Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics pdf download

AVERROES’ MIDDLE COMMENTARY ON ARISTOTLE’S POETICS – Book Sample

Chapter 1 – AVERROES’ MIDDLE COMMENTARY ON ARISTOTLE’S POETICS

Aristotle says: Every poem, and all poetic utterance (oratio poetica), is either praise ( vituperatio) or blame (laudatio ). This is clear from an induc­tive examination of poems, and essentially of those poems which deal with matters relating to the human will, that is, nobility and baseness. This is also the position in the representational arts which follow the lead of poetry, for instance the striking of the lyre or psaltery, or blowing into a flute or pipe, and the skilful use of the dance. For these arts naturally correspond to these two intentions [i.e. praise and blame].

Poetic forms of speech are based on images. There are three modes of imagination and of ‘likening’ (modi ymaginationis et assimilationis ). There are two simple modes, and the third is a compound of those two. One of the two simple modes is the ‘likening’ of one object to another and its exemplification in terms of that object. This is achieved in all languages by words peculiar to that language, for instance quasi or sicut, or similar words which are called particles of comparison, or else by adopting that which is ‘like’, together with the thing to which it is compared, or in place of it. And in this art this process is called ‘a trope’ (concambium ).

An example of this is when a certain poet said of a very generous man: ‘He is a sea flooding in from every quarter and, with overflowing abundance, replenishing the needs of those who come to him. ((Abii Tammiim, on whom see H. A. R. Gibb, Arabic Literature: An Introduction, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1g63), pp. 12, 24-5, 85, 91, 164. Butterworth renders the original Arabic as ‘he is the sea from whatever direction you come to him’, and explains that the generosity of the Sultan being praised here is likened to the boundlessness of the sea. Thus, ‘the sea’ is substituted for the generous man. Averroes’ Middle Commentary, p. 6o and n. 9. On Hermann’s citations of Arab poets see W. F. Boggess, ‘Hermannus Alemannus’ Latin Anthology of Arabic Poetry’, JAOS lxxxviii (1g68), 657-70. Averroes was determined to compare Arabic and Greek poetry, in line with his declared intention of extracting from the Poetics only those ‘universal rules’ which ‘are common to all or most nations, for much of its contents are either rules par­ticularly characteristic of their [i.e. Greek] poems and their customs therein’ (tr. Butterworth, p. 59). Avicenna, in marked contrast, did not attempt such a harmonization. See Dahiyat, Avicenna’s Commentary, pp. 11-12.))

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