The Poetics | Page 7

not from their comoe or revels, but from their
strolling from hamlet to hamlet, lack of appreciation keeping them out
of the city. Their word also for 'to act', they say, is dran_, whereas
Athenians use _prattein.
So much, then, as to the number and nature of the points of difference
in the imitation of these arts.
4
It is clear that the general origin of poetry was due to two causes, each
of them part of human nature. Imitation is natural to man from
childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that
he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns at first by
imitation. And it is also natural for all to delight in works of imitation.
The truth of this second point is shown by experience: though the
objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to view the most
realistic representations of them in art, the forms for example of the
lowest animals and of dead bodies. The explanation is to be found in a
further fact: to be learning something is the greatest of pleasures not
only to the philosopher but also to the rest of mankind, however small
their capacity for it; the reason of the delight in seeing the picture is
that one is at the same time learning--gathering the meaning of things,
e.g. that the man there is so-and-so; for if one has not seen the thing
before, one's pleasure will not be in the picture as an imitation of it, but
will be due to the execution or colouring or some similar cause.
Imitation, then, being natural to us--as also the sense of harmony and
rhythm, the metres being obviously species of rhythms--it was through

their original aptitude, and by a series of improvements for the most
part gradual on their first efforts, that they created poetry out of their
improvisations.
Poetry, however, soon broke up into two kinds according to the
differences of character in the individual poets; for the graver among
them would represent noble actions, and those of noble personages; and
the meaner sort the actions of the ignoble. The latter class produced
invectives at first, just as others did hymns and panegyrics. We know of
no such poem by any of the pre-Homeric poets, though there were
probably many such writers among them; instances, however, may be
found from Homer downwards, e.g. his Margites, and the similar
poems of others. In this poetry of invective its natural fitness brought
an iambic metre into use; hence our present term 'iambic', because it
was the metre of their 'iambs' or invectives against one another. The
result was that the old poets became some of them writers of heroic and
others of iambic verse. Homer's position, however, is peculiar: just as
he was in the serious style the poet of poets, standing alone not only
through the literary excellence, but also through the dramatic character
of his imitations, so too he was the first to outline for us the general
forms of Comedy by producing not a dramatic invective, but a dramatic
picture of the Ridiculous; his Margites in fact stands in the same
relation to our comedies as the Iliad_ and _Odyssey to our tragedies.
As soon, however, as Tragedy and Comedy appeared in the field, those
naturally drawn to the one line of poetry became writers of comedies
instead of iambs, and those naturally drawn to the other, writers of
tragedies instead of epics, because these new modes of art were grander
and of more esteem than the old.
If it be asked whether Tragedy is now all that it need be in its formative
elements, to consider that, and decide it theoretically and in relation to
the theatres, is a matter for another inquiry.
It certainly began in improvisations--as did also Comedy; the one
originating with the authors of the Dithyramb, the other with those of
the phallic songs, which still survive as institutions in many of our
cities. And its advance after that was little by little, through their

improving on whatever they had before them at each stage. It was in
fact only after a long series of changes that the movement of Tragedy
stopped on its attaining to its natural form. (1) The number of actors
was first increased to two by Aeschylus, who curtailed the business of
the Chorus, and made the dialogue, or spoken portion, take the leading
part in the play. (2) A third actor and scenery were due to Sophocles. (3)
Tragedy acquired also its magnitude. Discarding short stories and a
ludicrous diction, through its passing out of its satyric stage, it assumed,
though only at a late point in its progress, a tone of dignity; and its
metre changed then from trochaic to iambic.