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XXVI
The question may be raised whether the Epic or Tragic mode of imitation
is the higher. If the more refined art is the higher, and the more
refined in every case is that which appeals to the better sort of
audience, the art which imitates anything and everything is manifestly
most unrefined. The audience is supposed to be too dull to comprehend
unless something of their own is thrown in by the performers, who
therefore indulge in restless movements. Bad flute-players twist and
twirl, if they have to represent 'the quoit-throw,' or hustle the
coryphaeus when they perform the 'Scylla.' Tragedy, it is said, has this
same defect. We may compare the opinion that the older actors entertained
of their successors. Mynniscus used to call Callippides 'ape' on account
of the extravagance of his action, and the same view was held of
Pindarus. Tragic art, then, as a whole, stands to Epic in the same
relation as the younger to the elder actors. So we are told that Epic
poetry is addressed to a cultivated audience, who do not need gesture;
Tragedy, to an inferior public. Being then unrefined, it is evidently the
lower of the two.
Now, in the first place, this censure attaches not to the poetic but to
the histrionic art; for gesticulation may be equally overdone in epic
recitation, as by Sosi-stratus, or in lyrical competition, as by
Mnasitheus the Opuntian. Next, all action is not to be condemned any more
than all dancing--but only that of bad performers. Such was the fault
found in Callippides, as also in others of our own day, who are censured
for representing degraded women. Again, Tragedy like Epic poetry produces
its effect even without action; it reveals its power by mere reading. If,
then, in all other respects it is superior, this fault, we say, is not
inherent in it.
And superior it is, because it has all the epic elements--it may even use
the epic metre--with the music and spectacular effects as important
accessories; and these produce the most vivid of pleasures. Further, it
has vividness of impression in reading as well as in representation.
Moreover, the art attains its end within narrower limits; for the
concentrated effect is more pleasurable than one which is spread over a
long time and so diluted. What, for example, would be the effect of the
Oedipus of Sophocles, if it were cast into a form as long as the Iliad?
Once more, the Epic imitation has less unity; as is shown by this, that
any Epic poem will furnish subjects for several tragedies. Thus if the
story adopted by the poet has a strict unity, it must either be concisely
told and appear truncated; or, if it conform to the Epic canon of length,
it must seem weak and watery. <Such length implies some loss of unity,>
if, I mean, the poem is constructed out of several actions, like the
Iliad and the Odyssey, which have many such parts, each with a certain
magnitude of its own. Yet these poems are as perfect as possible in
structure; each is, in the highest degree attainable, an imitation of a
single action.
If, then, Tragedy is superior to Epic poetry in all these respects, and,
moreover, fulfils its specific function better as an art for each art
ought to produce, not any chance pleasure, but the pleasure proper to it,
as already stated it plainly follows that Tragedy is the higher art, as
attaining its end more perfectly.
Thus much may suffice concerning Tragic and Epic s poetry in general;
their several kinds and parts, with the number of each and their
differences; the causes that make a poem good or bad; the objections of
the critics and the answers to these objections. *
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