Aristotle's Poetics

The Poetics outlines Aristotle’s tri-partite classification of poetry: comedy, epic verse, and tragedy. At the center of his theory is tragedy, because it incites the most pleasure. Tragedy imitates real action, and we derive pleasure from its complexity. Representation plays a key role in how we experience poetry.

Aristotle assumes that his audience is men, men who value beauty and reasoning. He assumes that his readers already understand his theory of representation, and that they do not pursue the Platonic theory of ideals. Aristotle takes for granted that his audience values taxonomy; assuming that his audience will be welcome to his own theories on art. Finally, not only is poetry important, but its experience is universal; everyone (by this he means educated men) derives the same amount of pleasure from the same things. These values come through in his articulation of beauty, pleasure, and the satisfaction of the "whole." Apparently, Aristotle believes that his audience appreciates closure and complexity; the "simple" things in life are not those which incite pleasure. Furthermore, Aristotle's Poetics values the universal and the idea that representation can transcend differences to inspire pleasure in all. At the heart of Aristotle's discussion seems to be a value in beauty and art, albeit a particular kind of beauty and art.

Aristotle seems to be reinforcing the kind of beauty and the universal experience of pleasure. In addition, he reinforces the idea that there is a singular experience of pleasure caused by specific elements. What's interesting to me about this is that Aristotle is really only speaking to a select group of men, and therefore does not consider other types of pleasure. On the other hand, Aristotle believes that he is enhancing the experience of poetry by classifying its elements; it seems that he wants to articulate that which gives pleasure so that it can be studied, explained, etc. It seems, too, that he wants to place poetry on the level of art.

My questions come from the very beginning. Aristotle writes, "we delight in looking at the most proficient images of things which in themselves we see with pain" (5). He seems to mean here that within the recognition of pleasure or beauty, we also recognize pain; that is, the beautiful can be painful. The question then becomes, is it in fact pain that we experience? Can pain actually give us pleasure? How does one distinguish between pain and pleasure? Furthermore, is the experience of pleasure always painful? What is the relationship between pleasure and beauty?

Aristotle also writes that "if one has not seen the thing [that is represented] before, its image will not produce pleasure as a representation, but because of its accomplishment, color, or some other such cause" (5). Essentially, he argues that we enjoy representations because of their correspondence to the "real thing." Only if we have not seen the "real thing," can we pay attention to color, etc. This suggests to me that the pleasure we derive from seeing a representation without its "real" counterpart is somehow lesser than if we had experienced it. In some cases, I think this might be true, but it seems to ignore the pleasure we experience in seeing brushstrokes in a painting, for instance, or the way that it is composed. Are these two forms of enjoyment separate? In other words, can we somehow enjoy a print of the Mona Lisa without having seen the original? Further, is our attraction to things like still life painting because they represent so vividly the real scene? Benjamin takes up these questions, and it would be interesting to see how Benjamin has been influenced by Aristotle here.

This second quotation is what stuck out to me the most, and I'm trying to puzzle it out as I write this. I think I'll come away from it for awhile and see if I can make sense of it. I was also struck by the idea of the whole, which has pervaded our ideas about any creation (a paper must have an intro, body, conclusion; we can't just leave our readers hanging). How can this one text change consciousness in such a profound way?!? This is not the first text of Aristotle's I've read; and in every text I am amazed at the degree to which he taxonomizes everything. Finally, I'm also intrigued by the similarity between his descriptions of that which gives us pleasure and the descriptions we posted on our blogs. In almost all of them, complexity, familiarity, and closure were values that kept cropping up. Again, I'm not sure what to make of this at this point.