1
With regard to problems,A problem in this sense is a difficult passage or expression which explanation and may easily be censured by an unsympathetic critic. Aristotle here classifies the various grounds of censure and the various lines of defence. Most of his illustrations are drawn from the critical objections lodged against the Iliad by Zoilus and other hammerers of Homer. As the reader will see, many of them are abysmally foolish. and the various solutions of them, how many kinds there are, and the nature of each kind, all will be clear if we look at them like this.
2
Since the poet represents life, as a painter does or any other maker of likenesses, he must always represent one of three things—either things as they were or are; or things as they are said and seem to be; or things as they should be.
3
These are expressed in diction with or without rare words and metaphors, there being many modifications of diction, all of which we allow the poet to use.
4
Moreover, the standard of what is correct is not the same in the art of poetry as it is in the art of social conduct or any other art.
5
In the actual art of poetry there are two kinds of errors, essential and accidental.
6
If a man meant to represent something and failed through incapacity, that is an essential error. But if his error is due to his original conception being wrong and his portraying, for example, a horse advancing both its right legs, that is then a technical error in some special branch of knowledge,in medicine, say, or whatever it may be; or else some sort of impossibility has been portrayed, but that is not an essential error.
7
These considerations must, then, be kept in view in meeting the charges contained in these objections.
7
Let us first take the charges against the art of poetry itself. If an impossibility has been portrayed, an error has been made.
