With regard to problems, Footnote 1A problem
in this sense is a difficult passage or expression which explanation and may easily be censured by an unsympathetic critic. Aristotle here classifies the various grounds of censure and the various lines of defence. Most of his illustrations are drawn from the critical objections lodged against the Iliad by Zoilus and other hammerers of Homer.
As the reader will see, many of them are abysmally foolish. and the various solutions of them, how many kinds there are, and the nature of each kind, all will be clear if we look at them like this.
Since the poet represents life, as a painter does or any other maker of likenesses, he must always represent one of three things—either things as they were or are; or things as they are said and seem to be; or things as they should be.
These are expressed in diction with or without rare words and metaphors, there being many modifications of diction, all of which we allow the poet to use.
Moreover, the standard of what is correct is not the same in the art of poetry as it is in the art of social conduct or any other art.
In the actual art of poetry there are two kinds of errors, essential and accidental.
If a man meant to represent something and failed through incapacity, that is an essential error. But if his error is due to his original conception being wrong and his portraying, for example, a horse advancing both its right legs, that is then a technical error in some special branch of knowledge,in medicine, say, or whatever it may be; or else some sort of impossibility has been portrayed, but that is not an essential error.
These considerations must, then, be kept in view in meeting the charges contained in these objections.
Let us first take the charges against the art of poetry itself. If an impossibility has been portrayed, an error has been made.
But it is justifiable if the poet thus achieves the object of poetry—what that is has been already stated—and makes that part or some other part of the poem more striking. The pursuit of Hector is an example of this. Footnote 2See Aristot. Poet. 24.16 and note.
If, however, the object could have been achieved better or just as well without sacrifice of technical accuracy, then it is not justifiable, for, if possible, there should be no error at all in any part of the poem.
Again one must ask of which kind is the error, is it an error in poetic art or a chance error in some other field? It is less of an error not to know that a female stag has no horns than to make a picture that is unrecognizable.
Next, supposing the charge is That is not true,
one can meet it by saying But perhaps it ought to be,
just as Sophocles said that he portrayed people as they ought to be and Euripides portrayed them as they are.
If neither of these will do, then say, Such is the tale
; for instance, tales about gods.
Very likely there is no advantage in telling them, and they are not true either, but may well be what Xenophanes declared Footnote 3i.e., immoral and therefore untrue. He opened the assault on Homeric theology at the end of the sixth or the beginning of the fifth century B.C. —all the same such is the tale.
In another case, perhaps, there is no advantage but such was the fact,
e.g. the case of the arms, Their spears erect on butt-spikes stood,
Footnote 4Hom. Il. 10.152. Problem: Surely a bad stance: they might so easily fall and cause alarm.
Solution: Homer does not defend it. He merely states a fact.
It is thus that we excuse unpleasant
fiction. for that was then the custom, as it still is in Illyria.
As to the question whether anything that has been said or done is morally good or bad, this must be answered not merely by seeing whether what has actually been done or said is noble or base, but by taking into consideration also the man who did or said it, and seeing to whom he did or said it, and when and for whom and for what reason; for example, to secure a greater good or to avoid a greater evil.
Some objections may be met by reference to the diction, for example, by pleading rare word,
e.g. οὐρῆας μὲν πρῶτον, for perhaps he means not mules but sentinels. Footnote 5Hom. Il. 1.50: The mules and swift-footed hounds he first beset with his arrows.
Apollo is sending plague upon the Greek army. Problem: Why should he first attack the mules?
Solution: The word may here mean
And Dolon, sentiels.
One that was verily evil of form,
it may be not his deformed body but his ugly face, for the Cretans use fair-formed
for fair-featured.
Footnote 6Hom. Il. 10.316: One that was verily evil inform but swift in his running.
Problem: If Dolon were deformed, how could he run fast?
Solution:
And again Form
may here mean feature.
Livelier mix it
may mean not undiluted as for drunkards but quicker. Footnote 7Hom. Il. 9.202:
Set me, Menoetius’ son, a larger bowl for the mingling,
Livelier mix it withal and make ready for each one a beaker.
Problem:
Solution: Livelier
suggests intemperance.Perhaps the word means
Similar scruples emended the lines in quicker.
Young Lochinvar
to read: And now am I come with this pretty maid
To dance but one measure, drink one lemonade.
Other expressions are metaphorical, for example:
Then all the other immortals and men lay all night in slumber,
while yet he says:
Yea, when indeed he gazed at the Trojan plain Agamemnon
Marvelled at voices of flutes . . .
All
is used instead of many
metaphorically, all
being a species of many.
Footnote 8Hom. Il. 2.2 (quoted by mistake for Hom. Il. 10.1) and Hom. Il. 10.13, 14:
Then all the other immortals and all the horse-crested heroes
Night-long slumbered, but Zeus the sweet sleep held not. . .
Hom. Il. 2.1, 2
Yea, when indeed he gazed at the Trojan plain, Agamemnon
Marvelled at voices of flutes and of pipes and the din of the soldiers.
Hom. Il. 10.13, 14 Problem: If all were asleep, who was playing the flute?
Solution: This may be a metaphor; as explained in chapter 21,
And again, all
is one kind or species of many
, and thus by transference all
is used for many
, the species for the genus.Alone unsharing
Footnote 9Hom. Il. 18.489:
She alone of all others shares not in the baths of the Ocean.
The reference is to the Great Bear. Problem: Why does Homer say
Solution: she alone
when the other Northern Constellations also do not set?As in the last instance, the may be
is metaphorical; the best known is called the only one.metaphorical,
i.e., the genus, sole,
may be here used by transference for one of its species, best known.
By intonation also; for example, the solutions of Hippias of Thasos, his δίδομεν δέ οἱ
Footnote 10Hom. Il. 2.15. Our text is different. Aristotle, who quotes the line again elsewhere, read thus:
No longer the gods in the halls of Olympus
Strive in their plans, for Hera has bent them all to her purpose
Thus by her prayers; and we grant him to win the boast of great glory.
Zeus is instructing the Dream, whom he is sending to lure Agamemnon to disaster. Problem: The last statement is a lie.
Solution: Change the accent and the statement δίδομεν δέ οἱ becomes a command (the infinitive διδόμεναι written in a shortened form and used as an imperative). The lie will then be told by the Dream and not by Zeus, who may thus save his reputation for veracity.
and τὸ μὲν οὗ καταπύθεται ὄμβρῳ Footnote 11Hom. Il. 23.327: A fathom high from the earth there rises a stump all withered, A stump of an oak or a pine, that rots not at all in the rain.
Problem: The last statement is incredible.
Solution: Alter the breathing and τὸ μὲν οὐ becomes τὸ μὲν οὗ and means
;part of it rots in the rain.
and by punctuation; for example, the lines of Empedocles:
Soon mortal grow they that aforetime learnt
Immortal ways, and pure erstwhile commingled.
Footnote 12The Problem is erstwhile
goes with pure
or with commingled.
The former interpretation seems to give the best solution. Empedocles is speaking of the elements or atoms.
Or again by ambiguity, e.g. παρῴχηκεν δὲ πλέω νύξ, where πλείω is ambiguous. Footnote 13Hom. Il. 10.252: Come now, the night is far spent and at hand is the dawning,
Far across are the stars and more than two parts of the night-time
Are gone, but a third is still left us.
Problem: If more than two parts
are gone, a third cannot be left. Solution: πλέω here means full,
i.e., the full night of two-thirds
= full two-thirds of the night is gone,
and so Homer’s arithmetic is saved.
Others according to the habitual use of the phrase, e.g. wine and water is called wine
so you get the phrase greaves of new-wrought tin
; Footnote 14Problem: Greaves are made not of tin but of an alloy of tin and copper.
Solution: Compounds are called by the name of the more important partner. Just as a mixture of wine and water is called
So, too, is whisky and water called wine,
so here an alloy of tin and copper is called tin.
whisky.
or workers in iron are called braziers,
and so Ganymede is said to pour wine for Zeus, though they do not drink wine. This last might however be metaphorical. Footnote 15Nectar:gods :: wine: men. Therefore, according to the rules of metaphor in chapter 21, nectar may be called wine
or the wine of the gods.
Whenever a word seems to involve a contradiction, one should consider how many different meanings it might bear in the passage, e.g. in There the bronzen shaft was stayed,
Footnote 16Hom. Il. 20.272: Nay but the weighty shaft of the warlike hero Aeneas
Brake not the shield; for the gold, the gift of a god, did withstand it.
Through two folds it drave, yet three were beneath, for Hephaestus,
Crook-footed god, five folds had hammered; two were of bronze-work,
Two underneath were of tin and one was of gold; there the bronzen
Shaft of the hero was stayed in the gold.
Problem: Since the gold was presumably outside for the sake of ornament, how could the spear he stayed in the gold and yet penetrate two folds?
Bywater suggests as a solution that the plate of gold sufficed to stop the course of the spear, though the spear-point actually pierced it and indented the underlying plates of brass.
we should ask in how many ways being stayed
might be taken,
interpreting the passage in this sense or in that,
and keeping as far as possible from the attitude which Glaucon Footnote 17This may well be the Glaucon mentioned in Plato’s Ion as an authority on Homer. describes when he says that people make some unwarrantable presupposition and having themselves given an adverse verdict proceed to argue from it, and if what they think the poet has said does not agree with their own preconceived ideas, they censure him, as if that was what he had said.
This is what has happened in the case of Icarius. Footnote 18Penelope’s father. They assume that he was a Spartan and therefore find it odd that when Telemachus went to Sparta he did not meet him. But the truth may be, as the Cephallenians say, that Odysseus married a wife from their country and that the name was not Icarius but Icadius. So the objection is probably due to a mistake.
In general any impossibility
may be defended by reference to the poetic effect or to the ideal or to current opinion.
For poetic effect a convincing impossibility is preferable to that which is unconvincing though possible.
It may be impossible that there should be such people as Zeuxis Footnote 19See Aristot. Poet. 6.15. used to paint, but it would be better if there were; for the type should improve on the actual.
Popular tradition may be used to defend what seems irrational, and you can also say that sometimes it is not irrational, for it is likely that unlikely things should happen.
Contradictions in terms must be examined in the same way as an opponent’s refutations in argument, to see whether the poet refers to the same thing in the same relation and in the same sense, and has contradicted either what he expressly says himself or what an intelligent person would take to be his meaning.
It is right, however, to censure both improbability and depravity where there is no necessity and no use is made of the improbability.An example is Euripides’ intro duction of Aegeus Footnote 20Eur. Medea 663. In Aristotle’s opinion there is no good reason for Aegeus’s appearance and no good use is made of it. or(of depravity)the character of Menelans in the Orestes.
The censures they bring are of five kinds; that things are either impossible or irrational or harmful or inconsistent or contrary to artistic correctness. The solutions must be studied under the heads specified above, twelve in number. Footnote 21i.e., any expression that is criticized should be considered with reference to (1) things as they were; (2) things as thy are; (3) things as they are said to be; (4) things as they seem to be; (5) things as they ought to be. Further, we should consider whether (6) a rare word or (7) a metaphor is used; what is the right (8) accent and (9) punctuation; also where there may be (10) ambiguity and what is (11) the habitual use of the phrase; also we may refer to (12) the proper standard of correctness in poetry as distinct from other arts.