What is the point, again?

There's sudden bursts of energy, then they abruptly stop. Short, sharp shocks and incoherent statements that lead nowhere. What's he trying to do, doctor?

It's a reaction to information overload, and the inability to resolve the tension between emotional and cerebral response. He knows what he feels. He's trying to justify it.

So these outbursts are fragments of a systematic process?

Not yet, at least, I don't think so. But it is a processing of raw information, and an attempt to draw that information into line, making standards for analysis.

But where's it going to end?

Okay, I can pull together some of the threads. Here: he believes - knows, even - that the 'art' happens when the object meets the audience. Following Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he sees quality as the experience of an object. In other words, the aesthetic moment defines the nature of the engagement.

I'm sorry, that isn't clear.

Sure: when an observer experiences an event, that point of contact is, at first, emotion. The observer makes an aesthetic response.

Like when I taste fish and either like it or don't?

That might work as a short term example. Let's see. All subsequent appreciation of the art object flows from that initial experience. Let's call it the star rating.

And all this further discussion is an attempt to explain the star rating?

Yes, what we call the review is actually the analysis of the initial opinion. But he can convince himself to like something by the application of standards. You can't enjoy the fish once you've spat it out...

The Context of Aristotle's Poetics - I wrote it, so it is going up...

The theories of Aristotle about tragedy, as articulated in The Poetics, are potentially valuable both in an historic context – that is, as part of the study of ancient drama – and as a set of standards and ideas against which to judge subsequent theatre and theories of theatre. However, despite Aristotle’s interest in the Universal (citation) both uses can be clarified by a brief discussion of The Poetics’ historical context: the environment from which Aristotle emerges may offer clues to his philosophical positions.

Aristotle was born at the end of a dynamic period of social and political upheaval. As tutor to Alexander The Great, the Macedonian conqueror of Greece and the Persian Empire, he was intimately involved with the events that led to the expansion of Hellenic cultural into the east. Yet a mere century earlier, Greece had been a far more fragile and fragmented entity. Even following a spectacular victory over an invading force from Persia, the basic unit of the Greek state was the city, and rather than a unified nation, Greece was divided into many city states, each one with its own government and cultural concerns.

Traditionally, the two states of Spartan and Athens have come to represent the extremes of Greek politics. While Sparta was orientated to an austere military organisation – with two kings and the Ephors (a group of older citizens) at the top of the hierarchy, Athens was a direct democracy, with all male citizens entitled to vote on matters of policy.

This simple contrast hides a far more complicated history. Athens instituted democracy in 509 BC, following its liberation from a series of ‘tyrants’ (autocratic leaders without a hereditary entitlement), partially through the aid of the Spartan army. In the following century, Athens would become a military power in its own right – through its remarkable naval power – and a hub for artistic and philosophical revolutions. By the time that Aristotle was old enough to decide to pursue philosophy, Athens was the place to be.

The Athenians themselves regarded their cultural supremacy as an inevitable consequence of their political system, which encouraged freethinking and debate. In Thucydides’ version of Pericles’ funeral oration, the great general made a point of connecting the growth of Athens to its spirit of freedom.

The myth of Athenian freedom is, ironically, echoed in praise directed at the Spartan state. The film, and graphic novel, 300, despite its rather imaginative description of the facts surrounding the battle of Thermopylae, captures the spirit of Herodotus’ attitude towards the Spartans, and their own belief that the Spartan state offers freedom. In the aftermath of the Persian Wars, the whole of Greece could see itself as being a haven of individualism and intellectual freedom, by comparing itself to the Persian Empire, with its monarchy and monolithic cultural identity.

Athens, however, does have a solid claim to its beliefs. Even before the triumphant rejection of the tyrants, through Cleisthenes’ revolution, it had made several attempts to create a state based on equality. The concept of isonomia - equality before the law – was considered even in the disappointingly reforms of Draco. In drawing up a new system of punishment for crimes, Draco decided that every crime was worthy of death, leading to the modern epithet ‘draconian.’ While his practice was somewhat extreme, his theory was, at least, guided by isonomia.

A more fondly remembered ancestor to democracy was Solon, one of the ancient world’s great sages – who would also offer a little criticism to Thespis, the first author of tragedy. However, following the overthrow of Peisistratus in 507, the Athenians made serious efforts to expand equality into the political sphere, developing a form of democracy that revolved around regular assemblies that were open to all citizens.

At this point, the traditional note is that, of course, citizens were tightly defined: slaves and women were excluded from the assembly – and the various guiding panels and councils that surrounded it. Aristotle makes it quite clear that he shared the prejudices of this age in The Poetics when he observes that women are inferior to men. However, this glaring omission aside, Athenian democracy, and its legal system, was based on a far more egalitarian system than its neighbours, who might have been ruled by Kings or oligarchies (that is, groups of aristocrats).

That the shining exemplars of democratic leadership came from a tight-knit group of families, who had previously been competing for oligarchic power in Athens, is generally either ignored or approved.  The fundamental principal of Athenian democracy, nevertheless, is considerably more inclusion than the representative democracy that passes for government in contemporary Britain.

Alongside democracy, Athens had another innovation – this time in the arts. Attic Tragedy evolved very rapidly from the dithyramb – a choral hymn, usually to Dionysus – and within thirty years of the institution of democracy, it had become a showcase for Athenian cultural hegemony within Greece. But before the Athenians could boast of this achievement, the fledgling democracy had to fight off an external threat – the Persian Invasions of 490 and 480.

In Herodotus’ Histories, a book that does put the lie to the suggestion that Persian was purely barbarian and culturally monolithic, the invasions by the Persian Emperors Darius and Xerxes did pit two opposing ideologies at war. Persia was a monarchy, with a considerable emphasis on centralised control. Greece was a patch-work of independent city states which, as history reveals, were are happy fighting each other as defending their shared country.

The odds were long against a Greek victory. In 490, Darius sent an expeditionary force, which was defeated by a Greek army, led by the Athenians, at Marathon. When Darius’ son, Xerxes, made a more serious attempt in 480, a holding strategy by the Spartans at the narrow pass of Thermopylae allowed the Athenians to evacuate the city and lead the Greek navy to a stunning victory just off the Island of Salamis. The Persians were sent packing, and Athens begun boasting about its power. The capture and burning of Athens became an opportunity to rebuild, and the spectacular Acropolis that still attracts visitors to this day – even after Lord Elgin stole all the fittings – was the result.

In 470, about the time that Aeschylus was writing The Persians (his earliest extant tragedy and one that bucks the trend of using mythology for the plot), Athens was feeling pretty tasty. In Aeschylus’ trilogy The Oresteia, the finale happens in Athens, and the bloodguilt of the hero is purified by the intellectual logic of the defence council and the inherent justice of the Aeropagus, an ancient tribunal. Athens is even able to overturn the natural cycle of vengeance that has previously passed for justice, through a compromise with The Eumenides – previously terrifying embodiments of revenge, given a new shrine and role as protectors of the city.

While further study of Aeschylus will come when I write my best-seller on the character of Greek drama – it is worth observing that at this time, the politics and principals of Athenian society were reflected in the plays.

Sadly, this newfound confidence went to their heads all too quickly. A close reading of Herodotus reveals that the Persian invasions were provoked by Athenians messing about in the revolutionary activities of certain Ionian cities on the coast of Turkey – then known as Asia Minor and part of Darius’ empire. After the war, Athens became the centre of a Greek naval alliance system, which was supposed to have a shared treasury at Delos. Encouraged by the onion-headed hero Pericles, who would become an Athenian hero, the city decided that this treasury would be better used smartened up its Acropolis than just sitting on Delos as a financial assurance of future military collaboration.

Having spent their allies’ money – effectively turning alliances into tributes – the Athenians decided to meddle in national politics. They went for a period of cold war strategies against Corinth and Sparta, eventually refusing the Megarians access to a particular market. This was one of the factors that encouraged the Spartans to declare war on the Athenians, plunging Greece into a war that would last from 431 until the end of the century.

The nature of Athenian democracy was unashamedly imperialistic. Even during the war with Sparta, they found time to send an expedition to Sicily, which is one of the biggest military failures ever: and during a brief break in hostilities, they sent a warship to Egypt to wind up the locals (and possibly find new trade routes). Apart from drawing a cheeky comparison with contemporary democracies like the USA, who also have a habit of adventuring against nations with non-democratic government, it is possible to suggest that the very nature of Greek democracy encouraged this imperialism.

There is a twisted logic, but the inclusion of the poorest citizens in the decision-making process made Athenian policy vulnerable to populist measures that would provide work for these citizens. A quick trip over to Egypt provided plenty of work for the oarsmen… however, this line of inquiry collapsed at the suggestion of Eric Caroulla that Alexander the Great was also imperialistic, and he didn’t necessarily pay attention to the assembly.

Thucydides’ history of Peloponnesian War is a great attempt to develop a history that is stripped of the anthropology that makes Herodotus interesting but discursive. However, a real good book doesn’t excuse over a quarter of a century of seasonal warfare that would eventually destroy Athens’ power and confidence.

The end of the Peloponnesian War – after a few false reprieves and surprises, such as the Peace of Nicias and a brief period when a group of oligarchs seized the government – saw a Spartan army arrive in Athens again. Fortunately, the Spartans were not enthusiastic about extending their empire and went home – they already had another conquered people, the helots, to oppress and were not hot for ruling a Greek empire.

The democracy reasserted itself, and spent time condemning Socrates to death before making a dumb decision to fight Philip of Macedon, another invader. Philip conquered Athens, and his son went on to conquer Persian, creating a Pan-Hellenic culture that spread as far as Egypt. Indeed, this Greek culture was so important that people forget that Cleopatra was a Greek – part of the Ptolemy family who inherited Egypt after Alexander’s empire collapsed on his early death.

In brief, the Athenian democracy flourished very briefly for around a century. It was always argumentative and had great difficulty avoiding demagogues – populist politicians who would persuade the assembly to do something stupid. In its early stages, during the threat of Persian invasion, it had sterling leaders, like Miltiades, who combined rhetorical and military brilliance. After the death of Pericles, who was a victim of the plague (another factor in their defeat by Sparta), it ended up with characters like Cleon, who was mocked by comic poet Aristophanes for being ill-educated and was killed on an expedition he encouraged, or Alcibiades, who might have cut off the penises of religious statues before defecting to Sparta, sleeping with the wife of the king there, and finally running away to Persia.

There were further controversial debates, including the decision to prosecute a group of generals en masse for a defeat, which was illegal, and the brutal decision to kill everybody on the island of Melos for refusing to join their alliance. Frankly, if it wasn’t one thing, it was another. And the love of a good argument attracted a particular sort of teacher to gravitate towards Athens, which accounts for something of the city’s intellectual atmosphere.

Plato, who was born towards the end of the century, calls these teachers sophists, mainly to distinguish them from Socrates, his hero and a proper philosopher.  But they are better described as philosophers themselves, probably with an interest in rhetoric. They flocked to Athens, and made it the centre of intellectual ferment.

Plato is possibly the most important thinker of ancient Greece – he was the first to write down his ideas in a series of eloquent books, and his influence is such that the whole history of western thought has been described as footnotes to his work. He was a follower of Socrates, who was called the wisest man of the time by the Delphic Oracle, and who preferred dialectic – conversation – to rhetoric. Apart from being mightily annoyed by the democracy that killed Socrates, Plato had a suspicion of the other philosophers, whom he regarded as having wild ideas and placing more emphasis on the quality of argument that its relative truth.

It was Plato who taught Aristotle: after a few adventures that involved trying to persuade a tyrant to use a rational system to govern, then getting captured by pirates, he set up a school, The Academy. There’s a really cool painting that imagines the pair of them in conversation, and sums up their differences in a single image more clearly than all the words wasted in analysis.

Before dedicating some time to Plato, who told the best joke in history, it’s important to note that Athens was full of smart-ass intellectuals. Even the plays were full of arguments. Athenian democracy encouraged debate and new ideas. Now and again, they might kill someone for the new ideas – like Socrates. But generally, Athens was a city that was growing throughout the fifth century, with democracy, theatre, philosophy and the architecture all racing ahead together.

Isonomia: Getting Distracted Again

I observe the world as a hermeneutical spiral. That is to say, there are events, and their interpretations or iterations. Once upon a time, there was a singularity. Then the universe happened, and all of it is the hermeneutical spiral of that single event.

This is my way of claiming that criticism is as important as the art: the performance is the event, and the criticism makes senses of it.

This inevitably leads me to Fifth Century Athens. The political, social, aesthetic and philosophical evolution of this particular city state at this particular time counts as an even so impressive, it took Western Civilisation nearly two thousand years to get over it. Up until the 1970s, Classics was still crucial in the curriculum (with Greek generally regarded as the best bit). It took the combined forces of post-modernism, which fractured the ideal of a grand guiding narrative, and (sort of) socialist educational theory, which considered practical education better than immersing students in the stories of Grand Old White Males, to edge Classics out of the secondary class room.

I might have been one of the last generation who got Latin slapped into their timetable as a matter of course. By the time I came to teach Classics, we weren't able to pretend that it was relevant - even Glasgow University had abandoned Latin as an entrance requirement.

Forgive my sentimentality: I am researching the Fifth Century today, and it feels like a personal journey.

Yes, say The Kids. But what has this to do with us?

Right at the start of the period, the Athenian legal system came up with the idea of equality before the law. Now, there is plenty of boasting about how they started off democracy - and the complaint that this democracy excluded women and foreign residents. There's a pride in the growth of Tragedy (and comedy, but since that involves values that might make Jim Davidson blush, I'll ignore that). But I think that the equality before the law was the real breakthrough.

Wikipedia gives me two quotes on the ancient Greek attitude to equality before the law - without giving me the word in Greek, which is what I was looking for. Apparently, Aristotle reckoned that whoever controlled the law courts controlled the state. And Pericles thought it was so great, he mentioned it in his famous funeral oration in 431: it was the defining characteristic of the Athenian State.

The word is isonomia. Recently, Adam Scarborough suggested that Sortition, the allotment of responsibility by lottery, might make an alternative to the current nightmare of representative democracy. This sortition was used in ancient courts to select juries and councils - and depends on the idea of equality of all.

Quite clearly, I have become distracted again. I intended to write a timeline of Fifth Century Athens, and ended up taking potshots at modern politics. To be continued...

Aristotle Poetics (Part 5-6)

Part V
Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type- not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. To take an obvious example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain. 

Blah Blah Blah. You know how the mad monk in The Name of the Rose ate Aristotle's lost work on comedy? Good. I have cut out the next bit because it is Aristotle saying he does not know how comedy took its current form. 

Epic poetry agrees with Tragedy in so far as it is an imitation in verse of characters of a higher type. They differ in that Epic poetry admits but one kind of meter and is narrative in form. They differ, again, in their length: for Tragedy endeavours, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit, whereas the Epic action has no limits of time. This, then, is a second point of difference; though at first the same freedom was admitted in Tragedy as in Epic poetry. 

Seriously, Aristotle: the big difference between Epic Poetry and Tragic Drama is THAT ONE OF THEM IS PERFORMED ON A STAGE WITH ALL ACTORS AND MASKS AND PROPS. I don't even think the time span is right (The Oresteia is over a long period of time, longer than The Iliad even), and the condensing of time in most plays is a matter of aesthetics, not time limit. The changes of fortune in even Oedipus come after characters have been on some fairly long trips (Creon to Delphi et c). This must be where the Unity of Time comes from: and that is not my favourite Unity. 

Of their constituent parts some are common to both, some peculiar to Tragedy: whoever, therefore knows what is good or bad Tragedy, knows also about Epic poetry. All the elements of an Epic poem are found in Tragedy, but the elements of a Tragedy are not all found in the Epic poem. 

See my previous comment...

Part VI
Of the poetry which imitates in hexameter verse, and of Comedy, we will speak hereafter. Let us now discuss Tragedy, resuming its formal definition, as resulting from what has been already said.

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions. By 'language embellished,' I mean language into which rhythm, 'harmony' and song enter. By 'the several kinds in separate parts,' I mean, that some parts are rendered through the medium of verse alone, others again with the aid of song. 

This definition makes no statement about the performance aspect of tragedy, unless 'the imitation of an action' is about the live event. 

Now as tragic imitation implies persons acting, it necessarily follows in the first place, that Spectacular equipment will be a part of Tragedy. Next, Song and Diction, for these are the media of imitation. By 'Diction' I mean the mere metrical arrangement of the words: as for 'Song,' it is a term whose sense every one understands. 

I might want to wait before ranting. He gets to it here - but the plot is higher on the list than performance. 

Again, Tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves, and these- thought and character- are the two natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions again all success or failure depends. Hence, the Plot is the imitation of the action- for by plot I here mean the arrangement of the incidents. By Character I mean that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities to the agents. Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or, it may be, a general truth enunciated. Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality- namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song. Two of the parts constitute the medium of imitation, one the manner, and three the objects of imitation. And these complete the fist. These elements have been employed, we may say, by the poets to a man; in fact, every play contains Spectacular elements as well as Character, Plot, Diction, Song, and Thought. 

I have a headache. This is going to need another post....

Aristotle: A Double Tragedy. The prologue

Menander, who was a New Comedy playwright, was once asked whether he's finished his latest work. He answered that he's done the hard bit, and now he just had to write it down. The joke being that Menander was big on plot and short on jokes. In fact, that zinger is probably his best line. Consequently, Aristophanes remains the schoolboy's favourite Athenian comedian. He did dick gags.

And so is the opposite, Vile

However, I am wondering whether McManus has taught me enough to write a life of Aristotle as a tragic plot.

First of all - the beginning. Let's see: Aristotle liked the use of myths, and allowed the author to fiddle with the detail. I am going to use the example of Aeschylus' Persians, and take historical fact and treat it like mythology.

Footnote: Aristotle doesn't rate Aeschylus. David Wiles reckons that Aeschylus was too heavy on the sound of language rather than clarity of its meaning (AE Housman nails my memories of translating the bloody Oresteia), and had too much time for both gods (Athena and Apollo sort out the mess at the end of the trilogy) and Athenian patriotism.

The beginning - or, to involve Frankie Howerd, The Prologue. We need a scene that shows the effects of the cause, without over-egging the cause. I've got it.

The Prologue: A watchman on the walls of Athens. He is staring out at a big army of Macedonians, with Alexander the Great pacing in front of them. Shouts of 'you are going down' float across the walls. The watchman gets us up to speed: demagoguery has encouraged the Athenians to square up with the barbarian invaders, and in about fifteen minutes, Athens is going to be pwned.

Interestingly, Aristotle does not divide his plot structure into the noticeable parts of the extant tragedies, but I think this bit is called the parados. The chorus comes on stage. They are going to be poor Athenian citizens (because both Plato and Aristotle had a suspicion of democracy - Aristotle nipped off from Athens during the age of Alexander, as we shall see). The throw down with some tunes and dancing (although spectacle and melody are at the end of Aristotle's list of Tragic Ingredients). They bemoan the sophists who have taught the democratic assembly rhetoric, which has led to the speakers being able to convince the people to have a disastrous battle with the Macedonians.

Footnote: Plato would like that: he had a moan about sophists, and wasn't that keen on the whole Athenian political process. What with them killing his hero Socrates, he wrote this big book called The Republic, which suggested a better political system. I am not sure whether the whole thing is a joke, but he did spend a bit too much time trying to persuade a tyrant in Sicily to act a bit more philosophical.

Hang on, I am not sure my beginning has generated the subsequent plot. I've just stated the situation. This is harder than I thought. Wait... I'll bring on my protagonist. It's Aristotle. With a cheery 'hiya pals,' he bounces on stage and makes a speech about how Cinderella is a very special girl but... sorry, how Plato is a special philosopher but he has got it wrong about drama, and it can be part of a moral education.

Footnote: Casting must be crucial here. Gerard Kelly would have been perfect.

I am struggling to make this particular scenario universal rather than a series of ill-judged pokes at Aristotle.

I am going to race onto the middle: the climax. Again, Aristotle doesn't seem to be that interested in the formal aspects of Greek tragedy, and the middle bit was often an 'agon,' or big row between protagonist and antagonist. Somehow, I am going to have to make this agon between Plato and Aristotle...