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[1459a]
[1]
All that sort of thing, not being in the ordinary form, gives
distinction to the diction, which was what he failed to understand. It is a great thing
to make a proper use of each of the elements mentioned, and of double words and rare
words too, but by far the greatest thing is the use of metaphor. That alone cannot be learnt; it is the token
of genius. For the right use of metaphor means an eye for resemblances.1 Of the various kinds of words the double forms are most
suited for dithyrambs, rare words for heroic verse and metaphors for iambics.
And indeed in heroic verse they
are all useful; but since iambic verse is largely an imitation of speech, only those
nouns are suitable which might be used in talking. These are the ordinary word,
metaphor, and "ornament." Now concerning tragedy and the art of representing life in
action, what we have said already must suffice. We come now to the art of
representation which is narrative and in metre.2 Clearly the story must be constructed as in tragedy,
dramatically, round a single piece of action, whole and complete in
itself,
[20]
with a beginning, middle and
end, so that like a single living organism it may produce its own peculiar form of
pleasure. It must not be such as we
normally find in history, where what is required is an exposition not of a single
piece of action but of a single period of time, showing all that within the period
befell one or more persons, events that have a merely casual relation to each other.
For just as the battle of
Salamis occurred at the same time as
the Carthaginian battle in Sicily, but they
do not converge to the same result3;
so, too, in any sequence of time one event may follow another and yet they may not
issue in any one result. Yet most of
the poets do this. So in this respect,
too, compared with all other poets Homer may seem, as we have already said, divinely
inspired, in that even with the Trojan war, which has a beginning and an end, he did
not endeavor to dramatize it as a whole, since it would have been either too long to
be taken in all at once or, if he had moderated the length, he would have
complicated it by the variety of incident. As it is, he takes one part of the story
only and uses many incidents from other parts, such as the Catalogue of Ships and
other incidents with which he diversifies his poetry. The others, on the contrary, all write about a single hero or
about a single period or about a single action with a great many parts, the authors,
Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 23, translated by W.H. Fyfe. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1932.
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