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Lessing's Creative Misinterpretation of Aristotle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

K. A. Dickson
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Extract

German life and letters in the earlier eighteenth century were dominated almost exclusively by French influences. The fragmentation of the German-speaking world within the clumsy and largely imaginary framework of the Holy Roman Empire, the appalling devastation of the Thirty Years War, and the consequent dearth of a living autochthonic cultural tradition had led German intellectuals to look to the impressive achievements of Versailles as the only alternative to barbarism. Leibniz, the greatest philosopher of the German Enlightenment, wrote in Latin and French; Gottsched, an ardent admirer of the Grand Siècle, translated Corneille and Racine and urged imitation of their style upon his fellow countrymen; Frederick the Great, whose indifferent French verse Voltaire had the irksome privilege of correcting, possessed at his palace of Sanssouci (itself an imitation of Versailles) a magnificent library which contained not a single work in German, and though he is said to have had an eloquent command of German expletives, spoke only French at court.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , April 1967 , pp. 53 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1967

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References

page 54 note 1 Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767–1769). The most useful critical edition is that of Otto Mann (Stuttgart, 1958).

page 54 note 2 e.g. Aristotle's pronouncement on the best form of peripeteia (xiv. 19) conflicts with his statement that tragedy should end in misfortune (xiii. 6). Lessing's argument that A. is speaking of different parts of the tragic plot is somewhat specious (Hamb. Dram., chs. 37–38). It is probable that our text of the Poetics is only a set of lecturenotes, in view of which it may well be wondered that A. did not contradict himself more often!

page 55 note 1 ‘Per misericordiam et horrorem eorundem expiationem affectuum inducit’ (1611).

page 55 note 2 ‘Eine plötzliche, überraschende Furcht’ (ch. 74, ed. cit., p. 291).

page 55 note 3 Else, G. F., Aristotle's Poetics: the argument (Harvard, 1957), 369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 55 note 4 Rhet. (ii. 5. 12; 1382b: ii.8. 13; 1386a). Leasing refers particularly to the sentence ὡς δ' άπλ⋯ς είπείν, φοβερά ⋯στιν, όσα έτέρων γιγνόμενα ή μέλλοντα, ⋯λεεινά ἔστιν (ii. 5. 12), and draws attention to a curious mistranslation by Aemilius Portus of 1598, which reads ‘denique ut simplicker loquar, formidabilia sunt, quaecumque simulac in aliorum potestatem venerunt, vel ventura sunt, miseranda sunt’. Lessing corrects the Latin to ‘quaecunque simulac aliis evenerunt, vel eventura sunt’. Lessing's German version runs: ‘Alles das ist uns fürchterlich, was, wenn es einem andern begegnet wäre, oder begegnen sollte, unser Mitleid erwecken würde: und alles das finden wir mitleidswürdig, was wir fürchten würden, wenn es uns selbst bevorstünde’ (ed. cit. p. 295).

page 56 note 1 Butcher, S. H., Aristotle's theory of poetry and fine art (London, 1932), 259Google Scholar; Else, op. cit. 373 n. 31.

page 56 note 2 ‘Die Namen von Fürsten und Helden können einem Stücke Pomp und Majestät geben; aber zur Rührung tragen sie nichts bei. Das Unglück derjenigen, deren Umstände den unsrigen am nächsten kommen, muß natürlicherweise am tiefsten in unsere Seele dringen; und wenn wir mit Königen Mitleiden haben, so haben wir es mit ihnen als mit Menschen, und nicht als mit Königen’ (ed. cit., p. 57).

page 57 note 1 Livy, iii. 44–54.Google Scholar

page 58 note 1 F. L. Lucas, for instance, laments the passing of heroic tragedy in his admirable study Tragedy in relation to Aristotle's Poetics (London 1953), 117.

page 58 note 2 Cf. Curtius, who translated the last part of the section on catharsis ‘vermittelst des Schreckens und Mitleidens von den Fehlern der vorgestellten Leidenschaften reiniget’ (1753), (by means of terror and pity purges [us] of the errors of the emotions demonstrated). Similar is Lillo's didactic appeal to the audience at the end of his domestic tragedy The London Merchant (1731):

In vain

With bleeding hearts and weeping eyes we show

A humane gen'rous sense of others' woe;

Unless we mark what drew their ruin on,

And, by avoiding that, prevent our own. (v. 11)

page 58 note 3 ‘Alle philanthropische Erregungen’ (ch. 77, ed. cit., p. 304).

page 58 note 4 Oddly enough Lessing is here merely resuscitating a forgotten theory of the Italian Renaissance, e.g. Minturno, in L'arte poetica (1564)Google Scholar, see Butcher, , op. cit. 247.Google Scholar Milton echoes this in his Preface to Samson Agonistes with the words ‘to temper and reduce them to just measure’. Dacier also came very close to it in saying ‘la tragédie est done une véritable médecine, qui purge les passions’ (1692), but went on to apply it in the Cornelian tradition by suggesting that an over-ambitious man would learn to overcome his ambition, etc.

page 59 note 1 Bernays, ' Zwei Abhandlungen über die Aristotelische Theorie des Drama (1857).Google Scholar So also Gomperz, Rostagni, Gudman, Butcher, Bywater, Lucas, etc. See especially Butcher, , op. cit. 245 ff.Google Scholar, and Lucas, , op. cit. 24.Google Scholar For a different modern approach, however, see Else, op. cit. 227, 425.

page 59 note 2 Thus the derivative άποκαθήρασθαι in the sense of ‘to get rid of’ (Tim. Locr. 104 B, Xen. Cyr. ii. 2. 27); but there is also ⋯ποκαθαίρειν in the sense of ‘to refine (of metals by smelting)’ (Strabo 399).

page 59 note 3 τοια⋯τα [i.e. sexual appetites, anger etc.] ⋯μ⋯ς ⋯ Ποιητικ⋯ μίμησις ⋯ργάεται τρέφει γ⋯ρ τα⋯τα ἄρδουσα, δέον αὐχμεῑν, κα⋯ ἄρχοντα ⋯μῑν καθίστησι, δέον ἄρχεσθαι αὐτά, ἵνα βελτίους τε κα⋯ εὐδαιμονέστεροι ⋯ντ⋯ χειρόνων κα⋯ ⋯θλιωτέρων γιγνώμεθα. (Rep. x. 606 D).

page 59 note 4 ‘Die Verwandlung der Leidenschaften in tugendhafte Fertigkeiten (Hamb. Dram., 78, ed. cit., p. 308).

page 60 note 1 Lucas, F. L., op. cit. 52.Google Scholar