De constitutione tragoediae: La poetique d'Heinsius. .

Daniel Heinsius. De constitutione tragoediae: La poetique d'Heinsius. Ed. Anne Duprat. (Travaux du Grand Siecel, 21.) Geneva: Librairie Droz S. A., 2001. 354 pp. index. [euro] 128. ISBN: 2-600-006214

Anne Duprat's edition and French translation of Heinsius' De constitutione tragoediae is an important contribution which has been lacking for much too long. This guide to Aristotle's theory of tragedy was first published in Leiden by the Elzevir press in 1611 as an appendix to the Greek text of the Poetics and Hensius' Latin translation of it. When the De constitutione was reissued in 1643, the treatise preceded the Greek text and translation, already a sign of the status that Heinsius' reading of Aristotle's theory of tragedy had gained as a poetics in its own right. Heinsius understood that for Aristotle the structuring of the plot was the all-important principle for producing good tragedies, and the major aim of De constitutione tragoediae was to deduce from the Poetics "une methode generale et pratique de montage de l'intrigue dramatique" (12). Indeed, thirteen of its seventeen chapters ate devoted to an analysis of the plot of tragedy and to the technique of putting it together effectively. The fact tha t it was written in Latin did not mean that it was intended primarily for a scholarly, erudite audience. On the contrary, Heinsius' compendium aimed to simplify Aristotle's theory and render it more accessible, unburdening it of more than half a century of the learned commentary (mostly by Italians) it had accrued. For a Dutch intellectual like Heinsius it made sense to write in the one language that was international, and his aim to teach a wider albeit cultivated audience is reflected in the clarity and "lightness" of his prose style. Somewhat paradoxically he sought to make Aristotle's doctrine more intelligible and practical for poets working in the various literary vernaculars being established.

His treatise did reach and influence poets and dramatists across Europe. Modern scholars have acknowledged its discernible impact on poetics and dramatic practice in the seventeenth century, especially in France. But, despite the circulation and appeal of Heinsius' interpretation of Aristotle's conception of tragedy in the seventeenth century, until the text was republished alongside Duprat's translation no modern edition of it was available. The work was translated into English by Paul Sellin and John McMannon in 1971. However this English translation, published by San Fernando Valley Sate College (and long out-of-print), had several limitations, the first of which was that it could not be verified against the original Latin text on the facing page. In this short review I cannot point out in any detail the superior quality of Duprat's French translation, but from the very first chapter of the work, in which Heinsius explains the utility of his theorizing, one can tell from Duprat's more accurate rendering o f Heinsius' elegant but concise Latin that Sellin's and McMannon's translation not infrequently missed or modified the text's original meaning. In the notes to her translation Duprat occasionally comments on her significant departures from the prior English translation (161, n. 84). More often, however, her notes examine the language and terminology of the original to explain or justify her French rendering, and in the course of doing so illuminate Heinsius' usage as well as his own translation of Aristotle's terms. Not infrequently the Latin is so concise that it takes real concentration to follow the progress of Heinsius' thought. One then appreciates the intelligibility and consistency that Duprat's translation provides, based as it is on her careful consideration of the immediate or larger context of the argument.

In the substantial introduction (nearly 100 pp.) to the translation Duprat offers a thorough and often brilliant analysis of De constitutione showing that what Heinsius most wants his readers to learn from Aristotle is that plot structure and nothing but that determines the effectiveness with which tragedy achieves its function (of exciting pity and horror in order, ultimately, to regulate them). Particularly illuminating is her discussion of the ramifications of Heinsius' fundamental proposal that nor only the Poetics but poetics in general consist of the art of rationally constructing effective plots. It allowed Heinsius, as Duprat argues, to challenge more traditional views of poetry of his time by relegating language and eloquence to a secondary place, with a view to freeing poetics from the imperial hold that rhetoric had over it. At a more specific level Duprat succeeds in showing how Heinsius' grasp of the overall importance of plot structure enabled him to interpret difficult parts of the Poetics in ways that still obtain today. For example, she shows that as a result of his "structuralist" orientation Heinsius was able to understand that, when Aristotle distinguished history and poetry in chapter 9, he was proposing that poetry attained more universal meaning because of the rational, coherent, and complete structuring of what it represented, not because, as some earlier commentators would have it, of the poet's inspired access to higher truths, or the moral content of the poem. So, according to Duprat, Heinsius understood that Aristotle's call for probability (eikos) , had less to do with the relation of what the poet represents to the beliefs of the audience (the issue of verisimilitude, which was what most earlier commentators took Aristotle to be addressing) than with the logical sequence and intelligibility of a plot. "Heinsius renonce donc," she writes, "a interroge Ia dimension referentielle de la fiction. Ainsi, le rapport du texte q toutes les valeurs possibles sera completement abandonne: le se ul axe de reference de La fiction sera sa coherence logique, interne" (44-45).

In the course of such stimulating observations Duprat points to Heinsius' departures from the preceding, predominantly Italian tradition of reading Aristotle. However, her tendency to exaggerate Heinsius' difference from the Italians occasionally prompts her to make untenable claims: for example, that Heinsius' privileging of tragedy as the poetic genre par excellence departs from the focus on narrative poetry one finds in Italian poetics, and their attendant disregard of dramatic mimesis (31). Such a claim falls to take into account the pioneering thinking on tragedy produced by Italians in the 1540s: Giraldi's Discorso intorno at comporre delle comedie e delle tragedie, and the anonymous Giudizio sopra la Tragedia di Canace e Macareo both of which not only stimulated further disputation about tragedy, but set the terms for much of the theorizing about narrative poetry that follows. One could also show that some of what is presented as Heinsius' original thought is anticipated by Italian precursors: for exa mple, Heinsius' initial justification for his undertaking, that putting together an art or rational set of principles for the effective composition of a genre is a surer procedure than the usual alternatives facing a working poet--(1) depending on one's natural talent, or (2) laboriously familiarizing oneself with and imitating the past authors in that genre--is an argument (Duprat explains its significance on pp. 15-18) that can already be found at the opening of Tasso's "Lezione sopra un sonetto di Monsignor Della Casa" (delivered sometime between 1567 and 1570). Speaking of Tasso, one could argue that the paramount importance Heinsius ascribes to plot structure (and which Duprat sees as innovative) is already evident in Tasso's early Discorsi dell 'arte poetica (composed in the early 1560s) where the selection and structuring of the epic plot are similarly given primacy. I don't want to suggest that Duprat's claims about Heinsius' departures from the Italian Aristotelian tradition are tendentious, even tho ugh I find some of them too dependent on Bernard Weinberg's partial view of that tradition. Her overall effort to show what is new and different about Heinsius' poetics is very valuable. One is also convinced by her basic proposition that the "structuralist" orientation of De constitutione tragoediae affirms poetry's peculiarity and autonomy as a field a discourse in a more uncompromising manner than one can find in earlier Italian defenses of poetry. Nonetheless, during the half century before Heinsius' treatise appeared, Italian "poeticiens" were already concerned with the nature of poetic truth and its distinctiveness from historical, empirical, and metaphysical truth. They too were working toward an understanding of poetry's independence from other forms of discourse, and, like Heinsius, they found in Aristotle's Poetics authorization for their claims about poetry's autonomy. Duprat's insistence on Heinsius' departures from his Italian predecessors leaves one with too strong a sense that a rupture occurre d in the tradition of Aristotelian poetics inaugurated by precursors like Maggi, Giraldi, Trissino, Robortello, Castelvetro, and Tasso. But now that she has made the De constitutione once again available and has reaffirmed its importance, perhaps students of early modern poetics will devote further study to how this treatise develops rather than breaks with the tendencies of earlier Italian poetic theory.