2
Epic poetry, then, and the poetry of tragic drama, and, moreover, comedy and dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and harp-playing, these, speaking generally, may all be said to be representations of life.The explanation of μίμησις, as Aristotle uses the word, demands a treatise; all that a footnote can say is this:—Life presents to the artist the phenomena of sense, which the artist re-presents in his own medium, giving coherence, designing a pattern. That this is true not only of drama and fiction but also of instrumental music (most flute-playing and harp-playing) was more obvious to a Greek than to us, since Greek instrumental music was more definitely imitative. The technical display of the virtuoso Plato describes as a beastly noise. Since μίμησις in this sense and μιμητής and the verb μιμεῖσθαι have a wider scope than any one English word, it is necessary to use more than one word in translation, e.g. μιμητής is what we call an artist; and for μίμησις where representation would be clumsy we may use the word art; the adjective must be imitative, since representative has other meanings.
3
But they differ one from another in three ways: either in using means generically differenti.e., means that can be divided into separate categories. or in representing different objects or in representing objects not in the same way but in a different manner.
4
For just as by the use both of color and form people represent many objects, making likenesses of them—some having a knowledge of art and some working empirically—and just as others use the human voice; so is it also in the arts which we have mentioned, they all make their representations in rhythm and language and tune, using these means either separately or in combination.
5
For tune and rhythm alone are employed in flute-playing and harp-playing and in any other arts which have a similar function, as, for example, pipe-playing.
