How the Young Man Should Study Poetry (5-9)

We must not neglect, either, the means for rectifying a statement which are afforded by the words that lie near, or by the context; but just as physicians, in spite of the fact that the blister-fly is deadly, think that its feet and wings are helpful to counteract its potent effect, so in poetry if a noun or adjective or a verb by its position next to another word blunts the point which the passage, in its worse interpretation, would have, we should seize upon it and add explanation, as some do in the case of the following:

Thus, at the last, can honour be paid by miserable mortals Cutting the hair from their heads while the tears stream down their faces,[*]

and

Thus, then, the gods have spun the fate of unhappy mortals Ever to live in distress.[*]

For he did not say that absolutely and to all mankind a grievous life has been allotted by the gods, but to the silly and foolish, whom, since they are wretched and pitiable on account of wickedness, he is wont to call by the name of unhappy and miserable.

Another method, again, which transfers from the worse to the better sense suspicious passages in poetry, is that which works through the normal usage of words, in which it were better to have the

young man trained than in what are called glosses. [*] It is indeed learned, and not unpleasing, to know that rhigedanos [*] means dying miserably (for the Macedonians call death danos ), that the Aeolians call a victory won by patience and perseverance an outlasting, [*] that the Dryopians call the divinities popoi. [*] But it is necessary and useful, if we are to be helped and not harmed by poetry, to know how the poets employ the names of the gods, and again the names of bad and of good things, and what they mean when they speak of Fortune or of Fate, and whether these belong to the class of words which in their writings are used in one sense only or in several senses, as the case is with many other words. For, to illustrate, they apply the term house sometimes to a dwelling house, as

Into the lofty house,[*]

and sometimes to property, as

My house is being devoured; [*]

and the term living they apply sometimes to life, as

But dark-haired Poseidon Thwarted his spear, nor would let him end his foeman’s living,[*]

and sometimes to possessions, as

And others are eating my living;[*]

and the expression be distraught is used sometimes instead of be chagrined and be at one’s wits’ end :

Thus he spoke, and she departed distraught and sore troubled[*]

and at other times, instead of to be arrogant and be delighted, as

Are you now distraught since you vanquished Irus, the vagrant? [*]

and by huddle they mean either be in motion, as Euripides says:[*] A monster huddling from th’ Atlantic’s surge, or sit down and be seated, as Sophocles [*] says: What means your huddling in these places here With suppliant garlands on the boughs ye bear? It is a graceful accomplishment also to adapt the usage of the words to fit the matter in hand, as the grammarians teach us to do, taking a word for one signification at one time, and at another time for another, as for example, Better commend a small ship, but put your goods on a big one.[*] For by commend is meant recommend, and the very expression of recommend to another is used nowadays instead of deprecating for one’s self, as in everyday speech we say, It’s very kind, and Very welcome, when we do not want a thing and do not accept it. In this way also some persons will have it that it must be commendable Persephone because she is deprecated.

Let us then observe closely this distinction and discrimination of words in greater and more serious matters, and let us begin with the gods, in teaching

the young that when the poets employ the names of the gods, sometimes they apprehend in their conception the gods themselves, and at other times they give the same appellation to certain faculties of which gods are the givers and authors. To take an obvious example, it is clear that Archilochus, when he says in his prayer,

Hear my praver, O Lord Hephaestus, and propitious Lend thy aid, and bestow what thy mercy bestows,[*]

is calling on the god himself; but when, lamenting his sister’s husband who was lost at sea and received no formal burial, he says that he could have borne the calamity with greater moderation,

If upon his head and his body so fair, All in garments clean, Hephaestus had done his office,[*]

it is fire that he called by this name and not the god. And again when Euripides [*] said in an oath, By Zeus amidst the stars and Ares murderous, he named the gods themselves; but when Sophocles [*] says, Blind and unseeing Ares, worthy dames, With snout like that of swine upturns all ills, the name is to be understood as meaning war; just as again it suggests weapons of bronze in the passage where Homer [*] says,

Dark red blood of these men by the fair-flowing river Scamander Keen-edged Ares has shed.

Since, then, many words are used in this way, it is necessary to know and to remember that under the name Zeus also (or Zen) the poets address sometimes the god, sometimes Fortune, and oftentimes Fate. For when they say,

Father Zeus, enthroned on Ida, most glorious and mighty, Grant to Ajax victory,[*]

and O Zeus! who boasts to be more wise than thou? [*] they mean the god himself; but when they apply the name of Zeus to the causes of all that happens, and say, Many valiant souls it sent to the realm of Hades, Goodly men, and their bodies gave to the dogs as ravin And to birds a feast—the design of Zeus in fulfilment,[*] they mean Fate. For the poet does not imagine that it is the god who contrives evils for mankind, but by the name he rightly implies the compelling force of circumstances, that States and armies and leaders, if they show self-control, are destined to succeed and to prevail over their enemies, but if they fall into passions and errors, if they disagree and quarrel among themselves, as these heroes did, then are they destined to act discreditably and to become disorganized and to come to a bad end, as Sophocles says [*]:

For fated is it that from evil plans An evil recompense shall mortals reap;

and certainly Hesiod [*] in representing Prometheus as exhorting Epimetheus

Never to welcome Any gifts from Zeus of Olympus, but always return them,

employs the name of Zeus as a synonym for the power of Fortune. For he has given the name of gifts of Zeus to the blessings of Fortune, such as wealth, marriage, office, and, in a word, all outward things, the possession of which is unprofitable to those who cannot make good use of them. Wherefore he thinks that Epimetheus, who is a worthless man and a fool, ought to be on his guard against any piece of good fortune, and be fearful of it, as he is likely to be injured and corrupted by it. And again when the poet says,

Never dare to reproach any man for accursed and woeful Poverty, gift of the blessed gods whose life is for ever,[*]

he now speaks of what happens by chance as godgiven, with the suggestion that it is not meet to impugn those who are poor through misfortune, but to reproach the penury that is accompanied by laziness, soft living, and extravagance, since then it is disgraceful and reprehensible. For at a time when men did not as yet use the name Fortune, but knew the force of causation as it traverses its irregular and indeterminate course, so strong, so impossible for human reason to guard against, they tried to express this by the names of the gods, exactly as we are wont to call deeds and characters, and in fact even words and men, divine and godlike. In this manner, then, a corrective is to be found for most of the seemingly unjustifiable statements regarding Zeus, among which are the following:

Fixed on Zeus’ floor two massive urns stand ever, Filled with happy lives the one, the other with sorrows,[*]

and

Cronos’ son, enthroned on high, hath made naught of our pledges, But for both our hosts with evil thought is planning,[*]

and

Then rolled forth the beginning of trouble Both on Trojans and Greeks through designs of Zeus the almighty.[*]

These are to be interpreted as referring to Fortune or Fate, in which guise are denoted those phases of causation which baffle our logic, and are, in a word, beyond us. But wherever there is appropriateness, reason, and probability in the use of the name, let us believe that there the god himself is meant, as in the following:

But he ranged to and fro ’gainst the lines of the rest of the fighters; Only with Ajax, Telamon’s son, he avoided a conflict, Seeing that Zeus was wroth if he fight with a man far better,[*]

and For Zeus takes thought for mortals’ greatest weal; The little things he leaves to other gods.[*]

Particular attention must be paid to the other words also, when their signification is shifted about and changed by the poets according to various circumstances. An example is the word virtue. For inasmuch as virtue not only renders men sensible, honest, and upright in actions and words, but also often enough secures for them repute and influence,

the poets, following this notion, make good repute and influence to be virtue, giving them this name in exactly the same way that the products of the olive and the chestnut are called olives and chestnuts, the same names as the trees that bear them. So then when poets say,

Sweat the gods have set before the attainment of virtue,[*]

and

Then the Greeks by their virtue broke the line of their foemen,[*]

and

If to die be our fate, Thus to die is our right Merging our lives into virtue,[*]

let our young man at once feel that these sayings relate to the best and godliest estate to which we can attain, which we think of as correctness of reasoning, the height of good sense, and a disposition of soul in full agreement therewith. But when at another time, in his reading, he finds this line, Zeus makes virtue in men both to increase and diminish,[*] or this, Virtue and glory are attendant on riches,[*] let him not sit astounded and amazed at the rich, as though they were able to purchase virtue without ado for money, nor let him believe either that the increase or diminution of his own wisdom rests with Fortune, but let him consider that the poet has employed virtue instead of repute, or influence, or good fortune, or the like. For assuredly by evil the poets sometimes signify badness in its strict sense, and wickedness of soul, as when Hesiod [*] says, Evil may always be had by all mankind in abundance, and sometimes some other affliction or misfortune, as when Homer [*] says, Since full soon do mortals who live in evil grow aged. And so too anybody would be sadly deceived, should he imagine that the poets give to happiness the sense which the philosophers give to it, namely, that of complete possession or attainment of good, or the perfection of a life gliding smoothly along in accord with nature, and that the poets do not oftentimes by a perversion of the word call the rich man happy and blessed, and call influence or repute happiness. Now Homer [*] has used the words correctly:

No delight [*] have I in ruling these possessions,

and so has Menander:[*]

A great estate have I, and rich am called By all, but I am called by no man blest.

But Euripides [*] works much disturbance and confusion when he says,

May I ne’er have a painful happy life,

and

Why do you honour show to tyranny, Happy iniquity? [*]

unless, as has been said, one follows the figurative and perverted use of the words. This, then, is enough on this subject.

There is a fact, however, which we must recall to the minds of the young not once merely, but over and over again, by pointing out to them that while poetry, inasmuch as it has an imitative basis, employs embellishment and glitter in dealing with the actions and characters that form its groundwork, yet it does not forsake the semblance of truth, since imitation depends upon plausibility for its allurement. This is the reason why the imitation that does not show an utter disregard of the truth brings out, along with the actions, indications of both vice and virtue commingled; as is the case with that of Homer, which emphatically says good-bye to the Stoics, who will have it that nothing base can attach to virtue, and nothing good to vice, but that the ignorant man is quite wrong in all things, while, on the other hand, the man of culture is right in everything. These are the doctrines that we hear in the schools; but in the actions and in the life of most men, according to Euripides, [*]

The good and bad cannot be kept apart But there is some commingling.

But when poetic art is divorced from the truth, then chiefly it employs variety and diversity. For it is the sudden changes that give to its stories the elements of the emotional, the surprising, and the unexpected, and these are attended by very great astonishment and enjoyment; but sameness is unemotional and prosaic. Therefore poets do not represent the same people as always victorious or prosperous or successful in everything; no, not even the gods, when they project themselves into human activities, are represented in the poets’ usage as free from emotion or fault, that the perturbing and exciting element in the poetry shall nowhere become idle and dull, for want of danger and struggle.

Now since this is so, let the young man, when we set him to reading poems, not be prepossessed with any such opinions about those good and great names, as, for instance, that the men were wise and honest, consummate kings, and standards of all virtue and uprightness. For he will be greatly injured if he approves everything, and is in a state of wonderment over it, but resents nothing, refusing even to listen or accept the opinion of him who, on the contrary, censures persons that do and say such things as these:

This I would, O Zeus, Athena, and Apollo, That not one escape death of all the Trojans living And of the Greeks; but that you and I elude destruction, So that we alone may raze Troy’s sacred bulwarks,[*]

and

Saddest of all the sad sounds that I heard was the cry of Cassandra Priam’s daughter, whom Clytemnestra craftily planning Slew o’er my body,[*]

and

That I seduce the girl and ensure her hate for my father. So I obeyed her and did it,[*]

and

Father Zeus, none other of the gods is more baleful.[*]

Let the young man, then, not get into the habit of commending anything like this, nor let him be plausible and adroit in making excuses or in contriving some specious quibbles to explain base actions, but rather let him cherish the belief that poetry is an imitation of character and lives, and of men who are not perfect or spotless or unassailable in all respects, but pervaded by emotions, false opinions, and sundry forms of ignorance, who yet through inborn goodness frequently change their ways for the better. For if the young man is so trained, and his understanding so framed, that he feels elation and a sympathetic enthusiasm over noble words and deeds, and an aversion and repugnance for the mean, such training will render his perusal of poetry harmless. But the man who admires everything, and accommodates himself to everything, whose judgement, because of his preconceived opinion, is enthralled by the heroic names, will, like those who copy Plato’s stoop or Aristotle’s lisp, unwittingly become inclined to conform to much that is base. One ought not timorously, or as though under the spell of religious dread in a holy place, to shiver with awe at everything, and fall prostrate, but should rather acquire the habit of exclaiming with confidence wrong and improper no less than right and proper. For example, Achilles summons an assembly of the soldiers, who are suffering from an illness, since he is most impatient of all over the slow progress of the war because of his conspicuous position and reputation on the field; moreover, because he has some knowledge of medicine, and perceives now after the ninth day, on which these maladies naturally reach their crisis, that the disease is out of the ordinary and not the result of familiar causes, he does not harangue the multitude when he rises to speak, but makes himself an adviser to the king: Son of Atreus, now, as I think, are we destined to wander Back to seek our homes again.[*] Rightly, moderately, and properly is this put. But after the seer has said that he fears the wrath of the most powerful of the Greeks, Achilles no longer speaks rightly and moderately, when he swears that nobody shall lay hands on the seer while he himself is alive, No, not though you name Agamemnon,[*] thus making plain his slight regard and his contempt for the leader. A moment later his irritation becomes more acute, and his impulse is to draw his sword with intent to do murder; not rightly, either for honour or for expediency. Again, later, repenting, Back he thrust his massive blade once more to its scabbard, Nor ignored Athena’s words,[*] this time rightly and honourably, because, although he could not altogether eradicate his anger, yet before doing anything irreparable he put it aside and checked it by making it obedient to his reason. Then again, although Agamemnon is ridiculous in his actions and words at the Assembly, yet in the incidents touching Chryseis he is more dignified and kingly. For whereas Achilles, as Briseis was being led away,

Burst into tears and withdrawing apart sat aloof from his comrades,[*]

Agamemnon, as he in person put aboard the ship, and gave up and sent away, the woman of whom, a moment before, he has said that he cared more for her than for his wedded wife, committed no amorous or disgraceful act. Then again, Phoenix, cursed by his father on account of the concubine, says: True in my heart I had purposed to slay him with keenpointed dagger, Save that one of the deathless gods put an end to my anger, Bringing to mind the people’s talk and men’s many reproaches, Lest I be known among the Greeks as my father’s slayer.[*] Now Aristarchus removed these lines from the text through fear, but they are right in view of the occasion, since Phoenix is trying to teach Achilles what sort of a thing anger is, and how many wild deeds men are ready to do from temper, if they do not use reason or hearken to those who try to soothe them. So also the poet introduces Meleager angry at his fellow-citizens, and later mollified, and he rightly finds fault with his emotions, but, on the other hand, his refusal to yield, his resistance, his mastery over them, and his change of heart the poet commends as good and expedient.

Now in these cases the difference is manifest; but in cases where Homer’s judgement is not made clear, a distinction is to be drawn by directing the young man’s attention in some such manner as the following: If, on the one hand, Nausicaa, after merely looking at a strange man, Odysseus, and experiencing Calypso’s emotions toward him, being, as she was,

a wanton child and at the age for marriage, utters such foolish words as these to her maid-servants,

How I wish that a man like this might be called my husband, Living here with us, and be contented to tarry,[*]

then are her boldness and lack of restraint to be blamed. But if, on the other hand, she sees into the character of the man from his words, and marvels at his conversation, so full of good sense, and then prays that she may be the consort of such a person rather than of some sailor man or dancing man of her own townsmen, then it is quite right to admire her. And again, when Penelope enters into conversation with the suitors, not holding herself aloof, and they favour her with gifts of garments and other apparel, Odysseus is pleased

Since she had coaxed all these gifts from them, and had cozened their senses.[*]

If, on the one hand, he rejoices at the receipt of the presents and the profit, then in his prostitution of his wife he outdoes Poliager, who is satirized in the comedy as

Poliager blest Who keeps a Cyprian goat to yield him wealth.[*]

But if, on the other hand, he thinks that he shall have them more in his power, while they are confident because of their hopes and blind to the future, then his pleasure and confidence has a reasonable justification. Similarly, in the enumeration of his possessions which the Phaeacians had put ashore with him before they sailed away, if on the one hand, upon finding himself in such solitude and in such uncertainty and ambiguity regarding his surroundings, he really fears about his possessions,

Lest the men on the ship had sailed away with something,[*]

then it is quite right to pity or indeed even to loathe his avarice. But if, on the other hand, he, as some say, being of two minds whether he were in Ithaca, thinks that the safety of his possessions is a demonstration of the rectitude of the Phaeacians (for otherwise they would not have carried him for nothing, put him ashore in a strange land, and left him there, at the same time keeping their hands off his possessions), then he makes use of no mean proof, and it is quite right to praise his forethought. But some critics find fault also with the very act of putting him ashore, if this really was done while he was asleep, and assert that the Etruscans still preserve a tradition that Odysseus was naturally sleepy, and that for this reason most people found him difficult to converse with. Yet if his sleep was not real, but if, being ashamed to send away the Phaeacians without gifts and entertainment, and at the same time unable to elude his enemies if the Phaeacians were in company with him, he provided himself with a cloak for his embarrassment in feigning himself asleep, then they find this acceptable.

By indicating these things to the young, we shall not allow them to acquire any leaning toward such characters as are mean, but rather an emulation of the better, and a preference for them, if we unhesitatingly award censure to the one class and commendation to the other. It is particularly necessary to do this with tragedies in which plausible and artful words are framed to accompany disreputable and knavish actions. For the statement of Sophocles [*] is not altogether true when he says:

From unfair deed fair word cannot proceed.

For, as a fact, he is wont to provide for mean characters and unnatural actions alluring words and humane reasons. And you observe also that his companion-at-arms in the dramatic art has represented Phaedra [*] as preferring the charge against Theseus that it was because of his derelictions that she fell in love with Hippolytus. Of such sort, too, are the frank lines, aimed against Hecuba, which in the Trojan Women [*] he gives to Helen, who there expresses her feeling that Hecuba ought rather to be the one to suffer punishment because she brought into the world the man who was the cause of Helen’s infidelity. Let the young man not form the habit of regarding any one of these things as witty and adroit, and let him not smile indulgently, either, at such displays of verbal ingenuity, but let him loathe the words of licentiousness even more than its deeds.

Now in all cases it is useful also to seek after the cause of each thing that is said. Cato, for example, used, even as a child, to do whatever the attendant in charge of him ordered, yet he also demanded to know the ground and reason for the order. And so the poets are not to be obeyed as though they were our keepers or law-givers, unless their subject matter be reasonable; and this it will be if it be good, but if it be vile, it will be seen to be vacuous and vain. But most people are sharp in demanding the reasons for trivial things like the following, and insist on knowing in what sense they are intended:

Never ought the ladle atop of the bowl to be rested While the bout is on, [*]

and

Whoso from his car can reach the car of another Let him thrust with his spear.[*]

But in far weightier matters they take things on faith without testing them at all, such, for example, as these:

A man, though bold, is made a slave whene’er He learns his mother’s or his sire’s disgrace,[*]

and

Who prospers not must be of humble mind.[*]

And yet these sentiments affect our characters and disorder our lives, by engendering in us mean judgements and ignoble opinions, unless from habit we can say in answer to each of them, Why must the man who has ’ not prospered be of humble mind,’ and why must he not rather rise up against Fortune, and make himself exalted and not humbled? And why, though I be the son of a bad and foolish father, yet if I myself am good and sensible, is it unbecoming for me to take pride in my good qualities, and why should I be dejected and humble on account of my father’s crassness? For he who thus meets and resists, and refuses to entrust himself broadside on to every breath of doctrine, as to a wind, but believes in the correctness of the saying that a fool is wont to be agog at every word that’s said [*] will thrust aside a good deal of what is not true or profitable therein. This, then, will take away all danger of harm from the perusal of poetry.