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1 A “Dramatistic” View of “Imitation”2

[This is an excerpt from a much longer essay concerned with the “carving out” of a Poetics, and taking Aristotle’s treatise as its point of departure. Its stress upon “Dramatism,” as contrasted with “scientism,” is in no way meant to imply a derogation of science as such. The “Dramatistic” perspective approaches the poem in terms of action, whereas “scientism” approaches the poem in terms of knowledge. And the author would contend that, though poems, and even works of sheer persuasion, may have value as information, or “news,” the direct approach to their nature as forms is not through such a route.

Any scientific work can be studied purely for its persuasiveness or beauty (i.e., as rhetoric or poetic); any rhetorical work can be studied purely for its beauty or truth (i.e., as pure poetry or as scientific information); and any poem can be studied either as a piece of rhetorical exhortation or as a means of purveying information (news, knowledge, science). But essentially, culminatively, it is only scientific works that should be approached directly in terms of truth, knowledge, perception, and the like. (Unless we have overlooked it, the word “truth” does not appear in the Poetics. It does, however, appear in many scientistically tinged translations.)

In the present pages, we consider Aristotle’s key term, mimesis, from this point of view, as we try to show how the culminative emphasis in his notion of the “entelechy” was obscured by a notion of representation that is nearer to the stress upon the average or “statistical” as a test of the representative. Othello, for instance, would be a “culminative” or “entelechial” depiction of a jealous husband. He is not the statistical average (though some people seem to think they have reclaimed him for science by discovering that there actually was one notorious case of a Moor who strangled his wife in Shakespeare’s time).]

“Dramatistically,” we would admonish that “imitation” and “representation” are not wholly adequate translations of mimesis. These words are slightly too “scientist” in their connotations. There is no reason to replace them, particularly since the usage has been established by so many centuries of tradition—and there are no handier equivalents anyhow. We need merely to point out the respects in which, unless we deliberately make allowance for differences between the original word and its translations, the translations can mislead.

First, when you are told that drama is “the imitation of an action” (sometimes also phrased as “imitation of life” or “imitation of nature”) you might get around the overly photographic or “documentary” suggestions in such expressions by recalling that Aristotle also lists flute-playing and lyre-playing as “imitations.” The overly scientist emphasis may also arise in this way: Where the original says merely mimesis, translators often add words, making the statement read “imitations (or representations) of life (or of nature).”

Greek tragedy being much nearer to grand opera than to the style of modern naturalism, its “imitations” included many ritualistic elements (as with the masks of the actors and the traditional dance movements of the chorus) that could only be interpreted as interferences with imitation, if the term had merely some such meaning as the faithful depicting of the “lifelike.”

For a beginning, let us consider a scattering of terms that might help us loosen up our notion of “imitation.” To an extent, we might substitute: “the miming of an action.” (Recall where Chaplin, for instance, “imitates” a dancer by taking two forks, sticking a roll on the end of each, and acting “life-like” in terms of this greatly disparate medium.) Or: “the ritual figuring of an action” (since Greek tragedy was built about “quantitative” parts that, whatever their origin in nature, were as ceremonious as the processional and recessional of the Episcopalian service). Or: “the stylizing of an action.” (The characters in Greek tragedy stood for certain civic functions somewhat as with the heroic posturing of an equestrian statue in a public park.) Or: “the symbolizing of an action.” (Hence, we would hold that our term, “symbolic action,” aids greatly in the reclaiming of lost connotations here.)

“Nature” or “life” is the world of history. And history in Aristotle’s scheme is the realm of particulars, whereas he tells us that “imitations” are concerned with universals. What does he mean by this distinction? (The distinction would allow us to add, among our scattered correctives, “the universalizing of an action.”)

The difficulty seems to involve the fact that many critics who have directly or roundabout adored Aristotle’s stress upon “imitation” do not at all share the particular “philosophy of the act” implicit in his use of the term. Such short-cutting makes for what we call the “scientist” fallacy, a materialist stress upon the scenic document, “truth to life” in an “informational” sense, whereas Aristotle rated Spectacle (that is, scene) as the lowest among the six parts of Tragedy. An obscuring of the distinction (Coleridge’s) between “imitation” and “copy” results, we believe, from the use of Aristotle’s term without reference to the theory of the “entelechy” that was an integral part of it.

The world of modern technology is so thoroughly built in accordance with concepts of place and motion developed from Galileo and similar experimental geniuses, that if we approach the whole subject of motivation from this point of view, not only shall we not believe in the notion of the “entelechy,” we shall have trouble in understanding it, and even more trouble in understanding how anybody ever could have believed in it.

In Sir Philip Sidney’s Apology for Poetry, there is a passage admirably designed to show how the notion of the “entelechy” gradually ceased to be applied in the Western critics’ use of the term, “imitation.” (And since the “entelechy” is essentially Dramatistic, a term for action, in contrast with the great Renaissance inquiries into motion, it would be fitting to recall that Sidney was a contemporary of Galileo’s, though Galileo survived him by more than half a century.) Sidney is discussing the “Heroical” (that is, Epic poetry):

But if anything be already said in the defense of sweet Poetry, all concurreth to the maintaining the Heroical, which is not only a kind, but the best, and most accomplished kind of Poetry. For as the image of each action stirreth and instructeth the mind, so the lofty images of the Worthies most inflameth the mind with desire to be worthy [let us at this point interrupt to recall the almost psychotic emphasis upon the digne and indigne in Corneille’s tragedies, the test of worthiness being, of course, such as fits the ideals of the French court, or more specifically, submission to the French monarch, whose rule was by Corneille identified with both the will of God and the love of country] and informs with counsel how to be worthy. Only let Aeneas be worn in the tablet of your memory, how he governeth himself in the ruin of his Country, in the preserving his old Father, and carrying away his religious ceremonies: in obeying the God’s commandment to leave Dido, though not only all passionate kindness, but even the humane consideration of virtuous gratefulness, would have craved other of him. How in storms, how in sports, how in war, how in peace, how a fugitive, how victorious, how besieged, how besieging, how to strangers, how to allies, how to enemies, how to his own: lastly, how in his inward self, and how in his outward government. . . .

Now, in the “entelechy” is the idea that a given kind of being fully “actualizes” itself by living up to the potentialities natural to its kind. (Man is not wholly complete as man, for instance, unless he has completely attained the rational maturity possible to man as a species. A tree’s actualization requires not only not rationality, but not even locomotion for its completeness of being, though of course its actualization requires the kinds of motion needed for its growth.) We can see the strong vestiges of “entelechial” thinking in Sidney’s statement; for he would have us note how Aeneas imitates kinds of perfection (finishedness, completeness, in the sense of “the compleat angler”). According to this interpretation, by “how in storms” Sidney means that Virgil shows Aeneas perfectly storm-tossed; “how a fugitive” would mean, the sum-total of fugitive, the very essence of the fugitive, the embodiment of the exact traits, in the exact proportions, that would best imitate the fugitive’s role.

No, we would modify our account here somewhat. Pure entelechial imitation would obviously have a less moralistically didactic slant than we find in Sidney’s formula. Already, the entelechy is on the way out. Insofar as foul-mouthed Thersites, in the Iliad, is the “perfect” exemplar of what Hegel calls “Thersitism,” he too would be an entelechial imitation. A playwright entelechially motivated might thus look not just for perfect heroes; he would also seek for the exact situation, the exact expressions, the exact relationships, the exact thoughts and choices, that would constitute the perfect coward, the perfect hypocrite, the perfect traitor, and so on.

We do not say that the actual concept of the entelechy is needed for literary criticism. We are saying that the full significance of “imitation” has been lost to us—and by thinking of the “entelechial principle” we can better discount the scientist meanings that have engrafted themselves upon the strongly Dramatistic term. Philip Wheelwright’s thoughtful translation of selections from Aristotle variously renders the term as: “actuality,” “fulfilment,” “state of perfect fulfilment,” “realization,” “full actual character.” W. R. Ross, for the Metaphysics, uses “complete reality.” In his introduction to an edition of Leibnitz’s Monadology, Robert Latta defines entelechy as “the principle of a thing in the sense of its implicit perfect realization.” And in another passage he says: “Entelecheia in Aristotle is the state of perfection or realization in which energeia [actualization] as a process, ends.” Windelband gives his definition a somewhat idealistic twist: “self-realization of the essence in the phenomena.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition: “The perfection of the form of a thing is its entelechy, in virtue of which it attains its fullest realization of function.” Zeller points to the etymology: “Entelecheia means that which has its perfection, its end (telos) in itself.”

In the De Anima, Aristotle calls the soul an entelechy. In the Metaphysics the term is applied to God, the “first essence,” which “has no matter because it is complete reality.”

Leibnitz borrowed the word to describe his monads, each of whom is said to be an entelechy. The word here means tendency of a thing to unfold its nature. But the application is atomistic, and incipiently scientist (since each monad is said to be a unit of innate perception, a notion that fits well with the epistemological turn from act to cognition as generating principle of the terminology).

However, Leibnitz’s notion of his sensitive monads, each partially reflecting the nature of the entire universe, is useful for our purposes. He says: “The world is entirely in each of its parts, but more distinctly in some than in others.” This may or may not be true of the particles that compose the material universe, but it is certainly true of the various terms that cluster together in a single universe of discourse. Hence our belief that entelecheia is present, though not “distinctly,” in Aristotle’s use of mimesis with regard to the symbolic action of poetry.

We might put it thus: Given the full range of human characters and situations there would not merely be the entelechial imitating of man’s noblest potentialities qua man; there would also be the actualizing of human types within the species. For though man, in his perfection, would be essentially rational, according to the Aristotelian scheme, there will also be characteristic ways of departing from this rationality. And the entelechial principle would prevail insofar as you “imitate” any such departure, or imitate different situations. Thus the ruler’s typical ways of being to perfection “himself” as ruler would differ from those in which the poet might “be himself,” etc.

We deliberately use here the expression “be oneself” to give a glimpse of entelechial thinking behind the formula, though the notion of “kind” has been individualized. One is exhorted to be a kind all by oneself, in accordance with idealistic emphases that transform the realistic concern with role or act into a cult of “pure” personality.

This is not the place to consider at length the many ways in which the entelechial principle was later lost in the idea of “imitation,” or warped into a different shape by the increasingly “scientist” connotations that obscured the original implications of the term. But a few of the main ones are obvious, since they can be seen in Sidney’s statement.

The didactic emphasis (the Renaissance stress upon “instruction” as an important element of poetry) is the first great deviation. The how’s of Sidney’s statement were given a moralistically pragmatic slant, with the hierarchal motive in art conceived too narrowly. Thus when discussing “the utility of tragedy” (Reflections on the Poetic Art, Section XLV) Fontenelle says that he does not understand Aristotle’s formula for “the purgation of the passions by means of the passions”; then he continues:

It seems to me that the greatest utility of the theatre is to render virtue amiable to men, to accustom them to interest themselves in virtue, to touch their hearts, to put before them great examples of resoluteness and courage in their misfortunes, and by that means to fortify and elevate their sentiments. From that it follows that not only must characters be virtuous but also that they must be virtuous in the proud and elevated manner of Corneille, so that they will strengthen the heart and give lessons in courage.

There are endless variants on this notion, of tragedy as a set of models for noble action (though the connotations of nobility gradually shift from the gestures of the Court to the bourgeois virtues of sentiment, a shift discernible in the Fontenelle quotation).

By the same token, comedy is praised for producing the same effect by opposite means, since it uses ridicule to deter men from temptations that would threaten the social order. One sample of this endlessly varied theme should be enough for our purposes. (René Rapin, The Poetics of Aristotle, section XXV):

Comedy is an image of common life; its end is to show on the stage the faults of particulars, in order to amend the faults of the public, and to correct the people through a fear of being rendered ridiculous. So that which is most proper to excite laughter is that which is most essential to comedy.3

Another mode of departure was, of course, through the use of stock characters and stock situations, a burlesque of “universality” got through sheer lack of invention. Such procedure did not need to be asked for; low canons of rhetoric would spontaneously lead mercenary playwrights into this path, since one must appeal through an audience’s sense of the “natural,” and a convention can become “natural” in this sense (as with superficial “typing,” the “typical” Irishman, “typical” Jew, “typical” Englishman, etc.). Such canons of “naturalness” now help protect a great deal of Hollywooden art against the encroachments of serious foreign films. Largely, of course, such protection is contrived by an extra-artistic device: control over the system of distribution. But it can also rely on a low form of aesthetic conservatism (there are admirable kinds of such) in the movie audiences.

Our movie-goers are supposed to be in search of “entertainment.” But actually, they will pay good money to be bored. We do not mean that they are cheated, in being led to expect more than they get. We mean that they positively demand boredom. For in such boredom there is solace, there is the implied assurance that all is as was. It is the modern equivalent, in “movie temples” (when witnessing a murder mystery, for instance) to the almost irresistibly sleep-producing intonations of a hell-fire sermon in the earlier dispensation.

Be that as it may, once “typicality” (in the sense of stock characters and stock plots) has come to be deemed “natural,” a scientist test can raise good aesthetic questions. (Above all, for instance, it questions the habit of assigning to each nationality a single role, like the animals in Aesop’s Fables.) There is thus a positive reason for becoming insensitive to the entelechial aspect of imitation: insofar as universality has thus degenerated into the use of conventional signs for recalling conventional attitudes, art can reinvigorate itself only “scientistically,” by fresh “observation,” by checking its utterances against the many particulars of life.

But while realism, in this “naturalistic” sense, is necessary, the very zeal of critics in expounding it can take us too far from a concern with the range of major motives that figure in aesthetic appeal. And if you read a novel, say, about nondescript, Bohemian, cosmopolite, and perverted characters roaming through the bars and brothels of pre-war or post-war or between-wars Europe, we would propose that you’d come nearer to explaining its nature if you adapted Sidney’s formula than if you heralded it as a purely “naturalistic” emancipation from “moralistic” and “didactic” bias. That is, you should say: The author is showing us how to be the perfect, “compleat,” nondescript, Bohemian, cosmopolite, perverted wanderer in the bars and brothels, etc. In this sense, his imitations would have the kind of fulfilment that we would associate with the entelechial aspect of imitation, in contrast with a purely naturalistic kind (reportage).

Here would be the bond between “imitation” and the “universal.” After the German romantic philosophers, perhaps the notion is often contained in the term “idealization.” (It is a useful term for the purpose, if you remember its range: at one end, the questionably eulogistic attributing of excellencies to someone or something; at the other, the attaining of the purposive simplicity we get in such ironic expressions as “the ideal liar,” “the ideal thief.”)

One imitates entelechially, thereby attaining a universal, insofar as the individual is shown living up to the potentialities of its genus. There is such entelechial thought in Shakespeare’s phrase, “every inch a king.” (One also glimpses the hierarchal motive in the notion of the entelechy.)

And so, in sum, were the poem (for instance) to imitate a sailor universally, entelechially, it would have him represent to the full the potentialities of sailor as such: speaking nautical terms (even perhaps to the extent of applying nautical analogies to non-nautical matters), scrupulous in the performing of his duties at sea (yet revealing exactly the most relevant temptations to the dereliction of such duties), looking perhaps with a carnival eye upon his times in port, etc. He would not be merely “typed,” though typing would be the corresponding corruption of such a norm. And insofar as the feeling for this norm began to weaken, the same insight might be preserved somewhat in canons of “instruction” (which would involve the corresponding antithesis, canons of “amusement”). “Instruction” could then become conceived in hierarchal terms overly narrow: hence would result a kind of moral pragmatism, instructions how to be the ideal sailor for the greater glory of such-and-such an empire-builder. And whether we end with merely the stock character of a sailor, or with a falsely heroicized figure, “naturalism” would be our corrective. However, though its “scientist” emphasis might help refresh art, it would in turn lead to a faulty analysis of poetic excellence. Critics would suggest that the writer appealed by purely naturalistic imitation of particular sailors. At this point, we would attempt to recover the entelechial ingredient in imitation. Or at the very least, even if you would ban the entelechy as a bit of outmoded nonsense, we would reaffirm our contention that you must at least take it into account when asking what Aristotle meant by mimesis (in contrast with what the term can seem to mean, when translated as “imitation” or “representation,” and thus used after several centuries during which “nature” came progressively to be equated with the processes of technology).

And when thus summing up, we might note how the “fourfold method” of mediaeval criticism in its way also departed somewhat from the entelechy even while partially preserving its genius. In effect, it broke the entelechy-universal into four pieces, each of which thereafter could be featured, or even proclaimed exclusively. From the stressing of the literal could come the “documentary” school (“naturalism,” the “scientist” bias). From the stressing of the moralistic or “tropological” could come “instruction” (hence, tragedy as a book; of etiquette for the heroics of empire; comedy as a book of etiquette in reverse, the use of ridicule to deter deviations). From the stressing of the “allegorical” would come the featuring of temporal or local allusiveness as the be-all and end-all of poetry. (One can see how both “allusiveness” and “instruction” could be telescoped eventually into aspects of the “documentary.”) And from the “anagogic” could come “amusement.” (Once the concerns with grace, power, felicity, perfection, and the like have been secularized for use as terms to describe purely aesthetic ultimates—in accord with the translating of the religious passion into the romantic passion—then the “radiance” of an aesthetic object can be said to reside in its sheer delight as a pleasurable sensuous thing existing here and now, obviously another emphasis that has been telescoped into the scientist-literal.) In our Rhetoric, we have sought to show how such “grace” (of the ars gratia artis sort) is emblematic of a social anagoge, as the objects of “natural” experience (in the empiricist sense) can secretly represent social judgments related to the real but somewhat confused hierarchy of social classes. “Amusement” thus now covers the use of art to ends implicitly “propagandistic.” For the “naturalness” of such art derives from its conformity with conventions that would uphold the status quo (even though, inexorably, by the ironies of history, they are making for exactly the contrary outcome: general inaccuracy, when coached and perfected with systematic efficiency, must become a Pandora’s box that opens itself).

The present cult of the “myth” can also be fitted into these thoughts on entelechy. For the “mythic” now is usually proposed in opposition to overly scientific, naturalistic, “documentary” or materialistic criteria in art. In part, the controversy is rooted in extra-aesthetic considerations. The myth can serve as “idealization” in the merely eulogistic sense; or, when not downright eulogistic, it can at least be deflective, as were some immediately present and materialistically explainable politico-economic conflict to be viewed exclusively in the “higher” terms of some mythic or prehistoric struggle, fall, or curse. In this respect, the market for a myth may be explained by critics on purely aesthetic grounds, whereas the supposed “universality” of the supposedly “aesthetic” can be a temporary way of using art to avoid the accurate contemplation of non-aesthetic elements.

But there is one good argument in behalf of myth, as we realize when we consider, for instance, the various ways in which the three great Greek tragic playwrights used myth. If you relate characters to one another after the analogy of some myth, you automatically acquire an underlying simplicity of structure that almost requires you to make the various roles “universal.” You can get the point by thinking, in contrast, of some complicated modern novel or drama of intrigue (a feeble variant of the “scientist psychosis”), in which you are dragged through a “mysterious” muddle of false leads and loose ends, to end on some hastily contrived gadget of explanation (or rather, an anti-climax disguised as an explanation). Contrast such an unprincipled contraption with the stark lines of a Greek tragedy, which possesses in its way the same simplicity as one finds in Greek architecture and Greek statuary of the classic period. Even much of the best Elizabethan tragedy suffers by comparison. The outraged lover, the unjust king, the avenging son, the suppliant fugitive, the blind seer, the tortured god—the myths “naturally” led the playwright to cast his perception of particulars into such universal molds, giving his “imitations” the summarizing quality that adds up to the notion of the “entelechy.”

Thus, even though Sartre uses myth perversely, he does contrive to exploit it for its formal, simplifying function. And a play of intrigue can be improved formally by even an artificial imposing of mythic lines upon it. In The American Scholar, Winter 1950–51, Malcolm Cowley touches upon this point somewhat when, discussing the possible effect of the “New Criticism” on creative writers, he says:

It may terrify them; it may stop them from writing at all, or, if they do write, it may cause them to write according to one of the formulas advanced by whichever New Critic is teaching that year at Princeton or wherever it may be—according to a number of formulas, like a beautiful one followed by Frederick Buechner in his first novel, A Long Day’s Dying. The formula is simply to find classical myth, tell the myth in the shape of a lecture delivered to Princeton boys, and then restate the myth in contemporary terms, always stepping down the intensity of the myth into mild contemporary equivalents.

The observation suggests that the mythic frame might even become a mechanical subterfuge, a device of play-doctoring. But we are suggesting that a formal virtue, however perverted, rests at the roots of such a possible vice.

As we tried to show elsewhere, in our analysis of Othello, the concept of “tensions” can also be applied, as a way of re-introducing an equivalent of the entelechy in imitation. For if there is a certain tension in human relations, the artist may exploit it dramatically by analyzing it into parts, “breaking it down” into a set of interrelated roles (a device that permits the tension to be “processed”; for whereas in human relations it just is, the breaking of it into parts permits these parts to act upon one another, in a series of operations that, when followed in exactly the order they have in their particular whole, lead to a “catharsis”). Roles chosen by such a test are likely to be “entelechial” imitations, since they will imitate not particular individuals, but basic human situations and strategies, translated into equivalent terms of personality.

When the “tensions” are too local (as with the tensions of temporary factional disputes), often a sheerly rhetorical motive can be misinterpreted “scientistically.” Thus, when looking for evidence that a certain social situation prevails, sociological critics will sometimes cite the prevalence of such a topic in popular literature of the times. But often a rhetorical discount is necessary. For instance, a speaker held that, in his opinion, life in the United States was much more “matriarchal” than “patriarchal.” And as proof, he cited the fact that so many motion pictures play up the type of the put-upon husband and father, whose frustrations about the house are humorously amplified, while he mumbles to himself ineffectually, being treated patronizingly by wife, children, servants, tradesmen, and even the family dog, but masochistically and without fail paying the bills with which all the other members of the family blithely saddle him. Maybe yes, maybe no. But before taking this stock character at face value, as evidence of a correspondingly prevalent social type, one should certainly consider the possibility that the role is the sentimentalizing of a situation quite different.

Imagine, for instance, a husband who is unquestionably the head of the family. Each day he goes off to work as to a “mystery,” so far as his family at home is concerned. They know only what he chooses to tell them. Everything necessarily centers about him, since he is the wage-earner. Things must be so arranged that he catches exactly the right train, gets exactly the right food at exactly the right time, sleeps for exactly the right interval [. . .] and insofar as such requirements are not met, he must grumble mightily for his rights. Each day he goes into a world of “adventure,” his absence being in essence as unaccountable as the daily disappearance of Cupid was to Psyche. Under such conditions, might not the wife feel herself inferior? Then if, of an afternoon, she goes to a movie temple for her meditations and devotions, would there not be “medicine” for her in the picture of a husband thus lovingly put upon, a lovable old bear essentially as timid as the lion in the Wizard of Oz? And so on. In brief, might the part be featured in this popular art precisely because it did not directly reflect the motives in the social situation itself, but was an “idealization” of them? There would, of course, be certain superficial signs about, to give the character plausibility. But the main function of the character would derive not from a corresponding “documentary” reality, but rather from the ingratiating triviality of the distortion.

In the Poetics there are several passing references to the appeal of “wonder” in the imitations of tragedy, and we shall revert to the theme when we come to that term. Meanwhile, we should note this “complicating factor”: Once the resources of imitation have been systematically exploited by a priesthood, imitations can be endowed with a magical power not present in the things imitated. Hofmannsthal tells of a tribe that fears neither man nor tiger, but the tribesmen are paralyzed with terror when a priest dances before them wearing a tiger pelt. And we know of a child who awoke in the night, shrieking, from the dream of a snake. Yet the next day he placidly bathed in a pool while a water snake lay on a branch nearby. His mother asked him: “Why aren’t you worried about this snake, when you were so afraid of the snake you dreamed about last night?” And he answered: “This one is real.” There is a magic in imitations, that probably draws in part upon the magic of dreams (which a priesthood can interweave with the magic of class). Such considerations lead us to the “hierarchal” motives that lurk in the entelechy (touching upon it as “enigmatic,” containing the mystery and magic, the “wonder,” of class relationships).

From our point of view, however, the Poetics, beneath its essayistic facade, would in this regard be itself a kind of “dramatic analysis,” with the terms of a single tension being so broken apart that they can curatively or cathartically operate upon one another like characters in a play. Thus the wonder in entelechial imitation is not explicitly said to be a part of it, but is broken off, treated as an independent term, existing in its own right, its secret relation to its partner-term being revealed not by explicit tracing of the relationship between them, but by the fact that they appear in the same context (apparently related only by “and”: there is imitation and there is wonder).

But, just as previously our doubts about the “scientist” grounding of a character led us into rhetoric in the superficial sense, here we touch upon rhetoric in the profoundest sense. Or rather, we come upon the centre, where rhetoric and poetic coalesce, where the intrinsic radiance of an aesthetic object has social implications in its very essence. And as we have said before, we are unable to maintain our vision steadily, where this moment is concerned. Here is the point where the divinity of the ultimate ground merges deceptively with the pseudo-divinity of class relationships. We have claimed that “naturalism” but reproduces, more self-protectively (from the standpoint of “scientist” norms), the deceptions of “supernaturalism” (insofar as “supernaturalism” can be a disguise for temporal interests in terms of the eternal, a shift that Hobbes would call “making men see double”). If we are right, then Aristotle’s stress upon “nature” as the grounding for men’s delight in imitation should secretly contain such a “drama” as we have here caught glimpses of.

Conversely, we can catch glimpses of an entelechial grammar behind the pathos of John, XIX, 30: “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished”; consummatum est; es ist vollbracht; the Greek text has Tetelestai, a verb perfect passive in form, that contains the telos of “entelechy,” to designate an “end,” not just as a dying or desisting, but rather as a purpose, now at last fulfilled.

Accent 12.4 (August 1952): 229–41. © The Kenneth Burke Literary Trust. Used by permission.

Both of these citations are from Dramatic Essays of the Neoclassic Age, edited by Henry Hitch Adams and Baxter Hathaway.