Sidney’s doctrine presents the poet as creator. The poet’s
mediating role between two worlds transcendent forms and historical
actuality corresponds to the Neo- platonic doctrine of emanation. A
complement to this doctrine is the concept of return or catharsis, which
finds a parallel in Sidney’s contemplation of virtue, based on man’s
rational desire (Craig 117). Apology contains only elements of Neo-platonism
without adhering to the full doctrine.
Even
a cursory view at Sidney's Apology may prove that
Sidney has an exalted conception of the nature and function of poetry.
Following Minturno he says that poetry is the first light-giver to ignorance,
it Nourished before any other art or science. The
first philosophers and Historians were poets; and such supreme works
as the Psalms of David and the Dialogues of
Plato are in reality poetical. A mong the Greeks and the Romans, the
poet was regarded as a sage or prophet; and no nation, however primitive or
barbarous, has been without poets, or has failed to receive delight and
instruction from poetry.
Poetry,
according to Sidney, is an art of imitation, a
representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth; to speak metaphorically,
a speaking picture, with this end,—to teach and delight. The object of all
arts and sciences is to lift human life to the highest altitudes of
perfection; and in this respect they are all servants of the sovereign, or
poetry, whose end is well-doing and not well-knowing only. Virtuous action is,
therefore, the end of learning; and Sidney sets out to prove that the poet,
more than anyone else, fulfils this end.
Showing
the superiority of poetry to history and philosophy Sidney says that while the
philosopher teaches by precept alone, and the historian by example alone, the
poet conduces most to virtue because he employes both precept and example. The
philosopher teaches virtue by showing what virtue is and what vice is,
by setting down, in abstract argument, and without clarity or beauty
of style, the bare principles of morality. The historian teaches virtue by
showing the experience of past ages; but, being tied down to what actually
happened, that is, to the particular truth of things and not to general
possibilities, the example he depicts draws no necessary consequence. The poet
alone accomplishes this duel task. What the philosopher says should be done,
is, by the poet, pictured most perfectly in some one by whom it has been done,
thus coupling the general notion with the particular instance. The
philosopher, moreover, teaches the learned only; but the poet teaches
all, and so is, in Plutarch's phrase, "the right popular philosopher."
He seems only to promise delight, and moves men to virtue unawares. But even if
the philosopher excels-the poet in teaching, he cannot move his readers to
virtuous action as the poet can, and this is of higher importance than
teaching, for what is the use of teaching virtue if the pupil is not moved to
act and accomplish what he is taught? On the other hand, the historian deals
with particular instances, with vices and virtues so mingled together in the
same personage that the reader can find no pattern to imitate.
The poet
improves upon history, he gives examples of vice and virtue for human
imitation; he makes virtue succeed and vice fail, and this history can but
seldom do. Poetry does not imitate nature; it is the reader who imitates the
example of perfection presented to him by the poet. He is thus made virtuous.
Poetry, therefore, conduces to virtue, the end of all learning, better than any
other art or science.
The basis of Sidney's distinction between the
poet and the historian is the famous passage in which Aristotle explains why
poetry is more philosophic and of more value than history. The poet deals, not
with the particular, but with the universal,—with what might or should be, not
with what is or has been. But Sidney, in the assertion of this principle,
follows Mintumo and Scaliger, and goes farther than Aristotle would probably
have gone. All arts have the works of nature as their principal objects of
imitation, and follow nature as actors follow the lines of their play. Only the
poet is not tied to such subjects, but creates another nature better than
nature herself. For going hand in hand with nature, and being enclosed not
within her limits, but only by, the zodiac of his own imagination,"
he creates a golden world in place of Nature's brazen; and in the sense he may
be compared as a creator with God. Where shall you find in life, asks Sidney,
such a friend as Pylades. Such a hero as Orlando, such an excellent man as
Aeneas.
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