Poetics | Page 6

truth. In composing the
Odyssey he did not include all the adventures of Odysseus--such as his
wound on Parnassus, or his feigned madness at the mustering of the
host--incidents between which there was no necessary or probable
connection: but he made the Odyssey, and likewise the Iliad, to centre
round an action that in our sense of the word is one. As therefore, in the
other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the object imitated is one,
so the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and
that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one
of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and
disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible
difference, is not an organic part of the whole.

IX
It is, moreover, evident from what has been said, that it is not the
function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may
happen,-- what is possible according to the law of probability or
necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in
prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still
be a species of history, with metre no less than without it. The true
difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may
happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing
than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the
particular. By the universal, I mean how a person of a certain type will
on occasion speak or act, according to the law of probability or
necessity; and it is this universality at which poetry aims in the names
she attaches to the personages. The particular is--for example--what

Alcibiades did or suffered. In Comedy this is already apparent: for here
the poet first constructs the plot on the lines of probability, and then
inserts characteristic names;--unlike the lampooners who write about
particular individuals. But tragedians still keep to real names, the
reason being that what is possible is credible: what has not happened
we do not at once feel sure to be possible: but what has happened is
manifestly possible: otherwise it would not have happened. Still there
are even some tragedies in which there are only one or two well known
names, the rest being fictitious. In others, none are well known, as in
Agathon's Antheus, where incidents and names alike are fictitious, and
yet they give none the less pleasure. We must not, therefore, at all costs
keep to the received legends, which are the usual subjects of Tragedy.
Indeed, it would be absurd to attempt it; for even subjects that are
known are known only to a few, and yet give pleasure to all. It clearly
follows that the poet or 'maker' should be the maker of plots rather than
of verses; since he is a poet because he imitates, and what he imitates
are actions. And even if he chances to take an historical subject, he is
none the less a poet; for there is no reason why some events that have
actually happened should not conform to the law of the probable and
possible, and in virtue of that quality in them he is their poet or maker.
Of all plots and actions the epeisodic are the worst. I call a plot
'epeisodic' in which the episodes or acts succeed one another without
probable or necessary sequence. Bad poets compose such pieces by
their own fault, good poets, to please the players; for, as they write
show pieces for competition, they stretch the plot beyond its capacity,
and are often forced to break the natural continuity.
But again, Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but of
events inspiring fear or pity. Such an effect is best produced when the
events come on us by sunrise; and the effect is heightened when, at the
same time, they follow as cause and effect. The tragic wonder will thee
be greater than if they happened of themselves or by accident; for even
coincidences are most striking when they have an air of design. We
may instance the statue of Mitys at Argos, which fell upon his murderer
while he was a spectator at a festival, and killed him. Such events seem
not to be due to mere chance. Plots, therefore, constructed on these

principles are necessarily the best.

X
Plots are either Simple or Complex, for the actions in real life, of which
the plots are an imitation, obviously show a similar distinction. An
action which is one and continuous in the sense above defined, I call
Simple, when the change of fortune takes place without Reversal of the
Situation and