History is about what has happened, poetry is about what may happen, and poetry is more philosophical than history.
Among the various writings left by Aristotle, "Poetics" is famous for its simplicity and wisdom. In it, he compared poetry with history and believed that poetry has a more philosophical flavor. Has greater intrinsic value. Perhaps because of Aristotle’s legacy, the Macedonian Poetry Festival, founded in 1962, is held on the shores of the beautiful Lake Ohrid in late August every year. It is also the oldest poetry festival in the world.
Aristotle believed that poetry "describes universal things", while history "narrates individual things".
As for the nature of art, Aristotle believed that it was imitation. Compared with poetry and history, one characteristic of literary imitation is that it must reveal internal logic and ordinary laws. And historians describe historical facts that have happened. The task of poetry is not to describe the accidental events that have happened, but to reveal what should happen according to the inherent laws of things.
Aristotle said that the difference between poetry and history is that "one describes what has happened, and the other describes what may happen. Therefore, poetry is more philosophical and more significant than history, because Poetry states things that are universal, while history states things that are specific."
Aristotle and Plato have different standards of truth. Plato's objective idealism believes that what is more true is true. "Reason", art imitates the appearance of the real world that is less real, so art is not real. Aristotle believes that art is more real than the real world, because art imitates more than just what Plato said. What we are talking about is the appearance of the real world, but the inevitability and universality of the real world, that is, its inner nature and laws.
Aristotle distinguished between "reasonable impossibility" and "unreasonable possibility". "Unreasonable possibility" is accidental and cannot see the essence and inner laws of things, but it may happen. , has even happened; and "reasonable impossibility" means that although it is not true in fact, it is consistent with the law of development of things, has universality and inevitability, assuming that a certain situation is real, in which case a certain character does It makes sense to do certain things and say certain things.