Poetics | Page 2

should bring him too under the
general term poet. So much then for these distinctions.
There are, again, some arts which employ all the means above
mentioned, namely, rhythm, tune, and metre. Such are Dithyrambic and
Nomic poetry, and also Tragedy and Comedy; but between them the
difference is, that in the first two cases these means are all employed in
combination, in the latter, now one means is employed, now another.
Such, then, are the differences of the arts with respect to the medium of
imitation.

II
Since the objects of imitation are men in action, and these men must be
either of a higher or a lower type (for moral character mainly answers
to these divisions, goodness and badness being the distinguishing
marks of moral differences), it follows that we must represent men
either as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are. It is the
same in painting. Polygnotus depicted men as nobler than they are,
Pauson as less noble, Dionysius drew them true to life.
Now it is evident that each of the modes of imitation above mentioned
will exhibit these differences, and become a distinct kind in imitating
objects that are thus distinct. Such diversities may be found even in

dancing,: flute-playing, and lyre-playing. So again in language, whether
prose or verse unaccompanied by music. Homer, for example, makes
men better than they are; Cleophon as they are; Hegemon the Thasian,
the inventor of parodies, and Nicochares, the author of the Deiliad,
worse than they are. The same thing holds good of Dithyrambs and
Nomes; here too one may portray different types, as Timotheus and
Philoxenus differed in representing their Cyclopes. The same
distinction marks off Tragedy from Comedy; for Comedy aims at
representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.

III
There is still a third difference--the manner in which each of these
objects may be imitated. For the medium being the same, and the
objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration--in which case he
can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own
person, unchanged--or he may present all his characters as living and
moving before us.
These, then, as we said at the beginning, are the three differences which
distinguish artistic imitation,--the medium, the objects, and the manner.
So that from one point of view, Sophocles is an imitator of the same
kind as Homer--for both imitate higher types of character; from another
point of view, of the same kind as Aristophanes--for both imitate
persons acting and doing. Hence, some say, the name of 'drama' is
given to such poems, as representing action. For the same reason the
Dorians claim the invention both of Tragedy and Comedy. The claim to
Comedy is put forward by the Megarians,--not only by those of Greece
proper, who allege that it originated under their democracy, but also by
the Megarians of Sicily, for the poet Epicharmus, who is much earlier
than Chionides and Magnes, belonged to that country. Tragedy too is
claimed by certain Dorians of the Peloponnese. In each case they
appeal to the evidence of language. The outlying villages, they say, are
by them called {kappa omega mu alpha iota}, by the Athenians {delta
eta mu iota}: and they assume that Comedians were so named not from
{kappa omega mu 'alpha zeta epsilon iota nu}, 'to revel,' but because

they wandered from village to village (kappa alpha tau alpha / kappa
omega mu alpha sigma), being excluded contemptuously from the city.
They add also that the Dorian word for 'doing' is {delta rho alpha nu},
and the Athenian, {pi rho alpha tau tau epsilon iota nu}.
This may suffice as to the number and nature of the various modes of
imitation.

IV
Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them
lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in
man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals
being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through
imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the
pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of
experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight
to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms
of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again
is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but
to men in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited.
Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in
contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying
perhaps, 'Ah, that is he.' For if you happen not to have