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.xThis is interesting, because it lets us see the close fit between character andmimesis.The beginning of poetry, which is here seen as nothing but formalizedor rather professionalized mimesis, lies in an expression of character.The earlyu On whether Aristotle s contrast is fair, see de Ste Croix 1992.v Although mimesis in Aristotle cannot unproblematically be translated as representation (cf.Halliwell 2002), I find that the term conveys some of the central idea here.w On this, see Heath 1991, in particular the first section, which brings out the distinctionbetween two related senses of kath holou.x I am grateful to John Cooper for (among much else) stressing the importance of this passageto me. Habituation as Mimesis 111poets performed as they did because of who they themselves were.They took thenatural inclination to mimesis one step further, in somehow staging themselves,or rather something about themselves, in front of an audience.The passage also helps us to explain the delight we take in the works ofrepresentational artists.The enjoyment of one s own representations and theenjoyment of others representions are described by Aristotle as basically differentenjoyments, having their sources in two natural tendencies of which neither isentirely reducible to the other.This, I take it, is the meaning of 1448b4 5 sreference to two natural causes of poetry.There are two causes, since the pleasure inwriting a tragedy is not identical to the pleasure in watching a performance of it.yIn creating art, the artist draws upon his or her experience with somethingand conveys, through suitable media, various aspects or truths about it.The earlypoets drew upon their experience of themselves, thus making the first tragediesand comedies a kind of expression of self-knowledge.Here Aristotle s account gives a clue about how mimesis can be a factor inhabituation.The joy that is natural to us and is here set forward as the joyof learning is not that of seeing the representations of others so much as thatof oneself doing the representing.The process by which we take our very firststeps in understanding is primarily a form of learning that takes place throughrepresentational activity.To relate mimesis as a factor in the habituation of character to the more or lessprofessionalized poetic mimesis which is the main topic of the Poetics, we needto understand poetic mimesis in reverse.The poet creates an action from theresources of who he already is; habituation involves establishing a character byfirst performing its characteristic actions.Habituation does not mean activating aformed character and thereby realizing something out there in the world; it meansrealizing something in the world and thereby forming a character.Here I mean realizing in both senses of the word: both grasping something intellectually, andalso making it real.For mimesis in habituation is about forming a character.Andthis requires both that the subject of the character-formation be exposed to somemodel or example, and also that he use this model as material for a mimesiswherein he stages or re-enacts one or several of its manners or actions.The general idea, then, is this.Children and young people develop their char-acter by actively engaging in mimesis of others who function as models for them.The child does as others do, and learns to become a certain sort of person by emu-lating the actions and manners of others.To stick to the simplest of examples: justas painting a flower means extracting something general and characteristic aboutthe object, so mimetically assuming, say, the gait of one s object of admiration,y Not all interpreters would agree with me on the last hypothesis, that the enjoyments of doingand of perceiving, respectively, are what make up the reference of 1148b4 5.Malcolm Heath, in anote to his own translation of the passage, thinks the point is about the Poetics next topic, music.However, my reading does not depend on 1148b4 5 alone. 112 Hallvard J.Fossheimrequires that one has isolated, from the object s other features, what constitutesthat way of walking, and that one has done so sufficiently analytically to be ableto repeat its variety of aspects.In re-enacting, one is oneself the repetition ( this )of a model ( that )
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