The Poetics | Page 4

ritual origin nor the
dramatic value of these divine epiphanies. He thinks of the convenient
gods and abstractions who sometimes spoke the prologues of the New
Comedy, and imagines that the God appears in order to unravel the plot.
As a matter of fact, in one play which he often quotes, the _Iphigenia
Taurica_, the plot is actually distorted at the very end in order to give
an opportunity for the epiphany.[1]
[1] See my Euripides and his Age, pp. 221-45.
One can see the effect of the tradition also in his treatment of the terms
Anagnorisis and Peripeteia, which Professor Bywater translates as
'Discovery and Peripety' and Professor Butcher as 'Recognition and
Reversal of Fortune'. Aristotle assumes that these two elements are
normally present in any tragedy, except those which he calls 'simple';
we may say, roughly, in any tragedy that really has a plot. This strikes a
modern reader as a very arbitrary assumption. Reversals of Fortune of
some sort are perhaps usual in any varied plot, but surely not
Recognitions? The clue to the puzzle lies, it can scarcely be doubted, in
the historical origin of tragedy. Tragedy, according to Greek tradition,
is originally the ritual play of Dionysus, performed at his festival, and
representing, as Herodotus tells us, the 'sufferings' or 'passion' of that
God. We are never directly told what these 'sufferings' were which
were so represented; but Herodotus remarks that he found in Egypt a
ritual that was 'in almost all points the same'. [1] This was the
well-known ritual of Osiris, in which the god was torn in pieces,
lamented, searched for, discovered or recognized, and the mourning by
a sudden Reversal turned into joy. In any tragedy which still retained
the stamp of its Dionysiac origin, this Discovery and Peripety might
normally be expected to occur, and to occur together. I have tried to
show elsewhere how many of our extant tragedies do, as a matter of
fact, show the marks of this ritual.[2]
[1] Cf. Hdt. ii. 48; cf. 42,144. The name of Dionysus must not be
openly mentioned in connexion with mourning (ib. 61, 132, 86). This
may help to explain the transference of the tragic shows to other heroes.

[2] In Miss Harrison's Themis, pp. 341-63.
I hope it is not rash to surmise that the much-debated word _katharsis_,
'purification' or 'purgation', may have come into Aristotle's mouth from
the same source. It has all the appearance of being an old word which is
accepted and re-interpreted by Aristotle rather than a word freely
chosen by him to denote the exact phenomenon he wishes to describe.
At any rate the Dionysus ritual itself was a katharmos_ or _katharsis--a
purification of the community from the taints and poisons of the past
year, the old contagion of sin and death. And the words of Aristotle's
definition of tragedy in Chapter VI might have been used in the days of
Thespis in a much cruder and less metaphorical sense. According to
primitive ideas, the mimic representation on the stage of 'incidents
arousing pity and fear' did act as a katharsis of such 'passions' or
'sufferings' in real life. (For the word pathemata means 'sufferings' as
well as 'passions'.) It is worth remembering that in the year 361 B.C.,
during Aristotle's lifetime, Greek tragedies were introduced into Rome,
not on artistic but on superstitious grounds, as a katharmos against a
pestilence (Livy vii. 2). One cannot but suspect that in his account of
the purpose of tragedy Aristotle may be using an old traditional
formula, and consciously or unconsciously investing it with a new
meaning, much as he has done with the word mythos.
Apart from these historical causes of misunderstanding, a good teacher
who uses this book with a class will hardly fail to point out numerous
points on which two equally good Greek scholars may well differ in the
mere interpretation of the words. What, for instance, are the 'two
natural causes' in Chapter IV which have given birth to Poetry? Are
they, as our translator takes them, (1) that man is imitative, and (2) that
people delight in imitations? Or are they (1) that man is imitative and
people delight in imitations, and (2) the instinct for rhythm, as
Professor Butcher prefers? Is it a 'creature' a thousand miles long, or a
'picture' a thousand miles long which raises some trouble in Chapter
VII? The word zoon means equally 'picture' and 'animal'. Did the older
poets make their characters speak like 'statesmen', politikoi_, or merely
like ordinary citizens, _politai, while the moderns made theirs like
'professors of rhetoric'? (Chapter VI, p. 38; cf. Margoliouth's note and

glossary).
It may seem as if the large uncertainties which we have indicated
detract in a ruinous manner from the value of the Poetics to us