24
when he says that people make some unwarrantable presupposition and having themselves given an adverse verdict proceed to argue from it, and if what they think the poet has said does not agree with their own preconceived ideas, they censure him, as if that was what he had said.
25
This is what has happened in the case of Icarius.Penelope’s father. They assume that he was a Spartan and therefore find it odd that when Telemachus went to Sparta he did not meet him. But the truth may be, as the Cephallenians say, that Odysseus married a wife from their country and that the name was not Icarius but Icadius. So the objection is probably due to a mistake.
26
In general any impossibility may be defended by reference to the poetic effect or to the ideal or to current opinion.
27
For poetic effect a convincing impossibility is preferable to that which is unconvincing though possible.
28
It may be impossible that there should be such people as ZeuxisSee Aristot. Poet. 6.15. used to paint, but it would be better if there were; for the type should improve on the actual.
29
Popular tradition may be used to defend what seems irrational, and you can also say that sometimes it is not irrational, for it is likely that unlikely things should happen.
30
Contradictions in terms must be examined in the same way as an opponent’s refutations in argument, to see whether the poet refers to the same thing in the same relation and in the same sense, and has contradicted either what he expressly says himself or what an intelligent person would take to be his meaning.
31
It is right, however, to censure both improbability and depravity where there is no necessity and no use is made of the improbability.An example is Euripides’ intro duction of AegeusEur. Medea 663. In Aristotle’s opinion there is no good reason for Aegeus’s appearance and no good use is made of it. or(of depravity)the character of Menelans in the Orestes.
