BOOK III.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Plato and Benjamin Jowett
But if you admit that I am right in this, then I shall maintain that you have implied the principle for which we have been all along contending.
I grant the truth of your inference.
C That such things are or are not to be said about men is a question which we cannot determine until we have discovered what justice is, and how naturally advantageous to the possessor, whether he seem to be just or not.
Most true, he said.
Enough of the subjects of poetry: let us now speak of the style; and when this has been considered, both matter and manner will have been completely treated.
I do not understand what you mean, said Adeimantus.
D Then I must make you understand; and perhaps I may be more intelligible if I put the matter in this way. You are aware, I suppose, that all mythology and poetry is a narration of events, either past, present, or to come?
Certainly, he replied. 77
And narration may be either simple narration, or imitation, or a union of the two?
That again, he said, I do not quite understand.
Analysis of the dramatic element in Epic poetry. I fear that I must be a ridiculous teacher when I have so much difficulty in making myself apprehended. Like a bad speaker, therefore, I will not take the whole of the subject, Ebut will break a piece off in illustration of my meaning. You know the first lines of the Iliad, in which the poet says that 393Chryses prayed Agamemnon to release his daughter, and that Agamemnon flew into a passion with him; whereupon Chryses, failing of his object, invoked the anger of the God against the Achaeans. Now as far as these lines,
‘And he prayed all the Greeks, but especially the two sons of Atreus, the chiefs of the people,’
the poet is speaking in his own person; he never leads us to suppose that he is any one else. But in what follows he takes the person of Chryses, and then he does all that he can Bto make us believe that the speaker is not Homer, but the aged priest himself. And in this double form he has cast the entire narrative of the events which occurred at Troy and in Ithaca and throughout the Odyssey.
Yes.
And a narrative it remains both in the speeches which the poet recites from time to time and in the intermediate passages?
Quite true.
C Epic poetry has an element of imitation in the speeches; the rest is simple narrative. But when the poet speaks in the person of another, may we not say that he assimilates his style to that of the person who, as he informs you, is going to speak?
Certainly.
And this assimilation of himself to another, either by the use of voice or gesture, is the imitation of the person whose character he assumes?
Of course.
Then in this case the narrative of the poet may be said to proceed by way of imitation?
Very true.
Illustrations from the beginning of the Iliad. Or, if the poet everywhere appears and never conceals Dhimself, then again the imitation is dropped, and his poetry becomes simple narration. However, in order that I may 78 make my meaning quite clear, and that you may no more say, ‘I don’t understand,’ I will show how the change might be effected. If Homer had said, ‘The priest came, having his daughter’s ransom in his hands, supplicating the Achaeans, and above all the kings;’ and then if, instead of speaking in the person of Chryses, he had continued in his own person, the words would have been, not imitation, but simple narration. The passage would have run as follows (I am no poet, Eand therefore I drop the metre), ‘The priest came and prayed the gods on behalf of the Greeks that they might capture Troy and return safely home, but begged that they would give him back his daughter, and take the ransom which he brought, and respect the God. Thus he spoke, and the other Greeks revered the priest and assented. But Agamemnon was wroth, and bade him depart and not come again, lest the staff and chaplets of the God should be of no avail to him—the daughter of Chryses should not be released, he said—she should grow old with him in Argos. And then he told him to go away and not to provoke him, if he intended to get home unscathed.
And the old man went away in fear and 394silence, and, when he had left the camp, he called upon Apollo by his many names, reminding him of everything which he had done pleasing to him, whether in building his temples, or in offering sacrifice, and praying that his good deeds might be returned to him, and that the Achaeans might expiate his tears by the arrows of the god,’—and so on. BIn this way the whole becomes simple narrative.
I understand, he said.
Tragedy and Comedy are wholly imitative; dithyrambic and some other kinds of poetry are devoid of imitation. Epic poetry is a combination of the two. Or you may suppose the opposite case—that the intermediate passages are omitted, and the dialogue only left.
That also, he said, I understand; you mean, for example, as in tragedy.
You have conceived my meaning perfectly; and if I mistake not, what you failed to apprehend before is now made Cclear to you, that poetry and mythology are, in some cases, wholly imitative—instances of this are supplied by tragedy and comedy; there is likewise the opposite style, in which the poet is the only speaker—of this the dithyramb affords the best example; and the combination of both is found in epic, and in several other styles of poetry. Do I take you with me? 79
Yes, he said; I see now what you meant.
I will ask you to remember also what I began by saying, that we had done with the subject and might proceed to the style.
Yes, I remember.
D In saying this, I intended to imply that we must come to an understanding about the mimetic art,—whether the poets, in narrating their stories, are to be allowed by us to imitate, and if so, whether in whole or in part, and if the latter, in what parts; or should all imitation be prohibited?
You mean, I suspect, to ask whether tragedy and comedy shall be admitted into our State?
A hint about Homer (cp. infra, bk. x.) Yes, I said; but there may be more than this in question: I really do not know as yet, but whither the argument may blow, thither we go.
And go we will, he said.
E Our guardians ought not to be imitators, for one man can only do one thing well; Then, Adeimantus, let me ask you whether our guardians ought to be imitators; or rather, has not this question been decided by the rule already laid down that one man can only do one thing well, and not many; and that if he attempt many, he will altogether fail of gaining much reputation in any?
Certainly.
And this is equally true of imitation; no one man can imitate many things as well as he would imitate a single one?
He cannot.
395 Then the same person will hardly be able to play a serious part in life, and at the same time to be an imitator and imitate many other parts as well; for even when two species of imitation are nearly allied, the same persons cannot succeed in both, as, for example, the writers of tragedy and comedy—did you not just now call them imitations?