Essays Toward a Symbolic of Motives, 1950–1955. Kenneth Burke
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