something about why tragedy is singled out as the model for human action.
Xix [Since] the turn of events involves not to much a change as a reinterpretation of what has already occurred, some recognition seems necessary. Reversal must, therefore, be our recognition as an audience that what we thought to be is not what we thought it to be…Recognition as an-agnorisis, is a privation of ignorance. But might we not understand its etymology as ana-agnoroisis—knowing back or re-cognizing? As the very same syllables give us two quite different etymologies, it is not so obvious what “the name signifies.” When this sort of ambiguity arises within a play, the conditions are present [end of page xx] for recognition. A prior confusion is discovered in a way that alters the action of the play. Recognition is thus the awareness within the play, i.e., of a character, which parallels the audience’s awareness of a reversal.
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On Poetics
Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action [mimesis praxeos] that is of stature and complete, with magnitude, that, by means of sweetened speech, but with each of its kinds separate in its proper parts, is of people acting and not through report, and accomplishes [end of page 17] through pity and fear the cleansing49 of experiences of this sort. 49. “Cleansing” is katharsis; Aristotle treats it at somewhat more length at Politics 1342a5-16.
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In addition to these [end of page 21] parts the greatest things by which tragedy guides the soul61 are parts of the story, reversals and recognitions.62 Further, a sign of this is that those attempting to make
poetry [poiein], like almost all of the first poets, are able to be precise with respect to talk and characters earlier than they are able to put events together. Story, then, is the first principle63 and like the soul of tragedy, and characters are second. 61. “Guides the soul” is psuchagôgei; it referred originally to the leading of souls into or out of Hades and therefore to a kind of sorcery and black magic. The adjective psuchagôgikon occurs at 1450b16 of opsis. Neither word occurs anywhere else in Aristotle 62. “Recognition” (anagnôrisis) occurs once at Eudemian Ethics 1237a25 and nowhere else in Aristotle. It occurs once in Plato. It does not occur in any other classical author. “Reversal” (peripeteia) occurs twice elsewhere in Aristotle. 63. Archê, elsewhere translated as “beginning” is translated here as “first principle.”
21-22 We have posited tragedy to be an imitation of a complete and whole action having some magnitude; for there is also a whole which has no magnitude. What has a beginning, middle, and end is a whole. A beginning is whatever in itself is not of necessity after something else but after which another [heteron] has a nature to be or to become. But an end, on the contrary, is whatever in itself has a nature to be after something else—but after it nothing else. And a middle is that which is both in itself after something else and after which there is another. Well-put-together stories, then, ought neither to begin from just anywhere nor end just anywhere but use the aforesaid forms.
24
8. A story is one not as some suppose it is if it is concerned with one human being, for countlessly many things happen to one human being out of which, with the exception of [end of page 25] some, nothing is a one…Just as in the other imitative arts the single imitation is of a single thing, so also the story, since it is an imitation of action, ought to be of one action, and this a whole. And the parts of the events ought to have been put together so that when a part is transposed or removed, the whole
becomes different and changes. For whatever makes no noticeable difference if it is added or not added is no proper part of the whole.
25-26 It is also apparent from what has been said that this too is not the task of the poet, i.e., to speak of what has come to be, but rather to speak of what sort of things would come to be, i.e., of what is possible according to the likely or the necessary. For the historian and the poet do not differ by speaking either in meters or without meters (since it would [end of page 26] be possible for the writings f Herodotus be put in meters, and they would no less be a history with meter than without meters). But they differ in this: the one speaks of what has come to be while the other speaks of what sort would come to be. Therefore poiêsis is more philosophic and of more stature than history. For poetry speaks rather of the general things while history speaks of the particular things. The general, that it falls to a certain sort of man to say or do certain sort of things according to the likely or the necessary, is what poetry aims at in attaching names….It is clear then from these things, that the poet [poeiêtês] must be a maker [poiêtês] of [end of page 26] stories rather than of meters, insofar as he is a poet by virtue of imitation, and he inmates action.
26-27 Of simple stories and actions the episodic are worst. I mean [legô] by an episodic story one in which the episodes following one another are neither likely nor necessary.
28 Of stories, some are simple while others are of a complex weave, for the actions, also, of which the stories are imitations, are from the start just of these sorts. And I mean by simple an action that comes to be as continuous and one, as we defined them, and of which the change comes to be without reversal or recognition, and by a tragedy of a complex
weave, an action in which the change is with a recognition or a reversal or both. And these ought to come to be from the very putting together of the story so that it happens that, on the basis of what occurred previously, these things come to be either from necessity or according to the likely. It makes a great deal of difference whether what we have before us comes to be because of what we have before us or after what we have before us.
29 Recognition [anagnôrisis], on the other hand, just as the name too signifies, is a change from ignorance [agnoia] to knowledge [gnôsis], whether towards fellowship or enmity, of those whose relation to good or ill fortune has already been defined. A recognition is most beautiful when it comes to be at the same time as a reversal, for example as it is in the Oedipus.
30 Since, then, the putting together of the most beautiful tragedy should be not simple but of a complex weave, and what is more it should be imitative of fearful and pitiable things (for this is peculiar to this sort of imitation), first, just as it is clear that the sound82 men ought not to be [end of page 32] shown changing from good to bad fortune (for this is neither fearful nor pitiable but loathsome), so the wicked ought not to be shown changing from misfortune to good fortune (for this is the least tragic of all, since it has nothing of what it ought to have as it is neither productive of a feeling of kinship with the human83 nor pitiable nor fearful) and more than the very evil man ought to appear to fall from good fortune to ill fortune (for, though a putting together of this sort would have the feeling of kinship with the human, still it would not have either pity or fear; for with respect to one who has ill fortune, the pity concerns his not deserving it, and the fear concerns his being similar to us, so that what occurs will be neither pitiable nor fearful). The one between these, then, is left. He who is neither distinguished by virtue and justice nor changing to bad fortune on account of vice and wickedness if of this sort, but one who changes on account of
some mistake and is one of those in great repute and of good fortune such as Oedipus, Thyestes, notable men of families of this sort. 82. “Sound” translates epiekês. In Book 5 of the Nichomachean Ethics (1137a31- 1138a3) it is the virtue that belongs to the one who is more just than justice, for he sees where the general rules of justice embodied in the law fall short in every particular case. The epiekês is thus the man of equity. As one who in principle never errs, he ought never to suffer from making mistakes. 83. The greek is philanthrôpon. Aristotle discusses it once in the Nicomachean Ethics (1155a20) in the context of a discussion of friendship or philia.
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Of every tragedy there is an entanglement120 and an unraveling,121 the things outside and often some of those without being the entanglement and the remainder the unraveling. And I mean the entanglement to be what is from the beginning until that part which is an extreme [escathon] from which it changes into good fortune or misfortune, and by unraveling what is from the beginning of the change until the end. 120. “Entanglement” is desis; it could also be translated “tying,” “binding up,” or “complication.” 121. “Unraveling” is lusis, from the verb luô, to loosen or free; it also has the sense of resolving, and later in the text even of analysis.
45 About all the other kinds we have already spoken, but it remains to speak about talk and thought. Let the things about thought be those established in the writings about rhetoric, for this is more particular to that way of inquiry. Those things fall under thought which are to be produced by speech. The parts of these are proving, disproving, and the producing of passions (such as pity, fear, or anger and all that are of this sort) and further aggrandizing and belittlings.
47 It is a virtue of talk to be clear and not low. That from ordinary words is thus clearest but low (the poiêsis of Cleophon is an example and that of Sthenelus), while the use of alien words is august and alters the idiomatic.
I mean by alien the foreign, metaphor, the lengthened, and everything beyond the ordinary. But, were someone to make everything of this sort, it would be either an enigma or a barbarism, an enigma if out of metaphors and a barbarism if out of foreign words. For this is the form of an enigma: while speaking of things that exist to join them together in impossible ways. One cannot do this in putting together [end of page 54] other words, but in putting together metaphors it is possible, for example, “I saw a man who welded bronze on a men with fire” and things of this sort. But when they are from foreign words, it is a barbarism. There ought to be, somehow, a blending of these. For, on the one hand, the non-idiomatic will make it not low, for example, the foreign, metaphor, ornament, and the other species [eidê] mentioned, and, on the other hand, the ordinary will make for clarity. The lengthenings, shortenings, and alterings of words contribute not the least part to the combination of clarity of talk with the non-idiomatic. For because of the occurrence of the unusual and its difference from ordinary talk, they will make for the non-idiomatic, but, because they share in the usual, there will be clarity.
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