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[1458b]
[1]
A considerable aid to clarity and distinction are the
lengthening and abbreviation and alteration of words. Being otherwise than in the
ordinary form and thus unusual, these will produce the effect of distinction, and
clarity will be preserved by retaining part of the usual form. Those critics are therefore wrong who censure this
manner of idiom and poke fun at the poet, as did the elder Eucleides1 who said it was easy to write poetry, granted the
right to lengthen syllables at will. He had made a burlesque in this very style:
Ἐπιχάρην εἶδον Μαραθῶνάδε βαδίζοντα and
οὐκ ἄν γ᾽ ἐράμενος τὸν ἐκείνου
ἐλλέβορον.2 Now to make an obtrusive use of this licence is ridiculous;
but moderation is a requisite
common to all kinds of writing. The same effect could be got by using metaphors and
rare words and the rest unsuitably for the express purpose of raising a
laugh. What a difference is made by the proper use of such licence
may be seen in epic poetry, if you substitute in the verse the ordinary forms.
Take a rare word or metaphor or
any of the others and substitute the ordinary word; the truth of our contention will
then be obvious.
[20]
For instance, Aeschylus
and Euripides wrote the same iambic line with the change of one word only, a rare
word in place of one made ordinary by custom, yet the one line seems beautiful and
the other trivial. Aeschylus in the Philoctetes wrote, "The ulcer
eats the flesh of this my foot," and Euripides instead of "eats" put "feasts upon."
Or take "I that am small, of no account nor goodly;" suppose one were to read the
line substituting the ordinary words, "I that am little and weak and ugly." Or
compare "He set a stool unseemly and a table small." with "He set a shabby stool and
a little table," or "the sea-shore is roaring" with "the sea-shore is
shrieking."3 Ariphrades4
again made fun of the tragedians because they employ phrases which no one would use
in conversation, like " δωμάτων ἄπο" instead of
ἀπὸ δωμάτων and their " σέθεν"and " ἐγὼ δέ νιν"and "
Ἀχιλλέως πέρι" for περὶ Ἀχιλλέως, and so on.
1 A critic of this name wrote on the drama, but his date is uncertain.
2 In Homer we find short vowels lengthened "by position," but, whereas Homer uses the licence sparingly, Eucleides raised a laugh by overdoing it and writing in parody such hexameters as those here quoted. A modern parallel may illustrate this. The poet Stephen Phillips employed to excess the licence whihc allows a clash between the natural accent and the metrical ictus, and Mr. Owen Seaman, "for the express purpose of raising a laugh," parodied the trick by carrying it to further excess and wrote in blank verse, "She a milliner was and her brothers Dynamiters."
3 Similarly we might use "ordinary" words instead of those which Keats chose so carefully and speak of "wonderful windows abutting on to a dangerous sea-shore in a dreary, mysterious country."
4 Unknown.
Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 23, translated by W.H. Fyfe. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1932.
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