CHAPTER I

RHETORIC AND POETIC

The two great works of Aristotle on composition, the _Rhetoric_ and the _Poetic_, presuppose an ancient division. That a philosopher should have written either is itself significant; that he should have written both implies his ratification of the ancient idea that the art of speaking and writing is not throughout its various phases single and constant, but distinctly twofold. On the one hand, the ancients discerned and developed an art of daily communication, especially of public address, τέχνη ῥητορική, _ars oratoria_, rhetoric; on the other hand, an art of imaginative appeal, τέχνη ποιητική, _ars poetica_, poetic.

A distinction between the two in diction, the idea that the language of poetic is more freely imaginative, is both commonplace and superficial. The ancients, of course, were aware of it, and frequently thus contrasted poetry with oratory[1] or with history. But the distinction between the diction of public address and the diction of drama or epic, between prose style and poetic style, was not in ancient thought fundamental. Rather the ancients saw here common ground. Their discussions of prose style freely draw examples from poetry; for their rhetoric, more explicitly than most modern rhetoric, realized that the appeal of public address, in so far as it is an appeal of style, is largely imaginative and rhythmical.[2] Polybius, indeed, reproaches Phylarchus for his eagerness to be pathetic and his habit of visualizing the terrible, “as do the writers of tragedies”[3]; but as a restriction on style in history this is quite exceptional and would involve disparaging Thucydides. The common view of history is summed up playfully by Lucian: “Let the [historian’s] thought, in so far as it too is high-sounding and uplifted, appropriate and seize something of poetic, especially when it is involved in arrays and battles by land or sea; for then there will be need of a poetic wind to fill the sails and bear the tall ship over the waves.”[4] In oratory the ancients specifically inculcated imaginative visualization, and taught it from the poets. Their general distinction of style between prose and verse was in the habit of rhythms. No, the ancient distinction between rhetoric and poetic is far more than a differentiation of style.

The difference that Aristotle saw between history and poetry is far deeper; and perhaps this was in the mind of Polybius when he went on to say,[5] “the end of history is not the same as that of tragedy, but the opposite,” and complained that Phylarchus was too fond of working up crises (περιπέτειαι). Even the flippant Lucian may have meant to imply, though he does not carry out, a deeper difference when he said:[6] “the undertakings of the poetic art [in general] and of poems [in particular], and the appropriate rules, are one thing; those of history, quite another.” At any rate, the Aristotelian distinction of history from poetry, repeated by Polybius in the second century B.C. and by Lucian in the second century A.D., is not merely in diction, not in prose or verse, but in composition.

So, even more evidently and pervasively, is the broader distinction between oratory and poetry. Rhetoric and poetic connoted two fields of composition, two habits of conceiving and ordering, two typical movements. The movement of the one the ancients saw as primarily intellectual, a progress from idea to idea determined logically; that of the other, as primarily imaginative, a progress from image to image determined emotionally. This distinction is more fundamental than that of so-called literary forms. The ancients were well aware that a particular composition might shift from one movement to the other, a play of Euripides lean toward oratory, an oration of Isocrates move for a while in the mode of poetry. What they contemplated in their division was not primarily a composition, but composition as a general habit, the predominant and determining way of composing, the difference between the habitual movement of a Demosthenes and that of a Sophocles. Finding these to be distinct essentially, as typical processes of conceiving, ordering, and uttering, Aristotle treated them separately as two distinct technics, rhetoric and poetic.[7]

That the distinction between the habitual composition, or movement, of rhetoric and that of poetic is not oftener made explicitly by ancient critics need cause little surprise. The distinction may have been familiar enough to be tacitly assumed. It is, in fact, often assumed; it was quite clear in the mind of whoever wrote the _De sublimitate_; but it is sharply defined and fully carried out only by Aristotle. We must remember that ancient criticism had no second Aristotle, that it was preoccupied with rhetoric, and that it usually discussed speaking and writing, as modern criticism does no less usually, in terms of style. The long history of criticism shows few outstanding works on composition in the large. None the less for the meagerness of criticism, the active presence of the distinction is seen in the greatest works of antiquity.

Nor is the distinction unknown to modern criticism. It is misinterpreted, for instance, at the beginning of Blair’s Lecture XXXVIII, confirmed by De Quincey’s distinction[8] between literature of knowledge and literature of power, and revived in the division, cited by Renard[9] from H. Balzac, into “_écrivains d’idées_ and _écrivains d’images_.” But in spite of significant occurrences and recurrences, it seems not to have controlled any consecutive movement of modern criticism.

Again, the four “forms of discourse” widely accepted by American text-books naturally combine into exposition and argument under rhetoric on the one hand and, on the other, description and narrative under poetic. But obvious as this seems, the older, simpler, more fundamental division does not widely control modern pedagogy. None the less its pedagogical aspect, in either ancient or modern times, is more important than that of many more current critical distinctions. For learning to write, the distinction between rhetoric and poetic is more directive than the distinction, for instance, of literary forms. It is also more supported and interpreted by psychology; for it divides not merely what is composed, but the typical habits of composing.

Thus the experience of the ancients with composition, an experience so prolonged and so progressive as to constitute a full and distinct chapter in the history of art, may be approached first by dividing as they divided. Each technic, defined within its own scope, helps to define the other by contrast. Making each more distinct, the contrast further exhibits interrelations and confusions highly significant for the history of both pedagogy and criticism.

Rhetoric in the philosophy of Aristotle is essentially the art of giving effectiveness to truth. Accepting this theory, Cicero nevertheless feels rather the tradition of rhetoric as the art of giving effectiveness to the speaker. The constructive review of a great orator exploring his art is thus complementary to the analysis of the philosopher. Even after Aristotle and Cicero there was room for a third survey. Quintilian showed how rhetoric pervaded and largely directed ancient education. For that ancient art which was at once useful and fine, an education and a career, had great spokesmen. We shall begin best, and go on most surely, by letting them speak: Aristotle for the function and scope of rhetoric, Cicero for its pursuit and achievements, Quintilian for its method.

FOOT-NOTES:

[1] Quintilian, for instance, appreciates Lucan as “ardens et concitatus et sententiis clarissimus, et, ut dicam quod sentio, magis oratoribus quam poetis imitandus.” _Inst. Or._ X. i. 90.

[2] Typical of this habit of thought is: “Exigitur enim iam ab oratore etiam poeticus decor ... ex Horatii et Vergilii et Lucani sacrario prolatus.” Tacitus, _Dialogus, 20_.

[3] Polybius, II. 56.

[4] Lucian, _Quomodo historia_, 45.

[5] Polybius, II. 56.

[6] Lucian, _Quomodo historia_, 8.

[7] The terms _rhetoric_ and _poetic_ are contrasted in Lucian, _Demosthenis encomium_, 5-8, 17-18; Strabo, I. ii. 6 (C. 17, end).

[8] Essay on Pope.

[9] G. Renard, _La méthode scientifique de l’histoire littéraire_, page 385.