Chapter 22

The merit of diction is to be clear and not commonplace. The clearest diction is that made up of ordinary words, but it is commonplace.

An example is the poetry of Cleophon and of Sthenelus.

That which employs unfamiliar words is dignified and outside the common usage. By unfamiliar I mean a rare word, a metaphor, a lengthening, and anything beyond the ordinary use.

But if a poet writes entirely in such words, the result will be either a riddle or jargon; if made up of metaphors, a riddle and if of rare words, jargon.

The essence of a riddle consists in describing a fact by an impossible combination of words. By merely combining the ordinary names of things this cannot be done, but it is made possible by combining metaphors. For instance, I saw a man weld bronze upon a man with fire, and so on.

A medley of rare words is jargon.

We need then a sort of mixture of the two. For the one kind will save the diction from being prosaic and commonplace, the rare word, for example, and the metaphor and the ornament, whereas the ordinary words give clarity.

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 Eucleides 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:

Ἐ̄πῐχᾰ́|ρη̄ν εἶ̄δο̆ν Μᾰρᾰ|θω̄νᾰ́δε̆ | βᾱδῑ|ζο̄ντᾰ

οῡ̓κ ᾱ̓́ν | γ̆' ε̆ρᾰ́με̆νος το̄ν | ἐκεῑ́νοῡ ε̆λλε̆́βο̆ρο̄ν.

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. 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.

Ariphrades 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.

All that sort of thing, not being in the ordinary form, gives distinction to the diction, which was what he failed to understand.

It is a great thing to make a proper use of each of the elements mentioned, and of double words and rare words too, but by far the greatest thing is the use of metaphor.

That alone cannot be learnt; it is the token of genius. For the right use of metaphor means an eye for resemblances.

Of the various kinds of words the double forms are most suited for dithyrambs, rare words for heroic verse and metaphors for iambics.

And indeed in heroic verse they are all useful; but since iambic verse is largely an imitation of speech, only those nouns are suitable which might be used in talking. These are the ordinary word, metaphor, and ornament.

Now concerning tragedy and the art of representing life in action, what we have said already must suffice.