AESTHETICS AND EMOTIONS has less to do with the art of tragedy and needs external aids. To go further and use the spectacle to produce something that is merely monstrous, instead of something that rouses fear, is to depart entirely from tragedy For one should look to tragedy for its own pleasure, not just any pleasure; and since the poet's job is to produce the pleasure springing from pity and fear wia mimesis, this clearly ought to be present in the elements of the action What sort of events, then, do seem apt to rouse fear, or frather] pity? This is my next subject, In such actions, people must do omething to those closely connected with them, or to enemies, or to people to whom they are indifferent. Now, if it is the case of two enemies, this arouses no particular pity, whether the one damages the other or only intends to; or at least, pity is felt only at the pathostconsidered in itself. The same is true in the case when pecple are indifferent to each other. The cases we must look for are those where the pathos involves people closely con nected, for instance where brcther kilis brother, son father, mother son, or son mother or if not kills, then means to kill, or does some other act of the kind. Well, one cannot interfere with traditional stories, cannot, for instance, say that Clytaemnestra was not killed by Orestes or Eriphyle by Alcmaeon; what one should do is invent for oneself and use the traditional material well. Let me explain more clearly what I mean by well'. One can make the act be committed as the ancient poets did, that is, with the agents knowing and aware Twhom they are damaging] even Euripides has the example of Medea killing her children with full knowledge. [And they can have knowledge and not act.] or they can commit the deed that rouses terror without knowing to whom they are doing it, and later recognize the connection, like Sophocles' oedipus. (1453b) Extract from Aristotle's Poetics On encountering the first sentence of Aristotle's Poetics, pne could be forgiven for thinking one was still reading the physics. Just as his method when studying the natural world was to