●詩：模仿

☉There are, lastly, certain other arts, which
combine all the means enumerated, rhythm, melody, and verse, e.g.
Dithyrambic and Nomic poetry, Tragedy and Comedy; with this
difference, however, that the three kinds of means are in some of them
all employed together, and in others brought in separately, one after
the other. These elements of difference in the above arts I term the
means of their imitation.(1)

☉It follows, therefore, that the agents
represented must be either above our own level of goodness, or beneath
it, or just such as we are in the same way as, with the painters, the
personages of Polygnotus are better than we are, those of Pauson
worse, and those of Dionysius just like ourselves.(2)

☉This in fact, according
to some, is the reason for plays being termed dramas, because in a
play the personages act the story. Hence too both Tragedy and Comedy
are claimed by the Dorians as their discoveries; Comedy by the
Megarians(3)

☉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(4)�]模仿來自求知慾的天性�^

☉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.(4)�]模仿�~�[即興�^

☉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. (4)

●詩：真實

☉The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing
prose and the other verse--you might put the work of Herodotus into
verse, and it would still be a species of history; it consists really
in this, that the one describes the thing that has been, and the
other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is something more
philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements
are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are
singulars.(9)�]詩比歷史�真實�^

☉Nevertheless even in Tragedy there are
some plays with but one or two known names in them, the rest being
inventions; and there are some without a single known name, e.g.
Agathon's Anthens, in which both incidents and names are of the poet's
invention; and it is no less delightful on that account. So that one
must not aim at a rigid adherence to the traditional stories on which
tragedies are based. (9)�]不必拘泥於史實�^

☉Herein, then, to repeat what we have said before, we have a further
proof of Homer's marvellous superiority to the rest. He did not
attempt to deal even with the Trojan war in its entirety, though it
was a whole with a definite beginning and end--through a feeling
apparently that it was too long a story to be taken in in one view, or
if not that, too complicated from the variety of incident in it. As it
is, he has singled out one section of the whole; many of the other
incidents, however, he brings in as episodes, using the Catalogue of
the Ships, for instance, and other episodes to relieve the uniformity
of his narrative.(23)�]Homer的成�\處在於不拘泥於史實�^

●喜�@

☉As for Comedy, it is (as has been observed) an imitation of men worse
than the average; worse, however, not as regards any and every sort of
fault, but only as regards one particular kind, the Ridiculous, which
is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake
or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others; the mask, for
instance, that excites laughter, is something ugly and distorted
without causing pain.(5)

●悲�@

☉All the parts of an epic are included in Tragedy;
but those of Tragedy are not all of them to be found in the Epic.(5)

☉There are six parts consequently of every
tragedy, as a whole, that is, of such or such quality, viz. a Fable or
Plot, Characters, Diction, Thought, Spectacle and Melody; two of them
arising from the means, one from the manner, and three from the
objects of the dramatic imitation; and there is nothing else besides
these six.(6)

☉for the
older poets make their personages discourse like statesmen, and the
moderns like rhetoricians. One must not confuse it with Character.
Character in a play is that which reveals the moral purpose of the
agents, i.e. the sort of thing they seek or avoid, where that is not
obvious--hence there is no room for Character in a speech on a purely
indifferent subject.(6)

☉the longer the story, consistently with
its being comprehensible as a whole, the finer it is by reason of its
magnitude. As a rough general formula, 'a length which allows of the
hero passing by a series of probable or necessary stages from
misfortune to happiness, or from happiness to misfortune', may suffice
as a limit for the magnitude of the story.(6)

☉As Tragedy is an imitation of personages better than the
ordinary man, we in our way should follow the example of good
portrait-painters, who reproduce the distinctive features of a man,
and at the same time, without losing the likeness, make him handsomer
than he is.(15)�]悲�@是模仿比我�好的人，�]此必須�化�^

●悲�@：宣洩

☉A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also,
as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable
accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work;
in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity
and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. (6)

●悲�@：憐憫與�懼

☉Tragedy, however, is an imitation not only of a complete action, but
also of incidents arousing pity and fear. Such incidents have the very
greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the
same time in consequence of one another; there is more of the
marvellous in them then than if they happened of themselves or by mere
chance. (9)�]引�_憐憫與�懼�^

☉A Peripety is the change from one state of things within the play to
its opposite of the kind described....A Discovery is, as the
very word implies, a change from ignorance to knowledge, and thus to
either love or hate, in the personages marked for good or evil
fortune. The finest form of Discovery is one attended by Peripeties,
like that which goes with the Discovery in _Oedipus_.....
will arouse either pity or fear--actions of that nature being what
Tragedy is assumed to represent; and it will also serve to bring about
the happy or unhappy ending....
A third part is Suffering; which we may define as an action
of a destructive or painful nature, such as murders on the stage,
tortures, woundings, and the like.(11)�]轉折點�^

☉We assume that, for the finest form of Tragedy, the Plot must be not
simple but complex; and further, that it must imitate actions arousing
pity and fear, since that is the distinctive function of this kind of
imitation. It follows, therefore, that there are three forms of Plot
to be avoided. (1) A good man must not be seen passing from happiness
to misery, or (2) a bad man from misery to happiness....
(3) an extremely bad man be seen falling from happiness into misery.(13)

☉Whenever the tragic deed,
however, is done within the family--when murder or the like is done or
meditated by brother on brother, by son on father, by mother on son,
or son on mother--these are the situations the poet should seek after....
This will explain why our tragedies are restricted (as we said just
now) to such a small number of families. It was accident rather than
art that led the poets in quest of subjects to embody this kind of
incident in their Plots. They are still obliged, accordingly, to have
recourse to the families in which such horrors have occurred.(14)
�]尤以家庭悲�@最�動人�^

●悲�@：過失

☉There remains, then, the intermediate kind of personage, a
man not pre-eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is
brought upon him not by vice and depravity but by some error of
judgement, of the number of those in the enjoyment of great reputation
and prosperity; e.g. Oedipus, Thyestes, and the men of note of similar
families. The perfect Plot, accordingly, must have a single, and not
(as some tell us) a double issue; the change in the hero's fortunes
must be not from misery to happiness, but on the contrary from
happiness to misery; and the cause of it must lie not in any
depravity, but in some great error on his part (13)�]性�即命運�^

☉It is ranked as first only through the
weakness of the audiences; the poets merely follow their public,
writing as its wishes dictate. But the pleasure here is not that of
Tragedy. It belongs rather to Comedy, where the bitterest enemies in
the piece (e.g. Orestes and Aegisthus) walk off good friends at the
end, with no slaying of any one by any one. (13)�]訴諸�[眾的弱點！�^

●悲�@：技巧

☉The third is to make them like the reality, which is not the
same as their being good and appropriate, in our sense of the term.
The fourth is to make them consistent and the same throughout; even if
inconsistency be part of the man before one for imitation as
presenting that form of character, he should still be consistently
inconsistent. (15)�]真實性�^

☉Discovery in general has been explained already. As for the species of
Discovery, the first to be noted is (1) the least artistic form of it,
of which the poets make most use through mere lack of invention,
Discovery by signs or marks.... (2) Discoveries made directly by
the poet; which are inartistic for that very reason
..... (3) A third species is Discovery through
memory, from a man's consciousness being awakened by something seen or
heard......(4) A fourth kind is Discovery through
reasoning......(5) There is, too,
a composite Discovery arising from bad reasoning on the side of the
other party..... (6) The best of all Discoveries, however, is that
arising from the incidents themselves, when the great surprise comes
about through a probable incident, like that in the _Oedipus_ of
Sophocles.(16)

☉At the time when he is constructing his Plots, and engaged on the
Diction in which they are worked out, the poet should remember
(1) to put the actual scenes as far as possible before hi.e.es....
(2) As far as may be, too, the poet should
even act his story with the very gestures of his personages.....
(3) His story, again, whether already made or of his own
making, he should first simplify and reduce to a universal form,
before proceeding to lengthen it out by the insertion of episodes...(17)
�]必須具有�@通性�^

☉There are four distinct species of
Tragedy--that being the number of the constituents also that have been
mentioned: first, the complex Tragedy, which is all Peripety and
Discovery; second, the Tragedy of suffering, e.g. the _Ajaxes_ and
_Ixions_; third, the Tragedy of character, e.g. _The Phthiotides_ and
_Peleus_. The fourth constituent is that of 'Spectacle', exemplified
in _The Phorcides_, in _Prometheus_, and in all plays with the scene
laid in the nether world. (18)

●悲�@：隱喻

☉Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to
something else; the transference being either from genus to species,
or from species to genus, or from species to species, or on grounds of
analogy. That from genus to species i.e.emplified in 'Here stands my
ship'; for lying at anchor is the 'standing' of a particular kind of
thing. That from species to genus in 'Truly ten thousand good deeds
has Ulysses wrought', where 'ten thousand', which is a particular
large number, is put in place of the generic 'a large number'. That
from species to species in 'Drawing the life with the bronze', and in
'Severing with the enduring bronze'; where the poet uses 'draw' in the
sense of 'sever' and 'sever' in that of 'draw', both words meaning to
'take away' something. That from analogy is possible whenever there
are four terms so related that the second (B) is to the first (A), as
the fourth (D) to the third (C); for one may then metaphorically put B
in lieu of D, and D in lieu of B. Now and then, too, they qualify the
metaphor by adding on to it that to which the word it supplants is
relative. (21)�]隱喻與移轉�^

☉It is a great thing, indeed, to make a proper use of these
poetical forms, as also of compounds and strange words. But the
greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one
thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of
genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the
similarity in dissimilars.(22)�]隱喻關乎天�~�^

●悲�@：批評

☉The objections, then, of critics start with faults of five kinds: the
allegation is always that something i.e.ther (1) impossible, (2)
improbable, (3) corrupting, (4) contradictory, or (5) against
technical correctness. The answers to these objections must be sought
under one or other of the above-mentioned heads, which are twelve in
number.(25)

☉All Tragedy, however, is said to
stand to the Epic as the newer to the older school of actors. The one,
accordingly, is said to address a cultivated 'audience, which does not
need the accompaniment of gesture; the other, an uncultivated one. If,
therefore, Tragedy is a vulgar art, it must clearly be lower than the
Epic.(26)

☉In saying that there is less unity in an epic, I mean an epic
made up of a plurality of actions, in the same way as the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_ have many such parts, each one of them in itself of some
magnitude; yet the structure of the two Homeric poems is as perfect as
can be, and the action in them is as nearly as possible one action.
If, then, Tragedy is superior in these respects, and also besides
these, in its poeti.e.fect (since the two forms of poetry should give
us, not any or every pleasure, but the very special kind we have
mentioned), it is clear that, as attaining the poeti.e.fect better
than the Epic, it will be the higher form of art.(26)
�]悲�@是比史詩�高的藝術�^


2004.9.27
�人�密�齋