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A Note on Lessing's Misinterpretation of Aristotle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Michael Anderson
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Extract

One of the aspects of Lessing's misinterpretation of Aristotle1 which deserves a comment is the question of the Greek text used by the author of the Hamburg Dramaturgy for his translation and discussion of Aristotle's sentence describing the nature and function of tragedy (Poetics vi. 2; 1449b). Mr. K. A. Dickson (p. 54) quotes the text of the modern editions:

(1) ἔστιν ον τραγῳδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας καὶ τελείας μέγεθος ἐχούσης, ἡδυσμένῳ λόγῳ χωρὶς ἑκάστῳ τῶν εἰδῶν τοῑς μορίοις, δρώντων καὶ οὐ δι' ἀπαγγελίας, δι' ἐλέου καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , April 1968 , pp. 59 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1968

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References

page 59 note 1 Cf. Dickson, K. A., ‘Lessing's Creative Misinterpretation of Aristotle’, Greece and Rome, 14 (1967), 53–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 59 note 2 So Bywater, Butcher, Rostagni, Hardy, Kassel. Vahlen reads ἑκάστου and omits all punctuation marks—an arrangement which makes it easier to understand how the confusions noted below may have arisen.

page 59 note 3 Robertson, J. G., Lessing's Dramatic Theory (Cambridge, 1939), 345.Google Scholar

page 59 note 4 Op. cit. 351.

page 59 note 5 ‘Die Tragödie’, sagt [Aristoteles], ‘ist die Nachahmung einer Handlung,… die nicht vermittelst der Erzählung, sondern vermittelst des Mitleids und der Furcht die Reinigung dieser und dergleichen Leidenschaften bewirket.’ Hamburgische Dramaturgie, ch. 77. The translation of passages from the Hamburg Dramaturgy, with a few minor variations, is that of Zimmern, Helen (Bonn's Standard Library, c. 1890 and Dover Publications, N.Y., 1962).Google Scholar

page 60 note 1 Note 44, p. 230.

page 61 note 1 Attributed to Reiz (1786) by Bywater, Hardy, and Kassel; to Tyrwhitt (1794) by Butcher and Rostagni.

page 61 note 2 L'Art Poétique d'Horace traduit en vers français par M. **, avec le texte Latin en regarde, précédé de la Poétique d'Aristote, traduction française par le même, avec le texte Grec en regard, Michaud, L. C. (Paris, 1818).Google Scholar

page 61 note 3 Robertson, (op. cit. 352)Google Scholar only adds to the confusion when he concludes his examination of the problem with the statement that ‘the whole discussion falls to the ground with the now accepted conclusion that the word ἀλλά is an unjustified interpolation of the Aldine text’, since in the version that he printed the interpolated word has moved to another (more sensible) position. It is interesting to remark that the translation of Curtius (1753), which Lessing quotes only to deride (ch. 77), follows Robertson's version so far as the position of ἀλλά is concerned: ‘einer Handlung, welche nicht durch die Erzählung des Dichters, sondern (durch Vorstellung der Handlung selbst) uns, vermittelst des Schreckens und Mitleids, von den Fehlern der vorgestellten Leidenschaften reiniget’.

page 62 note 1 Ch. 77.