|
13. What should one aim at, and what should one avoid, when putting together a story? What will enable tragedy to achieve its effect? This is the next topic after what has been said. |
30 |
|
For tragedy at its best the plot should be complex, not simple, and it should be representative of fearsome and pitiable events, for that is the specific feature of this kind of representation. Hence it is clear first of all that good men should not be shown passing from good fortune to bad, for that evokes not fear or pity, but outrage. Nor should depraved men be shown passing from bad fortune to good—this indeed is the least tragic of all: it has none of the appropriate features, evoking neither pity nor fear nor even basic human sympathy. Finally, a very wicked man should not be shown passing from good fortune to bad: this may evoke basic human sympathy, but neither pity nor fear. One of those sentiments, namely pity, has to do with undeserved misfortune, and the other, namely fear, has to do with someone who is like ourselves. Accordingly, there will be nothing in the outcome to evoke either pity or fear. |
35 |
|
We are left, then, with the person in between: a man not outstanding in virtue or justice, brought down through vice or depravity, who falls into adversity not through vice or depravity but because he errs in some way.* He is a personage enjoying renown and prosperity, such as Oedipus, Thyestes,* and eminent persons from families of that kind. A well-made story, then, will have a single rather than (as some argue) a double upshot, and it will involve a change not from bad fortune to good, but from good fortune to bad. The cause of the change will not be depravity, but a serious error on the part of a character such as we have described (or someone better rather than worse). Evidence of this is provided by history. At first poets picked out stories at random, but nowadays the best tragedies are always constructed around a few families, for example, about Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus,* and any others whose lot has been to do or suffer something terrible. |
10 |
|
Accordingly, the best tragedy, technically, follows this plot. Critics who find fault with Euripides for doing this in his tragedies, most of which have an unhappy ending, are making the mistake that I mentioned earlier. For this, as has been said, is the right thing to do. The best evidence for this is the fact that on the stage, and in competitions, such plays, if well performed, are the most tragic. Euripides, even if he mismanages some other matters, is at all events the most tragic of the poets. |
25 |
|
Second best is the kind of plot which some people like most: a double plot like the Odyssey, with a different ending for the better and worse characters. It is regarded as best only because of the weaknesses of the audience; the poets follow the lead of their public and pander to its taste. But this is not the pleasure proper to tragedy, but is more characteristic of comedy. In comedy even those who are bitter enemies in the story, like Orestes and Aegisthus,* make friends and go off together at the end, and nobody gets killed by anybody. |
30 |
|
14. Actually seeing a play performed may evoke fear and pity, but so too can the plot itself—this is more fundamental and the mark of a better poet. The story should be put together in such a way that even without seeing the play a person hearing the series of events should feel dread and pity. This is what someone would feel on hearing the story of Oedipus. Evoking this effect by a stage performance is less artistic and more dependent on the production. The effect that some producers try to achieve is not so much fear as horror: that has nothing at all to do with tragedy. One should not look to it for every kind of enjoyment, but only the appropriate one. The poet’s job is to use representation to make us enjoy the tragic emotions of pity and fear, and this has to be built into his plots. |
1453a |
|
Let us therefore ask what kinds of event strike us as terrible or pitiable. The interactions in question must necessarily occur either between friends and relations, or between enemies, or strangers. If an enemy takes on an enemy, there is nothing in his acting or planning to arouse pity, only the actual suffering of the victim. So too when the characters are strangers. What should be looked for are cases where the sufferings occur within relationships, as between brother and brother, son and father, mother and son, son and mother—where one kills, or is on the point of killing, the other, or is doing something else horrible. |
15 |
|
The traditional stories should not be tampered with—Clytemnestra must be killed by Orestes, and Eriphyle by Alcmaeon, and so on—but the poet needs to be inventive and make the best use of the traditional material. Let me explain what I mean by ‘the best use’. The deed may be perpetrated in full knowledge and awareness, which is the way the old poets showed things, and as Euripides too made Medea kill her children.* It is also possible for the terrible deed to be done in ignorance, and the relationship be discovered only later, as with Sophocles’ Oedipus. Here the deed is outside the play; examples within the tragedy itself are Astydamas’ Alcmaeon or Telegonus in the Odysseus Wounded. A third possibility in addition to these two is when a person is on the point of unwittingly doing some irreparable deed, but realizes the situation in time to desist. There is no further possibility, since the deed is either done or not done, and the agents must either know or not know. |
25 |
|
Of these, the worst is being on the point of doing the deed knowingly, and then not doing it. This is monstrous without being tragic, since no one suffers. That is why poets never, or only very rarely, compose in this way (one example is Haemon and Creon in Antigone).* Second worst is the actual performance of the deed. This is best if the deed is one that is done in ignorance, with the relationship discovered only later—here there is nothing monstrous, and the discovery will make a great impression. Best of all is the last case: I mean, for example, when in Cresphontes Merope is on the point of killing her son, and recognizes him in time.* The same happens with sister and brother in the Iphigeneia, and in Helle when the son recognizes his mother when about to hand her over to the enemy.* |
1454a |
|
This is why, as I said earlier, not many families provide material for tragedy. It was chance, not art, that guided poets in their search for stories in which to produce their effects, so they are obliged to turn to the families who have suffered such woes. |
10 |
|
Enough has now been said about the construction of plots and the kinds of stories that are appropriate. |
15 |
|
15. We turn to moral character.* Here there are four things to aim at. The first and foremost is that the characters should be good.* As was said earlier, moral character will be shown if a speech or action reveals the nature of a person’s fundamental choice,* and the character will be good if the choice is good. This is possible in every class of person: there is such a thing as a good woman and a good slave, even if one of these is perhaps inferior, and the other base. The second point is appropriateness: it is no good for a character to be courageous if the courage or intelligence is expressed in a way that is not appropriate for a woman. The third aim is plausibility, which is something different from making the character good and appropriate in the manner described. The fourth item is consistency: even if the character portrayed is someone inconsistent, and that is the whole point of the representation, he should nevertheless be consistently inconsistent. |
20 |
|
An example of unnecessary badness of character is Menelaus in Orestes,* of inapt and inappropriate character the dirge of Odysseus in Scylla and the speech of Melanippe;* of inconsistency in the Iphigeneia in Aulis—the girl who pleads to be spared is not at all like her later self.* In the case of moral character no less than in plot, we should always look for what is necessary or probable: it should be necessary or probable for this kind of person to say or do this kind of thing, and it should be necessary or probable for one kind of event to follow another kind of event. |
30 |
|
Clearly, the explication* of a story should issue from the story itself, and not from a deus ex machina as in the Medea,* or in the departure scene in the Iliad.* A deus ex machina may be used for events outside the play—for past events beyond human ken, or subsequent events that can only be described in prophecy—since we believe that the gods are all-seeing. But there should not be anything implausible in the events themselves; or if there is, it should be outside the play, as with Sophocles’ Oedipus. |
1454b |
|
Since tragedy is a representation of people who are better than we are, poets should copy good portrait-painters, who portray a person’s features and offer a good likeness but nonetheless make him look handsomer than he is. In the same way, a poet exhibiting people who are irascible and indolent should show them as they are, and yet portray them as good men—in the way that Homer made Achilles both a good man and a paradigm of stubbornness.* |
10 |
|
These points are to be kept in mind throughout, and also the features of stage production that are essential to the art of poetry. Many mistakes are possible in this area. But they have been discussed in detail in my published works. |
|
|
16. Discovery has already been explained. It comes in six kinds. |
|
|
The first is identification by signs and tokens—this is the least artistic form, though because of writers’ lack of ingenuity it is the one most used. Some of these are congenital marks, like ‘the spear the earth-born bear’ or stars like the ones Carcinus uses in Thyestes, while others are acquired. Marks of this second kind may be bodily, such as scars, or external tokens, such as necklaces or the boat that leads to the discovery in Tyro.* Even these can be put to better or worse use: the way in which Odysseus’ scar leads to his recognition by his nurse is different from the way in which it leads to his recognition by the swineherds. Recognitions that are merely to add plausibility—and all others of a similar kind—are less artistic; far superior are those linked to the reversal, as in the bath scene.* |
20 |
|
Second are identifications that are made by the poet himself, which for that reason are inartistic. For example: Orestes in Iphigeneia reveals his own identity. Iphigeneia’s identity is revealed by the letter, whereas Orestes is made to say in his own person what the poet, and not the story, demands. This makes it close to the error just discussed: he might well have brought some tokens with him. Another case is ‘the voice of the shuttle’ in Sophocles’ Tereus.* |
30 |
|
Third there is identification through memory, when the matter is brought to mind by something seen or heard. A case in point is Dicaiogenes’ Cyprians, where the hero bursts into tears at the sight of the painting; another is the moment when Odysseus, telling his tale to Alcinous, weeps at the memories brought back by the sound of the harp. In each case recognition ensues. |
1455a |
|
Fourth there is identification by inference. The Choephorae provides an example: ‘Someone resembling me has come; no one resembles me except Orestes; therefore Orestes has come.’* Polyides the Sophist suggested another in connection with Iphigeneia; he said it was natural for Orestes to infer: ‘My sister was sacrificed, and so I will be too.’ Another case is in Theodectes’ Tydeus: ‘I came to find a son, so I am doomed myself.’ Again, in Phinaedae, when the women see the place: ‘This is where we were exposed, so this is where we are to die.’ |
5 |
|
There is also a complicated kind of identification based on fallacious reasoning by the audience. For instance, in Odysseus the False Messenger: the premise that the poet offers is that Odysseus, and he alone, can bend the bow. Odysseus himself says that he will recognize the bow which he had never seen. The identification actually takes place on the former basis, when the audience thinks fallaciously that it takes place on the latter.* |
15 |
|
The best discovery of all is one that ensues from the actual course of events, where the emotional impact is achieved through a probable sequence, as in Sophocles’ Oedipus and in Iphigeneia (her desire to send a letter is entirely probable). Only this kind of identification can make do without artificial marks and necklaces. Second best are those that involve inference. |
20 |
|
17. When plotting stories and putting them into words one should do one’s best to visualize the events. By envisaging things while they happen, as if one were an eyewitness, one will discover what is appropriate and one will be less likely to overlook inconsistencies. Evidence of this is offered by the criticism that was made of Carcinus. At the crucial moment Amphiaraus was returning from the temple—this would not be noticed by someone who did not see it, but on the stage it irritated the audience and the play was a failure. |
25 |
|
As far as possible, the poet should act the story as he writes it. People of the same temperament are more persuasive if they actually feel the emotions they enact: someone actually in distress best acts out distress, someone really angry best acts out rage. This is why, in order to write tragic poetry, you must be either a genius who can adapt himself to anything, or a madman who lets himself get carried away. |
30 |
|
The poet should first lay out the general structure and only then elaborate it into episodes: this is true whether the story is a ready-made one or a fresh composition. As an example of what I call laying out the general structure, take Iphigeneia. ‘A girl has been sacrificed and then vanishes without trace. Unbeknownst to her sacrificers she is set down in another country where it is the custom to sacrifice strangers to the local goddess. She becomes the priestess of this rite. Much later her brother happens to arrive, and on arrival is taken prisoner. (His being sent by an oracle, and for what purpose, does not belong to the story.) On the point of being sacrificed, he discloses his identity—either as Euripides makes him do, or as Polyidus suggested, by saying, not improbably: ‘As my sister was sacrificed, so must I be too’—and so he is saved. After that, names are to be supplied and episodes worked out—but the episodes should be appropriate, as are the fit of madness that led to Orestes’ arrest and the purification that led to his being saved. |
1455b |
|
In plays the episodes are short; in epic they lengthen out the poem. A summary of the Odyssey is not at all long. ‘A man is away from home for many years; he is kept under surveillance by Poseidon and isolated. Meanwhile affairs at home are in such a state that his property is being squandered by his wife’s suitors, who are plotting against his son. After being shipwrecked he returns home, identifies himself to several people, and launches an attack in which his enemies are destroyed and he survives.’ That is the core of the story; the rest is episodes. |
15 |
|
18. Every tragedy has both a complication and an explication. What goes before the opening, and often some of the events inside the play, make up the complication; the rest is the explication. What I call complication is everything from the beginning up to the point that immediately precedes the change to good or bad fortune; everything from the beginning of the change to the end I call explication. Thus, in Theodectes’ Lynceus the complication includes events before the play, the kidnapping of the child, and the […] of the parents; the explication is everything from the accusation of murder until the end.* |
25 |
|
There are four kinds of tragedy—the same number as that of the component parts mentioned. There is the complex kind, constituted by reversal and discovery (for example, plays about Ajax or Ixion); there is the morality tragedy (for example, Women of Phthia and Peleus); finally there is […] (e.g. Daughters of Phorcys, Prometheus, and plays set in the underworld).* |
1456a |
|
Preferably one should try to have all four, but if not all then the most important and as many as possible, especially given the way people criticize poets these days. Because in the past there have been good poets in each genre, people expect a present-day poet to surpass each of them in his own particular excellence. |
5 |
|
If we are to compare and contrast tragedies, we must do so principally in respect of the story, that is, whether they share the same complication and explication. Many poets complicate well but explicate badly, but the two need to be matched to each other. |
10 |
|
You must call to mind what I have said several times: one should never build a tragedy with an epic structure, that is to say, one containing more than one story. Suppose one were to make the entire story of the Iliad into one play! Epic is long enough for every episode to appear on an appropriate scale, but in a drama the result is very disappointing. There is evidence of this. Consider those who have treated the sack of Troy as a whole, like Euripides, rather than piecemeal, or the whole story of Niobe, rather than what Aeschylus did. These people’s plays were either complete failures or fared badly in the competition. There was even a play of Agathon’s which was a flop simply because of this. |
15 |
|
In reversals and in simple plots poets like to astonish us, in order to produce a desired effect that is both tragic and humane. This happens when someone who is both clever and wicked (like Sisyphus*) is taken in, or when someone who is brave but unjust is worsted. This is not improbable, since, as Agathon remarks, it is probable that many improbable things should happen. |
20 |
|
The chorus should be treated as one of the actors; it should be part of the whole and should take part in the action. Sophocles, not Euripides, should be the model here. With other poets the songs have no more to do with the story than with any other tragedy. That is why they sing interludes—a practice commenced by Agathon. But what difference is there between singing interludes and transferring a speech or an episode from one play into another? |
25 |
|
19. Now that the other elements have been discussed it is time to speak about style and ideas. The topic of ideas, however, can be left for my Rhetoric, the subject to which it more properly belongs. Under the head of ideas come all the effects that can be produced by reason: proof, refutation, the evocation of emotions (pity, fear, anger, and so on) and also the placing or removal of an emphasis. The same principles should be applied to the management of events, when there is a need to represent something as pitiful, or frightening, or important, or probable. The difference is that in stage-management the effect is to be produced without explicit statement, while in speeches the effect must be produced by the words of the speaker. What, indeed, would there be for the speaker to do if the required effects were evident without anything being said? |
35 |
|
One topic of inquiry, under the head of style, is the distinction between different speech acts: command, prayer, statement, threat, question, answer, and so on. Knowledge of these is part of the art of performance and of stage-direction: no serious criticism of a poet can be made on the basis of his knowledge or ignorance of such matters. Protagoras* complained that when Homer writes, ‘Sing, goddess, of the wrath …’, he purports to be uttering a prayer, but in fact he is giving an order, since that is what telling somebody what to do or not to do actually is. Why should anyone think that is a fault in Homer? So let us set that aside as belonging to some art other than that of poetry. |
10 |
|
20. Different grammatical elements go to make up style: phoneme, syllable, particle, noun, verb, conjunction, inflection, sentence. A phoneme is an indivisible vocal sound of a particular kind: it must be able to form part of a composite vocal sound, because animals too produce indivisible sounds, but none of them are what I call a phoneme. |
20 |
|
Phonemes are classified as vowels, fricatives, and mutes. A vowel is an audible sound without contact between the organs of speech; a fricative is an audible sound which does involve such contact (for example, s and r); a mute involves such contact but makes no audible sound unless it is combined with a phoneme which does have audible sound (such as g, d). Phonemes differ from each other in several ways: the shape of the mouth; the point of contact of the organs; and the presence or absence of aspiration. They also differ by being long or short, and by having acute, grave, or intermediate pitch. Detailed discussion of these differences belongs to the theory of metre. |
25 |
|
A syllable is a composite sound, made up of a mute and a sounding phoneme, that does not have a meaning in itself. Gr without an a is not a syllable* but becomes one with an a, namely gra. The various forms of syllable also belong to the theory of metre |
35 |
|
A particle is a sound, without meaning in itself, that neither helps nor hinders the creation of a single semantic unit from two or more such units. It is meant to stand in the middle or at the end of a sentence, but may not stand at the beginning. Examples are men, dh, toi, and de.* Another kind of sound that lacks meaning in itself is capable of forming a single semantic unit from several semantic units that share a single meaning. A conjunction is a sound lacking meaning itself that marks the beginning, the end, or the division of a sentence: for instance, amphi, peri, and so on.* Another such sound neither helps nor hinders the creation of a single semantic unit from two or more such units. It is meant to stand in the middle or at the end of a sentence, but may not stand at the beginning. |
1457a |
|
A noun* is a compound sound, lacking tense but bearing a meaning, no part of which is meaningful in its own right. (In composite nouns we do not treat any part as independently meaningful: ‘dorus’ in ‘Theodorus’ has no meaning.) |
10 |
|
A verb is a compound sound bearing tense as well as meaning, no part of which is meaningful in its own right (just as with nouns). Words like ‘man’ or ‘white’ do not indicate time, but ‘walks’ and ‘walked’ indicate present and past tense respectively. |
15 |
|
Verbs and nouns have inflections. With nouns, the inflections signify the case (the genitive ‘of’, the dative ‘to’, and so on) or the number (singular ‘man’, plural ‘men’). With verbs, the inflections signify things like the moods. The interrogative (‘did he walk?’) and imperative (‘walk!’) provide examples.* |
20 |
|
A sentence is a compound significant sound which has a part or parts that have meaning in their own right. Not every sentence consists of a verb and a noun—a definition of ‘man’ might not. There can be a sentence lacking any verb, but there must also be a part which has meaning on its own, for example, ‘Cleon’ in ‘Cleon is walking’. |
25 |
|
There are two ways in which sentences can be made into a unity: they may have just a single meaning, or they may simply be joined up together. The Iliad forms a unity in the latter sense, the definition of ‘man’ in the former. |
30 |
|
21. Nouns come in two kinds, simple or double. Ones that have no parts that are meaningful—for example, ‘earth’—I call ‘simple’. Double nouns again come in two kinds: those that have two meaningful parts, and those that are composed of one meaningful and one non-meaningful part (though neither part has any meaning within the noun itself). There can also be triple, quadruple, and multiplex nouns, like many from Marseilles, such as ‘Hermocaicoxanthus’.* |
|
|
Every noun can also be classified in a different manner. There are ordinary words, foreign words, metaphorical terms, euphemisms, and coinages. Again, a noun may be lengthened, or shortened, or modified. |
1457b |
|
An ordinary word is one that is in general use in a community, a foreign word one that is in general use elsewhere. Obviously the same word may be both ordinary and foreign, but not in the same community: for instance, sigunon is the ordinary word for spear in Cyprus, but is foreign to us; ‘spear’ is an ordinary word for us but foreign for them. |
5 |
|
Metaphor is applying to something a noun that properly applies to something else. The transfer may be from genus to species, from species to genus, or from species to species; or it may be a case of analogy.* |
|
|
If someone says ‘My ship stopped here’, I call that a transfer from genus to species, because mooring is one kind of stopping.* ‘Odysseus wrought in truth ten thousand noble needs’ is transfer from species to genus: ‘ten thousand’, a specific large number, is used instead of the generic ‘many’. Examples of transfer from species to species are ‘drawing off the life with bronze’ and ‘cutting off with sharp bronze’: here ‘drawing off’ means ‘cutting’ and ‘cutting’ means ‘drawing off’—both activities are kinds of removal. |
10 |
|
By analogy I mean the case where B is related to A as D is to C; one can then speak of D instead of B or B instead of D. Sometimes people add the thing to which the replaced term is related. I mean, for instance, a wine bowl is to Dionysus what a shield is to Ares, so you may call a wine bowl ‘the spear of Dionysus’ or a shield ‘the wine cup of Ares’. Or again, old age is to life as evening is to day, so you can speak of evening as the day’s old age, or, like Empedocles, call old age the evening or the twilight of life. Sometimes there is no current word for one term of the analogy, and yet the analogy can be used. A sower scatters seed-corn, the sun scatters rays of fire: the first is called ‘sowing’, the second has no name. Yet because the relation of the sun to its rays is the same as that of the sower to his seed-corn, the poet can speak of the sun ‘sowing his divine fire’. Yet another way of using this kind of metaphor is to refer to something by the transferred term minus one of its properties, as one might call a shield not just ‘the wine bowl of Ares’ but ‘the wineless wine bowl of Ares’.* |
20 |
|
A coinage is a word not in use in a community which is made up by the poet himself; there seem to be a few examples, such as ‘sproutage’ for horns and ‘prayerman’ for priest. |
35 |
|
Next, lengthening and shortening. A noun is lengthened if it has a long vowel instead of a short one, or if an extra syllable is inserted; it is shortened if something is removed. Examples of lengthening are poleeos for poleos and Peleiadeo for Peleidou. Examples of shortening are kri for the Greek word for barley, and do for the Greek word for house. In a famous line, ‘from a pair of eyes a single vision comes’, the abbreviation ops is used for the Greek word for vision.* Finally, what is modification? That is when you take a word as it stands, and then add something on to it—for example, ‘his rightward breast’ instead of ‘his right breast’. |
1458a |
|
Nouns themselves are either masculine, feminine, or neuter. Masculine nouns are those ending in nu, rho, sigma, or the two letters that contain sigma, namely psi and xi. Feminine are those that end in vowels that are always long (e.g. eta and omega), or among the vowels of variable length, in alpha. (So it turns out that there are just as many kinds of masculine nouns as of feminine nouns, since psi and xi are compounds of sigma.) No noun ends in a mute or in a short vowel; only three end in iota (meli, kommi, peperi), and five in upsilon.* Neuter nouns end in these letters and in nu and sigma. |
10 |
|
22. The best style is one that is clear without being vulgar. The clearest style is one that uses only common words, but that is vulgar, as the poetry of Cleophon and Sthenelus demonstrate. On the other hand, the use of exotic expressions—foreign words, metaphor, lengthening, and anything else out of the ordinary—makes a style solemn and elevated beyond the norm. But if you compose entirely in this style, the result will be either paradox or gibberish—paradox if made up entirely of metaphor, gibberish if made up of foreign words. The essence of paradox is to report actual facts by an impossible combination of terms. This cannot be done with ordinary words, but it can with metaphorical expressions—for example, ‘I saw a man use fire to fasten bronze upon his fellow’.* Passages composed entirely of foreign words produce gibberish. So what is needed is a mixture of these kinds of expression: the use of common words will produce clarity, and the use of exotic expressions (foreign words, metaphor, ornament, and the other items listed) will elevate the style above the vulgar. |
20 |
|
A great contribution to a style that is both clear and elevated is made by lengthenings, shortenings, and modifications. By its unfamiliarity the variation from common usage will elevate the style, but the features shared with everyday speech will preserve clarity. Some people find fault with this style and mock Homer for it, but they are wrong to do so. (An example is the elder Euclid, who said that it was easy to write poetry if you can lengthen words whenever you like—he offered parodies such as ‘I saw Epichares walking to Marathon’ and ‘not mixing his Hellebore’.)* An obtrusive use of this style certainly produces a comic effect; moderation is needed here, but equally in the employment of other elements of style. The use of metaphors, foreign words, and the other devices in an inappropriate and deliberately comic way would produce the same effect. The difference they make to epic, when used appropriately, can be observed if one takes a verse and substitutes common words for them. The truth of what I am saying can be observed in the particular cases of foreign words, metaphors, and the other devices, by this method of substituting common words. For instance, Aeschylus and Euripides each composed the same iambic line, but the change of a single word, the substitution of a foreign for a common noun, made one line seem splendid and the other banal. Aeschylus wrote in his Philoctetes, ‘the cancer that eats the flesh of my foot’, and Euripides changed ‘eats’ to ‘banquets on’. Again, in ‘a lowly, lank, and loathsome man’ one might substitute the words ‘small, weak, and ugly’. And compare ‘offering a misshapen chair and lowly table’ with ‘offering a bad chair and a little table’. Or again, ‘the resounding shore’ with ‘the noisy shore’.* |
1458b |
|
Ariphades ridiculed the tragedians for introducing expressions that no one would ever use in conversation, such as ‘the palace from’ instead of ‘from the palace’, ‘of thine’ and ‘Achilles round about’ for ‘round Achilles’. Ariphrades failed to realize that it is precisely by being out of the ordinary that such expressions elevate the style.* |
1459a |
|
All the items I have mentioned must be used in an appropriate manner. This goes for double nouns and foreign words, but above all the poet must be skilled in the use of metaphor. This is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others, and it is a sign of genius, since it involves a keen eye for similarities. Double nouns are particularly suited for dithyramb, foreign words for heroic verse, and metaphor for iambics. All the devices I have mentioned are in place in heroic verse, but in iambic verse, which is particularly close to conversation, the most appropriate ones are those that could also appear in prose—including metaphor and ornament as well as common words. |
5 |
|
So much, then, for tragedy and imitation on the stage. |
15 |