3 20 46 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b4f252cb056e37f0ca0721d64dec8446.pdf 63e46eb105fb47f1ef1faa4378cb9dd9 PDF Text Text �energe1a editors staff faculty advisor Stephanie Connolly Kaitlyn Schuler Genevieve Allen Jerome Dausman Liam Dougherty Nathan Goldman Danielle Nelson Ian Tuttle Fawn Trigg cover by Hannah Pasternak: Pacific Sun<1et �contents Jerome Dausman 7 Noble Lied Nathan Goldman 9 Mu.:1cfe Sarah Marx 15 YomKippur photographs Henley Moore Rainer Maria Rilke 39 40 14 Erika Adam Maraschky Stephanie Connolly 17 Be.:1tpitch Trinity Kathryn Lewis Eva Brann 8 59 38 29 67 Quad Scene Tunnel Vuion Private Cour0 State Circle Hannah Pasternak 16 Journeyc1 Kaitlyn Schuler 46 Flamingo d Repo.:1e AchiLfean Armor and 0dyd.:Jeian Time Summer Sonnet Offering trandlateo by Stephanie Co11110LLy Maggy Barnes 42 Suffocation Liam Wallace 47 The Labyrinth of Quixote and the Dream ofMonte.:1ino.:1 T. Carmi 68 Intimate Matter.:! tra11<1!ateo by Daniel Kraft Vmcent Tavani 78 The Bird who Wait.:1 - hu .:1ong �7 Noble Lies .feronielJaUdnian Is it so noble, that Socratic lie that would, Republic proudly give birth to? Do noble ends the means ennoble by transmuting base-born acts to holy view? What is it in a man that Truth mayn't be enough to draw him out from dismal cave to dwell where sunlight permits all to see that which forbids a man to be a slave? If shadows be the poetry so strong to turn the heart of even a good man would not the poems of free men belong to all that would against the lie withstand? May that division of Socratic line, fall ne'er between the likes of mine and thine. �9 8 Muscle Nathan GorJnian Bedtpitch I Henley Moore Watching the birth of new muscle is like watching the growth of a vine in fast motion. It blooms from the seed and wraps, wraps about the bone, forms a coiled spiral. Moves as if hungry, chasing prey, mounts both widthwise and lengthwise, swells into a creature of substance, bubbles gently until its journey is complete, before it tightens, solidi£es. And then it is a dead thing, and it's hard to remember that what comes next is not grief, but life. "There's a reason this is supposed to happen in the dark," I tell her. Don't think she hears me. She's too busy seeing, gaping, to remember the world outside her line of sight . . The organs come next, sprouting one by one from the tiny black nodes distributed generously around the body, clustered most noticeably in what should become the chest cavity, I think. The heart is a meaty, fleshy thing, and I'd like to say it blossoms like a rose, but it doesn't. It gurgles. Pusses up into an unshapely, unbeating mass, and I find myself wishing hearts really could resemble those simple, symmetrical symbols sandwiched between magnet and metal on refrigerator doors, circumscribed in lace, a tear drop splintered and inverted upon itself. That is a place from which love could arise. But this ... even blood seems too pure. The veins. Arteries. Twisting, trembling see-through tubes, snaking around each other, up �11 10 through the body, constructing a dense network of tangles. "I thought veins were blue," I say to her, accusmg. "Blood is blue," says the attendant. He's young, with hollow cheeks and a well-proportioned nose. Smugness flickers at the corners of his lips, the way it does on young people when they correct someone older. "There's no blood in these. Yet." "Oh," I say. "We're just constructing the shell now. It will be refrigerated while you continue the customization process. Fluids enter last." "Right." It's almost human now. Everything but the skin. That's a terrifying thought. Is this how I would look if you ripped off my skin, drained my fluids? A fleshy labyrinth of organs and tubes. We are such ugly things. "That's it?" Helen says. Her voice is quiet, like a stifled breath. "F or now, yes, "h e atten dant says. "B eauti. t ful, isn't it?" Helen nods dazedly, and I suck back a grimace. Sunsets are beautiful; sons are beautiful. This .... "Dr. Burke will see you now, for your consultation," says the attendant. "If you'll just follow me." Behind the glass, the tube in which the body was grown is drained of fluid. The tube divides at the center and retracts into metal canisters on each end. Two silver, three-pronged mechanical claws grip the body at the shoulder and hips and move it t o t he left, out of sigp.t. "It goes to the refrigerator now?" I ask. "Yes," says the attendant. "With the others. " "Blue," Helen says. "We decided blue." Dr. Burke makes a note on our file. "A popular choice," he says, smiling, looking up at us with rich brown eyes. "Helen's are blue," I say, probably too defensively. "And my mother's were." We haven't lost respect for lineage. Genetic tradition. Helen places her hand on mine, delicately, and runs her index finger around the curve of my wedding band. Sterling silver, cold and smooth. "I don't think Dr. Burke meant to ruffle you, dear," she says, squeezing my hand gently. · "No, no," he says, tapping his pen rhythmically against his ample mustache. "And brown hair, you said. Lovely choices." "Auburn," Helen says. "Of course. Auburn," says Dr. Burke, smiling like a grandfather assuring his granddaughter that yes, of course Santa will like your letter. His eyes turn to me, as if to say, Isn't that cute? I look down. "And how about complexion?" Dr. Burke asks. His pen abandons his mustache to hover near the form once more. "You looked at the samples?" "Yes, yes," Helen says, beginning to rifle through her purse. "They're in here somew her e .... " �13 12 "S eventeen, I say. e wante d num b er seventeen. Right, honey?" I remember a line from the brochure: We're proud to bring you the widest range of shades in complexion. We out color the competition. "Oh, yes, yes, how could I forget?" She restores the contents of her purse and looks at me, eyes adoring, lips slightly puckered. "And that's why I love you." I smile at her, genuinely. She has the palest skin, the reddest lips. "No lipstick?" I asked her, incredulous, when we first moved in together, and I surveyed the makeup she had moved into the bathroom. "Really?" "All natural," she said, smiling so impishly I forgave the cliche and kissed her. Dr. Burke makes another note. "Should go nicely." He nods his sage approval. JJ "TIT vv "I had this dream last night," I tell her driving home, "about a dragon." ''I'm glad we went with blue," she says. "Blue was right, wasn't it? Best option?" "Had this long tail. Coiled, like a snake." "Huh?" "The dragon." "Oh. Well. What color was it?" It was blue. "Red," I say. "Strange color for a dragon," she says. ''I'd have thought green." 7 "' .1.eah , I say. "Blue was right. Right?" "Yes." JJ "And ... auburn?" I wonder what it's like to hope; I imagine it's somewhat warmer a feeling than it is to know. "Of course, dear," I say. "All The Right Choices." END �14 15 Yorn Kippur Sarah Marx Someone had told them that the Book of Life was already bolted, that the only way to wrench it open was to pray. They stared, unmoved for what were words? Transactions, courtesies, a string of curses when the hammer slammed down too hard, missing the nail, · excuses, the sibilant lies of a love song, as many and slight as the grains of sand that chafed their feet; yet, chastened by the warnings and the autumn storms and the wild dogs whose barks lit up the sky they prayed - and prayed - and prayed and after they had vomited up their insides in a hail of guttural sounds, corrosive, sticky, bilious, after they had spewed their words and purged themselves beyond recognition, Erika I Kathryn Lewis all they could do was wash their mouths and hope that the book might reopen, and hope that the night would pass. �17 16 Achillean Armor and Odysseian Time Eva Brann Predented Ma Lecture at Mercer Univerc1ity on October2Ic10 2010 Joarney.1 I Hannah Pasternak Homeric scholars used to worry a lot - perhaps they still do - about the authorship of the two great Greek epics. Do they have an author, or were they pieced together from lays, from folk songs? If there is an author, a final composer, is it the same one for the Iliad and the Odyssey? And was it the Homer of tradition, the one claimed by seven ·cities? A sensible amateur, meaning an aware and loving reader of the poems, might well ask: Does it matter? Well, it really doesn't, except insofar as this pseudo problem might make us actively attentive to factors we would otherwise take in passively: the inner coherence of each poem separately and the comparative character of the poems taken together. I'll make no mystery of my opinion. To me, it's a no brainer. Each poem taken separately, Iliad and Odyssey, offers scores of bits of evidence that it was composed by one acutely aware, fully in control author and, taken comparatively, they give plenty of signs that they have one maker. (You may have heard that the word poet, poietes in Greek, means "maker.") For all I know, the �18 19 poet walked on earth in two bodies with one soul. Maybe his real name was Homer, or maybe Homer 1 and Homer2. It is the comparative aspect I want to talk to you about tonight - to whet your appetite for taking in both poems. But I'll say more about the Odyssey, which you've read recently. Why do I think that comparison shows that both poems have one maker? For the oddest reason: because they are so unlike. Put less oddly - because they are deliberately and thoughtfully antithetical. Obviously the one is relentlessly devoted to war making and its contingencies, while the other depicts the uneasy peace that is war's aftermath and the returns of its veterans. Consequently the venue of the Iliad is static, the beach, the plain of Troy, while the events of the Odyssey move all over the Mediterranean Sea. The dreary long stretches of close combat and the high moments of holy terror of the Iliad are almost hyper realistic, stuffed with repetitive accounts of pierced jugulars and spilled bowels, while the Odyssey is full of swiftly moving, novelly various adventures and magically fantastical places. The poetics of the poems is in accord with these features. The Iliad is full of lovely similes, whole cascades of them; they are needed to relieve the imagination of its concentration on blood and guts. The Odyssey has far less figurative language, and some of it in fact uglifies the proceedings, since the poem is in itself "poetic" and in parts dreamlike. But above all, the chief heroes are quite de- signedly antithetical, each other's precise opposites: Achilles has chosen a short life; he is intense, temperamental, and constitutionally juvenile. Odysseus, on the other hand, is promised a peaceful death in old age; he is patient, controlled and manfully mature. Achilles, it turns out, is an unconscious liar (we can talk about that in the question period), while Odysseus lies consciously, artfully, gloriously. Longinus, the best known art critic of late antiquity, thought that Homer wrote the Odyssey in old age when dramatic intensity gives way to narrative fantasy. I think Homer composed both at the height of his power, but that's speculation. Tonight I want to draw your attention to two preoccupations of Homer, each characteristic of one epic: Armor and Time. Armor is clunky, concrete, and eminently ex terior; in fact, you might call !t the warrior's exoskeleton. Time is fleeting, intangible, eminently interior; you might call it the traveller's inner life line. Armor is Achilleian and time is Odysseian, at least in this talk. That is a way of saying that the two epics claim your whole attention always - but that in reading the Iliad your powers of visualization, of making words into images, are specially called on, while the Odyssey requires particularly a capacity for running complex strands of events together in memory. So first to armor in the Iliad. We are at the climax of the poem, in Book XX, when the moment comes that Hector, having run around the walls of his doomed city trying to escape fleet footed A chilles, gives up and turns to face him. �21 20 Homer makes sure we see what Achilles sees as he examines the figure before him to find a place for his fatal spear. Hector is covered from tip to toe by the armor he has stripped from the corpse of the one friend Achilles loves ardently, Patroclus. Achilles sees the spot near the jugular and thrusts. Visualize it, and it makes your hair stand on end. Hector is inside, but what is visible is Patroclus as Achilles last saw him when he sent him off to enter battle in his stead. And indeed, when Achilles first hears that Patroclus has fallen he cries out in unconscious self accusation: ''I've lost him" which is in Greek homonymous, that is, like sounding, with "I've killed him." But there's more. This armor Patroclus then wore is Achilles's own. And indeed Achilles, the short lived, knows that he must die soon after Hector; in killing him he is fixing his own death. There's yet more. What does it mean to wear another's armor, especially Achilles's? Our freshmen back home read the Iliad before any other book, and I am - happily - with them in seminar this fall. They pointed out to each other that the same thing happens to Patroclus and Hector, as Homer m a kes explicit: They begin to be filled with the raging courage characteristic of Achilles. That enters into them with his outer covering - but not his warrior's competence, his incomparable potency. Their borrowed temper exceeds their unborrowable ability. They go beyond the orders and the advice of their friends and beyond their own powers - and they die. These are the conundrums of bor rowed outfits. W ho hasn't experienced a, perhaps less than heroic, personal case of it? Now to time in the Odyssey. Let me begin with some wild speculation: What did Homer assume about time? The same as you and I, I would guess. His language expressed three main tenses, present, fu ture, and past, as does ours: "things that are, things that will be, and things that are before." And as are we, so was he, guided by them. He surely wondered where the past had gone (or better, he knew) and where the future was to be found (he knew that too). He may not have asked himself how long the present is, nor, since the more closely you analyze it the less viable it gets; just when is it that we are actually there, alive and present? If you wonder how legions of angels can dance on the head of a pin, try living on that knife edge cusp of the time phase called the Now by philosophers! Story tellers, Homer included, rely on the three phases of time that our lndoeuropean language proposes. But each of these phases has its own times: There's an extended present, termed the progressive aspect, which is in grammar what the so called "specious present" is in psychology the practical solution to the evanescence of the instant: "I am talking," - indeterminately, extendedly, but "now" as well. Then, besides the simple past, there is a future of the past and also a past of the past, called the past perfect: "I was going to finish, I had finished my talk." And the same can b e done for the future, and all these tenses (verbal �-23 22 times) and aspects (ways of relating to these phases of time) are thus available for story telling. It is therefore significant that most tale telling takes place in the simple past. By and large stories, to be told, need to have happened; that's their warrant for being tellable. Homer too begins the Odyssey this way: "The man of many shifts - tell me of him, Muse - he who drifted so many ways .... " Story time is "Once upon a time," meaning "at some indefinite time past," in the unfixed time of the imaginary world. The places of this world were never present but always past in the telling -yet present in the imagining. Their ordinary time, for Homer and for us, marches on, continuously and progressively. But in the soul's imagination and in the poet's fiction that time has inversions, repetitions, parallelisms in short discombobulations. Ordinary or r eal time is the measure of the world's most reliably regular motions: the diurnal rotation of the heavens as mirrored in mean time which is visible in our analogue watch dials. It is cyclical, imaging the daily retur ns of the sun, and if the watch has a calendar function, it has a linear component as well, the "marching on" factor. When you compose these you get a spiral, a good model for real world time - upward directed if you believe in progress, otherwise spinning down. The time of fiction, however, issues from that laboratory of experiments with nonbeing, the workshop of the imagination, which, first, in Shakespeare's words, "bodies forth/ The forms of things unknown," whereupon "the poet's pen/ Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing/ A local habitation and a name." And as soon as the imaginatively formed nothing has acquired a local habitation it is fixed in the past permanent, what you might call the mythic tense. This time of the poet's pen is the soul's time, which is anything but linearly sequential. In short, Homer's time can be soberly the same and also imaginatively very differ ent from our daily time. Thus, the Iliad is a temporally quite prosaic tale, while the Odyssey is a time web of fantastic complexity. For the events of the Iliad are deeds and their consequences, and its actors are warriors. They have passionate souls, but, except when they are put out of commission, they live those passions out in action; they themselves don't do much extensive imagining. Consequently, the less than six weeks of the Iliad are told in linear order. Old heroes do, to be sure, go into their memories to tell stories, but the time of the camp goes on while they are back in their youth; the young listeners respectfully conceal their impatience while their elders ramble instructively and invidiously: They in their time were better. If the march is straight on, the pacing of time is, however, very varied. Sometimes it's time out while Homer walks the beach telling who was collected before Troy, and very significantly - just where they were stationed. Sometimes for days and days nothing much happens except that a punitive plague rages or that the warriors incessantly knock out or in each other's eyes, teet h , b reast b ones, innards. Then �25 24 again comes a memorable minute not of knocked about bodies and stricken camps but of agonized souls and human eventfulness, for example that moment when Achilles is about to plunge his spear into a body which is completely covered, face and all, with his own old armor. In short, the story of Troy is told straightforwardly though with greatly varying psychic density. All in all the Iliad goes in, as Longinus noticed, for grandeur, the Odyssey for sophistication, and so with respect to time structure. The less than two weeks of the Odyssey are as temporally complex as a composition can well be. I will say right now what most helps to make that complexity possible: Horner turns over a large part of his epic to Odysseus' imagination, so that all the temporal laminations of the soul- Odysseus' soul of many shifts - are wor ked into the fabr ic of the poem. Consequently there is a multitude of what I will call "time realms" in the Odyssey. (I forego here dwelling on an unabating puzzlement of mine: why the gear of the human world develops in time from simple to complex, while the souls of human beings tend from deeply intricate to reductively simple: why does the psychic appear to go less subtle as the material world gets more intricate?) I discern ten such time realms. 0. I list as zero a ternporality not belonging to the poem itself, the historian's chronological speculations about the reality and dates of the fall of Troy (thought in antiquity to have taken place in 1183 B .C .E.), t he date of H orner and his corn- position (thought to belong to the later eighth century), and, most vexedly, the real time of the times there described (thought to be an amalgam of a historical Mycenaean Greece of the late second millennium with the times of the following Dark · Age, when the Achaean kingdoms had been destroyed). All that, all the speculative "historical" time, has, even were it more certainly known, no great bearing on the epics. It is indeed delightful to learn that many a boar's tusk helmet, such as Odysseus wore on a beastly night of marauding in the plane of Troy, is found depicted in Mycenaean contexts, but it is a dead end delight. There's nowhere to take it; evidently Horner had seen artifacts half a millennium old. Such archaeological evidence is altogether external to the poems; it doesn't even provide their context, did they need one. 1. I'll begin with Homer's time - not the century of his life or of the seven cities t hat claimed him, but his time relation to the poem, which is, as I said, the present. Horner is presently there; his Muse tells him, and he immediately tells us the story, and at rare times he even intervenes, notably when he directly addresses a man he loves, Eurnaius, the faithful swineherd. The story is long past, but the teller is now present, a human channel for the goddess, his Muse. Delicate as he is about introducing himself, to me it seems to matter that the third word of the poem is his imperative -Andra rnoi ennepe, Mousa: Tell me the man, Muse" - a request now, to be realized as the p oet intones: H orner the teller is always there �26 27 (e.g., Iliad XII 176). It is a presence evanescently in my consciousness, and yet it is of some consequence to me that the teller himself is in the "sempiternal," the enduring, present. 2. The Odyssey has its own real world. Its time is indeterminate, because it is probably, as I said, an amalgam of old stories, surviving artifacts and present conditions. Its places are more or less determinate and still in existence. Ithaca has recently been relocated, but is still close to the island even now called Ithaca; Troy was rediscovered by Schliemann in 1871 at Hissarlil{. in Turkey, though that its seventh level is Priam's Troy is speculative. Egypt and its "men of strange speech" is still where returning Menelaus was blown and landed and gathered treasure, and we know where Phoenicia was. This world is a very real world, r inging the "midland" sea, the Mediterranean , which forms the setting for the so called "returns" (nostoi) of the Trojan expedition. Of these Odysseus's took the longest, ten years. It was a world of danger and opportunity for trade and piracy. Since the victors, after a ten year investiture, finally captured a totally impoverished city (Iliad XVIII 290), they also took time getting home, attempting to beg, barter, and rob their way into some semblance of a prosperous venture. This is what Odysseus is up to during part of his travels. His is a mobile world; rumors and real news are rife, but only toward the end do brief sightings of Odysseus come to outlying Ithaca. 3. Ithaca has its own time world, the baseline time. It and neighb oring islands comp rise a tiny island kingdom left bare of fathers, full of rambunctious sons beleaguering a strong and wise queen, Penelope, and her dangerously exposed son, Telemachus. Odysseus, the then young monarch, had left twenty years ago, ten sitting before Troy and ten traveling back. His old father has withdrawn to his farm, his mother has died. Otherwise nothing much happens in this isolated little realm, until seventeen years or so after Odysseus' departure, when the now grown up sons of Odysseus' expeditionary force - a hundred plus of them - begin to make trouble for the queen and the prince about to come of age. The pretense is the wish to marry her, though only two older men are real contenders. They plot Telemachus's death. Ithacan time is a long relegation to stasis, gathering into a crisis. 4. Parallel to the island's isolation runs Odysseus' strange disappearance. At Troy, for ten years, he had been at the center of things; as Homer tells us, his beached ships are literally in the middle of the line up (Iliad VIII 223), but no sooner is Troy taken when he takes off. He nearly reaches Ithaca but is blown off course. For a few years he becomes an adventurer (in the old sense of someone who undertakes hazardous enterprises) and then falls off the earth for seven years, "out of sight and hearing." In the twentieth year of his absence sporadic news of him comes to Ithaca. Then he himself returns. Here's his time, his ten years of oblivion: After some years of doing what adventuring captains do - sacking, stealing, selling - and meeting and (to b e properly vulgar) shack- �29 28 ing up with the lady whores of island ports, he holes up with one of them until he's thoroughly, depressively, sick of her. And then he finds his way home, where he tells a jumble of tales realistically pieced together from the reality of his driftings - real adventures, real experiences, in a real sea world, real, that is, in the world of the Odyssey. As the Muse tells Homer: After sacking Troy, he drifted all over and "saw the cities of men and knew their mind." While he is satisfying his insatiable curiosity, he slowly loses his men, who have neither his endurance nor his self containment. They succumb to drugs in one port, make pigs of themselves in another, transgress the cattle laws of the land, and fall into the ocean, until no one is left. Recall that these are the fathers of the sons who are growing up wild in the kingless Ithacan kingdom. This sea world is the dangerous and opportunity laden venue that history books about the early Aegean world describe - relying heavily on Homer, to be sure. 5. Odysseus is the most steadfast of men and the most vagrant, most genuine and most · lying, most focused and most ambiguous, most rf:!alistic and most imaginative. The time I'm about to delineate, the odyssean time (with a lower case "o") is altogether (as expressly was his time at Troy) under the aegis' of his wife and his boy. He thinks only and always of returning to his queen, but he diverts himself - literally - on his way, particularly with women. Decry that ambiguity who will, to me it Tunnel Vuwn I Adam Maraschky �30 31 makes human sense; we, well, many of us, are capable of such digressions on our way- I won't even add: men especially. That longing for Penelope is the plangent strain behind all the "adventures" whose time I'll describe in a moment. This man is the most adhesive of husbands and the most abandoned of men - a raw and real sea captain who has the soul of a poet. So much so that, as I said, Homer turns the telling of the most wonder filled part of the tale over to him. He tells it twice, both times in deepest privacy; only of Calypso is there ever more than a passing hint in the world at large. Odysseus tells his story first to the Phaeacians, who are, wonder of wonders, themselve~ a part of his magical myth. This lower case odyssey is more involved even than being a story within a story; it is a ring tale, a veritable ouroboros, the snake that swallows its own tale. Odysseus finishes his "myth telling" (his very own word: Odyssey xxii 450) with his arrival on Calypso's island of Ogygia, of which he had told them the day before, since it was the last station before his arrival among the Phaeacians. Thrice, then, we here hear the tale of the Calypso episode, once as Homer sees Odysseus living it out and twice as Odysseus spins it into a tale. The Phaeacians bring him home, and for that Poseidon, the god of the element Odysseus has used and battled, loved and hated, punishes them with isolation: He throws a high wall around them, and that's the end of their magical sea faring in sh ips that h ave the speed of a t h ought su ch as flies instantaneously from here to the bounds of the world. Once properly home, that is to say, in bed with Penelope, Odysseus tells the story again, with discreet omissions. Both tellings are exclusively for his listeners. It is a story of coastal raids and island hopping, of places where dwell formidably mature feminine witches who are eager to seduce him, Circe, Sirens, Calypso - and once a young girl whose shy approaches he wisely suppresses in his account to Penelope. To put it plainly: It is a time in the world of the imagination identifiably parallel to his travels in the world of reality. While the time the army spends investing Troy is, as war time is said to be, an alternation of long stretches of boredom and short squalls ofterror, these ten years, parallel to the merchant pirate's voyages, consist of about three years of vivid eventfulness and seven years out of the sight, out of the mind of men - though never of the woman who holds him, a demi divinity - and then at the end there is a week or so, when he emerges into reality, and everything happens at once, just as it does in life. During the first voyaging y~ars, when the pirate Odysseus is sailing the Aegean sea, the poet Odysseus is seeing his places of call imaginatively: monocular giants, the Cyclopes, who are incarnations of primitivism, and magical islands with aggressively lascivious vamps - very beautiful, very ripe, very dangerous - and in the long run boring. The la st one, C alypso, w hose name means "she �33 32 who covers (or hides)," the one with whom he goes to ground, drives him, as I said, into a deep depression; he feels stuck, surfeited night after night by her incessant desire. These island Edens are isolated and static. Nothing happens, and their mistresses are lonely and at loose ends. The time scheme of these places will - don't balk at the thought - become the great ternporality of Western history, in fact it will give us our chronology that breaks around B. C. and A.D. and that first makes historical time have meaningful epochs: the irruption of a stranger into ongoing but eventless life, a potent man who is godlike. When he leaves the island dwellers, for of course he is only a sojourner in their world, we must imagine that they are bereft and dream of a second corning. In the Odyssey his first corning is merely mythical (though "merely" is a poor term for this work of the paradigm producing imagination), but it is how Odysseus sees himself: as the Event of these spots in the sea, by which its dwellers will reckon before and after. And so he transforms his voyages for himself, for the Phaeacians, and for Penelope. These t ravels ar e munda ne in the literal sense of the word, very practical and worldly, but he makes them into stories that will form the backdrop for all future odysseys. For that is what is meant by myth telling. A myth is a model event that makes sense of many a mere occurrence. This odyssey gives many a subsequent mere t r ip its significant shape: its local habitation and true name. 6. Within this enchanted w orld Odysseus makes an excursion to the extremes of the human world, whose bor der is the flux of Ocean, the out landish water. He sails to what we call the underworld, though it is not so much infernal as outlying. Hades too has its time, or better, it has no marching time, for it has no moving bodies, only gliding shades. It is a place where the newly dead arrive but whence few return, among them Odysseus, as ever the intruder, the live one, whose descent into hell ex cites the shades. Yet even inactual Hades has its time phases: it is full of old news; stories and myths are packed away ther e, a treasure increased by whatever a new arrival can tell. But above all, a visitor ·finds out who has recently died and how. Odysseus learns that his mother has arrived in his absence from home. And toward the end of the poem there is a second visit. Horner himself follows Hermes, the Conductor of Souls, into Hades and, in a grand flash back, supplies a great gap between the Iliad and t he Odyssey: the sacrificial death and overwhelmingly splendid burial of Achilles, that unwilling king of Hades. Hades is the place of the past, wher e dead heroes tell tales which live poets go to learn. 7. The gods on Olympus also have their time. No human gets there in the Odyssey, but Horner knows what goes on through his Muse; indeed it is the glorious enig~a of the epics that he has a direct line to Olympus and tells of men as a man and of the gods as a poet. As in Hades, nothing much happens - only one god, Hephaestus, does any productive work, and one goddess, Athena, shows much real intellig ence; she's quite �34 35 humanly in love with Odysseus because he's such a clever liar - which is indeed an attractive characteristic in him, betokening the sinuous complexity that complements his stubborn endurance. The Olympians are, to be sure, born (though not all as babies), but they cannot die, which means that nothing temporal is serious to them, and that in turn means that they are very excitable, for excitability is a sign of levity. The Odyssey begins with one of their festive gatherings in the halls of Olympus, where some decisions are taken to get things moving, to get Odysseus off Ogygia. Of Olympus one might say that its time is determined by constitutional light mindedness. It is depressurized, weightless time. No heartbeat brings any of its residents closer to death; to them fatal human time is play time (e.g., Iliad XV 362), spectacle time, and they hardly ever, perhaps even never, cause anything the human actors aren't about to do anyhow. Hades' dead hordes endure somberly; Olympus' divine company persist in levity. 8. That initial gathering on Olympus marks the start of the time internal to the poem itself. The action of the Odyssey begins with the last days of Odysseus' stay on Calypso's island and ends with Laertes, Odysseus, Telemachus, three generations of the Ithacan dynasty, making peace with the Ithacan insurgents - perhaps a week or so of active time, within which are comprised twenty years - no, it will turn out, fifty years - of told time. 9. Perhaps the most artful time device of the Odyssey is the temporal disposition of t his last week, the actual time of the epic. For in it, along with flash backs, there is yet another parallelism, a day by day parallelism, and a final convergence, of the father with his son, of Odysseus with Telemachus. Early in the poem Athena, flying into Ithaca in the guise of a stranger, a captain called Mentes, "Minder," who rules ov er the Taphians, the "Burial People," has told Telemachus to make what turns out to be a voyage of coming of age and self discovery. While he is traveling in the real Peloponnesus and returning home, acknowledged by the world of the Trojan generation - meaning mostly Helen - as his father's son, his father is emerging from the world of his imagination into the reality of his disordered realm of Ithaca. It is possible to figure out where, during these last, pre climactic days, each of the two is in their parallel approach, Telemachus in his real itinerary a nd Odysseus in his imagined odyssey. For example, just when Odysseus in Phaeacia meets and is shyly approached by the young princess N ausicaa, the most innocent of all the women in the epic, Telemachus in Sparta meets and is instantly r ecognized as Odysseus' son by Helen, the least innocent of them. And when, in his story of Hades, Odysseus recounts how Agamemnon's shade tells of his own murder by his wife Clytemnestra, Telemachus is told that very tale of horror by Agamemnon's brother, Menelaus. Both accounts cast a raking light on Penelope: Is she above suspicion? Parallelism and convergence are the temporal modes of the last week. Then, together, father and son retak e th eir palace. �r 37 36 10. One final time treatment: As I said, people in the epic often tell remembered events. The time belonging to the place of their telling passes while they take time to recall the past. But there are certain moments, one spectacular one in particular, when Homer himself tells a story, the story of Odysseus's birth some half a century back; then he fast forwards a couple of decades to the time when, at his coming of age, Odysseus acquired the scar by which his old nurse has just recognized him. It is a time chasm, a sudden drop into explanatory depth; the edges of the story's present time close around it; none of it passes while Homer is telling it; he interrupts the main story without taking up its time. This temporal mode, the steep, time exempt opening into the past, is the starkest time disruption of the Odyssey, and it completes my inventory. I'll briefly recapitulate the ten "times" or ways of eventuation of the epic: 1. Homer s own presence in the poem; 2. the real time of the poem, that of all the Aegean sailors and their cities of origin and ports of call; 3. the cut off time of Ithaca, remote from world events and the time of Penelope's waiting; 4 . the years of Odysseus s trips of trading and marauding and the time of his occulting; 5. that very time transformed in Odysseus imagination, a parallel time of wonders marked by his irruption into hidden places and recounted in his cyclical myth telling; 6. the past as the phase of time operative in Hades where heroes and heroines come and deposit their stories; 7. the light time of Olympus, unconstrained by mortality and 1 1 1 inconsequential to the Olympians; 8. the time, a little more than a week, of the poem's action within which the cycles of returns, recollections, reprises, take their place as told tales; 9. that same week unfolding as two coordinated parallel times, those of Odysseus' odyssey and Telemachus' telemachy, ending with a convergence on Ithaca; 10. the time chasms, by which the poet, rather than taking up the time of the action, tears into it to insert a causal tale. Here I'll end. For what conclusion could do justice to such adroit artistry, such complex clarity, such inventive eventfulness? On second thought, one more observation. Generally speaking, comparative readings don't do much for me. It is, after all, the mystifying glory of fictions that they tell universal truth by being uncannily particular, and it is that peculiar particularity of each work that gets lost in reading across several works. Comparing is an iffy enterprise we should engage in only when we are deeply already imbued with the incomparable character of each work. But reading across both Homeric epic strikes me as a possible exception. Perhaps they are, as it were, one work composed in two movements. �39 38 Summer Sonnet Stephanie Connolly You watched my body pressed against the cold of my own winter's making: the chill air which turns the darkening sky into frail snow and strips your bones, like trees denuded, bare. You watched me turn to go, and I who left thought you were gone, and all the world away. Sun withered, summer hid, and I, bereft, was left to winter, held in death's pale sway. But now the world is sick with flowers sweet, and now all brightness and all warmth returns; yet we in all this beauty never meet, and still my heart with yearning's fever burns. Oh, dearest, whom I left behind in spring, come back to me on winter's fleeting wing. Quao Scene I Adam Maraschky �41 40 Offering Opfer Rainer Maria Rilke Tran:Jlated 6y Stephanie ConnoLLy 0 wie bliiht mein Leib aus jeder Ader dufteneder, seitdem ich dich erkenn; sieh, ich gehe schlanker und gerader, und du wartest nur--: wer hist du denn? 0 how my body blooms from every vein more fragrantly, since I have come to know you; see, I go slender now and straighter, and you only wait--: who are you, then? Sieh, ich fiihle, wie ich mich entferne, wie ich Altes, Blatti um Blatt, verlier. Nur dein Lacheln steht wie lauter Sterne iiber dir und bald auch iiber mir. See: I sense how I am disappearing, how I let fall my old life, leaf by leaf. Only your smile towers like brilliant stars over you and soon over me. Alles was <lurch meine Kinderjahre namenlos noch und wie Wasser glanzt, will ich nach dir nennen am Altare, der entziindet ist von deinem Haare und mit deinen Briisten dich bekranzt. All that which, from my childhood, is nameless still and shining just as water, Will I name after you, upon the altar, which is ignited by your hair and garlanded lightly with your breasts. �r 42 43 Suffocation Maggy Barned [Based on Rene Magritte's painting The Lovers] It was only difficult at first. Before we decided on the sacs, we thought about masks. But masks were dangerous, you said. They left our eyes too open and our lips too vulnerable. I was sure you were right. My eyes were exhausted from all the ·things they'd seen. They were getting tired of skimming over your shallow features night after night before I allowed them the easy relief of closing. The burlap sacs were our only option. We knew it would be difficult,......., keeping our heads covered all the time, maybe even when we didn't want to,......., but it was the only way we could hold tight to the fragile bindings of the things that kept us going: our traditions. Our routines. Our marriage. The first step you took, you ran into our coffee table. You let out a shocked burst oflaughter and made some stupid joke like, hey was that table always there? I could tell you were nervous, but I felt better anyway. Your jokes always made me feel better, even if they also made me feel numb and a little tired. And then your hand fumbled to find my face and you traced the crook of my nose, as though convincing yourself I was still there. Of course I was. Where else would I be? So things got easier after that. Well, for starters our electric bill went down right quick, because it's not as if we could have used the lights to see. For weeks we went through the tiring motions of flipping and switching; but soon the novelty wore off, and the distinction between dark and light became too difficult for us to judge. So eventually we unplugged the lamps and lights. Things were simpler that way. With the money we saved, we said we'd buy some music. Maybe an audio book or two. We never did do that, but that's all right. Silence was an easy adjustment to make, and anyway sometimes music strikes chords that make my heart beat too quickly. And if I can't feel your lips when we kiss, well that's all right too. I'm not so certain I liked them all that much. They're chapped, aren't they? Chapped and too thin. Yes, but the burlap, it's allowed us all sorts of freedom--and in my head your lips can be whatever I'd like them to be. Your eyes, too. My memory is hazy, but I think they used to be brown and musty. Well now they're blue and clear. They shine and reflect all the things you know and remember. Beautiful things I can scarcely bear to imagine anymore. (I don't remember my eyes so well either, but it really doesn't matter. They could be grey, couldn't they? Grey and deep and wise? I like the sound of that, and I think it must be true.) Okay, yeah--there's the breathing thing. Burlap, it doesn't circulate so well, and it isn't so easy to get air past our mouths, into our lungs, and back again. So sure, sometimes I have to rest when I'm climbing up the stairs. And of course it's too hot under here. Everything is stifled and stuffy. The moistur e from our b reath collects and �45 44 .I twines itself around the tight weaving of the bags, and it can be almost suffocating. And sometimes you find yourself on our bed and on your back, hyperventilating shallow breath after shallo:w breath. There have been some close calls. Sometimes your breath wheezes and dies into nothing. And then there are long seconds when I cannot feel your chest rise and fall. But it comes back. It always comes b~ck. You've been fine all along. Why shouldn't you be fine forever? These are the types of prices we' re willing to pay. For safety. For security. There are some things more important than air. Hey, can I tell you a secret? Sometimes I lie awake at night, listening to your lungs struggle. It's a comforting sound because I'm afraid. I'm afraid one day you will tire of blindness. You will take off your bag, or maybe you will only cut yourself slits for eyes and lips. You will want to see what has become of our home, or you will want to see what has become of me, or maybe you will even want to see what has become of yourself. That, I think, would be the most dangerous. If you could see, maybe you could even leave. And what would I do then? I would look for you--feel for you against cool walls and dead furniture. I might never know you're gone. Mostly I still trust you. You've always been smart, I think, if I can remember it right. And it was your idea, in the first place. You realize, don't you, that this is the best way? So yes, I trust you. I trust you to not want to know. There are some things better left unseen. And us--you and me-- we' re a part of that. You're still there, aren't you? And you're all right, aren't you? Aren't you? I can't hear you breathing. �46 47 The Labyrinth of Quixote and the Dream of Montesinos Liam Wallace I began this essay from the desire to know what there was to learn from Don Quixote. The aim quickly became to figure out how to learn anything from the novel. Or rather, how to learn anything important, that is, how to learn something from the true author of the novel, Cervantes 1• This is made very difficult by the multitude of narrators and reporters through which the adventures of Don Quixote are relayed. All of these narrators are within the story, and most of them contradict each other. Because of this, it is unclear how one is to approach Don Quixote; it is 1 It is, of course, easy to learn certain things from the novel. Many Flamingo:, Repode I Kaitlyn Schuler different characters give speeches on many subjects: Don Quixote speaks on the golden age, for example, and the erudite canon, at the end of part I, on chivalric novels, plays, and the poetic art. But these speeches often contradict each other. The canon and priest criticize chivalric novels for not being true, but Don Quixote argues that there is nothing truer in the world. This contradiction forces one to realize that the speeches are not wholes. They may seem to be if extracted from the novel, but seeing them placed within it, one is forced to realize them as smaller units of meaning, like words in a sentence. If one is to learn what the author is trying to say, these speeches, these smaller pieces of meaning, must be read in relation to each other, and in relation to the other units of meaning used in the novel: the characters who give the speeches, and their actions. When the novel is seen in this way-as a sentence whose words are its characters, their speeches, and their actions -it is clear that the ideal way to understand Don Quixote would be to hold the entire novel in one's head at once; to take the whole novel, in all its detail, in at a glance. But this is impossible, even for Homer. �49 48 .! difficult to find a voice one can trust. I will first examine the labyrinth of different arguments and opinions expressed by the authors, narrators, reporters, and other characters found in the book, and how the novel the reader receives is tinted by the opinion of its primary source, Cide Hamete Benengeli. I will then examine the uncanniness of the particular arguments of the novel's protagonist. Concluding that Don Quixote is no ordinary madman, I will then point out several similarities between him and the novel's actual author, Cervantes. Because of Don Quixote's uncanniness, and his similarities to the author, it seems that perhaps we can learn what Cervantes wants to tell us by trying to understand Don Quixote's true motives and desires. This leads to the Cave of Montesinos, which seems to hold Don Quixote's attention throughout the second part. I will spend the final part of the paper explaining why I think the cave is important, and provide two interpretation of the nature of the cave, and how it may effect the knight's later actions. I. Cervantes h a s the adventures of Don Quixote relayed to the reader through a sur p risingly long chain of viewpoints. Cide Hamete Benengeli is the primary source for most of the text. The narrator explains this early in part I (chapter ix, 65-69) 2 • Benengeli wrote in Arabic, however, and so the narrator first needs to have it trans2 All q uotations a nd pag e numbers a re from the HarperCollins Edith Grossman translation. lated. He does this by commissioning the first Arabic speaker he finds. These translations are then related to us by the narrator, who is not himself Cervantes. Cervantes is mentioned twice within the novel (in part I, Chapters vi, p . 52, as the author of La Galatea; and xl, p. 344, as a fellow prisoner in the captive's tale) and earlier works of his are referenced twice. (both in part I: La Galatea in chapter vi, p. 52; and Numancia in chapter xlviii, p. 416) but in none of these places is he associated with the narrator. So there are at least four layers to the labyrinth: Benengeli, the Arabic translator, the character of the narrator, and Cervantes, the actual author. This difficulty is made worse by the fact that it is often unclear which narrative voice we are listening to. It seems that Benengeli is the main one, and that the narr ator is doing some type of transcribing and paraphrasing to relay his words to us from the text prepared by the Arabic translator. Part I, chapter i, begins, "Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember ... " and at the end of part II (chapter lxxiv, p. 938) the narrator attributes this statement to Hamete, not himself, saying "This was the end of the Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha, whose village Cide Hamete did not wish to name precisely." It is important to try to make this distinction between Hamete and the narrator because they do not see Don Quixote in the same way. The narrator is either heavily sarcastic or he, like Don Quixote and the innkeeper of part I, actually believes chivalric tales to b e true, and Don Quixote �51 50 to be praiseworthy as a true knight. A good example is found in part I, chapter ix (which is also where Benengeli is introduced to us). The narrator believes in wise men that follow knights around and record their adventures: "It seemed impossible" the narrator says, "and completely contrary to all good precedent that so good a knight should have lacked a wise man who would assume the responsibility of recording his neverbefore-seen deeds." He wants to know, "Truly and in its entirety the life and miracles of our famous Spaniard Don Quixote of La Mancha, the model and paragon of Manchegan chivalry, and the first in our age and in these calamitous times to take up the exercise and profession of chivalric arms, righting wrongs, defending widows ... " ( 66). Benengeli, on the other hand, explicitly states his purpose as, "to have people reject and despise the false and nonsensical histories of the books of chivalry" (part II, chapter lxxiv, 94 0), and it seems that he must be the source of the frequent, unattributed narrative comments that, from the beginning, criticize Don Quixote as mad, and chivalric novels as the source of his madness. "His fantasy filled with everything he had read in his books," we are told at the beginning of part I, "enchantments as well as ... other impossible foolishness, and he became so convinced ... of the truth of all the . .. false inventions he read that for him no history in the world was truer" (chapter i, 21). We find these comments throughout the novel, and they are made confusing if we do not distinguish w hich r eporter w e ar e hearing from, the narrator or Benengeli. Whether either the narrator or Benengeli is on to Don Quixote's intentions is unclear One might ask which layer, or narrator, we are closest to. It would seem that we are closest to the narrator of the prologue, and then the main novel's narrator (assuming these are distinct), with Benengeli being the most removed from us, simply because he is farthest from us in the chain of reporting. It is however, Benengeli's opinions that are made most clear to us, followed by those of the narrator of the main novel. The Arabic translator hopefully remains only a minor influence. It is the prologue narrator (of part I) who is more elusive. He calls Don Quixote a "noble" knight (4) but books of chivalry "inane" (9), and wants God to not forget him. Beyond that, we do not know why he is writing. It is not the prologue narrator but his friend who asserts, "This work ... intends only to undermine the authority and wide acceptance that books of chivalry have in the world." Does Cervantes the author agree with the opinions expressed by the narrator of the main novel, or, for 3 This labyrinth has the strange effect of making Don Quixote him- self, Sancho, and most of their adventures, feel more real, as if they were historical. One gets so caught up in when the various narrators are accurately or inaccurately relaying information to the reader, that one forgets that there is not in fact any accurate information relation to relay. One gets into the mindset that there was a historical Don Quixote, and what we are getting in the novel is tales filtered through the ey es of several narrators. But all we have of Don Quixote are the fictional recordings; they are what he is, there is no real Don Quixote who lived behind them. But is there a more real Don Quixote that can be found by reading carefully and reinterpreting his adventures, ta king th e c ha r acter o f t h e various �53 51 that matter, the narrator of the prologue, or the Arabic translator, or Benengeli the historian ?3 The easiest thing would be to simply listen to Benengeli, and accept his purpose for the book, but in Benengeli's insistence on his history mainly being a stumbling block for chivalric novels, it seems that he must surely miss some greater themes found in what he is describing. We are led to most of these themes by the uncanny power of the novel's protagonist, who manages to exert a rhetorical force over the reader equal to that of the narrator and other reporters. It is difficult, moreover, to shake off the feeling that Don Quixote is doing something so subtle or strange that the narrator and Benegeli, along with nearly every character in the book, miss it completely. At the beginning of the book we are told (most likely by Benengeli) that Don Quixote's brains have dried up (part I, chapter i, 21), but this must be conjecture, since Benengeli is not in fact a fantastical wise man, but only a human historian; he cannot actually see into the knight's head. This may mean that Don Quixote is not mad at all, or at least mad in a very different way, or for very different reasons, than the narrator may claim. narrators into account? Don Quixote and Sancho point out in the beginning of the second part several "false" sections in the first part; mistakes by their historian (chapter iv, 481). Yet we get these reports in the second part still through the work of that same historian, Benegeli. This suggests that the entire novel must be read with a very discerning eye; that the reader must try to see through ~he ~istakes of Cervantes' fictional narrators in order to get to the real story. IL The novel is split between Benengeli and Don Quixote. We are drawn to listen to one or the other. But the fact that Don Quixote is so strangely compelling is an indication that Cervantes does not wholly agree with Benengeli. I do not think it is possible to write such an uncanny madman unintentionally. Even if Cervantes himself was not aware of it, there is something more to what Don Quixote says and does than simple madness. It will be beneficial to look at an example of how the words and actions of Don Quixote are elevated above simple madness to something uncanny and compelling. The first good one may be the adventure of the windmills. Sancho tries to point out that they are only windmills, but instead of ignoring him, or simply insisting on the opposite, Don Quixote says that Sancho cannot recognize the giants because he is "not well versed in the matter of adventures" (part I, chapter viii, 58), and implies that he is denying their existence out offear of facing them. Rather than allowing his own reality to be questioned, he brings into question Sancho's. When Don Quixote is tossed from his horse however, he does not continue to insist that the windmills are giants. It seems that Cervantes could have simply had him continue to rave about the windmills being giants; this would have had comedic effect. But instead Don Quixote brings up the concept of enchanters. Yes, he admits, the giants are windmills now, but they were, before, giants. This is a much more subtle and in- �54 55 teresting response, because it merges the two realities; Sancho's (and the reader's) with Don Quixote's. It makes it possible for Don Quixote's reality to exist while explaining why Sancho's seems so different. Don Quixote uses similar arguments when essentially the same thing happens in chapter xviii of part I, where he attacks an army of sheep . He concludes, expanding on the concept of enchanters, "This is how that thieving wise man, who is my enemy, can make things disappear and seem to be what they are not. You should know, Sancho, that it is very easy for those like him to make us see whatever they wish" (131, my emphasis). The knight once again addresses the disparity between Sancho's (and the reader's) perception and his own. And once again, and even more clearly, he calls into question the validity of our own (and Sancho's) perception of reality. This is perhaps one of the most important sentences in the book, because it not only casts doubt on the view of the reader and Sancho, but also that of Benengeli. It gives authority to Don Quixote. If Sancho can be deceived by an evil enchanter, then so could Benengeli, the historian. This would.mean 4 H e explain s th e problem ye t aga in in chap te r xxv of part I, speaking to Sa ncho, " ls it possib le th a t in a ll the time yo u have I rave lled w ith rn eyo u have not no ti ced th a t a ll thin gs hav ing to do w ith kn ig ht s e rra nt appear 10 be chime ri cal. fo olis h, senseless, a nd turn ed in side o ut? i\nd no t because th ey really a re, but because ho rd es of' e ncha nt e rs a lways walk a mo ng us an d a lte r and cha nge eve ryt hing an d turn thi ngs int o w hateve r the.)' please, ac- that, contrary to being mad, Don Quixote is, in fact, the only character in the book who is able to catch full glimpses of reality4 . To summarize his method: First, he points out something no one else can see or understand; giants, fantastical armies or castles. Then he acts on what he sees, attacking what appear to be windmills and sheep. When this brings up a disparity, though ,.........the giants, for example, appear very clearly to be windmills,......... Cervantes' does not simply have him continue to insist on his own world being true. Rather, in all these cases, Don Ouixote manages to blend the two realities ---the one he sees and the one everyone else does.......- so that it is possible for us to conceive of his being real and ours being the illusion. What is important to notice here is that there is no reason why Cervantes had to create such a subtle, uncanny, and elusive madman if the main purpose of the novel was to be a stumbling block for the books of chivalry. There is a reason that we are drawn back to what he says, compelled to listen to him even though it seems to be nonsense and his actions madness. Cervantes has left what the knight says on the edge of believability, and, because of the intricacy required to do this while also having the knight argue such absurd things, it seems Cervantes did this intentionally. This means Benengeli, the main narrative voice, is probably not in fact expressing the senti- cord ing to w heth e r th ey wish to favor us or destroy us; a nd so, w hat see ms to yo u a ba rber 's basin seems to me th e helmet of' Ma mb rino, a nd w ill seem a not her thi ng lo someone else" ( 195). \Ve sho uld be re mi nded of Don that obsc ure the m, and canno t be seen w ith th e s mooth ness a nd colo r of the right s ide" (pa rt 11 , chap ter lxii, Q ui xote's desc ri ption of e nchan ters ca us ing everythin g to be "chimerical. foolis h, se nseless, a nd tu rned inside 873). We sh o ul d remembe r th at D o n Q ui xote has, purp o rt edly, bee n tra nslated fro m Arabic, a nd that w r; tin g o ut '' w hen we read his desc ri p lio n o f lhe effect lh at tra nsla ti o n has on a book . Read ing a tra nsla tio n is lil<e "look· hi sto ry is a lso a l<ind o f' int erp re ta ti o n, o r transla ti o n, w hich ye t again brings th e pict ure Bene ngeli gives us into ing a t Flem ish tapes tries f'ro m the wro ng side, f'o r altho ug h th e fig ures a re visible, they a rc cove reJ by the threaJs q uestion. �r i 57 56 ment of Cervantes, which leads us to Cervantes and Don Quixote, who have some interesting similarities. It is quite apparent that Cervantes knew a great deal about chivalric novels, since Don Quixote knows a great deal about chivalric novels. There is also the matter of the prologue narrator, who seems similar to Cervantes. It is not he but his friend who brings up the book as an attack on books of chivalry, and he (the prologue narrator) describes his wits as "barren and poorly cultivated" and says they begot a child "dry, withered, capricious, and filled with inconstant thoughts never imagined by anyone else." This description echoes that of Don Quixote's own mind being dried up in reading books of chivalry from dusk till dawn (p.a rt I, chapter i, p. 20-22). In the same chapter it is also noted that Don Quixote most likely would have become a writer himself, had he not had greater and more persistent thoughts (p. 20) which draws another connection with the writer Cervantes. Finally, Cervantes is almost certainly the narrator in the the prologue to part II. He tells two stories about madmen, to be relayed to the author of the false Quixote. In the first story, it seems reasonable to say that the madman stands for Cervantes himself. It is about a madman who goes around inflating dogs with air, using a sharpened reed "fit ... into the right place" and then sending them waddling off. He asks the crowd of onlookers at the end of the story, "Now, do your graces think it's an easy job to blow up a dog?" "Now," Cervantes asks the other author, "does your grace think it's an easy job to write a book?" (456). So Don Quixote is called mad, but Cervantes also compares himself and his writing to a madman and the actions of a madman. But most of this seems absurd. -why would Cervantes want to give any credence to Don Quixote's assertions that a world of dragons and giants actually exists? And what is Don Quixote's ...._, intention in playing these strange games with reality? We have established that Don Quixote, using the chivalric idea of enchanters, has argued for a drastically different version of the world than most people see. We could compare it to the systems of Ptolemy and Copernicus. They both provide an explanation for the world; it only depends on where you put the motion, in the earth or in the rest of the universe. Similarly, the events of the novel can be explained in two ways; it only depends on where we are persuaded to put the madness. Do we place it with Don Quixote, or is it the rest of the world that is mad (or, that is, deceived by enchanters)? By bringing up the second possibility Don Quixote snatches some authority in the book, wrestling with Benengeli for it. We have also noted similarities between Don Quixote and Cervantes. It may be helpful now to ask what it is that Don Quixote wants. -what could compel him to do and say the strange things that he does? If we can find this, then we may also be able to find what Cervantes wants to tell us. Don Quixote says he desires eternal fame, and immortality, but everyone wants those. What seems to compel him, specifically, is something about the Cave of Mon- �T I 59 58 tesinos. In chapter xxxii of part II, the duchess says that she understands Dulcinea to be, "the most beautiful creature in the world, and even in all of La Mancha" ( 670) In the strange order of this sentence, La Mancha seems to encompass the world. In the title to chapter xxii, it is said that the Cave of Montesinos "lies in the heart of La Mancha." If La Mancha encompasses the world, it seems that the Cave of Montesinos, for Don Quixote at least, lies at the center of everything. III. What follows is an interpretation of the Cave of Montesinos. I am not wholly convinced of it myself, and am not certain that it is possible to provide a complete interpretation of either the cave or the novel as a whole. At least by setting up an interpretation it is possible to have a somewhat clearly defined starting point, a possible way t o understand the novel, which we can then demolish and move on from, in hopes of finding a more apt interpretation. Don Quixote often thinks back to whatev er it was that happened to him in the Cave of Montesinos. In Chapter xxv of part II, he asks Gines de Pasamonte's monkey, at Sancho's bidding, whether "certain things that had occurred in the Cave of Montesinos were dreamed or true, because it seemed to him that they were both" ( 627). He thinks about the cave before the adventure of the enchanted boat (chapter xxix, 647), and Benegeli conjectures that he believes more of it to be true than false. When the Merlin of the duke and duchess mentions the cav e, Don Quixote is Trinity I Henley Moore �61 60 amazed, because "he could not be certain if what had happened to him in [itJ was true or not" (chapter xxxiv, 688) (This again must be Benengeli guessing at the source of the knight's amazement). After Sancho relates his own strange adventures in the sky, Don Quixote tells him "Just as you want people to believe what you have seen in the sky, I want you to believe what I saw in the Cave of Montesinos. And that is all I have to say" (chapter xli, 727). In chapter lxii, Don Quixote asks the bronze head of Don Antonio, "Was my account of what happened to me in the Cave of Montesinos the truth or a dream?" (870). That is a difficult question to answer. There is also the third option: that Don Quixote is lying. It seems to me most likely that it is a dream. Admitting it is real would require a drastically different interpretation of the w hole nov el, and our w orld, one which takes giants into account. While Don Quixote's rhetorical skills and use of the concept of enchanters leave this possibility open, it seems unlikely. He falls asleep in the cave, and comes out sleeping, and many aspects of his experience have a dreamlike quality. A very interesting interpretation could come from assuming the cave story is a lie of Don Quixote's making; indeed, at the beginning of chapter xxii, in which he goes into the cave, Don Quixote says of certain illusions carried out at the wedding of Camacho, "They cannot and should not be called deceptions since their purpose was virtuous" (597). The statement seems to be in too appropriate a place for its placement to be coincidence. Taking the cave story as a dream, one particular aspect comes to the surface. Like Odysseus and Aeneas before him, Don Quixote gains instruction on what he is to do when he leaves the under-realm he is in. Don Quixote reports of Montesinos: "He .. .told me that over the course of time he would inform me how the spell on him, and Belerma, and Durandarte, as well as all the other s who were there, was to be broken," (612) . But we are never told, and it seems no one else is either, what the instructions are. I had at first as. sumed that Sancho woke him before he could gain the instructions, but Don Quixote never complains of this, and it does not appear to be the case. We can speculate on what Don Quixote was told by looking at what the consequences of breaking Merlin's enchan t m ent would be, and by looking at certain aspects of the cave if it is taken as a dream. Don Quixote is shown the dying Durandarte, "the flower and model of enamored and valiant knights of his time" (609). He is a symbol of everything chivalric. Now, strangely, it seems that Don Quixote's breaking of the spell will mean not freeing Durandarte and his companions into the world, but the death of them all. Montesinos thought Durandarte had died; he was buried, this is what was supposed to have happened to him. It is the enchantment that keeps them all alive (the rest should have died of old age long ago, instead of continuing on like the sickly Lady Belerma) . Since we are assuming this is a dream, everything in t h e Cave of M ontesinos is nothing more than �61 63 Don Quixote's own imagination speaking to him. Benengeli tells us, "His fantasy filled with everything he had read in books, enchantments ... " (part I, chapter i, 21). Don Quixote's mind is the cave or the enchantment that Montesinos and the rest are trapped in. To let them go, to break the curse, Don Ouixote must give up his knightly aspirations. It seems then that when Don Quixote asks things like "Was my account of what happened to me in the Cave of Montesinos the truth or a dream?" what he is trying to get at is, "is what Montesinos told me true, must I give up chivalry, or was it only a dream (not a true one)." At the first inn Don Quixote comes to after the cave, he sees it as an inn, rather than a castle as is his custom. He tries one more adventure of his own, that of the enchanted bark, but no more. After his adventure in the Cave of Montesinos he seems t o no longer have the inclination (whether it is purposeful or from madness) to mistake ordinary objects like windmills and inns for things much more spectacular. By the end of the novel, Don Quixote has given up his chivalric goals. This is what I say Montesinos told him: you must sleep (indeed, it was the need for sleep that drew Don Quixote to the meeting with Montesinos, and the lack of it, according to Benengeli, that drove him to knighthood) and let us go. In chapter lxxiv (935) Don Quixote sleeps for a very long time, and wakes up "sane." I do not know what we are to draw from this. It may be helpful to note that Cervantes did not write any chivalric novels, b ut h e did write a pastoral one, La Galatea, which is mentioned in Don Quixote, and he was planning to publish its sequel after the story of the man from La Mancha. Perhaps Don Quixote had to go through the spectacular madness of knighthood to be able to die sane and good. In this interpretation, it is the chivalric ideas themselves that tell Don Quixote that they must be let go. Maybe Cervantes is trying to tell us that chivalr ic novels and virtues must naturally give way to pastoral ones. This is what Don Quixote's friends are ready to attempt at the end of the novel; they all want to become shepherds, after Don Quixote plants the idea in them. There are problems with this interpretation. Why does Don Quixote say the experience of the cave was pleasurable? When he wakes up he tells Sancho and the cousin "May God forgive you, friends, for you have taken me away from the sweetest life and most pleasant sights that any human being has ever seen or experienced. In truth, now I realize that all the pleasure of this life pass like shadows and dreams" (604). Then when he is recounting the tale, the cousin says "Your grace should continue, Senor Don Quixote, for I am listening to you with the greatest pleasure in the world." He replies, "With no less pleasure do I recount it" ( 606). This should remind us of two other stories told by Don Quixote and the innkeeper, both given as reasons to read chivalric novels (in chapters xxxii, pp. 269-270; and 1, pp. 428-430 of part I). They are about knights plunging into seeming danger and ending up instead in wonderful, enchanted realms, greeted by wise men or maidens. �65 64 Don Quixote and the innkeeper both say that if one reads such tales they go mad·with what seems a very peculiar kind of pleasure. If chivalric novels are nonsense, there is something about them, especially stories and experiences like the Cave of Montesinos, which makes for deeply compelling nonsense. The canon, in his discourse at the end of part I, criticizes chivalric novels, asking, "What beauty .. . can there be in a book or tale in which a boy of sixteen, with one thrust of his sword, fells a giant as big as a tower and splits him in two as if he were marzipan?" yet this and other supposedly absurd examples he gives call to mind not only chivalric novels, but the Bible, in this case, the story of David slaying Goliath. This leads us to ask, is there not more to chivalry in Don Quixote than just learning it must giv e way to the p a storal life? Again, there is something uncanny about the knight's arguments. He seems to be alluding to something just beyond our reach. The best place to examine this would be in Don Quixote's long response to the canon's attack on chivalric novels, in part I, chapters xlix and 1, pages 425 to 430. He h a s several a rguments for why one should read chivalric novels, and they verge on the inane and silly, but never quite tip into it. The key question to ask when reading the speech is what does Don Quixote mean by "true"? It may seem like it sometimes, but I do not think he is talking about historical truth, as the canon is. He may not even be talking about a kind of Aristotelian, poetic probability. I will end with a quotation from the middle of the speech: "That is really good!" responded Don Quixote. "Books that are printed with a royal license and with the approval of those officials to whom they are submitted, and read to widespread delight, and celebrated by great and small, poor and rich, educated and ignorant, lowborn and gentry, in short, by all kinds of persons of every rank and station: can they possibly be a lie, especially when they bear so close a resemblance to the truth and tell us about the father, the mother the nation, the family, the age, the birthplace, and the great deeds, point by point and day by day, of the knight, or knights, in question? Be quiet, your grace, and do not say such blasphemies, and believe me when I tell you what you, as an intelligent man, must do in this matter, which is to read these books, and then you will see the pleasur e you derive from them" (428) . We have learned that Benengeli is not to be completely trusted as a narrator, and that his stated purpose for the book is different from the book's actual purpose. We have also found a possible place to begin to understand the novel, the Cave of Montesinos, and one possible conclusion: that the chivalric novel, and chivalric life, naturally gives way to the pastoral one. But Don Quixote also leaves us with good advice. Just as we must learn mathematics to read the book of nature --- not simply hear about it from others or in translation---- so must we read the books of chivalry ourselves in order to understand what he has found in th em, and what he is after. If we do �66 67 read these books ourselves, and find what Don Quixote may have found, that may require a great change in our understanding of what goes on in the Cave of Montesinos, what it would mean for Don Quixote to break its enchantment, and what actually happens for the rest of the novel after he comes up out of the cave. There are many questions left unresolved that this essay tries to address. They could be picked up directly from where this essay ends, specifically by reexamining the novel in light of the Cave of Montesinos, and with a careful eye on the opinion of the Benengeli versus the truth, since we were able to chip away at the authority of the narrators. Why does Don Quixote use the strange device of enchanters to play with our perception of reality, assuming he is not simply mad? What does Montesinos tell him? What is his experience in the cave, a dream, a lie, or something else? Why or how does he die sane? What does he mean by "truth" when he claims that chivalric novels are true? And why, though he is as intelligent a man as the canon, who is able to resist them, is Don Quixote driven, dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, to read chivalric novels in the first place? Private Court, State Circle I Adam Maraschky �WWW 69 68 Intimate Matters Intimate Matters Trand!ated 6y Daniel Kraft T. Carmi 1 1 NI7 r.JI7'li1 .J' NI7 .J!J i1J7l'D, i1NDl'D. You untangle all the oaths, all the vows within me. Nn r.J1npn Nn .JI7.J- '7' r.J.J!J i1lJ'1V1I7 i1'1VJ1I7. You erase my handwriting from every old draft. NI7 r.J7.JlI7 Nr.JI7. NI7 r.Jr.J'li1 ,, You speak the truth. You remind me .J' .J; i1N7D .J7r.J that every man is deceptive and there is no truth like mine at this moment. 1N'] Nr.JI1 .JNr.JI7' .Jl..:IJI. NI7 IV1N;I7 N1I7': .Jr.Ji1 rr.J] Jr.JIV7 l..:IJI? You ask me: how long does a moment last? i1ND NI7i1 rDl NI7 .J; i11V,VJJ'D 1Vi1'1 ;7z Do you remember all the clocks you've owned? r.Ji1 i11VJli1 Jl.JIV1? i1ND NI7i1 ;77Ji1 NJ r.JN.J7? What time is it now? Are you owning or losing? NI7 r.J7.JlI7 r.J~l7J' Nn r.Jnr'vi1 .J~11J' You speak from my throat. You clutch my throat .J'7 l.Ji1 .JJ7F7. 111, i1'7 i1rNI7 i1l)?~iJ N1I7' .JNIV IVN'] .Ji1JIY1N'] .Ji1 N!Jl. with a hand like tender wind . 0 h, this hand that kindles me like fire with no wood and no ashes. .J; i1 i2 J.;J. ,r.J m. r.JJl1;D 'JN i1"I1' All who come close must die. Never have I been .Jh ;717.J ;J/.Yr.J'. so close to myself. �70 71 2 2 17.fJ~lD 17rNn, )71JJ NJ' N117.J. N117J This craving to say I love you JlN717 N17 17;/lJV'D .Y7))>D .J.lJ.Yn], to see the wrinkles sink into your forehead JIV1J1JJ N17 ..'.11.!P nnvlV .J.;71.J.J, 17!1n717rl7, )71JJ NJ' N117.J. N117J, to hear my body silent within you this fear to say I love you IVlJN 'IVlJJJ 17)>)17 .. p1) IVN'] )1 177 in case the night hears a voice without an echo IVr;JJ:f 17N1Jl 1JlNl7 in case a mirror says where is your face? N~i) !JJ'7Z 17.fJ~lD 17rNn 17!1n717rl7 J11J] 17'D IVi?.1'7 1171N IV{.], IVlJN 'nl.J. )JJ'J' 1171N IVJ'. ,. T . . this craving this fear to say the sea is clear and it is yours in case I see it dry up and it is mine. �WW 73 72 3 r.J17J> 171)7 un?lf. Jl.JIVJ NJ> n;p .Jt_.Jl7] .0?,J, ND Nn N>J7 rJ.JlnlJil NlJlfl> ;7, .JIVili?l IV?.J .il>il fl!JJIV JN>7 ,1J7h> NI1 lJ~.f1.J~ )nntJ .JIVrJ7 . 3 My memory weakens. Now I depend on your memory. If you do not remember~ what I said to you when your line was busy and how I taught my letter to be signed with your name 11Jil j)JlN>D ;)>)17. IVN>] )J >JD 1il1N ;N )>)17 and what a night is called that has no day and is no night JN>7 .n;1 ilNJn>Jn J/7 .J> !JIVD1.Y1lil and how the letters grew until they renounced their shapes 11Ji11 _y)>) p1;> .JIVNfl lJDil )J Nr] and what the tone of my voice is when your ear is attuned JN>7 .J; IVN)il IV~?J, Jil>?J7 .J> )r:J>lJ] 11Ji11 ilJ777 .Jn77 IVJ,0~ JN>7 Jl?)~!Jj)171n and how all your questions become symbols for me and what wanders in my sleep and how my eyes open N.J; N?)t 17N7n 7.Jl .J> JI?)~] ,JJl>J> JJl>J> .JJ,1?)~1: J/7 .J)Jn .J) illJlNJn ND Nn N>J7 rJ.Jln N>] )> >t; N>] ,, IVD, NJ>qT. but they see nothing because your eyes are in mine and my eyes are in yours until all sights have ended~ if you do not remember then I have no hand, I have no name, my memory is lost. �WW - 74 75 4 NJ 1 rJ!Jn7111J 17. NJ 1 NJlJl )J, NLJ13.i) 11J!Jn71J] /PJD ll.1;)1° IV!JJ1> >JJJJJ 1p1) 1 )N 1 1VlJJI. NJ 1 NJlJl ) ] , NLJ13.i) m!Jn7 rJ1 i11VJJi1 IV..f i) p1) 1 )N 1~ 1 1J 1• NJ 1 NJlJl )], NLJ13.i) m!Jn7 rJ1 i11JJJ IV,_f J°NJ 1 NJJl NIVV N7D rJ!Jn7111J 1 7. 4 I am always afraid. I tell you love and I am afraid of the day when my lips will stir and my voice will not be heard. I tell you love and I am afraid of the hour when my voice will not recognize me. I tell you love and I am afraid of the moment when I say happy is the man who is always afraid. �WW 77 76 5 ':JJ11' ::nl~') Nl7 J/~r.J' N'JJ 1~'17'. ':JJ17' )?;(~) N1Jnl7-~j71 7j;;·i1.v~~ Nl7 l:!lr.J]., '~J.;).[J ~i?JJ~]l? J)N.[jD Ni1 NfJ~J., 17N' IV'.f Jl7~. l:!lr.J~ ill PD, ~~"D JI) ill:JD PlvJ~'D ;~j'r:i l?.n J!J) j/!Jil p)J~ J/l!JJ IV) l:!lnl'l7 r.Jil ):JD J)J? ':JJ17' Jil~'J Nl7 J/~r.J; N';?r/??;< Nr.1117' JJ:, il~'''· 5 I could have saved myself if I had wanted. I could have eaten breakfast and starved you·r name, sat in a concert and deafened you. Of course I could have. Sun, mountain, and sea, gazelles on the ridge attending to the moon, the smell of roast coffee, the fog of dawn --what is for them and for you? I could have saved myself if I hadn't said to you: save me. �78 79 The Bird who Waits - his song Vincent Tavani This is the land promised to all who wait. Thrust these hands into the warm loam, the earth's moist womb with that heavy soil smell of late spring: dirt worked under still-growing fingernails, in creases of my hands. This is the grave where I have been sown along with all that I've saved. The worms like old bathwater against the cold food of skin: they crawl to keep their outside-bodies warm, and their insides in. I, like them, scrawled, if in my head. These are the worms I receive. Flowers I love, but the bouquets I never gave, the name never sung that inside me bloomed when I ought have flown and flung it out like bread on water. Now another nameless molehill mansion, am a ribcage flowerbed; this is the land. Here bones that always craved to be hollow have by time their marrow made blithe and dry, in purer flesh entombed. I've heard that juniper can heal the heart, but like a baby bird, I'd never tried ingesting outside-me, this have-some-heart. - I've often said I've flown: I've often lied Out for a better part, I, a hand with leaves to fill the pretty glass I found, am here dissembled on the ground. They disappear like liquid, these poems disbe lieved, if she - kaleidoscopic broken bottle - can not hold what I already poured her to appear like lilacs. But I after the burning swallow - be bold! - then shining eagle-like to meet her fly. "Here are the feathers that made me fly." Oh OH, you liar! all you have is vomit: poems and sonnets like gin and tonic that make you trip, that strip you dry. Shall these bones sing? Well, poet, heal thyself, if in rhyme you wake alone, tangled in leaf-woven wings, smelling now of now acidic pme. �80 I fear the maddening wines of dirt-moist spring. When in December, the barren Earth was old, cold and proper; but in June, youth blooms and spreads her healthy skirt. And then remember the dirt's sown secrets, am aboveground to be told. For I refrained to try my hand at gardening those stained-glass growing things, not till I re ceived my plot. Now, here is the lot: loveless hopeless marrowless wmgs. �ENERGE!A ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE P.O. BOX 2800 ANNAPOLIS, MD 21401 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>Energeia</em> Description An account of the resource <em>Energeia</em> is a non-profit, student magazine, which is published once a year and distributed among students, faculty, alumni, and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis.  Staff welcome submissions from all members of the community -- essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context energeia Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper (bound book) Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 80 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Energeia, Spring 2011 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Spring 2011. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Connolly, Stephanie (editor) Schuler, Kaitlyn (editor) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Energeia Spring 2011 Energeia Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/0d42625fcd83c70110a9c55c16cb566e.pdf 7ab04196e3ede8489a4d025939cc32cb PDF Text Text SPRING 1987 ~ ar: ~ z iiii z <I: . ~ lll:: u ..... :z: ..... :z: .... I �ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself. Cover: ARES: "The Tremble and Scream of a Body's Undertow" by Lance Connin Pastel on Watercolor Paper Photographed by Greg Ferguson il ... vou c:vtpyc:ta ~roil ... (Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1072b) Staff: Printed by the St. John's College Press St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland Talke Breuer Carloss Chamberlain Meetra Doorandish Barbara Gesiakowski Jana Giles Chris Howell Steve Jackson Rena Kuntavanish Sarah Waters Co-Editors: Laurie Cooper Joseph Macfarland Faculty Advisor: Jonathan Tuck Energeia is a non-profit, student magazine which is published three times a year and distributed among the students, faculty, alumni and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis and Santa Fe. The Fall issue contains a sampling of the student work from the previous school year which the prize committees of both campuses have selected for public recognition. For the Winter and Spring issues, the Energeia staff welcomes submissions from all members of the community-essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. Note: A brief description of the author accompanies all work not by current St. John's students. Please include some such statement along with your submission. Thank you. �CONTENTS A CRITICISM OF SOCRATES' THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE Fritz Hinrichs 1 SENTO-GOSHO GARDENS Jennifer A. Lapham 4 PRIZE WINNING PO EM (1986) . THESEUS' PASSAGE Claudia Probst 5 THE BOUNDARY OF THE METHOD Sally Fine 7 ON WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS' POEM "HE THINKS OF HIS PAST GREATNESS WHEN A PART OF THE CONSTELLATIONS OF HEAVEN" Anne Leonard 9 A PARTIAL DEFENSE OF VICONIAN ETYMOLOGY AND TOUR GUIDE TO SOUTHERN MARYLAND Christopher Bailey 13 DISTANCE #2 Stacy Grimes 17 THE NEST Patricia Dawson 18 CHICAGO LABYRINTH Ellen Schwindt 19 SENIOR ESSAY (1986) HONORABLE MENTION ORIGINS OF COHESIVE THOUGHT Lawrence Seidl 20 FOR LI CH'ING CHAO Judy Kistler 35 SURF AND MISFORTUNE A STUDY OF OEDIPEAN TRAGEDY Jeff Kojac 36 A TRANSLATION OF JEAN DE LA FONTAINE'S "THE CAT, THE WEASEL, AND THE LITTLE RABBIT" James O'Gara 38 STREETLIGHT Walter Plourde 42 AN APPRECIATION OF APOLLONIUS 1.34 Henry Higuera 45 �A Criticism of Socrates' Theory of Knowledge Fritz Hinrichs In the Meno, Socrates is faced with the problem of how we can go about searching for virtue when we do not know what it is. He has to explain how we can search for some thing and know when we have found it when we do not know what to expect . It is similar to the problem we would have if someone said, "Go find my dog," and then refused to give any description of the dog. To solve this problem, Socrates refers to the belief expounded by the poets that our souls never die and have lived through many lives . This being the case, they can recall the truths they have gained in past lives . Our learning, therefore, is nothing but the spontaneous recovery of knowledge that was previously known. To try to substantiate this idea, Socrates asks Meno to bring to him a slave boy without any previous geometric knowledge. He then proceeds to ask this slave boy questions about geometric figures that he draws in the sand . Gradually he leads the boy to an understanding of a particular train of 8eometric reasoning. First Socrates shows the boy why his initial idea about the geometric figure is wrong, and then he asks the boy questions until he comes to the correct understanding of the figure. Because he never tells the boy anything, but only asks him questions, Socrates claims that the boy has recalled the knowledge of the figure from his own mind. Now, if all our learning were recollection, then one would expect that our learning would resemble the way we recollect things that we have learned in this lif e. This is one point where I find fault in Socrates' theory, fo r the process that Socrates uses to teach his student does not at all appear to be the same process one experiences when recalling other facts one knows one has forgotten. It can be seen that the boy never really recalls anything from his own memory; he only approves of the ideas Socra t es presents to him . If he truly were recalling the ideas from memory, Soc rates would only have to give him lit t le hints, and the boy's memory would do the rest, just as our memory does when we recall things that have become dim in our minds . Instead , we see Socrates lead t he boy through almost every step of the geometric argument, and the boy obediently following behind. This can be well seen in the second part of the discussion in which Socrates corrects the boy's misconception that one can double t he area of a square by doubling the length of the sides . Socrates erases his old square and starts with a new one to show the boy that the base of a square twice the . area of the square he dre·w would be the square's diameter . He shows this by constructing three other new squares around the one he had drawn and dividing each along its diameter to construct a new square that is made up of the diameters from each one. Because there were four squares, the new square is twice the original (four halves make two). This whole construction is made by Socrates with the boy contributing nothing to the argument beyond his consent . When Socrates finishes constructing the figure, he asks the boy some questions that require more of a reply than "yes" or "no." SOCRATES: Here are four squares. inner half of each of them? BOY: Yes. 1 Has not each line cut off the �SOCRATES: And how many such halves are there in the figure? [The figure made by the diameters of the squares.] BOY: Four. SOCRATES: And how many in this one? [The original square.] BOY: Two. SOCRATES: And what is the relation of four to two? BOY: Double. SOCRATES: How big is the figure then? [The one cut off by the diameters.] BOY: Eight feet. SOCRATES: On what base? BOY: This one. [The diameter of the original square.] (85a-85b) In this quotation, Socrates asks the boy six questions. In the first, the boy consents that a diameter cuts a square in half. In the second and third, he counts how many triangles are in particular squares. His response to the fourth and fifth shows his knowledge of ratios, and that to the sixth his knowledge of what a base is. I hope this quotation adequately shows that the reasoning the boy goes through does not originate from himself, but is the product of Socrates. What occurs in this dialogue is certainly a far cry from the boy's needing a little prodding to remember those things that are obscured by the forgetfulness of his mind. In 84d, Socrates infers that his method is closer to the interrogating for opinion than to instruction or explanation, but in fact the opposite seems to be the case. However, part of what Socrates says is correct. He repeatedly tells Meno that the boy's opinions are the boy's own; this is reasonable in the sense that Socrates never forces the boy to believe in anything. But the opinions are not the boy's in the sense that he made them up or had previously consciously held them. It is reasonable to say that the boy agrees with what Socrates is saying, but not that he already knows what Socrates is saying; if this latter were the case, Socrates would not need to be continually telling the boy how to deal with the problem of the square. Also, if we are to say that the boy understands something because he recalls it, how would we account for the mistakes he makes? For example, the boy proclaims that if the side of the square is doubled, the area will double. How could the boy come up with this idea i f he recalled it? This is what he recalled, so how can it be wrong if recollection is what determines truth? Socrates would probably answer this accusation by saying that the boy recalled incorrectly or that he did not recall at all. I think a hint to what his response would be can be found in line 82e. I will present two translations that from my inquiry seem to represent the two ways that this passage is typically translated: "Now watch how he recollects- things in order--the proper way to recollect." (W.K.C. Guthrie) and, "Watch him now recollecting things in order, as one must recollect." (G.M.A. Grube). The actual Greek is "GE1' 1 11 ) ' I _,. ( 1 (82 e ) ; t h e pivota 1 wor d • au-rov m.>aµ 1µvncrKoµsvov scps~ns, ws as 1 avaµ 1µvficrKso8a 1 is OEl . If Socrates admits there is a proper or correct way of recollecting, he is implying there is an incorrect way of recollecting. Now, if we call some recollection proper and some improper, then there must be something by which we are evaluating it by; there must be something higher. To make a judgment would be meaningless if there were no criterion. This is why I think Socrates is not using recollection as his ultimate source of truth, but is using something else, most probably reason, as his final criterion. The word os1 can be translated as proper or necessary (the two translations give examples of each). If it is translated "proper", then my idea is supported, but translating it "necessary" does not really escape the problem either. Why should something be necessary? Is it not because we have an end in mind by which we are evaluating the process? I think Socrates has shown that he is not really relying on what he calls recollection, but is actually using reason to get the results that he wants. There is another problem in Socrates' theory that needs to be addressed: when Socrates states that we learn by recollection, he is not really solving the problem of how learning came about in the first place. He may say that we learn now by recalling what we learned in the past, but that does not tell us how we learned in the past. The only thing that his theory does is to push the problem back into the past where it might not occur to us to think about it. This way of dealing with the problem would be like trying to answer the problem of the origin of life by saying that it had been placed on the earth by outer space life-forms. This method is evasive but not substantive. However, since Socrates seems to do so well using myths, I suspect he could have easily answered this objection by stating that when man first came into being he was endowed with perfect knowledge and has since lost it. Socrates is able to convince Meno of his theory because it does make a comparison that is superficially correct--when we remember something and when we see something is true, we tend to experience the same feeling of insight or perception. We experience the same sense of "Aha" when we remember and when we gain understanding, so it is tempting to see them as coming from the same source. But to equate them does not really answer the problem of where learning came from to begin with; moreover, when more closely examined, remembering and understanding have some distinct differences that rule out their being one. on 2 3 �Theseus' Passage Claudia Probst ' vi \ l\v: ~ ,ff-I\j j ~ ~ ~ j ~ ( r j t ~ i ~ ~ "'<j> ~ I \ ~ ~ \\ ~ ~ ~ t} Theseus, kneeling by the slain monster picked up the trail of a golden thread and followed it, wearily, through the dim eternal twilight of the labyrinth. He wound it over and between his knuckles, the sweat of his palm matting the thread, darkening the filament of his direction and enclosing the heat of his hand. He recalled his fingers entwined in his mount's mane, after grasping suddenly for lost balance when shame had made him sway in the saddle, on the day he saw his father surrender the city's youths to the Minotaur. Later his hands had traced the curving wooden ribs of the prison ship's hull during the voyage to Crete, and mesmerized his seasick companions with endless soothing caress. So long did his hands travel circularly on their backs, waiting for gasping nausea to subside, that in darkness he could name each by resting his hands lightly on their sides, touching for the duration of a breath. He felt the thread's tension, more than guide it impelled him, tugging at his memory -sunlight and sweet airTheseus longed to follow his eyes frontwards as Man, to probe then where a man may. He remembered in those passages the dark servant halls of his home, nights in his early youth when, trembling, he had eased blindly down stone steps fingertips brushing moss along rough walls groping his way to she his destination. Images of her bare limbs' movement, first stolen through a crack in the wall of the servant bath had rooted in his mind. And when he first clasped her to his breast, 5 �his pulse had quickened, hammering in his ears until her image, blooming, had threatened to burst from his head shattering the night with strong remembrance of sun on olive skin and the play of her muscles underneath, as she lifted an earthen water jar. Then it was no longer the still air of the labyrinth and memory that enveloped him wind-driven dew struck his forehead and he emerged again into the living worldTo find Ariadne, her hair unbound falling "'loosely golden in the blessed dawn . The Boundary of the Method Sally Fine In Book VI of th~ Republic, Plato discusses the geometer's use of the figures and the three forms of angles as hypotheses and asserts that the geometer uses these hypotheses as the basis of his argument. That is to say, the geometer takes certain properties as common notions and from those common notions stem the images in geometry . In addition to this assertion, Plato continues by asking if geometers use: visible forms ... and make their arguments about them [visible forms], not thinking about them, but about those others that they are like? They make the arguments for the sake of the square itself and the diagonal itself, not for the sake of the diagonal that they draw, and likewise with the rest. These things themselves that they mold and draw, of which there are shadows and images in water, they now use as images, seeking to see those things themselves, that one can see in no other way than with thought. (510e) Plato's account of the geometer seems an appropriate description of Euclidean geometry, but hardly applicable to the realm of geometry which Lobachevski provides. In Euclidean geometry we are provided with images that we consider to be intuitive . The pictures that accompany the propositions fit the image of the figure we have in our minds. The pictures fit so well that one might wonder if Euclid might be 'spoon feeding' us by appealing to our intuition of how space should be defined and described. It is easy to lose track at times that what we actually see before us when we work through a Euclidean proposition is not square or triangle, but the image of square or triangle. It is important, however, to remind ourselves of what Plato suggests, that as long as geometry depends on hypothesis, it can never really grasp square or triangle. I interpret this to mean that, unless we can move beyond hypothesis, we can never grasp the eidos of square or triangle, but must content ourselves with their images . In the imaginary geometry that Lobachevski gives an account of, the images provided certainly do not 'spoon feed' our intuition. Few things are more counter-intuitive than parallel lines that converge or a quadrilateral with three right angles and the fourth angle acute. The images that accompany Lobachevski's theorems seem almost incommensurate with the language of his geometry. It is very difficult to convince oneself , after years of being led to believe that parallel lines never meet and remain equidistant from one another, that the two lines depicted as converging can really be called parallel. Although we see the images before us on paper that illustrate converging parallels, in our minds we still imagine parallel lines that do not meet and do indeed remain equidistant. In Lobachevski we have a discrepancy, between the image on paper and the image in our minds, that we did not have in Euclidean geometry. How does one look at the images provided with the same language used in a completely different way and make sense of it? The first reaction, and certainly a legitimate one, is that the system that Lobachevski introduces is counter-intuitive. Well, yes, it does seem awkward to be 6 7 �given a quadrilateral with three right angles and then to be asked to prove the fourth angle acute. This does not come easy because in all of our previous experience, a principal property of the quadrilateral was that the angle sum was consistent. However, now that we are in the world of imaginary geometry, we no longer have that proportionality, and that is disconcerting. At this point I don't know whether it is right to question Lobachevski's idea of geometry or to question our own. Euclid gave us a beautiful system of geometry, but he never claimed it to be more than a system. He offered us images, and we took to them eagerly, again, forgetting that he offered us image, not eidos. Plato reminds us that the geometer can only offer us image in his discussion of the geometer's use of hypotheses. I don't think that Plato is judging whether the geometer is justified in using hypotheses, but rather he is pointing out the problem that all geometers face in being limited by the common notions. The boundary lies in being human, a limit that we cannot surpass. Euclid and Lobachevski, if nothing else, at least share this boundary. I think that the geometers themselves are much more willing to acknowledge this boundary than the students of their geometries. Why are we so unwilling to accept Lobachevski? First let us examine what it would involve to accept Lobachevski's system. The obvious thing that comes to mind is the denial of the necessity of the fifth postulate. Once one denies the need for the fifth postulate, one must acknowledge that Lobachevski's geometry is certainly as feasible as Euclidean geometry. Of course, this is much easier said than done. How can we possibly acknowledge a geometry other than Euclid's when we quite obviously live in a Euclidean world? Everything that surrounds us is Euclidean. Is it because we are surrounded by Euclidean images that we come to expect Euclidean images in our geometry as well? After all, what is our real problem with Lobachevski? His images are consistent within his system, so we can't find fault there. His theorems follow in logical progression and still we balk. Consistency and logic aside, his system still goes against our expectations. We have been habituated to Euclidean geometry, and that is what we expect. Although I readily accept the argument that Lobachevski is counter-intuitive, I am still puzzled by this intuition that we cling to so desperately. Do we really have the criteria to determine our world as Euclidean? I hesitate to make this claim when I consider, once again, Plato's discussion of hypotheses. It seems impossible to deny that there are certain things which are inexplicable and those things we call common notions. I want to call them self-evident, but after studying Lobachevski and re-reading Book VI of the Republic, I wonder if we only intuit them to be selfevident. This question is seemingly rhetorical, considering that we are bound by . image. If we could actually get to eidos, then we would truly grasp geometry. Apparently, the methodology in the activity of geometry is our problem. Plato seems to make an argument for the method of dialectic. In dialectic we begin with an hypothesis and match it with an antithesis. The struggle between the two eventually produce some sort of conclusion or falling out of a bigger idea. No matter what the outcome, one is able to get beyond the hypothesis. Some progress is made. With the geometry, however, we are bound by the hypothesis. No antithesis is presented in opposition to the common notions. We can build and build our system, but the hypotheses that Plato mentions time and time again remain. Using the methodology of geo-metry as we do, we can never approach eidos which is free of hypotheses. On William Butler Yeats' Poem "He Thinks of His Past Greatness When a Part of the Constellations of Heaven Anne Leonard I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young And wept because I know all things now : I have been a hazel-tree, and they hung The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough Among my leaves in times out of mind: I became a rush that horses tread: I became . a man, a hater of the wind, Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head May not lie on the breast nor his lips on the hair Of the woman that he loves, until he dies. 0 beast of the wilderness, bird of the air, Must I endure your amorous cries? William Butler Yeat's poem "He thinks of his Past Greatness when a Part of the Constellations of Heaven" is a poem which is hard to understand on the intellectual level but which strikes deeply into the human heart. What stands out in the poem more than anything else upon a first reading is the tone, and the meaning itself is dependent upon the tone. The poem is sad. It is not raging, burning, passionate grief, but more gentle, implacable sorrow--embers of grief which will never go but will remain, ceaseless and unchanging. The very first hint of sadness occurs in the title; someone who has become a constellation, who has become part of heaven, is thinking not of present glory but of past greatness. The feeling is then brought out more in individual lines of the poem. In the second line, the second word is "weep." This, a tangible and open expression of sorrow, is coupled with "because I know all things now" and as such furthers the sadness. It is a human desire, wish, aim, to know, and this knowledge makes the line sad in two senses: first, things that are learned can be sorrowful and second, in the deeper way the fulfillment of a dream can be sad, even painful. Sadness occurs too in the fact that knowing all things, the speaker is no longer human; he is something different. With knowledge, humanity is lost, and that is reason for grief. In this line, there is regret, regret for having "drunk ale from the Country of the Young" and thus learned all things, leaving no mysteries or secrets, and regret for the actual things learned. The relationship between knowledge and sorrow is expressed in another manner in the seventh through tenth lines: I became a man, a hater of the wind, Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head May not lie on the breast nor his lips on the hair Of the woman that he loves, until he dies. 8 9 �Here the knowledge is of only one thing, yet that thing--loneliness--is so great, so powerful, that it brings sadness. The sadness is felt not only by the speaker, is not only empathetic grief for the poet, but is a reawakening of individual, human sorrow; everyone has known loneliness and estrangement. Indeed, the word that those four lines focus on is "alone." It is difficult to tell from the grammar of the eighth line whether "alone" modifies "one" or "man," but this difficulty is exactly the purpose of the vague syntactical structure: "alone" applies to both. The one thing a man knows is that he is alone. WP.ether a man or not a man, knowledge brings grief. The last two lines, "O beast of the wilderness, bird cf the air, must I endure Being a your amorous cries?" are an expression of the sorrow, a plea for surcease. man, he is denied the love and the companionship that the beasts have, and this brings grief and pain , pain that others have what he does not . The cry is not one of Even taken by themjealousy or anger, but of helplessness and deep loneliness. selves, the lines are sad, and as the last two lines of a sad poem, they round out the grief and the sorrow. Sadness is not the only emotion expressed in the poem, however . Another is one of captivity, of helplessness. This is evident not only in the language but in the structure of the poem; it has a fairly rigid ABABCDCDEFEF rhyme scheme, the only appropriate rhyme being between "mind" in the fifth line and "wind" in the seventh . Although the rhyme scheme is no t the most dominant expression of captivi t y , it serves to lock in the feelings and reinforce the captivity present in the imagery . The very first image of captivity occurs in the first line, "I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young . " Ale from the Country of the Young is ale which controls and changes a person, and although the drinking itself may have been volitional, the effects of the drink are beyond the power of the drinker . It is a subtle image, one which does not present itself at first for what i t is , but which sets the captive tone for the rest of the poem. The very next two images presented, the hazel-tree and the rush, are images of captivity or helplessness. In the lines I have been a hazel-tree, and they hung The Pilot Star and Crooked Plough Among my leaves in time out of mind the haze-tree is not acting but being acted upon . Long ago the tree stood, and the stars were hung by some unknown "they" amidst its boughs; it did not hang the ' stars itself, or even choose which one were hung. It stood and was used . Likewise the ru sh is helpless; "horses tread" it . A ho rse is an image of freed om , of wild grace , and the rush is that which is repressed, pushed down by the free. Like the t r ee, the rush is a passive, emotionless thing of nature which is only acted upon. And then there is the man, "a hater of the wind . " This hatred is a rejection of and resentment of freedom. Wind is wild, powerful, reckless, goes where it wills when it wills. Wind can destroy, wreak havoc, ruin. It is uncontrolled. One who hates the wind hates that total, raw power and does not know the exhilarating joy present in a wind dashing wildly through the trees. Unrestrained and unrestricted, the wind is a symbol of all that is free and of all that that freedom means. Hating what is free, the man is not free. The final image of captivity is expressed, like the sorrow, in the plea of the last two lines. The beast and the bird are like the horse and the wind; they are free, unfettered. It is to the "beast of the wilderness." the animal that lives wild, subject to no rule but its own, and to the bird of the air," that animal which lives among the wind, that the plea is addressed; these things which can love are free, and which are free, can love. Nor is the object of the plea the only way that 10 captivity is expressed; the word "endure" is one which applies to a prisoner. One who is free would not have to endure the amorous cries; one who is free could leave, or could vanquish the cries. But that the cries are endured is an indication that they cannot be escaped. Sadness and captivity are the dominant emotions, the first impressions which leap from the words into the heart. These are what the spirit understands. But there are things underlying these emotions, reasons for them, and they are buried deeper in the poem. Even understanding the tone, the poem itself is still an unresolved puzzle. There are two questions which seem to contain the core of the matter. The first involves the "Past Greatness" anrl the second the separation of the man from the woman he loves until after death. There is sadness involved in both questions, and a sense of being trapped. " Past Greatness" seems to refer to being a hazel-tree, a rush, and a man. These are all things which have been, which the speaker became, which are no longer, and for which there is some grief . None of them seems particularly great, yet there is reason for sorrow; they have one thing which a constellation does not. They have life. A hazel-tree and a rush have sprung from the earth, have been nurtured by the sun and the water and the soil, have grown and changed and developed and will continue to do so. Attached, they belong to the world and to each other and to all living things. They may be helpless, they may be controlled, but they belong, and this in its own way is far greater than being a constellation, fixed, immutable and completely unconnected. Better to have the stars amongst one's leaves than to be a star; for a star is not alive. In a way, the constellation is even more a captive than the rush and the tree, and this too is reason for sorrow. And why a man? What greatness is there in being a man, in hating the wind, in knowing one terrible thing? There seems to be no inherent greatness but inherent grief in this. Yet, there is something in the man which is as great as or greater than the hazel-tree and the rush. Perhaps it is as with the rush and the hazel-tree. Living, no matter how terribly, is greater than being a constellation. However, it seems that there must be something deeper than that. A man is not so connected to the earth and to the world as a plant or even a wild animal is. In addition to living, a man thinks and knows. Feeling sorrow, feeling captivity, are things which a man can do and a rush cannot. It is these, the feeling and thinking as well as the living and connecting, which make a man great. It is a sad, painful, captive existence, but it is an existence which is unique and wonderful. That seems to give some answer, inadequate though it may be, to the first question, the question of "Past Greatness." The second question, the question of love, still remains. Why cannot a man be with the woman he loves until he dies? The most simplistic, obvious answer--the woman he loves is already dead--just does not seem to do. The loneliness is part of it. The loneliness is two-fold in nature; first, the man is lonely because he cannot be with the woman he loves, but second, he cannot be with the woman because he is by nature alone. Only in death can the solitude of self be broken. This part of human nature, this loneliness, exists in several different ways. The human race itself is separate from other animals and from nature by means of language and rational thought and technology. Other animals have societies, forms of communication and of tools, but none so sophisticated, and no other animal can change the face of the earth in the way a human being can. This separates the human animal from the earth and from the other animals; to be human is to be separate. Further, every individual is alone. The soul of each person is unique. At the 11 �very center of the self is something which only one's own soul, and sometimes not ev en that, can understand. There is separation from other people and even from oneself. No thing, not even love, can cause the centers of two individ~al souls to ~oin­ c ide, and in s ome deep, almost terrifying way, every human soul is always solitary and l one l y. This seems to be the loneliness Yeats is expressing. . To say that a man cannot be physically close to the woman he loves is, on the literal leve l , r i diculous . Bu t it is metaphorically quite true; the laying of the head on the br east or t he lips on the hair are metaphors for human companionship, for unity, for mind t o heart and speech to thought. Only after death, when humanity is exchange d f or s ometh ing e l se, can such companionship be. The knowledge the man has is the knowl edge of his own loneliness ; he is captured by his very nature. What, then, is the meaning of the poem? It certainly cannot be captured in one single sentence or phrase . The essence of it is both sorrow for loneliness , and lack of free dom , but a l s o the greatness of life itself . The poem has to do with the struggle to find one's place in the world , and with the pain that knowledge brings, wh ether it be knowled ge only of one's nature or of all things. More than anything else, it shows the paradox of humanity: how hard but how essential it is to be human, how painful and how great , how separate and how connected. And this seems to be why the tone, expressed through images, is und erstood before the reasons underlying the tone. The poem is the speech of one human to another, the expression of common feelings. And so, like the human soul , the poem is a paradox; by its expression of human l oneline s s, it t ouches human connectedness. Thus there is greatness to think of wh en a Part of the Constellations of Heaven. A Partial Defense of Viconian Etymology and Tour Guide to Southern Maryland Christopher Bailey Preface By the terms ordinary etymology, scientific etymology, etc., I mean the use of scientific rules of word-mutation and language comparison to trace the development of wo r ds. Or at least I mean something like that. Any other words I use ought to be comprehensible from the context in which I use them; it's very likely that there ar e some which aren't, but I can't think of everything. The fundamental argument of this pape r is that ordinary etymology is not ade quate for the complete understanding of a word's history, and of its effect on the people who speak the language of which it is part; and that therefore Vico's attention to superficial similarities in words should not be lightly dismissed. This brief prefatory statement may be used as a map and compass to guide the reader out of the dar k and trackless digressions which lie in his way , and which might otherwise persuade him that the author of this essay has never quite decided what he's talking about . "Port Tobacco," says the Maryland Writers' Project guide to Maryland, "was the most important of the many Maryland ports on the Potomac ruined by the silting up of the creek at its landing. Made the seat of Charles County in 1658, it continued to be the center of the county government until La Plata developed around the new railroad down the peninsula. The Indians also considered it a desirable village site, as Captain John Smith's map shows; and by 16Rl it had enough settlers to be the scene of the uprising of Kendall's followers . " The name "Port Tobacco" is not a terribly unlikely one for a colonial Maryland port town, since tobacco was probably Maryland's most important export. But Captain Smith's map shows an Indian village on the same site before any English settlers had planted themselves there . One might have expected the Indian name of the town to survive, as the names of other Indian towns did in Maryland, and as the name of the river on which Port Tobacco was built-- the Potomac -- survived. I n fact the Indian name did survive. For these were the Potopago tribe. Their name was attached to their town, and when the English began to settle there, it was rapidly corrupted into its present form . It was quite natural for it to be so corr upted . The wonder would be, if anyone who was not making a special effort to speak distinctly should mention a tobacco port called Potopago, that any ordinary listener should not understand him to have called it Port Tobacco. Now, if one wanted to t r ace the etymology of the name Port Tobacco, one might go about it in the normal way . One might first look up port, and find that the Rev. Dr. Skeat tr aces i t back to the Latin portus , closely allied to porta, from conj e ctur al root par, to pass through, and thus eventually related to English fare. Then one could' do the same for tobacco (where one would have less luck, since, the word being derived from a West Indian language, its ultimate roots are inaccessible to the Rev . Skeat). One could do all that, and one would be no closer to the truth than when one started. Obviously, without the critical knowledge that the place was originally a Potopago Indian town, any derivation of its name will be at best only partly correct: 12 13 �And then, not much later (869) : "Tradition says that Homer was blind and that from his blindness he took his name , which in the Ionic dialect means blind . " If Vico is, as he seems to be, offering each of these as the derivation of Homer ' s name, t hen he ha s certainl y contradicted himsel f . The most f undamenta l laws of logic would seem to insist that only one of the t wo could be t r ue. Possibly Vico, composing these paragraphs at different times, didn't notice the cont radiction : perhaps one derivation seemed right to him the first time, and then later the other. But he did let both stand in the third edition . There are infinitely many other possible explanations of Vice's mo t ive in giving these two different derivations, but, skipping entirely the question of Vice's real motive, I shall try to invent a plausible defense for him . , If Vico acutally has discovered the true Homer in the Greek people themselves , then there must be some reason why the name Homer was associated with the Iliad and Odyssey , and not the name Orpheus or Dobzhans~In fact , we must look for~ason why any name at all was given for the author of these poems , when their real author was a whole nation. / Perhaps Homer became a so r t of poetic universal for epic poe t, as Hercules for strength or Achilles for swiftness, because there was once a rhapsode named Homer who was extraordinarily good at rhapsodizing . Thus, in the same way that stor ies-a~ su- perhuman strength might come to be associated with the name Hercules, eventually giving us a Hercules who travelled to all places at all times and did just about everything; so epic poe t ry of great quality might become associa t ed wi t h the name Homer. But even if this we re the true explanation, it might not quite explain why the name of Homer and not that of some equally proficient rhapsode became the poetic universal . In the case of He rcules, the name itself had significance . Perhaps it was thus in the case of Home r . Let us suppose that there are two rhapsodes in ancient Gre e ce, both equally admired; one of them is named Homer , the other Dobzhansky . Now, to the Greek ear, Dobzhansky might not suggest much . But Homer--Homer is a name fraught with associations . An Ionian would immediately hear the word as blind, and immediately would remember the rhapsodes he had known who were , if we can believe Vico (who takes his evidence from Homer), conrrnonly blind. The name would seem as appropriate as some I have noticed in businesses in Inverness, Florida, where on the same street one can find Grumbling Motors, Crook Real Estate, and Hood Bail Bonds . Those names don't slip out of memory easily . I can't remember the name of any other bail bondsman , though I have doubtless seen many who displayed prominent advertising signs; but the name of Hood Bail Bonds is ineradicably stamped in my memory. Similarly, one who happened to be thinking of the strung- together aspect of the rhapsodes' tales might be led to hear, though perhaps not altogether consciously , hom' eirein when the name Homer was spoken . If an English speaker heard of a poet name Stringtale, he might hav e the same reaction. Just so the name Shakespeare often suggests to us, without our being aware of it , a vigorous, thunderous, rugged sort of drama that a name like Jonson doesn't suggest . (In fact some of his contemporaries made the most of Shakespeare's name, believing that entirely too much spear- shaking went on in his plays) . In the same way, some theorists have suggested, any person's name carries with it a package of vague associations which partly determine the way we react to the person who carries the name . I have heard of some studies which seemed to indicate that school teachers had pr edetermined conceptions of their student s acco r d i ng t o the students' names . And I remember how I was often shocked in elementary school when I learned a teacher's first name . (She didn't seem like a Mavis to me, I might explain . ) Now , or dinar ily these associations of names with character types migh t be specific to me only, depending , perhaps , on events in my individual experience . (I might , for example , have known a Mavis in early childhood.) But there might be certain cases in which the name was likely to produce a similar group of associations in all the members of a certain culture--as Mr. Hood, Mr. Grumbling, and Ms. Crook can probably attest . This might especially he the case when the name resembled some common word or set of words . Contrast the effect of the name Homer with t he effect of Dobzhansky , and i t seems obvious why Homer would become the poetic universal and Dobzhansky would be forgotten . Homer simply suggests poet, and suggests it in more than one way . Thus Vico' s two "derivations" of the name Homer both would add to our understanding of how that name came to be associated with the author of t he world's greatest epics . As derivations in the strictest sense, they might not be historically correct, but they might help explain why the name was applied as it was in the same way that a knowledge of the meanings of port and tobacco helped explain the name Port Tobacco, t hough his t ory may t ell us that t he name is actual l y a corr up t ion ---of Potopago. And for that reason that one "derivation" need not exclude the other . For both may have operated on the common sense of the Greek people in driving them to select Homer as the name of their national poet. What is true for names we might suspect of being t rue for any word. For we find we have more to explain, even in ordinary wor ds , than simply how a basic root was changed into its modern form . Knowing the etymology of the word lift or the parts 14 15 for it would be misleading to give a derivation based on the meanings of the words in the name without noting that those words only came to be assigned to that place through corruption of its Indian name. On the other hand, it would be equally misleading to say that the name is a simple corruption of the name Potopago without taking into account the meanings of the words port and tobacco. For the town was a port where tobacco was shipped, and that is why the corruption arose in the first place. It would be just as useless to study the etymological history of the name !'_~!~p_ago as i t was to study the histories of port and tobacco. What is most necessary is an understanding of the conditions which led to the choice of the name Port Tobacco for that particular place. In his New Science, Giambattista Vico often uses the etymology of a word as part of his argument. He doesn't seem to have much of a method for his derivations: the one facto r c ommon t o mo st of them is incorrectness . If Vico wants to say that a certain word actually developed in history in a certain way, he ought to have some sci entific methods for determining that development . Otherwise he should keep his mouth shut. At least, that would be my attitude as a twentieth- century admirer of the accomplishments of scientific etymology . But Vico may not have seen etymology quite the way I do. He certainly was not aware of the scientific methods which came into use after he was dead. But he may not have had in mind the same purpose I have when I search for the one true historical root of a word . Anyone who pays attention to the etymologies in the New Science is bound to no tice that, within a few pages, Vico gives two entirely different derivations for Homer's name. First he says (852), By the etymology of their name from the two words which compose it, rhapsodes we.re stitchers together of songs , and these songs they must certainly have collected from none other than their own peoples . Similarly [the common noun] homeros is said to have come f r om homou, "togethe r ," and eir e in, "to link," thus signifying a guarantor, as being one who binds creditor and debtor to gether. This derivation is as far - fetched and forced [when applied to a guarantor] as it is natural and proper when applied to our Homer ci.s a tier or putter together of fables. 1 �from which elevator was coined will not explain to us why the first is used in one part of the English- speaking world and the second in another . The same goes fo r lorry and truck . or solici t o r and lawye r; and, taking a broader look way and chemin, since French and English are supposed to be derived from the same ultimate source . Why does one society choose one root to build its ways on and anothe r choose another? I have often heard it asked why the same word should have different meanings , but it seems to me just as interesting to ask, Why does the same meaning have different words? Ordinary scientific etymology is of no use in answering this question. A new etymological science would be needed to supplement the old. Perhaps no science at all could be adequate: perhaps thjs is a field for wild speculation . . I don't ordinarily like wild speculation as a method for finding answers to important questions, bu t i t i s a t l east mor e u s e f u l he r e t h an t h e o r dinar y etymolo gy . The r ules of vowel- shifting and consonant mutation and such are simply not applicable to this ques tion: one might ·as well try to answer it by referring to a yardstick or Ptolemy's Table of Chords. The laws of etymology have been spectacularly successful in showing the historical mutations of words; now what we need is a sort of transcendental etymology to fill out the picture. We already practice this transcendental etymology, although we really have no method for it. If we ask why the word ~ as a synonym for ~ has almost disap peared from our spoken language, no rules of word- mutation will give us an answer . Rut we probably can answer the question for ourselves by pointing out that the word has come into use as a synonym for homosexual, and that in our society homosexuality is an embarrassing subject . We used no scientific procedures to dete r mine that answer: it simply seems obvious to us from what we know of American society . Vice's method of etymology seems to us today to be crude and sloppy . And it is . For I believe Vico usually wants to tell us the way a word historically developed , and modern scholars could off er very convincing proofs of the wrongheadedness of most of his derivations . But perhaps in back of Vice's mind there was an unformed idea or assumption that the true histo r ical development of a wo r d was not its only important story--and perhaps not its most important for his purposes. The similarity of one word to another to which it bears no historical relation might in fact have a great effect on the use of both words, and might not otherwise be associated. Modern etymology might tend to persuade us to ignore such similarities as mere coincidences, but they ought not to be so easily tossed aside. I regret that I am completely unable to provide a scientific method for dealing with such similarities when they are noticed; but we should not close our eyes to extra-etymological considerations when non-etymological relations suggest themselves. And therefore we should not pass over Vic o' s "der ivations" as if the y were mere emb arrassments . M any of them may be totally worthless, but in some of them may lurk a social truth inaccessible to scientific Distance #2 Stacy Grimes ,, 0 wet day blanket-of-deep - forest - green day steam, my body is spice tea, I curl I am the Sun the Center, heat I am pulling o tugging o Venus I want smashed into betwixt me to be me but all and every ring around me rosy. Stasis, stance in this and in all wet days I am the Sun o shining Sun. etymology; and if he uncovered even one such truthrthen Vico's wild speculations were not entirely in vain . 16 17 �Chicago Labyrinth Ellen Schwindt feet thud on wettish concrete slabs of buildings building song no rhythm is forced by metronome of traffic light the loop rumbles softly a lofty thought sways in blue chiffon dances a spectral jazz sandal softens upon the area above my head my foot sweeps into someone else's space no one screams for air accepts suffocation with welcome coffee yes please lines becomes a sweeping ellipse of warmth dark purple apathy to fluorescence Emily creeps around the fringes repeating the bit about frogs unintelligably through saxophone slur of brown corner booths tea and roses drifting darkness is becoming sweeping around mouths open in effort to breath thick air eyes swell to almost open ended corridors of sea fog fading black 19 �Origins of Cohesive Thought Lawrence Seidl INTRODUCTION Philosophy is an analytic endeavor. It takes things apart and looks at them, and in a way this artificial mental reading irrevocably changes the things it looks at. One never loses the insights that are gained through philosophical analysis. Even if one chooses to give up philosophy, the pursuit of its questions leaves an indelible impression--i ts effect, as belonging to one's experience, is present in every subsequent endeavor. Perhaps the only real philosophical synthesis available to humanity is the acceptance of the ever more potently described limits of thought that thought itself struggles with. The acceptance might lead one to leave the study of philosophy and to incorporate it simply and completely, living the question rather than asking it. But here the challenge is in the asking. The question that brought me to this paper was: What is in the "space" between the steps in a logical sequence? The question forces me immediately to look a.t the language that such a series could be described in. Say, for example, that I examine a series of statements and judge that they follow logically, one after another. It is the logical rigor of the series that I am concerned with testing, and not the content of each statement, which, as language, depends on the rules of linguistic construction . How am I testing the logical rigor of the sequence, what do I mean by logical? This is a basic question, asked in simple language. "What I mean by logic" is an expression for one thing. It is the thing to which we refer when we use the word logic. We think of it usually as a criterion by which we judge . thought as ''making sense'i. Kant says, the science of the rules of understanding in general, that is, logic." Any series of statements seems susceptible to being made more logically coherent and rigorous, by filling in the "spaces" between with other statements, making a new series which more thoroughly explicates the necessity of the steps. The aim of this would be to understand better. This filling in can go on until it becom~s ridiculous--the understanding that resulted from the initial series becomes confused and the process begins describing itself. Language, when its logic comes into question, begins justifying itself, turning inward, and describing its own limits. Logic is not language--it is independent of its description. We can make a progression more logical with language, but we are limited by the dependen~that language has on logic. At a certain point, we will use up the empirical content; no more actual detail will be available. The logic of the progression will remain unexplica ted, and we will be left only with an unsupportable affirmation of the necessity of logically stepwise movement. For Kant, considering a series of statements as f o llowing logically is an example of the subsumption of the concepts contained in the statements by pure, a priori concepts of the understanding , that is, categories. His assertion is that this subsumption is necessary if there is to be any thought at all. In order to substantiate this assertion by showing it is logically correct, and thereby proving it is true, it would seem that he must explicate the necessity of the categories for thinking. Now the idea that thinking must be proved categorical is itself a categorical 20 thought. "The co~plet~ness and. art.iculation of this system [of pure understanding] can at the stme time yield a criterion of the correctness and genuineness of all its components-." On the face of it, categorical necessity wouldn't seem sufficient to prove that thought is categorical, just as language, a logical construct, doesn't ultimately serve to explicate logic. Logic and categorical necessity themselves require to be made necessary by something more coherent and more necessary from which they can derive their power. ' The search for this ground can take place only on the edge of meaningful language. The language of the search ts admittedly insufficient for the task of explaining its quarry, and at some crucial moments must rely on its ability to point, to imply the ultimate coherence and necessity that must validate thought. Kant's own language suffers these weaknesses, and yet it resounds with the power of its rational intent. The completeness and coheTence of the system speak for the power, while at certain points the rules of language represent an obstruction to Kant ' s clarity o f intention. The ultimately coherent source of logical necessity is the synthetic unity of apperception. In trying to make this unity an "object" of my thought, I must, it seems, deny the use of those elements of thought which depend on it for the necessity of their existence. This puts me very near the "I", in the immediate logical vicinity of the noumenal center of my being. It makes me feel alone. In what follows, I have presumed to begin with unity, itself the seemingly logical beginning of thought. I have attempted to explore Kant's treatment of this function of unity, and to give a sense of where we are in relation to the "I" we cannot know. I. A. Preliminary and purposely naive examination of the relation between unity and thought. Reason is the unified faculty which binds our mental activity into what we call thought. Its singularity reflects the unity of the thinking subject in which it is housed. Reason views the subject's body of knowledge as one comprehensive thing, a manifold of systems of understanding, each of which contains subordinate systems of concepts. Since systems and the concepts are themselves considered as whole things, this suggests that the manifold into which reason unifies them need not be considered as a whole at every moment in our thought. We are not thinking all our knowledge at all times. Our body of knowledge, and the subordinate wholes within it, are all susceptible to analysis. Indeed, the large encompassing order that reason prescribes is its fullest end, and we rarely have any sight of its oneness. This is because our understanding does not always succeed in its effort to secure fully unified concepts. We possess concepts which seem incomplete. They contain strongly associated impressions but their boundaries are not clear, and they are thus not fully unified. These concepts present problems to reason's goal of unity. Since reason is a faculty acting on already unified wholes, a question presents itself. What is the relation between the unity of the concepts considered as parts, and the unity of the system of reason? Do the unities we see in each share a common source? Thinking of reason as subsuming the understanding, fully contained and extended within itself, we may also consider both faculties as concentric around a central unity, from which the unity of each is derived. Since concepts are ultimately formed from the chaotically independent world of pre-appearance, and therefore rely on a unification of these jumblings for their wholeness, they require that the unifying source be active continually during this nearly constant process. Making concepl tual ones out of the chaotic many, and then organizing the ones into a rational manifold we identify as ours, seems to be the general character of thought. I Reason thinks ideas, which incorporate intuitions and concepts. Reason is thus a higher faculty than sensible intuition or understanding. But it is -e ssential tb I 21 �see the dependence of reason on these subordinate faculties. It does not depend on them for its existence, but it needs the concepts they produce to carry out its function, so as to be useful to the subject. Intuition and understanding, considered with regard to this use, are in reason, and their functions are part of reason's own usefulness. All three faculties rely on unity. Pure reason is in fact occupied with nothing but itself. It can have no other vocation. For what is given to it does not consist in objects that have to be brought to the unity of the empirical concepts, but in those modes of knowledge supplied by the understanding that require to be brought to the unity of the concept of reason--that is, to unity of connection according to a principle. The unity does not serve objectively as a principle that extends the application of reason to objects, but subjectively as a maxim that extends its application to all possible empirical 3 knowledge of objects. This subjective maxim of systematic unity is an idea that belongs to the thinking subject. It is an idea that can apply only to knowledge. Without a unifying faculty of understanding, we would never coalesce the manifold of the sensible impressions that constitute Kant's "beginning" of all knowledge. The thinking subject first intuits, then thinks concepts through understanding, and then orders his thought through the unifying function of reason. We must look to the subject for the unity upon which the elements of this process depend. This assertion presupposes an important question: how does the unity, which I assert to be central to the nature and activity of thought, relate to my concept of unity? This echoes Kant's criterion for determining a given concept to be synthetic. "The question is not what we ought to join in t,fought to a given concept, but what we actually think in it, even if only obscurely." If what we actually think in a concept is a manifold, and can thus be separated or analyzed, the "what we think" has a two-sided existence. On the one hand it is many, on the other it is one. As a concept, it is synthetic if we are aware that the two sides are required to be put to gether . The many impressions have somehow been previously conjoined into a manifold . If I ask myself what I actually think in my concept of unity, that is, what kind of synthesis resulted in my concept, I become confused. The question loses meaning because I fail to find a coherent concept of unity in my thought. Examples of unity pour forth, empirical and partitive. I am unable to gather them. Soon I see myself thinking, over against the lot of united things thought. This serves to point out ~ oneness in a comparative way. My failure to find unity as a concept, does not prevent me from thinking of myself as one, more truly one than any other example I have. Is my own unity also my concept of unity? To answer this question, I must analyze my thought without the benefit of Kant's system. I can't think about my thought through his system without first determining my own relation to it. According to Kant, I can have no empirical experience of unity. I can have experience only of concepts arising from sensibility, which are possible in part because of the category of unity. The category is at work each time I am conscious of a given representation. But what do I think about unity, what notion do I hav e of it that allows me to hope to apply Kant's ideas in my thought? It is appropriate here to be somewhat naive, and briefly to follow my sense of being pushed back from the empirical experience . of the cohesive aggregations we loosely term "unities", to the reasons why we do so. In the second paragraph of the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishesr: empirical knowledge from "what our own faculty of knowledge supplies 22 ·~ from itself ."5 His cautions against the error of deducing necessity from examples ot experience are frequent and numerous. This suggests that Kant wants to remind not only the reader, but himself as well, that care must be taken to limit consideration of the role of necessity to the realm of pure thought. As creatures in the world, we don't often need to question the truth of appearances. We treat objects as things entirely knowable in themselves, even as we contemplate the inherent error of so doing. If we look at the process of our giving up on the hope that experience can illuminate the character of unity, perhaps we can reveal something about the way we come to see unity as crucial to thought in general. · Strictly speaking, we don't see unity in experience, but rather unification, or the results of processes of unification. In the first case we see the actual "bringing together" of diverse empirical elements into a "whole". In the second case we see the "whole", and its composition is apparent to us by analysis. In the world of objects treated as things knowable in themselves, unification is the process whereby individuals are grouped. This results either in an aggregation in which the individuals are judg.ed as sharing an identical quality, or in a system where the individuals are seen as complementary elements of a unique singularity. The description of the simple aggregation can serve as a general description of any of its members. Similarly, the end toward which the system-group is aimed is greater than any of the diverse purposes of the complementary parts. In both instances, the parts are more effectively comprehended. Our thinking, which was scattered because it had to address many thing, gains cohesion and power by our gathering them into encompassing wholes. Next we may notice in gathering individuals into unified groups we do not negate their individuality. The unified groups strive to imitate the cohesion of the individuals they contain, which are always simpler than the groups. This pushes our thought into the regressive exploration of increasingly simpler wholes. Our empirical examples fail to show us unity, because the successively simpler wholes contain parts that can in turn be analyzed. We are forced to explore unity in thought. A purposely naive retracing of the path that we take in moving from the awareness of empirical unification and the power it seeks to secure, back into the necessary principle of unity in thought, mirrors what must have been the philosophical preparation for the writing of tht Critique. "There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience." This first sentence of the introduction to the Critique reveals Kant's awareness that he must subsume empiricism in stepping away from it. There can be no doubt that man's first knowledge comes from an unexamined process of acquisition. Kant knew that he normally treated objects the way we all do. His initial examination of experiential knowledge must have involved basic questions, and threatened ( at least initially) his confidence in the "reality" of the world. Ultimately his philosophy does not ask us to change our physical relation to objects; but it does demand that we recognize "reality" as a subjective idea. The empiricists were confident that their observations were undeniably objectively real, and that unerring logic following from these observations taken as principles could not fail to be correct. Kant ushered in transcendental philosophy by simply asking how they observed, how they thought, and from that, how observation and thinking are possible. I. B. Discussion of the presuppositions behind considering experience to be the beginning of knowledge. The assertion that all our knowledge begins with experience only seems possible after an extended analysis of the faculty of understanding. It presumes a specific definition of knowledge as relying on concepts, which are themselves defined as the reproducible representations of manifolds in intuition. The statement also therefore 23 �presumes that the understanding is the faculty which makes concepts. The beginning described above is a temporal one, where perhaps the connotation of origin is missed. It cannot be otherwise, since time is the form of all intuition, the root of knowledge~ but the awareness of this temporal beginning presupposes analysis of understanding. It is the first sentence of the Critique. It has been placed there for a specific reason. We must transcend this temporal beginning, and examine the analysis from which it results. Consideration of the presuppositions involved in Kant's assertion that experience must be the temporal beginning of knowledge, helps to reveal the logical convolution of the Critique's explication. Logical analysis reveals sensible intuition as the temporal beginning of possible knowledge. For this reason, the Critique begins its explication with an analysis of sensible intuition. Logic reveals intuition as the source of knowledge. Logic is a faculty which lends necessity to the movement of thought. Thus intuition is revealed as the necessary beginning of the process of acquiring knowledge. We may acquire knowledge that begins with intuition, without explicating this process to ourselves. Logic then simply works in us unanalyzed. We treat our intuitions as given and from them determine what logically follows. But when we wish to explicate the workings of the process, this is, to say what in us receives impressions, and what we do with them, etc., we are faced with the problem of explicating necessity. In effect, logic is then led to explicate itself, its function of lending necessity. A further complication is the fact that the language of the explication depends on logic for its capacity to ''make sense''. The logically derivative, complex rules of syntax must constitute the form of an explication of the most basic beginning of logic. What approach can we make to the explication of logic? The Critique is Kant's offering to us in our predicament, the result of his sharing our dilemma. It can only have followed in the wake of the incisive questions which carry it along. Our initial attempt to judge his rigor, his logic, his depth, consists of trying it on. That is, we try to think as he does. As a result of this effort we come to a point where we rely heavily on the prefacing remark , "Kant would say . • • " , in answering philosophical questions put to us. We give Kant permission to answer for us. The temptation and indeed (if we want to know his thought) necessity of this "trying on" is analogous to the aforementioned unanalysed acquisition of knowledge. We read Kant and accept him, working to give the system its full due. We do not isolate clearly and methodically the concepts that we understand arising from the book, but we do generate them, as unquestioningly as we avoid cars in the street. As we grow comfortable with the Critique, we disentangle ourselves, achieve some distance, and try to figure out what we think about it. · · •t We apply his method to his own system, once we can b egin t o " p 1 ace " 1 , o r glimpse its collective rational unity. The above description of our familiarization process , could perhaps be generalized into a description of familiarization in general. But the fundamental character of Kant's subject matter puts limits on the process of looking within his system. We want to go beyond an unquestioning acceptance, to a full explication of the necessity, carried to its original source. This "source" may well be seen as the true beginning" of knowledge. As it is the source of logical necessity, it is also a limit to the logical process of validating philo sophical systems. II. A. Dependence of e ach stag e of the analysi s of und e rstanding on the u nity it reveals as its highest principle. This paper began by discussing reason as the unifier of and of possible knowledge. We think of the expression "what only one thing, albeit comprehensive. Kant terms this aspect unity", and he relates it directly to the unifying capacity of 24 our body of knowledge we know" as intending of reason "systematic the faculty of under- standing. Just as the understanding unifies the manifold in the object by means of concepts~ so reason unifies the manifold of concepts by means of ideas, positing a certain collective unity as the goal of the activities of the understandi~, which otherwise are concerned solely with distributed unity.' ., This collective unity is the totality of possible knowledge, and it apparently re flects the unity of the understanding which facilitates the generation of concepts . The Critique of Pure Reason is. distinguished from the system of pure retson since it does not claim to offer the "exhaustive application of such an organon." Rather, it seeks to delimit completely the principles of a priori synthesis. Two results of a priori synthesis are possible: the form of possible manifold in intuition, or a body of ·a priori knowledge based on pure concepts of the understanding. The first synthe sis is temporally prior in relating to acutal experience, but depends on the logical ly prior possibility of the second synthesis. Pure concepts of understanding must relate a priori to objects, but their exisfcrnce, Kant says, already presupposes the combination attributable to a higher unity. [Combination] .•• is an affair of the understanding alone, which itself is nothing but the faculty of combining a priori and of bringing the manifold of given representations under the [systematic] unity of apperception. The principle of apperceptioIJ.. is 1 the highest principle in the whole sphere of human knowledge. This lofty evaluation of the synthetic unity of apperception may seem surprising, since we associate it with concepts of understanding rather than with the disjunctively considered, "higher" sphere of pure reason . It is often difficult to retain the awareness of reason as the legislator of thought . This is because we are normally put upon by need and see legislative function only when we reflect op the 2 "how" of thinking. Reason itself supplies the principles of understanding, of which the highest is t he unity of apperception. This high principle of knowledg e alone can reflect the systematic unity of pure reason, whose ideal end is the totality of all possible knowledge . But this is a statement of its stature and is not illuminating as to the nature of the principle . Our initial , more naive conception of the shared unity at the center of thought was based on the dependence of reason on understanding and intuition. We imagined t he subordinate faculties as contained within the faculty of r eason . In makin g such a formulation, we abstracted from the movement in the process of acquiring knowledge to a fixity of the interrelation of the elements of our mental activity. I suggest that Kant's description of the .;3.cquisition of knowledge arose from an analytic and methodical questioning of empiricism, which centered around a complaint that it lacked explicit logical necessity and didn't address the condition of its thought. The original synthetic unity of apperception is the ultimate yield of Kant, s rational analysis of the possibility of understanding. When we have it revealed, we have attained the abstract fixity in which all the fundamental elements of rational thinking are displayed before us . Their necessary order can only now be ascertained as truly necessary, since only by seeing its root in the principle of unity is cat egorical necessity even deemed possible. Once we have attained this high principle that lends necessity to the generation of concepts, we can look back at the process of its revealing , that is , the sections of the Critique prior to the Transcendental Deduction. We then see the dependence of each stage on the principle itself. In the first stage, the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant is primarily concerned with estab- 25 �lishing space and time as the sole formal conditions of sensible intuition. "It is ... indubitably cerf~in that space and time ... are merely subjective conditions of all our intuitions." Kant's analysis of the faculty of receptivity thr ough which objects are given to us is the epitome of plausibility. He offers a complete argument for its acceptance, since our alternative of ascribing objective validity to space and time would be a relinquish::Lng of our ability to say "indubitably certain", that is, to prove the necessity in the relation of space and time to our intuition. But the completeness of the argument is not assured until we have gone further. This "indubitable certainty" is not explicitly possible until the ground of the necessity is revealed as the unity of apperception . "Time and space are therefore two sourcI~ of knowledge, from which bodies of a priori synthetic knowledge can be derived." Such bodies of a priori synthetic knowledge necessarily contain concepts derived from sources in intuition, and so establish these sources as indubitably certain and subjective. To question their necessity is equivalent to denying synthetic unity, and questions Kant's formulation of concept making. In the short introduction to the Transcendental Lo~, the understanding is designated as "spontaneity in the production of concepts," which it makes in conjunction with the other fundamental source of knowledge in the mind, the sensible intuition. Here, the two-fold role of logic that we have already described is made explicit. First, it must give necessity to the process of acquiring a priori knowledge; and second, it must reveal the source of this, its own necessity. This is the role of transcendental logic, which is distinguished from general logic in that it treats only of the a priori use of understanding. Empirical objects, even should they never vary in our experience, cannot be shown to exist necessarily. Their consistence in experience refers us to the subjective necessity that underlies the possibly of their being judged as unvarying . General logic, which supplies the rules under which these objects must be brought in the understanding, can therefore only treat of the form of thought, irrespective of its sensible content. But since a priori synthetic knowledge is available to us, a distinction might likewise be drawn between pure and empirical thought of objects. In that case we should have a logic in which we do not abstract from the entire content of knowledge. This other logic, which should contain solely the rules of the pure thought of an object, would exclude only those modes of knowledge which have empirical content. It would also treat of the origin of the modes in which we know objecr~' in so far as that origin cannot be attributed to the objects. · The origin of the modes of human knowledge is attributed to the thinking subject. Is this saying that knowledge derives from the knower? If appearances provide only the substance of knowledge, and in no way contribute to the actual modes of knowing, this would suggest that in the thinking subject alone are we to find the functional origin, or true beginning of thought. II. B. Transcendental Analysis purest concept. of understanding reveals synthetic unity as the The Transcendental Logic is divided into two sections, one of which, the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant claims to be "no more than a critical tre17ment of the pure understanding for the guarding of it against sophistical illusion.'' The first part, the Transcendental Analytic, is the more substantial, recognizably logical section. The initial book contains first, the exposition of the table of categories, or 26 pure concepts of understanding; and then the Transcendental Deduction, where the unif~ing function of the categories is made explicitly possible and necessary. The first book of the Transcendental Analytic contains what seems to be the essence of the Critique of Pure Reason . The analytic is an attempt to understand understanding Here is found the full force of the word "transcendental". Here is also felt th~ extreme limitation of words and language. If we think of the term "transcendental" as indicating movement out of a given mode into the understanding of its possibility, then what do we intend by the application of this "movement beyond" to the under standing itself? The determination of the system of concepts of pure understanding is an analysis which Kant does not describe. The system seems to yield itself to him effortlessly, through the act of his looking at understanding with only the aid of his concept of purity, which prevents his looking, as it were, from admitting any empirical blemish . What is Kant analyzing? We might offer some of his own words--he' s analyzing the faculty which generates concepts a priori--but are these words satisfying to the purity of what they intend? Kant's own description is equally troubling. By analytic concepts, I do not understand their analysis, or the procedure usual in philosophical investigations, that of dissect ing the content of such concepts as may present themselves, and so of rendering them more distinct; but the hitherto rarely at tempted dissection of the. faculty of undP-rstanding, itself, by looking for them in the understanding alone, f~ their birthplace, and by analyzing the pure use of the faculty . The analysis is explic itly a mere "looking" and yet it serves to "dissect" the under standing. What is intended by the two metaphors? "Looking" is that evaluation of the thinking self, in which we determine what concepts are available . They need to . . . . b e " soug ht II , t o f in d " p 1 ace ,, -- I can ' t seem to avoi d spatial analogies or of fer a description of what is intended by this process of "searching out'' the contents of a thinking faculty . It is a mental "searching" t o which we have such a simple relation that our need to employ analogical descriptions of it cannot tarnish the clarity of o u r th oug ht . "D. sec t. " is even more comp 1 ex as it presupposes the more specific . · is ing condition of the prior cohesion of the elements of understanding. It is the dissection of a faculty we must already "have" in its entirety. Th~s ~alls up t~9 distinction initiated in the Introduction between analytic and synthetic Judgments. There Kant claims that the effect of this distinction on philosophy has not been keenly felt before his own treatment of it. This is an important indication of the role that his analysis of thought occupies in his own mind . Analytic judgments, he says, can be thought of as explicative; while synthetic judgments should be termed ampliative. These words point to a question which becomes vital when thinking of the unity of apperception, namely, is one of the two kinds of judgments more necessary? The possibility of an analytic judgment depends on the existence of a concept that is unified, or has already been synthesized. All analysis then, is grounded by a priori synthesis. And while the determination of a concept as synthetic depends on the capacity to analyze it, it might be imagined that synthetic concepts could exist alone without any analysis possible. They would simply foster other synthetic concepts in one direction, that of a progressively more encompassing and complex concept. All learning would then be the building of a super-concept that contained all of an individual's knowledge. Analytic judgments, adding nothing to concepts, do not sit in the position of grounding synthetic ones. Thus the entire Transcendental Analytic presupposes a synthesized subject matter already existent. Since the actual steps in Kant's "analyzing the pure use of the faculty" of understanding, are not described, we are forced to trust that a synthesized 27 �ill understanding that must be presupposed is known to us so simply and fundamentally that it is indescribable and susceptible of an equally indescribable analysis. Upon presenting his table of categories, Kant says, This then is the list of all original pure concepts of synthesis that the understanding contains within itself a priori ..• by them alone can it understand anything in 2Be manifold of intuition, that is, think an object of intuition. The table is the result of the undescribed analysis. The next statement is an assertion of their fundamentality to thought. At this stage of the argument, Kant relies on the rigor of his preparation to make up for the "space" in between the categories and their function . The above statement is an encapsulation of the move from the analytic determination of what the categories are, to the analytic deduction of their indispensability, in which he set out to prove their uniqueness and exhaustiveness. "Concepts of synthesis" are principles of . the combination of the manifold in intuition. The possibility of combination is rooted in the original synthetic unity of apperception. In the same way that we presume as necessary a pure synthesized understanding whose analysis reveals the categories, so the syn the tic unity is described by Kant as an analytic proposition. We must be able to deduce a priori the form in which an object may be represented to us. Only by this will we be able to extend ne,cessity to the object, as known. Deduction is a logical process, and it is analytic. It has the character we looked at earlier, of "pushing" us back to necessary conditions. Since, in this case, all its movement is born of a priori necessity, Kant terms it a transcendental deduction. The necessity that this deduction pushes us back to is so pure as to validate the categories themselves. It is the source of their power to give cohesion to the chaos of pre-appearance. It is the purity in pure thought. The word "necessity" seems insufficient to its actual intended function. impossible bind? We feel the push of analysis, but we can't offer an illumination of the nature of the synthetic unity that is presupposed. We can only deduce that it must exist, and this deduction is the result of an analysis that began by looking at sensible intuition. I suggest that this whole preliminary analysis stands in need of the ultimate unity that it reveals as the limit and source of its own power. Here we feel both the push of analysis and the ultimate synthetic coherence of unity co- existing and giving rise to thought itself. In support of his attributing an analytic nature to the principle of synthetic unity, Kant makes the following statement: I am conscious of the self as identical in respect of the manifold of representations that are given to me in an intuition, because I call them one and all my repr1~entation, and so apprehend them as constituting one intuition. It seems that the unity is an analytic proposition because it serves only to explicate the thinking subject, not to join anything to the concept that we have of it . Looking at the language of the argument, I question whether there is any "rooul." for analysis in the simple realm where the unity exists; or whether anything is mo r1 e analytically appropriate than that my representations must be called mine. By analy\ sis, I identify my capacity to say "I think" as signaling a unity in my represent~r­ tions which must be the result or prior synthesis. Explication is often essential to understanding. Analysis, in the empirical world, would seem capable of providing more information to the mind than synthesis. Here, however, isn't analysis in an The analysis of any concept will result in a sequence of analytic judgments in which "I" am the judge, and I identify the elements of the judgment (subject and predicate) as ~ representations. In order that this be possible, we must conceive of the necessity that a synthesized , potentially divisible concept already be available, aris ing from the original unity. The formation of the above sentence is revealing. I am something because I do something. "I" both is and does, and its doing is a proof of its being. Upon whar-does this proof rely if we accept that we can have no knowledge of the "I" as it is in itself, but only as it appears? The synthetic unity of apperception is not the "I". We want to attribute it to the "I" as a way to get "nearer" to what the "I" in itself may be. In the unity, we see a coexistence of analysis and synthesis nearing the absolute cohesion we suspect must exist in the "I" that is capable of sensing, understanding, and reasoning. We have said that analytic thinking is pushy in general. It seems that a concept isn't fully known, isn't knowledge per se, unless it is fully analyzed . So the understand ing pushes for completeness in concepts. Similarly Pure Reason is a kind of transcendentally analytic, or potentially analytic faculty, that applies itself once a body of potentially related complete concepts are known. What is reason's analysis pushing toward? A complete system is what Kant suggests is reason's focus. What do we mean by a complete system? His assertions about the responsibility of philosophy and the exhaustiveness of the categories, all suggest that he intends to fully delimit the parameters of possible truth. He wants to be infallible, so that all questions of the form of thought, that is, the a priori condition of the mind, may be answered. The only proof Kant will accept of the connection between an object and its synthesized representation in the understanding, is one that establishes an a priori readiness to know the representation as an object. These words--know, representation, and object--have the very narrowly defined meanings offered by Kant in order to limit confusion. He rejects an empirical proof of the connection between object and representation (i .e. that the object makes the representation possible), because it cannot be shown to rest on a stronger condition than the commonality of experience. The object itself is out of range of possible knowledge. It is truly independent of our thought. Commonality of experience could only yield what Kant considers a de facto deduction of the form of its representation in thought. This brings us back to transcendental deduction, and its relation to the noumenal synthetic unity whose activity brings the categories into existenc~ 4 Deduction is a logical process and cannot contain the unconditioned in any way. But this is the deduction without which no other deduction is possible. It is at the beginning, and logic cannot simply start itself up like a motor. If we wish to make it logical , it seems we must find a way to condition the original unity. We are 28 29 III. A. The thinking subject considered as object leads to our inability to reject individuality. The application of the analytic/synthetic distinction discussed in section four of the Introduction to the consideration of the synthetic unity of apperception, serves to exhibit the depth of my conceptual dilemma with unity. Kant identifies the principle ~f the unity of apperception as "an identical, and therefore analytic prop 2 He explains, osition." For it says no more than that all ~ representations in any given intuition must be subject to the condition under which alone I can ascribe them to the identical self as synthetically combi~2d in one apperception through the general expression, "I think". · �i pushed and reason won't yield, even here where its own effectiveness finds its root, its limit. Kant certainly does not proclaim the unity of apperception to be unconditioned, nor does he claim to condition it so as to preserve the strict logic of the deduction. Indeed, as logically necessary, unity must he conditioned. His description of its necessity only succeeds insofar as his language succeeds. And while his language and logic are impeccable in regard to establishing the "I" (or at least the synthetic unity attributable to it) as a kind of ground for thought, he makes statements which out of context sound like tautologies. "For the manifold representations, which are given in an intuition, would not be f?e and all ~ representation, if they did not all belong to one self-consciousness." Perhaps it is reason's unceasing drive toward comprehension that "conditions" the unity of apperception. For there is an idea of "complete systematic unity belonging to reason. Kant assigns three ideal object~ to this idea, the first of which is the "I" considered as "thinking nature or soul." 7 Since we are beyond "I think", where the thinking self is an object, we are also outside of understanding. Pure reason is looking at an object that it gives for itself. Instead, then, of the empirical concept (of that which the soul actually is), which cannot carry us far, reason takes the concept of the empirical unity of all thought; and by thinking this unity as unconditioned and original, it forms from it a concept of reason ... The idea of a simple self subsisting intelligence .• It is endeavoring to represent all determinations as existing in a single subject, all powers, so far as possible, as derived from a single fundamental power, all change as belonging to the state of one and the same permanent being, and all appear~§ces in space as completely different from the action of thought. If we consider this in conjunction with our understanding that tq~ synthetic unity of apperception constitutes the objective validity of the object,~ and so determines itself as utterly subjective, we see here, at the root of the thinking process, something like an inability to reject our own individuality. When I say, "my mind makes me •.. ", I mean that l feel a necessity in my thought that "pushes" for completeness. I believe this is what Kant describes as the effect of the transcendental ideas on my understanding. I wish to order my knowledge and to have concepts in their fullness of meaning. Reason is always seeking to complete the system of knowledge that is born in the understanding, thereby giving concepts place and "extension". Transcendental ideas are not bound the way concepts are to objects, as they have no object in concrete. By identifying "I think" as a kind of ultimate object, we have introduced a ranking of a priori concepts--a transcendental hierarchy of importance that reflects the truth of the concepts contained in it. "I think", as we know, accompanies all representations. We may therefore consider our knowledge of any concept to be expressible in a judgment. This can be seen most clearly in the common response to the question, · "what do you think?" We say, "what I think is ••• ", in which objective truth, that is, subordinate judgments concerning objects, is united in the predicate of a self - directed judgment of myself as thinking. This is only redundant, since all representations are susceptible of such a construction, but it is also a very common use of language. This suggests something we have already alluded to--the "ultra a priori" nature of original unity. One might think that the universal applicability of "I think" would eliminate it as an effective linguistic tool. But we seem to need to say it, to reaffirm a connection between the object we make of our self, the activity of thought, and the empirical object of the cosmos. 30 III. B. Thought directed toward the self is recognized as conditioning being. All our concepts must come in a categorical form. Kant says, The table of categories, as contains all the elementary concepts of the understanding in their completeness, nay, even the form of a system of them in human understanding, and accordingly indicates all the momenta of a projected spec~~ative science, and even their order, as I have elsewhere shown. Any concept may be placed in a category which subsumes it a priori, and we can see a necessary relation between empirical concepts only because of the necessity of the relation of the categories that subsume them. The necessity of the categories is not, however, the so"rce of necessity itself. The deduction of their necessity is different from the necessity that "I think" accompany all representations which, as we said, involves our inability to reject the individuality of our thought, or to separate our being from the condition of this activity of thought. Our consciousness of this inability is what leads us to deduce the original unity of apperception as underlying the analytic unity of all consciousness of objects. The logical necessity of the existence of this unity is categorical, implying a tautological circularity--that the categories could somehow provide proof of their own necessity. Logical necessity is the result of our holding up individuality of thought as undeniable, our challenging ourselves to "get behind" it in thought, and our inevitable failure to do so. Can we ever get behind logical necessity? This is to ask whether we can get behind original unity. Perhaps we cannot do so directly, as we have shown that the language we would use relies on the principle of unity in a truly transcendental way. Its reliance prevents us from actually explicating the truth of the original unity's being, or the truth of its transcendental necessity. What can we do with language that might cast light on this hidden place in us? --I have spoken of the "I think" as an ultimate object. I have intended by this to show that the reliance of human thought on "object" limits and bounds our language and conditions the true independence of the unity which constitutes individuality itself. Thus far I have not dealt with the fact that my ultimate object "I think" is also a verbal construction. Because it is language, our expression is analyzable into the linguistic elements it contains. But the truth of the object is that, in the "thinking being" we intend, the so-called activity of the being is not deemed analytically separable from the being itself. That is, the thinking seems to "constitute " the being, or is unified to it so closely that language is unable to describe the joining. Still, language calls this "I think", which, as containing elements, suggests that, though the unity of the thinking being may not be described, it is not the ultimate source of unity. Considering the predication of being in the "I am", we find it illusory and self-indicting in its self-consciousness. The predication does not trace back to an inner sensible intuition. Does it make sense to just say "I" and look? My status as a thinker is changed by questions concerning the "I". As the ground of thought, it seems no conclusions may be reached about it analytically. There can be no concept of it. Alone in its presence, I am thinking, but my thinking is a mere looking, the simplest mental affirmation that I am real, and I am thinking. Kant justifies the principle upon which his Transcendental Deduction, and I claim his entire philosophy, is based, by presenting us with a challenge. It is a challenge he must have presented to himself as an "I". The challenge is simply to reject the 31 �consciousness of the absolutely unified self, to say that it is not one , or that we are unsure where we acquire whatever internal cohesion our thought has. If being is separated from thinking, perhaps we are introducing a demonstration of the independence each has from the other. In any case, the justification for the principle which lends necessity to all thought, both a priori and empirical, is not strictly a logical appeal. We cannot ultimately reject our own individuality . Kant tells us what must fall out from this, if we accept it as true, but we cannot offer logical proof. May the justification ultimately be our own feeling of oneness, and might this not still be a rational justification? The analytic nature of the principle of original unity has come into question. What we know of the original unity is not "what it is", but only that it is necessary for us as sayers of the expression "I think". This is because we must understand by thinking, because there is no understanding available to us intuitively. Intuitional understanding may be possible, but Kant says that we can ' t imagine what it would be like. The "I" that thinks is phenomenal, and its concept may be traced empirically to inner sense, the representation of myself as I appear to myself, i.e. as thinking. Of the two verbal expressions in which we place the "I", the expression of being, I am, offers no synthesizable manifold. The active expression, I do (in this case I think) implies an obj e.ct of the action, something done or thought. The object cannot come from anywhere else than a given united manifold of intuition, whose unity is derived from the unity of apperception. I may attach "I think" to any of my representations. Thus each of them presumes a self directed judgment of myself as thinking, and not merely thinking, but thinking something. This would seem to indicate that I cannot be aware of the unity of apperception except as necessary to my perception of a unified object. The unity's effect is extended from the origin to the potential object in the joining of the elements in a judgment. Through the judgment (a relation itself), the being of the subject, conditioned by the predicate, ts seen in relation to or is "brought to", the original unity. The simple relation of the judgment, when seen as a uniting of its disparate elements, can receive this unifying force only from its original source. If I am not specifically conscious of my judging, I am nonetheless conscious of "what I think". When I unite disjointed representations into an objective concept, I do not make the object into a part of ~ unity. My extending of unity is not something I may choose or not choose to do. It makes my thought, and thereby all consciousness of myself, possible. I force the manifold into a state that reflects my unity of thought; I make it a whole by relating it to my unity. In the third class of categories, those dealing with relation, such a whole corresponds to community. The logical function associated with community is the disjunctive judgment. We may say "I think", or we may off er a conditioned verb of being, "I am a thinking thing". If we say only "I am", we are still conscious of our saying, and so of our thinking. We cannot think of our being without thereby conditioning it. Our thought recognizes the condition it sets on our being. It recognizes its own function as the impediment to itself--it seems ultimately to preclude examination of itself. Even stranger, thought isn't stopped in its tracks by this realization, it retains all its normal power intact. It still is able to prove propositions and provide the full framework for human truth. It can categorize itself, but not know itself. The origin of all its limited ability, is its ultimate inability. I say this because of unity. Oneness and wholeness are words that I associate with empirical observations , for they are primarily attributable to things. I associate unity, on the other hand, with origin, and I consider these to have specifically transcendental implications. The synthetic unity of apperception is the yield of a self-directed analysis. It is attributable to the I. Somehow, looking.at its place , and its surmised function, puts me near the unspeakable truth of my exis tence. The power that binds analysis with synthesis into coexistence within the uni ty of apperception roust be even greater in the unkno-wn self. Because the challenge of rejecting this origin stands ( that is, because we do not know what it would mean if it didn't stand), we are sure of the unity of the self, despite its being unknown . The self is the groun<l we stand on when we look at object, whether empirical or a priori. What can ground us if we wish to look at the self, to extend out the sphere of knowledge to meet it? What if man were. able t~ cultivate an. abilit~ to feel the unity of empirical wholes as simple, despite possible complex division into parts? Maybe if we listened more closely to ourselves, we would realize the depth of our own unity. Each time we possess or claim, or otherwise subj ectify ourselves, maybe we "touch base" with the center of our minds. We do this to a degree in certain recognitions and responses of a less philosophic character, more instinctively. For example, need is an awareness of necessity in the self, and so the need, as mine, has a self-focusing quality. The self-awareness that results from this kind of necessity is one in which the self is alone with its need. Such a need can beco~e so acute that it drives everything out of the mind except self- awareness. In considering unity as the fundamental center of thought we put ourselves in a similar position of being alone. It is from this cohesive center that we open out to the world. We must observe that in all disjunctive judgments the sphere (That is, the multiplicity which is contained in any one judgment) is represented as a whole divided into parts (the subordinate concepts), and that since no one of them can be contained under any other, and so as determining each other, not in one direction only, as in a series, but reciprocally, as in an aggregate - if one member of t~I division is posited, all the rest are excluded, and conversely. Concepts are coordinated with one another, and thereby unified into a judgment. The concept of this coordinate relation is the most illuminating description I can find of the actual process of extending unity and making "wholes" in thought. It seems like transcendental organization. The coordination is most like the activity of unity. The categorical necessity of the coordination reflects the pure internal cohesion that must constitute the truth of unity. 32 33 �For Li Ch'ing Chao FOOTNOTES Judy Kistler All notes refer to the following: Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. St. Martin's Press, New York 1929. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. 93 102 552 54 42 41 533 58 58 152 154 58 86 80 92 95 101 103 Section IV, Intro. 113-4 155 157 155 501 153 556 557 557 156 Last night the upper heavens were the color of eggplant, but the last breath of the sun shone golden through the trees. I often watch in silence, then turn aside to read the Chinese poets. Unlike them, I have no phoenix hair ornaments t o crush in my uneasi.ness over your absence. Unable to decide, we dance about each other; repelled and attracted, magnets unsure of our polarities, moths flirting with the flame. 114 117 Judy Kistler graduated from Santa Fe in 1977 and teaches math and Chinese at the Forman School in Litchfield, Connecticut. 34 35 �Surf and Misfortune A Study of Oedipean Tragedy Jeff Kojac In the final choral ode of Sophocles 1 Oedipus Tyrannos, the tragedy and the moral of the play are portrayed in the words, s\s toov KAdowva OElvns mJµ¢opas sAnA08sv (He was taken into the great fearful surf of misfortune) . l The c onc l u sion to t h e play begins with a parall e l to Oedipus ' opening speech. The chorus addresses those who live in Thebes and reminds the heare r that Thebes i.s a city cursed with bloodshed since it was founded . It describes Oedipus as a masterful riddle solver envied by all . Yet this Oedipus, the cho r us sings , was swallowed by the sea of misfortune and found that no mortal could be counted happy until dead , fo r the future can hold great misery no matter what may be the blessings of t he pr esent . Such a closing statement to the play leaves the reade r with a mo ra l ve r y close to that Solon shar es with Croesus-- that the rich and powerful king i s by no means the happiest , fo r his downfall can ccrne b e fo r e his de at h . Th e ke y t o this mo ra l in Oedipus Tyrannos is the fearful surf of misfortune actually swallowing Oed i pus ; this is the tragedy of the play . The nature of the swallowing is Oedipus' inability to perceive himself due to his fear and anger . Oedipus clearly is in the sea of ouµ¢opas right from his birth , long before he drowns himself . He flees from Corinth in fear, kills Lauis' par t y in ange r , and b r ings about his own downfall in the dialogue of t he play . Re becomes angr y a t Teiresias and forces the seer to speak words which only make Oedipus mo r e ang ry and b r ing him into conflict with Creon . Oedipus' anger agains t Creon draws Jocasta int o the play, and thr ough her Oedipus ' guilt is exposed . When the messenger fr om Corinth presents the news that Polybus is dead, Oedipus openly expresses his fea r of t he bed of his mother in Corinth. This fear dissolves whe n the messenge r ex plains that Me rope was only his step- mother . This in turn brings a h e rdsman to th e palace . Oed i pus again becomes ang r y , and i t is because of this ange r that he f inds t h e tr uth and realizes the oracle has been proved true . His r age t akes him t o Jocas t a ' s chambe r s and, finding he r dead, he vents h is wrath on hims el f: h e blind s his own eyes and thus completes his descent into the waves of misfo r tune . Oedipus sinks in misfortune's waves thr ough his t h r ashing abou t i n ange r and fear. Bo t h o f t h es e emo tion s b lind h im fr om true se l f-kn owledge and make it all the more painful when the truth is finally impress e d upon h i s e yes . The dr owning in misfortune is an understanding of the self . Oedipus lear ns o f his tr u e s el f , jus t a s Cr oesus even t ually sees his fragility and mo rt alit y whe n h e is abo ut t o b e bu r ned at the stake by Cyrus . Oedipus does not only lea r n of his tr u e se lf in t he sen s e of his heritage and the consequences of his actions . He catch e s sight of h i mself a s a man who is proven able to err and suffer r egar dle ss of p re viou s rank , ble ssings , o r abilities . Yet Oedipus i s not happy in his newl y gain e d s e lf-knowl e dge, and t o use his own phrase (line 1444), he is "&vcSp6s ke>.. lO-U " - - a man of mise r y . The ho rr or of his wretchedness is not purely a product of the discove r y of h i s inc e s t and pat r icide , for as Jocasta hints at , unknowing inc e st do e sn't necessarily d e se r ve such horror (line 982), and Oedipus' father surely attempted to kill him t wi ce--Oedipus' killing was self - preservation. The unde r lying r eason fo r Oedipus 1 wre t chedness mus t lie elsewhere. 36 Oedipus ' tragedy comes about through his fear and anger, and it is these two facets of his character that blind him. Oedipus cannot see because he is too frightened to see. He does not believe in himself as an individual, for clearly he is affected by the words and actions of others to such an extent that he loses himself in rage. Such rage expresses his inability to accept his own self; his anger comes as a reaction to those that challenge his authority in any way. This anger shows that he does not feel himself truly to be the great man that he is considered, for if he were the 'great man' he could not successfully be threatened. Thus Oedipus' insecurity is his blindness. The word translated as misfortune is cruu~opas , but this word can be rendered as luck, either good or bad, and as a chance event. This explains why ouµ¢opas is described as the surf; the waves can be positive, negative, and neutral in their apathetic treatment of a surfer. The waves do not set out to drown the surfer or provide him with a good ride or bore him with small breakers; rather the waves are a natural function of the planet without any intentions or cause to them (other than a merely efficient cause). The surf of cruµ¢opas is pictured as great and fearful because it is man who is responsible for the outcome of the waves; his actions decide whether the luck is good or bad. Oedipus is taken into the horrible world of chance: this is a totally different understanding of the play from the usual speculation that Oedipus is fated and trapped into his tragedy. But it is a solid interpretation: he can react in any way he chooses to the oracle, his father, the plague, Teiresias, Jocasta, the messenger, and the herdsman. And he does so in a consistent manner: with anger and fear. Swept into the world of chance, Oedipus acts in a destructive and insecure fashion. He thrashes around in the surf of ouu¢opas with his actions because his self-perception produces the consequences of the great fearful surf. The play' s tragedy therefore lies in Oedipus 1 being given the chance to make his own consequences. The reason why such 'chance' is tragic is that his true self is relied upon. It is his true self that fails him; it resp onds with decisions that topple him from his throne. Oedipus' horror comes fr om perceiving that his true self is prone to the same mistakes and follies as that of any other man. Sophocles' lesson in Oedipus Tyrannos is not simply for haughty kings trapped in fate. Sophocles writes in such a way that his play is applicable for all men who can strive to see themselves truly and avoid both arrogance and self-deprecation. Through a portrait of Oedipus' being taken into the great fearful surf of misfortune, Sophocles gives the reader an exhortation to stay away from the extremes of conceit and self-hatred and instead to seek after a balance simi l ar to Aristotle's 'mean' in The Ethics and Plato's 'sophro syne' in Cha rmides. 1 o e d i p us Tyr a nno s line 1527, my transla t ion . 37 �I ':~ I I A Translation of Jean De La Fontaine's "The Cat, the Weasel, and the Little Rabbit" James O' Gara LE CHAT, LA BELETTE ET LE PETI T LAPI N A rabbit ' s pala tia l home fe l l, one f ine morning, As spoils to Dame Belette , who, without war ning, Seize'd on it ; her cunning wit was weaselly-The maste r was absent , the thing was done easily . She brought and installed her hearth- gods one day While he had gone to Aur or a , his homag e t o pay Amid the thyme and the r ose . Having grazed , trotteCT , made his rounds , Johnny Rabbit re t ur ned to his abode , unde r gr ound . The intrude r weasel pr essed to the window her snou t. "O hospitable gods! What ha t h caus'd such a r ou t ?" Cried t he animal evicted f r om his ancest r al hous e. "O Madame Belette , Kindly dislodge , else further me upset! Pr ovoke me not the local rats t o r ous e !" "But , " said the lady of the pointed nose, "To the first occupant needs must go the land . Me t hinks t hi s subje ct unwo rthy of t h rea t 'ning po s e-This lowly pit where I have crawled . And , I demand , Were this a kingdom Pr ay tell, what law were i t t o cede Eternal right , " asked she , "unending deed To John , son or nephew of Peter or William , Rather than to Paul- -or better still , t o me ?" John the rabbit invoked custom and ancient code . "It is these laws that have granted me the run Of this my hutch, and that have, from father down to son, From Peter, thence to Simon, then to me, John , fai r ly won . This 'squatter's right,' 'tis mos t unjust and incommode . " "Ah well, sir , let us no more sco r n and scold But take our case," said she, "to Haughty- snou t. " 'Twas a cat who lived as a devout hermi t, Pr acticed in all the arts of the hypocrite , A saintly sort, deck'd out , all big and fat , Pois'd referee , dispenser of much tit - fo r- tat . Johnny Rabbit agrees the cat should ju9ge the case , 38 Du palais d'un jeune Lapin Dame Belette, un be au matin , / S'empara : c'est une rusee. Le Maitre 6tant absent, ce lui fut chose ais~e. Elle porta chez lui ses pe'nates, un j our Qu'il ltait all/ faire~ l'Aur ore sa cour / Parmi le thym et la r osee. Apr~s qu'il eut brout{, trotte', fait tous ses tours, . . /. Janot Lapin retourne aux souterrains seJours. La Belette avait mis le nez~ l a fen~tre. A 11 0 Dieux hospitaliers! que vois-je ici paraitre? Dit l'animal chass{ du paternel logis. Hol~! Madame la Beletee, / Que l'on deloge sans trompette, Ou je vais avertir taus les Rats du pays." La <la~ au nez pointu r~pondit que la terre Etait au premier occupant. "c'ttait un beau sujet de guerre Qu'un l ogis O\i lui-~me il n'entrait qu'en rampant. Et quand ce serait un r oyaume, Je voudrais bien savoir, dit-elle, quelle l oi En a pour toujours fait l'octroi A Jean, fils ou neveu de Pierre ou de Guillaume, Plut~t qu'~ Paul, plut~t qu•}i. moi!" Jean Lapin alltgua la coutume et l'usage: "Ce sont, dit-il, leurs lois qui m'ont de ce logis ~ . . ' Ren d u maitre et seigneur, et qui, d e pere en f i·1 s, L'ont de Pierre 'a Simon, puis a moi, Jean, transmis. Le premier occupant, est-ce une loi plus sage? -Or bien, sans crier davantage, Rapportons-nous, dit-elle, 'a Raminagrobis." C '~tait un Chat, vivant comme un dlvot ermite, Un Chat faisant la chattemi te, U saint homme de Chat, b i en f ourre", gros et gras, n Arb itre expert sur t ous le s cas. Jean LaP.in pour juge l ' agr/e. 39 �See the pair of them arrayed in face Of fur-lined majesty, stuffed with pomp, but claws as mace. Scratch-paw bids them come: "Advance a pace, For I am deaf, infirmity of age the cause." The two approach, gullible both, right to the traitor's jaws. As soon as he has seen the plaintiffs near, Scratch-paw, the good Judas, of canting mind, Engulfs them both in a flurry of claws; and a wave of fear Reconciling the plaintiffs, devours the pair combined. Les voila taus deux arrives . / Devant sa maJeste/ f ourree. Grippeminaud leur dit: "Mes enfants, approchez, Approchez, je suis sourd, les ans en sont la cause." L'un et l'autre approcha, ne craignant nulle chose. Aussit~t qu'~ port{e, il vit les contestants, Grippenminaud, le bon ap"ci'tre, Jetant des deux c~tls la griffe en m~me temps, Mit les plaideurs d'accord en croquant l'un et l'autre. All of which quite resembles the squabbling things Which petty lords argue forth before their kings. Ceci ressemble fort aux d~bats qu'ont parfois Les petits souverains se rapportant aux rois. 40 41 �Streetlight Walter Plourde The streetlamp shines outside the window. The light falls on me all the time when the room is dark, even though a Japanese blind is rolled down, obscuring the light. The glow from the street falls across my knees pulled up tight to my chest; it spreads across her sleeping face, across the cluttered floor, only to be lost in the corners of the room not ten feet from where I sit. I don't know how we survived, she and I, three months in this tiny room. For three months this has been almost my entire world, our self-contained cave, and I'm not sure what spring bubbled up to keep us alive, feed us. Love, I tell myself. I told her the same thing a couple of days ago. I was sitting as I am now, my knees pulled up, arms wrapping my shins, hard wall cramping my back. She was sitting right next to me--the wall never seemed to hurt her back. She turned her head to look at me, her right eyebrow arched high above her pale, blue eye. A scolding glare twisted otherwise smooth features. She covered my face with her hand and slammed my head against the wall. "You sap," she said. She laughed. I laughed, and I chuckle softly now as soft images of love float around my head. Sweet-lipped cherubim dance in dew-kissed grass, and curly-haired cupids gently pierce swooning lovers. But I don't see our love; it's more like a hulking lunk, too dumb to die. The blind rustles against the window. A draft lifts the blind and lets it drop against the window. The air is chilled around me. Cold air enters the room. Warm air leaves, and I am drawn with it. I am drawn to my other room, really my room, because I pay the rent there. And I draw myself out to repeat a stroll taken on a harsh winter morning months ago. An early morning, and I left behind my cold, spare room with its drafty windows. Better to walk the streets in the cold than let the cold creep upon me through the windows. My feet made the only sound on the sidewalk, empty except for a light dusting of snow. The grey, still clouds pulled the world in upon itself, a place for solitude that day. And then her figure from around the corner. She pulled her grey cloak around herself and swooshed by me. She spun me on my heel. "Hey, honey," I said, "What's your hurry?" Empty, vapid speech tossed out on the wind, swirling down the street. I recognized her from a time before. She turned. Her cloak fell open. "Oh, hi," she said. Better for her if she had passed on by, never noticed me; better still if I had stayed in my room and let my teeth chatter together. It's too late. A cold blast from the window brings me back, but it's too late. I am being pulled apart, my pieces spread through everything in this room. I pull back the blind. The direct light hurts my eyes. It feels real, but even the light is taking its piece of me. I let the shade fall back in place, and I look out across myself into the dark room. A goat hair rug covers the floor to the door. The rug is soft and littered with debris. Clothes, books, and papers are scattered in no particular order. Every day 1 42 she says that it's a mess or it's a pig sty. Every day she cleans it, but every night it's messy again. "It messes itself," I tell her. She shakes her head sadly and squeezes my cheeks together with her fingers: "No," she says, "You're a slob." The stereo ~plifier is still on; I reach across her and turn it off. The lamp for the whole room is on the amp. It's a small lamp with a white shade always covered with unused bandanas. Every time I want to read I beg her to remove them. "I can see fine," she says. "But I'm going blind," I tell her, "Now, what could be causing that?" She chuckles: "Probably the same thing that makes your palm rough." I can just make out the books in the far corner near the door. They're not on shelves, not really in any order, but piled haphazardly two feet high. Somewhere.in the pile is the book we fight about. She explains in detail her thesis of ironic, yet sexist symbolism. In the telling she loses her breath, and at the end she pants and stares triumphantly at me. "That's nuts," I tell her. "Chauvinist pig," she says. "Jesus Christ," I say. I slouch down and wait for the attack. "Pig," she says. She need say no more. I waver, and her eyes give the fatal blow; her glare is like a death crazed army crashing itself against my feeble defenses, until I finally yield to the sweetest defeat, self-righteous guilt. "Don't try to be nice to me now, you pig," she says. I chuckle to myself in the dark; she stirs in her sleep. Again, I pull back the blind from the window. I am drawn to the lamp on the corner like a moth, but I am the only moth here. The others have yet to be born. The snow is still on the ground--dirty, spring snow with months of traffic grime coming to the surface. But the streetlight makes the snow look clean, fresh, alive as if it had fallen this night. The light, reflecting off the snow, is like Aegean-blue water. I sit back and let the blind fall shut. I have to squint to see very far into the room--it is growing wider than the Aegean, and a salty spray is filling my eyes. Everything now, all my pieces fly back at me. Everything that is me cuts into me, scratches me, scrapes me, pain upon pain, until my senses die; no hearin~, no sight, no smell nor taste, no touch, but I can feel. I can feel that warm figure sleeping next to me. I can feel each breath, each memory, each hurt. I can even feel her dreams, both happy and sad. I can feel her dreams becoming mine; they are my dreams. Most of all I can feel beauty--outside and inside, so much deep inside her that there's no more room, and it flows out, covering me, raining down on everything. This is hell, I tell myself: eternal damnation is a slow walk through this tiny room. A hand softly touches my arm; she's not sleeping either. "Go to sleep," she says. Her voice is far away, but clear, and it brings me back. "Yes," I say, "That's a good idea." I lie down. My senses return. I can smell her warmth. I can touch her hand. I can see her profile in the dim light . "I l ove you," I say. "Yes," she says ev en further away, but warm and alive. I go t o sleep. She is all ar ound me. Wh en the alarm rings, it is t oo early, and I am t oo tired. I get up anyway. I have t o go t o work. The house this little r oom is in is quiet. No one else fs up, 43 �and that pleases me. I don't want embarrassed shame this morning, no knowing glances . As I'm putting on my clothes, she stirs. She, too, must get up early this morning. She watches me, her eyes half shut, but we don't speak. My clothes cover me, but I feel as if they are covering nothing, as if they move, but I'm not in them. I'm not there; the only thing left is one last memory dropping slowly like a forgotten, slimy tear staining a dead cheek. "I'm going away," she had said, "We can't be together any more . " "Yes, I know. You're right," I had said. I am ready to go. I must leave; I must stay. The distinction is lost on me. I lean down and kiss her. Her arms circle my neck too lovingly and too long. Her face is wet, or maybe it's mine. I walk to the door. "Don't forget to take care of my stuff," she says. "I won't," I say, "Have fun." "I'll try." My throat hurts, and my eyes burn, as a I close the door . I walk out --it is a bleak spring day. The sun cowers somewhere behind a cloud. When I burst into the room later that day, I pray for the impossible. I pray that all is as it was: nothing's changed. I pray she's sitting down, watching tv. I pray she's smiling, waiting for me to get home. She gives me a kiss, and we are happy. I pray many foolish things. The boxes are piled up near the window. The stereo and posters are in boxes. The blind is off the window. The records, books, everything is in brown cardboard boxes. The room suddenly smells stale and musty, as if nothing had ever lived there. She is gone, but I am here . I try to let numbness, emptiness, take over. This is practical, I tell myself, as I carry the first box down to my car. And for every box, I tell myself, I will send them away tomorrow. Yes, that is the practical thing to do. Every box I want to be just as it is: If light, full of nothing, if heavy, full of a lot of nothing. I want, but I can't have. One box I want to throw through the window, another to set down, open, and gently replace the contents where they were. I want everything to be as it was, or I want it never to have been. I want, but I can't have. I come to the last box. As I pick it up, I see that something is written on it. Something is written in bold letters with magic marker. Lt says: I LOVE YOU. I put the box down. I must laugh, though I'd rather not. I would rather scream, cry. Even better weep, weep blood, but I can't have that either. I lift the box again. It is the heaviest box of them all; I laugh. I laugh out loud. Even the distinction between my emotions is lost. "Damn her," I say. I take a step: "Damn her." And each step, damn her. It is my antiphon, every step, damn her. My strophe and antistrophe: Damn her, damn her. The door closes behind me, damn her. Damn her, the box is in the car, damn her. But there, on the back seat of my car, is a simple message: I love you. An old saying pops into my head: If it'd been a snake, it would've bit you. What a song I sing to myself: Damn her, a snake bit you, I love you, damn her, yeah, yeah, yeah. I slam the door, walk around the car, and get in behind the wheel. I lean forward and look up at the streetlamp. It is humming with energy, pulsating with life. Its light is strong and clear. That light is the only thing keeping me and everything from flying apart and into space. The light hurts my eyes. It is cold and I shiver. I drive away. I can't see the streetlight anymore. I imagine that someone, somewhere, is paid to turn the streetlights off in the morning, but I hope he forgets this one. I hope it stays on a long time. THE END 44 An Appreciation of Apollonius I.34 Henry Higuera As upperclassmen will remember, in Book I of his Conics Apollonius demonstrates that there is a surprising and pleasing relationship between the "harmonic mean" and the tangent to an ellipse, hyperbola, or circle: B E A D B Specifically, in I 34 he proves that if AB is the transverse, CD is an ordinate, and E is located so that AB is a harmonic mean between BD and BE , then EC is tangent to the section. One of my very fav o rite memories from sophomore math is the morent when I was up at the board blithering some nonsense about I 34 and two students managed to explain to me the significance of the harmonic mean. On the other hand, some of my other most vivid memories from sophomore math are of whole classes spent slogging through that monstrous proof, with its un-reconstructable construction, its two doublefold footnotes from Eutocius (I always called him "Atrocious" to myself), and Lord knows what else. Remember? The proof has always bothered me, especially in comparison to the beauty of the fact it establishes, and I've spent some time trying to understand why Apollonius did it the way he did. My efforts have paid off to some degree, for I now feel I appreciate the situation which Apollonius faced and the accompJ,.ishment which his particular proof represents. This article is an attempt to spread that sense of appreciation and is dedicated to anyone who will ever go to the board to do I 34. I. First, it seems certain that this proposition struck Apollonius and his original readers differently than it does us, because they m.ust already have known that I 34 was true of circles. Euclid never proves it; but it follows so easily from his method of drawing a tangent from a point outside a circle (III 17) that it must have been common knowledge. Here is Euclid's method (the actual proof is omitted): From a given point to draw a straight line touching a given circle. 45 I I I �Let A be the given point, and BCD the given circle; thus it is required to draw from the point A a straight line touching the circle BCD . For let the centre E of the circle be taken; let AE be joined, and with centre E and distance EA let the circle AFG be described; from D let DF be drawn at right angles to EA, and let EF, AB be joined; I say that AB has been drawn from the point A touching the circle BCD. A II. On to the proof itself. If you look at it (it's on pp. 641-3) you'll remember that it's really in two parts . First comes the terrible part, which is based entirely on Euclid, not on earlier propositions in Apollonius. Then, just after the line rect.BD,DA: rect.BG,GA ) sq.DE: sq.GE Here is the easy proof which demonstrates that I 34 holds for circles: Let there be a circle ACB with center H and diameter AB, CD perpendicular (i.e., ordinatewise) to AB, E on AB produced so that BD:DA : : BE:EA (i.e., so that AB is a harmonic mean between BD and BE), and EC joined. EC is tangent to the circle ACB. For, draw concentric circle EF. At A erect a perpendicular to AB meeting circle EF at G. Join RC and HG (i.e., do not assume that C is on HG: this has~ be proved). Now clearly, BE=AF, while BD:DA so BD:DA But BD:CD and AF:GA so BD:CD .. .. .. .. E [given] AF:EA [Euc. CD:DA GA:EA, D A G B using only Euclid Bk . II and clever manipulations of ratios. (I have not succeeded in doing this, although I have proven it without any constructions by using maxima/minima calculus techniques) . Furthermore, this property is not limited to lines; for example, a version of it holds for Euclidean numbers. If this property had already been proven in some treatise on the harmonic mean, the figures to I 34 should have looked like this: f [Euc. VI 8, Por.] 7, 11] H A GAF is similar to B B AF:GA, being subduplicates of the same and L DBC= L AFG; so (p. 643 1. 5) he brings in a property of conic sections for the first time (I 21), and the proof is f]nished in four more lines. The fact that I 21 gets brought in so late may have alerted you to the important fact that r.BD,DA:r.BG,GA ) sq.DE:sq.GE is a property of the harmonic mean E.z itself; it holds true entirely independently of conic sections. In fact, one could pre sumably prove it without constructing any extra line.s at all, E [Euc. VI 8, Por.] v And the right angles GAF and CDB are of course equal so I say that [ C. N. 3] BE:EA; for the moment their unique characteristics and considering them merely as a "special case" of a conic section . r~tio [Euc. VI 22, note]. [Euc. Post. 4] A CDB [Euc. VI 6] and the whole proof could have taken five lines: L DHC= L AHG as well, being their doubles. [Euc. III 20] Therefore C is on GH and the construction satisfies Euclid III 17. tangent to circle ACB. Q.E.D. Therefore EC is and but so and For, r.BD,DA:r.BG,GA::sq.CD:sq.GH sq.DE:sq.EG::sq.CD:sq.FG; r.BD,DA:r.BG,GA > sq.DE:sq.EG, sq . CD:sq . HG ) sq.CD:sq . FG HG ( FG Q.E.D. [I 21] [Euc. VI 4, 22] [Treatise on Harmonic Mean LXVII 873] [Euc. V 10] In other words, I 34 was not originally the proclamation of a startling new fact about circles. On the contrary, it belongs to that interesting series of proposit~ons which shows that some well-known properties possessed by ci3cles considered as circles also belongs to them considered purely as conic sections. This proposition contributes to one of the most important subplots of the Conics : that suggestion that we can deepen our understanding of the complex simplicity of circles by ignoring Furthermore, this would have helped to highlight what the horrible clutter of Apollonius' proof tends to conceal--namely, that the connection between the harmonic mean and the property proven in I 34 is quite remarkably direct and intimate. 46 47 �I III. Now, the enunciation of the property would have to go something like this: PROP. LXVII 873: If there be four unequal lines, of which the second is a harmonic mean between the first and the third and the fourth is another, random line, then the rectangle contained by the first and the difference between the first and the second has a greater ratio to the rectangle contained by the fourth and the difference between the fourth and the second than the ratio which the square on the difference between the first and the third has to the square on the difference between the fourth and the third. This is an enunciation only Apollonius cases: could love. Furthermore, there are four At A draw a line AX, at any angle, of any length. Bisect it at N. Connect BX and DN, and produce as necessary until they meet at C. From C draw a line parallel to AN until it meets AB at E. I say that ED:DA::BE:EA. (Easy, huh? Here's the proof.) Then so but and so For, from B draw a line parallel to AN = NX, BK:AN: :BK:NX; (Euc. BE:AE::BC:CX::BK:NX (Euc. BD:DA: :BK:AN, (Euc. BD:DA: :BE:EA (Euc. AN until it meets DN produced at K. V 7) VI 4) VI 4) V 11) Q.E.D. Case 1 • • D G Case 2 B Case 3 X E Case 4 'n b, A. E: ~ On top of that, as far as I know, this fact has no application to anything in the total universe except to I 34. So, perhaps it is not surprising that nobody ever bothered to prove it. On the other hand, if one already knows that I 34 is true of circles and one bears in mind Euc. VI 4, 22, and 8, Por., it becomes extremely obvious that this proposition is true at least in Cases 1 and 2: '"' B E "Behold! Rect. BD,DA: rect.BG,GA ) sq.DE: sq.GE!" Notice that this by itself is already enough to prove that I 34 is true for ellipses. Maybe this is what gave Apollonius the hint for how to attack the general problem. Look familiar? These are the first five steps of Apollonius' proof to I 34 run exactly backwards; the constructions look exactly the same (except of course for the angles) as the correspondingly-lettered constructions in Apollonius' figures. No wonder he was able to figure out that AN equalled NX! I'm less impressed by that than I used to be. On the other hand, the proof now looks impressive in an entirely new way. To a reader familiar with this construction, the first part of the proof emerges as an extremely clever and resourceful use of a familiar old device, instead of appearing mind-bogglingly oracular and weird, as it does to us. Also note that in his reverse version (i.e., to prove that AN=NX) Apollonius didn't have to use the particular lengths and angles he did. Any AX bisected at N would have served to prove LXVII 873. By making C in our Figure 5 be the point of tangency in his proof , all he did , basically, was save himself an extra point and a couple of extra lines on his figures (because that way CD is set up an ordinate and CE turns out to be the tangent). The proof would have been just as valid if he'd set up perpendiculars at A, B, and E, with C up somewhere in mid-air, and not brought up the ordinate and tangent until he needed them in the last five lines of the proof: K M IV. But Apollonius obviously wanted to prove LXVII 873 without assuming that I 34 holds true for circles--otherwise the proposition couldn't take its place in the series we mentioned. In figuring out how to do this, he seems to have been helped by another private joke between him and his readers which we hoi polloi tend to miss 21 centuries later. I would bet anything short of money that the following was a commonly-known method of constructing a "third harmonic proportional": Given AB, BD; it is required to place E so that BD:DA :: BE:EA. c Beautiful. E 48 A This is a figure not even Apollonius could love. To my mind, aft er all this muddling and fiddling with I 34, the great difficulty and most admirable achievement of Apollonius' way of proving it is that, using this commonly- known construction, he found a method of proof so powerful that he could show that all four cases of LXVII 873 were true with the same steps. It looks like he really wanted to be able, in I 34, to proceed just as he did in, say, I 21: he really wanted to show that Cases 1 and 2 of LXVII 873 (which only apply to the ellipse and circle) and cases 3 and 4 (which only apply to the hyperbola) have the 49 I �same kind of inner kinship which the circle, ellipse and hyperbola have among themselves. That he managed to do this is a mark of the sure instinct, subtlety, and ambition of his great genius. NOTES 1Andy Freda and Jeremy Lauer (Class of 1986). 2Things are made worse, too, by the fact that Eutocius' N. 2 is very clumsy and roundabout.. If you study it you can write a proof of your own that's three lines shorter. 3other propositions in the series: I 21 (compare Euc. VI 8, Por. and remember that the upright always equals the transverse in a circle, a fact which actually follows from Apoll. I 5); I 32 (compare Euc. III 16); I 47 (compare Euc. III 3); II 6 (compare the other half of Euc. III 3), and II 26 (compare Euc. III 4). It's worth wondering why Apollonius doesn't mention circles in I 15 and I 30. He's clearly drawing some kind of line here (no pun intended). 50 [, �Non-Prof it Org. BULK RATE U.S. POSTAGE PAID St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 PERMIT No. 120 ,ANNAPOLIS, MD. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>Energeia</em> Description An account of the resource <em>Energeia</em> is a non-profit, student magazine, which is published once a year and distributed among students, faculty, alumni, and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis.  Staff welcome submissions from all members of the community -- essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context energeia Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. 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(Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1072b) Staff: Talke Breuer Carloss Chamberlain Barbara Gesiakowski Jana Giles Chris Howell Michael McShane Sarah Waters Co-Editors: Laurie Cooper Joseph Macfarland Faculty Advisor: Jonathan Tuck Energeia is a non-profit, student magazine which is published three times a year and distributed among the students, faculty, alumni and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis. The Energeia staff welcomes submissions from all members of the community-essays, .poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. Note: A brief description of the author accompanies all work not by current St. John's students. Please include some such statement along with your submission. Thank you. �Philosophical Striving Derek O'Brien I CONTENTS PHILOSOPHICAL STRIVING Derek O'Brien 1 PHOTOGRAPHS Greg Ferguson 12 THE ROLE OF PROPOSITION 1.11 IN APOLLONIUS' ON CONIC SECTIONS Brian Sullivan 14 LOVE Mary 17 WENG AT WORK: #3 Leslie Sheppard 18 PHEDRE'S SELF DISCOVERY Andrew Sloniewsky 19 SONNET #9: A CONVERSATION WITH MOTHER, AND AN UNTITLED POEM Dahra Latham 22 THE GAME OF CHESS IN NATHAN THE WISE Mark Ressler 24 APRIL RESIDUE David Walter 26 NEWTON, AND AN UNTITLED DRAWING John Bertram 27 PRIZE WINNING SENIOR ESSAY (1986) A VISION OF THE HAGIA SOPHIA Clayton DeKorne 29 I would rather no one put this essay down thinking it not addressed to himself, or herself, but to "philosophers." What I will attempt to show here is that philosophy, in its true sense is the natural state of the human being; even more, the turning away from philosophy is actually an escape man makes from his very existence. But I first must point out that what I consider to be the genuine philosophic state is not the same as is commonly believed. Indeed, I find the common notion of philosophy carries with it a tragic misconception as to the very direction it should take. Yet this misconception is nothing shameful. It inevitably arises in our outset and only "works its way out" through continued philosophical activity. To show this we will have to follow out this activity from its very beginning to the pdint where the true nature of philosophy arises, by itself, into our view. Thus I begin not from this or that "philosophical viewpoint," but with the way in which I find philosophy begins within myself -- that is, with the desire to know. By this I mean nothing vague, but an actual feeling I experience, one which simply comes over me. It is such a feeling which causes me to ask questions like "Why am I here?" or "What should I do with my life?" Further, it pushes me to look for answers to these questions. Thus, it is a feeling which "bothers" me and which drives me toward activity. But the philosophic desire to know is not t o know relatively in this or that way, but in a universal way--that I have a sense that such a point of view actually exists. Thus, inherent in the philosophical desire to know, in philosophy itself, is the idea of its object: truth. From this we consider philosophy simply as the striving for truth, and insofar as one does this he or she is a philosopher. But how is this striving to take place? How is this goal to be accomplished, a goa l which I seem to know of , so far, only by my desire for it? From the outset I face the question, "What is truth, and what is my relation to it?" The only thing I can do in this posit ion is move blindly. I can only guess "take a stab" at what truth is. We .see this happen historically in the birth of sep~ arate "philosophies." Each one makes its own guess at the universal with the general statement "Everything is "; e.g., "Everything is matter," or "Everything is motion." Were such first attempts seen for their limitations to explain all things, then philosophic striving might find a direction through them toward the universal. But the more common tendency is to cling to these guesses as if they were the truth. In doing so, one must force everything into his system, and what does not fit, that is, what one finds to contradict his opinions, must be disregarded as being "unphilosophic." To explain this tendency of "clinging" we must first distinguish between the desire to know on the one hand and the desire to have knowledge on the other. By the first is meant the spontaneous feeling I have which drives me, in a way blindly, 1 �toward knowledge. It is this feeling which produces philosophical striving. The second desire, though it sounds ~lmost identical, is completely different, perhaps ev~n opposite to the first. It is not a desire which simply comes over me but one which grows out of self-reflection. I wish to see myself as having knowledge, or as ~eing knowledgeable, i:ot to be "lacking" in knowledge. This _ desire does not produce in me a. spirit of striving. Instead, it wants this striving to be done with. It is the desire for a state of rest. This kind of self-judging holds within it an unwarranted shame of, and contempt for, not-knowing. From a quasi-perfectionistic viewpoint I "look down" upon the lack of knowledge as ugly. And perhaps, in the sense that this lacking is simply hard to look at, there is some validity to this view. But, as we shall soon see, it is just this not-knowing which must be outrightly acknowledged and faced in a uncompromising way, if philosophical striving is to continue its course. But what I have ref erred to here as the "tendency to cling" deserves much more elucidation. Indeed, the harm which this "tendency" causes to philosophy at every level cannot be understated. The negative reflection I take upon my state of not-knowing (a state in which I clearly must begin), the desire to see myself as ·a "knowledgeable person," the impatience this produces in me toward achieving my goal, and the attempt to comfort this impatience by resting upon a pseudo-truth, all of this is not merely a wrong turn I make in philosophical striving, but an active and force~ul turn directly against it. These tendencies are not unphilosophical· striving, but an active and forceful turn directly against it. These tendencies are not unphilosophic, but anti-philosophic. What we have discovered here is the supreme enemy of philosophy, an enemy hidden within philosophy itself. It constantly frus trates genuine striving for knowledge. Here it cuts off this striving by stating "Those questions are 'unphilosophic. '" There it blocks the striving by stating "you ~re not philosophizing in the 'right way.'" It does this to keep up a fantasy that it has already somehow accomplished the philosophic task; that it has already found the truth. This hypocrisy, when seen from the point of view of common sense, often results in a complete abandonment of philosophy. The desire to know comes to be seen as a "silly dream," and the task of striving for truth as a waste of time. Philosophy becomes something done in "Ivory towers," completely separated from the "real world." But, insofar as those who take this view find the desire to know within themselves, this becomes a contempt for their very own thinking. These problems and their cause are not unique to philosophy, but are found rooted in the nature of striving itself. All striving is accompanied by a fear of failure, a fear which fights directly against it. With any task I set myself on, I take the risk that I might fail in its accomplishment. My striving might result in nothing. If my striving is to be wholehearted, this possibility must be faced. My desire to know does not bring with it the guarantee that I will be able to achieve knowledge, or that this knowledge even exists. Further it is becoming more and more clear that a wholehearted striving for · truth would constitute an immense struggle; perhaps the greatest one an individual can undertake. As great as this struggle turns out to be, just as great is the risk that the effort will have been spent in vain. Failure is a painful possibility which striving must come up against. Thus philosophical desire inevitably leads to what we may call philosophical despair. There are three ways with which I can deal with this despair. The first is to pretend as if I have already achieved my goal, or, what is essentially the same, pretend as if it is certain that I will achieve it. This is done, in a way already shown, by clinging to a pseudo-truth, or to a pseudo- guarantee that I will reach the truth. This is the way of Naive Philosophy. 2 ,,,, The second is to simply tell myself that the goal is an impossible one to reach. I do this by clinging to the idea that truth does not exist, or at least if it does that it is entirely separate from and beyond me. This is the way of Skepticism. ' Both of these ways cope with philosophical striving, and the pain inherent in it, by killing it, or more precisely, beating it down, since the desire to know does no: cease. "comi~g upon" me •. In the first case I do this by turning my back upon anything which might contradict my precious pseudo-truth. In the second I must continuously repeat to myself "it is hopeless." Both are means of escaping the possibility of failure, the first by telling myself "I can't fail," the second by not even attempting · to succeed. The final way I have to deal with Philosophical Despair is simply to face it. This is to face my present state of not knowing and the possibility that, in spite of whatever striving, I will always remain in this state. Let me point out that when I use the word 'despair' I am not being metaphorical at all. This is very important. It is living pain we face here; indeed, it is intense suffering. If we are not simply to make an "empty gesture," thereby sneaking our way back into Philosophical Naivete, we must make this clear to ourselves. It would be wrong to put down the tendency to cling as being simply a "bad habit." There are strong reasons why we cling to certain beliefs, "philosophies," systems, ideas, etc., and these reasons must be looked at. This clinging not only provides me with the false notion that I have attained the truth, but also with the notion that I have found a place for myself within this truth; that is, it provides me with a sense of meaningfulness. Thus, in facing Philosophic Despair, in facing my not-knowing, this meaningfulness, along with everything else, is thrown into question . I will not be able to avoid asking myself: "Does my life, my entire existence, have any meaning?" And to ask this honestly is to face the possible answer: "No, my existence is utterly meaningless." What could be more difficult than this? This is a good place to make clear a subtle yet very important distinction between the way of Philosophic Despair and Skepticism. Both entail a giving up of the pseudo-truth, and pseudo-meaningfulness, to which I cling, and in this sense Skepticism may be seen as a step toward Philosophic Despair. But Skepticism stops short and clings to the "giving up." It is only through Philosophical Despair that I go on to actually ask this question about my meaning or meaninglessness, and to search out the answer. Both Philosophical Naivete and Skepticism avoid this extremely difficult task: the first by ignoring the question, the second by ignoring the answer. It is clear that the sense of meaningfulness which my clinging gives me is somet hing very comfo r table. It provides for me both a sense of place and a sense of di rection. If I give up this clinging, I come to experience an agonizing sense of being totally lost. I become engulfed in the question, "Who am I?" or more precisely, "What am I?" With this question comes an almost irresistible urge to grab for an answer, any answer at all, anything to give me a sense of belonging, anything to escape this painful suspension in not-knowing. If I resist this temptation, if I do not turn back here, if I willfully plunge deeper into despair, I find myself utterly alone. More than this, having given up all of my pseudo-guarantees about the way things are, the future takes on for me the character of the completely unexpected. I can have no sense of what will happen next, of where I will "end up." I feel entirely dirfctionless. It seems as if I am dropping into a black abyss of "What am I to think?" There is a break in my argument which cannot be avoided here. 3 What I will at- �, tempt to show in the second half of this essay is what I believe we discover through philosophical despair. In doing so, I will primarily use the ideas put for th by Edmund Husserl, because it seems to me that his is the same "attitude" or "path" we will come upon. The sense I do not wish to give is that we now get "the answer," that this is what our despair has guaranteed for us. This, of course, completely destroys the nature and value of the despair itself, since despair must be the giving up of all guarantees. Our "discoveries," insofar as we anticipate them, are not really discoveries at all. A criticism might be made that I am, in what follows, resting upon Husserl, that is, clinging to "Husserl's Philosophy." This deserves serious attention. Thoughts which are the product of the most genuine striving for truth can, and very often do , "flip flop" on us and become objects to which we cling. The fact is, insofar .a s we cannot face Philosophical Despair , this clinging will be something we simply cannot help doing. On the other hand, insofar as we have faced this despair we do not have to worr y that the thoughts which are presented to us will manipulate our beliefs. It is the desperate need for ~ truth which is manipulated in this way, and it is just this nee~ which Philosophical Despair painfully gives up. All of this will be mad,e clearer as we go on. II Once I have felt this despair, or once I have gone through this despair, or better, once this despair has run fully through me, I awaken to find, for the first time, that this terrifying abyss, which I have kept myself from falling into by clinging to anything I could, is an illusion. I do not fall into black nothingness. My consciousness does not die. Instead, things come to me . I "see this piece of paper," I "feel this chair," I "hear this noise." These things cannot be part of any "system of the way things are," not even part of the "scientific obj ec ti ve world," because all such "sys t ems" and "worlds" I have given up . They are simply things I find pr esent t o me . Indeed , when I "look up" I find presented to me an entire field of sense, an i n finite field filled with things . More than this, this field of sense is not new to me . All of it is presented with a sense of familiarity. This "Here and Now" is no t given to me blankly . Along with it I f i nd an inf i nite field of memories which relate my present state to an entire past. I can recall other "places I have be en", "people I know", "things I have done", etc. And, on the other side, I am given a sense that all of these things present to me will not simply disappear ; that is , they will continue on into a fu t ure . Indeed, what is present to me is an entire world in which I live, th e Life- Wo r ld as Husserl calls it. It is the world "in which I live and br eathe" , "in which I deal with other people", "in which I find likes and dislikes" , "in which I cope" , "in which I catch myself daydreaming", "in whi ch I brush my teeth ", etc . It is so present to me that I don't even have to think about it , so pr e s ent t hat i t has always been there for me . As Husse r l states : Is not the life wo r ld as s uch what we know be st, wha t is always taken for granted in all human life , always familiar to us in it typology through expe r ienc e ? (The Crisis, p . 123) To push the point: the Life-World is not present to me as entirely new. 4 What is new, what is now radically different, is my relation to it, for now it is simply present to me. I am no longer compelled to say what this Life-World before me "actually means." I do not have to define it as "an objective world of things in themselves," or "a world of matter," or even as "a world of pure illusion." I make no claims at all as to its existence. It is simply "there" for me, "there" as phenomenon. I find myself in a state of "non- position taking" toward my experience Husserl's Epoche. I have stepped out of the "current of ever new experiences, judgments, evaluations, decisions" which are always "directed toward objects in the surrounding world." I have become a "disinterested observer" or the Life-World. I am no longer "naively absorbed" in it. This does not mean that I no longer experience the world. It means that this experiencing self has now come under my view. This is not a "view", an "interpretation" bestowed upon the world. Every view about ... every opinion about 'the' world, has its ground in the pregiven world. It is from this very ground that I have freed myself through the epoch; I stand above the world, which has now become for me, in quite a peculiar sense, a phenomenon. (The Crisis p. 152) But this "peculiar sense" must be elucidated, for, from a naive point of view, this state of the epoche can be severely misunderstood. Natural misconceptions arise in the face of this separation between myself and the Life-World. I am struck with the fearful notion that I am now to become cold, distant, and impersonal to this world. But, insofar as one really does attain this state, this rejection is not necessary at all; in fact, in the end, the exact opposite turns out to be the case. If we reflect back we find it was actually in my previous state of clinging that I was rejecting the world. The beliefs about this world to which we cling determine everything we see; that is, if we are going to be able to keep these beliefs as the "truth" we will have to close our eyes to any experience which might contradict them. In this way I really imprison myself within an ordered structure through which all of my experience must fit. In the act of clinging I place blinders upon myself. I must actively ignore at least part of the Life-World. But it is just this clinging which I give up when I enter the epoche; or,more precisely, i t is only by giving up this clinging that I can even arrive at this state. I am not here rejecting the Life-World but fully accepting it for the first time. I remove the blinders which have been hiding this world from me, and hiding me from it. This there is no longer anything to restrict me in my experience. I let the Life-World come to me as it will. And much more c ome s t o me than s imply perc eptions . I also d i scover dreams, wishes, fantasies, emotions, etc., in their own modes of presentation. Thus I find in my experience "this pain", "this attraction", "this pleasure in the company of a friend" . Further, even thoughts and judgments can~ to me. But they are now present only as relative and subjective since I no longer cling to them as the truth. We can now explain the initial misconceptions and fears concerning the epoche. The misunderstanding rested on a naive sense that this is a state into which I force myself, an attitude I try to attain so that I may see things in the "right way." But, clearly, this forcing would destroy the epoch itself, since it would then become simply another ground to which I cling. This state is not one in which I see things in this or that way, but one in which I simply find myself "seeing" that is, experiencing. But we have yet to make clear what an extraordinary position this is in which one finds himself. He sees now, for the first time, what awesome control his pseudo - truths have had over him. In his stubborn clinging, he had actually been placing a philosophical authority over himself; an authority which checked and directed his 5 �every thought. When one no longer depends upon it to cling to, this authority simply disappears. He no longer has .!£ think in this or that way. In fact, he no longer has to think at all. He has reached a state of philosophical autonomy. But along with this new found freedom of thought comes a responsibility in thought. He realizes he can no longer rest upon "knowledge" which is given to him. Any knowledge he is to claim he will have to have discovered for himself. Thus his attention turns from supporting 2beliefs to seeing what is really there before him, what he really knows: phenomena. With this now uninhibited attitude we can begin paying attention to the world present to me. Let us, then, patiently observe this field of sense I find myself within. Among this multitude of things, one, say "this chair", "catches my eye" and my attention turns towards it. Already we may notice that "this chair" is present to me as a thing, even if it is in the most general way. It is something which I am conscious of. But "this chair" is not present to me simply as I perceive i t in the strictest sense -- that is, as only blank data given to me. Though my experience is always in the present, the living now, I am somehow aware of more. First of all, "this chair" which is present to me now is present as the same thing which was present to me in a now just past. Further, if I "move my head," I find my perceptions change, but I do not thus perceive different things. They are still present as perceptions of "this chair." But say I "close my eyes." Now "this chair" is no longer present to me. Yet ~ti~l in s~me sense I retain it as "that which was just now present but now no longer is. And if I reopen my eyes, what I find present is not a new "this chair" but "the same thing which had been present to me before." Or even suppose that when I "reopen by eyes" I do not find it to . be present again. Still it remains for me "that which was 'there' but not no longer is 'there; '" that is, I am aware of it as the thing which has "disappeared." I find this to be the same with anything I "turn toward . " Throughout the ever changing flow of my consciousness, the thing upon which my attention has focused remains for me this one thing. I find that whatever I experience is present to me as what Husserl calls an intentional object: "A unity which 'appears' continually in the change of the modes of its giveness." (p. 80). This I simply did not notice before I had reached my state of the epoche, since then I was so concerned over what the thing was that I could not observe how it was a thing for me at all. As we shall discover more and more, this intentionality, this fact of experience , is the key to explaining what was before simply unexplainable. We find that all of experience has what we may call, after Husserl, a Horizonal Structure. I experience nothing as being completely contained within what is strictly present to me. I always have with it an awareness of there "being more," a "beyond" which is not present. With everything actually given, horizons are awakened; thus, if I see the front of a motionless thing-like object, I am conscious, within the horizon, of the back of the object, which I do not see. (Experience and Judgment, p. 82) It is only because of this that my interest toward an object can grow, for if it were given to me "completely" and "all at once" then what would there be for me to "look for?" Now I can turn toward the object with a sense of discovery, making it my "theme." In this firm orientation on the object, in the continuity of the experience of the object, there is an intention which goes beyond the given and tends toward a progressive plus ultra. It is not only a progressive have-consciousness-of but a striving toward a new consciousness in the form of an interest i~ the en- 6 ~ richment of the 'self' of the object which is forthcoming eo ipso with the prolongation of the apprehension. Thus the tendency of the turning-toward continues as a tendency toward complete fulfillment. (Experience and Judgment, p. 82) With this sense of "striving" toward an object" we clarify the nature of striving itself. All striving is toward something to be attained and thus beyond what I "have;" that is, what is present to me. Thus, for there to be striving there must be intentionality. Given this sense, I strive toward my original object. I "walk around to the other side" of it, so that this now becomes present to me. I "touch" it. I "look underneath" it. In doing so, more of the object becomes present to me than when I first tur ned toward it. I am "fulfilling intentionalities." Thus my initial hori zons are expanded out to ever new horizons. But, even though the horizons are new, even though the object is continually changing for me, they still remain the horizons of this object; that is, this one thing remains as that which is changing. But so far we have only focused upon what I find "in" the object present to me, its "internal horizons." But I discover beyond the fact that it is always present to me as itself, that it is never present to me !?.z_ itself. If I now "look away" from my first object, though retaining it intentionally, to what is "next . to" it, I am given its relation to something else. "This chair" is smaller than "this table." Thus I am pointed toward the relational determinations of the object its "external horizons." As we have already noticed in passing, the things which are present to me I find not only in relation to my field of sense but also in relation to what I take as an entire life. Nothing is ever present as entirely new to me. The object is present from the very first with a character of familiarity; it is already apprehended as an object of a type more or less vaguely determined and already, in some way, known. (Experience and Judgment p. 113) With this relation of type or likeness we begin to see that I do not have only particular objects present to me. We discover a new realm of experience. A realm of unity which we will find to be separate· from that of particulars, but also, in a remarkable way, tied to it. This new realm can be shown in our use of words. Suppose that within my field of sense I turn toward an object A and, "pointing it out," name it as "this book." La t e r , ano t he r objec t , in its internal dete r mina t ions, to t he fi r s t , which I have "retained in grasp," and discover object A to be like object B. I thus name this second object "that book." -But from here I may place objects A and B in the background and take up as my theme the likeness itself which has "arisen out of" the unity of my experience of the particulars. Thus I no longer refer to "this or that book," but to the "concept of book," or "book in general." When I use the work "book" in this new way I am no longer "pointing to" an object present to me, or even to a plurality of objects which I have grouped together. What I mean by the word; that is, what I intend by it, is that which all of the particular objects have in common -- that which unifies them. And this refers not simply to the particular objects I have found in my experience, but any possible particular I could have an experience of, any one of an infinitude of particularizations I can imagine. We should make it clear that in my use of words here I am not, as might be suspected, "doing something to" my experience. I d0 not "make up" the concept. It is 7 �,, simply a unity between objects I have discovered within my experience, indeed it is this unity which explains why I use the same word in the first place. From this point of view, concepts are no longer mysterious things which simply "pop into my head." They are instead things present to me, as perceived objects are, but in a different manner. Concepts are unities I experience. Let us elucidate this new manner of presentation. First we find that "this concept" is present to me as an intentional object. What are strictly given to me here are particulars, but, though they are separate from each other, they are each present as a particular of this unity. Thus concepts have a horizonal structure. What is intended by the concept is an infinitude of various particulars falling under this unity. But, obviously, I do not have this infinitude present for me. Therefore, I am not given the concept "completely" and "all at once , " but am aware of a "beyond;" indeed , an "infini t e beyond . " This is an awareness of all of the possible particulars which I do not "see." As soon as an open horizon of like objects is present to consciousness as a horizon of presumptively to consciousness as a horizon of presumptively actual and real possible objects, and as soon as it becomes intuitive as an open infinity, it gives itself as an infinitude of particularizations of the SAME universal. (Experience and Judgment p. 328) Thus I may direct myself toward the concept with the sense of discovery. From having first turned toward the concept in "uttering" it, since using the same word toward separate objects "pointed to" their unity, I now "strive toward a new consciousness" of it, "as a tendency toward complete fulfillment." But clearly I don't strive toward the concept in the same way as I do toward an object of perception. I can't "walk around to its other side," or "touch it." Instead, I approach it in thought. This takes place as I "try to say" what the concept " is. " In doing this I "run through" or "go over" variations wit hin t he concept to discover, in my single line of thought, what remains constant. This is a paying attention to the unity of the particulars. The essence proves to be that without which an object of a particular kind cannot be thought, i.e., without which the object cannot be intuitively imagined as such . (p. 341) In this way, by "exercising the concept" or "playing with the idea," I become more f amiliar with it. M etaphor i cally speaki ng, I am " seeing its different sides, " and thus it becomes more "sensible" to me. But since the concept intends an infinitude of possible variations, my "making sense" of it must be an infinite process. There are, as it were, an infinite number of "sides" to "see." Here we find the unique nature of my relation to the universal. Toward it my striving is never completely satisfied. My goal, as such, is never quite attained. I never come to possess the truth. Instead, what my striving does give me is an ever growing universal sense. A sense which tends toward its complete fulfillment, i.e. truth, as an "infinite ideal goal." If I am to continue my philosophic striving I must content myself with this, and the "all or nothing" attitude upon which Naivete and Skepticism are based must be. given up. · But more must be said about this universal sense and the way in which it grows. So far it might seem as if it is strictly through thinking that this growth takes place, that in striving toward truth I now cut myself off from the Life-World and find myself in a "pure" realm of thought. This is simply not the case. In fact, 8 this separation is really naivete slipping back upon us. To show this we must turn back to the fact that it is from the unity of my experience of the Life-World that concepts arise for me in the first place. But does this mean I should then turn all of my attention here to "find" the universal? No, for we find, on the other hand, that this Life- World is familiar to me only by virtue of the fact that it conforms to concepts I have. What we discover here is a peculiar relationship between the realm of thought and the Life- World (Which we may also ref er to as the realm of action since it is in this way that I fully immerse myself in the particularity of this world . ) . The universal is not to be "found" in either . Instead it grows out from a motion between the two; a "shift of attention" between unity and particularit y. If I attend only to unity and turn my back upon particulars, my concepts sit stagnant. They are unities, but empty ones. My universal sense always remains in a state of naive simplicity. If, on the other hand, I attend only to particulars and turn my back upon uni t y , then, in simply ignoring the fact that it is present to me , the concept sits "untouched . " I might experience a great deal, but I experience it all as disunified and senseless . My universal sense remains always in a state of skeptical chaos. Thus it is only through experience of both unity and particularity that my uni versal sense can grow. This growth takes place through a continuous flux back and forth between the realm of thought and the realm of action. In this flux, my concepts are constantly being expanded from their previously naive states by the admission of ever new variations, and, on the other hand, the particulars I make preserit to myself become ever more familiar to me under "richer" concepts . But all of this should be made clearer. Let us take, for example, then, the concept of friendship. I might spend enormous thought over this concept, contemplating the nature of the "perfect friend." Yet, if I remain strictly in the realm of thought, if I neve r actively engage in a friendship with all of its complex moments, the variations which fall und er t he concept , which give the concept its infinite determination , never be I am come present to me. I do find a unity, but its true nature remains hidden. left, pe rhaps, with the naive notion that friendship is "always being nice to some one . " On the other hand , I might eagerly seek out companionship with others, and in doing so come upon genuine moments of friendship. But, if I remain strictly within the realm of action, if I never think about what I mean when I call someone my "friend , " then the moments are left scattered and senseless. My "friendship" is ac cidental. I am a "friend of whim," a "friend" when it suits me. But how is such an indi f ferent relationship really friendship? It is possib l e, though, for me to both engage in a friendship and think about it. When I do this, I find my friendship takes on qualities I hadn't expected, such as perhaps keeping my friend fro~ being too dependent upon me. This leads me to question what friendship really is. As this sense increases, I am able to recognize more and more the limits of my friendship; moments, say, when I subtly manipulate my friend for my own gain. This pushes me to correct such habits. Thus, both in thought and in action, I come closer and closer to true friendship. The concept becomes more and more "alive." My sense of what it really means for me to concern myself with the existence of another person grows. Let us retrace our steps . Philosophy b egins in the r e alm of thought and at first believes , naively, tha t it should r emain there . This is due to the misconception that its task is to possess 9 �,,,, the truth in right concepts or correct thoughts. This task is eventually proved impossible by experience, and philosophical despair is encountered. If philosophy in its true sense is to continue, this despair must be faced . When this is done philos ophy is raised to a new level, one of autonomy and wholehearted striving. Freed of his need to cling, one sees himself as he is in the Life- World, the world of common sense which naive philosophy originally turned its back upon. But he discovers that his experience takes place both within a realm of action and a realm of thought. The philosophic . task is no longer to possess the universal but, in a continuous flux between these two realms, to grow toward the universal; this is the never completed growth of universal sense. From the point of view of the epoche, I do not see myself as frozen within a world, but as an active part of the world. I find in thi. world not simply pers ceptions given to me, but also my relations with others , my emotions , my effects upon the world. Do these things not deserve my attention? Should they not also be sub ject to my thought? Should I spend no effort to try to make sense of them? What we have uncovered here is the misleading character of the question "Is the human being primarily an active being or a thinking being?" The fact is he is both ! Action and thinking are interwoven throughout human life . Action gives him experience which can become the "material" for thought; and thought, in turn, gives him a greater sense for what actions he should take. In this interaction his concepts come ever closer to the particulars wh~ch fall under them. His universal sense grows . We can see now that the unnecessary choice he makes between these two realms of existence is really a choice between two means he may use to escape this struggle. In taking refuge in one or the other he can avoid facing his imperfection, his limitations, his not-knowing. But sadly, in taking such refuge, he never becomes aware of what tremendous sacrifice he makes. In clinging to one realm and turning his back on the other, he cuts himself off from his own existence. He performs an act of pure self-sacrifice. It is only by giving up the need he feels to be grounded here or there that man is able to accept his being in its entirety. This sheds light on all of the parallels we drew between the practical and the philosophical spheres. The moral epoche and the philosophic epoche are one and the same state. It is a state of "free-floating" attention between the two realms of his existence. But this freedom does not, as we constantly fear, lead to his becoming totally lost. All of his thoughts do not fall apart into nonsense. All of his actions do not become amoral. It is the opposite reaction which actually happens . Because his two realms of experience are no longer split, he can no longer comfortably think one thing and do another. Thus, not a single thought is taken any longer to be "just a t hough t, " no r a single action taken to be "j ust something I happen to do . " Nor , for that matter, is a non-action taken as "just something I happen to not do," since non-action is now also recognized as a choice. Thus philosophy, the state of the epoche, is a state of responsibility. In being able to attend to both realms of his existence, man becomes painfully aware of their distance from each other. This produces in him a spirit of striving to bridge this distance by giving up misconceptions on the one side, and redirecting actions on the other. In this way he grows toward a unity of thought with the Life-World: a perfect unity of self . But, since this distance is infinite, this growth never reaches complete fulfillment . Again and again, from the point of view of the epoche , man will encounter his hypocrisy. His only choice is either to give up his growth or to face a constant state of striving. This is not "metaphysical gibberish . " It is simple common sense. One night in a poolhall, two players at the next table caught my attention. The younger was los ing every game, and obviously becoming frustrated. As his frustration grew, his game 10 became worse and worse . Finally he missed a shot one could hardly help making. "God damn!" he said , dropping his stick . He looked up to the older player and asked , "What's wrong with me?" To this, his opponent offered him no flattery that he was sure to get better, nor told him to give up . Instead he said matter-of-factly, "All you can do is keep on trying." Endnotes 1 We may draw a number of parallels here to my practical sphere of existence. Here I desire and strive toward the Perfect Will, but the fear of failing in this leads me to moral despair. I can deal with this despair by 1) clinging to a pseudo- morality made up of rules which I simply assume are right (moral naivete), 2) giving up entirely on trying to direct my actions toward a right (moral skepticism), or 3) facing the despair. In following the final path, I become lost, only here the abyss I face is one of "What am I to do?." 2 The moral parallels continue: Here , following despair, I find an infinite field of possible actions before me, but I have stepped out of the current of inclinations and obligations. I find myself in a state of moral epoche . I free myself from a moral authority which I had placed over myself, and, no longer having to do this or that, I reach a state of autonomy of will. But with freedom of action comes responsibility in action. No longer resting upon others' ideas of right and wrong, I can no longer blame anyone or anything for my actions. Everything I do is now based on my own choice. All .quotations in this paper are taken from Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment, trans . James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks, Northwestern University Press; and Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans . David Carr, Northwestern University Press. 11 �12 13 �The Role of Proposition 1.11 in Apollonius' On Conic Sections 2. sq. LK:sq. L'K'::ML,LN: M'L', L'N' (Eucl. I.7) 3. But LN=L'N' (since ACuFG and LNttZN, by Eucl. I.34) 4. with LN as common height, sq. LK:sq. L'K': : ML:M'L' (Eucl Brian Sullivan VI.l) • 5. But ML:M'L'::FL:F'L' (Eucl. VI.4) 6. sq. LK:sq . L'K'::FL:F'L' In examining the structure of a work which intends to persuade us through a series of logical propositions, we must take great care in determining the true dependence of proofs upon one another . The use of the enunciation of an ear lie r proposition in a later one may be misleading in this respect : It may occur that a logically prior fact may follow what is, in the order of proofs, its posterior. By "prior" I mean 1. closer to first principles in following from them more directly (following with the necessary introduction of the fewest intervening new facts) aQd 2. more essential to the study, in being that upon which all later facts proven depend completely for their demonstration. Propositions Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen of Book I of Apollonius' Conic Sections may be considered misleading in terms of their priority within the structure of the book . Apollonius presents these three as the definitive propositions for the parabola, hyperbola, and ellipse: he distinguishes the sections by their relationship to the axial triangle perpendicular to their plane and then demonstrates what might be considered the most essential property of each section itself (that is, without reference to the cone) -- the relationship of any ordinate to its abscissa. From these three propositions Apollonius derives all later facts about the conic sections, and thus it would seem that by our second criterion for a logically prior fact, they are the most essential property of the conic sections. But if these we re the essential p r opositions fo r discover ing t he p r ope rt ies of the conics, it should be impossible to discover a more basic property than theirs or to discover any properties of the conics without passing through their steps or using their enunciations. And yet this is possible with all three propositions: Propositions I.20 and I.21 concerning the ratios or ordinates to one another may be proven entirely independently of I.11 - 1.13, though Apollonius derives them from these three . And with I . 20 and I. 21 proven it is then possible to prove all of the properties of the conics that depended formerly upon propositions eleven through thirteen for their demonstration. And yet these propositions for I. 20 and I. 21 i n d ependent of I . 11-1 . 13 are much shorter and simp l er than what Apollonius gives as their antecedents. This paper will focus on the par abola in investigating the interdependence of these propositions in their bearing on the structure of Book I of the Conics. Proposition I.20, which demonstrates that the squares on the ordinates of the parabola are to one another in the ratio of their respective abscissas, may be proven without reference to the parabola's "definitive" proof (I. 11) in this way: (Figure 1) Let there be supposed a cone with vertex A and with base BC cut by an axial triangle ABC . Let this cone be cut by a plane such that its intersection with the cone's base, line EGD, is perpendicular to the base of the axial triangle, BC, and such that the sections's diameter, FG, is parallel to one side of the axial triangle, AC. Let two random points K and K' be taken on the section and let the straight lines LK and L'K' be dropped from these points parallel to ED. Let MLN and M'L'N' be drawn through the sides of the axial triangle both parallel to BC . Then - E Since the ordinates for this proof were taken randomly, it is evident that any two such will b~ar in square a ratio ~o one another as their abscissas. A similar proof may be carried out for I.21 proving for the case of the ellipse and the hyperbola that the ordinates are to one another as the rectangles formed from the lines cut off by them from the ends of the transverse diameter. But once I.20 has been proven, it may be used to replace proposition I.11 in all propositions concerning the properties of the parabola that call for it. (The propositions from I. 52 do not essentially concern themselves with the properties of the parabola.) For instance Proposition I.26, proving the existence of a family of monosecants parallel to the diameter of any parabola, may be proved using I.20 rather than I.11. The proof shows (figure 2) that given a line EFL drawn parallel to the diameter BGAC one can necessarily find some ordinate CH greater than an ordinate wise line (EG) drawn from the parallel to the diameter, for if EG is shorter than the parallel must intersect CH below H and thus also must intersect the section. Apollonius proves that CH is greater than EG by making the rectangle of the parameter AD and line AC equal to the square on EG; so if an ordinate CH is drawn from point C to the section, its square will be equal to the rectangle DA, AC and thus greater than the square on EG. Apollonius r e lies on Proposition I. 11 for the determination both of a particular paraola and of its parameter. (One cannot say "Let there be .. . " something without having discovered that "something" from first principles. One cannot say "let there be parameter AG" without knowing how to determine the parameter of some particular parabola.) The same proposition is crucial in showing that the rectangle on the parameter and abscissa is equal to the square on the ordinate. But our proof using I.20 demonstrates that it is not necessary to find the parameter of a particular par abola (albeit, a parabola randomly chosen) in order to prove the property of I.26: L 6 1. 2. 3. 4. Let there be drawn straight line XY dropped ordinate wise from a random point Y on the section. Let GE:AC(YX:XA then GE:AC(CH:AC since YX:XA::CH:CA by I.20 therefore GE(CH and line EF must meet the section. 1. sq. LK=ML, LN; sq . L'K' =M'L', L'N' (for reasons given in I . 11) 14 15 �Two other proofs prior to I.52 rely on I.11 in an identical manner (namely, I.27 and I.32) and may also use I.20 to be proven. Thus all of the properties of the parabola may be demonstrated without any reliance whatsoever on the "definitive" proposition for the parabola, since all of the propositions showing the properties of the parabola (with the exception, of course, of I.11 itself) may rely on I.20, which has been proven entirely independently. Even the property of I.11, that is, the equality of the square on an ordinate to the rectangle of the parameter and the abcissa, may be proven in a general way from I. 20. If the abscissas are to one another as the squares on their respective ordinates, then one may take anv common hei~ht H. and say that the squares on the ordinates are to one another as the rectangles formed of their respective abscissas and side H (by Euclid VI.l). Alternating this, it becomes evident that all ordinates must bear the same ratio to the rectangle formed by H and t heir resp ective abscissas. But H may have any length, and thus this ratio may be set at equality by merely adjusting H so that some rectangle formed by H and their respective abscissas. But H may have any length, and thus this ratio may be set at equality by merely adjusting H so that some rectangle formed by it and an abscissa will equal the square on the abscissa's ordinate. Thus it is evident that any parabola must have such a line H with the properties that are associated with the parameter. This is a "general" proof for the parameter in that it states that all parabolas have such a line H, rather than that parabola A (being from a specific cone and having a determinable relationship with its axial triangle) must have parameter H. I.11 expresses this property in the latter way. The "general" case is clearly deductible from the specific: If any parabola is of axial triangle A and distance from its vertex to the cone's vertex B it must have parameter C bearing a fixed relationship to the parabola itself. It clearly follows that for any parabola such a line bearing that same fixed relationship must exist. It is for this reason that Apollonius' proof for I.20 is not convertible; it is impossible to deduce the specific relationship (which Apollonius uses in the proposition) from a general relationship. The reason that I. 20 may be used to determine all properties of the parabola with the exception of I. 11 is that evidently, all of these properties are of the general category: none specifies a property of a specific parabola, but rather of the parabola as a species~ It is evident then that I.20 may be considered the logically prior fact of all those concerning properties of the parabola as a species. But at the same time one cannot consider I. 20 to be the most essential property of the parabola absolutely, for while I.20 need not follow from I.11 it is impossible that I.11 should follow from I.20. From I.11 all other properties of Book one may follow, though they do not depend absolutely upon it, while this cannot be said of I.20. 16 Love Mary How curious that one brief flash of light From one eye to another can create A flame that no mere tinder could ignite A fire that won't in rain or cold abate. A wondrous thing, that accidental touch Of hand to hand could strike a spark so strong A passion that, opposed by ne'er so much, Continues, as true hearts to each belong. Unusual, that one abrupt embrace Though clumsy, should initiate such bliss That two quite separate beings face to face Should find themselves united in a kiss. It seems that love is wayward, not unkind. And chance, for him that waits, a lover finds. 17 �Phedre's Self Discovery Andrew Sloniewsky The shadow of death hangs over both the first and last appearances of the queen in Racine's Phedre. Tormented and driven in the first scene, Ph'edre claims that she is trying to kill herself through exhaustion. The slowness of her method, however, and the fact that her decision can be easily reversed both point to a certain lack of resolve. In fact, Ph'edre is postponing her death because she does not know what she really wants nor, b( extension, who she really is. By the last scene, however, this has changed, and Phedre exhibits a true unity of soul. Standing within the steady light of self - knowledge, Phedre is able to face with calmness and dignity the darkness of her approaching death. In spite of her motion toward enlightenment, at least two qualities of Ph"edre's personality remain constant throughout the play. The first of these is the importance to her of her family relations. At various times in the play, Ph~dre mentions her grandfather, father, mother, sister and sons. A second enduring aspect of Ph'edre' s character is the highly poetic nature of her mind. Hippolyte in his chariot, herself in the labyrinth, and the final vision of Hades, are some of the fruits of this strong imagination. Although both of these characteristics are important parts of Ph~dre's personality, they are not the ones which strike the audience most immediately in her first scene. Rather, it is Ph~dre's psychological torment and confusion of soul which are most striking . Within her first ten lines, Ph~dre, exasperated by the painful knots in her hair, demands to know who has tied them. Oenone's response to her, that she herself ordered it done, symbolically points to Ph'edre 's confusion about what she wants . This confusion is based on three competing ideas of the good which are only fully unfolded later in the play, but which are nonetheless latently present in Act I, scene iii. Ph'edre' s deep and abiding desire to be morally pure is the first of these competing claims. This desire makes her hate her love for Hippolyte, regardless of the fact that her passion .has not become public. It is Ph~dre' s need to be pure which moves her to say to Oenone, "Gr~ces au ciel, mes mains ne sont point criminelles./Plut aux Dieux que mon coeur fut innocent comme elles!" (I,iii,221,222). Similarly, she later tells Hippolyte, "Je m'abhorre encor plus que tu ne me detestes." (II, iv, 6 78). This st Fong need to be virtuous is what gives Ph'edre her nobility and moral stature. Despite the sincerity of this wish to be moral, the effective power of this sentiment is not very great. When she first felt love for Hippolyte, Ph~dre's imagination and concern for family led her to think of her mother and sister. With them as examples, she immediately assumed that it was a great god, Venus, who had planted this love inside her. Having fallen into fatalism from the very moment she saw Hippolyte, by the time of the pl~y, Ph\dre has abandoned any real hope of banishing this love from her heart. The queen reveals her belief in her powerlessness many times, such as when she tells Oenone that, with respect to her mind, "Je l'ai perdu: les Dieux m'en ont ravi l'usage," (I,iii,181) , or when she tells Hippolyte that she is an "Object infortune des vengeances celestes," (II,iv,677) . In her first scene, Phedre's desire to be virtuous is closely related to another 18 19 �desire, and the two are only fully separated later in the play. This second impulse . . · is Ph' d re ' s d esire a 1ways t o appear virtuous . " La rogeur me couvre le visage : / Je te e laisse trop voir mes honteuse douleurs," (I ,i ii,182 ,183), she cries t o Oenone, after nearly letting slip her secret. The need to be respectable is tied to Ph'edre's concern for her family in at least two ways. First, respectability fears shame as a punishment, and the power of shame comes from a fear of being separated from a gr oup, of being made to stand alone. In Ph~dre 's case, this would mean exclusion from a group which is very important to her, her family. Secondly, if Phedre were to reveal her crime, she would cause her children to suffer the fate of being despised as offspring of a near-criminal. Together, the desire for respectability and for true virtuousness are fighting a third motive of Phedre's actions, namely her love for Hippolyte. This love is centered ar ound the young man's virtue, the fact that he is "fidele •.• fier , et meme un peu far ouche," (II, v ,638 ) . Perhaps Phedre is particularly attracted to this aspect of Hippolyte because she thinks herself married to a "Volage adorateur de mille objet s divers," (II,v,636 ) . It would be deeply ironic if this love of virtue were to inspire such vice. At any rate, this love for Hippolyte is fairly well controlled in Act I, scene iii by Phe dre's other two motives, though it can still burst out through the imagination, as it does in the vision of Hippolyte in his chariot, or as it does later, in the labyrinth image. All three of these c ompeting forces are exerting their influence on Phedre in her first scene, and bo th of the moral desires are pushing her to suicide. The need for true moral purity is speaking when Ph'edre says, "J 'en ai trap prolong{ la coupable duree." ( I,iii,217). Only a few lines later, it is fear of shame which speaks: "Je meurs, pour ne point faire un aveu si funeste." (I,iii,226) . In spit e of these impulses, Ph'edre chooses to die slowly, not having within her the kind of resolve which would persuade her to plunge a dagger into her heart. Why is Ph'edre waiting? It is death's horrible irrevocability t hat stops her. One would choose dea th only if one knew both what one must necessarily have, and the world ' s necessary inability to supply it . The irrevocability of death must be mirrored in the irrevocability of one's despair. The mere desire for Hippolyte, regardless of the fact that Ph'edre consciously thinks it evil and unattainable, lessens the force of the queen's first two motives. Because they do not represent all that Phedre desires, her will becomes divided and she is unable to decide to die. She cannot kill herself for moral reasons because she is not totally sure she wishes to be moral. Furthermore, because Phedre's love for Hippolyte has never been acted upon, and therefore has not left any unchangeable marks on the world, Ph'edre believes within her heart, despite her fatalism, that she might be able to overcome her lust or at least to keep it hidden forever. At the present she cannot kill herself out of guilt because she is not sure that the future will not wipe the guilt away. In only one scene other than the last does Ph~d re come close to killing herself. In Act II, scene v, having abased herself before Hippolyte, the queen begs him to kill her. It is not shame alone which motivates her to do this, however, but a strange mixture of shame and love. Phedre wants Hippolyte to exhibit that virtue which she so dearly loves, in an act which she describes in nearly sexual terms. This union of sexual passion and the need to be respectable is not stable and does not last long, f or Oenone is quickly able to bring Phedre back to her senses. The nurse's action is so far from being against Phedre's will that The'ram~ne is not sure whether the retreating Phedre is being dragged away or is actually running away (II,vi,714). It is only as the play progresses to its final scene that the number of Ph'edre's desires diminishes, not by a melting together, but rather by a process of selection. In Act IV, scen e iv, Phedre becomes furiously j ealous when she hears from Theseus 20 , that Aricie is loved by Hippolyte. Nearly mad, she is looking forward to having Theseus punish the princess when she realizes the magnitude of the evil which has grown within her hear t : Chaque mot sur men front fait dresser mes cheveux./ Mes crimes desormais ont comble la mesure./ Je respire a la fois l'inceste et 1' imposture. I Mes homicides mains, promptes a me venger, I Dans le sang innocent brOlent de se plonger. (IV , vi, 1268-1272) Ph'edre is horrified at her wish to kill Aricie, a wish more terrible than desiring to sleep with her stepson. Although she does not reflect on it in this scene, Ph~dre already has spilt innocent blood by this time. Because jealousy maddened her, she did not tell Theseus those things which would have caused him to revoke his prayer to Neptune and saved Hippolyte's life. It seems fair to guess that, because Phedre never again expresses desire for Hippolyte nor any jealousy toward Aricie, it is guilt and her desire to be morally pure which preoccuppy the queen's mind after this scene and push away all thought of passion. In the middle of her crisis, one of the other two conflicting motives, her love for Hippolyte is simply forgotten . Phedre's strong feelings of guilt at this point in the play are also a sign that it would be difficult for her need for respectability to overcome her need to be vi~ ­ tuous. Because of Oenone's lie to Theseus, these two motives had broken apart from their original unity. After Hippolyte's death, Phedre could simply live an honorable life, unscathed by the events of the play, as long as she does not allow her guilt to bother her too much. Ph'edre' s horror at her guilt in Act IV, scene vi sets the stage, however, for Panope's description of the queen's final struggle between honor and truth, in Act V, scene v. Ph'edre is said to be wearing a "mortel desespoir" (1463), and alr eady, "La paleur de la mort est ... sur son teint." (1464). Her children, who as members of her family symbolically represent the claims of honor, and who would be harmed by her dishonor, are alternately embraced by and then, in self-hatred, pushed away by the tearful queen . This awful description of the queen's inner conflict means that Phedre only truly discovers what she wants and who she is when she is offstage, in the time between her last two scenes. In her final appearance , Phedre shows that she has chosen truth over honor and death over life . She makes her confession in the most painful manner possible, by delivering it to the entire court. Ph'edre can kill herself now because her situation is radically different from what it was in Act I, scene iii. Now her guilt is tied to an objective fact, the murder of Hippolyte, which cannot simply fade away. Furthermore, in some way the queen must have realized that he r love of t he truth is a more important part of her than the need to be respectable. Unlike Euripides' pagan queen, who kills herself from shame, Racine's Ph'edre acts like a Christian and chooses to obey the claims of the individual conscience over the claims of familial duty. Perhaps it is her guilt which, paradoxically, allows her love of virtue finally to emer ge. Because her new condition as murderess is different from that of her mother or sister, she can now think of herself, not as just another slave of Venus, but as a guilty, yet free and undetermi ned individual. In any case, she is able to overcome her family-based shame at the end of the play because she has outgrown her familial self-image and the fatalism which accompanies it. Thus, through tragic events which have scoured away her inessential desires, Ph'edre has come to know who she really is and that being truly moral is important to her. 21 �Sonnet #9: A Conversation With Mother Dahra Latham I watch as if from far away The thunderous progress of your face Within a little minute's space From emptiness to screaming rage . I shall not argue with you now- Why should I , when your ears a re shut? No thought I muster can rebut The blue vein beating on your brow . The logic of your glazing eye Logic dethrones, and passion sets Above that power, that leaps from earth To chart the dances of the sky Upset the silent sky wi th jets And teach your human soul its worth . 22 untitled Dahra Latham Driving fast I stopped to gather roses while I could They we r e not rosebuds and were not pristine But full in bloom and somewhat touched by time And somewhat chewed by not invisible worms Though night was near and storm howled close at hand. Their petals were the final sha de of r ose From which all roses spring The thorns were such as only roses wild And gentle children know the way to forge. I wove my hands among them, wove small wounds Across my hands and up my unwhite arms Bleeding to feed the roses: I distrubed A drugged and drunken bee from lovers' slumber And off he whirred into the thunderous light. 'How better, little brother, Your honey than my mind to keep fo r fall The sweetness of such lovely days as these, Bitter with passage . ' 23 �,. The Game of Chess 1n Nathan the Wise Mark Ressler The game of chess is employed cunningly in the play Nathan the Wise, both in its character structure and as a metaphor for certain concepts tha-;-t he play presents. Chess is a game of conflict and may even be conceived as representing a war between two nations in systems, a situation much like the conflict between the Christians and Moslems in the play. Moreover, the conflict in chess is a direct conflict, permitting no cooperation, for the game is won, not by an individual struggle to achieve a position despite the opponent, but by a paralyzation of the opponent, by a real conquest. This aspect of the game is curious in the light of the question of religious toleration in the play; as with chess, the religious question seems to allow no cooperation between opposing ideologies. The Sultan in addressing his strange question to Nathan says, "Of these three religions only one can be the true one," [III 5, 42] and he believes that the three religions are distinct and separate in all aspects [III 7, 72]. After Nathan makes clear to Saladin the kinship between the religions and brings the Sultan to his concept of an overriding humanity, the image of the chess game is no longer used: Lessing has exchanged the game of chess for charades, in which all the players cooperate to solve the puzzle. Beyond a general meaning of the chess image in the play, Lessing uses the image in the specific area of characterization: all the pieces used in chess are represented in the play, not in number, but certainly in type. The king is the central piece for the game of chess; if he falls, the other pieces have no life. While holding so much power, the king may only move one space at a time and therefore cannot have a very active influence on the struggle. Saladin is a central figure for the characters in the play, just as the king is in chess. He spared the Templar' s life, and thus the Templar was able to have Rachel, without whom Nathan said he would have no need of houses. Nathan himself acknowledges Saladin's effect on his life through the Templar. Certainly Sittah as well as the Patriarch and Brother Bonafides would not be in this play were it not for the Sultan. For these reasons, Saladin is the king in the play in rank and function. Sittah, as opposed to Saladin, has a more active influence upon the action in the play, for she develops the plot to trap Nathan, she takes the initiative to support the Sultan's household and hide the fact from Saladin, and she brings Rachel to the palace. The queen in chess is the most powerful active piece, with no limit on its advancement or direction. In developing the characters of Saladin and Sittah, Lessing certainly seems to use the king and queen in chess as models, making Sittah more aggressive than Saladin, contrary to expectations. It is curious that in his game with Sittah, the Sultan wishes his queen to be taken. He says, "I never was too lucky with that piece." [II 1,33]. Perhaps this comment relates to Saladin's plan to marry King Richard to Sittah. The Patriarch clearly fulfills the role of the bishop in chess, moving diagonally across the squares of the board in his underhanded manner. Brother Bonafides, however, may either be a bishop or a pawn. As a bishop he and the Patriarch would never meet upon the same space, for one of the bishops in chess moves solely on black spaces and the other moves on white. The analogy would thus carry through since the Patriarch's concept of a churchman's circle of affairs differs from 24 Brother Bona£ ides' idea of his Christianity. However, Brother Bonaf ides does not move as diagonally as the Patriarch does; in this respect he could easily be a pawn, a humble man moving one space at a time, moving diagonally only to capture another piece at the Patriarch's bidding, but otherwise moving straight toward the other side of the board. The knight moves most uniquely of all the pieces, as does the Templar, the knight in Nathan the Wise. The knight takes two spaces in one direction then one space either to the right or the left of that direction, forming an L. The Templar as a character moves in a similar manner , moving ahead then to one side quickly, as when he rescued Rachel from the fire or when he visits the Patriarch about Nathan raising Rachel a Jew. The knight, unlike other pieces in chess, may actually leap over a barrier of pieces so that his path need not be clear for him to make his move, forming an image like the Templar leaping through the flames and over the barriers of his religion. The rook is symbolized on the chessboard as a stronghold, a storehouse. Surely Nathan could be characterized in this same manner, not only in terms of his wealth, but also in terms of the the understanding he possesses. The rook moves in a rectangular fashion, either horizontally or vertically on the board, and is therefore a valuable piece for support in both defense and offense. Nathan seems to demonstrate the same rectangularity and strength in his character. A pawn has a few interesting properties, despite its seemingly low value in the game of chess. Though it moves just one space at a time and is powerless if an ob stacle is placed directly in front of it, i f its path is clear and it manages to reach the other end of the board, it becomes any of the major pieces except the king as it chooses. Al Hafi exemplifies these properties more than any other character in the play; Saladin clears the path for him, and he reaches the other end of the board to become a rook, the Sultan's treasurer. However, he still retains his pawness, for he r e aches the end of the board a second time, becoming a man by travelling to the Ganges. When Al Hafi departs, Nathan claims, "I think, when all is said, the genuine beggar is the genuine king." [II 9, 89]. This statement agrees with the idea of the pawn's potentiality for change. It is the pawn's hope of change that lends it nobility, which hope may be the reason Al Rafi loved to play chess. While chess seems woven into the characterization, it also appears prominently in the first scene of Act II when Saladin and Sittah are engaged in a game of chess . The occasion of the game has its effects upon the plot, and Lessing uses the game to form an image of the effect of the game. In describing the game to Nathan, Al Hafi says, "His king could be protected with a pawn upon her check .... For this the rook had an open file, and she was done for." The king is Saladin, the pawn Al Rafi, the r ook Nathan , and Sittah is the opponent . In terms of the plot , this situation could be described in two ways. If Al Rafi had continued to keep Saladin protected from the knowledge of his dwindling finances, then Nathan would have remained free of obligation. On the other hand, if Saladin had listened to Al Rafi, who knew the game was not lost, Sittah might not have won, and the events following would not have occurred. This game, though, leads to the Sultan's conversation with Nathan, and it is through Nathan that chess loses its importance in the play. Nathan's ideas about humanity seem to break down the black-arid-white idea of religions symbolized by the two- colored pieces in chess, and through Nathan's investigations into the Templar's lineage, king, queen, knight and pawn cease to be seen in those classifications and come to be seen as family and friends. Thus, Lessing's most effective use of the chess image might be its removal, creating a contrast between the harsh world of chess and the ostensibly sensitive sphere of human relationships. 25 �April Residue David Walter In the crowed station sudden doors shut-The train makes its dizzy way downward; In the tunnels, there is nothing but dim earthlight And breathless winding motion downward. No end to the plunge--the eyes journey inward-No end to this stiff isolation, sterile passage, From the manlit clangor shut and shuttled forth And hurled into the earth's barren womb-And should I shave tonight, put on my best, Go out and drink in a darklit room; Until I return inside my own dark walls And strip my clothes, eager to pass the night. "NEWTON," John Bertram 26 27 �A Vision of the Hagia Sophia Clayton DeKorne There is a Great Church; it is a building though and not a code by which to live. It stands in the city of Byzantium, modern day Istanbul, as a monument to many ages. Today it is a museum, and it is revered only as a work of art and no longer as a temple. Prior to this, it served as a mosque throughout the tumultuous history of the Turkish nation since the day in 1453 when the Sultan Mohammed II entered the capital city of the Eastern Roman Empire. In the last two centuries of this unstable Empire, it served the Roman Catholic Order. And before, for nearly seven centurie~, this church had been the center for religious activity in the thriving Byzantine Empire. Construction of the Great Church began in 532. After less than five years building, i t was consecrated as the church of Holy Wisdom - Hagia Sophia - by the Emperor Justinian I. It was designed by Anthemius of Tralles and Isodorus of Miletus, two scholars of the arts and sciences whose genius is explored, in this essay, at least in part, by examining their great work of art. Their genius has produced not only a great monument to Justinian, to the Empire, and to Christianity, but has created a beautiful work worthy of the contemplation of many people from different religious and cultural backgrounds. Certainly the exceptional engineering feat required to erect a structure of such enormous size as the Hagia Sophia has attracted the serious attention of many admirers. Even the lavish decorations gained so great a reputation that the Abbot Suger wished to fill St . 1 Denis with ornaments of comparable worth. Yet the richness of the decorations is perhaps the least significant feature of the artists' designs. W2en the church was first completed, it was virtually free of iconic representations. Only some patterns, mostly floral motifs, were painted within the cathedral. Otherwise, it was like a blank slate to be filled with the exquisite icons and mosaics that began to appear throughout its interior in the course of the following nine centuries . But the valid use of iconic representation was a subject of grave dispute among the early Christian Fathers. Indeed, the decisions of the Iconoclasts made i n t he e ight h and ninth centuries contributed to the eventual separation of the Eastern Orthodox from the Roman Catholic Orders. Throughout this period, however, the form of the Hagia Sophia remained resplendent. Its form - a central dome ,surmounting a rectilinear base - is a paradigm for almost all Byzantine churches built after 550, even those built during the Iconoclasm. Some compelling examples of this are the chapels of the Goreme Valley in Cappadocia. Here iconoclast mon~s seeking to preserve their faith in austerity, carved dwellings with solid rock. The scale of the chapels is small in contrast to the Hagia Sophia, but the interior is patterned after the Great Church: a hollowed out hemisphere over a square nave is separated from low galleries on either side by rows of arched columns. Here the monks sought their spirituality in a severe and isolated environment . They rejected iconic art forms and yet preserved the form of architecture most suited to their contemplative pursuits. Similarly, the Moslem faith forbids the representation of religious figures, but the Moslems adopted the form of the Hagia Sophia as a place of worship. When the Moslems overtook Byzantium, they whitewashed over the gleaming mosaics and thereby UNTITLED, John Bertram 28 29 �transformed the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. And so, too, the greatest mosques of their faith built after 1500 are patterned after the Great Church.* These examples seem to indicate that, regardless of particular preferences, the form of the Great Church speaks to all. In the church, space and light are so abundant that these elements seem to stand apart from the structure itself and take on a being of their own. The ordered combination of space and light is considered here as the form of the church. Space and light are as much the medium of architecture as are stone, timbers, and metals. The form itself seems to have been intentionally crafted and also found to have a profound effect upon those entering the church. Hence, in examining the church, two points of view are essential: the first is the impression that the form has upon the observer or participant in the work; the other is the artists' intention in the design of their work. Only the unity of these two views of the church can provide, I think, a true account of such a great work as the Hagia Sophia. To gain an impression of the Hagia Sophia, I have relied on drawings and descriptions written by those who have spent a great deal of their time studying the church. Among these, the account written by the Roman historian, Procopius of Ceasara, is of special interest. Procopius' account is contemporary with the completion of the cathedral. It provides a thoughtful description of the author's firsthand impressions. Procopius writes as much of the effect the church has upon himself as he does of the church itself. In addition, I have consulted the geometrical works of the Hagia Sophia's principal designer, Anthemius of Tralles, and, in general, I have tried to gain an understanding of the theoretical aspect of his mechanical science. Finally, I present some conclusions that I see as demonstrating the unity of both the observer's impression and the artists' intention. i. A View of the Work The Hagia Sophia rises solemnly from the midst of the confusion of a bustling city . Its many half domes climb from a squabble of outlying buildings and partitions. This multiplicity of curvilinear roofs leads to the massive shapes of two piers that outline a single square surmounted by a single, central dome. From the exterior, the combination of the circle and square is a prominent motif. This can be seen distinctly from a distance. The four high corner spires were built by the Moslems, and one wonders if they expressly did so to accentuate the square plan. In doing so, they seem to have adjusted for the numerous low lying buildings which have appeared as the city grew and obscured the rectangular base of the original structure. If the intention cannot be proven, the effect can certainly be verified. At the center of this huge cube formed by the spires, the greater part of a large sphere, the dome, is seen. It seems to pour forth its cascade of circular roofs that are supported by the cornered sections of the walls. Procopius seems to confirm the impression of a square plan. Both its breadth and its length have been so carefully proportioned that it may not improperly be said to be exceedingly long 4 and at the same time unusually broad. This formulation indicates that the plan is perceived as a square of equally huge * The Selimiye (built 1567-74 in Edirne, the original capital of the Turkish Empire) and the Mosque of Ahmed (built 1609-16 in Istanbul) are two examples that exactly reproduce the form of the Hagia Sophia, even in size. 30 31 �,,. breadth and length. It is not worded, however, to account for an abstract shape. One's impressions of great magnitudes are not capable of precise measurement. However, as Procopius seems to imply, a sense of proportion is possible. But Procopius was also aware of the reality that exists behind the impression of this aspect. Therefore, both the rule which defines the proportion as well as the sense of proportion one acquires need to be explored. The church is not laid out on a perfect square. The foundation is slightly longer along the east-west axis than it is along the north-south axis. It has been suggested that the Great Church is built upon the foundations of another church, also called the Hag~ Sophia, which burned down shortly before the construction of the present church. In order to make use of what had already been laid, the designers of the new church may have found it necessary to conform to the previous plan. This claim 1b8s been disputed, however, in view of the outstanding importance of the new church. But there is a functional advantage in preserving, if not the foundation, at least the style of the older church. The original Hagia Sophia · (as most of the earliest Christian churches) is reported to have been built in the style of the Roman Basilica, which is rectilinear in plan and divided lengthwise into three sections. The outer aisles are separated from the central nave by rows of columns that serve to support the high central roof. Often parallel to these aisles are second floor galleries which open onto · the nave. But the ceiling of the nave is much higher than even these galleries. The functional character of this building is superb, accomodating a great number of people while leaving a central aisle open for processionals. Moreover, it allows for a directed ~~ze toward the end of the church where the service is conducted. 000 OD Cross-Section (east-west axis) The present Hagia Sophia has all these features and is undisputably a basilica in character. These features of . the cathedral's design, including the rectilinear base, are, I think, entirely functional in the sense just defined: to allow the most number of people to participate in the service. But this does not begin to explain the illusory effect of a square plan nor the other senses of proportion that might serve another function that is more aesthetic than utilitarian. Overall, Procopius describes the building as "a spectacle of marvellous beauty." 7 His sense for this beauty is bound to a recognition of the proportion of its parts and the play of light within it. Plan of the Hagia Sophia 32 It exults in an indescribable beauty. For it proudly reveals its mass and the harmony of its proportions, having neither excess nor deficiency~ .• and it abounds exceeding intunlight and in the reflection of the sun's rays from the marble. 33 �,. To see this beauty, however, one must go within. The entrances used by the congregation, whether Christian or Moslem, lie along the west side of the cathedral. On the face of the exterior porch (or narthex) is a series of five doors, three in the center and one at either end. Two pairs of windows are placed in between the central three doors and the outer-most two. The center-most doorway has always been called the· Beautiful Gate. As one passes over the threshold here, he leaves the city behind and, as it will be shown, he seems to enter into another world. Within the outer narthex there is a series of five more doors, equally spaced, leading into another narthex. This inner space is both twice as wide and twice as high as the outer narthex. It has been suggested that this increase ~n space prepares the way for the "more powerful spatial effect within the nave." This claim can be easily justified. The mass of the exterior announces the vast interior. One can imagine the awe with which one approaches each doorway in anticipation of the great space that must lie within. Hence, the expansion of space and perhaps even the 1: 2 ratio of the two spaces is noticeable. The doubling of a magnitude is more easily comprehended than any other multiplication. In the eventual analysis of the church, this sense of space a hap tic sense of an ordered, dimensional, but ostensibly empty space - is explored in detail. There are three sets of three doorways leading into the main body of the church. Those on either end of the porch lead into the aisles on the north and south sides of the nave. The center doorway, in line with the Beautiful Gate, is called the Imperial Doorway in honor of the emperors (from Justinian on) who entered here. This gate is twice as broad and higher by a third than the doorways flanking it. The view through the Imperial Doorway into the central nave is the most important perspective in the church. From this entrance the full scale of the dome's height an be seen, as well as the full length of the nave. Through the vast expanse, one's gaze is directed to the inside ofo"the face of the church (which would be the part which faces the rising sun ... )." Here the semi-cylindrical apse rises from the place of the altar to meet the half dome. The apse is the most light-filled space in the church; its windows are the only windows opening directly onto the lower region of the nave, and they seem both larger and more closely packed than the windows above them in the half dome. Thus, even from ·across the enormous space, one's attention is drawn to this area. From the Imperial Doorway the first impression of the interior forms is made. Procopius' description of "the face of the church" emphasizes the order and arrangement of shapes. He begins by describing the apse and the regions closest to it: A structure of masonry is built up from the ground, not made in a straight line, but gradually curving inward on its flanks and receding at the middle, so that it forms the shape of a half-circle, which those who are skilled in such matters call a half-cylinder; and so i t rises precipitously to a height. The upper part of this structure ends in the fourth part of a sphere, and above it another crescent-shaped structure rises fitted on the adjoining parts of the building, marvellous in its grace, but by reason of the seeming insecurity of its composition altogether terrifying. For it seems to float in the air on no firm basis, but to be poised aloft to the peril of those inside it. Yet actually it is braced with exceptional firmness and security. On either side of this are columns arranged on the pavement; these likewise do not stand in a straight line, but they retreat inward in the pattern of the semi-circle as if they were yielding to one 34 35 �another in a c~~ral dance, and above them hangs a structure of crescent shape. ' '1 This arrangement of geometrical shapes seems to mirror the order and arrangement of the Imperial Door. The niches on either side of the apse are, in plan, found to be identical to the apse. But turned in along the line of a semi-circle , they are perceived to be much narrower than the apse which is looked at straight on. The niches seem to be nearly half the width of the apse and follow, it would seem, the pat t ern of the three central doorways. Moreover, the height of the half domes, which rise above these niches and embrace them all, is greater by a th i rd. Hence, this too is in the same ratio (2:3) as the height of the two smaller doorways is to the Imperial Door. While the ratio of the doors is measured in the flat plane of the wall, the measure of the semi-cylindrical shapes is expanded to three dimensions. From ac r oss the expanse of distance, the shapes are seen in a visual plane. Therefore, they are not judged in their actual form, but seem at fi r st to be outlined on a two-dimensional plane. At the great distance from which the forms are viewed , the outlines are not clearly defined. This plane of vision is pierced by windows or by passageways between the columns. One's vision is carried t hr ough the outlines . Ye t there is no outside view to be seen, for the windows are at such a height that they frame only the sky. However , a sense of depth is added to the impression . This depth carries one's vision through the outline which wavers in the immense atmosphere of the church. Hence, one's sense of space moves the figu r es ou t wards into three dimensions. This volume is distinct from the similar impression first seen in the doorways and then mirrored in the next visual plane . The forms are judged by Procopius to "retreat ... as if yielding to one another as in a choral dance . " In claiming that the farms actually are moved by one's perceptions, Procopius' language is taken more literally than perhaps. Procopius intended. I exaggerate the literalness of it, however, to accentuate the possibility of sensing a shimmer ing , balanced movement of form . The imp r ession of t his mov ement or "dance" is created by the distance from which it is viewed and by an awareness of the actual three-dimensional volume of the forms outlined by a certain perspective . The depth and movement of space are enhanced by the exceptional light that enters the church. Ptocopius writes that the interior abounds exceedingly in sunlight and in reflection of the sun's rays from the marble. Indeed one might say that its interior is not illuminated from without by the sun, but that the radiance comes into ~1ing within it , such an abundance of ligh t enters this shrine. The sense that the light "comes into being" inside the church is probably due to the clear definition of the shafts of light that come streaming through the great expanse of space. These beams accentuate the sense of depth in the space within the church. As the light travels, it diffuses slowly into the interior. The shafts, however, reach the walls and floor in distinct outline and produce patterns of light that mirror the windows from which they came. And the reflections themselves create a r adiance of thei r own t hat itself illuminates the space around them. The windows are nol simply openings in the shell of the building. "Channels for 3 the admission of light" have been built into the structure. By means of these it seems that the intensity of light has been intentionally gathered, and that the direction of the light has been purposefully ordered. One can imagine, then, that the regular movement of light throughout the day and year provides another movement in addition to the shimmering radiance that charges 36 37 �the air with light 1 ~f its own. The church is aligned along an axis about 33 degrees south of due east . On the morning of the winter solstice, the rising sun shines directly thr ough the apse windows and sets in the evening beyond the Beautiful Gate. The circular domes with their channeled windows at different levels must seem to chart the paths of the sun, not just on the day of the winter solstice, but throughout the year. The strongest beams within the church mark where the sun is outside and can be distinguished from all the others . As the visible beams change direction and sweep through the interior of the church, they change the quality of light in the depths they illuminate . The forms themselves would then seem to move, as they change, from light to shadow. In effect, the light moves the forms that seem to "dance" with one another. On either side of the central nave are the aisles and galleries. In comparison to the height of the dome, the vaulted ceilings of the aisles are low. They are the same height as the inner narthex. This height is marked along the perimeter of the nave by an elaborate bronze railing. The height of the gallery ceilings is marked by a similar railing at a height again a third higher than the aisles. Between the nave and the aisles and galleries are rows of columns centered in the face of the north and south walls. The aisles do not seem separated from the nave by these columns and, Procopius sayf1 the spaces seen from the nave "actually make the effect of the width much wider." This extension adds to the impression of a square marked out on the floor. In addition, the symmetry of the aisles is aligned along the axis of symmetry of the half domes. This forms an equal armed cross with one axis below and the other axis seen most prominently higher up. Of the symmetry of the aisles, Procopius writes One of (the) colonnaded stoas has been assigned to men worshippers, while the other is reserved for women engaged in the same exercise. But they have nothing to distinguish them , nor do they differ from one another in any way , but their equtsity s e rves to beautify t he church , the i r similarity t o ador n it . Procopius suggests here that the symmetry of t he church in some way reflects a symmetry among the congregation in the activity of praye r. It s e ems possible that the symmetry of the church might have contributed to inducing the effect of equality among the people , at least while they were in the church , since it is unlikely that this equality actually existed as a general rule in Byzantine society . This effect would increase the other- worldly aura the church has by making otherwise habitual distinctions unimportant and thereby heightening the distinctions that one does find, namely t ho se among t h e fo r ms of the building. The rows of columns pierce the walls between the large interior piers and mark out the corners of a square on the floor of the nave. The open area int erlaced by arched columns outlines a square on the north and south walls. These define a cube that is associated with a semicircle on either side of the nave, suggesting a hemisphere. Above the squares on the north and south walls is a semi- circle of windows formed within the great arches that support the dome. The motif of the circle and square is outlined here in its most sensible form; it is outlined in space and light. Through the circle only light passes. Through the space between the arches pass humans and also a murky, diffused light from the aisles and galle r ies. This correlation exists throughout the church: all the windows have curved lintels, while all the doors have straight lintels. The circle and square motif is also found throughout the whole expanse of the interior space. The radius of the circle of windows is equal to half the side of the square of arches; the circle can be perfectly inscribed within the square. Its center, however, is displaced upwards. Similarly, the square drawn from the inside of 38 39 �the interior piers and equal to the width of the nave is found to perfectly circumscribe the circle outlined by the uppermost arch, as well as the present dome. The upper side of this square (or cube) over-scores the windows along the diameter of the first circle. Hence, the center of its circle is also displaced upwards, leading towards the dome. In addition, the side of this square is equal to the diagonal of the first square. It is therefore twice as great as the original square of arches. The circle inscribed within the greatest square (that which indicates the dome) can exactly circumscribe the square of arches. "1 The piers that mark the corners of the central cube support the four great arches: two above the semi-circle of windows and two outlining the ends of the half domes. These arches rise to meet the lower rim of the dome at four points. Between these points and along the four quarters of the dome, and in the spaces between the adjacent halves of the great arches are four pendentive domes. This ingenious co11struction of four spherical triangles evenly distributes the forces of the huge shell of the dome onto the arches and, hence, onto the four inner piers. Because the dome is not supported directly beneath the rim, but off to the sides, Procopius remarks: It seems not to rest upon solid masonry ••• All the details, fitted together with incredible skill in midair and floating off from each other and resting only on the parts next to l~em, produce a single and most extraordinary harmony in the work. The illusory effect of the dome "floating" is no doubt accentuated by the light entering the forty windows spaced equidistantly along the circumference of the dome. This corona of windows seems to detach the dome from the rest of the structure. 18 Procopius writes that through these windows "the light of day first smiles." The inside of the dome was once covered over entirely with gold. This highly reflective surface, it can be imagined, enhanced t~9 effect of this "first" light and radiated it down from a "height to match the sky." The dome of the Hagia Sophia has attracted a lot of attention, and it has almost universally been compared to the heavens. Procopius says "the spherical dome which makes the structure except~5nally beautiful" seems to be "suspended as if from a golden chain from heaven." The analogy is made stronger by the poet, Paul of Silentiary, in his work describing the Great Church. There, overhead, in the shadowy air, Arches the rounded helm of the heavenly ~ouse, 2 Like unto the burnished roof of heaven. 40 41 �While the dome is compared to the heavens, its lower arches are likened to the upper regions of the earth, according to Procopius. One might suppose that they were sheer mountain peaks. 22 And also the lower regions of the church have been compared to the earth. Throughout the first two levels, the walls have been faced with highly polished slabs of marble, cut along the stone's natural grain and arranged in patterns. The marble is of many different colors and varieties. Similarly, the columns are made of various kinds of marble, and their capitals have been intricately carved in an acanthus leaf pattern. On this stonework Procopius writes: One imagines that he had come upon a meadow with its flowers in full bloom. For he would surely marvel at the purple of some, the green tint of others and at those which the crimson glows and those which Natuzj' like some painter, varies with the most contrasting colors. And again Paul of Silentarius echoes this theme in his poem. He describes each "tablet" of marble by where it 2'4mes from: Cocytus, Phrygia , Locania, Libya, and as far away as the "Celtic crags." Paul writes as if gathered within the church were a world composed of many regions; every land is represented by a different tablet of marble. He continues, after his description of each kind of marble, But before the sheen of mosaic appeared The hand of the mason set into the wall the pieces of marble. He designed on the tablets Horns filled to the brim with the sumptuous tokens of autumn: All kinds of foliage, baskets, and - perched on the ends of branches Quiet birds. At the border, in beautifully plaited designs Vines creep circling around, their golden tendrils Weaving a graceful measure among the twined and inter- twined branches, Then swaying gently forward so that the encircling marble May shadow - but only a little - the mesh of woven tendrils Over the lofty columns, too, swelling out Below a rim of stone, grow masses of bright acanthus - which creeps across the damp earth - swelling in and out . All gold and light are the wandering, sharp- pointed leaves, And the marble surfaces are bordered with purple buds. Every 25one catches the light with a loveliness that touches the heart. Procopius admires the hand of Nature as an active artist in the church. Paul of Silentarius, on the other hand, stresses the work of a human artist, a tradesman distinct from the mosaic worker, as the agent at work to ensoul the church. Underneath the bite of the mason's chisel, the stone comes alive. Moreover, this life is presented in its autumn colors. The insipient death of these hues contrasts with the fecundity that yields so great a harvest. From these analogies made of the heavens and the earth united in a "harmony", one can imagine an ideal world conceived in the church. The church, as a whole, seems to be a living cosmos. The realization of "harmony" in this ideal world does not, however, come 42 43 �,. unequivocably: though the half dome and its "adjoining parts", the niches and the apse, seem to fit together in a way "marvellous in its grace" and even as a "dance", Procopius also notes how it seems by reason of its seeming insecurity of its composition, altogether terrifying. For it seems to float in the air on no ~~rm basis but to be poised aloft to the peril of those inside it. The "seeming" here is "terrifying", and this effect is pervasive as one moves through the church. The dome that seems to float off its parts is "suspended" 180 feet in the air (nearly eighteen stories) and is 107 feet in diameter. The arches and the half domes of the same diameter climb to nearly 120 feet. The apse "rises precipitously" to a height of over 90 feet. The aisles are almost 40 feet high, and the galleries about 25 feet. Within these dimensions, a person is diminished to almost insignificant size. The recognition of these dimensions, not in numbers, but in relation to a human being, makes plausible the language that describes the forms as "mountain peaks" that "rise to the height of the sky," in short, as parts of a whole world. Because one is so diminished, the awe, even wonder, which one must experience when entering the church is understandable. It is understood not as a simple enthusiasm but, on the contrary, as the fear and appreciation of something both "terrifying" and "marvellous in its grace." The entirety of one's sensual experience awakens both a terror and a sense of order. Hence, the beauty one sees is found to be both terrible and harmonious. One "sees" this beauty in himself as clearly as he sees it around him. It is conceivable, then, that one enters into an inner cosmos when he enters the church. He comes to a world of a rational and emotional realm of his being, united by the sensation of the forms around him. These realms comprise a state of mind. The term "world" is used to denote the completeness of one's experience - a state of wonder - that one finds in himself when his whole being is engaged. In this way , the church is said to signify a living cosmos with respect to the one who is inside it, as well as with respect to the external forms of the domes and walls. But the complete sense of awe has not been sufficiently explored . The rational realm, so-called, has only been described as a "sense of order . " This is still impressionistic, though it may be powerful. Hence, the term "cosmos" may not yet be a convincing, or even a true, appellation for the complete engagement of one's .being. It is fitting to describe the complete impression one has - a conflicting impression that is nonetheless united. The sense for order, as it has been described so far, is an awareness of the rational order involved in the fitting together of the parts of the church. The apparent order arises from that which lends "grace" to the fitting together of the parts: the proportions, the symmetry, the repetition of like forms (especially the circle and the square), the similar arrangements of windows and arches, the continuous procession of lights throughout the day and the year, and even the fine craftsmanship that has rendered the stone smooth and full of images of "a graceful measure." The ratios of 1:2 and 2:3 have been described as visually recognizable patterns that are recurrent both in the structure and in the forms. This r epetition of divided magnitudes is visible to everyone - not just to a few who are initiated into the secrets of geometry. Even if these ratios do not give rise to an idea of number, they do give rise to a notion of order. . The notion of order, as it has been described, is not necessarily a rational concept, though it does point to a rational principle. This principle is to be explored in greater detail. In doing so, the artists' intention must be considered. 44 By exploring the rational principle at work in the cathedral, the rational state of mind it gives rise to in the observer may be better understood. ii. A Mechanical View of the Work Anthemius of Tralles and Isodorus of Miletus were the two principal designers of the Hagia Sophia. They are both known to have been geometers. A few fragments of Anthemius' geometry survive, and from these one proposition will be considered in detail as a possible part of his world underlying the design of the church. Isodor~' is regarded as the author of the so- called Fifteenth Book of Euclid's Elements. This treatise gave the rules for the measurement of dihedral angles, and one can imagine the usefulness of this theory in the construction of walls . Isodorus is also said to be the teacher of his nephew , Isodorus the Younger, who reco2~tructed the dome of the Hagia Sophia after it collapsed in an earthquake in 558. Isodorus the Younger redesigned the dome at this time to make it higher, and thus a greater section of a sphere than it had previously been . In this shape the dome is much more stable; it stands today, despite numerous other earthquakes. This larger dome enhances the overall harmony seen within the church; hence, Isodorus the Younger must also be considered as a designer of the form of the church. All of the designers were a part of a mechanical tradition that was especially active in the Byzantine Empire. This was, perhaps, the most active science of the time. Justinian, in his peculiar devotion to Christianity, closed the "pagan" academies of philosophy in Athens. Nonetheless, a philosophic stance may have been assumed by the mechanics. The mechanical science developed by the Byzantines conceived a unique unity between the real and the ideal. For instance, the mechanical propositions to be treated in detail here are found to depend on an understanding of space in which concrete elements and abstract notions are combined. This space is considered to be distinct from the space of pure thought and the physical space outside the mind. The mechanical method that has conceived of this space has provided a means by which both mathematical and technological developments have advanced. It is likely, therefore, that a certain philosophical disposition both underlies and is promoted by the mechanical tradition.* Anthemius and his fellow designers of the Hagia Sophia have also displayed a distinctive aesthetic sensitivity and a clear understanding of structural theory. The combination of a theoretical and practical knowledge, as it is presented in their work, is found to establish the ground for contemplation by the way in which it prepares the mind. To demonstrate this mechanical method, two propositions will be examined: the first , by Ant hemi us , is part of his treatise on "burning mirrors." The manner i n which he sets out this problem - to construct a door or window through which the sun's rays are to enter - is pertinent to the construction of his church. It provides an account of the relationship between a structure and the path of light. The second proposition, by Archimedes, concerns the determination of the centers of gravity of objects. The conclusions drawn by this proposition will be shown to have an important bearing on the design of the Hagia Sophia. The enunciation of Anthemius' proposition reads as follows: * It is curious to note that Proclus may have been the teacher of both Anthemius and the elder Isodorus. (Swift, Hagia Sophia, p. 31, attributes this to Andreossey, Constantinople et le Bosphore, II, 115.) Proclus is known for both his mathematical commentary (i.e. of Book I of Euclid's Elements) and his commentary of numerous dialogues of Plato. 45 �,. It is required to cause a ray of sun t2 f all in a given position, 9 without moving, at any hour or season. To accomplish the task he has set for himself, Anthemius first identifies the point A as the "given position to be constantly illuminated". He then identifies the point B to represent the position of the window through which a ray of light will enter. B is in a line through A that is both a meridian and parallel to the horizon. That is, the line AB lies in a line directed north-south and level with the surface of the earth. 0 G Anthemius then determines the different positions of the rays of the sun with respect to the north-south line which enter the window at B at all times of the year. He considers that on the day of the equinox, the sun, traveling along the ecliptic, crosses the equator, which is perpendicular to the meridians of the earth. Therefore, at sunrise and sunset, an equinoctial ray will fall perpendicular to the line AB. Throughout the rest of the year, the point on the horizon at which the sun rises and sets is inclined to either side of the perpendicular . As the days increase in length during the year, the sun rises at a point on the horizon further north and reaches a maximum displacement from the perpendicular on the morning of the summer solstice. Similarly, as the days decrease in length, the sun rises at a point further south and reaches a maximum from the perpendicular in thi s direction on the morning of the winter solstice . s Anthemius identifies BG, "normal to AB 1130 , as an equinoctial ray, BD as a ray of the summer solstice, and BE as a ray of the winter solstice . The angle formed between the winter ray and the summer ray is the greatest angle possible between the winter and summer lights. That is, the angle on the horizon between the points at sunrise or sunset for the winter and summer solstices is greater t han the angle formed between the tropic points at the zenith (or between any similar points) of the sun's paths across the sky. Anthemius can therefore account for the entire range of possible positions of the rays of light which will fall through the window at B in a year. He then procedes to construct a plane mirror for each of these rays of light so that a ray entering the window will be reflected to the position A. He selects a point Z along one ray, the winter ray BE, at s~'e distance from B "according to the size of the reflector we desire to construct . " The distance BZ is the distance the ray , once it has entered the window at B, will shine before i t i s reflected towards A. The position of the reflector to be constructed is also de termined by the position of the ray ZA which will be reflected from it. Given the position of the ray entering the window and the position of the ray to be reflected, the reflector is inclined at an angle so that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.* Since EZ represents the position of the ray entering the window, an~ ZA represents the position of the ray being reflected, Anthemius bisects the angle EZA formed between these rays so that the angle EZH = the angle HZA. And, since by vertical angles the angle EZH = the angle 0ZB, the ray BZ will strike the reflector at an angle SZB and be reflected at an equal angle, HZA. Therefore, a reflector lying along the line He will cause a winter ray to illuminate the position A. Anthemius goes on to determine the necessary positions for the reflectors which will cause a ray of the sun to illuminate A on the equinox and on the summer solstice. By positioning each reflector in the manner just described, so that the angle of incidence for a ray entering the window equals the angle of reflection, he describes a rectilinear shape, OMH9. The length of the sides OM, MH, H9 are de termined by bisecting the angles formed between each position for a ray of the sun. For example, the position of H is determined along the bisector BH, the bisector be tween the ray of the winter solstice and the equinoctial ray, at the point of intersection with ZH. And the position occupied by ZH , the bisector of angle EZA, is de termined by the selection of Z "according to the size of the reflector we desire to construct." Similarly, M is determined along the bisector BM between the equinoctial ray and the ray of the winter solstice, at the point of intersection with LM, the bisector of GLA . Howeve r, the position of LM, being extended to meet H, is dependent upon the position of Z as well. The rectil i near s ha pe so described wit h t he sides OM , MH, and H9 wi ll ref l ect the t hree rays indicated here to A. In order to reflect every ray within the range which these three rays represent, a "continuous mirror" is required to be made along OMH9, · comprised of an indefinite number of mirrors positioned in the manner that has been d;~onstrated . Anthemius alludes to the "repeated bisection of the said angles" (the angles formed between successive rays of the sun) which implies a sort of "method of exhaustion" to describe a rectilinear shape of an indefinite number of sides. But he gives a more p;ractical way to accomplish this task and thereby "to avoid the Tffort of continuous division tn constructing and putting together plane 3 mirrors." * In a treatise entitled On the Hypotheses in Optics, Damianus claims Heron of Alexandria, a mechanician, is reported to have demonstrated this property of light rays . It is probable that Anthemius, following upon a mechanical tradition, was aware of this or a similar wo r k . (c . f . Thomas, Greek Mathematics, II, p. 497) 46 47 �,. He first shows that the distance of the ray entering the window added to the distance of the reflected ray remains the same at every position indicated. The combined distance of the ray of incidence and the ray of reflection is therefore constant at any point along the reflective surface to be constructed. To describe the shape of this surface he concludes, "then we stretch a string surrounding the points A, B tightly around the first point from which the rays are to be reflected, the line will be drawn which is part of the so3~alled ellipse, with respect to which the surface of the mirror must be situated." ~nthemius is reported to be the first to describe this method of drawing an ellipse. 3 Anthemius demonstrates in this work certain theoretical properties of the ellipse. He shows that the ratio between the lines from each focus to a point on the surface of an ellipse remains constant. This result is identical with proposition 48 in Book III of Apollonius' Conics . In addition, as Huxley notes, Anthemius demonstrates his knowledge as a property of the ellipse that Apollonius did not show: The two "parts" of knowledge are distinct in the mechanical mind, and yet what is achieved by means of this mechanical science is a deliberate unity of the two "parts". For instance, in Anthemius' work, underlying the mathematical points, the foci, are tangible objects - a position to be illuminated and a window through which light enters. The lines joining these foci to the surfaces of the ellipse are rays of light, and the surface itself is an indefinite series of plane mirrors. These points and lines are not just abstract entities; they have a concrete basis in a physical world and are associated with a particular action. And yet this physical basis does not seem to be the end or cause for which this mathematics is set out. No r does it seem that the geometry has been applied merely to solve a problem. Rather,it seems that Anthemius unveils an underlying geometrical (and abstract) scheme of things. Rays of light falling t o the earth have a geometrical orientation with respect to a certain place and have certain properties of reflection that can be described by geometry. It might be said that Anthemius sees a world composed of distinct "parts" that have a certain correspondence between them. His mechanical method is meant to reveal this correspondence. The science of geometry is an attempt to find a rational account of an object's "being" in space. This acc ount is not only the identification of the regular or geometric shape of an object, or even just the identification of a principle of action, such as the optical property Anthemius describes. The geometry precedes from a deductive account of that object as a rational, knowable thing. The account Anthemius gives of the continuity of an elliptical curve demonstrates this unveiling of the rational essence of an object. The object he describes has a regular geometric form. Yet, it is not only an object of thought; this form also serves to describe the necessary shape for a mirror that will always reflect incoming light rays to a given place. The regularity of the curvilinear object is only recognizable as an infinite series of straight lines. Even as an object of thought, the curvilinear form is unintelligible without a geometrical analysis of its parts. By this, Anthemius has a complete knowledge of the object as a shape in thought and in phys ical reality. The correspondence between thought and reality here rests on a correspondence between the imaginable space of geometry and the sensible space of external objects. In Anthemius' work, however, it is not easy to separate these realms, though they are recognizably different parts of his knowledge. Yet it does not seem necessary to distinguish one space from the other absolutely. To do so would be to undo Anthemius' work. Anthemius achieves a unity of the space imagined in the mind and the space of an external world filled with rays of light. There is no analogy of one found in the other. There is, however, a relation between the two that is itself the space he conceives. Anthemius participates equally in the space of geometrical objects and the space of physical objects. Ideally, there is no distinction for him in his creation of a new mechanical space. Anthemius' proof demonstrates only one aspect of a possible complete correspondence between a theoretical and a physical world. His proof is an assessment of the relationship between a structural form and its effect on the path of light. In the complete correspondence, such as might be expected to establish this ideal in the Hagia Sophia, the measurement of weight, the measurement of area, and especially the measurement of volume would have to be accounted for in some similar way. Most of the remaining fragments of Anthemius' work concern the construction of various mirrors, such as the work just described. But one example demonstrates his interest in the centers of gravity of similar cones and cylinders. This work has been compared with Euclid XII-15 and is considered to be both "schoolmasterly" and even of a "repetitive and didatctic manner of exposition contrasting 3't}th the precise language of Archimedes and other Hellenistic writers of mechanics . " Yet the idea alone of centers of gravity is worth considering in respect to establishing a com~ plete correspondence between the theoretical and sensuous worlds. To examine first the mathematical treatment of this subject, it is best to examine Archimedes' method of abstracting from objects that have weight to identify the center of gravity at a mathematical point. However, I am directed to Archimedes' work not only on the basis of his authority and the apparent precision of his exposition. It is likely that Anthemius was particularly interested in the works of 40 Archimedes, and the "method of exhaustion" that Anthemius alludes to in his proposition is probably adapted directly from Archimedes. In addition, Isodorus the 48 49 that the straight line which joins the focus to the point of intersection of two tangents bisects the angle between the straight lines jo~ng the same focus to the two points of contact respectively. That is, the lines on which the plane mirrors are situated in Anthemius' description can be said to lie along the tangents to the curve. And the incoming rays of light which Anthemius defines are found t o correspond to "the straight lines joining the same focus to the points of contact." What is especially interesting in Anthemius' work, however, is the method he employs in his demonstration. This method is best described as a mechanical method. Mechanical has a remarkable sense for the Byzantines which is very different fro~ the connotation it often carries when signifying a merely practical, and even rudimentary, approach to problem solving. The Byzantine mechanics carried forward the whole of Hellenistic science into their era and were a very knowledgable class of scholars. It has even been suggested that the mechanics we57 the province of the elite scholars of this time, ranked even above the "geometers" Their rank is worth noting here not to show their superiority over others, but to illustrate a certain probable level of thoughtfulness among them which, I think, is important in understanding the Byzantine ideal. And this ideal is very different from the modern ideal. The mechanical method embraces both a theoretical and a practical knowledge; it combines theory and technique into one enterprise . One mechanic, Pappus of Alexandria (ca . 320) , describes this more explicitly: mechanics can be theoretical part and physics, the try and painting divided into a theoretical and manual part; the is composed of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy manual of work in metals, architecture, carg§nand anything involving skill with the hands. �Elder is said to have revised the editions of Eutocius' comment~~ies to Archimedes' On the Sphere and Cylinder and On the Measurement of the Circle. Therefore, it is probable that Archimedes' method underlies the design for the Hagia Sophia. It certainly is the foundat i on of the Byzantine mechanical method. The concept of a center of gravity is fundamental to mechanical thought. The center of gravity is a mathematical point identified within a geographical figure or within a system of equilibrium between more than one figure. Yet while the center of gravity is an abstract point, it is not disassociated from the weight of physical matter. The center of gravity is a mechanical property which admits both the mathematical and the physical. In his treatise On the Equilibrium of Planes, Archk~edes postulates the rules for the behavior of weights suspended on a bar balance. For instance, he states that equal weights balance at equal distances on the bar (Postulate 1) . The balance of this system is an "equilibrium" of weights with r espec t t o the dis tanc e s a t whi ch they are suspended from a center . "Equilibrium" is then generally defined as the balance of weights at "certain distances" from some point (Postulate 2 . ) This point is the center of gravity of the system. The center of gravity may be a point on a line which divides the line into separate magnitudes of length. Or it may be a point within a figure which divides it into separate magnitudes of area radiating from this point . That is, the figure is conceived of as an integration of lines passing through this point, and each of these lines is divisible into separate magnitudes. Yet in the strict mechanical t reat ment , these magnitudes of length and area of pure geometrical forms represent magnitudes of weight as well. Archimedes' mechanical treatment conceives of a magnitude having both a mathematical and a physical element. Archimedes' understanding of the correspondence between a length or area and a magnitude of weight is useful not only to the measure of the equivalent weights, but to the measure of equivalent areas and volumes as well. In his treatise entitled The Method, Archimedes explains the use of this "peculiar method, by which it will be possible ••• to investigate some of the problems in mathematics by means of mechanics. 1143 The mathematical pr oblems treated here are the quadrature and cubature of curvilinear figures. Archimedes' "method" can be generally characterized in the following way: he first either inscribes or circumscribes some figure, usually rectilinear, by another figure that is usually curvilinear. He then establishes a ratio between the parts of a line or section common to both figures that is divided by a t least one boundary of the inscribed figure . Then he sets up, as a bar balance , the extension of a diameter or an axis passing through the two figures on one end of the balance arm. And on the other end, he places a figure equal to the magnitude of the line cut off from the c ommon line by the inscribed fi gure. At some distance f r om t he f ulcr um de t ermi ned by the ratio of the separate parts of the common line, the portion cut off by the inscribed figure will balance the whole given line contained by the circumscribed figure . Archimedes then imagines that the two figures are each composed of an indefinite number of lines similar to the common line that has been identified. The ratio of this common line, as it is divided, is therefore representative of the ratio of one figure to another. That is, a system comprised of the sum of all the lines common to both figures, the whole of these lines being representative of the circumscrib ing figure, will balance, at a known distance from the fulcrum, a sum of all the lines composing the inscribed figure. Therefore, within this system the curvilinear figure can be found equal to the rectilinear figure at a determinable distance from the ful crum. And one can expect that in general it is true that areas composed of lines, or even that volumes composed of areas rotated around an axis, might be determined to be proportional to one another in the same ratio as the distances at which they balance. 50 Two important,. conditions characterize this method: the first is the way in which figures are balanced in a system about a center of gravity at a distance de termined by the rat i o of a line common to both figures. The second is the manner in which figures ar e considered as a sum of an indefinite series of lines , similar to the common line. To demons.t r a t e the "method" more clearly, I will paraphrase and explain in detail Proposition 6 of The Method. In addition to showing the use of this mechanical method in the measurement of weights and volumes, the c?nclusi~ns presented in the proposition lead to an interesting anal~sis of th~ Hagia Sophia. Several points are compelling about this proposition. First' Archimed~s presents here a mechanical treatment of hemispheres which are found to be contained by the domes and half domes of the church. Also, this treatment concerns the center~ of three - dimensional figures . Similar centers of gravity are found to b~ sensi~ly indicated in the Great Church. And finally, the peculiar use of the imaginati~n Archimedes depends on in the course of this demonstration may be helpful in conceptualizing the intended design of a work of architecture composed of space and This imagination conceives o'f a system of equilibrium between volumes 1 . ht c~!po~ed of an abstract, mechanical space that.seems to ~e endowed with properties of weight and yet is free of the solidity of physical materials. The enunciation to Proposition 6 states: The center of gravity of any hemisphere (is on the straight line which) is its axis, and divides the said straight line in such a way that the portion of it adjacent to the surface of the hem!4 sphere has to the remaining portion the ratio which 5 has to 3 . To find the tenter of gravity of the hemisphere , Archimedes begins by cutting a sphere through its center so that the plane of the great circle, ADCB, is found. Then he constructs the perpendicular diameters AC and BD. In the sphere, another plane is identified which contains the great circle with the diameter BD that is perpendicular to the plane of ADCB. On the plane of ADCB, he constructs the chords AB and AD. Using these chords as generators fixed at the vertex A, he describes a cone within the hemisphere BAD. The base of this cone is the great circle with t he diameter BD perpendicular to ADCB. Next, the diameter AC of the c irc l e ADCB is extended t o H so that the extension HA is equal to the diameter AC. The whole line HC is the bar of a balance, and its midpoint, A, is the fulcrum point . On the plane ADCB, Archimedes draws any line, OP, pare allel to the diameter BD. OP is contained by the semicircle BAD , but it is cut by the sides AB and AD at Q and R. The line, OP'. is therefore common to t he cir cums cr ibing figure, the semi- cir cle BAD, and the inscri~ed figure, the triangle ABD . One expects that a proportionate magnitude at H will balance the remaini ng magnitudes on OP. The necessary proportion is, however, d r ·i ed as a function of an a r ea and not of just a one- dimensional magnitude. e vA circle with diame ter OP is found parallel to the circle with diameter _BD and perpendicular to the axis AG . The plane of this circle is common to the hemisphere BAD and to the cone ABD . The r efore , within the plane OP , parallel to the plane BD, there are concentric circles about the center E. One, with diameter OP, describes a " 51 �,,,. The triangle ABD is a representative section of the cone, and it is an isoceles triangle whose base is equal to twice its height. Therefore, the perpendicular bisectors of its sides bisect the angles AGB and AGD. These bisectors are drawn as GX and GY. So, the four triangles within the great triangle ABD are all equal to one another. The triangle AXG and AYG, together where they are, form the square AXGY. The center of gravity of this square is at the midpoint of its diagonals, at the point p (I, 10 Equilibrium of Planes). The centers of gravity of the triangle GXB lie on the lines which bisect the angle GXB and the angle GYD, respectively (I, 13 Equilibrium of Planes). And these centers of gravity act upon BD as the bar of a balance at K and L, the midpoints of BG and GD. Therefore, the equal triangles, GXB and GYD, balance each other where they are about the midpoint of KL at the point G. Yet another system can be imagined that balances the square at one end and the two triangles at the other end. For, since AXGY is equal to the two triangles, these figures will balance each other at equal distances from the midpoint of GS. This point, V, equal to ~ AG, is the center of gravity of the entire system, the triangle ABD. And when the triangle is rotated about the axis AG, to describe the cone ABD, by symmetry the center of gravity must remain at the same point. Once the center of gravity of the cone is determined, the portion of the cone, M, that balances the cone alone, can be determined. That is, since AV=3/4 AG, then HA:3 / 4 AG just as the cone:M. And since AG=l / 2AC, and 3/ 4(!) =3 / 8, then 3/ 4 AG = 3/8 AC. Hence, M=3 / 8 of the cone and N=S / 8 of the cone. It remains to find the ratio of the hemisphere to the cone. This ratio is cited by Heath as given earlier in the treatise in Proposition 2. The same result can, however, be understood by using a slightly different application of the system that is used in Proposition 6. Because the angle AOC is right, AO:AE::AC:AO. Th~s, 2 compounded with AC:AO, gives the ~opoztion ~:AE::AC :AO. And, as shown above, becam~e AO =9E z+ QE and because AC=BD, therefore AC:AE::AC: (OE +QE ). Consequently, AC :AE:: the circle with diameter = 2BD: the circle OP plus the circle QR. And also, in the manner described above, the H cylinder with a radius BD, with its base centered along BD, will balance a figure equal to both the hemisphere and the cone with its center of gravity placed at H. The center of gravity of this cylinder will then be at the midpoint of the axis AG (I, 10 Equilibrium of Planes). If it is imagined that this center of gravity is moved to G, A at twice its distance from A, then half of the cylinder will balance the cone and the hemisphere at H. A new cylinder, equal to ! of the other cylinder, would equal 1/ 3 of the cone ABD (Euclid XII, 10). So, the portion of the figure at H equal to the cone will balance 1/3 of the cylinder with D its center of gravity at G. And the hemisphere will balance 2 / 3 of the cone. Therefore, the hemisphere is equal to twice the cone. In the original system of Proposition 6, if the hemisphere is twice as great as the cone, and if N, the portion of the figure at H that balances only the hemisphere, is equal to 5 / 8 of the cone, then 2: 5 / 8 ::HA:AW, where Wis the center of gravity of the hemisphere at some point along AG. And since HA=2AG, therefore AW = 5 / 8AG and WG = 3/ 8 AG. Thus, the center of gravity of the hemisphere is determined to be at a point that divides the radius AG in the ratio 5:3. The details of this proposition provide a thorough demonstration of the use of Archimedes' "peculiar method" to measure volumes and areas relative to one another in a system of equilibrium. This method relies on a theoretical concept of the center of gravity that has direct relevance to the material world. By means of this concept, he builds a system of equilibrium in thought with which to "weigh" ge ometrical forms. Not only can the center of gravity of an incommensurable 52 53 latitude of the hemisphere, and another, with diameter QR, cuts the cone. Hence, to describe the magnitudes to be balanced at H, the distances on the bar balance from A must be related to the circles OP and QR. If, in the semi-circle ABC, the chords AO and OC are joined, the angle AOC is right (Euclid III, 31). So, AC2A0:2AO:AE. This proportion, compounded with AO:AE, gives the p2opo2tio2" AC :AE: :AO :AE • And, because the triangle AOE is a right triangle, AO =OE +AE (Euclid I, 47). Further, since the tria~le f:GB, an ~soceles triangle, is similar to the triangle AEQ, AE=QE. ~herzfore~ (OE +AE ) and QE can be substituted into the proportion so that AC:AE::(OE +AE ):QE • OE and QE are radii of the circles with diameters OP and QR, respectively. And, since circles are to one another as the squares of their radii, the circle OP plus the circle QR are to the circle QR as HA:AE. By establishing this proportion, the first condition of the method has been set out. That is, the ratio of a line contained by a circumscribing figure and an inscribed figure has been found equal to a ratio of distances from a fulcrum point on a bar balance. It can be concluded at this point that the plane circle with diameter QR, with its center at H, will balance about A the two circles with diameters OP and QR, with their centers at E. The remainder of Archimedes' original proof is lost, but Heath, in his translation of The Method, supplies a conclusion that I think is faithful to the style Archimedes employs throughout his treatise. Heath begins by fulfilling the second-most important conclusion of the "method". That is, the hemisphere is conceived of as the sum of an indefinite series of plane circles .ffrallel to OP. Heath refers to these planes as "indefinitely thin plane laminae" , which speaks well to the manner in which they might be imagined to fill the volume of the hemisphere. Similarly, the cone within the hemisphere is conceived of as the sum of an indefinite series of plane circles similar to the circle QR. The relation of each plane to the distances on the bar then apply to the entire volume. "Hence", Heath concludes, "the hemisphere BAD and the cone ABD, in the places whe~g they are, balance about A (a figure) equal to ABD with its center of gravity at H." The figure equal to the cone ABD is then divided into two portions. Since both portions together balance the hemisphere and the cone together, one portion of the figure, M, is responsible for balancing only the cone. The other portion of the figure, N, is responsible for balancing the hemisphere alone. Heath places the center of gravity of the cone, at a point V on the axis AG so that AG=4GV. His reason for doing this is not immediately clear. A short analysis of the cone ABD, however, will reveal the sense of this statement. A . ----- ,,"" , ,, ,, c �iii. curvilinear form be established in this way, but its relative volume can also be determined.* In the course of defining this system -- the hemisphere and the cone "in the places where they are" -- are found to be in the same place. That is, they are both centered on the great circle of the sphere with diameter BD. The cone and the hemisphere must be imagined to have properties of weight so that they balance in the system. But at the same time, they must be imagined to have no substantial volume, so t .hat they occupy the same place. It can be said that the concept of weight is abstracted from material substance and given as a property of pure geometric figures. These figures are, then, forms composed of an inner concept of space. However, there is no free commerce between the concrete and abstract aspects of these forms; as they are, these forms cannot be applied to a purely physical or a purely theoretical world. As they are, these forms are conceived in a mechanical space or, rather, composed of a mechanical substance that exists between physical and theoretical worlds. Archimedes cle-fms that his method gives a "sort of indication that the · conclus~on~s a~e) true." In ~he Method ~ e calls a proposition a4E "investigation", and he distinguishes between this and an 1 actual demonstration". For every conclusion reached in The Method, Archimedes does offer an "actual demonstration", though most of these are found in his other treatises. For example, the conclusion to Proposition 6 is demonstrated in proposition 38 of On the Sphere and the Cylinder. In the "actual demonstrations", Archimedes often makes use of a system of equilibrium. But the primary difference between these and his "investigations" seems to lie in the manner in which the figures are conceived of as a sum of an indefinite series of magnitudes. Instead of simply imagining this to be so, he offers a more rigorous deduction of each series. In the demonstrations, he formally leads to the possibility of the "nth", or infinitesimal, magnitude in each series. This method won Archimedes fame as a precursor to the modern calculus. But, just as the conclusions to the propositions in The Method can be made "apodeictic" in some sense (though not without a great deal of effort) and, therefore, purely mathematical, one can imagine that the conclusions might be demonstrated in a purely physical way. Such a demonstration would reveal to the senses the truth of a mechanical principle. This sensuous kind of demonstration, it is . claimed here, was achieved by the designers of the Hagia Sophia. But while this demonstration may be found to lead to a mathematical conclusion, it is more probable that the intended conclusion has a more universal aspect. * Using the value TI to calculate the volumes of the cone and the cylinder, the relative volumes of the hemispheres and the cone, at the distances given, can be 2 verified. With a radius = 8, the volume of the cone 1T r h = 536 .165 and the volume of the hemisphere M = 3 cone 8 201.062 and N = = ~nr 3 = 3 5 cone 8 = 3 1072.287 335.103 And since N balances the volume of the hemsiphere at H, the volume of N at the distance HA = the volume of the hemisphere at the distance AW. That is, N(16) = 5361.648 and Vh(5) = 5361.434. 54 A Final View of the Work The designers of the Hagia Sophia worked to create a harmony. The harmony they sought is a unity of opposing forms of the circle and the square. The curvilinear forms are not set equal to the rectilinear forms in the church; they retain distinct identities in volume and in shape. But these forms are united in a balanced system. Cross-Section (north-south axis) If the interior volumes of the church are viewed as a system in equilibrium, the forms are entertained in the mind as they appear. No symbolic meaning needs to be imposed to conceive of a notion of harmony. One sees a balanced system of cubes and hemispheres. The upper region of the church contains the curvilinear forms of the half domes and the dome. In section, these are seen as three hemispheres. Their centers of gravity, marked by A, B, and C, represent three forms of equal size and therefore of equal "weight". Therefore, as a system, these hemispheres balance at the center of gravity of the triangle ABC, which is . he point D. t The triangle formed between the centers of gravity of the equal hemispheres is in equilibrium with the cube described in the lower regions of the church. This cube is defined by the square marked out on the floor of the church by the four piers that support the dome and by the height from which the great arches begin to rise to meet the dome. This cube is approximately ! greater than the volume of the half domes.* * radius of the domes = 53 feet. width of the nave = 107 feet. volume of the hemispheres = 3. 3 2 4 n r 3 3 volume of the cube = w = 12,25043 ratio of Vh : Ve is approximately 3:4. 55 935419.5 cubic feet �The arm of the balance can be imagined from the center of gravity of the cube (at the level marking the division between the aisles and the galleries) to the center of gravity of the system of the hemispheres. The center of gravity of the entire system would be * of the distance from the center of gravity of the cube. All the centers of ·gravity defined here lie in empty space, but they are visibly indicated by the structure. That is, the center of gravity of the interior cube is at the level at which the railing marking the division between the aisles and galleries runs along the entire perimeter of the nave. The center of gravity of the entire system lies within the space defined by the lower and upper limits of the galleries. Though a precise point is not identifiable, it is nonetheless sensible as a region of balance clearly defined by the limits of the upper and lower regions of space. The center of gravity of the hemisphere within the dome is indicated by the height of the corona of windows and of the hemispheres partially contained by the half domes at the level at which the quarter spheres of the apse and niches intersect the half domes . This level is also indicated along the north and south walls by the height of the lowest row of windows beneath the great arches. The center of gravity of the system of hemispheres is indicated by the window at the summit of the half- circle of windows on the north and south walls, and by the windows piercing the surface of the half domes to the east and west. If, as these indications seem to suggest, the interior volume of the church is recognized as a system in· equilibrium, the forms may seem to be composed of a space that is directly related to the forms of thought. In thought, the forms of a system of equilibrium are conceived in a mechanical space that lies between the purely theoretical and purely technical realms of the mechanic's world. This mechanical space has even been considered as a substance of which these forms are composed in thought. Hence, the actual space and light that compose the forms of the church are similar to the space of mechanical thought. Considered in this way, the forms of the church, as they are sensuously represented, are doorways into a realm of pure thought. As the mechanical concepts of the center of gravity have both a theoretical and a physical representation, the centers of gravity of the church have both a structural and an aesthetic significance . Structurally, the level of the center of gravity of the hemispherical shells is important. In the shell of the hemisphere there are both horizontal and vertical forces acting to move domes of such incredible weight. If these hemispheres were to move as a whole, they would move from their centers of gravity. The vertical forces of the three domes are transferred to the great arches and onto the four piers inside the church . The horizontal forces are , for the most part , transferred to the half domes and then to the arches of the niches. The horizontal forces on the strictly vertical north and south walls, however, are concentrated at a level near the center of gravity of the interior hemispheres. The center of gravity of the exterior shell of the domes is slightly higher than the interior volume. To support the forces concentrated at this higher level, arches have been built to span the diagonal from the four exterior piers to meet the faces of the north and south walls at this level. (See points r. ands. indicted on the cross-section of the east-west axis, above.) Also, the dome has been reinf creed by a series of exterior buttresses that reach to the l evel of its center of gravity. This has been done both to allow the shell to be pierced by the corona of windows (though the arches of these windows also support a great deal of this weight) and to support the dome at the level where the horizontal forces are the greatest. This level is also slightly higher than the level of the center of gravity of the interior volume . (See the points m. and n. indicted on the cross -s ection of the north-south axis, above.) The aesthetic sense one is to gain from the forms depends only on the interior 56 57 �~ volumes and not upon the exterior shell. Since the centers of gravity of the interior forms are indicated inside the church independently from the structural centers of gravity, it is likely that the designers intended to accentuate the effect of space and light. Inside, the centers of gravity are marked by that which is the complete antithesis of weight. That is, on the north and south walls and within the dome, the center of gravity of each hemisphere and of the system of hemispheres is marked by a region of light. In the half dome in the east, this level is marked by the opening of space into the quarter sphere of the apse. The effect, therefore, is a one of pure weightlessness, since the level where the most weight would be expected is transformed into light or into a greater volume. The recognition of the center of gravity prepares the mind for holding the notion of a harmony between opposing ideas, though one may not b e conscious of the center of gravity explicitly. Procopius' impression that the half domes "seem somehow to float in the air" while also imposing a "peril" might be explained by the seeming dissolution of . the dome's center of gravity. Similarly, this explains why the great dome is said to be ''fitted together with incredible skill in midair and (is) floating off from (the parts that support it)" while i t also "produces a single and most extraordinary harmony in the work." The singleness of this harmony is most intelligible as the center of gravity of the system from which, quite literally, one might imagine it being "suspended from heaven." This "single and most extraordinary harmony" is a characteristic of the whole volume of space within the church and its special coincidence with light. When one is aware of the "single" harmony, he is participating in the whole expanse of form contained within those walls. As soon as one enters the church, it seizes all of one's senses and leads his mind to wonder. From the Imperial Doorway, in looking up to the center of gravity of the system of domes, one sees beyond it through the windows at the base of the dome. (See line of vision xy indicated on the cross-section of the north-south axis, above.) As one moves into the center of the church, he comes under the full influence of the form of the dome. In the center, he can no longer see beyond the center of gravity to the corona of windows. These windows now surround one in a full circle above one's head . The windows in these, lying at the To either side he is aware of the half domes. level of the center of gravity, are now central to his vision of harmony. Here he can also see through the windows at the same level on the north and south faces . The angle at which these windows can be seen from the center of the church is about 41 degrees from the floor . This is also the latitude of the church, and so it marks the height of the pole star and the zenith of the sun on the days of the equinoxes. One sees through these windows the highest point in the sky to the north, and, on the equinoxes, the brightest light to the east. These details c ould no t be coincidental in a church designed by Anthemius. They serve, I think, to demonstrate the special significance of these windows. Beyond the visual indications, it may be that one is also engaged by a haptic sense of this single point of balance in space. In the center of the church, one must be aware of the space of the dome even if he is facing towards the apse or the doorway and not looking straight up. He is aware of the balance of the forms as a whole: the symmetry of the brightly lit half domes and the full dome balanced above one's head, as well as the symmetry of the shadowy aisles, both below the domes and extending in opposite directions in the form of a great three-dimensional cross. All of one's senses, perhaps, combine to produce this awareness. He remembers having just seen each of the forms individually a moment before. He is full of wonder at their presence for the terror is still quick in his blood. He sees the forms peripherally, perhaps, and the shafts of light from their windows cut across his field of vision. Maybe even the echoes of footsteps resound to heighten his awareness of a great space. Full of this sense of space, one's awareness expands to 58 meet the very shape of the forms balanced around him. In meeting this space of the hemispheres, one meets paradoxes. The space is clear and empty, but i t is filled with shimmering light and shadows; its quiet forms are filled with an impending terror; its scale diminishes one's being and y~t arches protectively over one's head. One is carried upwards by his vision to "weigh" the forms, and, at the single points of balance, all sense of weight disappears. One's senses engage the mind to resolve the paradoxes of this world he is in. The church by itself presents to a person just the barest form of thought that emerges from the feelings characterized here by awe and terror together: in a word, wonder. This particular state of mind has been characterized as follows: Whoever wonders no longer regards the whole of the external world as something which he has become clear about ••• Wonder only occurs when man, torn free from the most immediate first connection with nature and his own singularitl( now seeks and sees in things 9 a universal and permanent element. One gives up not only his wordly concerns when he crosses the threshold of the Beautiful Gate, but is compelled to give up even the simplest determinations of things. That is, one is not certain of the sense of weight of the domes, of his safety, or even of his individual worth. Most importantly, he is uncertain of the space in which he stands. . . The space inside the church is not the natural space of the physical world. It appears as the mechanical form of space that is present to the awareness as a s~ace between a world of objects and a world of pure thought. The space presented is a space of its own kind; it embraces neither one world nor the other, but provides a space through which to enter both. The word mechanical has an unfortunate connotation of a strictly technological quality . But there is no clockwork essence here. The mechanical science of Byzantine conception stands between the technique and handiwork of a constructed thing - a building, a balance, or a work of art - and its abstract design - the f~nal outcome of the thing which exists in thought prior to its creation. The mechanical space in which the work is conceived even stan~s betwe~n the ~ct~al, ~oncrete existence of a thing and the abstract, ideal certainty of it . It is in this space that the forms of the church were conceived, and it is in this space that they seem to exist now, fashioned there by the mechanic's art from space and light. One need not be a mechanician to recognize the forms as they are. The forms shimmerin g in light and shadow are, in their sensuous presentation, dual- natured. In . themselves they c ontain perplexities that concern their composition . By these, one is driven to a resolution in thought. In merely walking through the church's realms, one is disposed to a solemnity, a quiet reflection, and serious worship of the wholeness of things beyond even the · perplexities he sees. So agreeably do these forms mirro r the perplexities of the human soul, one cannot help but slip beyond .. I do not attempt t o name the specific representation of the ideal one must find. Procopius concluded wheneve5 anyone enters this church to pray, ..• his mind is lifted 0 to God. Yet the Sultan worshipped Allah here. And perhaps one may even be moved to embrace Beauty itself within the walls of Hagia Sophia. 51 Many spectres of harmony have "paced the pillared cloisters of the mind" , and each has had its name. But the names of something absolute merely distract one from the knowledge he seeks of it. Only when actively engaged with the specific forms 59 �,,, that are presented, whether to the imagination or to the senses, can one be aware of the possibility of such an absolute. To speak of such a harmony, one must speak of an idea that is connected to all human existence and to one's entire being if it is to be vital to human knowledge. The names, removed from their specific representation, may or may not retain their validity, instill a wonder, or lead one to a genuine vision of "a universal, implicit and permanent element." But in the Great Church, where one is awakened to a presence not itself absolute, but whole, it is certain a beginning is to be made. References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. Abbot Suger, The Abbey Church of St. Denis and Its Art Trearures, ed. and trans. Edwin Panofsky (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.) p. 65. Cyril Mango, "The Mosaics of Hagia Sophia" in Hagia Sophia by Heinz Kanler, trans. Ellyn Childs (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967.) p. 47. Richard Krutheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, (Baltimore: Pelican Books, 1965.) p. 247. Procopius, VII, Buildings, trans. H.B. Dewing, The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940.) Kahler, op. cit. p. 19-20. Emerson Howland Swift, Hagia Sophia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940.) p. 18. Procopius, op. cit. p~ 13. Ibid. p. 17. Swift, op. cit. p. 38. Procopius, op. cit. p. 17. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. p. 21. Swift, op. cit. p. 18-19. cites Antoniadi, Hagia Sophia, I,73 on the alignment of the main axis of the church. He also gives the orientation of the sunrise on Christmas Day at 31°41' to the . south of east. It is unclear whether on the the morning of the winter solstice the sun rises farther south but it is likely. In any case, it is clear that the windows of the apse are sufficiently wide to collect the rays of the sun at a variation of more than 1°41'. Procopius, op. cit. p. 25. Ibid. Ibid. p. 21. Ibid. Ibid. p. 13. Ibid. p. 20. Cited by Kahler, op. cit. p. 11. Procopius, op . cit . p . 19 . Ibid. p. 27. Cited by Kahler, op. cit. p. 45. Ibid. Procopius, op. cit. p. 17. T.L. Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965.) p. 421. 60 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. SO. 51. Kahler, op. cit. p. 15. G.L. Huxley, Anthemius of Tralles, A Study in Later Greek Geometry (Cambridge: The Eaton Press, 1959) p. 6. Ibid. Ibid. p. 7. Ibid. p. 8. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. p. 9. Ibid. p. 10. G. Downey, Byzantine Architects, Their Training and Methods, p. 111. Ibid. p. 107. (c.f. Thomas, Greek Mathematics, The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956: p. 615.) Huxley, op. cit. p. 25. Heath, op. cit., vol. II, p. 518. Ibid. p. 540. T.L. Heath, ed. and trans., The Works of Archimedes, (New York: Dover Publications Inc., reissue of Heath Ed., 1897.) Ibid. Archimedes, The Method (Supplement to Heath Ed.) p. 13. Ibid. p. 27. Ibid. p. 11. Ibid. p. 29. Ibid. p. 17. Ibid. p. 13. G.W.F. Hegel, Aethetics, vol. I, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974) p. 315. Procopius, op. cit. p. 27. George Santayana. Special thanks to Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, New York; Gehr. Mann Verlag GmbH, Berlin; and Mr. Raoul Laev, photographer; for their permission to publish, along with this essay, reproductions from the book Hagia Sophia by Heinz Kaehler. 61 �Non-Profit Org. BULK RATE U.S. POSTAGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 cw PAID PERMIT NO. 120 ANNAPOLIS, MD � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>Energeia</em> Description An account of the resource <em>Energeia</em> is a non-profit, student magazine, which is published once a year and distributed among students, faculty, alumni, and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis.  Staff welcome submissions from all members of the community -- essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context energeia Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper (bound book) Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. ii, 61 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Energeia, Winter 1987 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Winter 1987. Original publication is incorrectly labeled as Spring 1987. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Energeia Spring [Winter] 1987 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cooper, Laurie (co-editor) Macfarland, Joseph C. Energeia Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6e8932cebbbec991dacfd8e1e720af6e.pdf bbbf6b1fa577a8399df4c063bf8d086e PDF Text Text • energe1a winter 2009 �• energe1a winter 2009 �. en e r ge1a editor junior editor layout editor faculty advisor printer Jen Stocklin Kirstie Dodd Anne Duffee Kris Klotz My Nguyen Christian Holland Howard Morsberger & The St. John's Print Shop cover by Jeffrey Rome: Carport in Rockport, Missouri �contents Kris Klotz 7 Ophelia Drowned Peter Kalkavage 9 Malherbe's Consolation to Mr. du Perier on the Death of His Daughter Kirstie Dodd 21 Melpomene Bryan Smith 29 photographs & drawings The Killing Ideal: Love and Art in Baudelaire's "Une Charogne" Rachel Bartgis Harlin Glovacki 62 64 "'Christine-' I said, but you had closed the door" Northfield Auditorium Mount Hermon Water Tower Ron Sadan 28 Figure Study #3 65 Untitled Jeffrey Rome 76 Slickhorn Chelsea Adams 82 Wisdom of the Aegis Josiah Stephens 89 Michael 3 Always An Ellipse Rachel Bartgis 20 63 Nate Oesch Patricia Locke 40 False Summit of Green Knob, West Virginia William Knight, A 08 Luke Russell Kea Wilson Joseph Brodsky 66 Serenade 77 78 79 Twos. Bounty. Intervention. 80 Odysseus to Telemachus translated by Paul Wasserman Barrett Brooks 81 "irish restaurant" Eva Brann 83 What is the Common Good of Liberal Education? 8 �7 Ophelia Drowned Kris Klotz I saw you naked in the early dawn. Painted with a ray which stilled The dust midair, you failed to respond. I'd have you cast off death and speak: Let there be no more weddings And only funerals without rites. Let life be a stage for the dead, Then will you remember me? I prayed for her like I prayed the night before; Nothing, so I laid with her though she'd leapt. Then (belly to belly, with the dew between us) I whispered to her corpse: Ophelia, your prince, he's gone. Rosemary I'd wear (enough for us), If for you he died; yet still Woe, for you saw him and I saw you. �8 energeia 9 Malherbe' s Consolation to Mr. du Perier on the Death of His Daughter Peter Kalkavage In his long poem, Consolation aMonsieur du Perier sur la Mort de sa Fille, Frarn;:ois de Malherbe consoles a lawyer friend, Frarn;ois du Perier, by trying to shake him out of his seemingly interminable grief over the death of his five-year-old daughter, Marguerite. The poem is on a grand scale and is exquisitely crafted. Harsh in the extreme, it is anything but what most of us would call consolation. The sentiment of the poem derives from Seneca, whose works Malherbe translated . Several stanzas of the poem are directly indebted to the Stoic. The most striking is the twelfth stanza, where the poet accuses his friend of self-aggrandizement and hypocrisy: "N'est-ce pas se ha'ir pour acquerir la gloire I De bien aimer autrui?" (Is it not the case that to hate oneself is to gain the reputation for loving another well?) These lines echo a passage from Seneca's Epistle 63, which, in Malherbe' s translation, reads as follows: "Le pleurer excessif est plutot marque de vanite et de vouloir etre estime afflige, que d'une veritable amitie" (Excessive weeping is more the mark of vanity and of wanting to be esteemed afflicted than of a genuine love). The marks of Stoic doctrine are evident throughout the poem: the emphasis on reason as the moderator of passion, the need to bear up uncomplainingly in the most painful circumstances, the connection between modera1 False Summit ef Green Knob, !Fest Virginia I Rachel Bartg is 1. The original text of this poem ca n be found in th e Senior Language Anthology. For th e historical backgro und , see th e notes in Antoine Adam's edition of Malherbe's ,.vorks in Oeuvres, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, Editions Gallimard, Dijon, 1971. �10 energeia tion and courage, the recognition that there are no exceptions to the natural order of things, the acceptance of misfortune and death, the alignment of our will with that of the divine, and the claim that tranquility of mind is the highest human good. Malherbe' s consolation, however, departs from both Stoicism and the poet's official Christianity. Although the poem ends with the will of God, the dominant theme here is malevolent fortune . In the fourth stanza, Malherbe speaks of "the worst fate" that hunts down "the most beautiful things." And in the stanzas devoted to Francis I, we hear that the celebrated knight-king, having dried his tears, was "contre fortune instruit" (instructed against fortune). Francis did not so much seize the day as realize that no amount of crying would ever bring back the son whom fortune had taken away. He rose up against his enemies not with fortune's blessing but against what fortune had done to him. The malevolence of Lady Fortune finds its keenest expression in the other Lady who appears in the poem-la Mort, whom the poet depicts as cruel, deaf, and implacable. Although formally a Christian, Malherbe never consoles du Perier by eliciting his friend's trust in God's providence or his hope for a life after death. The "heavenly mansion" in the sixth stanza is rhetorically indistinguishable from the references to the pagan underworld. It is true that Malherbe ends the poem by urging du Perier to submit to the divine will: "Vouloir ce que Dieu veut est la seule science I Qui nous met en repos" (To will what God wills is the only science that puts us at rest). But this is mere resignation. It is a far cry from the joyous merging of the human and the divine will at the end of Dante's Comedy, or from Piccarda's sublime utterance: "in His will is our peace" (Paradiso III. 85). There is no grace in Mal- Kalkavage 11 her be' s world. Harrowed by evil fortune, man is left to his own devices and must seek consolation and peace in the power of his unaided reason. The poem was probably written in 1598, the year of Marguerite's death. It is a revised version of a poem Malherbe had written some years earlier for a man named Cleophon, whose daughter, like Marguerite, died very young. That her name was Rosette adds an ironic pang to the most beautiful line of the poem: "Et rose elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses" (And a rose, she lived what roses live). The present translation is an experiment in rhythm. I wanted to see how closely I could mimic Malherbe's stately alexandrines and half-alexandrines while also preserving the rhyme scheme. The shortcomings of this experiment will be immediately evident, as English iambs often overpower my attempt at anapests. I offer this translation in the hope that it will lead readers to a careful study of the original, and encourage them to examine the rhythmic differences between French and English verse. �12 energeia Consolation a Monsieur du Perier sur la Mort de sa Fille Fran9ois de Malherbe 13 Consolation to Mr. du Perier on the Death of his Daughter translated by Peter Kalkavage Ta douleur, du Perier, sera done eternelle, Et les tristes discours Que te met en l' esprit l' amitie paternelle L'augmenteront toujours? So your grief, du Perier, will it eternal prove? And those speeches of gloom That are fixed in your mind by strong paternal love, Will they heighten grief's bloom? Le malheur de ta fille au tombeau descendue Par un commun trepas, Est-ce quelque dedale, OLl ta raison perdue Ne se retrouve pas? The sad lot of your girl descended to the tomb Through death that claims all men, Is it some winding maze, where reason can't resume I ts path back out again? Je sais de quels appas son enfance etait pleine, Et n' ai pas entrepris, Injurieux ami, de soulager ta peine Avecque son mepris. I know full well what charms her childhood did contain, And never have I tried, Like some abusive friend, to mitigate your pain With scorn for her who died. Mais elle etait du monde, Oll les plus belles choses Ont le pire destin; Et rose elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses, L'espace d'un matin. But she wa.s of the world, where the worst fates pursue The most beautiful things: And a rose, ah! she lived what roses always do, The brief span morning brings. Puis quand ainsi serait, que selon ta priere, Elle aurait obtenu D' avoir en cheveux bl an cs termine sa carriere, Qu' en fUt-il advenu? Assume that it were so, according to your prayer, That the course she had run Had brought her in the end to shocks of silver hairWhat good would it have done? �r energeia 14 Malherbe 15 Penses-tu que, plus vieille en la maison celeste Elle eut eu plus d' accueil? Ou qu' elle eut moins sen ti la poussiere funeste, Et les vers du cercueil? Do you think that when old, having reached Heaven's gate, She'd meet with better terms, Or would feel any less the dust of her estate, The coffin's hungry worms? Non, non, mon du Perier, aussitot que la Parque Ote l'ame du corps, L'age s'evanouit au de9a de la barque, Et ne suit point les morts. No, no, my du Perier! When fatality dark From body wrests the soul, Then one's age disappears on this side of the bark, For the dead, plays no role. Tithon n'a plus les ans qui le firent cigale; Et Pluton, aujourd'hui, Sans egard du passe, les merites egale D' Archemore et de lui. Tithonus lacks the years that made him insect seem, And Pluto now, with slim Regard for what is past, holds in equal esteem Archemorus and him. 1 Ne te lasse done plus d'inutiles complaintes; Mais sage a l' avenir, Aime une ombre comme ombre, et des cendres eteintes Eteins le souvenir. So tire yourself no more with a pointless lament, But wise to what's ahead, Love a shade as a shade, and extinguish the scent Of ashes that are dead. C' est bien, je le confesse, une juste coutume, There's a custom quite just-it cannot be deniedThat a heart filled with grief, By voiding through the eyes the bitterness inside, Will try to find relief. Que le ce£ur affiige Par le canal des yeux vidant son amertume Cherche d'etre allege. 1. Tithonus vvas the mortal beloved of Eos or Dawn. Zeus granted him immortality at the request of Eos but not immortal youth. With the passage of time, he became so old and weak that Zeus finally transformed him into a grasshopper. Archemorus, when just a baby, was killed by a serpent. The seven Argive leaders who marched against Thebes slew the serpent and honored the child, taking his death as a portent of th eir vi tory. �16 energeia Malherbe 17 Meme quand il advient que la tombe separe Ce que la Nature a joint, Celui qui ne s'emeut a l'ame d'un barbare, O u n' en a du tout point. I'd go so far to say, when the tomb pulls apart What Natu re has made one, That he who is not moved has a savage's heart, Or simply just has none. Mais d'etre inconsolable, et dedans sa memo ire Enfermer un ennui, N' est-ce pas se ha'ir pour acquerir la gloire De bien aimer autrui? But all comfort to shun, and with memory's flame To put oneself through hellIs this hate of oneself not just pretex t for fame In loving someone well? Priam qui vit ses fils abattus par Achille, Denue de support, Et hors de tout espoir du salut de sa ville, Rec;ut du reconfort. Even Priam, whose sons by Achilles cut down, His hope for help all past, And beyond any thought of safety for his town, Took comfort at the last. Franc;ois, q uand la Castille, inegale a ses arm es, Lui vola son Dauphin, Sembla d'un si grand coup devoir jeter des larmes, Qui n' eussent point de fin. King Francis, when Castille, no match for him in war, Stole his Dauphin away, Appeared, from such a blow, to be fated to pour His tears out from that day. 2 Il les secha pourtant, et comme un autre Alcide Contre fortune instruit, Fit qu'a ses ennemis d'un acte si perfide La honte fut le fruit. He dried them nonetheless and like Hercules rose Against fortune, now tame, And for theft so malign he brought home to his foes The bitter fruit of shame. Leur camp, qui la Durance avait presque tarie, De bataillons epais, Entendant sa constance eut peur de sa furie, Et demanda la paix. Their camp, near the Durance, all dried up in the path Of that host thick as fleece, W hen they heard he stood firm, grew afraid of his wrath And at once sued for peace. 2. Frarn;ois is Francis I ( 1494·- l 54•7) and Castille is Charles V of Spain. The kings were mortal enemies. It was believed that Charles had poisoned the French king's eighteen-year-old son . �18 energeia Malherbe 19 De moi deja deux fois d' une pareille foudre Je me suis vu perclus, Et deux fois la raison m'a si bien fait resoudre, Qu'il ne m' en souvient plus. As for me, I've been struck by this thunderbolt twice, Made all crippled and sore, And twice so well-resolved by reason's sound advice, I think of it no more. Non, qu'il ne me soit grief que la tombe possede Ce qui me fut si cher; Mais en un accident qui n'a point de remede Il n' en faut point chercher. Let no grievance from me blame the tomb's icy wall For holding one so dear: But in accident plain that has no cure at all, Look for none to appear. La mort a des rigueurs a nulle autre pareilles: On a beau la prier, La cruelle qu'elle est se bouche les oreilles Et nous laisse crier. Lady Death has her toils, in which she has no peers, One implores her in vain: Cruel creature that she is, she just covers her ears And leaves us to our pain. Le pauvre en sa cabane, ou le chaume le couvre, Est sujet a ses lois: Et la garde qui veille aux barrieres du Louvre N' en defend point nos rois. The poor wretch in his slum, who must sleep on the floor, Is subject to her laws, And the guard who keeps watch at the King's palace door Can't save him from her claws. De murmurer contre elle, et perdre patience, Il est mal apropos: Vouloir ce que Dieu veut est la seule science Qui nous met en repos. When our patience we lose, when we whine at Death so, Why, it's foolish at best, While to will what God wills-that is all one need know To put the mind at rest. �20 energeia 21 Melpomene Kirstie Dodd Nortlifz.eld Auditorium I Harlin Glovacki The elegant man in the tuxedo stood in the wings, frowning and tugging at his cufflinks. He was grey-haired and handsome, in his mid-fifties, with deep-set eyes that suggested at best perpetual reverie and at worst eternal sadness. "The curtain goes up in thirty minutes, Mr. Bingham," called the stage manager from somewhere in the darkness. "Very good," sniffed the elegant man. He was coming down with another cold. He pinched the loose skin between his eyes. He needed a cigarette. He walked backstage towards the side door. About fifty people pushed past him, each one yelling something in varied pitches of frantic importance. The actors sat under hot vanity lights poking the crevasses of their cheeks, lazily lining their pale eyes and flipping through curled manuscripts. The young man playing Mr. Smythe practiced his lines with the wall, "But Candice, you musn't say that to Mr. Adams, not on the boardwalk!" between long, cool sips of the scotch he held. The beautiful Frances was yelling at a dumpy woman about staging problems in Act II. Mr. Bingham didn't care anymore, at least not tonight, not with Ada in seat Lso. But the dining room scene in Act II would be a problem. Hopefully Curtis would remember the flowers-they were supremely important. "I thought we said you were wearing the black wig, Milton," he said to a thin man in passing. The man nodded. There was the rusted side door with the EXIT sign, and Mr. Bingham released the compression from backstage into the cold night, the oily grit smells of New York City in January up his nostrils. He pulled out a cigarette and jammed it between his cashew-colored lips. Smoke curled upwards into the winter �22 energe1a night. He shivered in his thin tuxedo. It would be a good show, he thought; the actors were good enough, they would carry the writing fine. What play was this, now? Oh, at least his thirtieth-to think she'd never even seen one! That was just like Ada, too. Seat L30 . . . should he greet her before the show? No, she'd be with Morris. That was terrible eight years ago at that awards ceremony in Amsterdam-how she had spilled her wine on her new dress, how they had left so soon. Morris had made her cry, and she was there with mascara all over the place in the cab pouring out emotions to a friend she had distanced with time and space and experience. Had it been eight years already? She must look older by now. And her voice had sounded so strange on the phone, uncharacteristically demure, with that small aside: "Bing, your plays ... I never thought they would .turn into all this." He listened to the endless parade of cars and taxis stopping in the street for a while, and then watched the smoldering red dot soar into the gutter and opened the door. Backstage was a riot twenty-five minutes before curtaincall. People he had never seen were dumping clothes and props and obscenities everywhere. The stage crew was still working on the balcony for the final scene. Someone somewhere was yelling for the mustard teapot, and has anyone seen the paddle for scene five? Preston was putting the finishing touches on the costume rack. Mr. Bingham, brooding, swept along the front curtain; full house, he thought, pulling a tissue from his pocket. Where was seat Lso? Premiers were always the worst performances. He could see half a dozen faux-fur women in the front rows with their rich, aged husbands. They sat up in their seats, making sure they were noticed, making sure people knew they were patrons of the arts-the very ostentation she used to mock. Had she become one of them? He Dodd 23 had no idea. Here was the stage manager behind him prodding him in the back-it was time for the curtain to rise. He walked out onto stage, unable to see anything but bright circles above his head and the dim, black outline of hundreds of expectant people. This was his performance. He stepped up to the microphone and coughed nervously. Was she here, laughing at him the way she always did? He imagined her in a silver dress. Yes, silver, that was right; he imagined her pale skin enveloped in cold metal. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began timidly. "I've been thinking about this play for thirty-five years. I've ... I've .. ." He faltered. Was that? No, he could see nothing. His retina itched; he was going to sneeze, he had to get out of here. "I think I've finally said what I've wanted to say all along. Thank you. Enjoy the performance." And with that he receded into the shadows of the wings to the din of all that cultured applause, all for a play they would never understand. How could they? It was intended to be seen by only one person. The play began. He sank behind the curtain and ignored the muffled sounds of his work. Preston was fumbling with the final touches on the wardrobe for the last act. On the middle of the rack was a striking red coat with toggles and brown fur-lined sleeves. "What is that?" Mr. Bingham asked. "What is what?" "That coat on the rack right there. We said green, not red." "What? Oh. Frances didn't think that green looked good with her hair, and Simone agreed . So we decided to change it." "Well I said specifi'cally in the script that it was to be a green coat and no other color." He felt sick. Not a red coat, please, this was supremely important ... �24 energeia But here was Ada, walking towards him in that pea-green coat of hers balancing a stack of books, a cigarette in her fingers, her shoulders damp from melted snow. She looked stressed and tired, but beautiful. "Oh thank God," she said, "I thought I was going to have to walk all the way down to Holworthy with these before I could get a smoke. Got a light?" "How have you been?" he asked as he fumbled for a match in his pocket. They were outside the library during finals week. "I haven't seen you in a while." He thought how well the winter air made her face look-the right amount of flush, the cold resting on her pouted lips. He held out a match and she bent forward with her cigarette in her mouth. "Thanks." "I thought you stopped smoking." "Well, I started again. The Crimson just gave me a new assignment and I'm working on a twenty-pager for Mr. Grayson's class. And then those finals-" "Yeah, Cyd told me you are really busy these days." She stopped. "What does Cyd know about it?" "Oh, I don't know. I just keep hearing about this Morris character, and you haven't said anything to me about it ... " She blushed, brushing her hair away from her face. "I don't know what you're talking about." He knew her too well; she wouldn't tell him anything. But he continued anyway. "Well I was just wondering to myself the other day, 'Why would my best friend in the whole world not call me for a week,' and then it hit me, of course, she's got too much school work for socialization. That must be it." "Now, it's not like you've called me this week either." "Yes, but-" "Okay, what do you want me to say? I'm distracted. I've got Dodd 25 a lot of work." Bingham all of a sudden felt very angry; it wasn't fair for her to shut him out, especially not over someone so trite and ivy-league as Morris, for chrissake. "I think you're just embarrassed that the singular and insurmountable Ada Carleton might actually be conquered by someone for a change." "That's preposterous, Bing." She took another drag on her cigarette and sidled next to him in brown boots and that green coat. "I conquer whom I want." And there she was, smiling in that cruel, ironic way of hers, coming near to him near a bush outside the library. Her face got bigger and bigger until he saw her eyes as shallow pans of water. Thought escaped, and then she was there, face next to his, the closest the two friends had ever been. She took his lips in hers suddenly, without much force, but kissed him until he bled from his heart to his toes. She pulled away and started laughing. "Look at your face! Is Shakespeare finally at a loss for words?" "What? No." He stopped and then flushed, angry. "What was that for?" She threw her head back and shook her tresses while she laughed to the slate sky. "God, Bing, don't be such a prude! If you're so upset about it why don't you just write one of your goddamn plays about it?" "I wasn't-it's, it's just-" "Thanks for the light, Bing. I have to run, really. But do you want to go to coffee sometime this week, Thursday maybe? I've heard so much about your newest production from Nancy, but I want to hear about it from you." He felt like the ash in the end of her cigarette. "Yes, Thursday's fine." "And maybe, if you're not too jealous, you can meet Morris sometime? I promise it'll be brief. The boy's too conven- �26 energeia tional for you." She laughed, unaware of her cruelties, and walked away, the green of her back receding down the path ... The curtain fell and the house lights were coming up. He opened his eyes just in time to see the flushed faces of the actors come off-stage; it was a success. People were shaking his hand and asking him questions, women in minks interested in artistic productions, and why did Mr. Adams die in the end? I thought he was in love with Candice-and he answered them all automatically. It was all awful and forced. He did not feel like he was there; his body was in seat LS 1, talking to her. It had been so, so long, too long; did he look old? He didn't know. He was ushered to the foyer of the theatre, and he stood uncomfortably next to men in tuxedos on cold terrazzo while reporter bulbs flashed and newspapermen interviewed him for the morning reviews, asking things like, "How does it feel to be hailed as the best playwright of our generation?" He mumbled something about needing a cigarette, and disappeared into the crowd. Men were yelling for cabs while the women stood together on the curb, laughing at some collective joke. She was not there; was she still inside? He found the theater manager backstage with a girl who turned out to be Frances. She pulled away flushed and smeared red with lipstick, clutching a bottle of champagne. His own voice sounded strained, angry, in his ears, "Did you hear anything from a Mr. and Mrs. Morris Van Der Weide about coming tonight? Seat Lso and L29? They're on the Board of Trustees for this theater. She was probably wearing something silver." The man was drunk. "The Van Eycks?" "The Van Der Weides. Mr. and Mrs. Morris Van Der Weide," said Bingham. Dodd 27 "Hmm, not that I know of. Sorry." Bingham collected his coat and left the theater from the side door. He found his crushed pack of cigarettes in his pocket and smoked two on the way back to his hotel. The second cigarette tasted bitter, but he smoked it anyway. Women and men dressed up for parties passed him on the street. He pulled up the collar of his coat and walked fifteen blocks to his hotel. As he passed through lobby, the desk manager called, "Mr. Bingham!" "Yes?" ''A woman, a Mrs. Van Der Weide, left a message for you." "What did she say?" "She called to tell you that she could not make the performance because something came up, but she wanted you to 'break a leg in a cliched sense.' Also that she will see you in Dresden next fall, all going well." "Thank you ." He went up to his room and sat down on the bed, loosening his bowtie and taking off his shoes. He called for room service. As he sat there in the orange glow of the hotel room, he felt, if only for a moment, the force of all his playwriting successes. There were accolades and countless newspaper articles, honorary degrees, cocktail parties in posh urban hotels, premieres and ceremonies. None of that mattered to him. He had thought this play would be his last. But then he thought her hair and her lips, Dresden, her infinite little dramas, and the scene outside the library years ago where their breaths had mingled briefly in the cold. And then the familiar compulsion came over him, and stiffiy, like a marionette, he sat down at the small hotel desk with a piece of paper, pulled the ashtray close, and began to write. �28 energeia 29 The Killing Ideal: Love and Art in Baudelaire's "Une Charogne" Bryan Smith Figure Study #3 I Ron Sadan It is easy to forget that "Une Charogne" (A Carcass)' is a kind of love poem; it is addressed from the very beginning to a beloved, and though the carcass is the ostensible subject, the underlying subject is the relationship between the speaker and the one he addresses. Though the central imagery may stand on its own as an object of contemplation, for them it is also a memory-an image of a shared experience. It also serves as a set-up for the last three stanzas, where the subject is more obviously the narrator's thoughts about his beloved. Not only is he thinking about her, he wants her to know what he's thinking, which is also to make her think of it. There are two audiences: the real one (whoever reads the poem) and the one in the poem (the beloved). The description of the carcass will have, in part, the same effect on both, but will have an additional effect on the latter, and there are accordingly two motivations for the poem, corresponding to the different audiences. One of these motivations-vis-a-vis the reader-is outside the poem itself, though it might be inferred; the other-the lover's urge to horrify his beloved-is within the poem, though implicit. Whether or not the poem is based on a real relationship, its voice must be taken as a persona, if not a character, in that the speaker is an element of his own fiction. The speaker aims the entire poem at his beloved, and since both speaker and beloved are part of the artifice, the poem itself exists as a moment in the fictional relationship that it implies. This relationship is the frame of the poem, and even though Baudelaire is aiming at the reader, and not the beloved, it must not be forgotten that the poem ignores 1. All translations are my own. �30 energeia the reader and focuses itself around the beloved as a mysterious center. I say "mysterious" because, although the poem is clearly addressed to a beloved, there is no real description of her. This is why she is easy to forget; she seems barely to exist next to the horrible but vivid carcass. The poem is not about the beloved; rather, it is to her, or even at her. And despite the poem's title, it is not about the carcass, though that image indeed comprises most of the poem's words, and its concrete force makes it the body of the poem. Perhaps, then, the poem, which is through the description of the carcass, is about the speaker. We learn much more about him than his beloved, and even though he is not described in such detail as the carcass, we learn much about him by the fact that he makes such an elaborately morbid image and directs it to his lover, whom he integrates (or disintegrates) into his abominable imaginings. Since we need not, at this moment, decide definitively what the poem is about, it will suffice to observe that the crux of the poem is not necessarily the speaker's painstaking recreation of the carcass; we must also examine the implied relationship between the speaker who says nothing about himself and the equally invisible target of his poem. Then we will better understand the difference between his poem and Baudelaire's, and how they can be different despite using all the same words. I The speaker and the one he addresses are lovers. He calls her "my soul,'' "my angel," "star of my eyes,'' "sun of my nature,'' and "queen of graces." At first one might take such terms as insincere, especially considering the unsentimental, even cruel nature of what follows. They may be merely the perfunctory phrases of traditional chivalry; they may be, at worst, acidly sarcastic. The question is important both in determining the nature of their par icular lo e, and in e amining lo e in general. Is it even pos- Smith 31 sible for such phrases to be sincere? If these are indeed true expressions of love, what does that say about love? Baudelaire has a number of poems in which such idealized expressions would be at home. Poem XLII ("What will you say tonight, poor solitary soul. .. "), for example, is entirely in this mode, claiming that "her spiritual flesh has the fragrance of Angels" and "her eye covers us with a vestment of light"(7-8). In the last line, the beloved' s image tells him, "I am Guardian Angel, Muse and Madonna." There are no corpses or maggots here to subvert these lines; the most physical word in the poem, chair (flesh), is immediately qualified (or transubstantiated) by spirituelle (spiritual). In "Le Flambeau vivant" (The Living Flame), the speaker praises his beloved's eyes in language that Dante might have used for Beatrice, saying that they save him "from every trap and every grave sin"( 5). He goes on: Ils conduisent mes pas clans la route du Beau; Ils sont mes serviteurs et je suis leur esclave; Tout mon etre obeit ace vivant flambeau. 2 (6-8) As in "Une Charogne,'' much of the imagery has been appropriated from religion, as if the beloved were more than mortal. In the above quote, the divinity of the beloved inspires a devotion so complete that it is called slavery. Though extreme, this is perhaps the natural result of making the beloved into an Ideal. Exalting the object of one's love is not uncommon in the tradition of love-poetry and love-songs, but when taken seriously it raises some uncomfortable questions. If there is any validity to describing the beloved as divine-if such a description is indeed faithful to the nature of love---then must the lover prostrate him2. They conduct my steps along the way of Beauty; They are my servants and I am their slave; All my being obeys this living flame . �32 energeia self before her? And what happens when the beloved turns out to be as ephemeral and sinful as anyone else? Is love always in conflict with reality? Is the flesh-and-blood beloved ignored, or even hurt, in such a relationship? If the idealization of the beloved were mere hyperbole, such questions would be of no importance. It is hard to believe, however, that Baudelaire would write entire poems like this if he did not take such feelings seriously; even if they are meant only as a contrast to more shocking or realistic poems, he must mean them as a serious contrast. And the fact that he also wrote shocking and realistic poems means that he was not merely following a tradition or appealing to popular taste when he wrote "Le Flambeau vivant," which makes it more likely that he finds idealized love genuinely compelling. If the relationship in "Une Charogne" is an example of idealized love, then the above questions might illuminate the motive behind the speaker's gory image-making. But first we must see how such a love could be compatible with the other sentiments of the poem. "L'Aube spirituelle" (Spiritual Dawn) describes the beloved in language similar to Poem XLII or "Le Flambeau vivant," calling her "dear Goddess, Being lucid and pure"(8) and "always conqueror" ( 13 ). But unlike the other docile poems of praise, the beloved here is contrasted with a bestial hedonism that the speaker, it seems, has taken part in. Idealized love does not float in a vacuum; it exists in the world that it transcends. And though in this poem the Goddess triumphs over the "stupid orgies"(9) which were over anyway, the Ideal is called rongeur (gnawing), and it arrives "by the operation of a mysterious vengeanci'(<z-3, italics mine). What is this gnawing pain associated with love? Perhaps love has something unreachable in it, like "the inaccessible blue"( 5) of the sky. In a literal way, the beloved is unreachable here because she is only present in the speaker's memory But even if she were present, would no ph r ases such as "immor tal sun"( 14) and Smith 33 "Being lucid and pure" undercut her physical immediacy? Pure Being is not the kind of thing that can be here or there; you cannot touch it or kiss it. Even in Poem XLII, where the beloved is heavily idealized, it is not clear whether she herself is physically before the speaker, or whether it even matters to him. All he needs is her fant8me (phantom) ( 11 ), which is exactly what the speaker in "L'Aube spirituelle" has (13)-an image, not the real thing. Perhaps it is easier to think of someone as Pure Being when they're not around. It is also interesting that in none of these poems is the beloved really described, at least in a way that would distinguish her from anyone else. It is as if the beloved were less important to the speaker than his own feelings of love; in the least, it indicates that the beloved as a physical entity is subordinate to the beloved as an Ideal. The very reason they are physically separate is that he has been carousing and debauching all night; the physical distance between them is only a manifestation of a more intractable spiritual distance, which comes about because he is physical-la brute (4)-and she is, to him, spirituelle. Thus she is necessarily detached from him because she is his Ideal; if they were on the same level, he wouldn't be able to love her. Though her image is a spiritual awakening within him, the Ideal maintains throughout the poem a sense of Otherness, partly by its association with the distant beloved, partly by its contrast with the speaker, and partly by the hints of tension in the first two stanzas (the gnawing Ideal, the inaccessible sky). There is even a suggestion in the second stanza that l'homme terrasse (the prostrate man)( 6) yearns for the sky because it is inaccessible to him, providing him with an empty space-an abyss-to fill with his dreams of boundless things, Immortals and Forms, which are the complement to his terrasse condition. The word terrasse is particularly telling, for beyond the literal image of a man who is knocked down or prostrate, and the figurative sense of "conquered," there is th e etymological sense of �34 energeia being put to the earth, which in the context of yearning for the sky suggests that the opposite of being terrasse is not merely standing up, but more thoroughly defeating the limitations of gravity and transcending earthly things. It is in this earth-cast state that, according to the second stanza, the sky takes on "the allure of an abyss"(7). In other words, the sky is not an objective good, or at any rate the objective status of the sky isn't important to the earth-cast man; rather, the sky becomes attractive in relation to earthly limitations. Applied to the other side of the analogy, this means that the beloved too is not objectively divine, but appears so to the speaker in relation to his feelings of unworthiness and brutishness. The relative, complementary nature of the inequality that separates the lover and the beloved is further suggested by line 10, where her memory is "more clear, more pink, more charming" compared to the sordid morning-after remnants of his wild night. Since the beloved's divinity is in the perception of the speaker, or at least is more a feeling than a fact, the speaker egoistically separates himself from the true nature of the beloved, whose thoughts on the subject do not seem to matter to him. She is the passive recipient of the lover's Ideal, which is to say that he idealizes her, though this need not imply that he is acting freely or that he has all the power. The pull of the Ideal may be an overwhelming urge that draws him against his will, perhaps without even understanding why, by "the allure of an abyss" towards the unknown, the Other, and possibly into oblivion. As depicted in "L' Aube spirituelle," the lover's experience of his idealized love is complex and his feelings somewhat contradictory. Though he is entranced by the beloved, he also suffers separation from both the Ideal and the beloved herself. It is now a little easier to see how the speaker in "Une Charogne" could really love the person he addresses; at the same time, the poem is so aggressive, sarcastic, and morbid that we r eally need more ev- Smith 35 idence. Can love really be so self-contradictory as to include the imagined death of the beloved? It may help to look at Poem XXIV ("I adore you as much as the night's vault ... "), an overt love poem that includes images of the Ideal and images of death. As in "L' Aube spirituelle," the beloved is compared to the sky, and the suggestion there that distance enhances her desirability is here made explicit: [Je] t'aime d'autant plus, belle, que tu me fuis, Et que tu me parais, ornement de mes nuits, Plus ironiquement accumuler les lieues Qui separent mes bras des immensites bleues. 3 (3-6) But here the beloved's inaccessible nature leads the speaker to violent language; he will take her by force, advancing to the attack and mounting his assaults "like a choir of worms after a corpse"(7-8). To attain the beloved is, in the imagination of this speaker, to violate her, or even to devour her. On one level, this violence may come from the frustration of the speaker's desire for the Ideal, leading him in anger to assault what hurts him through an attack on the beloved. On a deeper level, he cannot obtain what he loves as long as she is an inaccessible Ideal, and so he must prove that she is a mortal creature, subject to force like any other. He brings her level with himself through violence. There is furthermore a sexual undercurrent in the seventh line, and in general to the idea of possessing the beloved, that is incompatible with the Ideal. Thus, to attain the beloved sexually would be to strip her of her Ideal nature, which is also her power over him. This debasement of the beloved through sex is further S. I love you all the more, my Beauty, as you flee me, As you seem to me, ornament of my nights With irony to accumulate the leagues That separate my arms from blue immensities. �36 energeia indicated by calling her bete (beast) (9), recalling the carcass with its legs spread "like a lustful (lubrique) woman" ("Une Charogne," 5) as well as the "drowsy brute" in "L'Aube spirituelle"(4). In the latter, it is the lover who is a brute; in Poem XXIV the beloved devolves from a sky to a corpse, and thence to the level of the lover, whose attacks also mark him as a kind of beast. His lust is an insult to the beloved-an insult imaged in physical violence-but he also implicates himself and the very nature of his idealized love. Though in the eighth line he makes the beloved a corpse, he makes himself even less than that. As a "choir of worms"(9), he is not even human; he is not even a single entity, and his love is nothing but the blind hunger of the lowest organism. The transformation of love into hunger is important, because the satisfaction of hunger always destroys its object, whereas love, we like to believe, preserves its object. The speaker here, however, thinks that the physical component of his love is offensive to the beloved. To attain her is to attack her, and even to devour her; her destruction is the fulfillment of his hungry love. Yet this is the inevitable conclusion when the Ideal is always Other: the lover, being incommensurable with what he loves, becomes an enemy to himself, and thereby an enemy to his beloved. He violates her out of the self-hatred that comes naturally from comparing himself to the Ideal. It is important to remember that, despite his urge to sully the Ideal, the lover is still an Idealist. His physical desire is, on the one hand, a proxy for his futile yearning after the Ideal, and on the other hand, more evidence of his own hatefulness before it. Furthermore, the images of death and devouring, rather than proving that the Ideal has been jettisoned, are only more evidence of its continued influence on the lover. The fact that he thinks of his beloved' s death as soon as he thinks of her mortality suggests that he is still dissatisfied with the ephemeral body and is measuring it against something greater. When held up to an infinit paradigm, the warmes t vitality can appear as meaningless Smith 37 as if it were already dead, just as immense magnitudes are to infinity as zero. The speaker is still an Idealist, but is the beloved still idealized? He still desires her, and the given reason for his desire is her inaccessibility; which is associated with the Ideal. The connection between the idealization of the beloved and her death is deftly held in the wordfroideur (coldness) in the last line, which most obviously recalls the notion, developed in the first section, that she is aloof and unresponsive to him, but which also refers cunningly to the "cadaver" of the eighth line. The speaker does not want the warmth of response and mutual sway provided by an equal, but the boundless silence of a grande taciturne(2), an emptiness that he can fill egoistically with his own obsession. In this way the beloved becomes a "vase of sadness"(2), where the sadness is that of the lover, the earth-cast man gnawed at by his Ideal. Whatever is full and substantial about the beloved becomes dead to the lover. If it still seems paradoxical that the lover could idealize his beloved and at the same time be cruel to her, it is a paradox already inherent in the idealization itself. The smearing of Ideal into real, eternal into ephemeral, is unintelligible and irrational, almost by definition. Poem XXIV merely pushes this contradiction to its extreme form. Or rather, the contradiction pushes itself to that limit, since the morbid violence of the second stanza follows naturally from the idealized love of the first. But though love-as-worship betrays its hidden dissonance, the bestial and the Ideal remain hopelessly tangled in the poem. For though sexual love is, to the speaker, nothing but animal hunger and death, his idealized love is also destructive and self-serving, changing the beloved (in imagination) into what she is not for the sake of the lover's obsession. The two opposing sides-sexual love and idealized love-reflect each other, giving them a strange unity that perhaps justifies their paradoxical conjunction. We can now begin to see how th e idealized love in "U ne �38 energeia Charogne" is not incompatible with the imagined death of the beloved, and that the latter is even evidence of the former. The speaker's love is sincere; he really does think of the beloved as the sun of his nature and the star of his eyes. Hence, idealized love, with its accompanying pain and self-hatred, runs through the poem as a hidden counterpoint, and lies at the root of its grisly, derisive surface. Based on Poem XXIV, we have three connected reasons that a lover might address his beloved with ghastly images and reminders of her eventual death: I. The speaker, angry at the beloved-as-ideal for being beyond him, is assaulting her in and with his imagination. In attacking the Ideal through her, he may hope to prove it attainable, and generally to free himself from its power, either by possessing it or destroying it. He fails in this regard, however, since in the end he still guards "the form and divine essence I Of my decomposed loves." In other words, though mortality is central to this particular poem, the speaker still reserves something eternal, and is thus using the death-imagery, rather than making it the sole object of the poem. He has not conquered the Ideal. 2 . The speaker is basking in depravity with his lengthy description of the carcass, proving his own brutishness by hurting what he loves, and all out of the self-hatred that comes from comparing himself with the Ideal. This aspect of his love, however, is hidden deep beneath the surface of the poem, which focuses on her mortality and physicality, never mentioning his. If he is debasing himself, he still wants to appear as if he has gained some kind of power, or become more like the Ideal, by alienating his beloved. 3 . To idealize the beloved is to negate her, and the speaker's fantasy expresses the insignificance of the beloved's physical self in comparison with her idealized self. The less immediate the beloved, the easier she can be made into an Ideal. This is quite explicit in the las t stan za, wher e the beloved' s divine essence in- Smith 39 deed replaces her physical self. We will come back to these themes-especially the thirdlater in this essay. But now let us turn to some other depictions of idealized love from "Spleen et Ideal" to better understand the tense, tenuous meeting between the eternal and the corruptible, and in particular how the lover deals with his beloved's imperfections. II So far, we have focused on the Ideal nature of love, ignoring the beloved's true nature because it is ignored by the lover. In a number of poems, however, the beloved's real ex istence is acknowledged, jarringly, even as it is transformed into an Ideal. Thus idealized love becomes unbearable for two related reasons: because it reaches for something eternal, and because it collides with the beloved's true nature. Idealized love transforms the conditional into the unconditional, such that the beloved cannot be relative, contingent, or flawed in any way. Likewise, whenever the beloved is desired absolutely, with a love that doesn't depend on what she does or who she is, then she has been mistaken for what she is not; she has become the lover's Ideal. Thus, idealized love is always unconditional love, and vice versa. This is another source of suffering for the lover, who will accept from the beloved all insult and injury in obedience to his Ideal. In "Le Possede" (The Possessed) for example, the speaker declares that he will love whatever his beloved does, saying: Allume le desir clans les regards des rustres! Tout de toi m'est plaisir, morbide ou petulant; Sois ce que tu voudras, nuit noire, rouge aurore .. . 4· ( 10-12) 4,, Spark des ire in the eyes of yokels! All of you pleases me, morbid, petulant! Be what yo u ,.vant, black nig ht, r ed cl avv n .. . �T energeia fVillimn Knight, AOB I Rachel Bartgis Smith 41 But even though nothing she does could affect his love, at the same time he calls her "Beelzebub"( 14), as if a part of him knows that she is not completely worthy. Feeling compelled to love what he should not, the speaker compares his situation to demonic possession. Idealized love is naturally profane because it blasphemously sets up the beloved as a goddess, attempting to make the earthly divine. Even if there is not a god to punish this blasphemy, the speaker's consciousness of the clash between the beloved and the Ideal may create its own kind of hell. The gulf between feeling and reality-between the Ideal and the beloved's true nature--makes their eventual collision through the beloved's imperfections all the more painful. It might be argued, however, that the suffering of idealized love is not inevitable and depends to a certain extent on the beloved; the lover only suffers if the beloved hurts him in some way, or if she is somehow unworthy of love. Regarding the former, it seems improbable that the beloved will meet his Ideal so closely that she will never hurt or upset him, even in some small way; moreover, if anyone could fit his Ideal, it would not be his Ideal. This is just another variation on the themes of "L'Aube spirituelle" and Poem XXIV, where the deepest yearning is reserved for the inaccessible. A lover may even be drawn, for this very reason, to a beloved who is "implacable and cruel"(Poem XXIV, 9). A part of the lover is glad to be hurt by her, because it signals his complete subjugation. He may even think of it as punishment for his own sinfulness, which as we have seen is complementary to the beloved's holiness. Even if he doesn't go this far, the Idealist-lover is bound to be hurt by his beloved because he expects more than she can give him. As for whether or not the beloved is worthy, if one takes the view propounded in "Au Lecteur" (To the Reader), then the beloved will inevitably be as full of sin and vice as everyone else. Indeed, with a strong belief in Original Sin, there is no earthly object that is worthy to be loved. If everyone is "fallen," then all �energeia romantic love is idealized love, and every beloved is a false idol. When I say "Original Sin," I do not mean to imply that the poem contains a Christian message. Though it is strange to talk about sin without a saving religion, ''Au Lecteur" does just that. We will assume, with Baudelaire, that sin is possible without Christianity. But does ''Au Lecteur" apply to the other poems? I ts moral cynicism fits with the erotic cynicism of "Une Charogne" and most of the other poems discussed so far. The idea that the beloved' s sin makes her unworthy of love is for Baudelaire closely connected to the idea that corporeal and ephemeral nature makes her unworthy of love. Both ideas represent the failure of the immediate to measure up to an Ideal, and this failure haunts so many of Baudelaire's poems that one wonders whether there is, in his mind, any escape from it. The first half of "Le Vampire" (The Vampire) is a good depiction of the pain that comes from loving what is not worthy to be loved. Continuing the demonic imagery of "Le Possede," the poem features a whole flock of demons in the speaker's "humiliated spirit" ( 5), representing the beloved who has entered his heart "like the blow of a knife"(s). She has violated him by entering his heart, suggesting not just that she has offended or abused him, but also that the desire for her that occupies all his thoughts and feelings is a crucial part of his suffering. This thread is drawn out in the third stanza where he compares himself to a gambler and to a drunkard; in both cases, it is the addiction, the unrelenting desire, that makes the object-"game" and "bottle," respectively-something harmful. But just because the gambler and the drunkard want the things that hurt them does not mean that they have any power. Both have become instruments of their own suffering by losing control of their desires. Similarly, the lover is tormented not just because of what he loves, but because, in his absolute exaltation of something imperfect, he loves too much. Bound by idealized love to that which hurts him, the speaker is rather like th e mayfly in "H ymne a la Beaute" (Hymn to 43 Smith Beauty) who says to the fire that consumes him, "Bless this flame!"(18). Possessed by his own desire, the lover feels powerless before the beloved, and he associates that powerlessness with death: "Panting lovers lying on their beauties I have the air of a dying man caressing his tomb"("Hymne ala Beaute," 19-20). The speaker in "Le Vampire" makes the same association, saying he is bound to his beloved "like vermin to a carcass (la charogne)"( 11 ). To be acted upon is to be conditional, to be forced is to be limited, and death is the ultimate limit-the vanishing point of human existence, the face of contingency. Furthermore, the very reason that the lover is so powerless before the beloved is that he has idealized her; thus, comparing himself to the Ideal, he feels his corruption and mortality all the more acutely. Just as the beloved hurts him because she is not his Ideal, at the same time she hurts him because she represents his Ideal. But though the lover's feelings appear contradictory, the fact that the beloved cannot live up to his Ideal is ultimately just another manifestation of the Ideal's divine, unreachable status. Love as death and powerlessness can also be seen in "Le Poison" (Poison), where love is described as a dangerous intoxicant, particularly in the sexually-charged final stanza: Tout cela ne vaut pas le terrible prodige De ta salive qui mord, Qui plonge clans l' ou bli mon ame sans remords, Et, charriant le vertige, La roule defaillante aux rives de la mort! 5 5 . All that is not worth th e terrible '"'onder Of your biting saliva, That plunges my soul with no remorse into oblivion, And, carrying vertigo, Rolls it swooning on the shores of th e dead. l �energeia The little death in the last line is associated with s uffering (the bite of her saliva) and, in the disorienting description of being plunged and rolled, with powerlessness. The word l'oubli (oblivion), moreover, aptly ties love-as-death with the general theme of love-as-drug. The oblivion of destruction is also the forgetfulness of intoxication, and idealized love provides both awareness of mortality and the alleviating illusion of an immanent-eternal. In the act of idealization, the lover forgoes his power of judgment: ''Angel or Siren, I What does it matter, if you make ... I The universe less hideous and the moments less heavy?" ("Hymne a la Beaute," 25-28) . Thus he relinquishes both his will and his consciousness to the Ideal, and in the vertigo of sex gives himself up so completely that he reaches the brink of death. But how can he attain the beloved sexually, if in Poem XXIV that ve.ry attainment is associated with sullying the Ideal? Can the beloved retain her divinity and her sexuality? Perhaps it is only possible here because the speaker has so thoroughly lost himself that there is no attainment; he has neither the will nor the awareness to possess anything. It is he who is possessed. And the fact that the speaker compares his love to a drug suggests that, up until the moment that he loses himself, he somehow recognizes the chimerical nature of the Ideal. But because he is an addict, he allows the Ideal to corrupt his judgment, transforming mere lust into the rejuvenation of dreams (14-15), until he is gone and the Ideal is all. Sex, therefore, can be a self-possessed urge to violate the beloved, as in Poem XXIV, or it can be the near-effacement of the lover, as in "Le Poison." The former seems to be a way of avoiding the latter, or a reaction to the fact that the lover is already powerless. Even in "Le Poison," despite its swooning end, there is something aggressive in comparing one's love to a deadly toxin and making the beloved merely an instrument of some narcotic stupor. Thus violence is born out of t he lover's feelings of power- Smith lessness. Just as the speaker in "Le Poison" thinks of his own death because he is overcome, the speaker in Poem X X IV imagines his beloved' s death in an attempt to break her power over him. Because he is ephemeral at the feet of his Ideal, and prostrate at the feet of a beloved who can never be that Ideal, he lashes out; the frustration of reaching for what he cannot have and the fear of losing himself combine in a violent urge to regain power over himself and his life by hurting his beloved. It should be noted, once again, that the lover hates the beloved for being Ideal at the same time that he hates her for being real. This strange unity of opposites is another manifestation of the paradoxical nature of idealized love, by which the ephemeral mingles uneasily with the eternal. The same duality is apparent in "Le Vampire," where the speaker hates and loves at the same time, and in "Le Possede," where the speaker worships what he knows to be sinful. And just as Poem XXIV shows bestial hunger and idealized love to be surprisingly similar, so in "Le Poison" forgetting oneself in sex and forgetting oneself in ecstatic devotion to the eternal are ultimately indistinguishable. III We can now understand "Une Charogne" as an expression of power over the idealized beloved, accomplished through an unflinching image of mortality. In his long, sobering description of the carcass, the speaker is trying to give up the intoxicating illusion of an immanent-Ideal. The poem is an act of self-possession, wherein the lover clings to his judgment and identity, asserting his independence from the beloved. In doing so, he does not destroy the Ideal, though some of his anger may be more properly aimed at it than the beloved. Rather, in the imagined death of the physical beloved, he is fulfilling the Ideal, which negates the beloved's reality and replaces it, as in Poem XXIV, with something unresponsive, unattainable, and eternal. This is the "divine essence" which the speaker guards in the last stanza- �energeia his Ideal beloved, free now of any reference to a corruptible reality (cf. #3 on p.38, above). The speaker's unblinking portrayal of corporeal decay manifests a cold detachment by which he allies himself with the Ideal; thus the carcass does not lead him to think of his own death, but only of the beloved's. The poem, then, represents the speaker's attempt to attain the Ideal through art instead of through the beloved. He gains power and identity by judging reality and finding it insubstantial, just as a vampire only has vitality when he takes it from those who actually live. In this way the lover willfully reverses the relationship of "Le Vampire," where the speaker, in his loss of self, is made a charogne ( 11) before the beloved. Accordingly, "U ne Charogne" is parallel to Poem XXIV, where the beloved also becomes a corpse; but unlike that poem, "Une Charogne" takes the degradation of the beloved to its limit, until there is no longer any trace of desire for her, at least not on the surface of the poem. If he feels any desire, he has banished it from the self-made reality of his words. The poem represents, for the speaker, an act of power and self-assertion even more so than in Poem XXIV, where the speaker, confusing the beloved for his Ideal, is still bound by desire. In "Une Charogne," the emphasis is shifting from the beloved to the speaker's image-making, which is perhaps why his artistic resurrection of the remembered carcass is longer and more vivid than the encl of the poem where he addresses the beloved. Still, the shift is incomplete, since the description is a set- up for the last three stanzas where the beloved becomes the focus, if only for the sake of tearing her down. In the last two lines, she is replaced by her divine essence, as guarded by the speaker, and as an added insult becomes just one of his many "decomposed loves." Even here, however, she remains in the background, both as the one addressed and as an indirect speaker of the last lines-a kind of macabre ventriloquist-dummy. Her contin ued impor tance m ay also be suggested by the fact Smith 47 that he guards her "form" as well as her essence. How is this possible if he is shifting from the beloved to the Ideal itself? It may be that he is using it in the Platonic sense, as in the first line of "L'Irremediable" (The Irreparable): ''An Idea, a Form, a Being ... " This would make it parallel to the divine essence. But since the word is not capitalized, and is contrasted with amours decompose (decomposed loves), it may also indicate that the beloved' s physical form is somehow incorporated into the speaker's Ideal. He probably doesn't guard her form merely through memory, since memory is used in line 32 as a metaphor for decay; but memory can be the basis of a new creation, where its blank spots can be used as a canvas. This is exactly what he does with his memory of the carcass, and since his entire mode of exorcism is imagemaking, the guarding of her form may likewise be accomplished through an art. IV But if the image still has reference to a physical reality, how can it be the pure Ideal? To answer this question, we have to know what the Ideal is, and whether it can ever be pure. If the Ideal is not within the beloved, then where is it? We should at least be able to say, based on the description of the carcass, where the Ideal is not. The Ideal is, first of all, not subject to death. But death is connected through the poem's imagery to sex (5) and to basic physical expressions of love (46), to eating ( 10, 36, and 4<6), to new life (19) and life itself (20 and 24'), and to Nature in general (11). The descriptions of the scavenging dog and the maggots show how life maintains and perpetuates itself through death. Even though these are only animals, eating and procreation are where the human blends into the bestial, and the basic human desires for sex and food implicate us, as much as any animal, in the intrinsic connection of life and death. The Ideal, then, which is beyond death , mu st also be beyond sex, beyond life, beyond all of Na- �energeia ture. Indeed, the Ideal is against life and nature, since it makes them paltry and pointless. It is, at any rate, unnatural. But is the Ideal therefore beyond the human? Is it supernatural2 Most of Baudelaire's references to god or religion are ironic or in parody, if not in outright sacrilege (cf ''A une Macione"). Sin is mentioned a great deal, as in ''Au Lecteur," but never with any hint of salvation. A distant god is seen briefly at the end of "Les Phares," and there is a vague mention of "the eternal designs" in line 18 of "Benediction" (both of which are about artists). More common are overtones of Platonic philosophy and Neo-Platonic mysticism, such as in "L'Albatros" (also about an artist) and "L'Irremediable." But as the title of the latter suggests, there is never any indication that some kind of mystical unity, or The Good, could ever be reached, whether through asceticism, contemplation, or even art. Furthermore, in the one poem that is actually called "L'Ideal," the Ideal seems to be very personal, and is more closely associated with art than religion. The speaker talks, for example, about his Ideal ("my red ideal," 8) as opposed to the Ideals of others. Because his heart is "deep as an abyss"(9) he requires a certain kind of idealized woman-a Lady Macbeth, a Clytemnestra, or Michelangelo's sculpture "Night"(I0-12). The Ideal here is more of a psychological phenomenon, and thus could easily be irreligious and amoral-a dark expression of ancient, violent impulses. At the same time, its natural formulation is not the enacting of such impulses, but the portrayal of them. Thus the Ideal, being unnatural but not supernatural, may best be described as artificial. The Idealist reshapes reality according to forms that have their continued existence, if not their genesis, in himself Accordingly, he is a natural artist, and the line between creating art and obeying an Ideal becomes blurred. This is why the speaker in "Une Charogne" affirms his connection to the Ideal through image-making, using art as a means of self-assertion and empowerment. Th at the Ideal is artificial is Smith 49 also suggested in the last stanza of "Une Charogne," where the speaker guards ("j'ai garde") the form and divine essence of his loves. If the Ideal were something eternal and self-sustaining, independent of the Idealist, then why would he have to guard it? Indeed, how could one guard the eternal? In the last stanza, the Idealist has an active role in sustaining the Ideal, as if it somehow belongs to him. The Ideal, then, has its origins in the Idealist, which would suggest that there is no pure Ideal. And since the Idealist is also an artist, it may be that the Ideal can never be divorced from particular things, anymore than art can exist without a medium. This is perhaps what is meant by the end of "Le Vampire," which offers a counterpoint to the end of "Une Charogne." In the latter, the lover gloats over the fact that, after his beloved' s death, he will still have her form and essence; in the former, the lover has no chance of escape because, after his beloved' s death, he would give new life to her corpse. This reanimation is a perfect image, though inverted with bitter irony, for the guarding of her form and essence. Since the lover was in love with his Ideal anyway, he will be just as haunted by that Ideal regardless of whether or not he associates it with a particular woman. The Idealist as artist must always associate his Ideal with something earthly, and in that sense he will be continually giving a ghastly non-life to ephemeral things that change and decay while their idealized counterparts persist in the freeze of image. Even though the Ideal is artificial and subjective, the Idealist can no more choose his Ideal than he can choose his own identity. Because it exerts power over him, and because it is always Other, the Ideal is practically objective to him. But at the same time that it lures him beyond himself, the Ideal traps him in his egoism, since there is nothing eternal or beautiful beyond the Idealist's subjective perceptions. Thus "Une Charogne" as an attempt at artistic empowerment is a failure because the speaker will continue to be enslaved to an �50 energeia unattainable Ideal. Though as an artist he takes a certain amount of responsibility for his idealizations, giving him some measure of control, he remains nonetheless in an essentially tragic situation. In "La Beaute" (Beauty), for example, we see the fruits of the artistic Ideal. Here, Beauty is the Ideal for which poets "consume their days in austere studies"( 11 ). This is the Ideal of the artist, as is further attested by the references to sculpture, monuments, and displaced lines. The speaker in "Une Charogne," who wants art to give him power over idealized love, is answered by "Beauty,'' where the Ideal, in the form of a cruel and distant woman, mocks and bruises her "docile lovers"(12). The poets in "La Beaut€( have, ironically, the same relationship to their Ideal that the lovers in poems like "Le Vampire" and "Le Possede" have to their beloveds: self-destructive obsession. Idealized beauty is just as unattainable and unresponsive as the beloved in Poem XXIV or "L' Aube spirituelle." It seems that the artist does not have much more power than the lover. Even the radiant final image of "La Beaute" suggests that the artist's Ideal is never independent of particular material things: "For I have, to fascinate these docile lovers, I Pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful: I My eyes ... "(12-13). Though the artist would look into the eyes of the Ideal as if it were human, those eyes are mirrors-showing everything but themselves, they are in a sense invisible. This is perhaps why they are so endlessly fascinating- to see them purely has the allure of the impossible. The artist cannot attain the pure Ideal, and must look for it reflected in ephemeral things, continually bruising himself against "a dream ( un reve) of stone"( 1). Thus the Ideal remains inaccessible and inhuman; its eyes are not windows to a soul. And since Beauty's eyes are mirrors, the easiest thing for the artist to see in the Ideal is himself. Again, we see that the artist egoistically imposes his personal Ideal on the world around him. Acco dingly, the artist is eventually alienated from other peo- Smith 51 ple. When the speaker in "Une Charogne" divides with his words the beloved from the Ideal, he also divides all of life, love, and nature from that Ideal, and by aligning himself with the latter, effectively cuts himself off from the rest of humanity. His cruelty towards his beloved corresponds to the detachment of the Ideal, in devotion to which he is led beyond human things like love and warmth. As an artist wielding the power of unflinching perception, he creates sarcastic and repulsive visions that will isolate him from society at large. Following his personal Ideal, he may produce art that crosses the boundaries of society and religion; the sampling of notable artistic visions in "Les Phares,'' for example, includes much that is horrific, macabre, and blasphemous. Unlike the Idealist-lover, who is still tethered to the world by his beloved, the Idealist-artist is completely isolated by his disdain for material reality. This is perhaps why the artist, as portrayed in "L' Albatros" and "Benediction,'' is despised and jeered by those around him. Unlike the Idealist-lover, whose obsession will be commonly understood, the artist is wholly devoted to his own personal vision, which puts his entire existence beyond the understanding of others. Thus, in his fevered devotion to something that is not food, sex, or wealth-something that isn't immediate-he appears laughable and stupid. When he is forced, of necessity, to engage in the worldly affairs that occupy all the attention and intelligence of others, he is hopelessly awkward and clumsy. The speaker in "Une Charogne" also runs the risk of becoming like the one in "L'Heautontimoroumenos" (Heautontimoroumenos ), who similarly begins with aggression towards his beloved, and who is shaken and bitten by ironie ( 15-16): "It is all my blood, that black poison!"( 18). To understand the significance of irony, recall that in Poem XXIV the beloved ironiquement (ironically) accumulates the distance between the speaker and herself, scornfully becoming, like "blue immensities" of the sky, unreachable (5-6 ). Irony here is not just saying the opposite of �energeia 52 what one means, nor is it simple mockery; rather, it represents an attitude of detachment and disdain associated with the Ideal. A perfect example is the last stanza of "Une Charogne," in which a shocking and sardonic juxtaposition of love and death ("the vermin I That eat you with kisses") is used to insult the beloved's physical nature. The irony here serves to sever the beloved, and physical love in general, from the lover's Ideal, in which they have no part. The sickest joke, however, is that he reanimates her corpse and bids it speak his cruel sarcasm, when of course she won't be able to tell the worms anything, nor will she benefit at all from the fact that the speaker has guarded her divine essence. And that is exactly the point of the image: to disdain the corruptibility of the physical in contrast with the eternal. Thus the speaker, in aligning himself with the Ideal, becomes as mordant and scornful as Beauty in "La Beaute." In "L'Heautontimoroumenos" this irony becomes a curse, as the speaker, being less than Ideal himself, becomes a victim of his own disdain. Though the poem's title means "Self-Punisher," 6 it begins with the speaker announcing that he will strike his beloved, which seems to suggest that he hurts himself by hurting the person he loves. This is made explicit in the sixth stanza: Je suis la plaie et le couteau! Je suis le souffiet et la joue! Je suis les members et la roue, Et la victime et le bourreau! 7 6. "uµWQEW, 3.Med., avenge oneself upon, exact vengeance from ... 'Eam:ov uµwQouµcvoi; Self-Punisher, name of a play by Menander, cf.X.Cyr.3.I.15." (Liddell, Scott, Jones) 7. I am the wound and the knife! I am the blow and the cheek! I am the limbs and the rack! The executioner and the condemned! 53 Smith All his emotional attachments are meaningless in the face of the Ideal, to the point where he is so dissociated from himself that he loses his identity, as if he were the medium of a self-consciousness not his own: "I am the sinister mirror I Where the shrew [Irony] sees herself"(19-20). This is the same doubleness that haunted the poems of idealized love, and the artist, rather than escaping it, has fulfilled it by his discriminating irony. In seeking what is beyond life, the speaker lays waste to his own vitality, becoming "the vampire of [his] own heart"(25). "L'Heautontimoroumenos" shows how the Idealistic mockery of "Une Charogne" can develop into the apathy and lifelessness of the "Spleen" poems, where Ennui "takes on the proportions of immortality" ("Spleen II," 17-18). So the Ideal remains unreachable, and the artist is just as powerless as the lover. He is, in addition, utterly isolated, despised by others just as he despises life. But because he is also part of Nature, he must likewise hate himself, killing within him every trace of love, pity, and life. v Is there nothing, then, that the artist-Idealist gains for his suffering? Despite all the pain it causes, isn't the Ideal a good in itself, almost by definition? In "La Beaute," for example, the bitter litany of the Ideal's cruelties ends nonetheless in entrancement before Beauty's eternal clarity, her "pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful." The artist can see what others cannot; he can look through a changing, corruptible reality and find, if not pure Beauty, its reflection. Thus the end of "Une Charogne" is a triumph over death, in that the speaker has gained something from the beloved that transcends her physical reality-a pleasure beyond sex, a beauty beyond physical attraction. Continuing up this ladder of more and more refined Beauty, the speaker of "Une Charogne" could end up like the poet in "Benediction," an uncompromising acolyte of art who, "in all that �energeia 54 he drinks and in all that he eats I Discovers ambrosia and vermilion nectar" (23-24). To him, all the aforementioned suffering associated with the Ideal is only "a holy cure for our impurities"( 58). He says: Je sais que la douleur est la noblesse unique Ou ne mordront jamais la terre et les enfers, Et qu'il faut pour tresser ma couronne mystique Imposer tousles temps et tousles univers.8 (65-68) Faced with the universal hatred of others, he remains innocently unperturbed, entranced as he is by his own Ideal: "The vast lights of his lucid spirit I hid from him the sight of the furious mob"( 55-56). His speech in the last four stanzas, glowing with a religious serenity and quiet determination, is quite beautiful, especially considering the many cruelties that he suffers in the rest of the poem. The speech is also extremely egoistic; though it has the same light imagery as "La Beaute," here the emphasis is not on the poet seeing something beautiful, but on his earning something beautiful-a mystic crown of pure luminescence, not to mention a place in "the happy ranks of the saintly Legions" and "the eternal banquet I of Thrones, of Virtues, of Dominations"( 61-64 ). The poem is strangely silent about whether there is any truth to what the poet says; there is only an ambiguous reference to "the eternal designs," and a guardian angel who follows the poet around. Regardless of whether it is true, the poet's faith blinds him to the ugliness of the world and the people around him, giving him a kind of dignity, albeit the lonely dignity of a misun8. I know that pain is the sole nobility That earth and hell will never bite, And that, to ·weave my mystic crown All t imes and all world s mu st be imposed upon. Smith 55 derstood prophet. He is the Ideal Idealist, the perfect artist-martyr, a Christ who saves no one. VI Now that we have seen both the failure and the success of "Une Charogne" as the speaker's attempt to reach his Ideal, let us turn from the speaker to the poet. What differentiates them? While the speaker's poem is a moment between love and art, Baudelaire's poem is the image of that moment. The artist who portrays the conflicts of Idealism cannot be the na'ive disciple of "Benediction," and the poet who can write "La Beaute" is not just another docile lover. While the speaker in "U ne Charogne" reaches for a purer Ideal, Baudelaire is showing us that reaching. The speaker says that there is a divine essence to be guarded from death, but all that the poem shows us are the images of corruption and decay that the speaker uses to grasp that divine essence. If there is anything guarded in the actual poem, it would have to be the essence of the decaying carcass, which is not what the speaker means, but may be what Baudelaire means. In subtle ways, the poem hints at an implicit critique of the artistic Ideal. In the seventh stanza, for example, the disorienting phrase ce monde (this world) seems to refer to the carcass, but smears the distinction between it and the surrounding world, pointing to a totality of experience reminiscent of "Correspondances". Perhaps the overwhelming harmony of the aesthetic experience can be found in anything-even in a rotting animal. Furthermore, the fly- and maggot-infested carcass is said to make a "strange music." Is the unfolding of music comparable to decay? The description becomes strangely beautiful, almost hypnotic, when the sound is compared to "the grain that a winnower, with rhythmic movement I Shakes and turns in his winnow"(2728) . All poetry has a musical element, and this poem in particular has a distinctive, lulling "rhythmic movement." Is poetry part of the interconnected world of life, death, and decay? �56 energeia In the eighth stanza, the deteriorating forms of the animal's body are compared to un reve (a dream), and then to a sketch drawn from memory. A dream is apt to disappear because it has no essence, just as the carcass is disappearing. As in a dream, the boundaries that define a thing, making it different from other things, fall away; the animal's body becomes what it is not, life becomes death, and death becomes, in the maggots, new life. In the scavenging of the anxious dog, one thing literally becomes another thing. In a memory too, details are blurred and over time become more so; like a dream, it is only an image. And art, which often relies on memory, and which is associated with dream in "La Beaute," may be also a type of corruption, thriving on the changing of its originals, and living most when they are forgotten. In "Une Charogne," everything described has already become,_through art, what it is not: eternal and motionless. Is it a coincidence that right after the artist is mentioned in the eighth stanza, the next image is of a scavenging dog? Perhaps they are inverted reflections. But again we must ask, what essence does the poem guard? The carcass? Amorphous and increasingly fluid, it barely qualifies as a thing at all. Does the poem guard the essence of the maggots and the flies? The essence of Nature? The soul of the Idealist-lover? Because everything in the description is interconnected, none of these answers can be complete. One must say either that art need not capture a divine essence, or that there can be a divine essence of the formless and ephemeral. Something of the latter can perhaps be seen in "Correspondances," where sensations come together "like lingering echoes that are mingled from afar"( 5), confusedly smearing much like the forms in "Une Charogne," free from any true object or essence, but somehow making a new unity. Nature in "Correspondances" is exalted as a temple ( 1 ), where the accoutrements of romance mingle with those of religion: " ... musk, balsam and incense, I That sing the raptures of the spirit and the senses"( 13- Smith 57 Interestingly, these fragrances are called "corrupt, rich and triumphant"( 11 ). Here, it is corruption and complexity-not a single, austere Ideal-that triumph, expanding themselves endlessly ( 12) in the fullness of life and Nature. Yet "Correspondances" emphasizes only pleasing sensations, ignoring the uglier side of Nature. The images of "Une Charogne" are perhaps an answer to "Correspondances," an inverted reflection where the pleasant mingling of sensations becomes a terrifying formlessness. This does not mean that "Une Charogne" cannot also be beautiful. But "Correspondances," which is overtly beautiful, is also incomplete, so we should be careful in using their similarities to prove that "Une Charogne" must therefore also be beautiful. At any rate, the sarcasm and black humor in "Une Charogne" should be a warning that this poem is not just singing the raptures of the spirit and the senses. "Une Charogne," then, does not guard an essence, though it portrays someone who wants to do so; furthermore, it does not show art to be above the corruption and decay of Nature, though it portrays someone who believes just that. Baudelaire's poem depicts a futile attempt to reach the Ideal by scorning life and love-a moment of power and self-assertion in the experience of an artist. The subject of Baudelaire's art is art; his Ideal, if he has one, is grasping at the Ideal-however painful and pointless that grasping may be. His answer to the ugliness of reality is not transcendence, but a paean for the will to transcend, in all its alternating egoism and self-hatred, its cruelty and adoration, its turmoil and dignity: 14). Ces maledictions, ces blasphemes, ces plaintes, Ces extases, ces eris, ces pleurs, ces Te Deum ... 9 ("Les Phares," 33-34) 9 . These curses, these blasphemies, these sobs Th ese ecstasies, th ese cries, th ese tears, th ese T e D eums... �58 energeia VII Why does Baudelaire exalt the desire for the Ideal, and not the Ideal itself? It may help to look at "L'Irremediable," which begins by describing an ''An Idea, a Form, a Being I Come from the blue and fallen ( tombe) ... "This is Baudelaire at his most neo-Platonic, but as the title might suggest, he does not seem to believe that there is any escape from the "fallen" world of material things. There is no completion for the Idealist, no mystical union. At the same time, Baudelaire seems to take the feeling of being fallen very seriously. He describes it over and over again: an Angel in "an enormous nightmare"(5-7), a bewitched man "searching for the light and the key"( 13-16), an ice-locked boat seeking "by what fatal strait I It has fallen (tomM) into this prison"(25-28). These are all "clear emblems" (29) of a feeling that there is something wrong with reality. This conscience dans le Mal (consciousness in evil) is concomitant with the Ideal, which is the standard by which we find existence to be lacking. For Baudelaire, consciousness in evil is our "sole glory"( 39 ), though nonetheless infernal (37) in making us despise an existence that we cannot escape, turning all earthly pleasures into a Hell. We have within us the reflection of the Ideal, a beacon-light that is ironique (37) because it guides us to a place we cannot go, and also because it gives us the detachment to ironically disdain our prison. It is satanique (38) not in the sense of worshiping Satan, but because it makes one, in Satan's likeness, an exiled angel. As we have seen, Baudelaire finds this "hopeless fate" in love, in art, and in religion (cf. ''Au Lecteur"). In "Les Phares," he calls the multiform variety of great art-ranging from blasphemy to prayer, from ecstasy to tears-a single echo "resounded through a thousand labyrinths"( 35). Perhaps, then, Baudelaire is guarding an essence, by depicting a perpetual characteristic of human life. Perhaps he even believes that reaching for the Ideal is the essence of being human. Smith 59 But even so, that does not explain why it would be our sole glory. Perhaps Baudelaire idealizes "consciousness in evil" because, in doing so, he is united with what he exalts. By making an Ideal of imperfection and self-conflict, he bridges the chasm between the essential and the ephemeral. His art becomes an expression, not just of his Ideal, but of his whole self, and image-making becomes a mode of self-awareness that accepts and even exalts the irresolvable tension between real and Ideal. The Idealist can thereby understand and embrace his own contradictions and failings. This may seem just as egoistic as ever, but because these imperfections are shared with the many others who long for the eternal, the artist gains a common ground with those around him. Through this new, human Ideal, self-absorption is united with sympathy; thus "Une Charogne," with its cruelty and sarcasm, leads naturally to the sympathy of "Le Cygne" (The Swan): Je pense a mon grand cygne, avec ses gestes fous, Comme les exiles, ridicule et sublime, Et ronge d'un desir sans treve! 10 (34-36) Though not physically exiled, the poet understands all to well the gnawing of a merciless desire, and in grasping for the Ideal is himself as ridicule et sublime as an earth-cast albatross or an urban swan. It might be said, however, that an immanent Ideal is no Ideal at all. If people already reach for the Ideal, then the reaching itself is nothing to strive for, nor does it lead us beyond ourselves, since it gives us nothing but the truth about who we are. But perhaps we are, in a sense, beyond ourselves; otherwise, from what 1 o. I think of that great swan, with its mad gestures, Like the exile, ridiculous and sublime, Gnawed at by a des ire without tru ce! 11 �60 energeia vantage point could we look with detachment upon our whole selves? Obsessed with Ideals, we are tangled in concurrent but seemingly contradictory emotions; divided by the duality of Idealism, we need a second mirror held up to consciousness, in order to see both sides of the self together. The new artist strives to detach himself from either side of the conflict, to see clearly how the Ideal and the immanent are unified in a single soul. And since for Baudelaire there is no escaping the Ideal, he must be detached even as he continues to longfor the eternal. Were he completely detached, he would not even be human, and he would have no reason to portray such a human thing as striving for an Ideal. But how is it possible to be on the one hand defined by Idealism, and on the other detached from it? Perhaps this second consciousness can never be entirely within the self, and only exists in its artistic concretization. This would mean that art is an external extension of self, and the only true mirror of consciousness. Even if self-consciousness is possible without art, it may not be easy to attain, and so art provides a way of communicating and perpetuating it. Even if Idealism is an unchanging form of human experience, the knowledge of it is a particular perception that could easily vanish, and so it needs to be guarded through art. Furthermore, art is not just record-keeping, and poetry is not prose; Idealism is also beautified by art, and thereby exalted as an end in itself This is necessary to fulfill its nature as a new Ideal; otherwise, if it were understood but not loved, it would be merely an inhuman detachment. But as we have seen, this "meta-Ideal," cannot really be called an Ideal, because, by making the immanent the highest good, it cancels all Ideals. Nonetheless, the new artist strives to understand and to exalt Idealism, and in that he follows something like an Ideal. It is an Ideal, however, in the modern sense-more of Smith 61 a paradigm than a transcendent reality that negates the physical world. The search, through love and art, for something eternal that can still be touched, or something divine that one can be part of, is sublated in the poetry of Baudelaire. The "divine essence" that the speaker in "Une Charogne" longs for is replaced by the poem itself, in which that very longing is captured and made beautiful. Though it offers no transcendence, this new vision embraces the will to transcend while at the same time accepting its futility. Thus Baudelaire's art affirms life rather than negating it, reconciling the artist with himself and thereby with the rest of humanity. �62 energeia 63 Always an Ellipse Patricia Locke "Every word is always an ellipse ... " -Christopher Alexander Looping around two centers, Every word is always an ellipse Steady as it goes about its work Precise and warm and shining Like the rails in midday sun Slick with wear, ready to track Rough meaning-yet straining . Up the hill. Or like a figure cut From Apollonius' cone, Inscribed on Descartes' tongue, It is an act, an utterance Infinitely sensitive To change, to light, To distance. I think he cares about the joint Where meaning meets Equal force from each Heart, then feels the first More weakly, almost Obsoletely, as the word Moves towards its other. Mount Hermon !Fater Tower I Harlin Glovacki Or perhaps he means The way it tastes As peaches in your mouth, Metal in mine. �T energeia 64 65 '"Christine-' I said, but you had closed the door" Rachel Bartgis "Christine-" I said, but you had closed the door, And left the house alone but for the stove (Four pilot lights aglow), and me. You drove Away. I heard the engine groan, then roar; And still outside the winter ever wove Its silver nets upon the silent grove And threw its chill upon my drafty floor. I s_ can feel my hands run down your hips. till I seized; I thrust; the poetry came hard: Sublime. Supine. The words rolled off my lips Unvoiced, my groans by tongue and teeth unmarred. I swear, next time I'll ask before you goI think that I'm in love, but I don't know. 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I I r-t ' !Ii, I i (I ,• ( ti'. ! :) la la J( ..1 '1 I. / - / Iii - l j /l I I ( . « (: ... ._ ~ c t ( o~ ~~ ~ (: "( -- ~ <:¢Ii (: (: J I - 11 ~ ~ c ~ ~ ( ( \ ~ ~ : • (. tL i I~t l ._ v l tJ I ) ( I\ ~ ', ,_ tt1 (:>ti (: (: ( \ lil'' o~ - ~ l ,_ b~ ~ (: - I, - ~ Ii -- . : ~ - , ·" - ' ·~ ; : I ' ~ "' , 1, /' ~ ';,) ; o~ ~~ : ;, ~ �76 energeia 77 Twos. Kea Wilson Slickhorn I Jeffrey Rome Lately, it seems like there is no one on the streets alone at night. To be honest, it has me unsettled. Human beings used to come in ones, not in matched sets like place settings or pedigreed dogs and their eerily resemblant owners. Now, they come paired, locked together at the palms like Siamese twins. Everywhere I go, I see double. There's a couple that always seems to be buying Vienna sausage at my bodega, and this couple, they have the most beautiful hair. Their faces leave something to be desired-dental hygiene, basic symmetry-but their hair is the kind that I imagine alopecian billionaires vie for in secret markets. I wonder if it's how they found each other, as if love were so much more obvious than how I've always pictured it: a constant sonar sent out into a helplessly immense ocean. Now, when I see eight year olds on matched bicycles, I immediately get jealous. I see blonde girls eating twinned creme brulees on restaurant patios, and the back of my heart starts to itch. I see coy men in cocktail dresses whispering to each other in a sunned alleyway, their faces mirrored jacks of hearts, and now-now I cannot help it. I want to put on a man's clothes and stand by my favorite lake and sing and sing my favorite songs until you come, perfect you, a delayed echo of my own voice. �78 energeia Wilson 79 Bounty. Intervention. Every goddamned Christmas, my mother goes to Costco, buys a month's worth of groceries, and wraps them up and puts them under the tree. When you're eight, it's kinda funny. When you're fifteen, you don't want to tear into a box expecting a laptop and find an entire frozen turkey, leaking juice out of its frozen turkey ass. I know it's supposed to be significant because my mom gets all misty, and I fake it, and hug her, and tell her that I love my 50 oz. jar of raspberry preserves, really. But she's been doing it for so long, ever since the year that Dad got laid off and they had to pawn all the kitchen appliances to pay my brother's tuition. Yes: I remember sitting in that yawning space where the oven used to be, playing with the dead yellow wires coursing out of the wall, and that was kind of sad, I guess. But I was six, and I was into the Brave Little Toaster. I thought coffee machines had significant inner feelings. Now, I don't anymore. Now, Dad works for Google. Now, I don't want a brick of Gruyere in a bag shaped like Santa Claus' face, and I don't want Mom to make us eat it all on the living room carpet like we're hobos who've never seen a bucket of caramel corn in their entire lives, and I don't want her to videotape it, sobbing. When you are twenty-two, everyone you know will finally stop shitting you: they will admit that they are all mind readers, and your whole life has been planned out in secret meetings, a record of your innermost thoughts tacked to the wall of their lair like an illuminated map of bombing targets. It sounds sinister at first, but they will remind you that they all went through it too-the awkward intervention ceremony with the floury store-bought cake, all the shame when they found out that their parents knew what they did during all those hours alone in the basement. They went through it, and now, that doctor administering the anesthesia, he'll help you be like them. You know that girl, Amy? Listen to her tomorrow night, while you lean against the drum of her stomach and pretend you're dreaming. The first time's tough, so listen hard. The words she whispers into your hair, her fingertips' soft calligraphy on your back: they are not a language you can speak anymore. If you pay attention, her thoughts will be a split fortune cookie in the palm of your mind. She will give you permission to do it, to break her heart. �energeia 80 Odysseus to Telemachus Joseph Brodsky My Telemachus, The Trojan War has ended. I can't remember who won. Must've been the Greeks: only they could leave so many dead littered so far from home. And still my way back has proved too long. It's as if while we were wasting time space got stretched. I don't know where I am ' some dirty island with bushes, buildings, and grunting swine, a neglected garden, a queen, . grass and stones ... My dear Telemachus, all islands are alike when you've traveled this far. The brain slips from counting waves, horizon-eyes weep, and the flesh of water numbs hearing. I can't remember the end of the war or how old you are. I can't remember. ' Grow to your height, my Telemachus. Only the gods know if we'll meet again. You are no longer that infant I used to guide in the face of bulls. Were it not for Palamedes' trick we'd be living together in the same hou se, but maybe he knows best: without me you are spared the passions of Oedipus, and your dreams, my Telemachus, are infinite. -translated b Paul fVasserman y 81 "irish restaurant" Barrett Brooks irishman standing in yellow-light cave beyond doorway, watching the people who are clacking forks and knives with little regard. is he fond? does he still enjoy the song that plays softly through the dark rafters and brick rooms? how long will he keep it up then, if this is what he now despises: this jollity and hand-clapping that he takes with him from table to table. what is the function? how is the reason? from whence is the action? what does he think of his wife's back tonight in their bed, and did he enjoy the night's stars on the drive home alone. �energeia 82 83 What is the Common Good of Liberal Education? 1 Eva Brann But exactly the opposite phenomena must also be considered. In all those emotional relations/ups where happiness lies not only in what one receives but just as much in what one gives, where each is mutually and equally enriched by the others, there develops a value the en:Joynient ef which is not bought by any deprivation on the part ef an opposite party. Similarly, the communication ef intellectual 1natters does not mean that something has to be taken from one p erson so that another can enjoy it. -Georg Simmel, The Philosophy fVisdoni ef the Aegis I Chelsea Adams ef Money When our alumnus, Dino Anderson, of whom we are both fond and proud, conveyed to me the kind invitation of the Center for the Common Good at Bowdoin College, he sent me a description so that I might compose my talk with your mission in mind. It told not only what the center was founded to do and of your alumni who were supporting it, but also of the present students-some might be in the audience tonight-who were doing good works under its auspices. Right away I saw that I have some explaining to do. Before I tell you what I think needs explanation, I want to say how glad I am to be here, not only to meet the students and teachers of Bowdoin, but also because this college has special associations for me: Your alumnus, professor, and president, Joshua Chamberlain, is a hero of mine. He was knowledgeable in logic, rhetoric, theology and modern as well as ancient languages, all subjects honored at my own college, and thus educated, he was, as you probably know, at the center of two high points of the Civil War. He and his men were practically responsible for sav1. This talk was delivered to The Center for the Common Good, Bowdoin College, on April 18, 2008. �84 energeia ing the Union, when they held Little Round Top at Gettysburg, and it was again he who was responsible for giving the war a redemptive culmination, when, put by General Grant in charge of receiving the surrender of Lee's army, he ordered the Union soldiers to receive the Confederates with a silent salute; the beaten Grays passed between the Blues who were standing at attention, as he himself wrote "in awed stillness ... as if it were the passing of the dead." It was a moment of unsurpassable grace and generosity. This warrior was a human embodiment of a Liberal Education. I wanted to see where he spent most of his life. But back to business, to my preliminary explanation. Your Center for the Common Good is devoted to doing good, to service projects and community involvement. Now I am deeply convinced that public doing and learning in the liberal sense are different activities: "Learn by doing; live and learn," people say, meaning that experience is what we learn from. But liberal education comes from books which are the carefully composed speeches of the dead and the absent, and liberal learning comes from the conversations of the living and the present, and both come before doing good in the world. You may scarcely believe your ears, but I mean this ardently, and I will say it bluntly: There is a learning called liberal education, which is very purposefully and deliberately removed from doing. Even the best of service amounts to playing hooky from it. Let me state right now that what I'm about to say doesn't mean that learners shouldn't be doers, that services work isn't a fine thing, but rather that it should be done in the time you would otherwise devote to amusement. I don't say "leisure" because your true leisure, your really free time, is your learning time. (Let me remind you of that convenient bit of etymology here, that our word for "school" is in fact the Greek word for "leisure," schole.) Here are some other scandalous criteria for liberal learning. At best it's good for nothing in the sense of having no immedi- Brann 85 ate use; positively put, you do it for its own sake, because someone, usually your parents, has given you the gift of leisure, and you've fallen in love with a subject matter. Thus it is, perhaps infuriatingly, uncommitted to anything but itself: not to eliminating poverty or saving the environment or to any other good cause. It is, furthermore, joyfully judgmental, for it involves forming opinions about high and low, good and bad. It is, moreover, unabashedly elitist, though in a special way: It excludes in principle no one, certainly not people with unhappy test scores, but it is severely self-selected; to want it very much is to deserve it (from which it follows that student aid should be a college's fir st practical concern) . Finally, liberal learning has a slight edge of danger, since in its course more questions are raised-questions being its animating force-than are answered, and that leaves some souls at sea. So you see that what I am describing, a place of liberal education, is a little reservation of privilege, where people are housed and fed and provided with leisure. Your first president, the Reverend Joseph McKeen, said in 1801 that "literary institutions are founded . . .for the common good and not for the private advantage" of its students. He goes on to say that those who were educated in a public institution (he means one open to the public) should contribute to the public good. You'll forgive me, but I think he was part wrong, part confused. Colleges cannot help but have the private, or better, the personal advantage of their students as an aim, and I think the common and the public good are quite different: A college, a literary institution, ought indeed to be the place of common good, but not in the way he meant, namely as a source of public service. Now you see that I have a lot of explaining to do. To be sure, most people in fact believe that colleges are places of privilege, that they are primarily for study, that they confer a personal advantage. I believe all of these things along with the rest of the world, but in an off-beat sor t of way. Above all, I think that a lib- �86 energeia eral education is self-centered in the sense that people engage in it to come to know themselves-what they are and will do-will do, once they've learned a lot. Incidentally, from participating in Peace Corps training in the seventies of the last century, I know that service activities, especially when engaged in by young preprofessionals, are mostly exercises-hard ones-in growing up. Our contingent of young Peace Corps trainees went of to India to initiate-what presumption!-community development, but judging from their letters, they actually succeeded mainly in selfdevelopmen t. So I need to explain why liberal education should be as I have described it, and what role the common good, which is not the public good, plays in it. This distinction between "common" and "public" is, I believe, really useful when we get down to thinking about allocating the time of our lives-we lucky ones who have the freedom of choice. The ancient philosophers, who looked at things directly, were much interested in the "types" of life. They distinguished a productive, a practical, and a philosophic type. The productive life was that of a maker, from poet to engineer; they tended to have less respect than we do for producers. The practical life was that of public engagement, from war to politics; the life of practical action was highly regarded, public service above all. Being themselves philosophers, they considered the life of contemplative philosophy as the highest, and moreover, thought that it was lived closest to reality. Those about to make a life-choice, as many of you soon will, owe it to themselves, I think, to ask how these ways of life are related: How does thinking go over into action or production? And the converse: How do we, who, especially as Americans, are usually eager to live all three lives together or in succession-how do we keep from being scattered, dispersed, decentered? A very vivid sub-question is: How is my private choice, my good, rela ed o he public and common good? That brings in two Brann 87 sub-sub-questions: What does "common" mean, and what is the good? Notice that this last, most narrowly focused question probably leads right back to the deepest and fundamental questions, those concerned with what is most universal and best. That is how reflection often works: Broad life issues funnel our thinking down to deep theoretical questions. That, I must stop to point out, is exactly one direction liberal learning takes: from self-centered personal problems to deep, common questions, from what is close to us individually and collectively, to what is more remote-because it takes thinking through-but also more illuminating and more common. It is liberal education that provides the so-called liberal arts, the skills of thinking, speaking, figuring, experimenting, which make such quests possible. Exactly how that works we might talk about later on or tomorrow. And now I'll take care in one fell swoop of all the, perhaps displeasing, assertions I've made about the places of liberal education, colleges such as yours. Such places need to be somewhat isolated from the real world (so-called), because though learning, once begun, goes on throughout life, there needs to be an initial period of formal, concentrated, planned study to start the habit. They need to be places of privilege, because hard daily work is the general human lot, and education needs leisure. The education that takes place there ought to be non-utilitarian, because it should be free, unconstrained by practical requirements, so that at least once in their life people can raise and pursue at leisure any question whatsoever. But perhaps even more importantly, it ought to be useless as all mere magnificence is useless, so again that at least once in their life span students experience that good life and know about it ever after. And it needs to have an edge of danger because that is a concomitant of the opening of the self to itself. (I want to say here, by the way, that real question-asking is not a form of rebellion but of appreciation, and that colleges constantly roiled by little tendentious revolutions �\ 88 energeia aren't places of liberal learning.) And finally, such education is intensely personal so that it may lead to a common good, and that is the notion I now want to set out. First I'll distinguish "public" from "common" more carefully. Some time ago, when I began thinking about what "having in common" means, it came to me that it is different from "sharing." If you own, say a time-share bungalow, you use it in turn, not in common-that would be a scheduling mistake. If you own shares in a company, you vote your own shares, which, though not individualized, don't belong to the stockholders in common, but to you individually according to your investment. If you mean to share out the cookies you baked, it's actually the opposite of having them in common. So also when you partake of public goods, you take your part of them: your week in a cabin on federal park land, your share in the public prosperity, your day in court, and so on. Why is it not a mere verbal quibble to try to distinguish this way of participating in public goods from our interest in the common good? The reason is that this notion of the common good, namely the one that confuses it with having a share in the publz'c good, can be quite dangerous. Think how often "for the common good" is used to force a sacrifice on a hapless individual. For example, you can be forced to give up your home for the common good. It is called "eminent domain," and someone other than you, an official authority, gets to decide what the common good is that outweighs your desire to hold onto your old life. Here "the common good" deprives particular people of their share in the goods that the public in general enjoys. Further, what is the commonality whose good is the "common good?" Just a few weeks ago, my freshmen, who were reading Aristotle's Politics, got into a lively discussion of his question: Can a political community have its own excellence, its own virtue, as can a human being? The question about the common good is similar : Is any institution, up to a whole state, the kind of 89 Michael 3 I Josiah Stephens �90 energeia entity that can have a good over and above the public good that individuals share in? Can there be a common good that is no one's good in particular, perhaps even the cause of quite a little bad for each of us, though good for the abstracted whole? Talk of the common good often, if unintentionally, turns in that direction. It's too often a mask for a faction's compulsion: "Do it our way, or else." The real reason for the questionableness of the "common good" is that unlike "the public good," which refers to the goods of people in the world, namely the public, the word "common" seems, on reflection, not to apply to any of the goods of this world in which people have an individual take-home share. Instead it refers to an ideological abstraction, to pie-inthe-sky. Here is what strikes me as a chief property of true commonality, wherever it may turn up: Whereas private sharing might be a negative sum game for me, since I'm giving away something for which I may not be compensated, and public sharing is a zero sum game, since, on the whole, what service or goods each of us gets, we end up paying for in fees or taxes, having goods in common is (here's the marvel) a positive sum game, because the more of a common good each of us gets hold of, the more of it there is for each of us singly and for all of us together. What could this wondrous idea of commonality be the idea of? I think this characteristic, that of, self-contradictorily, increasing by being shared, holds of only one kind of being in human experience: beings of the intellect and soul. (One remark before I go on. The word "common" has many uses in ordinary language, and I'm not in the business of rectifying people's linguistic usage. I've chosen this word, "common," for this talk because it comes closest to signifying the property I want to bring out.) Let me begin with examples. There is a condition most of us know and seek. It is called love. For all the heartache, being in lo o · lo ring without retu r n is fo r most human beings who are Brann 91 all there far more desirable than being loved without being able to love in return. But reciprocal love is what is most desirable of all, and it has just that characteristic of commonality, the property that here "sharing," even if falsely so called, increases the good rather than cutting it down. The word "sharing" is in fact etymologically related to "shearing," to separating, dividing off, the very opposite of having in common. And in the case of mutual love just that opposite happens: It increases as it is felt in common, and what one gives is not a loss but a gain. But love is of the soul as a whole, and Bowdoin College being an institution for the fostering of the intellect primarily, that is, a school of the liberal arts, I want to focus on the thinking part of the soul rather than on the feeling part; call it the mind or intellect. The beings we have "in mind," the objects of the intellect, are usually called ideas. The history of Western thinking can be read off the changes in meaning that the word "idea" has undergone. I will even summarize it for you, though that kind of abstraction from all the depth of inquiry isn't very respectable. But perhaps we can go a little deeper later, when I am talking with you rather than at you. But for now, that history takes us, in gross terms, from the notion of an idea having independent being and occurring to or shaping the intellect to the concept of an idea as being a property efand shaped by the mind. (But don't take that, or whatever is said to you in a lecture, as anything but an incitement for questioning.) Anyhow, my point is that I want to single out ideas as having the essential property of being common, and-I am convinced-as having commonality in its primary and exemplary sense. Let me again, give an example. Most of you have probably studied a little logic at some time-it is after all one of the skills comprising the liberal arts. So you know that classes, groupings of items, are spoken of in two ways: A class has "extension" insofar as it is a collection of things that can be listed one by one. �92 energeia Thus the audience here is-a very temporary-class and its extension consists of all the numerable members of the audience, awake and even asleep. But this group as a class also has an "in-tension"-spelled with an "s." That is its essence as articulated in a definition. So an audience of Bowdoin students might be by definition the collective embodiment of responsive attentiveness, civility and articulateness, and this is the class-intension of Bowdoin studenthood incarnate in this audience. It is what every student here has in common with each of the others; none has less because the other has more. This intensional definition lists the mental attributes good for having ideas, and accordingly my next example is, in fact, an idea. When you have taken in my notion that there are goods, some of them public, which we can share and other goods, individually held, which we truly have in common, when you have it in mind and are critically thinking it over, this idea is multiplied by the number, the extension of engaged listeners -that is, of course, everybody-in this audience. But your taking in my idea deprives me of nothing; indeed it enriches me in a very specific way that I'll talk about in a moment. Before I do, I need to make a vital distinction. There is a way crowds of people share an idea that diminishes it so that the more people have it the less good there is in it; in fact it becomes debased. Such a partaking of an idea is not commonality but conformity. We have a remarkable capacity for thoughtless ideas, for giving our minds over to what Francis Bacon called idols, man-made idea-gods that inhabit us without really being ours, usually installed in us by others for the purpose of manipulating us. One way to identify such shared idols, apart from examining their nature, their idea-meaning, is from the language which occasionally comes out of our mouth about them: It is the language not of communication but of command and coercion: "Believe this, or ls !" This cor uption of commonality is a study of endless Brann 93 and anxious interest. This too we might find time to talk about later. And as so often, I want to put a restriction on my assertion: There are many ideas we hold benignly in common by convention (the word means a "coming-together"), because we can't, after all, think about everything all the time; life must go on. But I might say here that I think it is part of the mission of a liberal education to bring even the benign idols we live with under scrutiny, to question them-though not in the sense of undermining them, but in the sense of bringing them to consciousness. Whether you then reject them or embrace them with a loyalty greater for being knowledgeable is up to you. It is most emphatically not the business of your school or your teachers to instill any opinions in you, except perhaps this one: that you should know as much as possible why you have the opinions that you live with. But with that caveat, I'll return to the intrinsic commonality of ideas. One mark of it is that ideas are communicable: You can convey an idea to a fellow human being merely by speaking, and not only don't you lose by such expression, but you gain something invaluable, namely the possibility of conversation. Conversation means, literally, "taking turns with each other" speaking and responding. Speech, responsive sociability, is, I think, the best thing human beings have. There is, of course, body language, speechless communication. But it is an iffy thing. Lovers may gaze into each other's eyes for eons and suddenly find that they are looking at, not into, each other, that there's nothing in common because nothing is being communicated; their mutual gazing glances off their exterior boundaries. The thought of that sad collapse of togetherness gives me an opening to reinforce my distinction between body and soul. Physical body is matter in space, and as such it is indefeasibly extensional, exterior, and external. I mean that everything we call �94 energeia "physical" comes in a format whose most ultimate characteristic it is to stretch out, away from itself, to be extensible and, by the same token, divisible, cuttable, capable of being sheared off, and thus shared. But what pertains to soul, mind, spirit, is intrinsically internal. I mean that it is, by its very nature, inward, unextended, unified, or at least unifying-intensional. So what is essentially common, I'll say again, belongs to what is non-spatial and nonmaterial, and that is why, for all its fascination, body language is, in the long run, nothing like as revealing, as engaging, as is the really communicative speech of words. The time has come to ask, formally, whether the word "common" is associated with the word "good" just accidentally or essentially. Are they perhaps intrinsically connected? Well, in my meaning, yes. To begin with, the very fact of communicability is the first of human goods, and such communication is in speech, and speech, when used according to its nature, is the embodiment of the things of the mind, ideas-and it is under their aegis that the sort of human togetherness which does not end in jostling and alienation comes about. This is a large claim for which I've only made the sketchiest argument. The second relation between "common" and "good" is not a mere connection but an identity, not a human outcome but a condition of the world's being-and my argument will be even sketchier, vanishingly sketchy. But it is what I would most like to talk about with you. The argument is philosophical. It says that what makes our world of bodies and souls intelligible and ultimately friendly to us is goodness itself, which expresses itself in all sorts of commonality: in the fact that most things in the world clump themselves into unities that are reachable in human words, such as star, earth, people, student, tree, grass, teacher, college; in the fact that we know how to live together in this world, if not always well, on balance better than we might fear; in the fact that we know how to deal with the world's resources Brann 95 and how to turn them into usable goods; but above all, perhaps, in the fact that what differentiates us, what makes us each other's other, also binds us together, that the idea of diversity is in fact a bonding idea. You can probably guess that these are notions held, and very ardently too, by certain philosophers and theologians. And of course, there are others who disagree and give arguments for saying that there is no bond of same and other and no governing goodness. Here are two concluding points: First, liberal learning seems to me the kind of education fundamentally concerned with the common good as I have delineated it. That means it is fundamentally philosophical, in the sense of being a search for the foundations of our opinions and so for the truth-a search, but not a delivery of dogmas. When I say "philosophical" I don't mean the researches of professional philosophers, but the inquiries of thoughtful amateurs carried on in their own unsophisticated way. This inquiring kind of philosophizing is-believe it or not-what every human being really wants to engage in, at least now and then. It is the moving force of liberal learning. And this search is carried on under the aegis of the Good, meaning in the faith that it will lead not to debilitating despair but to beneficial discoveries, discoveries we can live by and do good with. Thus the second and last point gets us back to doing good in this world, and so to your Center for the Common Good. All of you who have tried your hand at helping the world know what complexities that ambition involves: what actually to do, for whom, how and, not least, how to neutralize the unavoidable superiority of the giver over the given-to. All these perplex ities seem to me to lead to a conclusion which is also a beginning: First think, then do. To be sure, the Bible (Isaiah 58:7) says to "deal thy bread to the hungry," and there are immediate acts of charity that don't require much thinking out beforehand. But by and large, action in the world does demand it. That "thinking- �96 energe1a things-out-beforehand" is called liberal education, and your years at college are the time for it. �energeia st. john's college p.o. box 2800 annapolis, md 214<01 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>Energeia</em> Description An account of the resource <em>Energeia</em> is a non-profit, student magazine, which is published once a year and distributed among students, faculty, alumni, and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis.  Staff welcome submissions from all members of the community -- essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context energeia Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper (bound book) Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 96 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Energeia, Winter 2009 Description An account of the resource Issue of the energeia, published in Winter 2009. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stocklin, Jen (Editor) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Energeia Winter 2009 Energeia Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d91650c0a1e44b8ef918cb6538911097.pdf 12bae392310fcdaa90d671528bbfefaf PDF Text Text �~ l l �'The energy of a bocfy mqy be defined as the capacity it has of doing work, and is measured "l?J the quantity of work which it can do. The kinetic energy of a bocfy is the energy which it has in virtue of being in motion . .. '' -J. Clerk Maxwell ENERGEIA STAFF Editor: Peter Heyneman Junior Editor: l(athleen I<.:.elley Assistant Editors: Jill Delston Sandeep Shekhar Das Editorial Board: Anderson Tallent Matthew Albanese Matthew Gates Artwork Editor: Caroline Picard Publishing Advisor: Andrew Ranson Layout and Design: Paul Detchemendy Thanks to: Chris Colby and the St. John's College Print Shop If there is one truly encouraging factor to Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory, it is the concept of "vigor." Vigorous animals survive, and pass on a high level of this trait to their offspring. Darwin never defines it, but I would like to believe that vigor has nothing to · do with ambitious intentions or rippling muscles, and everything to do with efficacy, or work. A creature certainly must be judged by the effect it has in the world, and this judgment should take into account only the consequences of its striving for the betterment of its species. In other words, natural selection doesn't care for potential energy. The beings that have vigor, act; if it is unused, it does not exist. Perhaps there is also a sort of natural selection among the "Being of Fictions" that Eva Brann speaks of in her essay, (beginning on page 7). There certainly was an unnatural selection here at the magazine, when the staff and I picked a winner of the first annual ThorpeAndrews Prize for First Year Student Writing. There were many quite promising entries, and the decision was difficult, but the work we chose, Marshall Derks's poem "Song of Summer," (page 25) displayed a kind of vigor evident in writing that is not simply strong, but casually effective. Readers, like us Energeia editors, are constantly singling out characters, writers, books, even individual lines, not on the basis of some vague potentiality or secret power, but for the intellectual and emotional movement created in us by these vigorous fictions. For there must always be progression in thought as well as in life's development: a motion, if not towards a certain goal, then possibly just a cheerful, headstrong revolution of forms and beliefs, energized continuously by individual striving. Aesop, the great historian, once said, "Toils are the treasures of man." Treasure is equally toil, though, even if the bird hardly knows it is working as it sings out from the trees its vigorous tones. -Peter Heyneman �\' TABLE OF 0 n Faith and Perfection ........ ...... .. .. .. ............... ........... ..... ....... ... ...... ..47 .Annual Essay Prize Kathleen Kelley (untitled) .. .. ...... .. ....................... .... .... .... .. .. ...... .... ... ... .... ...... .... .... ... .. 62 Cara Lammey Harpokrate's Pilgrim ...... ... ...... .... .. ..... .......... .. ........... .... ....front cover Sean Ross Oula...... ... .... ..... .. .... .. .... .. .. ........... ... ........ .... ............ .... ..... .. .. ...... ... ... ..6 Caroline Picard The Being of Fictions .... ......... .. .. ... .... .................. .......... ..................... 7 Eva Brann 13 Colonial .............. ... ....... ... ... .. ........................... ................ .... .·.......24 Marion Cook Secret .. .. ...... ........... ... .... .. .. .. ........ .... ......... ..... .. ............ ..... ... ..... .... ..... ..63 Jill Delston Goat...................................................................... ................. ............ 65 Cara Gormally Untitled .. ................ ....................... ........... ...... .... ... .. ..... .... ............. .....66 Benjamin Truesdale Song of Summer .... ....... .. ....... .. ......... .. ....... .............. ... ............... .. ...... 25 Marshall Derks Egypt and the Cult of Heracles: Mythology and the Marvelous in Herodotus' Histories .... .. ..... .. ........ .. 67 ~-\nnual Essay Honorable Mention Bryan Thorpe Untitled .... ..... ................. .... ... .. ......... .............. .. ..... .... ....... ...... ......... ...26 Lucas Ford Untitled ... .......... .... ........ .. ........... ............... ......... ..... ..... ... .. .... ...... .. ..... 112 Elizabeth Wagner The Present is Pregnant with the Future .. ...................... ........... ... .......27 Annual Essay Prize Rachel Seay Beatrice.... ...... .. .... .... .. ...... .......................... ...... ............ .... .. ..back cover .Ann-Therese Gardner Arte Poetica ..... ....... ................... ... ...... .. .... .. ... ..... ... ............ ......... ..... ..44 Jorge Luis Borges translated by Isaac Smith S e!f-portrait ...... ..... .. ... ... .... ..... ...... ... .. ........ .. ..... .... ................ .. ... .. .... ...46 Kathryn Bush CON T EN TS �\ ENERGEL-\ 1 The Being of Fictions by Eva Brann Ou/a Caroline Picard 6 In casting around for a subject that might be of interest to many of you and yet not utterly familiar to everybody, I thought that an inquiry into which philosophy, literature, logic, psychology, ordinary experience, and cognitive science enter in about equal parts might fill the bill. The Being of Fictions seemed to be such a subject. The philosophical version of the issue would be: What is the ontological status of fictions? What kind and degree of being do fictions have? The literary question would be: How does a fictional text convey the nature of its creature? What literary devices distinguish fictions from lies? The logical version would be: What is the logical quality of the existence operator that a fiction commands? Are statements about nonexistent beings somehow true or simply false? In psychology one might ask: What is the mental framework proper to the reception of fictions? Is a special psychological vulnerability involved? In ordinary experience the question is: Whence comes the power of the unreal? Is it to be accepted or discounted in ordinary life? And in cognitive science the most clearly defined problem was: Can one show experimentally that there are mental images? Could the visual imagination, as a faculty for making canvasless and paintless pictures visible to none but the imaginer, be made to reveal its products to empirical science? All the questions I have mentioned are, as a matter of course, about cognition and its theories-what is there of interest to us that isn't? But only the last is about cognitive science as an experimental 7 �ENERGEIA study. Let me explain first why I put the question in the past, as a superseded problem, so to speak, and then why it once mattered to me and still does matter to the being of fictions. Like many of us who spend a very lively part of our lives immersed in fiction I live somewhat split-mindedly, schizophrenically. On the one hand I readily give in to the seduction particularly of novels, not so much in the mental frame of suspended disbelief (which implies an initial vigilant skepticism) as in an unguarded readiness to be taken over, to believe. But of course I emerge form the realm of reading, and the question is: ''Where have I been?", and the frame of mind is: "I believe; help thou my unbelief." Put more prosaically, a lover of fiction is likely to be driven to reflection about its status. For me, at least, such an inquiry has two aspects. There is a world to be penetrated, the world of the imagination as a natural amateur's realm of fiction-what goes on inside all of us (or at least most of us, since it seems to be true that there are some people, significantly enough, often people of very high logical purity and sensitive moral consciousness, whose imaginative inner realm is very narrow). And then, emerging from and distinct from this relatively inchoate space of fiction in general, there are the well-formed specific fictions of the profidents, the poets and the novelists. It is their products that particularly induce reflection on the controll~d exploitation of the imagination, · on the artificial modifications that lead to public fictions, and above all, on the warranties and certifications of existence with which fic. tion writers strive to supply their individual figures. In looking for light on this question, I immersed myself a decade ago in the literature of what was then the current research in cognitive science, the work on mental imagery. Before saying something brief about its history, its results, and its decline, let me tell you why it seemed pertinent at all. It seemed to me that writers of fiction, epic poets and novelists, evidently could not help but be guided by the world we inhabit into a dual configuration: background and foreground, scene-settings and beings moving through them, backdrops and the shapes appearing against them, atmospheres and the figures 8 BRANN emanating from them. Amateurs of the imagination are pretty good at unformulated atmosphere, but it takes a master to coagulate the figures: ... as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing .A local habitation and a name. At any rate, Shakespeare intimates that poetry begins with internal visions, and so, I'm persuaded, does most prose fiction. And it takes a cognitive constitution able to re-envision the shapes to become a reader of the scripture that comes from the poet's pen-which, put technically, means that mental imagery is a sine qua non, an absolute necessity for reading fiction. Let me give you a magnificent example of this necessity, the most spectacular one I know, though I can think of scores of other good ones. It is from the Iliad. Having been insulted by the commander-inchief, Achilles has withdrawn from the battle before Troy. Now, driven by the rout of the Greeks to fatal half-measures, he has dressed his bosom friend Patroclos in his own well-known armor, in the wrongheaded hope that the mere appearance of a figure looking like himself-recall that Greek armor covers the whole man, face includedwill scare off the Trojans. Of course, Patroclos, who has been told to fight only defensively, loses control and charges ahead. Hector the Trojan kills him and strips off Achilles' armor, as is the custom. He proudly puts it on himself, and Zeus makes it fit. Achilles, in a blazing fury and with new armor, rejoins the battle. On the next day the face-off between himself and Hector on which Achilles is intent comes off. (It is, incidentally, the Homeric fighter's mode to become a promachus, a forefighter, who emerges from the background battle to stand out in a duel, somewhat as the scenic imagination bodies forth figures.) Hector takes to his heels and runs three times around Troy, chased but not caught by the man whose chief epithet is "swift-footed." They run as in a dream; Hector cannot get away and Achilles can- 9 �ENERGEIA not catch up. They stop to catch their breath and to think. Athena, who is always there when people are thinking for their lives, brings about a confrontation. Achilles and Hector face each other. And now the mindful readers, those who see the moment, will feel the hair of their heads stand on end, for what is it that Achilles faces? His last glimpse of Patroclos as he had sent him to his death in hi~ _own armor but also himself as he was before his several fatal dec1s1ons. This i~ the apparition he will now transfix with his spear. Of this implied climactic vision Homer says not a word, though it has been nearly three thousand lines since the last mention of that fatal armor. So, to come out of the poem, the ability to have mental imagery is of the essence in reading narrative, and to know something about its nature must be, I thought, helpful to understanding what a fiction, that is, a figure of fiction, might be. Now just at that time in the late 1980's when I was reading around, very encouraging research on mental imagery was being done in cognitive science. The method peculiar to cognitive science was to force out into the empirical open, by cleverly designed experiments, aspects of cognition that had so far had to rely on introspection to appear, or being unconscious, had not been available at all. The latter case was of most interest, since the science had as one of its assumptions that cognition has more to it than shows up in consciousness. And that in turn was connected with an even deeper assumption, that the mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain and that the unconscious phases of what ends up as a conscious cognition could be ultimately externalized as a neurophysiological event. Mental imagery seemed to be a particularly rewarding small bailiwick within the cognitive psychology part of cognitive science. Roger Shepard had been first to devise a way to test one aspect of mental images: Subjects were shown two complicated shapes composed of cubes in different positions. The question to them was whether they were the same. The point was to determine from the time subjects took to answer whether something like a mental rotation was going on. The tests were convincingly positive. (I was put onto this research 10 BRANN .by Barry Mazur who is in the audience tonight.) Stephen K.osslyn, then of Harvard, took up and expanded these experiments in mental scannings and their latency times. I think the subject has since fallen into abeyance. I have not kept up with the research, but I do see why it couldn't go much further. To say why this is so, let me give the briefest background of the fate of mental imagery. The behaviorists who dominated psychology earlier in the last century and philosophers of a positivist empirical cast of mind had been simply denying that we have such imagery: For the behaviorist psychologists it was a brute dislike of introspection that set them against so invisible and behaviorally elusive an item. For the philosophers the issues were, it seems to me, deeper and more perplexing. I think that Wittgenstein asked the most unsettling and seemingly unanswerable questions, from which most later investigations derived, and the deepest of them, in his own words, is this: ''What makes an image of him an image of him?" In other words, is there a certifiable correspondence between an image, especially a mental image, and its original, wherever located? In testable terms and for mental images, that question yielded this problem: Does the cognitive process of generating a mental image give evidence of being analogous to seeing a real figure in real space? And, of course, if that question had a persuasively positive answer then the prior question, "Do we have mental imagery to begin with?", would be answered. K.osslyn's school of research does seem to have shown that mental images behaved in many ways like spatial figuresyou could scan them, zoom in on them, rotate them. Now, here are two interesting circumstances. One is that it all didn't do much good. Proofs were produced which showed that the issue was formally undecidable, that every effect accounted for in quasispatial terms could also, if ·s omewhat more laboriously, be explained in verbal or digital terms. To be sure, the quasi-spatial account was more immediate. Moreover it jibed with what everyone believes anyhow: that we have a mind's eye, so that to the question, "How do you know you are imagining him?", the answer is: "It's him all over; it looks 11 �\ EN ERGEL-\ lili:e him." To be sure, scientists tend to have a low opinion of what they call folk-psychology, as do certain estheticians who claim not to know what ~'looks lili:e" might mean. But in the end what you know introspectively you know unfalsifiably-that is, after all, why introspection is the bugbear of cognitive science and a last resort of philosophy. But these undecidibility proofs discouraged, I imagine, further research-they and a certain recalcitrance in the problem itself. If mind science was ultimately brain science, then to take seriously the notion that mental imagery was space-lili:e would be to show that some imaging brain activity was somehow really space-lili:e, which didn't seem to be in the cards. But if there was some irreducible distinction between spatial views and brain processes, then the epiphenomenona had some independence and ifltrospection was the lili:ely access to it-not to mention the fact that the possibility of effective introspection is assumed anyhow in every such subject-response experiment. And now the second curious thing. While many cognitive psychologists, methodological quandaries notwithstanding, had persuaded themselves that we do see images internally, the philosophers, especially the ones committed to scientific method, went right on rejecting this form of cognition. Why, incidentally, would one even call it a form of cognition? One question the investigators in fact asked is whether one can learn from one's mental imagery. They decided that there could be that in the imagination which the thinking mind had yet to know. I think that my Homeric example is proof positive, since, ·as I mentioned, the verbal text says not a word at the event, so that in the absence of visualization, the reader is apt to miss the great moment. Homer is, incidentally, the most reader-participant poet I know, precisely because he relies on the reader not only to see more than he describes but to infer more than he states. For example, when Odysseus' son comes to the palace of Helen and Menelaus, he hears wedding music; it is Helen's daughter who is getting married, and b efore long Helen will surely b e a grandmother. The pathos of this 12 BRANN dissonant fact will dominate Telemachus's visit, but Homer, again, says nothing out loud. Nonetheless, philosophers continued to be strong defenders of the notion that imagery is illusionary and words are real, for a variety of interesting reasons, chief among which was a desire for univocity and explicitness. I think that those contemporary literary theorists who believe that meaning is entirely intra-textual, that books have no outside reference, that mimesis is not involved in fiction, cannot help but belong to the same school of mental iconoclasts, though for different, one might say, more frolicsome, reasons. These mental imagery studies may later have run into a dead end for the researchers, but they were very profitable for me then. They made me ask what it might mean to believe in the reality of mental images in general. This was not the specific question I ultimately cared about, which was rather the ontological or existential status of the beings of fiction. But the cognitive researchers helped in thinking generally about what it means to have something in mind, before the mental eye, at all. They drew attention to the essential spatiality of images, to the character of closed configurations upon a quasi-spatial background, to the nature of mental movement and to the genesis of mental formations. But even the most ingenious detailing of the cognitive conditions of their possibility could not tell me whence the images came, what they meant, or whether these beings had real standing as existences. I have produced on purpose a clause that displays three terms which are often used randomly as synonyms, but which I want to distinguish: being, reality, existence. I have a certain warrant for these distinctions in the philosophical tradition, but I'll omit this background and hope you'll go along anyhow. Being means, from way back, whatever stable presence and intelligible nature anything has. It is the object of ontology, the study of Being, of which Aristotle says that it is what we search for of old, and now and forever. Being can be ideal or immattered. 13 �ENERGEIA Reality, from Latin res, means thinghood, and has come to signify what obdurately confronts the senses, particularly the material as opposed to the ideal grasp; reality is what is palpable. Existence is being here and now; it is presence as time- and spaceaffected; it is the being of facts, by which I mean objects that come to us as nodes of knowledge enmeshed in the fundamental modes of the world before us, in space and in time. Hence reality and existence are indeed pretty much exchangeable. Most of what is here and now, or there and then, is also, or at least was once or will sometime be, palpable. The cognitive scientists may be said to have concerned themselves with the existence of images, for they were teasing out their temporal and spatial features. But literary fiction is delivered primarily in words, and although someone without mental imagery-and ever since Galton made the earliest mental imagery experiments in the 1880's, it has been known that there are individual differences, that there are people who either don't have it or are somehow prevented from being aware of it-will miss a lot, still words can cortvey plot and character very densely. So the question of fictional existence can be raised, and in fact was first raised, in the verbal realm-and this will not surprise you-by logicians and logically-minded philosophers. The issue was launched by Russell and his-by him highly respected-antagonist Alexius Meinong at the turn of the century just gone by, and it has been periodically revived since then without any definite conclusion. I hope you will agree with me that while a good problem in mathematics and science is one that has a hope of resolution, a worthwhile pursuit in human wisdom is one that has given us good cause for despair. Here is how the problem, with which philosophers had so far only toyed, presented itself to Russell for serious solution: Suppose a teacher of Greek mythology asserts before a class as follows: "Pegasus is winged." What is he talking about? What is being referred to ? The sentence seems true, but it is not about anything in existence; it denotes nothing; it has no real reference. You can't find Pegasus 14 BRANN . grazing in the valleys of Montana with the wild horses or whisper him into gentleness. Moreover it's probably the case that horses that are real horses cannot, physiologically speaking, have wings, so Pegasus is not merely factual nonexistent-he's also impossible. What is the matter here, in Russell's view, is to be located in the sloppiness of ordinary speech that uses Pegasus as a proper name and thoughtlessly assumes that names have real references. Note, incidentally, that this low opinion of what we all say in ordinary life is an early parallel to the cognitive scientist's distrust of folk-psychology, what we all believe about our minds in our time off. We shouldn't talk this way, Russell thinks, and I quote: The sense of reality is vital in logic and whoever juggles with it by pretending that Hamlet has another kind of reality is doing a disservice to thought. ~-\. robust sense of reality is very necessary in framing a correct analysis of propositions about unicorns, golden mountains, round squares and other such pseudo-objects. What we should do is not so much utter as symbolize, so as to get at the proposition in all its logical purity. And that involves following the unnatural but clean reconceiving of a sentence like "Pegasus is winged'': 1. Get rid of the name Pegasus which gives the false impression that some being is named thereby. 2. Then rethink the predicate "has wings" or "is winged" as a sort of function on a variable, F(x) or W(p) in this case. The predicate is now no longer a property inherent in the subject, as is sweetness in honey, but an operation assigning to a variable-it might be a unique one-a qualitative value, as here wingedness happens to be assigned to, or function over a unique-valued variable, p. 3. Regard this x or p not as a thing rich in descriptive features but as a kind of nondescript prop to which functions can be applied. Oddly enough, the theory of prop ositions that I am 15 �ENERGEIA describing is called "The Theory of Descriptions," but it should be called "The Theory of Nondescript Beings." 4. Now determine whether there is in fact an x in the domain of this function and express this finding in terms of a so-called existence operator, the well-known reversed E. 5. In this case, if you have empirical evidence -that there is one unique Pegasus, a fact among facts, you may read: There exists a p that is a winged horse and is the only winged horse and it is assigned to the domain of winged things. And now it gets interesting: What if you have teason to think that no such creature ever lived through time or occupied space? What if the one and only Pegasus or the scattered tribe of unicorns were, you are convinced, never a part of nature? !hen you will put a symbol of negation in front of the existence-quantified prepositional function and read: "It is ~ot the case that there exists an x that is ... "and so on. Here is the spectacularly deflating result of one of the most successful logical theories of the last century: All propositions about nonexistent objects are now simp!J false. The assertion "Pegasus is winged" is not oddly and inexplicably but ineluctably somehow true; it's just false. The robust sense of reality requires that Pegasus and Hamlet have no sort of reality. But this is simply intolerable to anyone who loves and lives with fiction. Let me try to say how that point can be made. For Russell the status of things is exhaustively divided between existence and nonexistence, reality and unreality. But I have up my sleeve yet another term which the dictionary once again insouciantly conflates with existence and reality. That word is actuality, and traditionally it means Being insofar as it has potency. Pegasus, unicorns, and Hamlet all have actuality. The Russellian world is a world of existence, but there may be more modes of Being than are dreamed of in this philosophy. Here is how, in my experience, fictional beings are potently actual: They have more staying power than we do and are much longer-lived; in fact they endure fresh and present through millennia, like Achilles, Hector, and 16 BRANN Helen. They have powers of arousal, physical and mental, not the made-to-order goads of private day-dreams but the objective attraction of autonomous beings. They are self-moving, like living things with a will, and poets record rather than invent their deeds; I cite the same beings in evidence. They have an inner logic and their own spontaneity of action, and they surprise us-here's the wonder-by doing exactly what they must. As models they instigate action in us, as Achilles incited Alexander to conquer the world. In sum, they have a good many of the indices of actuality, and so the mere fact of nonexistence should not make all speech about fiction simply false, if speech is to preserve its full human function. Now Russell had a worthy opponent in his severe proscription of all nonexistence as unspeakable. This was Alexius Meinong, a somewhat older contemporary who wrote in Austria. He came to the conclusion that there must be, as I have just intimated, other ways of being besides existence here and now. In working out these ways he produced what Quine, a Russellian in this matter, called "a slum of possibilities," "a breeding ground for disorderly elements," such as "offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes." Now those of us who have plenty of occasion to visit desert landscapes (as I do because my college has a campus in New Mexico) know that the desert is in fact a veritable breeding ground for a wild profusion of gods and ghosts, but let that be. The Meinongian slum contains at the least some very colorful additions to the gallery of linguistically possible if existentially impossible beings, beings which it may be unwise to ignore if the human world is to flourish. If the specific cognitive object of the cognitive scientists I have mentioned was the mental image and that of the logicians the negative existence-quantified proposition, the philosopher to be here considered, Meinong, begins with the cognitive object in general, with intentionality. Intentionality is a word used by its proponents to signify the essence of cognitive consciousness, that is to say, all consciousness simply. To be conscious is to intend something, though not primarily in a purposive sense. It is always to be thinking a thought, to 17 i �ENERGEIA be mentally active about an object. All thinking is aboutness, all aboutness encompasses an object, and-here's the crux-no object of thought can be just nothing, a pseudo-being. Meinong begins by observing closely the varieties of consciousness, and in this observational mode he is a proto-phenomenologist, a precursor of the phenomenological school to whom the careful introspective description of intentional consciousness is a primary task. But the axiom that no object of consciousness can be flatly nothing-that is not descriptive but prescriptive, and it is undeniably metaphysics, to be precise, ontology. Meinong's own deliberately paradoxical for~ulation was: "There are objects of which it is true that there are no such objects." Now to say that a nonexistent object exists is rank self-contradiction, while to say that a nonbeing is, is merely paradoxical-because the statement can be made into sense by proper qualification. So the ensuing task was to distinguish as accurately and subtly as possible the types of intentional objects found in human consciousness. Of these there were broadly speaking three, and they make, I think, immediate sense. There are the perfectly palpable spatio temporal existences as we receive them through the senses. Set these aside. Thete remains a pair of types to which Meinong applies a clever principle: the principle of the independence of "Being-thus" or "Being-so" from Being. In the traditional way of thinking this principle is phrased as the independence of whatness from thatness; in common language, it is the thought that there might be quite determinate and interesting natures that just don't and can't occur in the spatiotemporal world. Among these beings are the ideal objects of mathematics, which have, Meinong thinks, being quite independent of cognition, yet no existence. And then there is an infinite reahn, Quine's overpopulated slum of quasi-beings, that is indifferent to, and outside of, both factual existence and the independent subsistence of ideal mathematical beings. These quasi-beings have articulable definite properties, both essential and accidental, but no genuine being at all. Among them the airy nothings of fiction find their habitation and their name. Meinong gives them the status of what he calls Aussersein, Beyond-being. 18 BRANN Though I admire Meinong's courageous intention to take on strange inquiries and by his meticulous distinctions to give the dignity of being acknowledged problems to elusive objects, it is not altogether easy to say what has been settled. To be beyond Being is, to be sure, more than to be beneath it, to be the nonexistent value of a consequently false proposition. But it is not much more. For Beyondbeing is a weasel term. It appears to grant fictions the ontological status of a determinate relations to Being while it takes away the actuality and autonomy that make being a being worthwhile. Meinong's kind of inquiry soon went into eclipse; people wanted results that were more spare and more punchy. Russellian minimalism won most of the last century. But then, since these cognitive questions are unquenchable, in the latter part of the last century there came a revival. In particular there was an attempt in 1980 by Terence Parsons of the University of California, Irvine, to bring Meinongian notions into Russell-territory-to reinterpret Meinong's Beyond-beings as nonexistent objects, and to devise a theory which would be in content inconsistent with Russell's Theory of Description-for recall that Russell denied to nonexistent objects the ability to enter into true propositions-and would yet be symbolic and so, formal. Parsons takes from Meinong the idea of a nuclear property, meaning all those predicates that make up the Being-so of an intended object. Now every existent object is conceived by Parsons as being complete!J describable by a unique set of nuclear properties. List them. This list exhausts all the objects that have proper existence, the kind of factual being that Russell and Quine find respectable. This existence itself is not one of the nuclear properties the objects in the list have, but it is what Parsons calls an extranuclear property. It belongs to every member of the list by definition-this is the list of factually existent objects-but it is not a part of its description, of its Beingso. Let me repeat that this list embodies one very important criterion of existence: Each object is complete!J described by its properties. It is 19 �ENERGEIA a crucial characteristic of anything that factually exists that it has no indeterminacy about it: !ny sensible question you ask of it, it will respond to, it will inform you about. If you ask any horse, "Do you pasture in Montana?", it will say yes or no, as the case may be, and if you ask it, '~re you winged?", it will say no. Now go on to make up more sets of nuclear properties that aren't in the list so far. Do it by dreaming up, in an orderly sequence, new combinations of nuclear properties or even properties never met with in this world. This list will be a lot longer, inexhaustible in fact. It will be a respectably defined list of nonexistent objects. But Parsons puts this in a clever way: All these new objects that don't exist empirically don't have extranuclear existence, but they do have nuclear existence. That is a way of saying that their existence is part of their description; it is ascribed to them as a property by the list maker. If this reminds some of you of ·Anselm's famous argument for the existence of God, which crudely put, says that God's existence is included in his essence, you will be on the right track-Parsons makes the same connection. Fictions have existence as part of their Being-so. What makes Parsons' treatment attractive to logicians is that it can be almost completely formalized; what I like is the cunning solution he introduces, that of nuclear existence, existence not by fact but by description. But I like it more for its clarity than as a satisfying answer, since attributed existence just doesn't account for the actuality of fictional being. Reduced to its rockbottom significance, to attach "nuclear" existence to a fiction is merely to reiterate that it is a fiction, a made-up being with a pretense of existence included in its make-up. Moreover, Parsons had worked with an assumption which seems to me to be false, though it is a great help in thinking about fictions. He assumes first that all individual objects in real existence can be listed-let that unlikely possibility pass--and then he assumes that every . atomic existence is completely determined, that I can list all its properties. Now we know that real nature is, on the contrary, rife with indeterminacies. For example, if you ask a particle to give you both its position and its momentum at any instant, it can't do it-this is the 20 BRANN so-called indeterminacy principle of quantum physics. If you ask yourself whether you are usually in a completely determined state, the answer is apt to be no as well. So most real individuals are highly underdetermined, in principle or in fact. But it is the opposed case, the case of nuclear existence, which includes beings of fiction, that is really interesting. Parsons supposes that, as real existences are determinate, so nuclear or purely descriptive existences are constitutionally indeterminate. If you ask Pegasus where he grazes and whether he is winged, he might answer: On the Acropolis of Corinth, and yes, he has wings. But if you ask him about the musculature of those wings he is silent, and there's no one who can tell and no way to determine what's inside that figure. Now on the face of it, Parsons seems to be right. Books of fiction do not contain indefinitely long lists exhausting the properties of their fictional entities. They leave their characters highly incomplete. And yet, can't we answer far more questions about such beings than the explicit information would seem to warrant? And I don't mean just logical inferences of this boring type: If we meet Natasha Rostov, that apotheosis of girlhood, at the end of War and Peace in a married state, we may infer that the Russia of 1820 had an institution of marriage. What I do mean is that I could confidently fill in a check list of the features, say, of Natasha's Bezuhov's looks: I know in a general way what any dowdy, fussy mother, self-neglectfully and fanatically absorbed in her family, looks like, and also what she is like: how over the fundamentally contented continua of her life there play descants of nagging complaininess and joyful resolutions. And I know, more particularly, what transformations the looks of that unique Natasha of the flashing black eyes, the slim figure and the impetuous disposition have undergone to make her much less charming to the world and much more indispensable to her intimates. Some of it Tolstoy tells and the rest I make out by looking within. So at the least I can carry on a perfectly judicious conversation about it with my friends. No, it is surely not the case that fictions are ineradicably incomplete, at least not if they fall into friendly hands-which means that the grounding 21 �EN ERGEL-\ distinction between existent and nonexistent objects either fails to do fictions justice or becomes too shaky for the clarity that was to be the bonus of the formal approach. Where to go next, then, when all the cognitive approaches have been proved unsatisfactory through the very illumination they offered? The scannable quasi-space of mental imagery, the falsehood of existentially quantified propositions, the Beyond-being of intentional objects, the nuclear existence included among the properties of incomplete objects-all these help a lot in making more precise our reflections about the being of fictions. But the more accurately they define the problem, the more acutely they fail to save the phenomena in their actuality. If cognitive science, symbolic logic, phenomenological ontology, and finally the melding ~f these latter two do not give satisfaction, not to speak of the many other philosophical and literary inquiries that are~ in my experience, less focused or less original, where to look next, besides of course, within? Well, there is one discipline left, and it offers strange and wonderful solutions-theology2 • I will leave for our discussion the possibility that the being of fictions is a matter for divine rather than secular science. One thing is certain: If it were so, if the being of fictions were properly a theological issue, there would ensue at least one unsettling consequence: The explanation which might be, to speak fancifully, most satisfactory to the fictional beings themselves might well be the one least acceptable to us who struggle not to be caught in the confusion between a wish and a warrant for belief. 22 Notes: 1. Delivered at the Seminar on Cognitive Theory and the Arts, Harvard Hwnanities Center, November 1, 2000. 2. I am thinking not only of the reference poets have traditionally made to divine inspiration, but of something much more specific: the remarkable similarity that the being of angels, as set out by medieval theologians, has to the being of fiction~. ..Angels have life but do not age; they begin as creations but have no end; they do not change, being each an intelligible species and yet are capable of crucial choices; to express their natures they assume bodies, which are, however, incorruptibly incorporeal; they do not live in passing time, yet they are compatible with its passage. They live instead in the aevum, a temporal mode between eternity and time, the temporality of Paradise. A short reflection will show that these features are exactly those of fictional beings, which also live without aging, which are made but not unmade, which are both once-and-for-all representations of their species and unique, autonomous individuals, which have visualizable but incorruptibly immaterial bodies, which live alongside us but not in passing time. They too have the aeviternity of an Edenic space parallel to our world but are exempt from the secular rule that the aspect of pain should not give pleasure. The question is now raised: Does this comparative account say to us that fictions are angels or that angels are fictions? If the latter, the theologians (above all, Thomas Aquinas in the Summa, Q. 10, 50 ff) had an insight into the being of fictions which was at once quite devoid of intention at the time and unmatched in depth thereafter. 23 �MARSf-L-\LL DERKS ENERGEIA Song of Summer Through this window's sagging glass, (Atlas with his might couldn't hold the years) pigtails wave at broken cars in the high grass, colored crayon yellow in the lazy heat. We skimmed time off the day, a few minutes alone on the hills we found anatomy. In eyes we found blue lattice works greater then the sky's tumult that left us breathless and wet under porches with their sudden love. The crowds we parted; a silk serpent, Flicking a forked tongue. In our indulgence we carried no pity nor coins for the ragged people. 13 Colonial Marion Cook 24 Our day was the burning sun when the cold moon rose and dream time enveloped our minds I saw a tree of glass and a river of amethyst shattered by the hammer of Vesuvius. Through its banks ran rust iron blood, burning the verdant plains and slowing till it sank the ballast that kept us afloat. 25 �ENERGEIA The Past is Pregnant with the Future by Rachel Seay In 1695, Leibniz published a short essay entitled "A New System of the Nature and Communication of Substances, and of the Union of the Soul and Boqy." This work presents a brief but compact statement of Leibniz's philosophy, which culminates in the presentation of a new definition of motion, or "action with respect to substance itself." He admits, "These considerations, however metaphysical they may seem, have yet another marvelous use in physics, in order to establish the laws of motion, as our Dynamics will be able to show"(p.145). His essay "Specimen Dynamicum", or~ "A Specimen of Dynamics: Toward Uncovering and Reducing to Their Causes Astonishing Laws of Nature Concerning the Forces of Bodies andTheir Actions on One Another7', was also published in 1695. Thus Leibniz presents simultaneously a New Science of Dynamics and a New System of Nature. The end of the latter bidding Untitled Lucas Ford 26 us look to the former clearly illustrates Leibniz's intention that these two essays be considered together. In what follows, I will treat first of the Leibnizean correction of force by the "new science", and then of the corresponding correction of substance by the "new system". I will conclude with a discussion of what Leibniz's corrections accomplish. At the beginning of "Specimen Dynamicum", Leibniz claims that his new notion of matter, substance 1 and motion "takes both the truth and the doctrines of the ancients into consideration." He continues with the following claim: 27 �ENERGEIA now we shall make intelligible the teachings of the Peripatetics concerning form or entelechies .. .we think that it is necessary not to destroy this philosophy accepted for so many centuries, but to explain it and augment it with new truths ... For if you just omit the harsher things they say against others, there is usually much that is good and true in the writings of the distinguished ancients and moderns . .. many things others have done please me in a way . .. Perhaps this is because, by thinking about many things, I have learned not to despise anything. (p.118-9) Leibniz proposes a new system and a new science, which together elucidate a way of thinking about the world that attempts to overcome the fissure between ancient and modern philosophy. Prudence must be exercised in applying such labels as "the ancients" and "the moderns"; there are in fact historically prior philosophers, who hold what may be recognized as modern philosophies, and likewise modern philosophers, who maintain characteristically ancient philosophies. For our purposes here, let it suffice to caricature the difference in the following way: Let us understand ancient philosophy as the contemplation of being and treatment of Nature as a whole; let us understand modern philosophy as the analysis of becoming and the questioning of material nature. For Leibniz, the unification of these ways of thinking consists in showing the insufficiency of mechanical explanations alone, and the necessity for metaphysical notions in physics. In the end, is Leibniz's proclaimed unification of the ancients and the moderns successful? Of what does this reconciliation consist, and at what expense is it achieved? Leibniz focuses primarily on the views of Aristotle and Descartes, who hold drastically different conceptions of motion, matter, body, substance and nature in general. He claims to reconcile these differences through the notion of force. Leibniz's philosophy consists of two main shifts, a shift in his understanding of body and motion and a shift in methods of explanation. Again, the first shift occurs in the redefinition of bodies and how they act and interact. Arguments about motion, whether it is real, what it is, where it resides, whether and how it begins and ceases, and 28 SEAY many more, have plagued philosophy since its beginnings. For behind s~ch speculation lie the fundamental concerns of philosophy: questions about the nature of matter, time, existence, and nature itself. Leibniz presents a new treatment of motion and a redefinition of body, both in terms of force. The second shift occurs in manners of ~xplanation . T~~ 'proper use' of cause and effect must be taught in light of Le1bmz s account of the laws of motion and the cause of those laws. Although I present these shifts separately, they are interdependent; they occur simultaneously and are at work in both of Leibniz's essays. I see these shifts as different manifestations of the same new way of experiencing and thinking about the world as will be discussed later. Meanwhile, I will continue to treat them so:riewhat separately only in an attempt to proceed in an orderly fashion. Part 1: Descartes' Mistake and the Art of Measurement The opening of "Specimen Dynamicum" is presumably referring to the New System when it recalls that "Elsewhere we urged that in corporeal things there is something over and above extension in fact something prior to extension, namely, that force of nature ~planted everywhere by the Creator." He continues, "This force does not consist in a simple faculty ... but is further endowed with conatus or nisus . .. ~therm~re, there is nothing real in motion but a momentary somethmg which must consist in a force striving toward change"(p.116). This argues directly against the Cartesian accounts of substance and motion. In Chapter 6 of Le Monde, Descartes declares in his 'description of a new world' "that the quantity of the matter I have described does not differ from its substance ... I conceive of its extension, or the property it has of occupying space, not as an accident, but as its true form and its essence." In the following chapter of the same treatise, Descartes informs his reader that he conceives of motion as nothing other than that "by which bodies pass from one place to another and successively occupy all the spaces in between." 29 �ENERGEIA What does Leibniz hold to be Descartes's mistake? By conceiving of substance as merely material extension, Descartes conceived of a body in motion only as mass with speed, and therefore only considers quantity of motion when he calculates it as directly proportional to speed. He did not understand force in the same way as Leibniz, because he could not conceive of speed with direction (velocity) as a reality possessed by the body. For while speed is something imparted to and hence can be measured in the body alone, direction implies a relationship between the body and externals, which by definition is not something contained in the body. Therefore he calculated quantity of motion as the product of the amount of body (mass) and the speed imparted to the body, and incorrectly asserted that this was always conserved. The majority of "Specimen Dynamicum" is devoted to distinguishing Cartesian quantity of motion from Leibnizean force. Leibniz claims that force, not quantity of motion, is conserved in collision, by illustrating the absurdities that arise from calculating force as the product merely of mass and speed. One absurdity that results is perpetual mechanical motion, which describes the ability of a body to endlessly do work without expending c::nergy. This no-cost labor results from having gained as much force as was started with, which is impossible given Leibniz's law of motion that an effect is equal in power to its cause (p.125). Calculating force using the Cartesian equation also results in the absurdity that a body at rest could not in any way be moved from its place by another smaller body, which is contrary to our experience of the world. Leibniz claims that Descartes's mistake derives from his purely mathematical definitions of substance and motion, causing him to mistakenly assign reality to motion, rather than force. "Descartes correctly distinguished [speed] from direction ... But he did not calculate the least change properly, first changing the direction alone, then the [speed] alone, whereas the change must be determined by both at the same time. But how this could be escaped him; since he focused on modes, rather than things, things so heterogeneous seemed incapable of being compared or treated at the 30 SEAY same time"(p.123). Leibniz's correction consists in maintaining that force is absolutely real, while motion is merely relative. Hence, when observing a body in motion, he considers its speed to be not a real characteristic, but a mode. What is this distinction between reality and modality? One of the measures of reality is the ability to cause or carry out works. Leibniz suggests this when he claims that space, time and motion "are true or real, not per se, but only to the extent that they involve either the divine attributes (immensity, eternity, the ability to carry out works), or the force in created substances"(p.130). According to Leibniz, the simplest means of measuring force is to measure the effect produced. Speed is a modality in the sense that it is imparted to the body for a certain time, but says nothing essential about the body itself or its ability to produce an effect. The effect produced varies directly not as the speed, but as velocity squared. Hence velocity squared is a reality, whereas speed is a modality. Confusion ensues because velocity squared is unimaginable; a body has a certain speed, whereas velocity squared has no existence within the body whose motion it is supposedly measuring. But this concept is intelligible, so long as one agrees to think purely mathematically and stop insisting upon direct correlation with the observable world. When trying to measure a body's motion, much diffi~ulty lies in discovering what to measure, and how. How is it possible to measure something about the body that is not found in it? Leibniz claims that "the true art of measuring ... consists in arriving, at last, at something homogeneous, that is, at an exact and complete repetition not only of modes, but also of realities"(p.128). It may be helpful here to look carefully at the language Leibniz uses in explaining his notions of conatus, impetus and quantity of motion. the quantity of a motion, which exists in time, of course, arises from the sum over time of the impetuses (equal or unequal) existing in the mobile thing, multiplied by the corresponding times . . .we can distinguish the present or instantaneous element of motion from that same motion extended through a period of 31 �SEAY ENERGEIA time ... just as the numerical value of motion extending through time derives from an infinite number of impetuses, so, in turn, impetus itself (even though it is something momentary) arises from an infinite number of increments successively impressed to material mass a certain superior and, so to speak, formal principle. \V'1nether we call this principle form or entelechy or force does not matter, as long as we remember that it can only be explained through the notion of forces. (p.125) on a given mo bile thing. (p.120) This language is that of the Calculus. A differential equation enab~es one to calculate the instantaneous action at any point along a contlnuous curve hence a derivative is the measure of action at a point. An integral is die summation of an infinite number of increments th~t are different in kind from what their summation is understood ultimately to be. Points are no longer considered as mere locations on a line, but rather as entities containing information about the nature of the curve, "mathematical points are the p9ints of view from which [substances] express the universe" (p.142). This renders points no~ flat ?r dead, but as little ·pockets filled with the contracted curve, or like coils about to burst and unfold into the curve. Thus, in measuring motion, we may be required to separate in thought the motion into components that are understood by reason, even when not obvious to sense. Leibniz urges us away from thinking physically or tangibly, ~nd towards thinking with a kind of metaphysical or mathematical abstractness. Doing so makes accessible essential notions that would otherwise not be intelligible. Part 2: Atom} Mistake and the Art of Resistance What results from applying this suggested new way of thinking to the notions of matter and body? In trying to devise systematic laws of motion, Leibniz realized the following: because we cannot derive all truths concerning corporeal things from logical and geometrical axioms alone . .. and because we must appeal to other axioms pertaining to cause and effect, action and passion, in terms of which we can explain the order of things, we must admit something metaphysical, something perceptible by the mind alone over and above that which is purely mathematical and subject to the imagination, and we must add 32 His notion of "material mass" as containing this 'metaphysical something' constitutes the new notion of body. This is presented as a solution to the problems that arise in trying to explain both what occurs when a body undergoes a collision, and how a body goes from rest to motion. Leibniz argues for continuity of motion, which implies the argument for continuity of matter. Let us first examine continuity with respect to motion, and we will discuss afterwards continuity with respect to matter itself. Leibniz proposes that "repercussion or reflexion arises from elastic force alone, that is, from resistance due to internal motion"(p.123). Thus the body contains a motion whose striving results in the resistance of external forces and causes the body to rebound after a collision. But if the body always contains this internal motion, we must reevaluate our notion of rest. For Leibniz, rest differs from motion not in kind but in degree: "It is also in agreement with the law of continuity, or the law excluding a leap in changing, that the case of rest can be considered as a special case of motion, indeed, the case of vanishing or minimal motion"(p.133). Again, this is the language of the Calculus. To understand his conception of rest requires thinking mathematically. Rest as described here is the ultimate case or limit of motion. Speaking in more mechanical terms, rest is the state in which this internal force is in equilibrium with some equal and opposite external force. Leibnizean body contains substance by definition; bodies, when thought of as containing enlivened forces, are never passive. For Leibniz, this constant internal activity constitutes substance: "not only is it the case the everything that acts is an individual substance, but also that every individual substance acts without interruption, including even body itself, in which one never finds absolute rest"(p.160). Thus, when observing the world we must remind ourselves that rest, or apparent inactivity or lifelessness, in fact results 33 �ENERGEIA from a constant struggle between contrary forces, and everything we see is filled with continuous motion. As for the continuity of matter, Leibniz holds that there are no fundamental building blocks, for "atoms of matter are contrary to reason"(p.142). Matter itself is infinitely divisible. However, divis~on implies multiplicity, which requires a notion of unity. Thus, denymg the atomic hypothesis also requires a redefinition of substance. it is impossible to find the principles of true unity in matter alone, or in what is only passive, since everything in it is only a collection or aggregation of parts to infinity. , .Therefore, in order to fmd these real entities I was forced to have recourse to a formal atom . . . Hence, it was necessary to restore, and, as it were to rehabilitate the substantial forms which are in such disrepu~e today, but in a way that w~uld render them intelligible . .. their nature consists in force . . ..Aristotle calls them first entelechies;. I call them, perhaps more intelligibly, primitive forces, which contain not only act or the completion of possibility, but also an original activity. (p.139) Continuity of matter seems to argue directly against those ~oderns who he claims "have carried reform too far, among other things, by confusing na~al things with artificial things, because they h~ve lacked sufficiently grand ideas of the majesty of nature. They think that the difference between natural machines and ours is only the difference between great and small"(p.142). Such thinkers seem to sacrifice continuity of matter for the sake of homogeneity of substance. Take, for example, Lucretius and Spinoza. Though historically prior to Spinoza, Lucretius upholds a modern perspective insofar as he believes that the nature of things consists in atoms. In his world all substances are composed of atoms, and thus can be understood by resolving them into these impenetrable and indestructible particles. Spinoza maintains a characteristically ancient philosophy ~s~far ~s it considers substance as one, reminiscent of Parmenides. Le1bruz claims that in the world of Spinoza, God is "the very nature of things, while 34 SEAY created things disappear into mere modifications of the one divine substance" (p.165). Both Lucretius's atomism and Spinoza's single-substance theory claim that there is nothing more to body than extended mass, though without accounting for how a mass of matter is identified as one. From where is the notion of unity derived? As with Descartes, they understand body as "merely geometrical", or as merely passive extended matter. Thus anything a body does must result from its being acted upon externally. Newton's first law is the pinnacle of this notion: "Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed" (Principia). This system renders matter and substance free from spontaneity, leaving in body neither soul nor mind nor principle of motion or cause. The world, then, is filled with things that are, in a word, dead. By contrast, Leibniz understands and experiences the world as being full of life, energy, and motion: "because of the infinite divisibility of the continuum, there are always parts asleep in the abyss of things, yet to be roused and yet to be advanced ... Thus, progress never comes to an end"(p.155). The notion of matter as dead or merely passive is particularly problematic when it comes to distinguishing substances or beings, especially between non-living and living beings, and furthermore between non-rational and rational beings. Pushed to its logical conclusion, substantial homogeneity seems to produce inevitable difficulties. Take the following example: One morning Fred walks into his living room and sees his favorite polkadotted vase perched, as usual, on the mantel piece and his wonder-dog Fido sitting urgently by the backdoor. That evening Fred walks into his living room and sees the vase on the table and Fido curled up on the couch. Without thinking, Fred asks only, "Who moved the vase?" Fred astutely does not ask, "Who moved the dog?" The former question implies the assumption that the cause of the vase's movement is external to the vase, while the absurdity of the latter suggests an instinctual understanding that the dog's motion derives from a princi35 �ENERGEIA pal within the dog. Our ability to instantaneously judge the absurdity of the question ''Who moved the dog?" seems akin to Fred's ability instinctively to discern some fundamental difference between the sources of the objects' motions. ~e observe this difference on yet another level, between Fido and Fred, but we will not pursue this here.) Both suggest that there really is a difference in kind between the substance of the vase and that of Fido. Yet there persists a problem that prohibits simply accepting that there is a difference of kind. Leibniz's solution maintains that there is substance in all matter. If the vase, Fido and Fred are all substances, as masses of matter, how do we distinguish between them as different kinds of beings? Perhaps this can be clarified by Leibniz's argument for a difference in kind between natural and artificial creations, which becomes a slightly different approach to the argument for material continuity and substantial unities: Here he is disagreeing once again with the moderns who, by confusing natural things with artificial things, claim that there is no substantial difference between natural and artificial machines (and hence find themselves having to ask also "Who moved the dog?") . He admits the equivalency of hypotheses, "although the opinion of those who transform or degrade animals into pure machines may be possible, it is improbable, and even contrary to the order of things" (p.139). For "machines of nature have a truly infinite number of organs .. .A natural machine still remains a machine in its least parts, and moreover, it always remains the same machine that it has been, being merely transformed through the different enfolding it undergoes"(p.142) . Insofar as they are matter, the vase and Fido are both infinitely divisible, but insofar as they are machines, only Fido remains a machine in all his parts. The picture being painted is one where an animal is considered simultaneously a unity with a chief principle of motion akin to the soul, and an aggregate of an infinite number of principles of motion. The problem with proposing material atoms, or indivisible building blocks, as a means of explaining something inexplicable on the large scale, is that the building-block level is simply a microcosm of the 36 SEAY same problem. When hypothesizing about how the body works, instituting divisions of matter leaves to be explained at each level how that part functions, and what causes it to function. For let the body's matter be divided, whether at the level of arm, muscle, blood, cell or atom. Each of these may be divided ad infinitum, and at every level is found activity which cannot be sufficiently explained without recourse to metaphysical explanations; the need for these principles of motion appear on all levels of division. Materialists, or moderns as I have characterized them here, believe that material division will yield understanding through the discovery of the fundamental buildingblock whose nature will shed hght on everything else. This is countered by the Leibnizean notion of the continuity of matter, which requires that unity be derived from the notion of substance which in ' turn obliges recourse to metaphysics. Part 3: The New System - Reconciliation through Resurrection Let us now adopt an all-encompassing perspective and ask the following: What exactly is Leibniz's "system"? This notion and word derives from the Greek "<JU<JTilµtx." which means "a whole compound of parts, a composition, an organized government, constitution". Leibniz's New System of Nature describes precisely that: a new way to compose or organize the parts of nature, that is, a-new way of understanding nature as forming a cohesive whole. This "new system" alters the notion of substance and causality, while the "new science" makes the necessary corresponding corrections in our notions of matter or force; it endeavors to reunite physics, or pure mathematical mechanics, and metaphysics. For Leibniz, God is omnipresent not by acting as a direct cause for all particular motions, but in having endowed bodies with internal principles of motion. Thus physics inherently refers to metaphysics. Consequently, we are required to adjust our concept of explaining the world in terms of cause and effect. "In general, we must hold that everything in the world can be explained in two ways: through the kingdom of power, that is, through 37 �SEAY ENERGEL\ efficient causes, and through the kingdom causes'' (p.126). Leibniz goes on, of wisdom, that is, through final we acknowledge that all corporeal phenomena can be derived from efficient and mechanical causes, but we understand that these very mechanical laws as a whole are derived from higher reasons ... For that first and most general efficient cause should not enter into the treatment of particulars, except insofar as we contemplate the ends which divine wisdom has in thus ordering things, so that we might lose no opportunity for singing his praises and for singing the most beautiful hymns. (p.126) Though the laws governing the realm of efficient causes point to the realm of sufficient causes, in accounting for the cause of a particular effect, we must stay within the realm of the effect. For example, observing my hand picking up a pencil, we must investigate how this happens completely within the realm of efficient causes, that is, my fingers pinch because a muscle contracts because a nerve transmits a signal because a synapse fires in the brain because this cell moves, etc. We learn many useful things by being able to investigate causes in this manner. Leibniz wants to ensure that modern scientific investigation can continue unimpeded by the reintroduction of forms. Thus, we are . prohibited from jumping discontinuously to sufficient causes. If we want to investigate the physical phenomena, we cannot say that my hand picks up the pencil because I wanted it, or because God moved me so. "But in solving problems, it is not sufficient to make use of the general cause and to invoke what is called a Deus ex machina. For when one does that without giving any other explanation derived from the order of secondary causes, it is, properly speaking, having recourse to miracle"(p.143). Though these may be the sufficient causes and as such shed light on the how or wi?J, they are not sufficient explanations of what happens, and inhibit an understanding of the particulars. It must simply be acknowledged that no amount of inquiry in the realm of efficient causes will ever sufficiently explain how and why things 38 work, but we must not let this sully the integrity of the scientific method, or diminish the abilities of physics and mechanics. The realms of. efficien.t and sufficient causes, or the realms of physics and ~~taphys1cs, are like opposite sides of the same coin - each is implic~t ill ~e o~er but we can never behold them simultaneously. This coin ill Le1bruz's "new system", which argues for a correspondenc~ between (1) force, the domain of physics and the realm of efficient cause~, all within the . so-called kingdom of power; (2) entelechy, the domaill of metaphysics and the realm of sufficient causes, all within the so-called kingdom of wisdom; and (3) the two kingdoms. Leibniz argues that all adherents in these correspondences, as well as the correspondences themselves, are necessary for explaining the workings of the observable world, and are linked through his notion of force. ~lso united under the umbrella of the new Leibnizean system are prev10usly opposed philosophies. Something metaphysical has been a~ded to the notion of matter, and a metaphysical backdrop has been given for explanations of cause and effect. Leibniz claims that these are in fact the same thing, for he claims that the nature of substantial forms consists in force. In the two ~large passages about entelechies cited a~ove, th~ end of the first, which is taken from Specimen Dynamicum, claims ''Whether we call this principle form or entelechy or fo~ce does not matter, as long as we remember that it can only be explaille~ through ~e notion of forces". However the second passage, which appears ill the New System, claims that rather than callin~ ~em "first entelechies", he prefers to call them "primitive forces", cla~g that this renders them more intelligible. What first appears to be a discrepancy between the two passages is resolved by the reference each makes to the notion of force as that which renders intelligible the metaphysical notion, regardless of its name. Hence Leibniz's reconciliation occurs in the claim that the notion of force necessary in physics is in fact what Aristotle meant by entelechy. Aristotle writes, 39 �SEAY ENERGEL-\ We describe one class of existing things as substance [oumav] in three ways: (1) matter, which in itself is not an individual thing; (2) shape or form [Et8oc;], in virtue of which individuality is directl;; attributed, and (3) a compound of the two. Matter is potentiality [8uvaµtc;], while form is realization or actuality [EV'tEAEXEta]. (De .Anima, Il.1). This is intimately related to Aristotle's definition of motion: Tl 'to'\) 8uvaµ£t ovto<; EV'tEAEXEta, Tl 'tolO'U'tOV, KtVT]O't<; E<J'ttV This can be rendered as "The being-at-work-staying-itself of whatever is potentially, just as such, is motion"(Sachs), or "The fulfillment of what exists potentially, in so far as it exists potentially, is motion"(McKeon). Physics then has ·changed from mechanics into dynamics, that is, into the study of motion in terms of potential and actualization. That notion of motion is far from that of Descartes, which treats merely of location. In terms of how Leibniz thinks about motion, I think that Leibniz is resurrecting Aristotelian entelechy proper. However, it remains unclear whether the force that Leibniz means by the product of mass and velocity squared is really the same thing as entelechy or actualization. I think it unlikely that Aristotle would agree that what he meant by entelechy is accurately preserved in Leibniz's rendering of it. The success of the reconciliation also depends upon whether the idea of substance is being used in the same way by all parties. Descartes writes, "From the fact that we perceive some forms, or attributes, which must be attached to something if they are to exist, 2 we call by the name Substance that thing to which they are attached" To me, this sounds suspiciously like matter. I do not profess to understand the Cartesian notion of substance, but I do wonder whether Descartes uses "substance" in the same way as Aristotle. It seems that this reconciliation may in fact be more like a readjustment, perhaps even a redefining, of prior notions. We are presented with a real problem: how to integrate the good and true ideas 40 of as many thinkers as possible in order to advance, but without corrupting th~ original ideas by interpreting them through the lenses of our own allns. Part 4: Conclusion Ultimately, why is Leibniz's new notion of force needed? His resurrection of substantial forms, or what he claims to be Aristotelian entelechy, seems on the one hand merely a logical necessity, for, as he claims, "a conception ~f forms is necessary for philosophizing properly, and no one can think that he sufficiently understands the nature of b.ody unless ~e has turned his mind toward such things" (p.119). Adding substantial forms, however, "makes no change in the phenomena" (p.44). Of the essays contemplated herein, both conclude with a discussion of the relativity of motion and the equivalence of hypotheses in their ability to explain the phenomena. If this new system ~roves equal t~ other hypotheses, like those of Newton, by as sufficiently accounting for phenomena, then what are the criteria for choosing between them? One must look at what it makes possible, in terms of accruing knowledge and understanding about the workings of the world around us. One of the most remarkable results of the Leibnizean hypothesis is the shift in thinking that makes possible his new mathematics of the Calculus. This allows a complet~ correction and redirection of physics consisting ill a shift from thinking in terms of mechanic to thinking in terms of dynamics. Perhaps this reputed rehabilitation is intended as a suggestion, both to the whole of science and o.n the personal level, about how to think about things, one that results in what we might end up being tempted to call a more spiritual experience of the world. This harks back to his use of the word "system", and suggests that we have the ability to choose how to view things to try and make sense of them, that w~ ~ave the c~~acity to choose freely a system of thought or philosophizmg. Renuruscent of Pascal's wager, one must choose one's system carefully. In addition to accounting for what intellectual advances the system makes possible, one must also look at how 41 �ENERGEL-\ adopting a particular system of thought affects one's experience of the world. Most importantly, this affects how one relates to other beings. The implications of the system by which one understands the nature of things are shown to be, after all, ethical. And in fact, this is the primary concern of Leibniz's New System of Nature. Here he addresses the problem of how to account for the union of body and soul, which must be explained carefully in order to avoid determinism and salvage free will. Though not addressed in my paper here, these concerns are the context for Leibniz's more scientific corrections on which I have focused. I think that while Lucretius saw the possibility of using science to banish fear of death, the new science proposed by Leibniz seems, at least in part, a means of augmenting piety. For in this system, his notions of matter and substance, laws of motion, and the construction of the system·itself, refer ultimately to the power and wisdom of God. Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason may be understood as promoting piety in science, ''And I advise those who have any feelings of piety and even feelings of true philosophy to keep away from the phrases of certain would-be freethinkers who say that we see because it happens that we have eyes and not that eyes were made for seeing" (p. 53). Inquiring about the world around us is a manner of giving attention to the details of things, and in so doing ''Anyone who sees · the admirable structure of animals will find himself forced to recognize the wisdom of the author of things"(p.53). In this system, insofar as it helps us distinguish or clarify our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live, science serves as a means to seeing the goodness and perfection of the world existing exactly as it is, and testifying to the power and glory of God. The result: a satisfaction that arises from a profound experience of the mystery and delight of existence. Notes: i. 1 page numbers refer to the Hackett edition of Leibniz's Philosophical Essqys, -\ll translated by 1 -\riew and Garber. " 1: "sub~tance",,is used throughout as synonymous with ouma, meaning also bemg, existence. 2. ~ited in as being from &plies, ! V IX, 112-3, from Descartes Dictionary by John Moms. I I I I I I I I 42 43 �ISAAC SMITH ENERGEIA Art of Poetry Arte poetica de Jorge Luis Borges To see the river made of time and water, remembering that time is another river, to know that we get lost, as does the river, and that our faces pass away like water, Mirar el rio hecho de tiempo y agua y recordar que el tiempo es otro rio, saber que nos perdemos como el rio y que los rostros pasan como el agua. to sense that waking is another dream that dreams about not dreaming, and that death so dreaded by our flesh is that same death that goes on each night, and is called a dream, Sentir que la vigilia es otro sueno que suena no sonar y que la muerte que teme nuestra carne es esa muerte de cada noche, que llama sueno. to see inside both day and year a symbol of all the days of man and of his years, to remake all the insults of the years into a song, into a sound and symbol, Ver en el dia o en el ano un simbolo de los dias del hombre y de SUS anos, convertir el ultraje de los anos en una musica, un rumor y un simbolo, 0 to see dreaming in death, and in the sunset a golden sadness: such is poetry which is both poor and deathless. Poetry restores itself just like the dawn and sunset. ver en la muerte el sueno, en el ocaso un triste oro, tal es la poesfa que es inmortal y pobre. La poesfa vuelve como la aurora y el ocaso. There are times in the evenings when a face looks at us from behind a looking glass; all art must be just like that looking. glass, revealing to us all our own true face. A veces en las tardes una cara nos mira desde el fondo de un espejo; el arte debe ser como ese espejo que nos revela nuestra propia cara. They say Ulysses, weary from strange wonders, wept out of love at seeing his Ithaca, humble and green. Art is that Ithaca that is forever green, and not strange wonders. Cuentan que Ulises, harto de prodigios, llor6 de amor al divisar su Itaca verde y humilde. El arte es esa Itaca de verde eternidad, no de prodigios. And it is also like the endless river of change and rest; a mirror for the same inconstant Heraclitus, both the same and yet another, like the endless river. Tambifo es como el rio interminable que pasa y queda y es crystal de un mismo Hedclito inconstante, que es el mismo y es otro, como el rio interminable. 44 45 �ENERGEIA On Faith and Perfection by I<athleen I<elley Self-portrait Kathryn Bush 46 Faith is a slippery word. We understand, even if we cannot quite sketch its edges, what it is to believe-as opposed to know-that something is true, but this act of belief is accompanied by uncertainty, a distinction that separates it from an act of faith. Faith, as Saint Thomas says in the Summa Theo!ogica, is "a mean between science and opinion" (II-II, q.1, a.2). It relates to science through its certainty, and through its capabilities for exploration based in firm first principles. It relates to opinion through its lack of intellectual knowledge of its object, and through its being a voluntary act. This is all well and good, but when one begins to consider faith's status as the perfection of the intellect, it seems at least a little odd that it should have anything to do with the will and uncertainty. That is, Saint Thomas's description of faith as the assent of the intellect as commanded by the will does not seem to be an inaccurate description, merely one that begs for exploration. Before the description can be fully understood, and before the necessity of faith in its particular formulation can be understood, it seems important to examine the way in which the soul usually works, the way in which the intellect and will generally interact. It would perhaps be easiest to begin to examine Saint Thomas's definition of faith in analogy to more secular experience, to proceed from the better known to the less well known. What Saint Thomas describes as faith is a movement, a movement straddling the gap between separate powers of the soul. This is of 47 �ENERGEL-\ course not the only movement of the soul that cannot be traced to one power in particular. Though the object of the intellect is the true and that of the will is the good, the two powers often overlap in action. Yet it seems important to notice that in normal acts of belief, where belief is synonymous with opinion, the will and the intellect have an overlap which is merely practical. In these acts the intellect is faced with two objects that seem equally true. This equality puts the intellect in a bit of a spot, as it only recognizes things under the formality of the true. If it cannot obtain more information on either option, if it cannot find a way to place the truth of one object above that of the other, then the intellect can either remain neutral or it can choose one. Neutrality seems preferable, but if the intellect cannot remain neutral, if it is for some reason necessary that it choose, it picks the better of the two, since "more true" is not an option in this way of deciding. But to change from truer to better is to change the formality under which the decision is made, and thus to change the faculty making the decision. The supposed impossibility of discerning a difference in truth between the two objects forces the decision to become a voluntary one. The intellect defers to the will, and the will, examining the situation under the formality of the good, makes the decision. This seems at first glance to be the case in the situation of · faith-either there is this God, or there is not this God. This is an important thing to determine-we would naturally want to be wellinformed if we were forced to make the decision a voluntary one. It ttirns out, however, that we are limited by our very potential in how much we can know here, for reasons to be examined later. For the time being, let it suffice to say that God is too great and infinite and actual for us to see Him-unless we have already believed, without vision, that He is great and infinite and actual. A choice must be made, yet the weight of the decision makes one want to remain neutral intellectually until all of the facts are in-an infinite neutrality, for all the facts will never be in. Still, the intellect works in this methodical man- 48 K ELLEY ner, and cannot choose without either knowledge or recourse to mere oplllion. Yet this seems to be the type of situation where the intellect should not defer to the will, where the real truth of the matter is too important to be decided under a different formality. The case here seems to be one of essential overlap. The intellect knows enough to see the importance of its taking an opinion, and this knowledge prevents the intellect from simply leaving the choice up to the will, from letting the will take over. Faith requires stronger action on the part of the will, a linking of faculties rather than a switch between them. In the case of deliberate opinion, the will makes a decision as to what will be believed until proven otherwise, a provisional decision. This is not the case here. Besides having greater gravity than the situations that usually use the will as arbiter, this case has a permanence attributed to the decision of the will, and an effect of the will upon the intellect. That is, the will convinces the intellect not only of the good of what it has decided upon, but of the truth of it. The first point of conviction is one with which the intellect cannot have much argument-it recognizes the true, not the good-but the second is decidedly odd. Why, if there is truth here, can it not be revealed to the intellect instead of being secondhand truth revealed through the medium of the will? Why must the will receive grace and .t hen somehow convince and command the intellect? It is difficult even to talk about what moves the will to action how ' the will recognizes its own object and end. Admittedly, it must have some way of choosing between goods, or it would not be a power-that is, it would not be capable of being directed to diverse ends. Yet it is still difficult to use, in reference to the will, any of the words we would use for the intellect's approach to its respective end. There is something extremely uncomfortable about saying "The will sees that x is good," or "The will understands that x is better than y." We do not feel that the will does not, in some way, recognize its end, we merely feel that there is something too undelib erated- too wilful-in the process for these thoughtful, rational words to be applied. 49 �ENERGEIA The will wants what it wants, and it is usually a prodigious act of intellect, one few (if any) of us can pull off completely, to figure out the whats and whys of that desire. Very little subtlety is attributed to the will, but perhaps one could say more comfortably that the will senses, that it smells the good and then turns blindly to it. How, though, would it discern between goods if it could not in some way "recognize" variations in its object? The will seems to have more of a feeling of its end than a seeing of it, something less hard-edged than the sensing of the intellect but no less certain-witness the near impossibility of trying to talk someone out of their perception that a certain thing is a good worth pursuing. Nonetheless, the strength of the will's own perception of a good does not mean that this conviction is convertible. The smell of an object is not very convincing to a power that usually deals with recognition, discernment, separations, etc. These methods are part of the mode of the intellect, and refer to truth rather than to good. It seems difficult at best to translate a feeling of the good into a certainty of the truth. So why then does Saint Thomas want to say that the will must move the intellect when the will seems like such a blind, groping power? Even in other parts of the Summa Theologica he speaks of the will as having "no inclination to anything except in so far as it is apprehended by the intellect" (I-II, q.4, a.7). Why, in faith, do their roles reverse? Perhaps this has something to do with the shape of faith and grace, their nature as mental movements? The comparison between faith and an act of choice has already been drawn, but faith and grace together are comparable to other mental movements. The closest things we have to this combination, things also closer to us (at least to those of us who have not experienced the act of faith firsthand) and thus more easily examined, are those mental activities which we refer to as inspirations or epiphanies. It would perhaps be fruitful to examine how the mind seems to work in these more familiar examples before returning to the nature of this move to faith. 50 K ELLEY There is a spectrum of epiphany, with differences of both speed of insight and mental structure. Plain insight seems to be at the mundane end of the scale, inspirationally speaking. This would be the sort of run of the mill connection drawn in attempting to understand a mathematical proof, when one suddenly understands why a step can be there, why it fits into the flow of the proof. The intellect is actively seeking, directed towards finding the very answer that it finds. The whole process is not very awe-inspiring-it seems as if the intellect merely looked into a dusty corner of its rooms to refind a tidbit of knowledge it had never entirely forgotten. We are not surprised by this process, although we are often pleased by it. After this, somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, is sought inspiration. This is the sort of inspiration we find when we are actively reading a book and, all of a sudden, some nuance of meaning leaps out at us, some deeper understanding of book and world. The mind is as active here as it is in plain insight, but less directedly so. It expects to find something, anything at all, but does not know what, or where, or really even how. When the mind does discover what it has vaguely sought, it feels as though it has found, on its own, something new, something to be distinguished from the relics of understanding it stumbled upon in plain insight. This "on its own," though, must be distinguished from.the far-off end of the spectrum, the exotic and rare domain of assisted inspiration, or what is sometimes called poetic or (though Saint Thomas might disagree) divine inspiration. Here the activity of the mind differs, here the intellect is not actively seeking, for few minds have the gall to expect this kind of inspiration every time they desire it. In a way, the mind is always active towards these epiphanies, but in a more passive, actively open and hoping sort of way. When the Muses finally speak, an infusion seems to come from without to open our minds wider. The important part of this phenomenon is our lack of participation-epiphanies happen to us. We are surprised, awed, and grateful at their appearance, but never know where to find them again. They 51 �ENERGEIA find us when we have, almost accidentally, gotten our minds into that soft receptive state. Yet, though they indicate aspects of it, none of these indicates exactly what goes on in the movement to faith. Faith certainly has that element of unexpected understanding to it, but faith does not exactly map onto inspiration, and this for two reasons. The first difference is in the relation of the object of each act to the mind seeking it. In inspiration, the object is either hidden or not yet in the intellect's lumber room, but in faith the object stands in the open, as clearly lit as possible, waiting to be understood. In faith, the surprise comes not from the sudden appearance of the object but from the believer's sudden realization that the object is not only present but is a truth to be believed without reservation. The second difference stems from the subcontracting out to the will-all other cases of inspiration, though they share a flooding in of light analogous to the flood of divine light in faith, are illuminations of the intellect solely. In faith, the light illuminates the will, which reflects this understanding over to the intellect. But, again, why the will? It seems boring and sloppy to say that the choice involved in faith (versus the deepening of understanding in inspiration) is the reason that the will must become involved. It is boring because it is a shallow summation of faith to say that the will · involves itself in order to help the intellect choose. Even if it were not boring, it is sloppy because, as was said earlier, it is unusual for the intellect to defer to the will in a matter with this much gravity, and strange and uncomfortable to speak of the will convincing the intellect of the truth of a thing. Belief and faith are in many ways peculiar, but it is of course not enough to leave it at that. Why must faith be a voluntary act as opposed to a real case of divine inspiration? Why, when "the ultimate beatitude of man consists in the use of his highest function, which is the operation of the intellect," must the will assist the intellect's operation (I, q.12, a.1)? · It seems-in a reversal of the order used for earlier inquiries-that these questions are best addressed from the direction of the less well 52 K ELLEY . known (but infinitely knowable). The nature of God makes it imperative that ,knowledge of Him be approached in a certain way-not because of a divine fiat, but because God's very essence makes it necessary that only certain modes of approach will be able to reach him. Appropriately enough to the human intellect-whose proper mode "is to know the truth by composition and division" -but inappropri.ately with respect to God-who "is altogether simple"-this look at God begins aspectually, with what can be known about God by the unassisted intellect (II-II, q.1 , a.2; I, q.3, a.7). In the Summa Theologica, Part One, Question Two, Article Three, Saint Thomas puts forward five separate logical arguments to prove the existence of God. All are valuable to an understanding of God and His workings in the world, but the most valuable to logically knowing more about God's essence is the first argument-the most manifest argument, as Saint Thomas says. This first argument is a synopsis of Aristotle's argument for the prime mover, with the existence of God taken to be its implication. We see that motion exists in the world, and that motion is put into effect, put from potentiality into actuality, by a mover. That is, motion requires both mover and moved, a chain of causality in which the cause of one motion may be the effect of a previous one. Now, either this causality can go on to infinity or it can be finite. It turns out that there is a large problem with having the chain be infinite-motion becomes impossible. The problem is as follows. If each link in the chain is a mover and a moved at once, motion can never get started. Each successive link requires one before where the mover is the thing moved, and no matter how far back in causal time the chain is allowed to stretch, it will always require one more link, one more mover, to set motion into actuality. Since the chain is supposed infinite, motion will never actually begin. The conclusion of this reductio ad absurdum is that since motion does exist, the infinite chain cannot. Therefore, there must be a beginning to it, a mover that moves other things without being moved itself. The necessary prime mover that can be 53 �ENERGEIA deduced from this argument is God in one of His many (from the human intellect's point of view) aspects. But once this argument is admitted as true, and logically traced forward, many other things turn out to be necessarily true of God. If God is the prime mover, and one accepts all of Aristotle's argument, then God is an unmoved mover. Movement, however, is "the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality" (I, q.2, a.3). By his very state as mover, God must have actuality naturally in Him, and, as He is unmoved, it follows that He cannot have any potential in Him either, as any actualization of that potential would in some way move God. Thus, God is entirely actual and always has been. And still more follows from this. The complete actuality of God means that he is not a body, does not have matter. If God were to have matter, even if it were matter that never changed, He would still be somewhat contaminated by potential, as matter admits of the possibility of change (by division, for example). This in turn proves something about the being of God. Now, in created beings, being is distinct from essence. That is, a man is called a man because his essence fits into the definition of man. However, his being as a particular man is differentiated fr<;>m the more general · man essence by things accidental to his essence as a man-whiteness or tallness, for example. In substances such as God, however, which are not individuated by particular matter, there is no distinction between being and essence. That is, in a substance that is only form, with no matter to make it an individual instance of an essence, to have being differ from essence would be to talk of two different forms, not a distinction in one form. Further proof of this equivalence is that "being is the actuality of every form or nature" (I, q.3, a.3). But the essence of a thing includes its end, as the end of man is included in the definition of man. In a particular man, though, that end exists as a potential separate from the thus-far actualized being of the man. So, "being must be compared to essence, if the latter is distinct from it, 54 KELLEY . as actuality to potentiality" (I, q.3, a.4). But there is no potentiality in God; therefore His essence cannot be distinct from His being. Also, "everything is knowable only inasmuch as it is actually" (I, q.5, a.2). But God is completely actual, which means He is completely knowable. And, going back to human powers, the faculty that knows is the intellect. The object of this knowing, however, can be referred to under either the title of what is knowable or the title of what is true. The two seem to be used interchangeably, as "the known is the perfection of the knower"-the knower being, again, the intellect-and "the true is itself the good of the intellect, since it is its perfection" (I, q.12, a.1; II-II, q.4, a.5). Therefore, it does not seem to be much of a stretch to say that because God is completely knowable, he is also completely true. He thus fulfills the need for a form of forms, a measure of the true itself, as brought up in another of Saint Thomas's arguments for believing that a God exists. Furthermore, what has been deduced so far can be used to prove the perfection of God. Saint Thomas says that "perfection of a thing is threefold: first, according to the constitution of its own being; secondly, in respect of any accidents being added as necessary for its perfect operation; thirdly, perfection consists in the attaining to something else as the end" (I, q.6, a.3). In God, the constitution is the same as the being, there are no accidents added on, and the end ,of God has been reached so firmly by His compiete and eternal actuality that it hardly makes sense to even speak of God as having an end. God's essence is equivalent to the height of perfection. But "it is in so far as it is perfect that everything is called good," so it can also be said that God is the height of goodness (I. q.4). And one final thing before we move on from the limning of God's aspects. In a way, the past few pages have been entirely inappropriate, for ''God is altogether simple and in no way composite" (I, q.3, a.7). God is being and essence combined, form without matter, and thus admits of no differentiation. All else is differentiated under His genus, but within God all these aspects mean the same thing. To say the Good itself is to say all the other facets of God listed above, 55 �ENERGEIA for the logic can be followed from any starting point and still reach the same conclusion. But now the problem with simply flooding the intellect with light begins itself to come into the light. While the separate things proved above make sense, they make sense separately. We can conceive of God containing all of these essences, so long as He does it and keeps them separate within Himself. The idea that good is convertible with being is convertible with truth is not an uncomfortable one, but the idea that they are all the same thing if we could only see them correctly is a little harder to accept. Why is it not enough to understand these various points of God and then, at the end of the understanding, to add the footnote that these things are essentially one thing? It is insufficient because a point-by-point understanding of God lacks the simplicity of its conclusion, a simplicity necessary to the entire understanding. These aspects map onto each other. They cannot be properly understood individually because they are not individual things. They are not even composite parts that are not fully understood unless one keeps the whole in mind. They are one whole, which we imperfectly see as facets of the great whole of God. The facets are all one facet, if we could only see them clearly. Each aspect, understood fully, is a synonym for all the others. That is, all this simplicity makes God rather complex to our understanding. God seems to be a sort of great circle, with every point exactly the same in its importance. The points are unimportant; it is the line that gives the form of the shape. Yet our complex intellects, so fond of division, cannot see this circle for the unbroken simple whole that it is. We see that God is good, and hold on to that point. We notice that God is completely actual, and connect that point to the one of His being good. Then we notice that God is the form of forms and connect that point to the other two. We could almost fool ourselves into thinking that we're beginning to get a handle on this thing, because a whole has been made of our points of understanding. 56 K ELLEY However, a triangle in no way indicates the meaning of a circle. We neglect the fact that the connections between these understandings, because of God's simplicity, must go through other understandings of God and not just straight to each other. Our polygonal understanding, no matter how many sides and vertices it may gain, will never be able to trace the curve of what it would really be to understand God. Our intellect's knowledge is discrete in comparison to God's infinite truth, and our straight line connections make the wrong thing actual to our intellect. We try, with our not-so-powerful intellect, to connect God through geometry when what we really need is calculus, a difficult and beautiful equation that will describe exactly the curve of God's being. But perhaps it is not so hard to understand, or at least to see, the equality of some of those things said to be synonymous in God. The true and the good, at least, seem to admit of more overlap than the discussion thus far has indicated. Of course one could say that the only truth worth talking about is propositional or circumstantial truth, and that all other things considered as possible truths are really mushy versions of these hard, logical ones. Perhaps this is correct, but it seems like a small, limited truth. Propositional truth does not seem to be the only kind of truth our minds are capable of recognizing. We admit of a hierarchy of truths. This hierarchy is not defined only by different levels of truth, but also by importance and gravity of the truths considered. I can say that I am not wearing shoes as I type this sentence, but I can also say that the true is the object of the intellect. Both are true, but the first is, I think, recognizably banal. These hierarchies and the unity of God begin to sketch the need for the will to assist and command the intellect in the movement to faith. If there is a difference between knowing one is not wearing shoes and knowing what the intellect seeks, and if that difference is not one of truth, then the difference might be one of worth. The second knowing has good intermingled with its truth. This mingling, however, is not something that the intellect can recognize on its own, as the object of the intellect is the truth. If, however, the intellect puts 57 �I I ENERGE IA a bit of trust in what it can learn from the will, it becomes more able to notice which truths are good and which truths are lacking in worth. The ability of the mind-as combination of will and intellect-to discern truths which are more than propositional and goods which are more that practical seems to indicate a perfection of both parts. Or one could consider it as the perfection of one part. If the mind begins to recognize the true and the good at once, as one object, then it seems to have begun to coalesce into one power, a superior power. If both will and intellect are considered and trusted, their combination would have an object of a more universal formality, and a deeper understanding of what both can perceive. But this coalescence is what one finds in faith. Both powers mutually turn and are turned to their objects, which, in their essence, are the same thing. The process begins with grace coming into the will, not simply because it must begin somewhere, but because of the difference in state of the will and the intellect. The intellect is imperfect before faith, as it has only its natural light to reach a supernatural end. The will, however, is not only imperfect but is corrupted. Before grace its perception of its object is even murkier than that of the intellect, for the will, "unless it be cured by God's grace, follows its private good, because of the corruption of nature" (I-II, q.109, a.3). With the infusion of grace, however, the will begins its overlap with · the intellect. It is perhaps helpful to faith if the will and intellect have already begun to recognize the meshing of the good and the true, if they have already begun to act as a unified, albeit poorly cemented, power. Nonetheless, God's grace is enough to give the will the ability to turn the intellect to its proper object. Again, this process needs to be mutual, because of its object and because of the form of faith. The grace coming into the will does not perfect the will-there would be no merit in that-but only raises it up to a natural state, out of corruption. It must be raised still higher in order to reach its supernatural end. But, as faith is an act of two power, and "for the perfection of an act proceeding from two active principles each of these principles must be perfect," the will needs to 58 K ELLEY .be perfect before the intellect, which is perfected by faith, can be considered perfect (II-II, q.4, a.2). This is where the reciprocity really comes into play. As, without the addition of grace, the will is inclined by the intellect, the intellect, with this precedent and its fresh understanding, is now in a position to complete the circle and perfect the will. And this is exactly what it does. It inclines the will to charity, which perfects the will and faith at once-which, as faith perfects the intellect, perfects the intellect as well. In a funny way, each power of the soul has perfected itself, and they are now linked together through the symbiotic nature of their perfections. This condensation of the soul is, as has been said, necessary so that the intellect might come to understand God in His simplicity. However, it is also necessary to the intellect's forming any sort of true image of God. Every aspect contained in God's simplicity makes this change of soul necessary, as "the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower" and "the mode proper to the human intellect is to know the truth by composition and division" (IIII, q.1, a.2). Now, in most situations the intellect is just fine acting in this manner-hardly anyone is going to complain that we understand rocks through our mode instead of theirs, although perhaps more of a complaint might be lodged against our understanding of art. G enerally, however, it is not a problem that our mode of knowing does not match the thing known. With God, though, this mismatch is a problem which makes knowing Him impossible without the intellect shifting its mode to match His. It is almost intuitive that God, in being so much higher than our mode of doing anything, might require some movement on our part, that He might not deign to stoop to our mode. To put it that way, however, is to put too much pride and emotion upon God-the situation is merely that it is impossible to know God without being changed to be more like God, either from inward or outside influence. T he problem with knowing God without a change in mode is this: "the divine essence is uncircumscribed, and contains in itself super59 �ENERGEIA eminently whatever can be signified or understood by a created intellect," and this: "to see the essence of God there is required some likeness in the visual power" (I, q.12, a.2). But "the intellect in act is the actual intelligible,'' therefore any knowledge of God involves what is intelligible about God being in the intellect (I, q.12, a.2). However, God's intelligibility is inseparable from the rest of Him, and the rest of Him includes His status as the form by which all other forms are known. That is, as God is the form of forms, the intellect cannot get a hold on Him by abstracting Him into a higher formality, but must know Him through His own form, which means that when the intellect knows God, God Himself is in the intellect. This need for God to be in the intellect increases the aforementioned reciprocity in the soul. The more grace in the will, the more the intellect cleaves to belief, for "when a man has a will to believe, he loves the truth he believes, he thinks out and takes to heart any reasons he can find in support thereof" (I-II, q .2, a.10). But the more the intellect clings to the truth, the more it inclines the will to charity; and the more the will is inclined to charity, the more merit; and the more merit, the more light of God in the soul, which increases everything else again. It seems a sort of constant movement toward perfection, with individual actions of the parts of the soul barely distinguishable in the increasing smoothness of their interlocking. So it becomes more and more appropriate that, as man's end is supernatural, this intricate movement of faith is his way of reaching perfection. Going back to the threefold definition of perfection, it becomes apparent how high the actuality man is reaching really is. Under the first part of the definition, man's approach to perfection brings him closer to a point where essence and being are synonymous. The more one knows God, the more one's soul is made up of unified essence and being-the intellect in act becomes its object, which in this case is essence indistinct from being. Under the second part of the definition, once man has become perfect enough to deserve eternal life, he no longer needs to be spoken of as having accidents to his being. This partially follows from the first part of the definition, but 60 KELLEY . also follows from this: man alone of all things has this possibility of the separation of soul from body. Creatures higher than him never had bodies, things lower never had the potential required to forget theirs. In man alone, then, can perfection of the soul be talked about in different terms from perfection of the body (though that corrupted flesh should probably never be entirely out of mind in the consid-. eration). Considered as merely soul, then, man seems to have little that is accidental. Before faith is considered, the will could perhaps be seen as accidental, but the unification of the soul, the refinement of the formality under which it considers its object, shows that in perfection the soul has both these powers as its essence and not as accidents. As to the third part of the definition, God of course surpasses man in perfection, being an end instead of directed to one, but as ends go, few are more perfect than tending toward the good and the true recognized as itself. Saint Thomas says in the Summa Theologica that "likeness of creatures to God is not affirmed because of agreement in form according to the same formality of genus or species, but only according to analogy" (I, q.4, a.3). However, the presence of divinity in the human intellect, the transformation of intellect into the divinity which is its object, means that the analogy between man and God, as man is perfected, becomes strengthened, until man's soul is worthy of being called "in likeness". That is, all the oddities and complexities in faith turn out to be a way of simplifying, and become the desired balanced equation, the calculus for God-and, in one final loop, the equation for our understanding does double duty as our perfection, bringing the believer to a point where he can be called, without straining the analogy, made in the image of God. 61 �ENERGEIA Secret by Jill Delston i I ·1 photograph l?J Cara Lammey 62 l "I have a secret to show you," she whispered, and ran up the stairs skipping every other step. I kind-of wondered if she even brushed her hair in the morning; it could hardly keep up with her, and the red ribbons which flailed about struggled to contain it. I followed close behind her, giggling in nervous excitement. Her secrets were always juicy. We ran into her room, not bothering to close the door behind us. It was a cozy area and privacy stuck to the walls, but she shushed me anyway. We both knew the room held secrets well-we whispered for effect. I sat cross-legged on the center of the soft Oriental rug, while she searched for something in the back corner. For some reason, the rug, which fits so well with winter, now seemed airy and breezy enough to be comfy for summer. What a wonderful place, I thought. The idea always popped into my mind when I sat cross-legged on the center of the Oriental rug. All her stuff was so neat-like some secret world. And I felt like a part of it. I wondered if she thought her room was as enchanting as I did, or if she was used to it. "My mom won't let me feed the pigeons,'' I said while I waited for her to find the secret. She was still rustling things in the corner. I knew it always took her a while to prepare her secrets, so I tried to get myself in that mood-you know, patience. ''Why not?" she asked as she emerged from the corner with a crinkled brown paper bag. "She says they're dirty." Now she sat in front of me, as concerned as I was about the pigeons, and we both seemed to forget abo t the secret." "But they're not feeding you, so what does it matter if they're dirty?" 63 �ENERGEIA "I know, I know;' I said shaking my head. "I can't imagine why it matters." We spent a moment trying to figure out the mystery, and then remembered the secret. "Okay," she said placing the paper bag carefully between us. She was holding back a smile and looking as if she would burst. I was getting excited all over again. "Look over there. What do you see?'' She pointed to a wall in her room." "A wall!" ''Yes! D'you know what I see? I see a painting!" I thought about it. "Now look over there. What do you see?" "Umm, I see lots of pillows." She practically jumped up. "I see a bed!" "Well I see a bed, too." ''Yeah, but that wasn't the first thing you saw." ''You're right. That's really weird." Now she opened up the bag slowly. She took out a small knife and then reached into the bag again, and this time took out a lemon. She held it in the palm of her hand like a jewel for a minute, and then flattened the paper bag and put th~ lemon on top. She took the knife and reverently cut it in half. The smell immediately washed over me, and I was thankful it was summer. The juice trickled out and made puddles in the crinkles of the brown paper bag before soaking in. She handed me half of the lemon. "What do you smell?" "I smell summer. What do you smell?" "My sister taught me this word in Spanish- fresca. Hace fresca. It means it's cool outside, like crisp and refreshing. It smells like fresca." She paused to make sure I understood. '~ll right! One, two, three." We both took a lick off the top of our half. Sourness swelled up in my mouth and we both scrunched our noses and smacked our lips and shrieked and giggled. She had the exact same reaction at the exact same time. And when we recovered she looked at me eagerly, with her eyes wide and her curly eyelashes blinking at me. I let myself fall backwards, with my hands behind my head, taking it in. "I get it." I smiled, and then sat up and stared at her. CARA GORMALLY Goat Cara Gormally 64 65 �ENERGEIA Egypt and the Cult of Heracles: Mythology and the Marvelous in Herodotus' Histories by Bryan Thorpe Untitled Benjamin Truesdale 66 Herodotus' Histories blend together the mythical and the historical, the seemingly spurious with the clearly factual, in a single work. 1 The consequence of such blending is that Herodotus appears to have one foot stuck in a mythical-poetic past, and consequently his Histories lack the credibility of systematic, that is, scientific history. The correlate criticism is that Herodotus is not a great poet; the Histories lack the aesthetic of epic poetry and so the corresponding emotional power. By blending myth and history, Herodotus appears to have forsaken the dignity and power of either. And yet, at the same time, he is clearly purposeful and thoughtful about his task, however much this task resists interpretation. The Histories taken in their entirety provoke the reader to ask, what is Herodotus doing? Just what are the Histories about? How do the large ethnographical sections of the Histories belong to the story of the Persian war? And how can Herodotus' peculiar mode of storytelling be understood as the proper vehicle for such disparate contents? In short, with regard to both subject and style, Herodotus defies easy categorization; and in the worse light, cast by the precepts of modern historiography, Herodotus appears naive. To untangle these questions, in order ultimately to posit a rationale behind the Histories, this essay examines what is perhaps the most perplexing part of the Histories, namely Book II. Book II appears to be a lengthy aside, an oddly large and thorough digression about 67 �THORPE ENERGEIA Egypt and the Egyptian people; the seeming misplacement of Book II calls into question the coherence of the Histories as a whole. By sorting out and analyzing several confrontations that occur in Book II between mythological storytelling and historical storytelling-these conflicts are one of its major themes-Herodotus' own storytelling ethic is triangulated; we see how Herodotus understands history and myth and the conditions under which he is willing to employ them. In turn, Herodotus' storytelling ethic suggests a new understanding about the plan of the Histories: Herodotus is concerned with wisdom, with deeply understanding the divine, humans, and the world they share between them. In the end, the relevance of Book II is shown to lie beyond its being merely an integral component to the stories of Cyrus and Cambyses, whose reigns bracket it; likewise, Herodotus is shown to be purposely involved with myth and myth-making. Taken on their own terms, the Histories form a unified whole, and Book II becomes, for the careful reader, a manual for engaging Herodotean thought, wherein myth and history are mutually informing features of the human domain and equal aids to wisdom. The first section of this paper provides a brief structural overview of Book II. The second section examines the differences between the Egyptian storytelling ethic and that of the Greeks. Conflicting stories revolving around 1) Heracles and 2) the oracle at Dodona yield an initial understanding of these ethics, which is then worked out in greater detail. The third section makes use of the previous, preparatory considerations to examine the storytelling conflicts present in the story of Helen. In the fourth and final section, Herodotus' stance towards both history and myth is considered. Structural Overmew of Book II After the introductory mention of Cambyses (which is something of a place marker until Cambyses' story is taken up again in Book III) , Book II opens with a remarkable story about king Psammetichus and his research into the antiquity of the Egyptians: "Psammetichus ... wanted to know truly which [of the nations] were 68 the oldest." (2.2) Why should Book II open with this story, with the 342nd king of Egypt inquiring into the origins of the Egyptians? At first blush, the subject of Psammetichus' research, beginnings, nicely marks off what is in fact the beginning of Herodotus' research into Egypt. This is true-Herodotus begins with a story about beginnings-but only as a matter of fact. The story of Psammetichus' research has importance beyond the results it produces, and both, research and results, require a better understanding of Psammetichus before their strategic placement at the beginning of Book II gains its full significance. For the moment, then, the opening story of Book II will be put aside in order to discuss Psammetichus himself. After considering Psammetichus' story, and the pivotal role he plays in Egyptian history, the opening story will then be presented as intentionally and thematically prefiguring the contents of Book II. The opening story serves to orient the reader. Psammetichus became king over Egypt twice. His first reign as king was as one of twelve in an unprecedented, cooperative powersharing arrangement. His second reign came about according to a prophecy: "It was prophesied to them at the beginning, when they initiated the [twelve] kingships, that the one of them who poured libations in the temple of Hephaestus from a bronze vessel should be king of all Egypt." (2.147) The transition from being one of twelve kings to being the sole, prophesied king came about by accident: They were sacrificing in the temple of Hephaestus . .. and they were about to pour the libation. The high priest brought them out golden vessels, with which they were used to pour the libations, but he missed his count and brought out only eleven for the kings, who were twelve. Psammetichus had no vessel and took off his helmet, which was bronze, and held it out and poured the libation with it. (2.151) T hough the eleven agreed that Psammetichus hadn't intentionally fulfilled the prophecy, they banished him (chased him) to the marshes, "and from these marches he was never to issue forth." (2.151) 69 �ENERGEIA Note that when the twelve began their reign, they "made marriages between their families and held their rule under a sworn agreement that forbade destroying one another, but rather all should be staunch friends." (2.147) To this end they built a memorial of themselves a monument to their unity. They made a labyrinth with twelve roofed courts (one for each king), but, as befits a labyrinth, o~y one exit (reflecting the prophecy that only one of them should ulttmately be king). Herodotus, who saw the labyrinth, writes: The passages through the rooms and winding goings-in and out through the courts in their extreme complication, ca~sed us countless marvelings as we went through, from the court into the rooms and from the rooms into the pillared corridors, and then from ~hese corridors into other rooms again, and from the rooms into other courts afterwards. (2.148) Three thousand ~terlocking chambers form the labyrinth, half above ground and half under; the interconnected.courts. and room~ and corridors all symbolize the bonds of loyalty, fnendship, and family shared by the twelve. (To get a sense of how unique ~e rei~ of the .twelve was, contrast the complex integrity of the labyrinth with t~e singular focus of the traditional king's monument, the pyramid.) When Psammetichus was betrayed by the eleven and forced to flee, those bonds were broken. Of course, from here Psammetichus regains the throne and puts down the traitorous eleven-but how he does so is critical to the organizational structure of Book II. From the marshes, Psammetichus sent to the oracle of Leto and, presumably (Herodotus is unclear here), asked him how he should, or if he should, go about taking revenge on the eleven. The oracle's response was ~hat he would hav~ revenge "in the shape of men of .b~onze emergmg fron_i the, s~a. (2.152) The theme of bronze here 1s linportant. Psa~etichu.s libation from a helmet of bronze is an indignity to the ritual sacrifice to Hephaestus, where golden vessels were the norm. This impurity foreshadows the oracle's meaning: The men of bronze turn out to be 70 THORPE . pirates wearing bronze armor, Ionians and Carians. Foreigners. Greeks. Psammetichus promised them, among other things, land, in exchange for their aid in deposing the eleven. The pirates agreed and became mercenaries. Psammetichus deposed the eleven and began his second kingship. The intermeshing chambers of the labyrinth proved to be less symbolically important than the single corner exit. The Ionians and the Carians stayed on in Egypt in the lands that Psammetichus had promised them. Their influence on the Egyptians was considerable. First, Psammetichus "turned over to them Egyptian children, to learn the Greek language." (2.154) The interpreters that Herodotus uses throughout his trip in Egypt are all descended from these original children. Second, these original mercenaries had access to Psammetichus' ear and every king's ear after him. The last king that Herodotus mentions had the mercenaries resettled near him as his personal guard against his fellow countrymen-and it is this same king, Amasis, who is noted for his love of the Greeks. The arrival of the Greeks initiated Egypt's rapid conversion from an isolated nation, and something of a relic, to a nation with international alliances and a permanent, non-Egyptian minority population. The Greeks in bronze introduced an enduring impurity into Egypt-and the golden age of kings ended. Psammetichus' second reign as king marks off the end of a major division in Book II, and the beginning of another. The political history of Egypt prior to the arrival of the Greek mercenaries is recounted for Herodotus by the Egyptian priests at Memphis (and perhaps partially affirmed by the priest in Thebes and Heliopolis). (See 2.3.) Herodotus is entirely at their mercy, that is, he has no recourse to non-Egyptian accounts to corroborate the priest's stories (histories). However, for the political history of Egypt beginning with and following Psammetichus, Herodotus has access to Egypt's Greek population, which Psammetichus' rise to power introduced-though, as will be seen, Greek versions of stories are often problematic. The political history prior to Psammetichus (the first three hundred and forty one kings) Herodotus sets off with the following disclaimer: 71 �ENERGEIA From this on, it is the account of the Egyptians that I will tell you as I heard them, though there will be, as a supplement to them, what I have seen myself. (2.99) Immediately following this disclaimer, Herodotus relays the Egyptian priest's account of Min, their first king. Herodotus then selectively relays accounts of the next three hundred and forty one kings (skipping nearly all of them except those leading up to Psammetichus). He then pauses to issue a new disclaimer before introducing Psammetichus, the 342nd king: So far, it is what the Egyptians themselves say that I have declared; now there remains to record what other men and the Egyptians say in agreement as ha~g happened in this country. There will be additional support to the narrative from what I saw myself. (2.14 7) Herodotus elaborates on this disclaimer shortly after issuing it: It is because these [mercenaries] were settled in Egypt, and we Greeks were able to have contact with them, that we have such exact knowledge of all that happened in Egypt, beginning from the time of King Psammetichus. (2.154) For Herodotus, Psammetichus' reign inaugurates both the beginning of the modern Egyptian kingships, and the beginning of intersourced Egyptian history (of Egyptian history as agreed upon between peoples different in kind). The structure of Book II reflects this. Book II has three major divisions: non-historical findings (2.298), single-sourced historical findings (2.99-146), inter-sourced historical findings (2.147-182). The first .division is the largest and encompasses a little more than half of Book II, taking up the first ninetyeight paragraphs. The second division is the next largest with fortyseven paragraphs. The third division is the smallest with only thirtysix paragraphs. Within these divisions smaller topical sections can be observed. For example, the first division breaks down into two sec- 72 THORPE tions: Land & River, and Customs. In every division, Herodotus' own voice is to be found among the findings-this "vill become important later. In addition to being a determining factor in the structure of Book II, and the precipitating agent in the eventual transform ation of Egypt's political outlook, Psammetichus is also a notable king in his own right. Herodotus appraises Psammetichus as the "most fortunate king of Egypt, more than all who had gone before." (2.161) (This is perhaps misleading if we allow that Solon's words in Book I (1.32) expresses something of Herodotus' own opinion; to be the most fortunate king is not the same as being the most blessed king, implying that Psammetichus' life might not have ended well, though he was for tunate in other matters.) Of the fifty-four years that Psammetichus was king, twenty-nine of those he spent laying siege on the Syrian city of Azotus. Herodotus writes: "Of all the cities I know of Azotus endured the longest time under siege." (2.157) Psammeti~hus was tenacious to his purpose, and this trait comes out in the stories surrounding him. The opening story of Book II was postponed so that it could be given proper context. Now that Psammetichus' political story has been outlined, his researches into the antiquity of the Egyptian people can be better understood. Herodotus writes: "The Egyptians, before Psammetichus became their king, thought that they were the oldest of mankind. But Psammetichus, when he became king, wanted to know truly which were the oldest." (2.2) After making unsuccessful inquiries, Psammetichus devised an experiment to have children tell unprompted what orderly asking could not uncover. Briefly, this is the premise of Psammetichus' experiment: Children raised in a linguistic vacuum will eventually speak of their own will, and their language, unadulterated, will be the language of the first people. From meaningless noises to meaningful speech, the children will ultimately reveal the proto-language, and by inference, the original people. Psammetichus is motivated to conduct this experiment because he has reason to doubt the Egyptian belief in Egyptian antiquity, 73 �ENERGEIA though three hundred and forty one kings before him, lasting "eleven thousand three hundred and forty years" (2.142), did not. He doubts because the arrival of the Greeks on his coattails is the arrival of Greek things and Greek stories and the Greek language: "The Greeks were the first people of foreign speech to be settled in Egypt." (2.154) No king prior to Psammetichus had been aided to power through foreign hands, hands which subsequently immigrated. Nor had Greeks, prior to Psammetichus, lived among the Egyptians, side by side, as people ef Egypt. Herodotus records that the Egyptian priests, after they've slaughtered a sacrificial bull to Epaphus, take its head and "call down many imprecations on it." (2.39) Then, if there are Greek traders in the marketplace, they give the head to them to sell. The Greeks and the Egyptians live symbiotically, though at the same time in distinct worlds; what is evil for one is a commodity for the other. A similar situation can be found between the crocodile and the sandpiper: The sandpiper has come to peace with the crocodile, for the crocodile owes him much. For when the crocodile comes out of the water . . . the sandpiper crawls into its mouth and gulps down the leeches. This is of great benefit to the crocodile, who likes it and does the sandpiper no hurt. (2.68) The cursed head of the sacrificial bull is given to the Greeks who make use of it; and the kings following Psammetichus make use of the Greeks to uphold their reign. Though the Greeks are clearly minorities, albeit well entrenched minorities, they nonetheless have stories and customs of their own. Who came first, the sandpiper or the crocodile?-it depends on who's telling the story, even though one is clearly more powerful. With the introduction of the Greeks, inquiry, in the form of historical research-history being the forte of the Egyptians-becomes untenable as a means of unearthing archaic knowledge, knowledge of seminal events and of first actions. Ancient Greek history as the G reeks tell it contradicts much of ancient Egyptian history as the Egyptians tell it (the irony of this will become 74 THORPE clear later in this essay). There would be no reason at all to question Egyptian antiquity but for the presence of the Greeks, another people with another language and another story to tell. Perhaps when Psammetichus observed, per his orders, Egyptian children learning Greek, his curiosity took flame and he saw an opportunity to get beneath language customs to reveal something ancient and true; maybe witnessing the plasticity of language acquisition in children who already spoke a language suggested the protocol for the experiment in question. Whatever occasioned the experiment, this much is certain: it is an attempt at controlled science. Psammetichus' experiment attempts to remove the element of storytelling; it eliminates the need to inquire about and listen to stories, historical or otherwise, whose authenticity may be questionable or at odds with other stories. The mediating storyteller is neutralized and the proto-language is allowed to speak for itself; it tells its own story. Recall that Psammetichus' life was spared by the eleven because he poured the libation out of his bronze helmet without guile: "They found, on examination, that he had done what he did without any forethought." (2.151) Psammetichus wasn't killed because he hadn't thought; he hadn't intended to do anything. Psammetichus' experiment with the children recreates that situation. As Psammetichus passively acted without intending, and so revealed himself to the eleven as the future king, likewise the children are to talk without telling, and so reveal to Psammetichus the language of the primeval people. Herodotus heard of the experiment and its results from the priests of Hephaestus in Memphis. The Greeks also tell Herodotus a version of the story. Herodotus considers the Greek story foolish and the Egyptian story worthy of investigating-he asks the priests in T hebes and the priests in Heliopolis about it. (2.3) In the Egyptian story, the shepherd who watches over the children is vigilante in his duties. When the children speak for the first time, he reports nothing, but waits for them to speak again, to be certain that their speaking is not gibberish: ''As he came constantly and gave careful heed to the matter, this word was constantly with them." Once convinced that the 75 �EN ERGEL-\ children are in fact speaking, the shepherd reports to Psammetichus. Psammetichus has the children brought before him and confirms the fact for himself. The shepherd paid careful attention and told what he heard to Psammetichus, who confirmed the shepherd's words himself. Let me belabor this: The children repeatedly said bekos, the shepherd repeatedly heard bekos, the shepherd spoke bekos to Psammetichus, and then Psammetichus heard bekos for himself. The version of the story that the priests tell Herodotus places a premium on accurate transmission and redundancy against error. In the Greek version of the story, "Psammetichus had the tongues of certain women cut out and made the children live with these women." The Greek version has an air of tragic irony to it. Here are some of the images that plausibly follow from the Greek version: silent women who used to speak wait on children coming into speech; the women ache to speak but can only waggle their tongue-stumps while the children go about babbling incoherently; the first words of the children mock the women, who must then, unable to speak their news to the king, emphatically gesticulate their news, like so many arm-flailing newborns; the women endure each other's silent company, each a mirror of the other, all the while listening attentively, lest the children "clasp their knees and reach out their hands, and call out bekos"; when the children beg with their naturally inborn speech, the women answer them with mute stares, their purpose now expired. The Greek version of the story doesn't just introduce the possibility of error by eliminating the Egyptian redundancy, but almost ensures that subsequent versions of the same story will become increasingly distorted; because the Greek version is tragic in nature (portending tragedy), it calls out for a tragic ending. For example, why shouldn't Bekos become the vocative form of mama, making the first word the children speak one of loss ("He took two newborn children of just or din ary peop1e. . .")~ . The Egyptian version of the story expresses something about the Egyptians; something like a concern for precision. The G reek version of the story expresses something about the Greeks, something like a 76 THORPE .concern for essence, the spirit of a thing. The Egyptian version presents just faqs. The Greek version, assuming it to be an exaggeration, highlights the dramatic element of Psammetichus' experiment, the forcefulness of his charge that "no one coming face to face with the children should utter a word." For the Greeks, the facts of the story are less important than capturing its spirit-this is a provisional assessment. The opening story of Book II, in one sense, is about beginnings and origins-but this misses the point. If Herodotus was primarily interested in beginnings then he would have opened Book II with the story of Min, the first Egyptian king. Instead, chronology takes a back-seat to what-people-say, storytelling, and the differences in how stories are told. Herodotus opens Book II with the 342nd king of Egypt because Psammetichus is emblematic for his own project: insight into humanity as exhibited through the medium of humanity. Psammetichus tries to get at something natural and primary about humans, and assumes that, in doing so, he will have uncovered the nature of the first people; on his view, children possess knowledge of the ancients that can be experimentally retrieved. Psammetichus wants to expose human nature, to uncover its core by isolating it from stories. So does Herodotus-but with a diametrically opposed method. H erodotus works with and through human coverings, stories, and all of their diverse modes of telling, and ·makes them yield insight into human nature. A careful study of the contents of Book II will show that every section, no matter how seemingly irrelevant, shares a common theme with every other section: the voice of the storyteller telling his story-Herodotus' own voice often rises to the surface of these tellings. The complications of multiple stories told in the opening story, and Herodotus' thoughtful presentation of them, prefigures the rest of Book II; Herodotus is the locus point that holds these stories together, and the axis along which they can be profitably sighted. The rest of this essay is a detailed examination of Herodotus' treatment of three different stories (to be exact, his treatment of the conflicting versions of these three stories) in Book II. Once these sto77 �ENERGEL\ ries are examined, I'll conclude by addressing the two major questions brought up in the introduction. Heracles and the Oracle at Dodona Herodotus notes that the Greeks and the Egyptians construct different family trees of the gods. Among the Greeks, Pan is thought to be one of the youngest of the gods, among the Egyptians, one of the oldest-to cite one difference between them. (2.145) Herodotus believes that, for the most part, the Greeks took their gods from the Egyptians. (2.50) His belief is informed by demonstrations. The Egyptians give demonstrations ("most of these things they showed me by clear proof") (2.4), and Herodotus provides some of his own. For example, Herodotus claims that it was the "Greeks who got the name Heracles from the Egyptians or who put the name of Heracles upon the son of Amphityron." (2.43) His chief proof is that the Greek hero's (Heracles') parents "stemmed distantly" from Egypt, implying that the name of Heracles was appropriated from Egyptian ancestors. His second proof that the Greeks got the name Heracles from the Egyptians works by disproving the reverse case (that the Egyptians got the name from the Greeks). (2.43) Herodotus argues that, had the Egyptians taken their gods from the Greeks, including Heracles, they would have taken Poseidon among them. Herodotus' reasoning for this is elegant: Cultural transmission between the two nations presumes a degree of nautical sophistication on the part of at least one of them. Herodotus posits the case wherein both countries are seafaring and implies that, because of this, a god whose powers embraced the sea would be foremost among the gods acquired by the Egyptians. And yet among the Egyptian gods, Poseidon has no place-though Heracles is considered one of the Twelve (the second tier of the ancient gods, older than all but the Eight). QED: The Egyptians did not get the name from the Greeks. But Herodotus adds to this another argument: 78 THORPE ~-\.nd because I wanted to find out something clear in the matter, as far as I was able, I sailed to Tyre in Phoenicia . .. I talked with the priests of Heracles there and asked them how long it was since the shrine was established. But I found that they too disagreed with the Greeks .. . These researches of mine indicate quite clearly that Heracles is an ancient god. (2.44) So now Herodotus has established that a) the Egyptians did not get H eracles from the Greeks, and that b) Heracles is in fact an ancient god that precedes the Greek hero by the same name. And yet, despite these conclusions, Herodotus doesn't decry the Greek Heracles as a complete sham. He writes: I think that, among the Greeks, their procedure is most correct who have established and cultivated two cults of Heracles; to one they sacrifice as a god and by title Olympian, and to the other they offer worship as a hero. (2.44) T hen, clarifying his position on Heracles the hero and establishing his conservative view on the matter, Herodotus debunks a Greek myth to the effect that Heracles had come to Egypt and slaughtered tens of thousands of Egyptians after allowing himself to be almost sacrificed to Zeus. Heracles "took himself to his valor and slaughtered them all," concludes the Greek myth. (2.45) First, Herodotus points out, how could the Egyptians have sacrificed a human being when, with few exceptions they don't even sacrifice beasts? Second, even putting aside the religious code of the Egyptians, the story is implausible; it goes against nature for one man to be able to kill so many men. H erodotus then puts Heracles aside, but not before acknowledging the divine context in which Heracles has become an issue: "That is what I have to say about the matter; as I do so, may the gods and heroes view me kindly!" (2.45) In order to examine Herodotus' thoughts on Heracles in detail, it is necessary to spell out his argument carefully, in stepwise motion. Amphityron did have a son. Nowhere does Herodotus deny that Amphityron's son was a hero. Amphityron himself was a son of 79 �ENERGEL-\ someone, and if his lineage were traced out it would show Amphityron's ancestors to be Egyptians. Amphityron's ancestors passed along the story of Heracles and the other Egyptian gods to their progeny, who in tu±n did the same. The story of Heracles moved; it was handled and conveyed; one person spoke it to the next. At some point Amphityron's ancestors drifted to or settled in land occupied by the Greeks. They became Greek with time, and the story they told of Heracles became Greek with them. The name of Heracles crossed the Mediterranean and found a limited home in Greek lands in the family of Amphityron. As Amphityron's son gained a reputation for his great deeds, so too he gained a name; the son's actions became worthy of the name of the household's god, and the story of Heracles, having traveled ~o far, took on new life in the form of a man. Heracles the hero became the incarnation of his namesake. There was a son. There was a god. The son became a hero, the god became a man. There was a family that moved from one land to another land. These are the original events, now covered over. Their coverings are Egyptian and Greek stories that have changed over time and increasingly diverged from each other. The family was an Egyptian family who told a story about an Egyptian god. The son was the son of Greek who transfigured his ancestors' Egyptian story and in doing so made it Greek. What was Egyptian became distinctly Greek-but always there was the son who was heroic and the family which moved across the Mediterranean before his birth. Herodotus affirms the dual worship of Heracles as god and hero because he understands that the life of the story reflects those things which are important to those who tell it. Heracles the god was important to the Egyptians. His story moved to Greek lands, became Greek, and covers now a hero, and not a god. Heroes are important to Greeks. Heracles, the son, is a hero, though his personality (his particular traits) was "put upon" him, borrowed from Heracles, the god. Both god and hero deserve proper attention, regardless of their shared history. 80 THORPE The Greeks have heroes and the Egyptians don't. The Greeks transfigure gods into men, while the Egyptians insist that since the beginning of man (coinciding with the reign of Min) there "had never been a god in man-shape; nor moreover, neither beforetime nor thereafter, among the rest of those who became kings of Egypt, had any such thing happened." (2.142) For the Egyptians, the gods reigned over Egypt before man did. There was no chronological overlap between divine rule and human rule and likewise between the divine spirit and the human spirit. This strict separation reveals something of the Egyptian storytelling ethic. How the Egyptians tell stories and what they tell stories about are related. The Egyptians tell a story that says, in effect, man is the same as he always was, and the earth is the same as it always was: "[Since the rule of man], they said, there were four times when the sun rose out his wonted places . .. and, say the priests, nothing became different among the Egyptians, for all these disturbances, neither products of the earth nor products of the river, nor yet in respect of diseases or death." (2.142) The Egyptians tell a story of human sameness or stability, and they tell this story from one man to the next, in the same way: The Egyptians claim that they know these matters absolutely because they are continually making their calculations and continually writing down the number of the years. (2.145) 2 T he self-reinforcing feedback between how a story is told and what is told makes the Egyptians ideal historians. And Herodotus appreciates this: Of the Egyptians themselves, those of them who live around the sown part of the country are great in cultivating the memory of mankind ;:i.nd are far the greatest record-keepers of any people with whom I have been in contact. (2.77) T he Egyptians who cultivate the Nile area cultivate the memory of mankind. (I haven't forgotten Heracles. For the moment I want to consider the relationship between the Egyptians and their land in 81 �ENERGElA greater detail.) Herodotus writes: "I believe ... that the Egyptians have been [existed] ever since the race of man was and that, as the land grew in extent, tnany of them stayed where they were, but many too spread over the new land." (2.15) The land was given to the Egyptians "as an addition and as a gift of the river." The river is of course the Nile and its gift is silt. The generosity of the Nile is such that if you approach the Egyptian seacoast, "within one day's run from land, and you drop a sounding line, you will bring up mud, though you are in eleven fathom's depth." (2.5) This mud is the alluvial silt carried into the Egyptian sea by the Nile. The generosity of the Nile spills into the Egyptian sea; the Nile is magnanimous. Its gift accretes over time and slowly extends the borders of the Egyptian seacoast, spreading its "deposit of earth ... from the Plinthinete Gulf to the Serbonian Marsh." Herodotus reckons the length of the seacoast to be "sixty schoeni,'' adding that "those who have plenty measure by schoeni ... which is the Egyptian measure." (2.6) The Egyptians spread out with the gift of the river, and have always been, like the river itself, "since the race of man." The Nile was original, like those who tended its shores; regarding the whole Nile setting (river, sun, wind), Herodotus writes: "Let these things, then, be as they are and as they were at the beginning." (2.28) The Egyptians and the Nile flowed out of the Ethiopian heights, increasingly gaining their distinction with time. The Egyptians became Egyptian and the Nile left in its wake Egypt and, splitting three ways at Cercasorus, the Delta. Herodotus cites the oracle of Ammon: "Egypt is all the land that the Nile waters in its course and they are Egyptians who drink from the water of the Nile." (2.18) In winter, the sun follows a more southerly route through upper Libya and the Nile runs normal. In Summer, the sun stays closer to the equator and the Nile floods. The sun and the Nile, Osiris and Isis, the only gods that all Egyptians worship, pass through phases, but always the same phases. Annually, Osiris is reborn and the Nile waters flood the plains. H erodotus notes that the climate in Egypt is virtually constant; there's little rainfall, and the air is always dry. The 82 THORPE . Egyptians, through the clear dry air, observe the constant stars; from these stars, the priests told Herodotus, they derived their calendar. (2.4) Herodotus thinks the Egyptian calendar is better than that of the Greeks, because it synchronizes itself with the cycle of seasons. For the Egyptians, the gods, nature, and time are interdependent phenomena, and the constancy of one is the constancy of the other. It's_ true: at one time the gods ruled and themselves underwent change. For example, the Eight became Twelve (Osiris and Isis being the two greatest of any of these), and the Twelve had children. (2.145) Then, when man's rule began, the gods froze, never to change again, except symbolically; the Twelve became symbolized by the twelve months of the year. Again: The gods lived and changed while they lived, deposed one another and multiplied in their time; then they became the static overseers of the dominion of man, once man began his rule. The Twelve, when their term expired, gained astrological significance; now they signify the stars, nature, time, and man's connection to all three as their witness and subject. The minor variations in the annual rise of the Nile and the other minutiae of agricultural life become historical facts associated with the cycling constellations-nothing happens in Egypt that is not a variation within a cycle that is itself constant. The cosmology of the Egyptians is a logos of preservation. When the Egyptians heard that "rain falls over the land of Greece and that the earth was not wetted by rivers, ·as their own was, they said that one day the Greeks would be deceived in their great hope and would all miserably die of hunger." The hope of the Greeks is that they must look forward to rain. They must anticipate rain with anxiety in their hearts: ''You have no water save from Zeus,'' said the Egyptians to H erodotus. (2.13) God might not send rain raining. The Nile on the other hand is constant, and so the Egyptians don't share this particular Greek anxiety. The Nile will flood again just as the stars rise, just as the gods remain themselves. The Egyptians are preserved by their gods who are themselves ever preserved against change. When an Egyptian is born, the astrological significance of that day determines "what events he will encounter and how he will die and what manner 83 �ENERGEL-\ of man he will be." (2.82) Egyptians are born into a running st?ry of preservation and made to synchronize like everything else. !hett stories are unchanging because they are unchanging; the Egyp~ans make great historians because they live to preser~e and ~oor~atel~ to mummify human experience-and mummification entails evisceration; much is left out in order to preserve, as will be seen. Herodotus says that the Egyptians were the first to tell the story of mete~psychos~s, so that even in death the Egyptians see themselves as cycling, and m this cycling, as preserved: . . . that the soul of man is immortal and that, when the body dies, the soul creeps into some other living thing then coming to bir~; and when it has gone through all things, of land and sea and air, it creeps again into a human ·body at its birth. The cycle for the soul is, they say, three thousand years. (2.123) Herodotus agree~ with the Egyptians that the Greeks must wait .on Zeus for rain, but points out that if the Nile remains constant, domg what it has always done, then they, the Egyptians, "must suffe~ · · ·the lot of the Greeks." (2.14) Slowly over time the plains surrou~ding the Nile get higher and higher, further silting up each year with "~very flood. The change is slow but sure. Eventually, says Herodotus, 1f no rain falls in their land at all, and if the river cannot rise high enough to flood their fields ... what will be left for the Egyptians but starvation?" The constancy of the Nile, its preserving agency, i~ s~lf~defe~t­ ing; it floods and leaves behind a residue that gradually dimirushe~ 1:s power to flood. The Egyptians will ultimately ch~ke on the N~e s gift-this is tragedy on a geological scale. The sa~e 1s true ?f stones: The taboo against theo-morphizing, of making gods ~to man, implicit in the Egyptian cult of preservation, slowly lost its power with each retelling of the story of Heracles. The changes that accumulated in the Egyptian landscape are evidenced in ~etrosp~ct only-one can't see it happen-and, again, the same is true ~th stones. What the Greeks suffer in their hope for rain, the Egyptians endure in their ignorance; but Herodotus knows they suffer the same lot. The 84 THORPE .Nile evolves its inability to flood unseen; Heracles can become a hero on distant shores because the injunction to preserve cannot itself be preserved against change. Stories deposit their own kind of silt. Returning to Heracles now in greater detail: The myth that H erodotus debunks, that Heracles the hero went to Egypt and slew mass numbers of Egyptians, is profoundly ironic. In it, the Greeks unwittingly give an account of their storytelling ethic and its entailed problems. Heracles the hero goes to Egypt. (Little does he know that this is the true land of his birth, from whence came his original form.) T he Egyptians begin first rites to sacrifice him to Zeus. (Meaning that Heracles doesn't recognize his Egyptian ancestors, nor they him in his human guise.) Heracles takes to his valor and slaughters the Egyptians. (With tragic irony, Heracles kills those who gave birth to him, and in doing so gains for himself more glory.) The Greeks make H eracles out to be superhuman-not a god, but something more than a mere man. Heracles can do what normal men can't do; that is, cahnly play false with exotic savages and then take their lives in retribution for their presumption of power or authority. The psychological meaning of the story (the ascendancy of the Greek spirit in face of the unknown) is factually true: the Greeks appropriated and transformed the Egyptian gods. What does this say about the Greek storytelling ethic? For H erodotus it means that the Greeks tell foolish stories. The Greeks take the content of the Egyptian stories, but leave behind the mode of their telling-and so engender the possibility of their evolution and poeticization. The Greeks appropriate and transform, and this power, or rather this impulse, finds its way into the stories themselves. Greek stories contain elements of transformation, of the natural crossing into the unnatural (or the other way around), of man bending nature to his will, of man simply controlling nature. For instance, Heracles the hero appears to be on his way to death but then takes control of the situation and, with god-like power, vanquishes the enemy. H eracles becomes himself (his disguise was that of a mere man, which is then cast off) and thus transforms a story of human ritual (the static) 85 �EN ERG E L\ into human prowess (effective agency). Again, how stories are told and what they say go hand in hand. Of course, this is a broad generalization and many complicated permutations exist between the limiting poles of truth/history/ preservation and beauty/ myth/ transformation-if I can grossly characterize them as such. In their incipient stages, the stories the Greeks appropriate need not suffer much change: But it was Melainpus who instituted the phallic procession to Dionysus, and it was from him that the Greeks learned to do what they do. It is my opinion that Melampus was a clever man who had formed for himself an art of divination, and, having learned from Egypt, he introduced much that was new to the Greeks, including the ritual of Dionysus-and he made very little change in it. (2.49) But given enough time, the poetic impulse will take root. Consider the story of the oracle at Dodona, "the most ancient oracular place of all among the Greeks." (2.52) The Egyptians tell a story to the effect that the first oracle at Dodona was a priestess from Egyptian Thebes who had been carried off by Phoenicians and sold to the Greeks. This woman was the first to set up a place of prophecy among the Greeks. Herodotus comments: \V'hen I asked [the priests telling the story] from what source they spoke with such exact knowledge, they said that there had been a great search by their own people after [this] woman, but [she] could never be found, but that afterwards they had learned about [her] what they now told me. (2.54) The account the Egyptians give Herodotus comes from their own inquiry and conforms to their model of storytelling. The loss of the priestess of Theban Zeus is for them a historical fact. The Egyptians preserved her story through the generations with notable precision. They made inquiry, found out her story, and recorded it against loss; they have an affinity with H erodotus as historians. And note that the 86 THORPE priests telling this story are themselves priests of Theban Zeus-their temple now was her temple then. Herodotus also interviewed the Greek priestesses at Dod th li · · h · ona, e Evmg ~ en~ors of the oracular tradition as it was passed on by the gyptian priestess, and asked them what they "had to say" on the matter: [Ilhey said [a] black dove that flew from Thebes in Egypt [to Dodona] . .. settled upon an oak tree and wi·th a hum an voice pro· . claimed that there should be there, in that place, an oracle of Zeus; they themselves then gasped that this proclamation to them was a divine thing, and because of it they made the place of the oracle. (2.55) !he Egyptian story and the Greek story agree on this much: the rmpetus for ~aking '.' the place of the oracle" was an Egyptian voice. In the Egyptian ~ers1on the priestess arrives and sets up a temple of prophecy, recreating the environment of her former Egyptian life. In ~e Greek vers~on a dove lands upon an oak tree and from this tree, its proper envuonment, speaks, in a human voice, a proclamation from the gods. The d~v~ .tells the Greeks to make the place of the ~racle. ~hat the dove llltiates symbolically, the Greeks are to effect m practice; just as the dove spoke from a tree in a voice not its own so the Greeks are to establish a home for the oracle from whence sh~ can prophesy. A~ter rel~ying both accounts, Herodotus, agreeing with the Egypti.an vers~on, hypothesizes that the Greek version of the story came mto existence through a sequence of transformations. (See 2.55-59 for most of what follows.) The Egyptian priestess, "being a slave ~ere ... set up a shrine-~ ~onor of Zeus, under an oak that grew there. Then, because she llltially spoke in a barbarian tongue the D o.donaeans who heard her called her a dove: she seemed to talk like a bud. Then, "efter a time, [the Dodonaeans] said, 'The bird spoke with ~ human voice,' as soon as the woman talked comprehensibly." [my italics] By this account, the Greeks took on the slave woman's spiritu87 �ENERGEL\ al practice, while at the same time transforming her Egyptian appearance and language into an animal form, a black dove. The appropriation of her custom parallels the transformation of the story told about her: She set up a shrine and spoke in gibberish (she talks like a dove); she learned to speak the language of the Greeks (the dove spoke our language); the Greeks learned and kept her practice for their own (a dove founded the oracle at Dodona). For the Egyptians, the intermediary step, where the priestess exists in a poetic-historic haze, is anathema to their preservation ethic. Removed from this ethic, the priestess of Thebes is doubly transgressed: On the one hand she is transformed into something like a defective, anonymous ibis ("[the ibis] is wonderfully black all over . . ."), one of the most sacred birds in Egypt. On the other hand she is made to cominit blasphemy by speaking through an animal, which is the prerogative of the gods. (2.76) The Greek Dodonaeans took over an Egyptian practice, and at the same time almost erased its origins-the dove is yet from Egypt. The same original event became for the Egyptians and Greeks historic and mythic respectively. Here is what they have in common: As the Egyptians agree among themselves that it happened in such and such a way, so too the Greeks agree among themselves that it happened in such and such a way. The priestesses that Herodotus interviewed and the "other people of Dodona ... . concerned with the shrine" all tell the same story: their shrine was established by divine proclamation via a black dove from Egyptian Thebes. The Theban priests agree amongst themselves and the Dodona priestesses agree among themselves, but neither party agrees with the other-and neither party has the full story. If historically important events result from tensions between people and nations-let us posit this-then history will always consist of competing stories told in competing manners. The priestess of Dodona is the subject of two separate stories, both of which fail to account for the whole truth, and both of which leave out as much as they say. The Egyptian story glosses over the details of how a slave b ecame th e first oracle of Greece, but instead simply asserts it as fact. The Greek story has been buried under lay- 88 THORPE . ers of poetic sediment and must be retrieved, but at a heavy price. Its credibility diminishes with every stratum; what Herodotus exhumes from the Greek story in his analysis bears the stain of myth, of having been crafted. The benefit of the Greek transformation is that it unknowingly preserves and highlights an important truth: The oracular tradition at Dodona was established by a force totally outside of Greek comprehension. From a historical perspective, the Greek story seems to le~ve out everything, retaining only the barest mention of Egypt, while the Egyptians story is a stilted, taciturn affair that begs more questions than it answers. Only Herodotus is in the position to coalesce both stories into a plausible story. Heracles becomes a hero; the priestess becomes a dove-these are particular cases. It will be useful to consider the Greek gods in general, and from this try to say something about Greek transformations in general. The Greeks make the unchanging and historical change and so become mythical. The historical is written down and given concrete form; the mythical is passed along, sometimes intentionally altered in the telling, sometimes altered through unintentional variation. The historical is set against change while the mythical evolves, sometimes in rapid, punctuated bursts. Herodotus believes that "all men know equally about the gods" (2.3), which doesn't mean that all men know the names of the gods or their offices. The Pelasgians, from wh.om the Greeks learned the names of the gods, initially called the gods "gods," without further specificity. (2.52) They worshipped the original gods in their unparticularized form. Then the Pelasgians learned the particular names of the gods from the Egyptians (names here can refer to either title or personality or both. The important point is that the names they learned from the Egyptians were of a lim3 ited nature compared to their subsequent transformations). When the Pelasgians settled in Greek territory they became Greek, and the Greeks took the names of the gods from the Pelasgians-again, just the names. As for the relationships between the gods, their family organization, their chronology and coming-into-being, and, further, 89 �ENERGEIA "their honors, their arts, [and] their shapes," these were given to the gods later by the great theogonizers, Homer and Hesiod. (2.53) There was a people and there were gods-original events. The Pelasgians settled among the Athenians and "came to be regarded as Greeks." (2.51) The Greeks absorbed the Pelasgians and the names of their gods; and then poets, in a burst of mythopoiesis, transformed the gods into distinctly Greek personalities having special names, histories, and functions. The transformations of Heracles and the Theban priestess are representative instances of a large-scale phenomenon. The Greeks didn't invent the gods from whole-cloth, but gave shape to what was original and true. The Pelasgians worshipped gods in their original form; their gods embodied the archaic forces that "disposed everything in order and arranged all." Herodotus claims that the etymology of theoi reflects this. The gods of the Pelasgians disposed all and so were called the-disposing-ones. These people "made all their sacrifices with invocations to gods ... but put no special title or name on any of them; for they had not yet heard of any such." The Pelasgians made ritualized (ordered) sacrifices to the forces which ordered their world. There was nothing to be written down and nothing to be told. 'The forces of the world were self-evident and had as yet no names; the rituals mimicked in the particular what the gods did universally, that is, purposing, disposing, settingforth. The Pelasgians and the theoi lived in an immediate relationship. Then, "[a]fter a great while," the Pelasgians heard the names of their unnamed gods from the Egyptians. The Egyptian names fit the Pelasgian gods because the gods existed initially, originally for all people; these were not new gods but names for existing, though perhaps generic, gods. Names and gods. aligned; the Pelasgians gained a degree of sophistication. ''After a time," the Pelasgians asked the oracle at Dodona if they should "take on the n~mes that came from the barbarians." (2.52) The Dodonaean oracle-whose practice was entirely Egyptian of course-affirmed the use of the Egyptian names. The black dove from Theb es affirmed her flock. 90 THORPE Greek religious culture appears to have been transformatively founded, on a massive scale. As for the Egyptians, they appear to have always had their gods and to have preserved them well, along with the bulk of their original Egyptian culture. Recall that there was always a people and there was always a river: the Egyptians and the Nile. H erodotus never speaks of the Egyptians gaining their gods or transforming them. Rather, for the Egyptians, there were gods. The Egyptians knew the gods and knew their names. Egypt grew and the Egyptians filled it. As the landscape of Egypt changed gradually with time, so too did the Egyptians: "For by no means [do] all Egyptians worship the same gods alike ... " (2.42) In Mendes they sacrifice sheep, but not goats. The Thebans sacrifice goats but neither sheep nor rams (with the exception of one ram a year) because of a "custom [that] has been established among them." The Egyptians who live above marsh country differ from those living in the marshes-but not by much. Those in the marshes "have much the same customs as the rest ... but with respect to cheap food they have made certain innovations." (2.92) Over time, internally, the Egyptians part company over minor differences. New customs come into being; new stories are told. Yet these are minor changes, anomalies in an otherwise homogenous culture preserved in stone, papyrus lists, patriarchies, kings, fixed classes, religious scruples, and a kind of cultural xenophobia: "T he Egyptians avoid following Greek customs and, to speak in general, the customs of any people other than their own." (2.91) It is this integrity of culture that allows Herodotus to comment: "I believe that all of Egypt is this country which is lived in by the Egyptians." (2.17) The landscape changed a little-but only a little. The Egyptians still sing the funeral chant that honored the death of their first king's son; it was their first and only song. Finally, we can put the Greek people and the Egyptian people side by side. The Egyptians are resistant to change, but not immune. The Greeks, on the other hand, seem especially adaptive and self-inventing, working from barbarian material (mostly Egyptian, with some exceptions) to forge their own cosmology and world-view. Without 91 �THORPE ENERGE L\ giving a thoroughgoing cause-and-effect account, Herodotus paints a picture of an ancient world of equally human humans, separated by geography, but otherwise very similar in their ways and worship. From this original stock (I can only guess at its distribution) the various national characters unfolded; Greeks became increasingly Greek, and the Egyptians became increasingly Egyptian-but not at the same rate. As the gods became more specific for the Greeks, the theogony of the Egyptians remained, for the most part, immutable. This initial difference between the two cultures-a tendency to change vs. a tendency to stasis-signifies deeper spiritual differences. between them, differences whose origins Herodotus does not indicate; he never says why the Greeks are prone to myth-making, or why the Egyptians are prone to preservation, but only notes. that they are and have been so for a long time. The Greek gods, the theoi, that became more (by acquiring names) became again more (by acquiring stories); once named they became mythogonized by the poets. Names are the handles for story-handlers, the access point by which the plain is made filigree. It was a poetic spirit that gave the Greek gods their office. It was a preserving spirit which gave the Egyptian gods their fixed thrones. The two spirits met and recoiled over Helen, who was an original event for both. The next section of this essay examines the story of Helen in depth, focusing on the differences between the Egyptian priests' version of her story and Homer's version, as told in the Iliad and the Oc!Jssry. These differences are discussed in light of the material just presented. Helen's story is a premiere example of Egyptian preservation and Greek transformation. The conclusion follows. The Story of Helen Herodotus doesn't say how he knew to ask the priests about Helen-he just does: "When I asked of the priests, they told me that what had happened to Helen was this ... "-1 Proteus' name comes up in the course of the Egyptian priests' presentation of kings, following immediately on king Pheros, who followed on king Sesostris. We can 92 speculate that the name Proteus triggered a conversation, with ~erodotus eager to sort out the differences between the Egyptian's king a~d the Greek god of the same name, "[t]he Ancient of the Salt ... unmortal Proteus of Egypt." 5 However it came about in the midst o~ the li~t of kin?s, ~erodotus learns that Homer's stor; has an alterna~ve telling, a historical telling in his opinion. In a nutshell, ac~ording ~o the Egyptian priests, Helen was never taken to Troy. The priests begm Helen's story with her arrival in Egypt: ..Alexander carried off Helen from Sparta and set sail for his own c~untry; wh~n he got into the .Aegean, wrecking winds forced h~ out_ his course into the Egyptian sea; and after that, as the of winds did not let up, he came to Egypt and, in Egypt, to what is now called the Canobic Mouth of the Nile and to the Saltpans. (2.113) The Canobic Mouth is the large, west-most mouth of the Nile's five mouths. The Ionians used the Canobic leg of the Nile to define the ~elta, meaning that everything west of this leg they considered to be L~bya. Though Herodo. us technically disagrees with the Ionians (and t with good reason), thett description has some truth to it; Alexander landed in Egypt and had he gone much farther, he would have been in another country. This is important for two reasons. The first is that H ero~otus uses this information as evidence to implicate Homer in a mythic cover-up. Herodotus calls our attention to a scene in the Iliad just prior to Hekabe's failed, elaborate supplication to Athena: But Hekabe went down to the low chamber fragrant with cedar, where her robes were kept, embroidered work by women of Sidonia ..Alexandros had brought, that time he sailed and ravished Helen, princess, pearl of kings. (289-92) 6 Regarding these verses, Herodotus writes: 93 �EN ERG EL-\ ... 1t 1s plain that Homer knew of .Alexander's wandering to Egypt; for Syria is the neighboring country to Egypt, and the Phoenicians, to whom Sidon belongs, live in Syria. (2.16) The coincidence is too great for Herodotus. The Egyptians claim that Alexander was forced to land in Egypt, right next to Syria, before returning to Troy. Homer claims ("if we are to speak on the testimony of epic poets") that Alexander had stopped in Syria before returning to Troy. Why would Homer insert this detail if he didn't already have in mind the Egyptian version of the story?-so runs Herodotus' reasoning. If Homer didn't know the Egyptian version of the original story, then why would he bother making up a trip to Sidon, causing Alexander to cross the full length of the Mediterranean? Herodotus' point is that Sidon is too conspicuous ·a location to be accidental and that it gives away Homer's transformation. To be fair, Homer's version has more to it than this. Herodotus himself, in this instance, is guilty of leaving out much: Hekabe lifted out her loveliest robe, most ample, most luxurious in brocade, and glittering like starlight under all. This offering she carried to .Athena with a long line of women in train. . . .Theano with grace took up the robe to place it on fair-haired .A. thena's knees .. . These were Theano's prayers, her vain prayers. Pallas .Athena turned away her head. (Book VI, 320) With this added context, other readings of the robe are possible. The souvenir of Paris' "rape and robbery" of Helen, was rejected. (1.3) The Sidonian women's alien craftsmanship is meant to give the robe an exotic aura, and hence great value. Precisely for this reason, it calls attention to itself: The robe is a beautiful shell, but not a living beauty like Helen. Hekabe offered up the artificial, external, soulless robe while, "during (this] supplication at the shrine," Helen sat "among her household women ... directing needlecraft and splendid weaving." 94 THORPE I I . ~hat Hekabe offered to Athena, Helen was making for herself-a textile produced by skill. Hekabe's train of suppliants mirrors Helen's household women. Unwittingly, Helen competes with Athena. She brings into her immediate world, with her own techne, what is laid on Athena's knees, Hekabe's treasure from afar. As long as we're out on a limb, we might as well conjecture that the robe's connection to Paris' abduction of Helen suggests that Helen rejected the robe for herself. Athe~a can only be insulted at a cast-off gift-offering, a discarded covenng unfit for Helen's real beauty and which Helen could make of her own powers .... The main point here is that the Sidonian women can be read as ornamentation to the ornamental robe, and less inculpating than Herodotus makes it out to be. The second reason for noting Alexander's landing place is the parallel it has with Menelaus' trip to Egypt in the Ocfyssey. In the Egyptian story, winds force Alexander to land on shores just inside ~e Can~bic mouth. In the Homeric story, winds force Menelaus (this will be. discussed shortly) to the same mouth: Pharos lies just off the Canob1c, at the westward edge of the Egyptian seacoast. Menelaus lands while the Nile is flooded, and, by inference (the winds blow inland wh~n the Nile is flooded), so does Alexander. In either story, H elen arnves in Egypt against her captain's (captor's) will, at the ~ercy of u~favorable winds. Helen was destined for Egypt and destmed for this particular part of Egypt, no matter who tells the story. Once Alexander made it to shore, his servants learned of a certain law pertaining to the shrine of Heracles (this shrine being right on the ~hore): "If a. servant takes refuge in (that shrine] ... and has put upon himself certain sacred brand-marks, thereby surrendering himself to ~e god'. no one may lay a hand on him." In other words, by ~ansfet~mg theu bondage to the god Heracles, servants can seek justice against unjust masters. Alexander's servants "wished to injure him" and so accused him to the priests of Heracles and local precinct warden; they told the "whole story of Helen and the wrong done to Menelaus." The warden then sent message to king Proteus, who in 95 �ENERGElA turn had Alexander arrested and brought to Memphis, along with Helen, the stolen property and the suppliants (Alexander's men). Once in Memphis, Proteus interrogated Alexander. He asked him "who he was and where he sailed from." Alexander smoothly obliged him. Then Proteus asked him "where he got Helen from." To this Alexander faltered and the "suppliant servants" (no longer his servants) "bore witness against him." Proteus then judged against Alexander on three related charges: a) doing the unholiest, coming at one's host's wife; b) empassioning one's host's wife to steal away; c) plundering one's host. Proteus refrains from having Alexander killed because he himself is now in the position of being a host; Alexander is a stranger in a foreign land, set there against his will, and therefore a guest. Ironically, Alexander is spared. death-his guest-crime's proper due-because of the guest privileges he now enjoys. The protocol of hospitality that he violated now protects him. Herodotus and Proteus share a similar skepticism over Alexander's story. Proteus doesn't buy Alexander's story as Alexander tells it, and Herodotus doesn't buy Alexander's story as Homer tells it. Let us carry this analogy further: Homer falters in his story, leaving behind evidence (the above mentioned quote from the Iliad, among others) of his deceit; his own text witnesses against him. Herodotus thinks that "Homer knew the tale [told by the Egyptians]; but inasmuch as it was not suitable for epic poetry as the other, he used the latter and consciously abandoned the one told here." The Egyptians had Helen-so they say, and Herodotus agrees. Homer heard the Egyptian story and took it for his own. Homer willfully stole Helen away from the Egyptians and plundered some of the details of the Egyptian story. Homer abandoned the truth and told a story and so violated the protocol of history-making-if we are to speak on the testimony of historians. Proteus judged against Alexander and returned Helen and the stolen property to Menelaus. Herodotus judges against the historical truth of Homer's story and returns Helen and the surrounding details to the E gyptians: "No, the Trojans did not have Helen I THORPE The resemblance between Proteus and Herodotus is a limited one. Herodotus looks beyond mere factual evidence in the Iliad to als o consider the story itself, gauging whether or not Helen's residence in Ilium makes good storytelling sense (fhe equivalent gesture from Proteus would have been to consider Alexander's story on the basis of how much it insulted his intelligence.) Is Homer's version of the story reasonably plausible, or is its audience forced to suspend knowledge of human nature? Herodotus again calls the Greek storytelling ethic into account. As he chastised the Greeks for thoughtlessness regarding Heracles' mass slaughter of the Egyptians, so does he go after the great poet. He reasons thus: Had the Trojans had Helen, they would have given her back to the Greeks, unwilling to risk "their own bodies, children, and city so that Alexander should lie with Helen." Priam was a reasonable king, and would have eventually done the reasonable thing, even if sentiment ran initially otherwise. Further, if Priam would have perished, the throne would have fallen to Hektor, who would "certainly not have suited to comply with his erring brother." In short, whole kingdoms of men are willing to die for kinfolk, but not without just cause-and Helen does not constitute a just cause. Menelaus' twofold story-Homeric and Egyptian tellings-is more complicated than Alexander's. For one thing, both the Egyptians and H omer agree that Menelaus came to Egypt. (fo be clear, Alexander's visit to Egypt is told explicitly only by the Egyptians, though H erodotus attempts to corroborate it with circumstantial evidence and an intuitive understanding of good storytelling.) Menelaus' story is also complicated because the Homeric version and the Egyptian version are related in a way that resists interpretation. If Homer knew the Egyptian version of Menelaus' story, his transformation of it reveals little in the way of method. Alexander's story was transformed in the simplest of ways: it was untold. Why didn't Menelaus' story suffer the same fate? Why have Menelaus travel to Egypt at all? Surely his opulent home and splendid furnishings could have come from other nations, as some of them, in fact, did? to give back." 96 97 �ENERGEIA In the Egyptian version of Menelaus' story, the Greeks sacked Troy only to learn that the Trojans had been telling the truth all along: Proteus had Helen. Menelaus set out to get her. On arriving in Memphis, Menelaus was "told the truth of what had happened, and received great hospitality and took back Helen, quite unhurt, and all his own possessions as well." So far so good. But then, "Menelaus proved an unjust man to the Egyptians": For when he was eager to sail home, contrary winds held him there; and to deal with this, he did something very wicked: he took two children of the natives and sacrificed them. \'\!hen his deed was discovered, he was hated and pursued as he fled with his ships to Libya. \'\!here he went from there the Egyptians cannot say. (2.119) Presumably, the truth that Menelaus heard was that Proteus had acted on his behalf, partially righting the wrong done to him by Alexander. For this Menelaus was in Proteus' debt; add to this debt the hospitality showed to Menelaus in Memphis, not to mention the care shown to Helen over the years. Proteus had been the host par excellence. Menelaus' wickedness lie in the fact that he had utterly destroyed Troy over the "impious deeds" done to him by a guest, only to commit an injustice while a guest himself. If impious deeds and unjust acts can roughly be compared, then Menelaus' actions were hypocritical. Menelaus is perhaps less guilty than Alexander only in as much as he didn't affront "his very host," but his host's subjects-but perhaps more guilty in light of the ruins of Troy. Homer's version of Menelaus' trip to Egypt takes place in Book IV of the Ocfyssey. In this same Book, Telemakhos meets Menelaus for the first time and discovers that Menelaus is a rich man. Looking around at the interior of Menelaus' mansion, Telemakhos comments to Nestor's son: 1\fy dear friend, can you believe your eyes?the murmuring hall, how luminous it is with bronze, gold, amber, silver, and ivory! 98 THORPE ... \V'hat a wonder! (IV.270) Menelaus overhearing this, without yet recogruzmg his guests, responds: .. . as for men, it may well be that few have more than I. How painfully I wandered before I brought it home! Seven years at sea, Kypros, Phoinikia, Egypt, and still farther among the sun-burnt races. I saw the men of Sidon and Arabia and Libya, too. . . (IV 90) A brief review of events leading up to this scene (above) is in order :7 As Nestor tells the story, "God scattered the Akhaians ... seeing they would not think straight nor behave, or some would not." After the Greeks had sacked and plundered Troy, the very next morning Agamemnon and Menelaus called an assembly. The soldiers, still "soaked with wine," turned out to hear their commanders. Menelaus urged a speedy departure; Agamemnon urged a respite to sacrifice a hekatomb to Athena, "to pacify [her] rage." The army itself was divided. Half of the army stayed behind with Agamemnon as their commander, the other half took to the sea. The seafaring half itself shortly split up, with Odysseus and his men returning back to Agamemnon. T hose who didn't return to Agamemnon kept on. Of these, the major captains, Nestor and Diomedes and Menelaus all met up at Lesbos where they "mulled over the long sea route" before them. After choosing a route, Menelaus went as. far as Sunion Point with Nestor, but then Menelaus' steersman died, felled with "some unseen arrow from Apollo." Menelaus landed to give his stee.tsman an honorable funeral. After this incident, already bad enough, Menelaus' luck changed for the worse. Back on the sea, "Zeus sent a gloom over the ocean, and a howling gale came on .. .parting the ships." Half of Menelaus' ships were driven towards Krete. The other half were pushed against the Gortyn coastline where a razorback reef destroyed all but five ships, which then alone remained to Menelaus. 99 �-ENERGEL-\ Because the Greeks would not think straight (or some would not), and were divided, so were they punished, through division. The original division between Menelaus and Agamemnon recurs three more times, like a stone skipping over water until it finally sinks. Menelaus takes half of the Greeks. This half is split with Odysseus' doubling back. What remains is split again by a storm, with one section being demolished on a reef. In the end, five ships are left under Menelaus' command. After this, Menelaus and his men were "taken by wind and current to Egypt." Meanwhile, as Menelaus "made a fortune among those distant races," Agamemnon was killed by Aigisthos back in Mykenai. On the very day that Agamemnon's son, Orestes, having avenged his father, buried his traitorous mother and her "soft man" in a single tomb, Menelaus "made port with all the gold his ships could carry." The juxtaposition of the two images is intentional; the fatherless Orestes and the gold encumbered Menelaus set the tone for Menelaus' dialogue with Telemakhos: But while I made a fortune on those travels a stranger killed my brother, in cold blood,tricked blind, caught in the web of his deadly queen . \""Vhat pleasure can I take, then, being lord over these costly things? But as things are, nothing but grief is left me for those companions. \""Vhile I sit at home sometimes hot tears come, and I revel in them, or stop before the surfeit makes me shiver. (IV 180) And that brings us up to speed. The riches that Telemakhos observed on his arrival in Menelaus' mansion only serve to remind Menelaus constantly of his losses, the stupid grounds upon which he and his brother parted and the costs of that parting. The luminous halls are an occasion for hot tears and bitter remembrances. On avowing his love for Odysseus and his sorrow over what must have become of him, Menelaus weeps, and so do Helen, Telemakhos and Nestor's son. 100 THORPE It is clear that, if Homer's version of Menelaus' story is a transformation of an Egyptian originfll, it is so brilliantly. By the time one finishes reading Book IV, Menelaus' trip to Egypt makes perfect storytelling sense. His guilt over his brother's death back home and its ' connection to his wealth gained abroad, form a complete storythought. And the details of Menelaus' stay in Egypt are remarkably cohesive even from Herodotus' perspective, especially compared to Alexander's story. For example, Menelaus was stranded there for more than twenty days because the breeze coming off of the Nile shore (behind him) was, in fact, not brisk, but "becalmed." This makes sense. Towards the end of his story, Menelaus indicates that the Nile was flooded; the Etesian winds (more on these later) blow strongly from the northwest in the summer, and not "seaward." And when the Etesian winds aren't blowing, almost no wind blows. One of Herodotus' pressing questions about the Nile is why "it is the only river that has no breeze blowing from it." His own theory is that "it is not natural for a breeze to come from exceedingly hot places." The Nile valley air is perpetually clear and calm and generally hot. Menelaus was tied down in Egypt waiting for the unnatural to happen, for the placid Egyptian winds to become gusty. Here is another reason to praise Homer: Menelaus was stuck in Egypt by virtue of his own will because he had decided against offering proper hekatombs to the gods following the razing of Troy. His original impiety, a matter of eagerness on his part, brings about retribution in kind: doldrums and waiting. Herodotus doesn't debate the poetic genius of Homer's story, or decry it for its ostensible falsity. Instead, he adds to it a new chapter. According to Herodotus' straightforward reconstruction, the Trojans told the Greeks that they didn't have Helen and that she and the stolen goods were in Egypt. The Greeks didn't believe them and so sacked Troy. Though this renders those parts of the Iliad containing H elen totally mythical, as Herodotus sees it, the reconstructed story retains what he considers its original moral: 101 �ENERGE L-\ [T]he Divine was laying his plans that, as the Trojans perished in utter destruction, they might make this manifest to all the world: that for great wrongdoings, great also are the punishments from the gods. That is what I think, and that is what I am saying here. (2.120) Herodotus' analysis of Helen's story brings to the foreground an important element of his storytelling ethic: there is truth, but there is also wisdom. The truth regarding Helen's story is not as important as the wisdom it conveys, to those who will hear it. Conclusion Herodotus' own storytelling ethic can now be triangulated. It is clear that, for Herodotus, the concept of story-agreement is a useful-but not absolute-means for discriminating between kinds of historical evidence, and therefore guidelines for historical inclusion. That a story is agreed upon by one set of people (say the priests of Thebes) does not make it historical truth, but might warrant its inclusion in the Histories. That a story told by one party is contradicted by another story, equally corroborated, does not necessarily exclude either from the Histon·es-nor does such a contradiction necessarily privilege one or the other as truthful. And certainly the composite stories that Herodotus wrings out of such contradictions (he acknowledges their speculative character) warrant inclusion in the Histories-but these stories too are neither fact nor fiction. Some stories and some speculations not all make it into the Histories-of three hundred and forty one ' ' kings, only a handful are discussed because "none of the rest did anything." (2.101) What governs the exceptions? Beyond their large scale arrangement according to evidential probity (agreement), we must further ask on what grounds are stories, ranging from the self-evident, first-person accounts of geographical facts to the inter-mythically exhumed, selected for inclusion. Does Herodotus bring to his work a storytelling mode-and-filter complex similar to those employed by the storians he interviews? One of his most open statements of rationale is this: 102 THORPE Throughout the entire history it is my underlying principle that it is v,;hat people severally have said to me, and what I have heard, that I must write down. (2.123) The Histon'es contain all that Herodotus was told and all that he heard, but both came about, directly and indirectly, as responses to Herodotus' inquiries. Herodotus' inquiring determines the general course of his discourse. Herodotus also determines what of such discourse finds its way into the Histories. Herodotus is the occasion for the Histon'es, their procuring agent and editor-which is just to say that Herodotus redacts self-consciously and purposely in microcosm what nations (the Egyptians) collectively author over time in macrocosm, though with varying degrees of deliberation. The stories that get passed along, finding their way. into common currency, achieving some level of homogeneity in their telling-these Herodotus takes for his primary material. From this material he works together a story of his own. If we were to treat his work as one of history, then we might say that his threshold for inclusion was informed by a variety of historiographical criteria. Among others: a story's relevance to the war between the Greeks and barbarians; a story's ability to provide context for other stories; a story's ability to support extra-historical arguments about, say, the nature of life in general. But is Herodotus a historian? Nowhere in the Histories does Herodotus imply that historical writing is the techne of chronologically arranging facts whose veracity is proven beyond doubt. His own writing strives to preserve the nebulous stories surrounding and covering over original events. Throughout Book II, Herodotus distinguishes between what he thinks happened (there was a priestess; there was a hero) and what he is told about what he thinks happened. His discernment is evidenced in statements of belief and preference: "I myself believe [this] true"; "I believe those who say these things"; "I will tell you what I think myself"; "I have further evidence for my judgment"; "For myself, I do not know". Herodotus is a voice himself among the voices he records. In writing himself into the Histories, 103 �ENERGEIA Herodotus becomes himself historical, a story worth recording: This is what I, Herodotus, am sqying about this matter. His beliefs and preferences incorporate him into the story he unfolds, in contrast to a mode of history-presentation which relegates the story-teller to the background, creating the fac;ade of objectivity. In short, every criterion for inclusion in the Histories is Herodotus' criterion. Herodotus is unconcerned about objectivity in this sense, about standing speechless on the outside of one's own storytelling. The Histories are just as much a document about Herodotus of Halicarnassus as they are about Amasis of Memphis and his other subjects. It is an easy mistake to conclude from Book II that Herodotus considers himself to be a historian in the manner of the Egyptian priests. The Egyptian world-view (~osmological preservation), the Egyptian manner of storytelling (permanent records), and the Egyptian stories .themselves (histories) all share an intimate relationship with each other, each reflecting a concern for sameness-stasispreservation. Herodotus' own concerns somewhat overlap with those of the Egyptians. The Histories are meant to hold out against time, to preserve. At the beginning of Book I, he writes: "I. .. am here setting forth my history, that time may not draw the color from what man has brought forth ... " It is no accident then that Herodotus admires the Egyptians as historians and often agrees with them. Their spirits overlap-but never coincide. Herodotus leans towards Egyptian accounts ("I say [on this matter] what the Egyptians themselves say") but with important reservations. Foremost among them is that Herodotus is willing to make stories-thoughtful, theoretical stories. A good example of this is Herodotus' theory about the mysterious nature of the Nile which attempts to explain why it is "the opposite of every other river in the world." (2.19) Why does the Nile rise or recede in cycles opposite those of other rivers? After persistent asking, Herodotus finally concludes that the Egyptians don't know the answer and, apparently, have nothing in the way of a theory to offer. Herodotus has his own theory follow on those offered by "some of the Greeks who want to be remarkable for their cleverness." (2.20) After sum- 104 THORPE matily dismissing the Greek theories (the first is disproved, the second is unprovable, and the third is illogical), Herodotus writes: But if, having found fault with the opinions set forth, I must declare my own view in these matters, which are far from clear, I will say why I think that the Nile floods in summertime. (2.24) Because he brings forth his own story, Herodotus seemingly associates himself with the other Greek theoreticians. But he differs from the Greeks in important ways: his story is logical, open to investigation, and plausible. Herodotus proves himself to be uninvolved with cleverness; his story is properly theoretical. The Greeks tell foolish stories, foolish not for telling stories simply, but because they tell Greek stories, explaining the Nile's anomalous behavior because of its relation to Etesian winds, Ocean, and Libyan snows, respectively. Herodotus' explanation fits perfectly with Egyptian sensibilities (had they wanted such a story), which is that "the sun [Osiris] is the cause of these matters." (2.26) The Greek stories make the Nile subject to external forces, alien forces unseen in Egypt proper: the Egyptians know nothing of snow; the wind almost never blows; and Ocean is a Greek myth "that Homer or one of the older poets ... introduced into his poetry." (2.23) Herodotus commits occasional acts of Greek-like storytelling, but with Egyptian interests. The obvious demonstration that Herodotus is not an Egyptianstyled historian is that he considers the Egyptian histories inadequate. The Greeks are needed to fill in Psammetichus' story, for instance. And yet neither is Herodotus a Greek myth-maker. The Greeks are consummate myth-wielders. By allowing the anthropic element to bleed across the adjacent realms of the divine and the natural, the Greeks bring to light the human realm. Heracles is a hero; I am a man. Further, by offering up a poeticized account of man, the Greeks reveal poetry as one of his activities. Herodotus calls this to our attention when he says, "The Greeks tell many stories that show no manner of thought," and then proceeds to tell those very stories in all 105 �ENERGEL\ their thoughtlessness. We learn through Herodotus what myth-making is; Herodotus doesn't tell myths, but presents for us the Greeks, who in their own voice, through narratological hyperbole, present something of what it is to be human and, in so doing, a peculiar impulse to mythopoiesis. Herodotus tells a story that fully compasses Greek storytelling; he puts the foolish Greeks to work. A more plausible, but still inadequate account of Herodotus is that he mixes the two storytelling ethics together to yield a more accurate history. The Egyptian cyclic/preservation model of storytelling tends to generate history or stories that purport to be factual accounts of real, original events. On the other hand, the Greek appropriation/ transformation model tends to generate myths or stories that exhibit the world poetically, uncover.ing man's passions or motive forces. What the Egyptian stories explicitly indicate of actions and achievements ac~omplished, the Greek stories implicitly reveal in the telling itself as possibilities of man's character, or, his impulse to poeticize and imbue his spirit into the world. Historical Egyptian papyrus lists and Mythological Greek oral poetry both work to show man's nature. We might conjecture that Herodotus weaves the two together-historic stories and mythic stories-because together, with the proper archeology, they can yield knowledge of original events. As the t case with the oracle at Dodona shows, Herodo_us is able to reconstruct a plausible account of an original event by letting the two competing claims inform each other. By understanding, passing through, and neutralizing the Greek storytelling ethic he is able to uncover a single truth which before lived in two separate stories. Such deft maneuvers disclose those nodes in our past from which stories diverge, and it is these nodes which the scientifically minded historian must take as his guide, lest he fall prey to them. But it is not Herodotus' intention to uncover the original, historical world underlying divergent stories in order to be a better historian-though original events are clearly among his many concerns. Only a handful of arche-mythoi, in the manner of the oracle at Dodona, are presented. Herodotus is neither an Egyptian historian, nor a 106 THORPE . Greek myth-maker, nor a scientific historian with a mytho-historic bent. He is something differynt from these, something more. Consider the rationale he gives for his sustained inquiry into Egypt: I am going to be much longer in my story of Egypt. And this is because it has more wonders in it than any country in the world and more that are beyond description than anywhere else. That is why I will say may more about it. (2.35) Herodotus marvels at Egypt and the Egyptians. In a way, all of Herodotus' work is sustained marveling, which, though following a single thread of thought (Croesus, Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes), allows itself such stories as marveling is wont. And nowhere is this more true than in Book II. Herodotus calls the labyrinth of the twelve kings "a wonder past all words," and the pyramids "greater than words can tell" -though the pyramids are not as great as the labyrinth. The Lake of King Moeris is "an even greater marvel" than the labyrinth. (2.149) Herodotus marvels at monuments, but also customs: "There are so many matter at which I marvel among the Egyptians, but certainly one is whence they got the name of the Linus song. It is clear that they have sung it forever." (2.79) The thing which is marveled at is greater than words can tell or beyond description; and yet Herodotus describes all such marvelous things in great detail, often in the greatest detail and with great pleasure. Herodotus enjoys sharing the marvelous things; and "Egypt has more wonders in it than any country in the world and more that are beyond description than anywhere else." Then he says, " That is wf?y I will sqy more about it." [my italics] Egypt is the most unspeakable country in the whole world, and that is why Herodotus speaks about it at such length. That which can't be captured by stories is the very subject of Herodotus' story. That which is worthy of setting down and putting forth in writing is immune to preservation. How can this be so? Consider the opening of the HistorieJ. 107 �ENERGEL-\ I, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, am here setting forth my history, that time may not draw the color from what man has brought into being, nor those great and wonderful deeds, manifested by both Greeks and barbarians, fail of their report, and, together with all this, the reason why they fought one another. (1.1) Herodotus sets forth a history about what man has brought into being and what the Greeks and barbarians in their war brought into being. The Greeks are men and the barbarians are men, and the Egyptians are barbarians, and so also men. Herodotus sets out to tell about those things brought into being, the great and the wonderful, the notable, in short, the marvelous. This is worth repeating, even telling redundantly in the Egyptian manner: This person, I, Herodotus, tells a story about man-things which defy telling and also. those Greek and barbarian things which defy telling. Let us separate the marvelous and the unspeakable. Here are some of the marvelous things of the Egyptians which defy telling: Egyptian women piss standing up; Egyptian men shave close, except when grieving when they let their beards grow long; Egyptians knead dough with their feet. (2.36) How is the trivial also marvelous? The concept of marvelous or wondrous embraces much more than just monuments and great deeds. Here is why shaving is marvelous: it points to something unspeakable. The marvelous things point to the unspeakable,· the visible and manifest light up the hidden and true. Of course these particular things (pissing, etc.) are recorded in the list of contraries, those things which the Egyptian people do contrary (or sometimes opposite) to most others. So are these perhaps marvelous only in a limited sense? On the contrary, they are as marvelous as the great cities: I will go forward in my account, covering alike the small and great cities of mankind. For of those that were great in earlier times most have now become small, and those that were great in my time were small in my time before. Since, then, I know that man's good fortune never abides in the same place, I will make mention of both alike. (1.5) 108 THORPE Cities grow smaller, cities grow larger, and good fortune moves and abides in neither. Good fortune endures through time, though it certainly takes on different forms-so too pissing, dealing with one's facial hair, and making food can take on different forms, or be done in different ways. The fact that Egyptian men grow out their beards when they grieve is not important in itself, but it says something about grief and how men change their appearance in remembrance of the dead. Herodotus records that when wealthy Egyptians eat in social gatherings, "there is a man who carries around the likeness of a dead man in a coffin." This man says to the guests: "Look upon him, drink and enjoy yourself; for even you shall be as such when you are dead." (2.78) The dead remind Egyptian men to take hold of their lives fully; but Egyptian men remember the dead by letting go of themselves, by letting their beards grow unchecked. These thoughts are compounded in the act of mourning. Herodotus notes that an Egyptian man in grief over a loved one is best consoled by looking upon the · loved one's mummified body;gneve no more, but live,foryou shall be as me, remembered. In Egypt, the dead and the living speak to each other. And while we do not, as readers, share in these particular customs, we see through Herodotus how sorrow, memory and joy belong together. T he thoroughgoing integrity of Egyptian customs, so concretely different from our own, somehow belies our unspeakable, spiritual kinship with them. This same kinship can be broached and better articulated by witnessing its expressions, the forms it takes in the world-attentiveness can inspire compassion. From investigating the marvelous it is possible to become wise about the unspeakable. Herodotus went to Egypt and saw and heard marvelous things, through them realizing better the unspeakable. Myths, monuments, customs, histories, personal observations-all of these appear in Book II because they are marvelous, they all revelatory of unspeakable things, aids to wisdom. The relevance of Book II is thus twofold. On the one hand, Book II is a unity unto itself, a systematic exposition of what is worthy of wondering over in Egypt and in Egyptian customs and history. Its presence in the Histories requires no further justifi.ca109 �T ENERGEIA ti.on, except for those with a surfeit of wisdom already. On the other hand, Book II is a component in the rest of the Histories, one of several in-depth investigations into barbarian peoples who are historically and culturally related. The central story line of the Histories (the Persian war), brings together all of the barbarians, including the Egyptians, and shows them doing great and wonderful deeds. Herodotus does not intend to chronicle the Persian war, where chronos is the key idea. Rather, he exhibits people acting gloriously, ignobly, vainly, or in any number of ways, but always marvelously, bringing into being things worth recording. Book II is purposefully arranged, both internally and with regard to the rest of the Histories; the Histories are wisdom texts of the highest order; and, finally, I utter a truth which risks becoming meaningless ~ the light of its own glaring selfevidence: Herodotus is wise. 110 Notes: 1. I am highly indebted to Seth Benardete's Herodotean Inquiries. Although I find Bernadete's treatment of Book II inspiring, for the most part I disagree him, especially concerning Book II's structure. Bernadette assumes the traditional four-part division in content, whereas I envision a three part division defined by kinds of evidence: non-historical findings; single-sourced historical findings; inter-sourced historical findings. See Benardete; Herodotean Inquiries; St. Augustine's Press 1999. 2. This quote recalls the opening story of Book II: '~-\s he came constantly and gave careful heed to the matter, this word was constantly with them." Both quotes emphasize continual, careful attentiveness. 3. See Green's interesting footnotes (p.153-5) on what Herodotus means by a god's name: ''What he does mean is the complex of personality referred to broadly as the god's name." 4. See 2.113 through 2.120 for Herodotus' discussion of Helen. 5. Homer; The Oqyssry, translated by Robert Fitgerald; Everyman's Library 1992; note that all character spellings follow Fitzgerald, except "Menelaus," which follows Green's spelling as he presents it in the HistorieJ, lines 3 70-630 of Book IV of the Odyssey contain 1vfenelaus' story to Telemakhos. 6. Homer; The Iliad, also translated by Fitzgerald; Everyman's Library 1992; 28992 of Book VI 7. The following is a quick paraphrase of Nestor's story starting on Book III, line 140, of the Oqyssry. 111 ��Energeia St. John's College � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>Energeia</em> Description An account of the resource <em>Energeia</em> is a non-profit, student magazine, which is published once a year and distributed among students, faculty, alumni, and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis.  Staff welcome submissions from all members of the community -- essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context energeia Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Heyneman, Peter (Editor) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. 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I I �Untitled............................................................................................ ..... front cover Ann-Therese Gardner Hallwqy, Arkansas................................... .............................................................. 4 ENERGEIA STAFF Sara White Wilson The Machine: Pascal's Path to Salvation ................................................................... 5 Michelle Paine Editor: Kathleen Kelley Like the humbling sunsets of the southwest....................................................... 21 ] essica Alexander Junior Editor: Assistant Editors: Sandeep Shekhar Das Aditya Adhikari Justin Castle Wilson Dunlavey Isaac Smith Abigail Vines Truck VII.......................................................... .. ............................................... .22 Kathryn Bush Telling the lf7hole Truth....................................................................................... 23 Daniel Harrell Exit Railwqy..................................................................... ······ ········ ··········· ·· ···· ·· .. 46 Samantha Buker On!J Brief!J Entertained.................................................................... ................... 47 Artwork Editor: Abigail Vines Joe Hyde Falling Sand.................................. .. ................................................ .. ...... ....... .... ..58 Publishing Advisor: Faculty Advisor: Andrew Ranson Daniel Harrell Cassie Sherman Just 'Cause Al Green Sing About It Don~ Make It True...... ............................. ... 59 Sandeep Shekhar Das Layout and Design: Cathy Keene Kathleen Kelley Although Tilted....................................................... .......... .... ................... ... ·· .. ·.. ·74 Casey Moore Af!Ything But Biblical. .........................................................................................76 C. Muscarella Thanks to: Chris Colby and the St. John's College Print Shop The Tyrant's Temperance: Plato's Charmides............................................... ......... 77 Eva Brann Windmill Farm, Oklahoma ................................................................................. 98 Sara White Wilson ust 3 ... ..... .... ............ ... ........... ... ........ .......... ......... ... ............. ............... back cover Cassie Sherman �ENERG EIA The Machine: Pascal's Path to Salvation Michelle Paine 'Order.' A letter of exhortation to a friend, to induce him to seek. He will reply: 'But what good will seeking do me? Nothing comes of it.' Answer: 'Do not despair.' Then he in turn would say that he would be happy to find some light, but according to religion itself it would do him no good even if he did thus believe, and so he would just as soon not look. Answer: The Machine. ... 11 jl • -Blaise Pascal, Pensees, no. 5 1 ,. 11 'Order.' After the letter urging men to seek God, write the letter about removing obstacles, that is the argument about the Machine, how to prepare it and how to use reason for the search. ~ -Blaise Pascal, Pensees, no. 11 Hallway Tenessee Sara White Wilson "Answer: the Machine." A tiny phrase which, if understood, offers a solution to one of the most distressing questions in theology: how can man, with all of his conflicting urges, approach and reliably achieve a state of faith? The above quotes are the only two instances in the Pensees in which Pascal specifically refers to this mysterious Machine. The reader is then obliged to determine from the rest of the work what sort of answer Pascal is providing. This pursuit is pivotal, since a thorough understanding of Pascal's Christianity 1 4 this and all subsequent numberings are according to the Lafuma edition. 5 �ENERGElA hinges on an understanding of this concept. It is important to consider first the audience for whom Pascal is writing the Pensees, and his purpose for doing so. The pensees themselves are merely the notes for an extensive, unfinished "Defense of Christianity."2 The book is not meant to enlighten simple believers as to the nature of their faith ' nor is it a mere presentation of Pascal's own beliefs. It is entirely evangelical in nature, an uncompromising and polemic answer to those who would attack both the need for faith itself and Christianity as a fulfillment of that need. Pascal's intention is to convert, first by convincing his audience that man has an inescapable need for God, and then by proving that Christianity is the only religion in which that need can be fully met. He has chosen for his intentions the most difficult of targets-those who imagine that they have reasoned their way out of a. need for salvation. The dependency of his audience on reason requires Pascal to use that very faculty in his attempt at conversion. This puts him into a complex situation, wherein he must use reason's own methods to persuade it that it must abandon itself. The fruit of his endeavor is a view of human nature, faith and Christianity that is complicated, subtle, and entirely unique. In order even to begin his attempt, Pascal must first convince his audience to participate in the endeavor; in other words, he must "induce [them] to seek." 3 He does this by describing the ridiculous circumstances of their current condition. 'Diversion.' From childhood on men are made responsible for the care of their honour, their property, their friends, and even of the property and honour of their friends; they are burdened with duties, language-training and exercises, and given to understand that they can never be happy unless their health, their honour, their fortune ~ Krailsheimer, A.J. 'Introduction,' Pascal 's Pensees. London: Penguin Books, 1995 . 3 No. 5 6 PAINE and those of their friends are in good shape, and that it needs only one thing to go wrong to m ake them unhappy. So they are given responsibilities and duties which haras s them from the first moment of each day. You would only have to take away all their cares, and then they would see themselves and think about what they are, where they come from and where they are going. That is why men cannot be too much occupied or distracted, and that is why, when they have been given so many things to do, if they have some time off they are advised to spend it on diversion and sport, and always to keep themselves fully occupied. How hollow and foul is the heart of man!-1 • + t In this tactic Pascal is relying on the universality of the human experience. Very few men could deny that they spend their days in such a state; a cursory look at the society around them would confirm the description. Moreover, they could not deny the unease and anxiety which Pascal claims appears when diversion is taken away: " . . . for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion." 5 Though he has forced his audience to admit to this state of restlessness by virtue of their very humanity, Pascal has not yet engendered in them a need to seek salvation per se. The vague unease that accompanies lack of diversion is at this point only an amorphous anxiety, an undefined suspicion of a more deeply rooted despair. In order to bring his reader to God, Pascal must force him to explore in detail the foundations of this unnamed dread. To accomplish this, Pascal compels his now-depressed reader to face another situation completely undeniable to reason: man's proportion, or rather disproportion, to the universe around him. For, after all, what is man in nature? A nothing compared to the infinite, a whole compared to the nothing, a middle point between all and nothing, infinitely remote from an • I t "'No. 139 5 No. 36 7 �ENERGEIA PAINE understanding of the two extremes; the end of things and their principles are unattainably hidden from him in impenetrable secrecy. 6 of the universe and that his precious power of comprehension has very little to which it can apply itself and nearly nothing on which it can build. Pascal cannot leave his audience in this state, however. He has proven only that man is wretched and useless; it remains to be shown that he is at all worthy of the salvation that Pascal urges him to pursue. The way in which Pascal elicits this worth from the depths of man's dejection is one of the most delicate and beautiful processes in the argument. In this Pensee, Pascal not only exposes man's insignificance as a finite being against the infinite stretch of the universe; he also reveals the utter inability of man's prize possession, reason, to even address the interminable reaches surrounding him. Thus begins his subtle manipulation of this uniquely human faculty. He appeals to the reader's reason here specifically to show how it is undermined by the very circumstances of its existence: Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this. Thus all our dignity c9nsists in thought. It is on thought that we must depend for our recovery, not on space and time, which we could never fill. Let us then strive to think well; that is the basic principle of morality. 8 Let us then realize our limitations. We are something and we are not everything. Such being as we have conceals from us the knowledge of first principles, which arise from nothingness, and the smallness of our being hides infinity from our sight ... Such is our true state. That is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge or absolute ignorance. We are floating in a medium of vast extent, always drifting uncertainly, blown to and fro; whenever we think we have a fixed point to which we can cling and make fast, it shifts and leaves us behind; if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips away, and flees eternally before us. Nothing stands still for us. This is our natural state and yet the state most contrary to our inclinations. We burn with desire to find a firm footing, an ultimate, lasting base on which to build a tower rising up to infinity, but our whole foundation cracks and the earth opens up into the depths of the abyss. 7 v It seems at this point that Pascal has reduced man to a rather dismal condition. The reader must now admit that he is truly a wretched and dejected creature: he spends the majority of his life frantically pursuing petty diversion; when he does force himself to sit still, he is assaulted by persistent ennui and anxiety; and when he finally turns his thoughts to the cause of his condition, he finds that he all but disappears in the scope 6 7 8 No. 199 No. 199 • The pensee itself is deceptively simple .. .it masks a breathtakingly subtle and complex move. In little more than one hundred words, Pascal has taken the tortuous ordeal to which he has just subjected his reader-from the first suspicions of foolishness to the terrifying humiliation in the face of infinity-and turned the entire process into the redeeming glory of man. Even more astoundingly, the very faculty that he had deemed nearly worthless in the previous pensee is suddenly the sole instrument of this redemption. Pascal is not, however, speaking of a complete redemption here. Even though man is more "noble" than the universe when he realizes its advantage over him, the advantage nonetheless exists. And although our dignity lies in knowing our terrifying situation, the concept is no less, and perhaps is much more, distressing as a consequence. 8 No. 200 9 �PAINE ENERGElA The admission of his dual nature does not bring about · harmony and balance in man; in fact, it throws his soul into a more acute state of conflict and confusion than ever. The fact that the knowledge of his condition creates in him such misery raises in him the suspicion that he is not altogether meant for this state. Pascal compares it to the misery of a deposed king, for "who indeed would think himself unhappy not to be king except one dispossessed?" 9 It is not just a state of wretchedness, it is a state of humiliation, and the only redeeming faculty which he possesses cannot heal him; it can only reveal the wound. He must seek his salvation elsewhere, yet the only tool at his disposal is that vital but seemingly useless faculty ... reason. Since reason, besides being the seat of man's dignity, is also his only path toward salvation, it is imperative to understand exactly what Pascal means when he refers to it. The nature of knowledge and the ways in which man achieves it are rather complicated areas for Pascal. He first must acknowledge the fact that the thinking capacity manifests itself in different, almost contradictory, ways. 'Difference between the mathematical and the intuitive mind.' In the one principles are obvious, but remote from ordinary usage, so that from want of practice we have difficulty turning our heads that way; but once we do turn our heads the principles can be fully seen; and it would take a thoroughly unsound mind to draw false conclusions from principles so patent that they can hardly be missed. But, with the intuitive mind, the principles are in ordinary usage and there for all to see. There is no need to turn our heads, or strain ourselves: it is a question of good sight, but it must be good; for the principles are so intricate and numerous that it is impossible not to miss some. Now the omission of one principle can lead to error, and so one needs very clear sight because to see all the principles as well as an accurate mind to avoid drawing false conclusions from known principles. 10 9 10 No. 117 No. 512 10 Pascal has, in fact, appealed to both minds in his argument thus far. In proving man's disproportion to the universe, he relies on an entirely mathematical process. The principle of man's finitude in an infinite universe is obvious; all that is needed is a turning of one's mind towards this solid but unfamiliar principle, and the realization of man's weakness necessarily follows. The understanding of man's greatness embodied in this weakness, however, relies on the intuitive mind. There is nothing mathematically obvious in the idea of weakness containing greatness, or vice versa. Yet the principle is somehow recognizable to us ... no mental stretching or logical wrangling is needed to comprehend it. It does, however, require a very delicate intellectual balancing act: if one focuses too much on either the weakness or the greatness involved, the principle slips from view. Both of the methods of knowledge set forth by Pascal so far are dependent on another, more basic form of comprehension. Though mathematical and intuitive minds rely on different sets of principles, each must have those principles at the start; the principles cannot be acquired by the same method for which they are the basis. Pascal attributes this mysterious but fundamental knowledge of principles to a human faculty that is equally fundamental and mysterious: We know truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them ... For knowledge of first principles, like space, time, motion, number, are as solid as any derived through reason, and it is on such knowledge, coming from the heart and instinct, that reason has to depend and base all its arguments... Principles are felt, propositions proved, and both with certainty though by different means. It is just as pointless and absurd for reason to demand proof of first principles from the heart before agreeing to accept them as it would be absurd for the heart to demand an intuition of all the propositions demonstrated by reason before agreeing to accept them. 11 + • 11 No. 110 11 �PAINE ENERGEIA Though the heart and reason both provide certainty, Pas- · cal by far prefers the knowledge given by the heart. Reason, while it is accurate insofar as it is applied to a proper subject and used with consistency, is constantly distracted by the senses or sabotaged by the imagination. And, as he has shown, its scope is severely limited. Our inescapable dependence on it frustrates him: ''Would to God ... that we never needed it and knew everything by instinct and feeling! But nature has r.efused us this blessing, and has instead given us only very little knowledge of this kind; all other knowledge can be acquired only by reasoning." The heart, on the other hand, can never err in its certainty nor is anything, as Pascal will soon show, beyond its scope. Pascal has used reason in every step of his argument so far. He has used it mathematically to prove its own limits, and thus our own weakness. He has used it intuitively to show the worth of that same knowledge, and thus our own greatness. He has used it to show the need for a reconciliation of this contradiction. But ahead of him lies the hardest task of all: having revealed the necessity of salvation and having urged man to seek God, Pascal must convince reason, that seat of all of our dignity and worth, to disqualify itself from this highest and most vital pursuit. His radical approach to this problem and his innovative, if controversial, solution are contained in the crown-jewel of the Pensees-N o. 418, "The Wager." ... Let us now speak according to our natural lights. If there is a God, he is infinitely beyond our comprehension, since, being indivisible and without limits, he bears no relation to us. We are therefore incapable of knowing either what he is or whether he is. That being so, who would dare to attempt an answer to the question? Certainly not we, who bear no relation to him. Who then will condemn Christians for being unable to give rational grounds for their belief, professing as they do a religion for which they cannot give rational grounds? They declare that it is a folly, "stultitiam," in expounding it 12 to the world, and then you complain that they do not prove it. If they did prove it they would not be keeping their word. It is by being without proof that they show that they are not without sense. 'Yes, but although that excuses those who offer their religion as such, and absolves them from the criticism of producing it without rational grounds, it does not absolve those who accept it.' Let us then examine this point, and let us say: 'Either God is or he is not." But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot decide this question. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails. How will you wager? Reason cannot make you chose either, reason cannot prove either wrong ... Pascal has started his wager argument by essentially leveling the playing field. He has neutralized his audience's potential protests against religion by pointing out that, while faith in God may not be a more reasonable choice than other options, it is certainly not a less reasonable one. In fact, reason could not possibly direct the choice towards one direction or the other. Pascal knows, however, that he cannot abandon reason entirely and still achieve his aim. He has already asserted that there are only two ways in which a man can decide something with any certainty: the answer can be revealed through the unquestionable principles of the heart, or it can be reached through the careful application of reason. While the heart is the more desirable of the two options, it cannot choose its topics; if it does not determine a question naturally, it can only be made to do so by supernatural force. "That is why those to whom God has given religious faith by moving their hearts are very fortunate ... but to those who do not have it we can only give such faith through reasoning, until God gives it by moving their heart." 12 Pascal seems to be stuck at this point. His entire purpose in writing the Pensees has been to convince the unb eliever to 13 �PAJNE ENERGEIA turn to faith. His only viable avenue, by his own argument, is reason; however, the very nature of his goal precludes reason as deciding factor. What could he possibly do to untie himself from this knot? He could change the question. This is precisely what he does when he introduces the idea of the wager. No longer is the iss ue whether or not there is a God, but whether or not it is worthwhile to think that there is a God. It is a mathematical question, a game of odds, completely and undeniably within the realm of reason. It seems a sneaky move, and Pascal anticipates the objection: 0 ... Do not condemn then as wrong those who have made a choice, for you know nothing about it. 'No, but I will condemn them not for having made this particular choice, but any choice, for, although the one.who calls heads and the other one are equally at fault, the fact is they are both at fault: the right thing is not to wager at all.' Yes, but you must wager. There is no choice, you are already committed ... Indeed, if the audience has participated in the process this far, they have to admit that they are, in fact, committed. Having been brought to the realization of their contradictory nature, they cannot deny their need for reconciliation-they must pursue it. And having been offered God as an option, they cannot escape the fact that they must decide on him one way or another. The game is set, and reason is the rule. . . .Which will you choose then? Let us see: since a choice must be made, let us see which offers you the least interest. You have two things to lose: the true and the good; and two things to stake: your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to avoid: error and wretchedness. Since you must necessarily choose, your reason is no more affronted by choosing one rather than the other. That is one point cleared up. But your happiness? Let us weigh up the gain and the loss involved in calling heads that God exists. Let us assess the two cases: if you win you win everything, if 14 you lose you lose nothing. Do not hesitate then: wager that he does exist. 'That is wonderful. Yes I must wager, but perhaps I am wagering too much .. . " Here Pascal has given the reader an overview of the premises of the situation. The game is a coin toss: two options (heads, that God exists; tails, that he doesn't) with equal odds. The bet is that one of these options contains the true and the good and the other does not. You bring to the pot your two most prized possessions, reason and will, the very things which you must use to determine your choice. Reason dictates that you cannot choose the irrational; the will forbids the undesirable. Since it has already been shown that reason cannot prove either choice more or less rational than the other, there only remains to show which can offer the most happiness. If one chooses tails, no happiness is lost in losing nor is any gained in winning. No happiness is lost in losing if one chooses heads, either, but infinite happiness is gained in winning. The most desirable option, then, is clear. And what of the misgiving concerning magnitude of the risk? It is certainly an understandable one. If one chooses God, one must hand over those two cherished possessions, reason and will, in favor of faith and obedience. It seems like an enormous wager, to give up the only things that give us a sense of happiness and worth in this lifetime for a 50 / 50 chance of reward. If one chooses tails, however, no such submission is required; reason and will remain safely in our hands, though the hope of reward disappears . This seems to be a real dilemma. When the bet is considered in light of the reward alone, heads is clearly the better option. When it is viewed only in the light of what's at stake, tails is more desirable. Pascal solves this predicament by once again relying on proportion. ... Let us see: since there is an equal chance of gain and loss, if you stood to win only two lives for the one you could still wager, but supposing you stood to win three? You would have to play (since you must necessarily 15 �PAINE ENERGEIA play) and it wou1_? be unwise of you, once you are obliged to play, not to risk your life in order to win three lives at a game in which there is an equal chance of losing and winning ... But here there is an infinity of infinitely happy life to be won, one chance of winning against a finite number of chances oflosing, and what you are staking is finite. That leaves no choice; wherever there is infinity and where there are not infinite chances oflosing against that of winning, there is no room for hesitation, you must give everything. Since you are obliged to play, you must be renouncing re~son if you hoard your life rather that risk it for an in.finite gain, just as likely to occur as a loss amounting to nothing . .. Thus our argument carries infinite weight, when the stakes are finite in a game where there are even chances of winning and losing and an infinite prize to be won. This is conclusive and if men are capable of any truth this is it ... And so the game is up; the proof is complete. The mathematical mind has no choice but to admit the truth of this argument. The intuitive mind, when forced to confront the principles at hand, cannot deny it either. In a game of equal chances, when one choice offers infinite.reward at finite risk and the other offers no reward at no risk, there is only one desirable and rational move. The reader is forced to watch helplessly as his reason shuts the door on itself. God it must be. While this seems like a crowning moment for Pascal, his task is not yet fulfilled. He must confront one more objection. . . . 'Yes, but my hands are tied and my lips are sealed; I am being forced to wager and I am not free; I am being held fast and I am so made that I cannot believe. What do you want me to do then?'-'That is true, but at least get it into your head that, if you are unable to believe, it is because of your passions, since reason impels you to believe and yet you cannot do so ... Pascal cannot pretend that convincing a man's reason through such an argument engenders the sort of unwavering 16 faith required for Christian salvation. A man could no more be expected to choose to believe in God than to choose to believe the sky is green, no matter how appealing the reward for doing so. Pascal has not given the doubting man faith through the wager; he has simply shown that it is not unreasonable (indeed, it is decidedly rational) to desire such a faith. How, then, does he propose that one achieve this elusive end? ... [L]eam from those who were once bound like you and who now wager all they have. These are people who know the road you wish to follow, who have been cured of the affliction of which you wish to be cured: follow the way by which they began. They behaved just as if they did believe, taking holy water, having masses said, and so on. That will make you believe quite naturally, and will make you more docile.' It seems that we have finally entered the world of the mysterious "Machine." Even though reason has been convinced to submit both itself and the will to God, the process is not so simple. Though reason in man is often fickle and undependable, nothing is more foreign to him than its complete abandonment. It is his only source of pride; its desertion would leave man hardly better than the beasts. This, in fact, is exactly what Pascal claims must happen. Interestingly enough, the word that he chooses to express man's becoming docile ("abetir") has its roots in the word for beast ("bete"). Even so, Pascal does not think this is an unnatural process for man to undertake . For we must make no mistake about ourselves: we are as much automaton as mind ... [H]abit provides the strongest proofs and those that are most believed. It inclines the automaton, which leads the mind unconsciously along with it. Who ever proved that it will dawn tomorrow, and that we shall die? And which is more widely believed? It is, then, habit that convinces us and makes so many Christians ... . In short, we must resort to habit once the mind has seen where the truth lies, in order to steep and stain 17 �ENERGEIA ourselves in that }Jelief which constantly eludes us. PAINE 13 He seems to be making a startling and somewhat distressing claim here. After acknowledging reason as our only nobility and after using it to such glorious avail, must we really admit that in its nature it has always been a slave to as base a faculty as habit? A simple look at ourselves will tell us that this is the case. The etymology of the word "habit" (from the Latin habere, "to have") implies that it is fundamentally a power of possession. One could argue that it is not our only power of possession; in fact, knowledge can only ever be possessed through reason, never through habit. While this is true, we are not looking for knowledge in this instance; the only knowledge we could possess concerning this situation was achieved during the wager. We are looking for "belief," that mysterious state in which we act with certainty concerning something which reason could never prove. Ordinarily, our rationality would show this behavior to be unwise, but that poor, bruised faculty has been forced to admit that, in this instance, it is required. In order to achieve this state now, we must examine how we have achieved it in all of those "unwise" circumstances. When we do investigate those situations, we find that they arise from a sort of trust brought about by consistent results to certain expectations. In the circumstances in which we are habituated unconsciously, we are first exposed to the consistencies, and as a consequence our expectations develop. With every fulfillment of them the expectations become stronger, so that eventually they are at least as powerful as rational certainty. The fact that this takes place, as it undeniably does, is what leads Pascal to label man as much machine as mind. In the cases where we are responsible for habituating ourselves, however, the process is slightly different. Since there is a lack of consistent outside phenomena to begin the habituation for us, we must rely on our reason to start the Machine by convincing us to provide the phenomena ourselves. This is exactly the situation in which we find ourselves concerning faith, and it is the reason that the wager is so important to Pascal's system. This first step relies heavily on the participation of the will, which is why the wager has to prove itself both rational and desirable. Once the reason has deemed a certain habituation acceptable, the will sets itself on that course. In this case, the man seeking faith as directed by his reason wills himself to follow the actions of the .truly faithful. If the will is steady and provides consistent phenomena, that is, if the man diligently acts as if he were faithful, he begins to expect himself to be faithful, and after a while is convinced that he is. The act of faith becomes faith itself. If this sounds strangely cold and divorced from divinity, it is because Pascal is not considering faith here as any sort of spiritual relationship between man and God. Faith for Pascal is merely the arena in which this relationship can take place. It is not salvation itself, but it is the work that must be done beforehand; it is the submission of pride and passion, the slow release of the heart from the bonds of vanity so that God in his mercy and at his choosing can turn it towards himself, "without which faith is only human and useless for salvation." 14 And so it seems we have found the Answer. When man finally humbles his reason and allows himself to be habituated into the manners of true believers, the "Machine" begins its slow but certain work on his soul. Fleeing becomes seeking, fear becomes hope, humility becomes dignity, and the desperate self-love which so hardened his heart against God dissolves in the desire for divine love. If this process is undertaken sincerely and diligently, faith will root itself and salvation is sure to follow. The Pensees will have achieved its purpose. Pascal's system is not appealing to everyone, nor does it address some of the other obstacles that face those searching for faith, such as the apparent weakness of the will in this arena. The Pensees do, however, provide even the most ardent 13 14 No. 821 18 No. 821 19 �ENERGEIA rationalist with a blueprint for escaping his own reasoned misery and rendering himself open to and perhaps even worthy of salvation. It is a work of immense scope, subtle method, and radical vision-a provoking and masterful appeal from a brilliant man of faith to the lost but seeking scholar. If my words please you and seem cogent, you must know that they come from a man who went down upon his knees before and after to pray this infinite and indivisible being, to whom he submits his own, that he might bring your being also to submit to him for your own good and for his glory; and that strength might thus be reconciled with lowliness. 15 15 No. 418 20 Like the humbling sunsets of the southwest ... Jessica Alexander ... the memory set my limbs to life, unstrung my knees. Dream life: silver buildings surpass a small sky; the streets are lined with all I've ever known and that is all, a small world where hope and fear fail to hide in time's broad horizon. Waking life: forgotten forms, vague outlines fading like smoke in space. The memory unstrung my knees, like the great humbling sunset of a western sky. I am nothing when I stand on the brink of each abyss. Only the compression of a fantastic illusion marks the beating of a violent heart, as music pulls the pulse beyond our skin and thumps out a heartless rhythm-we leave ourselves to lend it life. Something larger than a life boldly straps us to its curve, gently bends us to its motion. Resist this and you will be broken. Beneath an unobstructed sky-the great dome-the only end is my vision. So, we pulled over on the side of the highway: the earth was a sheet of ice; the snow played tricks on our eyes. We stopped to see if the world would curve before our vision blurred. The sky surpassed every abysmal conception; it unmasked imagination and hung it for fraudulence. Still we failed to see everything stretched endlessly. Shivering, feet frozen to the shoulder, a second, a minute, an hour-I need more than time! On the edge of the mountain a great wind surged through us, everything like Arizona where the roads bend beneath the horizon, the endless stretch of telephone poles and wires, but even then the world appeared to bend so it could come back again ... not like that sunset, not like this memory, where space has no curve or division and all I see is a beginning fade into the distance. 21 �ENERGEIA Telling the Whole Truth 1 Daniel Harrell Truck VII Kathryn Bush Part One Aristotle is known for saying some remarkably obvious things. Whatever is oily is burnable; whatever gives way is crushable; whatever gets cut is sliceable. These kinds of obvious truth, so obvious as to seem less than the whole truth, were once satirized-by someone French, I think. Whatever makes us sleepy-like this pill-causes sleep in having a soporific power inside. As far as I can tell, Aristotle would be just as willing to say that as he was to say what he said. Willing, that is, if he thought he needed any more examples of what he called dunamis, a thought about things best conceived along the line of what makes something dynamic rather than static. Dunamis is that feature in things we mean when we say something has a capacity, a capability, a force, a power, a potential, a potency. If Aristotle were to speak of a sleeping pill's potency, however, he might have gone on, as he usually does, to tell an equally obvious truth about the person who took that pill and was soon heard snoring in bed. Whatever is made sleepy by soporific things, rather than hyper or comatose, has the power to be put to sleep. So it holds for the complements in the first three cases, and indeed in all such cases. There are things in the world besides, but also in a sense beside, the burnable, the crushable, and the sliceable; things having the power to burn, crush, and cut. And when nothing in the world stands between the two, something in the world actually happens. And when it does a kind of work gets done. Where there were once two 1 Delivered as a Summer Lecture at the Annapolis campus of the College on July 2, 2002. 22 23 �ENERGEIA things, one able to act and another to be acted upon, there is now one difference-making event, going to work in the world-whether it be .burning, or crushing, or cutting, or sleeping-even for satirists who speak French. If this is roughly what Aristotle would go on to say in saying such obvious things, we can perhaps see something tellingly closer to the whole truth in the trifling truths he tells. Let's suppose we put what Aristotle meant by potency into an answer we might give to a question we might ask. What would that question be? Satirists will think it was one like this: why do sleeping pills cause sleep?-and then dismiss talk of soporific power, along with Aristotle himself, without a second thought. So will all of us if we think Aristotle's idea of potency is meant to explain the world and fall so laughably short of it; as if a word like "foldability" could ever tell how a paper bag can be folded, or "straightliness" or "stiffhood" could ever tell how a table can't. The answers will surely be found not in empty words but rather in the respective fields, whatever their actual names, of paperbagology and table-etics, accounting for the arts of paperbagestry and tablecraft. The answers, that is, are found in domains of skill surely below Aristotle's range of concern. Any such questions about the potencies in particular things can't be the kind of question Aristotle thought potency itself was the answer to. And to think they were would be to take each example of potency for all that potency means. If he tells so many obvious truths about the potencies in things to illustrate what he means by potenry as such, then the real question on Aristotle's mind must have been something on so large a scale as this: why does anything in the world happen at all? What must the world be like to be the kind of place where things don't exist alone and inert, one after one, but rather, in a sense, side by side, in actual, manifold, and even difference-making relations, where genuine ventures are possible, and what might loosely be called happenings are actual? Not just happenings like burning, crushing, cutting, or sleeping, but even happenings that go on all the time unnoticed? 24 BARRELL Happenings such as standing, sitting, leaning-even just being, as at least Aristotle himself would have us think? Happenings, in fact, on such a scale to include everything in the world there is, if there is nothing all alone by itself? What is the one feature, or factor, that any world must possess to be a whole world of happenings everywhere we look? Rather than a different kind of single world in which again there might be any definite number of things, one after one after one, but where no two such things have the power ever to be in any relation, and nothing, as a consequence, ever happens? Aristotle's answer? Potency. Any world where things can happen at all must be a world with potency. A world that doesn't begin as a spatial whole and then work ever inward but instead begins in actual places that then work ever outward. A world that works, in short, from the inside out, and therefore works in a number of ways. A world with an interior first and an exterior next, rendering both sides necessarily manifold. A world that begins at a certain depth and goes to its end unavoidably divided and differentiated, rather than remaining everywhere simple and entirely on the surface. A world that cannot stand all there, all at once, given where it stands at the start, which makes it a world that cannot stand in some wholesale way of anything happening at all, while ensuring that anything which does happen cannot be some single, ongoing concern. A world in which anything happening means a number of things do. In other words-a world with definite beings, in particular places, in specific forms of relatedness, possessing certain powers by which these same definite beings can exert themselves together in certain manifest forms of work. A world much like ours. Aristotle goes on to make certain distinctions that refine and develop this idea of potenry. But it can become easy to overlook how simply remarkable a first thought it is about how the world finally is. Of any potent world, this one idea 25 �ENERGEIA will implicitly capture the whole truth to be told. And this whole truth turns out to comprehend our world in ways we might not expect, rendering that world a less familiar place than we might have thought. In my lecture tonight I will discuss two such ways, deeply related, in which the world will grow less obvious the more potent it proves to be: the first having to do with what things are; the second having to do with what words are. Or more exactly-what words and things aren't. To summarize: in any world that works from the inside out, neither our words nor the things they name will be any more than abstractions from what there is to tell of that world in concrete truth. For in any potent world, in an important sense, there are no things. Everywhere you look, there is not a single thing to be found. We will be looking for things in a world that works from the inside out, rendering any so-called thing substantially more than simply a thing. For Aristotle, even to be at all is a kind of venture, a way of irrevocably going to work in the world. To be and remain being is not an all-at-once truth given by sight, but something more like an articulated fact for the mind, a state of affairs for the brain, a constituted truth for the head-and in the potent world itself a reality achieved,again from the inside out. Any so-called thing we see, in any potent world, is only there in having a power to face the inherent challenge to be something or risk becoming nothing. Which means that even in continuing to exist at all, it is working at holding together rather than giving up and falling apart. Perhaps encouraged by my rough use of ready-made words, we might have confined our conception of "happening" in such a world to a visible movement like cutting, and our conception of the "relatedness" implicated in such "happening" to a visible proximity like that between the scissors and paper involved in cutting. But the difference potency makes will be radical and absolute, and it compels Aristotle in his own thinking about potency to move dialectically from the obviousness of what moves to a kind of active surprise, akin to motion, to be 26 HARRELL discovered in what simply is-described in outline above. Our conception of "happening" in any world full of potency must be expanded beyond, say, cutting, to include what the scissors and paper are doing in remaining what they are in their own right, just as our conception of "relatedness" in such a world must be expanded beyond their proximity for cutting to include what is held together in the scissors and the paper in order for each to be what they are in being anything at all. What I just said is a mouthful, and perhaps a mouthful that fails to escape the idea of a thing convincingly enough to show how remarkable the very thought of potency really is. One reason why the idea of thing is so difficult to escape is again that we rely so much on our senses, and according to Aristotle take an especial delight in the eyes. In short, we love the shapely. But in any potent world, what it means to be cannot be seen, only appreciated. What we actually see is always in an important sense less than what we actually get: for what we see is again only what it actually is in working from the inside out-where the inside is necessarily unseen, and the outside is always more, in work, than simply the seen, making a difference in the world beyond mere visibility. The very obviousness of so-called things, then, ought to be a mark of a kind of obliviousness in the mind that keeps holding to the idea; a clue that we will be led by any notion of "thing" pure and simple awqy from the world rather than further into it; a sign that the sheer presence in things-what we might call their "thingishness" or "thingliness"-is, when called forth by the very invocation of thing itself, a way of locating the substantial in nothing more than an easily-formed, readily-handled abstraction of this presence. Thingishness vanishes into the work that something does in one direction, and into the power to do that work in the other. Potency turns even something as tangible, familiar, and easily pointed to as a shoe into a happening beyond indication which only a mouthful of words can tell. What we feel heel to toe is actually a difference-making instrumental work for the foot that moves, 27 �ENERGElA along with a difference-making adorning work for the foot that is seen, through an art-given power for work found in what, in turn, is a certain arrangement of actual parts-the aglet, the cuff, the eyelit, the eyelit tab, the heel, the insole, the instep, the lace, the shank, the sole, the upper, the vamp, and the welt2-which are each themselves actual in being ways of working as arranged parts of a shoe, which in turn betrays even further potencies for working as parts that reflect a further arrangement or composition of whatever further actual workings lie inside-which shall go nameless for reasons of ignorance and time. To use one more example: what we call a thing is, in any potent world, either as beneath our five senses as the actual difference in musicianship between the concert pianist and cocktail-bar performer when neither one is at the piano; or as beyond our five senses as this same actual difference in musicianship when both are playing, revealing the kind of distinction in skill that cannot .be simply heard, in what of necessity is separately heard. Even senses working overtime can't take everything in of anything in any potent world. But perhaps it's time I stop trying to dissolve the idea of a thing in so many words. Indeed, for the moment, I want less to convince you of any claim about how things stand with the world and more to show you what sentences can begin to sound like when we try tell a fundamental truth, as best as we can, about any potent world. They tend to become more involved the more they tell, and . almost insist on being put together, one after one, for the sake of elaborating what any one of them says rather than moving on to something else. They can become ever more difficult to follow, even when using few words not found in everyday speech-of which the only ones above were the names for the parts of a shoe. But this becomes a telling lapse, for these technical words are no more 2 Taken, with the exception of "lace", from "The Parts of a Shoe" in Marc McCuthcheon, Descriptio11ary. A Thematic Dictionary, 2d ed. (New York: Checkmark Books, 2000), 82. The subtitle of this volume is worth quoting: "The book for when you know what it is, but not what it's called." 28 HARRELL than exact identifications of the very parts of the happening shoe that the sentences meant to dissolve, descriptively, into happenings themselves. There seems a deep link between what we ordinarily call a "thing," and what we ordinarily call "jargon," suggesting that any difficulty in following what I said above is not simply different from the difficulty in understanding the meaning of certain words, but actually so contrary as to be a sign of a remarkable, unfamiliar fact: if our individual words make our sentences hard to grasp, we are likely trying tell a kind of half truth, under a simple conception of thing, about any potent world; while if it be the organization of the sentences themselves making for the difficulty, and each sentence in turn only sustains that difficulty, we are likely trying to tell a kind of whole truth about that very same world. And if there be nothing difficult to understand in either word or sentence, we are likely trying to tell no real truth at all. As we shall see, the simply clear will be too obviously true to be of any use in what can be told of a potent world. The power in the thought of a potent world, at any rate, lies in just how much of our usual ways of thinking about the world become inescapably figurative, and our usual ways of talking unavoidably metaphorical-to whatever extent these ways depend on any notion of thing. Even if a more exact expression of what there is in such a world fails to dissolve the very idea of thing in speech, it keeps that idea at a distance from all the thingly conceptions of the substantial we carry around in our heads and on our tongues(of which the largest such conception is likely that the whole of the world is obviously a whole of things, rather than, more puzzlingly, a whole of something, anything, else). But there I go again invoking the very idea of thing to dismiss it. And perhaps in my struggle lies a better way of expressing the distance that the very thought of a potent world will put between the idea of a thing and our thingly conceptions of the world. In any impotent world, the question of what a thing is can be answered in just the way so many of Socrates' 29 �ENERGEIA interlocutors will answer the what-is questions he will raise. All we need do is point to examples: what virtue is can be shown after a fashion by the example of a courageous man, or what the beautiful is by the example of a night-sky full of stars. In an impotent world, what a thing is amounts to no more than the kinds of thing there are. But in a potent world the question of what a thing is becomes exactly as distant from any answering examples as those examples of virtue or beauty remain from the question on Socrates' mind when he asks about the virtue and the beautiful in themselves. In an impotent world, in fact, what a thing is, is never any more than its examples; once potency is put into that world, what a thing is becomes inescapably a question, to which no such example is an adequate response. Part Two · I will now put this point in one final way. It will involve me in yet another mouthful, but I hope this mouthful, in which I attempt a kind of deduction, will provoke some reflection on just what our words might be for. The thought of a potent world, as it dissolves the very idea of thing in one way, dissolves the very idea of word in another. In any potent world, in an important sense, there are no words. Telling the whole truth about any potent world will force us to use something other than words. In any impotent world where there were words for things at all, the following collection would suffice: separate words for each thing there was, another set for each kind of thing there was, and a final collective term for each and every kind taken together-a word that corresponds exactly to the common English word "thing." The collection would thus be, in effect, a lexicon of names for what there was. They would each be an adequate answer to the question "what is a thing?" since in a world all there all at once, where what you saw was what you got, there would be no meaningful difference between the question "what is a thing?" and the question "what 30 HARRELL is this over here?" The question what is a thing? could never take any hold of its own, since there would be nothing in such a world to render any answer false, except, in a specified case, through a simple mistake of identification of what at bottom is still a thing. One could always be correct enough. Once we put potency into a world, its collection of words would at once be insufficient-for the moment, let us say by at least one word. This one word would be a separate answer to the question "what is a thing?" insofar as potency had rendered this question a different one about things than could ever be asked in an impotent world. "What is a thing?" would not mean "what is this over here?" but more a mouthful like this: "wry is this over here, in being what it is, anything at all?" Or: "What is it, about this over here, that makes it be something rather than nothing?" Or again: "What makes this over here be the thing that it is, rather than the nothing that it isn't?" All these mouthfuls would emerge out of the fact that now, in a potent world, what you see would always be less than what you got, anywhere you looked, since being a thing would now be something achieved, not given. And since the achievement would involve each thing working from the inside out to be a thing, one by one, this new word for "thing" would have to be distributive in its reference rather than collective. Which means the word "thing" itself could only be put to new use in an equivocal and confusing way. Yet any fabricated word-like "myxptlk" 3-would inevitably mislead, since the word we want is like "thing" in being a word .for things, not as a name for those things all at once, but rather as an address for each, one by one, in terms of what made each be the thing it was. And insofar as every specific word for things in our lexicon would only name each one, whether in number or kind, every such word would at best imp!J what we would want a 3 In our world, the capitalized "Myxptlk," along with a few other vowel-less variations all prefaced by "Mr.", is the proper name of an impish but potent villain of Superman's who hails from the Eighth Dimension. For readers of this lecture, the proper pronunciation of the name, roughly rendered, is "Mix-pi-til-ik." 31 �ENERGEIA separate word to address-, just as the word "shoe," pointing 't o this over here, only implies rather than addresses what it is that makes this over here into a thing by being a shoe, instead of, say, being brown or leather. What would be lacking in our lexicon, then, is a domain of words for things with a different purpose: to address rather than name, and thus to locate on the inside of things what is simply pointed to in each thing's name. Our lexicon wouldn't lack words in number, then, hut in kind. A book of no more than names, it would be lacking a power of reference we now need. But inventing this entire domain out of some whole-word cloth would again erase any sign of the inherent connection these words have to the words now in use. We would invent new words simply for the sake of putting our current words to a new kind of work. The difference potency has made to the world seems to be making a corresponding demand on our words. What we want is not the same words, or different words, but altered words. What our potent world seems to demand we do in telling of it, is not make new words up whole cloth, but devise some way of altering the fabric in the words we already have. We must think about how a word might be conceived as a different kind of whole in its syllabic sequence than simply the discreetly pronounceable; a whole that would make each word not simply one, but a one that also has a beginning and an end. We could then arrange letters into new patterns of pronounceable endings and beginnings for words that could make them into forms of address, thus multiplying our current lexicon functionally, rather than substantively. By this point, you might think I am belaboring and complicating the obvious with yet another mouthful of words. It's obvious what to do-stick a suffix on the word "thing" and make it more substantial-sounding, something like thingitude, thingicity, thingness, or, best of all, thinghood. All such alterations would name what it is that makes things be thingly, makes what's substantial be substantial. And so it would work 32 HARRELL for every other word in our lexicon, giving us initial answers to the new questions that have now taken hold. What is it about this over here that makes it be something rather than nothing? Shoehood. Or that over there? Scissorhood. Or this right here and now? Tutorhood and Lecturehood and Johnniehood. And so on for every last thing there is, remaining what it is by working at it in some particular way, even by itself being ever shoely, or scissorly, or tutorly, and ever ready in relation to its complements to scissorfy, shoeify, and tutorfy. All this new-fangled telling, in the power of a mere suffix. And in one way, these are the kinds of made-up words we want, and our lexicon will grow more comprehensive geometrically as our appreciation of any potent world becomes ever more discerning. Perhaps the one positive thing to notice about such coinages is the reason for their origin if the above genealogy is correct. They emerge not for the sake of identifying anything novel or newly noticed in the world, as the jargon in any technical lexicon does. They are rather meant to address a question about things that only arises when things become more than merely things: the question, again, of what it is that makes each such thing, in being the nameable thing it is, be a thing at all. The barbarity in coinages would not be like the vice of sophistication in jargon but more like the first blush of a newfound innocence, born of an impotence felt before a world freshly seen, where the entire collection of words in current use don't quite work any more, and get pressed into a service they'll never be quite fit for. This would be another sign for a possible fact I mentioned before-that any telling of whole truth about a potent world will render our sentences more difficult and involved; and if such sentences can ever be made less involved, any reducing will force a series of coinages to appear that only fold up the difficulty and hold it within. Any manifest coinages or apparent convolution in sentences would then be complementary signs that the telling of truth they convey is not growing ever more abstract, but becoming ever more concrete-signs that we are getting ever less thingly 33 �ENERGEIA in our telling the truth about things. But coinages do fold the difficulty up; they compress and nominalize what it seems only a sentence can expand to its proper length. In addressing a world that works from the inside out, these newly minted words work from the outside in. Any such minting is fated, being pressed into service as a single word, to do no more than address what there is in light of how it works-effectively rendering any such term more than a name by making it a name tied to context. We make our names more telling, but none of them really tells. With the power of the suffix, then, we can generate new telling words out of whatever names we have; but it also true we may come to believe we've now got all our answers about the world. Thus the resulting coinages, left on their own, threaten to drop us again into a world of laughably told truth in which .an all-too-ridiculous Aristotle is saying all-too-obvious things to be actually telling the whole truth-except of a world that only some medieval Scholastic in a cartoon could dream up. How things work will be explained by their possession of thinghood, giving them a power to thingify, which keeps them ever thingly, as illustrated by this piece of paper, which possesses paperhood, giving it a power to paperfy that keeps it ever paperly. But the reason we were looking for a word beyond "thing" was not to invent, through word-magic, the very answer to the question that a potent world made forever distant from any examples. Instead, we wanted to devise a word that addressed each thing in terms of what this now inescapable question is asking for. A coinage like "thinghood" doesn't explain what makes a thing a thing, any more than "paperhood" explains what makes paper paper. Or "tutorhood" a tutor. Rather, every such coinage gives a form of address beyond names for what it is, beyond presence, that makes each thing the thing it is. Each is meant to address what it is in the nameable things that needs to be more fully told, giving us an entrance into the way a thing stands-not an exit from it. Each one locates an 34 HARRELL answer rather than embodying it. A better way to understand how these coinages are meant to work in a locative form is to put them back into the question about a thing as follows: what is it about the way the world is, that makes shoehood a way it can stand? Or paperhood a way it can stand? Or scissorhood? Or tutorhood? Or finally thinghood itself? How must the furniture of the world be arranged to make such ways of standing possible? And how in turn must the work of the world be organized to make those same ways actual? These formulations of the question perhaps make the answer still to be told sound more otherworldly, in the very invocation of world, than the answer really is. Consider shoehood as a way for the world to stand: the furniture involved would be the shoe parts listed above, and the work involved would be the activity that put each shoe part in whatever spot of the shoe it properly resides in, making for one artful arrangement of the world with the power to go to work in walking without being torn apart. Telling the whole truth about the way the world stands in shoehood would amount to a mouthful of words on the point of the cobbler's art and another on the point of walker's work, along with a passing reference to any subordinate skill and material lurking within-like leather and leatherwork. Thinghood, which looked magically out of any real place in the world as a coinage, vanishes without a trace once the compression in the coinage is expanded-amounting to simply a working organization of what there is in the world on the one hand, and on the other, a corresponding ordering of the words by which what there separately is gets a name, an order of words then put to work to tell how the world more collectively stands. Although thinghood itself would have its own mouthful of words in the telling-call it the mouthful of Aristotle's Metapf?ysics-the very primacy of the account would tell not in the abstraction of how many doctrines a reader retained, or in how Aristotelian he could sound, but rather in the concreteness 35 �ENERGEIA of how discerning he might become when he turned to other books, proving wise in becoming known as that someone you ask about a good work on whatever-the shoe the walker ' ' the musician, the plant, the fish, the soul-and be told of the best or informed of the lack. The whole truth told in the Metapf?ysics would be of a kind to orient the reader towards what is substantial in the world, leaving everything there of substance still to be studied. And in the limits of coinages we discover where mere words fail, and in their own way vanish. In wanting to tell of a potent world we recast what the word was as a whole in order to make each one alterable, and in order to put our names to a new kind of work beyond naming. Yet any such recasting of a word confines us to names, even if tied in the alteration to a context. These newly minted terms may locate us on the inside of things, but at that point they abandon us, leaving us to tell any more truth on the inside by facing nothing other than what is already nameably there in that world, as an organized whole that can go to work. What a potent world demands of our words, then, is not that they be altered, but somehow ordered-in a way beyond their alphabetical sequence in a lexicon. Our book of words, which seemed to require emendation, actually demands a renovation, ~ one that allows some number of its entries to be organized into larger wholes of words that separately name, but somehow together still tell, and tell what was addressed in coinages. What we need is less a lexicon and more a grammar. Potency has made an absolute difference to words, it seems, by forcing them to stand in a syntax, and become something meaningfully more than merely words. The truth in any potent world escapes capture by mere words just as surely as the truth that this shoe is brown escapes capture in being called "this," or "shoe," or "brown." But what grammar or syntax is, on this level of my deduction, is not yet clear. How might it be that words which separately name, and in an altered form can address, might together have the power to tell-in this case, to tell what a 36 HARRELL thing is in being anything at all? How does what was separately · true straightaway in mere names, and in coinages too puzzlingly true to be any more than telling, gain a power to be more significantly true in combination? The most elementary composition of our lexicon to be achieved beyond its given order would be to string the needed entries together, one after one, in just the way I did above, listing the parts of a shoe. But in names these become pieces of a shoe, evicted from their residence and chained to an alphabetical sequence. Their togetherness in a shoe is only implied, and their power to work together at being a shoe remains untold. In putting our names simply together, we have lost the very difference between inside and outside that a word like "shoehood" was coined to address. We need a word that doesn't name but connects, yet does more than simply connect like the conjunction "and." For we need it to conjoin our names yet reflect in that conjoining the difference potency has made to the world to be told. We need, it seems, a word that conjoins and at the same time conveys, carrying us through names not simply, one after one any which way, but rather in light of the very way the world itself works-from the inside out. This new word needs to move us through what it conjoins as if we were going from first to last in going one by one. In the smallest whole of such words, the new linking term will have to stand between one naming word that is not simply first, but meaningfully first, and another naming word meaningfully last. But what will give our naming words this meaning? How can they be made to stand first to last in standing one to one? In the most elementary form of such words that told of a potent world in the most elementary sense, what stands first would have to be something like what has a power to work, and what stands last something like the work itself. And what it would mean to stand together, first to last, would be with respect to the standing that the word "thinghood" was meant to address. Our naming words will need to be aligned and stood, it seems, on the level where things themselves stand-organized 37 �ENERGEIA and at work, from the inside out. But what does this mean?· It seems to mean this: our names must stand, first to last, in the light of what makes each so-called thing, separately named, the single thing meant once the names are conjoined. As a result, our names must mean this single thing by naming it first to last, from an inside out. But this seems to mean, and I'm about to speak a final mouthful, that these names will stand meaningfully first to last, working from the inside out, to tell of a single thing, only if the kind of thing in the first name has the power to make the kind of thing in the second name be the thing it now actually is. The names "shoe" and "brown" can be so joined, first to last, to capture that brown shoe that escaped each name separately, if"shoe" names the kind of thing with the power to make the kind of thing named by "brown," in other words, color, the actual thing it now is-the color brown. And so, in. saying that the shoe is brown, I will be effectively telling this: This thing that I see over there, is a thing, in being a shoe, and because it's a shoe, it's the brown-colored thing I see over there as well. Or something like that. I'm not sure how any of what I just said in mouthfuls actually sounds. Perhaps impossibly obscure, mystifying so simple a thing as what we mean in putting the name "shoe" and the name "brown" together in the sentence "the shoe is brown" to tell the color of this shoe over here, or another such sentence to say the shoe is leather. What we are looking for is in grammatical terms a copula, that little word "is" in English that lurks in every statement we make that has the power to be true; telling that something is this way rather than another way-that the shoe is brown leather, rather than, say, white canvass. But my mouthful above is meant to render this tiny word "is" remarkably telling, although perhaps at first remarkably puzzling in what or how it tells. What does the word "is" really mean, and why does a word that names no definite thing at all turn out to be at work in every true or false statement about things that we make? With the tiny word "is," we link our naming words by a 38 HARREIL functional word that makes a separate yet indeterminate reference to being. The copula puts the exact distance between being itself and the beings named as the distance we achieved in our coinage "thinghood," between the things themselves and what makes each one be a thing at all-giving a form of address to what was yet to be determined. This distance is laid bare in the copula; so bare, in fact, that it keeps apart what it brings together, seeming to disrupt the very identification intended-for if there are brown and leather things in the world besides shoes, then being brown or being leather is different from being a shoe, and yet here we are in such seeming indifference making what's different be the same, in saying no more than what we happened to notice: that this shoe is brown and is leather. To say the shoe was anything but itself, not to mention saying so about the brown an? leather things too, would be incoherent in an impotent world. So would one of Aristotle's most beautiful discerning mouthfuls: that two things can be different in being, but the same in number. And here we stand in speech, in apparent recognition of what he told, as we call a shoe a shoe, then take it back by calling the same thing brown or leather, somehow telling that these things are all together in the following way: the brown or leather thing we see over there, is only the thing that is there to see in that particular color and material, because at bottom that thing's a shoe. By the above deduction, then, if any statement we make about the world is not simply false through compositional incoherence, it proves to be true through a kind a penetration to the bottom of things-in this case a shoe-that we carry around with us in the tiny word "is". Part Three Perhaps it's time to begin the end of my lecture. If all that I have just deduced is true, then with baggage as light as the copula, naming no thing at all, comes a heavy burden to bear. We must care beyond words for the truths we tell. We 39 �ENERGEIA take the barest notice that this is that, and yet in putting it into words, in the ordering of names we do, we are forced to stand up and declare, in effect, that should you wish to know what makes that second kind of thing an actual thing, you will have to go to the trouble of discovering what makes it be this first kind of thing first. We are forced, that is, to care for any deeper truth to be told of wf!J what we happened to say, of what we happened to see, is true in just the truthful wqy we said it. And this means caring for the truth of how the world can stand first to last, working from the inside out, even in something so small as a shoe of brown leather. We say but this about the world, and can't help but declare, however implicitly, that to know its truth is to grasp how the whole world can sort all its furniture and ways of working out to make an organized stand in shoehood, and be a world in which the flesh of one animal g~ts wrapped around another animal's foot, time and time again, by the hand of the cobbler, the foot of the walker, and the coin of the shopper, along with every piece of handiwork that happens between. And with that longer tale of truth about the shoe, so much for the thing named by shoe, so much for the thinghood addressed by shoehood, and so much for our every word being immediately or puzzlingly true. No single word can tell any more than simple truth about what there is in a potent world, forcing us to speak any further of what there is, in mouthfuls. And in speaking any further, we are forced to take the deepest risk. Our words together gain a power to be true, by gaining in turn, a power to be false. We tell of a brown leather shoe and so declare it nothing else, when in being a thing, it might have been anything else, and in being so much as a shoe, might have been of any other suitable material and accompanying color-again, such as a canvass of white. With every claim we go on to make about the shoe, we multiply the number of things we say it isn't, and multiply the number of ways in which our telling escapes falsehood. Potency has not simply made questions real, but rendered answers dangerous, and those who 40 HARRELL venture answers courageous. Whosoever dares to tell truth, pronounces any potent world with words, shall take an irreversible step into being something rather than nothing, going irrevocably to work as a teller of truth who constantly risks a nothingness in falsehood, and with ever more telling of truth risks ever more ways to die in the false. This does not mean we risk ever more ways of likely being wrong the more we think we're right. The risk involved is not a matter of ignorance, nor is the challenge involved a matter of being so tidy and correct in speech as to avoid any false-threatening mess. The risk and challenge are exactly the opposite: the unavoidable result of ambition, knowledge, and skill-akin to what the world-class chef in his five-star kitchen can never avoid in being who he is, ever risking the nothingness of the inedible in whipping up his every signature dish, as he escapes all the ways it might be ruined, time and time again, when the safety of simply edible food was as close by as the security of the simpler kinds of truth: on a neatly set table, in a freshly washed bowl, where a recently scrubbed apple might be reached. But I myself haven't the time left to be so brave about a brown leather shoe; I simply salute the challenge of its shoehood, as the shoe becomes ever more concretely the shoe that it is in a telling that risks ever more ways of being false. N or have I the time to discuss the geometric expansion that occurs in our simplest tellings of truth when we move from the question of what something is to wf!J. A pure marvel awaits the Febbies next Spring that goes by the name of "syllogism." Suffice it to say, that in going on to tell why something is so, we will need a word like "thus" or "therefore" to accompany our word "is," in needing a term of conveyance beyond the copula to move us now from first to middle to last in whatever series of names then tell-first, middle, and last-how we moved simp/y from first to last in the movement through names we originally made. The middle will tell further of the thinghood in the thing meant by the names conjoined, in just the way that leather will tell more about what makes a shoe be brown. 41 �ENERGEIA And this, in essence, is what we do to tell why. Astonishingly, the whole truth of this expansion in explanation can be told without telling a single truth about a single thing there is. It seems an inherent yet articulable demand that a potent world makes on mrything we might say if we mean to tell the truth. And the whole telling of that remarkable truth can be found in a series of volumes known as the Organon, which Aristotle composed to found, all by himself, the entire liberal art of logic. And every document of this founding, you'll be happy to know, is available at a bookstore near you. Let this suffice, then, as my conclusion about syntax: on the deduction given above, every functional instrument we use in language to arrange our naming words, from our particles to our punctuation, is most deeply and collectively grasped as a way of conveying us through the separate things named, from a beginning in being a thing at all, to an end in being the one thing meant by those names so conjoined. All such instruments of syntax exist to help us tell why being a thing at all can mean being the thing now told. Even the Iliad is a syllogistic display in this sense: it tells, from beginning to end, why being a thing at all, can mean being a raging Achilles at the walls of Troy. Homer's song takes the mere idea of a such a man and line by inevitable line makes this idea an ever more actual thing in an ever more actual world. But now that I have reached the end of my lecture, I do want to say a word or two, so to speak, about what any of this should mean to us-assuming of course, we live, as Aristotle thought, in a potent world. The central question, I think, is this: what does it mean to put words together as well as we can in order to get as tellingly close as we can to the whole truth of things? It means something unexpected: excellence with words will be better accounted for in a book like Aristotle's Prior Ana!Jtics than in a book like Strunk and White's Elements of S ryle, since the latter will treat our way of composing words as no more than a composition itself, a mere thing, while the former will treat what makes this way of composing the way it 42 HARRELL is in being any way at all-and so account for every composition in terms--dare I say it--of its compositionhood. And excellence with words will be more fully embodied in a treatise than in an essay, in a soliloquy than in a conversation, in a paper than in a poem, and in an argument than in an aphorism. Not that any of us should put our words to work the one way rather than the other; only that when we tell as much truth about something as we can, on as deep a level as we can reach, the telling will grow to look more like the one than like the other. The sentences that result will certainly increase in number, but they will also get more syntactically involved while demanding they be more systematically connected. And any revision to make them less involved and connected-more elegant, let us saywill render those sentences less actual, telling less of the whole truth than can be told. We will be using more mere words for more mere things, indulging our love of the shapely. Any advice on points of style will" guide us towards this sort of abridgment, and so, towards this kind of abstraction. Trying to be simple and direct, or even simply clear and consistent, will involve moving, slowly but surely, from a seven-course meal of a tale to an apple of one. Then again, how we do love apples. And how hard it is to make any meal of our words the more courses in thought that we articulately try. Given such sinful facts, the deeper lesson in my lecture might lie in how we are to greet the oftentimes very involved tellings of truth tried by the authors we encounter here at the College. The tellings of Aristotle to be sure, but I will speak of Euclid for the moment, since his names for things are, by definition, exact, yet in these definitions, as well as in his theorems and proofs, are found sentences quite difficult to follow. We can encounter the definition of "same ratio" in Book Five, for example, and dismiss it with all the uncomprehending swagger of someone I once heard call it "word-salad," with a chuckle. Better, if the above account is correct, to say "well-put" and get to work thinking what Euclid might have exactly meant in meaning something so involved, a sign of a 43 �ENERGEIA potent world told-in this case, a power in ratio that brings ever more furniture of the mathematical world into an alignment of sameness beyond simple equality. This, the kind of deep truth surely expressed, in any elementary terms, only by a mouthful of words. Like the mouthful of words Euclid seems to waste again and again in the theorems of Book II, on something as simple as a single straight line-~howing it nowise as simple as we thought. Every great author's most involved formulations should be greeted thus-not simply with respect, but hope, even excitement, that something deep is now being told in the kind of sentence that would ask us to think of the question it aims to answer and begin to see just how much of the world that question holds. Which brings me to a final word, before the question period, about questions themselves. Only in a potent world do questions seem to take hold; but ironically, they thus become the shallowest way of penetrating the world that there is, even at their best. They always come first-which means they only come first. At their best, they help to locate us where we have to stand to see or think or tell at any depth. But then they abandon us to the declarative form of answers if we are to risk anything at all in speech. Questions are sometimes profound, but they will never be true, because they can never be false. And in this impotence lies a tempting corruption in speech, where we do no more than question, exploiting its primacy to look deep to others while risking nothing ourselves. In this same exploiting way can we even cast a condescending look, from the perch our questions gain us, on any answers offered from below, even those that take the most risks, putting a telling of the whole world in the service of reaching that perch. The famed "what is" questions of Socrates are perhaps the ones most corrupted, where we go deep by digging in our heels and keep what we're asking for at a safe distance even from those answers that try to be better than mere examples-that try, in sum, to tell a whole truth about what is. If Aristotle was right that ours is a potent world, and I am right about his being 44 HARRELL right, then the example to follow in asking the question what is, isn't Socrates, but Plato, and the sheer entirety of his textual art that gives such provocative questions such puzzlingly rich surroundings, building an entire world in speech before questions ever get raised. What is virtue? what is justice? what is good?-Plato remakes into a question like this: what must a world be, to make virtue, justice, goodness, everything they can mean? Go out and build that world in words, says Plato, and then you'll know what they are. Then you'll know the truth. Another example to follow, finally, is Plato's friend, which returns us to our more pedestrian teller of truth, with all the obvious ones he traffics in. Who but Aristotle, or someone close, really would ever care to tell the difference between a Socrates sitting and Socrates himself? Telling the whole truth, says his own work with words, is caring for the whole truth in telling as much of it as you care to, and yet this means caring for the kinds of distinction in what you tell that risk being otherwise overlooked. For in the end, it is these kinds of distinction that make all the difference in the world. 45 �ENERGEIA Only Briefly Entertained Joe Hyde Wilt thou reach stars because they shine on thee? Exit Railwqy Samantha Buker 46 Sofia was kissing my eyelids when I awoke, and Valentino was crying curses through my open window from the street. It was Valentines day, nineteen-something-and-four, a decadent period in the history of Milan, to be sure, but I was an American in Italy, and therefore, life, with the impudent rigor of a mathematical proof, was bem.1:tiful. Valentino was my Italian roommate, and the girls he would invariably bring back to our flat, I would invariably fall in love with, even before they disappeared with him behind his green door. It is not to be supposed however that these girls ever preferred me to him, at least not initially, but only that Valentino's tastes were diverse and his attention only briefly entertained. Many-a-time, it did not outlast the night. (Ah, the nights, they came so softly to Milan in those days it would break your heart.) The weeping brunette or exhausted blonde (occasionally a melancholy redhead) would, after having been rudely ejected from the cavernous green doorway, stumble across the bare wood floor and sit dejectedly on the corner of my bed in the anteroom to recover. The slamming door always disturbed my slumbers. (I suspected only many years later that it was out of a vague consideration for me which he rarely demonstrated and never voiced that Valentino forced the poor girl out so loudly). I would rouse myself from sleep to console heaven's rejected angel in the sweating dark. I would begin always the same way, and it became such a custom for me that, not many weeks before the roof caved in and Valentino, drunk again, busted a 47 �ENERGEIA constable in the chops and was sent by the Italian Gestapo to God-knows-where beyond the shores of my little world, I could recite my verse even before fully awake. "Hello," I would say in English since I did not then and to this day do not know a word of Italian, "my name is Joseph Marlow. I go where the poor lovers go. I sing them a song and they tell me I'm wrong, but in ways that I won't ever know." The philosopher David Hume suggests that were a single color missing from the entire spectrum, the observer could isolate and, in some respects, "see" that color, even if he had never seen it before in his life. That's sort of the way I felt during the month and a half that I lived with Valentino, and watched the many girls pass from his room into mine, and from his vigorous bunk into my sleepy berth. If I were a bragging man, I would claim to have seen every kind of rejection: from the hair-tearing angry and screaming, to the disbelieving silence, and all the way to the tragically distraught, weeping all night while her small young body shook in my bed, for the girls Valentino brought home were, until almost the very end, very young and very beautiful. But I could not have claimed to have seen all the shades of rejection until the night before Valentines day, nineteen-something-and-four; and until that night that missing shade was a permanent blur in the corner of my eye, approached like a limit by the other nymphs, but never achieved; like the space left by a missing volume in my collection of books. Gentle reader, if you wonder how it is that Valentino's women always ended up in my bed, and if you are agitated by the very notion that an American, like yourself, could ever stoop so low as to take in the girls cast out by his Italian roommate, do not, I pray, forgo this tale of recollected love, for recollection has a magic all its own, and my story, like the wisdom I gained of love, will answer all your questions in due time. And if you continue in your inquiries and you complain that a tale of many pages could be told more easily in few, then I have no advice to offer and no words of parting either, for your impatience will be rewarded soon enough. 48 HYDE The reason the girls did not leave, did not shuffle discouraged, pulling on their open blouses, out the door and down the rickety wooden steps is that the door to our flat would not open from the inside. I remember fearing, when I had helped the wickedly handsome and rip-roaringly drunk Italian, whom I would come to know as Valentino, home that misty night weeks before, the enthusiastic click of the door locking behind me would mean something much more dangerous than having to sleep on the floor. But Valentino didn't seem to mind that I was curled up on the twisting boards when his door banged open the next morning, sunlight blinding all the room with anticipatory excitement from the window in what would become my chamber. It was the same window which my Valentino, head aching and eyes running, when he pushed past me that warm morning not so many weeks ago, climbed out of, one unsteady leg at a time, onto the terrace, which fr om the street looked like no more than the grotesque enlargement of a window box, and shimmied down the lilac covered lattice work to the street. So began my stay with Milan's own temperamental Don Juan. Needless to say, I never understood a word he said to me, so that after a while he stopped talking to me entirely, at least when he was sober; and when he wasn't, it didn't seem to matter how I responded to his shouted songs in the Italian dark, as long as the morning found him behind his green door in our humble flat. I never did see or even hear, as one might expect, the proceedings that went on behind that door, for it was always locked from the inside, so that when I slept in the bed that I had bought with what little traveling money I had left, I was trapped between Valentino's green door and the door to the street, neither of which I could open, and with only the window to provide an escape route, if ever I should need so romantic a thing. I never gave Valentino any money fo r rent, and I have come to doubt if he paid any kind of rent whatsoever. In my mind, our flat was owned by his father (whom I had never met and had no reason to believe 49 �ENERGEIA was even still living) who, in wild desperation, had conceded to allow his reckless and charming son to live there alone, if for no other reason only so that the poor old man's nights might not be further disturbed by his rowdy son's philanderings. It was one of those flats the existence of which are easily forgotten; the only remarkable thing being the doors, one of which was always unlocked, (as long as one were to approach it from the landing of the rickety wooden stairs) and the other of which was the dark green soldier guarding Valentino's chambers. To this day, I have never seen a door more beautiful and terrifying than this one, carved by an ancient hand with angels and demons and overlaid in places with suggestive patches of metal, as slight as seductive lingerie, and just as bewitching. The knob was a single golden orb, dulled into a different color than the rest of the metal by the rubbings of Valentino's eager hand. If it were not for the fact that this door fit so snugly and perfectly into its frame, I would have guessed that Valentino had stolen if from one of the many decomposing churches that peopled Milan's winding streets like beggars. It was into this portal that the girls disappeared, and from this same proud womb that they were pushed not long after, to weep or curse in the sweet shadows that played across the far wall from the window. I was reading Virgil (in translation) by candle light when Valentino came in that night with Sofia. I had heard him on the stairs below, for it was almost impossible not to hear the creaking boards complain, but I did not wonder why Valentino preferred them to climbing up the flower ladders outside our window, which as far as I could tell, were more sturdy and less likely to collapse. Valentino on the stairs meant that he was not alone. And in my mind, I predicted the girl who was smiling coquettishly at his side. Would this Madonna be my missing shade? I toyed with the possibility. What would rejection look like written across the faces of the world? Had Cleopatra ever been rejected? And to whose less royal bed did she repair to reassemble her defeated forces? There had been no such 50 HYDE rebound bed for Dido, I thought, and this led me to imagining what I would do if this girl tried to throw herself out the window, when the time came. Probably the same thing I did last time one of his paramours had tried: hold her by her naked arms and repeat my verse again and again, until she returned from whatever state of mind one must be in to attempt suicide, and in which I was determined never to find myself. But would that mean ... and at this point, the book forgotten on my lap, and my eyes sightlessly watching the shadows on the wall, Valentino entered with this evening's collection. I had never seen a girl so beautiful, from the dark coffee of her hair to the deep mystery in her eyes, her Persian neck curving so many different ways at once and kissed by the light of my candle. Her narrow arms wrapped around Valentino's mighty right arm like the tendrils of the flowers on the scaffolding below. And the color of her skin somewhere between cream and honey reminded me of all the colors at once and I thought, how unfortunate dead people are. I must have been staring, because the girl smiled with the most alluring hint of a smile, and Valentino began speaking in Italian, which I interpreted to be some kind of introduction. Then the most remarkable thing happened. "Oh," she said, "but he does not speak Italian?" I think Valentino must have been as surprised as I was, if not more so, to hear her speak thus in broken but understandable English. You see, it was rare in those days to find even an Englishman in Italy, if he were not a soldier or a millionaire, neither of which ever approached our forgotten corner of a forgotten city. But to find a girl who spoke English, or who had even been with a man who spoke English, was, at least I would have imagined, impossible. Valentino sensed danger, and rushed the girl into his chambers before I had had time to collect my scattered thoughts and formulate a sentence. She looked over his shoulder as she disappeared, and I saw the candle light dance in her luxurious eyes. The door slammed with uncommon bitterness. It should be obvious by now that I had seen beauties before. 51 �ENERGElA I had seen so many beautiful women, I sometimes longed for a brute, just for some variety. I had fallen madly in love with each one Valentino had brought, however, indiscriminate to their particular charms. But never before had I been so impatient to have her rejected by my prodigal roommate. It should not be imagined either that I had devoured every creature that crawled into my cave. Though it was not unheard of that one of Valentino's mistresses would feel an immediate desire to redeem her wounded pride by an exhibition of sexual prowess, it was with no less gentleness that on other not so erotic occasions I took them into my bed. Often, the girls just needed a place to spend the night; not that the streets of Milan were particularly dangerous in those days, but only that a soul that has decided not to sleep alone is rarely easily dissuaded, and I myself hated (and to this day still hate, though less passionately) to sleep alone. Should it be objected upon moral grounds that my welcoming of Valentino's darlings into my bunk was licentious or even sinful, let the objector consider the alternative. It was rarely before the next day, when Valentino himself would emerge from his abode and crawl out the window and down the lattice work, that the poor girl knew how to escape. Sure, there were those who wrestled the night-long battle with the door which they had entered, and collapsed despondent on the floor, as I had done my first night there. There were even those who attacked my person, pleading or furious for flight. There were those whose haunting silence drew from me an explanation of the window and the flower ladders, all of which explanations were incomprehensible to the poor Italian ladies. Once or twice I even tried to demonstrate, but each time, after a look from the window to the street below, and a look back at my grateful bed, the sheets already torn back and the promise of a man's body, however inferior to the lion's behind the now closed green door, breathing beside hers, the girls in question would slump their shoulders, or rub their eyes and plod like sad children, (like children?) like women, to my agreeable bed. 52 HYD E Thus it was that I had tasted, had savored, had nourished myself upon all beauty and still not surfeited my passions since my arrival in Italy not so terribly many months before. Do not, dear reader, imagine however that my appetite could begin to compete with that of Valentino. On the contrary, where mine had been more prone to scan the feminine forms with discretion, even with reluctant moderation, his had been avariciously selective, bringing home these beauties one after the other, like separate dishes in a fine meal of many courses. For, say what one might against desire, call down however many execrations upon its multifarious devilish heads, consider it the root of all vices and the mother of all indignities, yet it remains the engine of genius, and the motor which drives men beyond the petty affairs of the next world into the blissful madness of this one. Valentino was a genius of desire. And like a student operating under the expert tutelage of a practiced hand, I began my researches precisely where Valentino had grown weary of his own. Such students are not uncommon. Visit any school in Europe, or even any one of those fine academies which, blown from the neglected fields of Europe, scatter the Eastern shore of America, and you will discover in the classroom the public beginnings of the love which is consummated in secret within the darkened dorm room. I too had been such a student, had glimpsed the shadow of wisdom departing into the alleys of the past, and I too had suffered longings for her deep into the American nights. So seductive had been her charms that I had left the crumbling classrooms behind to seek this mistress in the land of her conception; had come to find her, and instead found Valentino, her minion and her slave. Long afterwards, I convinced myself that I had come to Valentino with a purpose, that I had sought him out and indentured myself to him, saying: I come from a land that is barren and dry, with a hope beyond hope I might one day descry, in her movements sublime and her stillness complete, the most beautiful one, whom through you I might meet. This introduction, had it in fact been deliv- 53 �ENERGElA ered, would likely not have earned me the hallowed place I eventually occupied in his foyer, certainly not have earned it so surely as my helping Valentino home and falling asleep there did. His door had slammed, leaving me with silent Virgil in translation. I stared dumbly at Valentino's door. Like the hesitation that comes when you finally sit down to write a letter which you have composed so many times in your imagination that when you actually try to write it, your mind is blank and the page stares back at you with the haunting question: so you are the speaker of English, eh? the poet who in Shakespearean verbiage seeks to transcribe the curious grandeur of his American thoughts? So too, I, the writer, the vacationing American, the pathetic roommate, the dreamer of strange dreams (but never so strange a dream as this!), stared blindly and hopefully at the door which I knew must open again ... And at that moment it occurred to me that I must write it all down ' must compose this incomposure in a letter as if by speaking the magic words I could open the door with the sound of my voice, as if I held the key in my vocabulary and the trick was not to find the right words-for I had the right words-but to put them together in the proper order. To the bookshelf then through the tepid air I moved and snatched my dog-eared notebook off the shelf much as one would snatch at inspiration from a departing moment. The pages were scribbled over with idle thoughts and incomplete essays, attempts, tries, failures to illustrate by telling what I had meant to show. Was not this beginning destined for another such end? The entire weight of a continent rested on my shoulders, the bone-grindings and nerve endings of all the world concentrated to a point, and that point the end of my little pen working rapidly over the page. Hadn't I abandoned the absurd notion that I could ever join the ranks of such brilliant writers as did then begin to do somersaults in my belly? My own history flared up before me as the work of one failure after another, failure as a student, failure as a scribe, but failures that I then greeted with such 54 HYDE magnanimity in that darkened room that I would not then have traded them for all the mute and maidenly successes of all the poets in all the world. And as I wrote, not knowing what I wrote, the rhythms and the rhymes of all that I had ever read rehearsed melancholy melodies in my mind which I hurried to transcribe. Right then, with the pain of love behind a solid green door, I was a Shakespeare, a Hemingway, a Byron. I was every lover that had wooed too high and won too little, won in place of her delicious body, the immediate eternity of verse. Yes, I was a filthy rodent feeding on the corpses of these artists! I was the scavenger of all that love had used and left behind. Yes, and with such awe had I apprehended each new wonder that I myself had given up the hope of ever joining them outside of the Inferno. But had not I as well consigned my very body to the choices of another? Had not I discipled my very soul to Valentino's love? And I had seen to what great ends we are sometimes led! Sofia had come, and in English too! But Valentino, like an Italian crying in the wilderness, had seen her first. And so I had to wait. And how should I wait? Did I not have at last some advantage over my tutor? Had not she come to me like an angel prayed for, W<:e Dante's Beatrice? "My name is Joseph Marlow!" I whispered. Never, it must be understood, never had I disturbed Valentino's routine. Seeing the first girls come and go, a system had erected itself, and we, its unconscious creators, had come to take pride in this system, the formulation of which was really more due to chance and circumstance than to our wills; but when chance thus enters the realm of human activity it is often deemed divinity, and understood rightly as such. Divine had been the origin of our procedure, and it would be blasphemy of the worst kind to alter it now. "My name is Joseph Marlow!" I said again, like breaking the holy silence of an Orthodox Mass. The words echoed nervously about the dark little chamber, chaotic with my papers, which was more accustomed to the vigorous animal noises of animal encounters than to intelligent speech. "My name is Joseph 55 �ENERGEIA Marlow!" I almost screamed, I hollered, finally I wailed, "I go where the poor lovers go!" No response. "I sing them a song, and they tell me I'm wrong but in ways that I won't ever know!" This last phrase hung in the humid air ~e the smell of her perfume which still permeated my room. Valentino's door opened. My candle was blown out. In the dark, I could make out his silhouette, leaning with both arms wide across his open door frame. I wasn't sure whether he was going to throttle me there, or whether he would throw me out the window and commence his operations outside. I was determined not to aggravate the guilt I already felt heavy upon me, so I said nothing. Valentino swung toward my bed. I scooted as far away from him as I could in the small bunk and clutched the sides of my mattress. Down he fell upon the bed, scattering my already disordered papers, crumpling the sheets and my legs beneath him. I must have let out a shriek, for I was convinced he was going to clobber me. But a moment's hesitation convinced me otherwise. Up he staggered from his drunken stupor and moved unsteadily toward the window. First one leg then the other, finally his torso and last his terrific head disappeared. I heard him breathing heavily as he descended to the ground below. In my confusion, I looked again where the door was supposed to be, the green door which was as often closed as Milan's nights were silky, as Milan's women were beautiful, and as Milan's beauties preferred Valentino to me. The door stood open. And framed in that great hollow was the shape of a woman. "] oseph?" she said, "is that your name?" I couldn't speak. "My name is Sofia," she said sweetly. There was a pause. '1\re you an American?" Another pause. "My name is Joseph Marlow," I whispered, "I come from a land that is barren and dry." Shocked into speech by her tremendous presence, I fell back upon these trite verses to which I had habituated myself in the past. But as is ever the case with such encounters, a new language was slowly forming in my brain, a pidgin by way of which we might communicate; 56 HYDE for lovers always have a language all their own through which that love is known just as surely as it's expressed in the native tongue and private dialect of its two participants. She just laughed. I heard the pads on her cat feet step carefully to my bed, smelled her coming closer. She sat down. "My name is ... " "No more words," she said, and she kissed me. Here was the last color of rejection, and it was no rejection at all. Or if a rejection, then a rejection of Valentino himself, the mediator. Had not he left first? Did I not have the recent memory of seeing him depart? Had not that very sight which had covered my body with sweat, the very sweat Sofia was now kissing from my naked limbs, led irrevocably to this sweet moment? "But how ... " I found breath to ask. "I sent him out for Bordeaux," she smiled, "and I happen to know there is not a drop in all Milan. He'll be gone for days." If I did not then ask why, patient reader, nor should you. Such considerations find their place in anticipating a desired movement that is never made; whereas the gradual progression toward a climax is at last concluded by an unanticipated leap. The sun was just beginning to send its golden envoys through my window when we, after much activity, at last fell asleep, Sofia curled closely next to me. It was Valentines day, nineteen-something-and-four, a decadent period in the history of Milan, to be sure, but I was an American in Italy, and therefore, life, with the impudent rigor of a mathematical proof, was beautiful. 57 �ENERGEIA Just 'Cause Al Green Sing About It Don't Make It True Sandeep Shekhar D as Falling Sand Cassie Sherman 58 Happiness? Happiness?! What is this happiness of which you always speak? Sorry, I didn't mean to get excited. Perhaps I have assumed too much in accusing you, my noble reader, that happiness is something of which you speak, but I would wager that it is something you think about, and if you are anything like me, something you think about often. Often often. Too often. Let me rephrase, then, my initial confrontation to more resemble an investigation. What is this happiness we think of? What is this thing toward which we apparently direct our lives without really knowing where it will lead us? What is this thing that transforms us into children, craving something we are told to want without knowledge of what it actually is? To be sure, we have some sort of idea or belief or understanding that (whether it is a state or an end) happiness is good, or at least better. But better than what? Better than being unhappy? Better than where we are right now? Better than where you are? Better than where I am? Perhaps these are the wrong questions to ask, at least if our semblance of an investigation is not to come to an end before it begins. Perhaps there is another way to approach this elusive entity that won't startle it away before we can at least get a good look at what we are actually chasing after. Now remember, my intrepid reader: no sharp, sudden movements and no loud noises. I think that instead of a frontal assault, we could come at it from the sides where its vision is not quite best. We could, and I think should, look at what happiness 59 �ENERGEIA resembles and its relationship(s) to what it resembles. This might help us understand better what the thing itself is, and consequently see if this knowledge in any way quickens us on the path to attaining it-unless of course, those things which resemble happiness are just as elusive as the thing itself, and succeed only in confusing us further-which I confess to you, my trustworthy reader, very well might happen. But as the poet said, "Be bold, and mighty forces shall come to your aid!", and so, we shall. So. What resembles happiness? What other things in our life do we desire to know without knowing why or how or where, or even what? What other things are we drawn toward with only, at best, a vague sense of their goodness, or betterness? What other things make us mere children in our relation to them? It seems to me that the objects in this category number two: love and God. It is difficult to deny that these two forces, along with the 'pursuit of happiness,' have not only driven Man throughout the course of history but also drive men through the course of their individual lives. God, however (at least in a Christian framework, and I think in other frameworks as well precisely because we cannot empirically know him), must be addressed with the added complication of faith before we can even hope to reap whatever it is we need from him. Therefore, for our purposes at least, I think it would be more fruitful to explore the very mysterious, controversial, and perhaps mythical relationship between love and happiness. Geoffrey Chaucer, with The Canterbury Tales, has given us rich and fertile terrain upon which to conduct these explorations. Many of these tales deal with aspects of love and situations born from being in it. But in these illustrations, whether explicitly or implicitly, looms the spectre of happiness that is always seemingly connected to love. The question is, is it? or is it all in the seeming? Is there a necessary relationship between love and happiness? Does each one imply the other, and the lack of one the lack of both? Is the connection akin to that between a child and a balloon, in that, to both possess the 60 DAS balloon and let it fulfill its nature, the child must tie it to a light but lengthy piece of string and then hold on to the other end, with there always the chance it might slip away forever into the atmosphere above? To be sure, the balloon and child could be attached with an iron chain, insuring they would never be separated, but at the same time keeping both from being what they could be. Is it a magnetic connection, with like repelling like and opposites attracting, a balance being struck between the two? Or is it that there is no connection, no attachment at all, and what we are about to undertake is a Ptolomaic endeavor of 'saving the appearances'? Let us begin to dig, and see whether we are physicists, archaeologists or astronomers. The first tale, The Knight's Tale, tells us the tragic story of Arcite, Palamon and Emelye. As we recall, Arcite and Palamon are two knights of the defeated city-state of Thebes and have been imprisoned without hope of reprieve by their conqueror, Theseus, the Duke of Athens. Even before we are introduced to the two knights whose tale this will be, we are given a picture of love in terms of Theseus: 865 What with his wisdom and his chivalrie He conquered the regne of Femenye Although the knight is explicitly speaking here of the defeat of the Amazons in Scithia, we cannot help but wonder if this is in any way an echo of the knight's own views of love- that love is to be won like a war, or perhaps that it is itself a war to be won-especially since, immediately following Theseus' victory, he and Hippolyta are wed. It seems that Theseus' marrying is a natural extension of his conquering. This view is only encouraged by the line 881 And how asseged was Ypolita, The faire, hardy queene ofScithia. Here it doesn't seem as if there is any difference if we apply the word asseged (besieged) to the war Theseus is fighting against 61 �ENERGEIA DAS her or his courtship of her. In this case, they are inextricably tied. But let us leave this knot of love and battle for a while ' and return to the plight of Arcite and Palamon. They are friends, cousins and comrades in arms, and yet they sit in prison, alone together, unable to find consolation in each other. 1074 And so bifel, by adventure or cas, That thurgh a wyndow, thikke of many a barre Of iren greet and square of any sparre, He cast his eye upon Emelya, And therewithal he bleynte and cried, 'JV., As though strogen were unto the herte. This appears to be the mechanism of Palamon falling in love with Emelye-a chance glance and a piercing of the heart. But even those of us who are hardcore romantics, my starryeyed reader, must question the truth of the claim, and even of the existence, of 'love at first sight'. It seems a more true and honest explanation to say "I knew I could fall in love with her when I first saw her" than to say "I fell in love with her when I first saw her." Is it not more likely, in this case, that if one is incarcerated (physically or otherwise) and staring at the world through thick iron bars, that one would begin to look for something, anything-perhaps to give your life meaning that you can no longer draw from yourself, perhaps to save you? It is only in this state of longing and desperation that I can see the potentiality and the actuality of love becoming one and the same without any motion, only in this state that the temporal unfolding from 'could be' to 'am' could be collapsed into an instant. We see evidence of this (to be fair, probably subconscious) manipulation soon again, for when Arcite hears his cousin's cry, he tries to comfort him and says 1084 62 For Goddes love, taak al in pacience Oure prisoun, for it may noon oother be. Fortune hath yeven us this adversitee. To which Palamon replies 1095 This prison caused me nat for to crye, But I was hurt right now thurghout myn ye Into myn herte, that wol niy bane be. The faimesse of that lady that I see Yond in the gardyn romen to and fro Is the cause of al my criying and my wo But how accurate can we take Palamon's evaluation of himself to be? Although he tells us otherwise, we are given these three snapshots of Palamon before he ever sees Emelye. 1063 1070 1072 Palamoun, this woeful prisoner This sorrowful prisoner, this Palamoun And to himself compleynynge of his wo. That he was born, ful ofte he seyde, 'alias!' Palamon was full of woe before Emelye ever entered into his ~orld, perhaps because of his imprisonment, perhaps out of his own disposition. These are not necessarily things, however, he could lament out loud. Definitely not if his woe was ~ue to his disposition (how unchivalrous, unknight-like, and m the end, futile, is it to say "O, I wish I was happy!"), and prob~bly n~t if it was due to his imprisonment, for although he nught wish to be free, he knows already what Arcite will tell him to be true: there is nothing to be done. But when he sp.ies Emelye, a voice is given to his longing, a 'why' to his nusery and woe, a tangible reason to his desire to be free where desire, potentiality and actuality are combined to b~ "cleped" love. We~, if this be called love, should we then attempt, my sys tematl~ ~eader, to catalog what type of love this be, agape or eros, divme or mortal? Arcite soon wants to-for his own ?enefit, as it turns out. Palamon deifies Emelye as Venus mcarnate, penitently falling to his knees and asking her for both compassion and deliverance for both he and Arcite, when 1112 ... with that word Arcite gan espye 63 �DAS ENERGEIA Wher as this lady romed to and fro, And with that sighte hir beautee hurte hym so, that, if Palamon was wounded sore, Arcite is hurte as muche as he, or moore. Of course, when the best of friends fall in love with the same woman, watch out. When Arcite declares his desire for Emelye, Palamon justifiably claims that the bonds of ti1ieir friendship should preclude Arcite from falling in love with Emelye, and furthermore, that he should instead help Palamon in trying to obtain her. But although Palamon's stance is justifiable, chivalry or no chivalry, it is also quite naive. Arcite's similarly justifiable response is that while Palamon's feeling for Emelye is an "affecctioun of hoolynesse", his own feeling for her "is love, as to a creature", which he constructs as having both more urgency and currency. Whereas Palamon's error in judgement might be that he is too naive, I think Arcite's error in his justification is that he presumes too much. Why would a holy love have less urgency, and what really is the difference between loving God (I told you, my deceived reader, that I was going to leave God out of this, but, as it is wont to do, love is making a liar of me) and loving a person? If we want to say it is the difference between eros and agape, that love for a person has more claim over eros, is it agape that we feel towards God? If we judge by appearances, I would say it appears more like eros than agape. Perhaps when we love God, we are also in love with Him. Perhaps there is no difference in kind at all, only a difference in object. If this is true, the question changes to one about the worthiness of the object. Which is more worthy of an intense and deep love: God or another person? and towards which are we more able to have such a love? If this is the question behind Arcite's reasoning, I would be less inclined to disagree with him as to which of them has more claim over Emelye's love. For me, the way to answer this question would not be to ask which object would give us a greater benefit if we inclined 64 our love towards it, for I believe that if both objects are real and true each could fill the same void equally. I would ask instead which object would gain greater benefit from our love being inclined towards it: another person, who has a void as we do? or God, who, presumably, is whole? Whatever the answer to that question might be does not change the fact that in the face of love laws and customs are thrown out the window, cir at least are hierarchically reordered in such a way that their internal logic ceases to make much sense. If laws or customs are meant to further our happiness, if they represent the surrendering of lesser freedoms in order to attain a greater one, does this mean that when love disorders them it is asserting itself as a better route to happiness than one that has already been established, that it is pointing out a shortcut of sorts? Or does it mean that it is taking its rightful place at the top of the hierarchy, that love itself is the highest freedom of all? Or is it just a destructive force that offers nothing better then that which it destroys except the need to accept on faith that it is better. Arcite tells Palamon: 1165 Love is a gretter lawe, by my pan, Than may be yeve to any erthely man; And therfore positiflawe and swich decree Is broken al day for love in ech degree. A man moot nedes love, maugree his heed. This passage is more than somewhat confusing to me, not so much because I have a hard time accepting that love might be a greater law, but more because it seems to say yes to more than one of the questions I have above. Positif !awe, or law by decree, man's law, seems to be presented as distinct from natural law, and if love has no problem breaking man's law whenever there is a choice between the two, I am drawn to say then that love is a kind of natural law. But then there is the last line, which approximately means ''A man must love, in spite of himself." If this is true, then it seems the law of love is in opposition to natural law. There are then three ways to 65 �DA..s ENERGEIA reconcile love's position as law, if we are to make any sense of it at all. First (in no particular order), we can take the rule of love to be an aspect of man's law, a law by decree that has a stronger decree behind it than any other of man's laws. Second, we could take the rule of love to be an aspect of natural law, and, if a man must love in spite of himself, we are shown through the rule of love that it is part of man's nature to do things in spite of his nature. Third, we could say that the rule of law is transcendent over both man's law and natural law, and what is left is that it is a sort of divine law, whose functionality would then depend on us on having faith in the rule of love and faith that it is best for us to do so, even when it is destructive. Although all three options are plausible, none, to me, presents itself as more probable then the others, and none seem to necessarily point to happiness. I suppose as a child of this Age of Pragmatism, I believe the rule of love to be some combination of all three of these possibilities-but as to percentages, my learned reader, your guess is as good as mine. Let us go back and consider for a moment the destructive ability of love. Was the strife that love engendered between Arcite and Palamon (not to be reductive) a good thing or a bad thing? More constructive than destructive? Did it shatter the closest and most noble of bonds, or give them both something to live for? Indeed, Arcite tells Palamon when he is released from prison and Palamon is not 1236 Thyn is the victorie of this aventure. Ful blisfully in prison maistow dure,In prison? Certes nay, but in paradys! Arcite has transform~d prison into Paradise by the fact that it is only from prison that he could experience Emelye. Since there was no hope ever to escape, no hope ever to possess her, hope instead became to see her every day, which he could do while incarcerated. In a way, while the two friends were imprisoned, Emelye walked among them, as God did in Eden with Adam and Eve. It was Paradise for Arcite, for he was 66 given all he could hope for. Freedom, though, came with a price. For Adam and Eve, knowledge, or intellectual freedom, cost them Eden and being with God in the fullest way man could ever be. For Arcite, his parole, or physical freedom, took him out of a state in which he had all he could hope for and placed him in a situation whereby he could hope for much more with no possibility for satisfaction. The following two statements show how love has disordered the natural order so, that it has caused the divorce of freedom and happiness. 1250 1272 Farwel my lyf, my lust, and my gladnesse! Tuer now I am exiled from my wele. Palamon, on the other hand, views Arcite as being blessed and having the advantage, for with his parole Arcite could return to Thebes, raise an army, and lay siege to Athens-not as retribution for years of unjust punishment, but rather to put himself in a position to gain Emelye as his wife, either by victory or by treaty. Perhaps this is a way in which love is connected to happiness, but if it is, it is certainly a negative attachment. We can call this the "Grass is Always Greener" factor. When love is withheld from you, you can never be content with where you are, your present situation. This is partially because something which has become essential is now missing, partially because a clear, measured and objective assessment of the present situation, and consequently of what can be done to remedy it, is clouded to such an extent that it doesn't even seem that a remedy is possible, and partially because not being able to fulfill love creates jealousy, which is also an impediment to happiness. It is at this point in the tale that love fully comes into the inheritance of another aspect of itself which it has been only hinting at so far. Whereas we have seen love earlier either as a sudden violent force, a reason to live, or as an imperious bureaucrat with an almost unfathomable sense of order, it now shows itself to be a malady both chronic and acute. The malady 67 �DAS ENERGEIA manifests itself in Arcite by causing him to be not what he is. He is a knight. He should face adversity with valor and courage and with an eye towards gaining victory. Instead, he is weak, enfeebled and broken after his parole. Love creates a separation between who you are and who you are, and "a house divided against itself cannot stand." Why doesn't Arcite attack Athens? He receives a vision from Mercury that he is to return to Athens and that there his misery is destined to come to an end. Granted, Mercury, among other things, is a god of subterfuge, and this might have suggested to Arcite that he was meant to go to Athens in disguise. But still, he is a knight, straightforward and honest. Mercury is also the messenger of the gods, and could be delivering an oracle of sorts, a message Arcite is meant to interpret. Why then does Arcite interpret it in the way that he does? Has the malady divorced him from his nature to such an extent, or has it gone even one step further, has the illness changed his very nature itself? Even a knight in beggar's clothing should be recognizable as a knight. But 1403 That, sith his face was so disfigured Of maladye the which he hadde endured, He myghte wel, if that he bar hym lowe, Live in Atthenes everemoore unknowe, The lover's malady has ravaged the landscape of his visage to such an extent that it has rendered him unrecognizable, and, it seems, has not stopped at his face. When he returns to Athens as a free man, he does not return as Arcite the knight, but as a poor laborer who calls himself Philostrate, which means 'conquered (or destroyed) by love'. After Arcite qua Philostrate returns to Athens, the plot, at least, begins to move rather quickly. Arcite has become a trusted servant to the duke, Theseus, allowing him to restore the fulfillment of what was his former hope, to be able to watch Emelye. In the meantime, Palamon has escaped from prison with the intent of doing what he thought Arcite should 68 have done when he gained his freedom. When they encounter each other in the field where they first spied Emelye, they reprise the roles they had relinquished for so long and once again become chivalrous and courageous knights, ready and willing to fight for what they want; only now, instead of being motivated by honor and glory, they are driven by jealousy and hatred. Theseus comes upon them, about to destroy each other in some sort of manifestation of natural law, and imposes upon them instead man's law, converting their personal battle into a tournament. Alongside the lists, he erects a temple with three shrines: Venus, to whom Palamon prays, to the east; Diana, to whom Emelye prays, to the north; and Mars, to whom Arcite prays, to the west. Palamon, after asking Venus for Emelye, says: 2254 And if ye wol nat so, my lady sweete Thanne preye I thee, tomorwe with a spere That Arcita me thurgh the herte here. In this we see, once again, love disordering all laws, for love has made death desirable. At the temple, we are finally introduced to Emelye firsthand. She prays to Diana: 2304 Chaste goddesse, wel wostow that I Desire to ben a mayden al my lyf, Ne nevere wol I be no love ne wyf I am, thow woost, yet of thy companignye, A mayde, and love hunting and venerye, And for to walk.en in the wodes wilde, And noght to ben a wyf and be with childe. Noght wol I knowe compaignye of man. Where is Emelye's happiness? She says it is not in love, which she seems to view as some sort of entrapment, but rather with her own freedom. Indeed, we are introduced to this idea of love as a prison with Arcite and Palamon, but their ideas of freedom are fulfillment of that love or else death; there can be 69 �DAS ENERGEIA no voluntary cessation of it. Emelye ties her happiness in freedom to the fact that she is a maiden and therefore defined as herself, not constructed as a wife or mother. But her disinterest in love also seems attached to her aversion of men, and I am not sure if the reason for this aversion is rooted simply in physical disinterest or if it is also born out of an aversion to being entrapped by anyone. If I might be allowed to digress for a moment, my gracious reader, there seems to be an interesting discussion on freedom and entrapment in another tale, one which might be applicable here. In the beginning of The Clerks Tale, the marquis, who is unwed, is trying to be convinced by one of his subjects that he should marry. The man says to him 113 Boweth your nekke under that blisful yok Of soveraynetee, noght of servyse, Which that men clepe spousaille or wedlok. What is the difference between something having sovereignty over you and being a servant to something? How is it a blissful yolk to have a sovereign? Do we in some way take comfort from someone or something having ultimate power over us? If we do, it seems this comfort would come from the fact we believed or had experience that whatever had sovereignty over us was good, was good for us, would never harm us and would, in fact, nourish and take care of us. A little later, the marquis replies 145 I me rejoysed of my liberte That selde tyme is founde in marriage. It seems to me that in this discussion love is being equated with marriage, and so with your permission I will do the same. What is this liberty the marquis speaks of that is seldom found in love? Is it simply the ability to do what he wants? If so, why could he not do what he wants when in love, for don't your wants change when in love? Is it that he does not want to be responsible for anyone or anything other than himself? Well, 70 that can't be exactly true, for he is the marquis and already responsible to and for his people. Even if this wasn't the case, you cannot float through life being responsible to nothing save yourself and say you are really living. We are born responsible to others: to our parents, our friends, those we work for and those we work with. So what exactly is the freedom that is seldom found in love? It very well might be the love itself, the condition that love puts you in, that takes away your liberty. Not so much that your wants and desires change to coincide with those of the object of your love, but rather that they are replaced by them. If this is the case, the best possibility of love is not that we would be free and flourishing men under a sovereign who would order well those parts of our lives we cannot well order ourselves. Rather, when in love, the best we could hope for is to be a house slave, and most aren't even that. Most in love remain fieldhands, our only solace being the welts across our backs where our love has whipped us into submission, for at least those scars are memories of when our love deigned to touch us. If this is the condition Emelye is trying to avoid by cherishing her freedom, is there a difference in knowledge of love between Arcite and Palamon, and Emelye? Is Emelye saying it is possible to be without love and be happy? Is she saying it is necessary to be without love to be happy? Or through her fear, is she proving and understanding that when you admit love into your life your happiness becomes mere commentary on the state of your love? I suspect that this is what she understood, which makes it even more curious when she says to Diana 2322 And if so be though wolt nat do me grace, Of if my destynee be shapen so That I shall nedes have oon of them two, As sende me hym that moost desirth me. If the last thing Emelye wants to do, for whatever reason, is to be a wife or mother, to have the company of a man, why would 71 �ENERGEIA DAS she then pray to Diana that if she must be wed or possessed by one of the two, let it be the one who desires her most? Would not she have a better chance at retaining some of her freedom if wed to the one who desired her less? Would she not be in a better position to resist another's love from ruling her own life if it was less strong? Is it out of a sense of fairness? Out of submission? It could be an admission that on some level she does have desire for men, both sexually and emotionally, and perhaps the one who would have the best chance to draw it out of her would be the one with the most desire for her, the one who would have so much desire that she could appropriate some for her own purposes. My own inclination is to think, if we are to take her at her word about her loathing to be possessed by any man, that her prayer is made with the same wisdom of a John of Gaunt, that she understands 33 His rash, fierce blaze of riot cannot last, For violent fires soon burn out themselves; Small show'rs last long, but sudden storms are short; (Richard II II, i, 33-35) same trite gist of "happily ever after." Have we seen on this journey anything at all which might convince us that there are positive aspects to love? Perhaps. We have seen love turn prison into Paradise and turn death into a happy end. We have seen how love can disorder anything that has been previously codified, which, yes, does speak to its destructive nature, but also might say that the rule of law really is the highest law, and if highest, by definition, best. If this is true, then we have no right to judge love by all its seemingly ruinous effects. Indeed, if true we have no right to judge love at all. If true, with respect to love we are all in the position of pilgrims (or servants) to God. Of course, if you don't want to buy that, my discriminating reader, then love and happiness might only ever make sense together retrospectively, only after the happiness offered in the phrase "happily ever after" is accepted and believed, like a noble lie. In that case, farewell, my exhausted reader, and may you live happily e~er after. I believe that Emelye knows what happens to passionate people, that sooner or later they destroy themselves, and that the sooner this happened, the sooner she would once again have her precious freedom, and once again be in control of her own happiness. Are we any closer, my patient reader, to understanding what happiness is, or if there is any connection between love and happiness, than we were when we first started this journey? It doesn't appear that we are. We did not even succeed in staying within the parameters of our investigation, for we strayed often towards God and faith. It doesn't seem to me that continuing this investigation to the end of the tale would help us any more than the rest of the investigation has, for even by the end, we see no evidence of love being connected to happiness in any positive sense, only statements~ all with the 72 73 �ENERGEIA MOORE Although Tilted Casey Moore Stong as Kevlar-the threadbare cotton of her sheets against night's creeping fingers. Tomorrow she will clip coupons for chicken legs under the half-light of sunrise. Riding on her hip I am making turnip greens, I am inheriting ghosts in the silent ceremony .of dusting photographs. Riding on her hipnot kangaroo-like with motion coming somewhere from behind, but like a second head! am watching perpendicular to her eyes. I am the only child who picks her blueberries. Her smell is safer than home. Onto the floor now she eases me down. My fingers slip on stocking seams. She stands in the hallway like a half-empty see-saw, one lightened hip thrust out to the left. I could remember her this way, tilted, almost falling, and believe that I had always balanced her, 74 but in memory this image transposes itself onto another, colorless, stained with coffee, where she stands freshly wed, straight as a windless field of pines. H er gaze appears interruptedpolite but incredulousthe gaze of a photographed soldiershocked that anyone could find time, in time, to preserve a moment. Beside her, he is too heavy to ride her hip, but he will tilt her yet, as shade tilts a tree toward the sun. As she looks outside of space, he only pretends to look at the ground, refusing to see, crushed under the weight of being seen. (Old man, the ground you study is now your only lover, but although tilted, she is in my eyes. Riding on her hip, I learned to see beyond the wold by adding the component of her stare to my vector.) Strong as Kevlar-the threadbare cotton of her sheets against night's creeping fingers. 75 �ENERGEIA The Tyrant's Temperance: Plato's Charmides* Eva Brann Anything but Biblical C. Muscarella I'll begin by telling you when and how I came on this little drama, the Charmides, which is not among Plato's most read dialogues. It was during a cold Greek winter in the late fifties, and I was working by myself in the storage rooms of the American excavations at Corinth, the great commercial center of ancient Greece. At night I came back to the guest house where an invisible staff had made a fire and prepared a meal. There was no one there either, but the common room had a complete set of Loeb volumes, the olive and gold edition of all of Greek literature with Greek on the left and English on the right pages. There I conceived and carried out two deeds of intemperance: O ne was that I got hungry late at night and sneaked into the kitchen and ate a bowl of the far-famed Corinthian yogurt, real goat's-milk yogurt, creamy, with a thick skin, which I topped with mounds of brown sugar. Alas, I had incontinently eaten the starter yogurt, the seed pearl of yogurts, and this famous strain disappeared from the archaeological world forever, to my disgrace. The other conception of hybris was to read my way straight through all of Plato's thirty-six dialogues that winter in Corinth and Athens. As is usually the case with such study plans of overweening ambition, I remembered nothing and yet everything. I certainly remembered the Charmides for its intensely charming frame and its forbiddingly dry dialectic. It was the first time I had come on the close juxtaposition of the inflammation of love and the intensity of reason that appears in a number of Socrates' conversations. I might * Delivered at Middlebury College in October 2002. I thank Paul Dry warmly for his many corrective comments. 76 77 �ENERGEIA have said "the concreteness of passion and the abstraction of thought," but I avoid the term "abstract" like the plague when speaking of Socrates' or Plato's thinking. ''Abstraction" has to do, literally, with drawing away from the particularities of life and producing mere rational residues. For Socrates, however, what is reached by our thinking has more genuine life, more vibrant being than the particulars of experience which jump-start Socratic conversations. I say this now because in this dialogue there will be someone who does engage in abstraction (aphairesis) in that attenuating, ratifying sense, though the word itself wasn't used in that way until Aristotle introduced it into philosophy. The next time I thought seriously about the dialogue was just this past spring (2002), forty-five years later, when a group of us met for a day in Annapolis to have our own conversation about Socrates' conversation. As happens several times in the Platonic dialogues, there were two brothers in our group of friends; one of them was your own Professor Murray Dry, and the other Paul Dry, who has taught some of you as well. Also present was one of my colleagues, Peter Kalkavage, with whom I've translated some dialogues, and Cecie Dry, Paul's wife, who was probably the least used to reading these works. And again, just as happens in Socratic conversations, from this participant came the tone-setting observation: a sense of unease with the dialogue, a feeling of opaqueness and hidden agendas. We began to look for that hidden agenda, and this talk is really a record of what came to us in our animated talk. Let me here bring in the subtitle of the Charmides. We don't know who supplied it, but it is quite accurate. It says: "Concerning Temperance: Tentative." The dialogue is certainly tentative; it makes an unsuccessful try at discovering the meaning of a term and seems to have purely negative results. But just remember how useful negative results are in all sorts of investigation: They tighten the confines of the positive possibilities. There is, furthermore, no question that the dialogue has 78 BRANN a single theme: temperance. The Greek word is sophro.ryne, which means literally "safe-" or "sound-mindedness," just as Socrates means "sound power"-but that is pure serendipity, and though I'd like to say later on that Socrates' meaningful name resounds in the dialogue I scarcely dare claim it; Socrates himself will, to be sure, play on his partner's parental name. Sophro.ryne is rendered variously as "temperance" (and I've used that in my title, "The Tyrant's Temperance" for the small joy of alliteration), as "modesty," as "m·o deration," as "selfcontrol," and as "self-possession." All of these are interpretative versions, and it is good to keep them in mind when the effort is to get to the center of this ring of meanings. From now on I'll stick mostly with the literal translation: soundmindedness. Still meandering about the outskirts of the dialogue, I now have to raise a problem of the sort called "hermeneutic" by scholars, as follows: Suppose yourself in conversation with a forceful, clever young man of about twenty-eight, called Slobodan Milosevic. You know by a time warp that he will do such atrocious deeds that he will come before an international war crimes tribunal. Will that fact work retroactively, will a curious kind of ex post facto indictment taint the present conversation and your perspective of the young man's arguments? I would say it was practically unavoidable. Well, that's the case for Charmides and Critias who are ' Socrates' partners in the conversation (not that I seriously think that the worst Greek tyrant can quite match in style the gross boorishness of a modern Balkan dictator). We may suppose that the dialogue is an invention of Plato's intellect, though the participants are contributions from the real world. Logicians of fiction call such persons, people who wander from the world of fact into the texts of fiction ' "immigrant characters." Let me say as an aside here that I hope we all agree that the real people in their factual world probably never said anything as significant and revealing of truth as 79 �ENERGEIA they say in their fictionally revised moments. But if the truth is in the invented conversation, why allow these immigrants into the dialogue at all and so often? After all, Charmides and Critias aren't the only immigrants whose future casts a shadow on their dialogic present. Flagrant Alcibiades, incidentally a close friend of Critias, and iniquitous Meno are two others. It must be, I think, because their lives, known to contemporaries and to us from reports (sometimes from other dialogues), are supposed to be unheard yet shrill descants above the plainsong of the conversation, and we are intended to hear both strains. Now that possibility poses something of a problem for me. At home, at St. John's College, we pride ourselves on going at the text directly and getting out what's in it, and not diverting and distracting ourselves with extraneous knowledge. And here I am about to breach this hermeneutic, that is, this interpretational principle, to draw attention to the latter-day lives of the participants in the Charmides. My excuse is that I think the dialogue itself calls for such knowledge to be brought to bear on it. Or to put it somewhat paradoxically: Even someone who knew nothing further of Charmides and Cririas could tell, as could the freshest of the members of our reading group in spring, that there was something further to be known, something lurking behind the conversation. What was it? Critias as master spirit and Charmides as a follower belonged to the regime of the Thirty Tyrants. They put down the democracy of Athens and ruled Athens from fall of 404 to spring of 403 B.C. for eight months of carnage, plunder and sacrilege. Their rage to purge all opposition makes one historian compare their regime to the Reign of Terror that degraded the French Revolution. Here in Athens there seems to have occurred an early, perhaps the earliest, example of ideological purification; all persons even suspected of democratic incliniations were eliminated by judicial murder. More fellow-Athenians were killed by these Athenians in eight months than had died in ten years of the Peloponnesian War. The democratic exiles eventually mounted a battle in which Critias and Charmides died; this hap- 80 BRANN pened twenty-nine years after the dialogue we are thinking about had taken place. The Spartans were called in to superintend the end of the Athenian civil war. These are unforgettable facts. I might add that it is reported (Aeschines I 173) that "Socrates the Sophist" was executed-this was in 399 B.C.-"because he educated Critias." We shall see whether Plato thinks that Socrates taught Critias anything or was his mentor. It adds to the poignancy of the setting that all these people are blood kin: Charmides was Plato's maternal uncle, while Critias was Charmides' and Plato's mother's cousin (as well as guardian), and so Plato was Critias's first cousin once removed. It will become problematic whether this dialogue does what some people think: sets an honorable monument to these two monstrous embarrassments to the family, who died when Plato was about twentysix, not far from Critias' age in the dialogue, and when he was just a few years from giving up the composing of tragedies in favor of writing dialogues celebrating Socrates. Critias turns up in other dialogues, most significantly in the one named after him. Let me give a most abbreviated version of its contents: Critias describes the old, prehistoric enemy of an Athens that existed long before the historical Athens. This antediluvian Athens (which Socrates' friends pretend was an incarnation of something like that "beautiful city" described in the Republit) had to face a terrifying invader, Atlantis. Critias describes this island realm with such relish that to this day people think of it as a lost idyll, submerged in the great flood that also eroded Old Athens. In fact Atlantis is the prototype of a totalitarian state, whose imagined architecture prefigures the Nazi building programs under Hitler's architect and minister of armaments Albert Speer: Its land has been regimented by a geometric abstraction, a great grid; its city is an impregnable nest of concentric circles of deep moats and enormous walls, in whose center bloody sacrifices are performed. By an uncanny coincidence the colored stones used in this building program are the Nazi colors of white, black, and red (Critias 116 a). Poseidon, the most resentfully persecutional of all the gods, 81 �ENERGElA fathers the Atlantic kings by a rape. Of all this Critias is the admiring verbal architect. Surely Plato is shuddering at his work. To my mind it took courage on Plato's part to make this whole brilliantly awful crew turn up in the dialogues devoted to his teacher-but perhaps he thought that one Plato who turned out to be a credit to Socrates could outweigh them all, and that he could show by intimations that Socrates never had any illusions about those of his companions who went to the bad. If our reading group's hunch about this dialogue works out, it will be clear that Plato was never the captive of his clan and class convictions and that any argument that begins "He belonged to an aristocratic family, and therefore he ..." is apt to be a non sequitur. Where there is thinking there are no inadvertent loyalties. That is enough bumbling about in the outer precincts of the dialogu.e. Let me plunge into the work itself by setting out a preview of its main features so you'll know whe~e I'm heading. Many Platonic dialogues have this feature: Just as you think you've grasped the subject, you are asked to follow Socrates into something apparently different: The Phaedrus begins with love and ends with rhetoric, the Republic begins with politics and centers in on liberal education, and the Charmides declares itself to be about soundmindedness and slithers off into theory of knowledge, knowing about knowing. We are to apprehend the connection of these apparently disparate matters. Just as real people take part in this dialogue so it has an exact date. It is 431 B.C., right at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, when Potidea, a city that had abrogated its alliance with Athens, surrendered after more than a year's siege by Athenian troops. Socrates, who had been away for quite a while on this campaign, has returned the night before. Though he is thirty-nine, he probably has no family yet. At any rate, he turns up the very next morning at a wrestling school. There he has a conversation which he tells at some unknown time to an unknown person; perhaps we're supposed to think it is Plato. When Plato wrote the dialogue down we don't know, 82 BRANN nor does it matter, though it's generally thought to be an early work. Now there are other dialogues, like this one, that Socrates tells, in the first person. One is the Protagoras. There the cousins, Charmides and Critias, now a few years older, appear along with Pericles' sons, as well as the wild and beautiful Alcibiades ' in the company of Protagoras and several other sophists (315 a). The other famous first-person dialogue is the Republic, in which Socrates discusses that very narrational form for writing with respect to its truthfulness (393 f.). There are three forms of narration, he says: An author can candidly stand behind his work, so that we can readily infer his presence. He does that by speaking of his characters in the third person and in indirect discourse. For example: "Socrates came to the wrestling school as soon as he was back from Potidea, and there he met Critias, and Critias said that, etc." Or the author can, like a tragic poet, disappear from our consciousness and make himself into an imitator of each of the characters that are saying their lines in their own personas, hiding himself behind their dramatic masks, in this fashion: Socrates: "Good morning, how has philosophy been faring since I went on campaign? Any interesting boys?" Critias: ''Wait till you see my cousin Charmides." Or a writer might mix the candid and the imitational mode. The Republic itself, as well as the Charmides, is written in a yet different narrational mode. First, Socrates speaks in his own person, impersonating no one but himself-an honest proceeding. But then, second, he mimics the dialogue of the others-not so honest. And third, Plato is hiding beyond our ken and consciousness in bringing on the stage a Socrates who speaks for himself out of his first-person mask-very shifty. These firstperson dialogues, then, in which Plato imitates Socrates directly, contrary to his own canons of candor, betoken tricky business, to my mind. I'll try to show what that tricky business is. So when Socrates arrives, he is greeted first by a kind of philosophical nut, a histrionic person named Chaerephon, who 83 �ENERGELA has attached himself to Socrates. His presence shows that Socrates has slipped back into his old life, and that not all his followers are very self-controlled; Chaerephon is a kind of immoderate innocent, harmlessly unsound of mind. He brings Socrates to sit down with Critias, who will not be so harmless. They all want to know the news from the field. Socrates reports, evidently modestly saying nothing about his own part in the campaign, which we however hear of from Alcibiades in the dialogue Symposium (219 e f.). According to him, Socrates was famous in the camp for his terrific hardiness, his self-control under conditions of wintry cold and hunger, his day-long sieges of standing motionless in the summer sun, rapt in thought, and his heroic rescue of Alcibiades in battle. Clearly Plato is presenting sophro.ryne incarnate-Socrates is a model of modesty, hardy self-control, and, we'll soon see, of moderation. Now he asks for the news he cares about: How is philosophy doing, have any of the boys become prominent for wisdom or beauty (in that order) or, what he would evidently welcome most, both together? At this moment a noisy crowd of fighting fans come in, announcing the celebrity himself, Charmides, who is probably about fourteen, just grown into adolescence; he is called a stripling-a long narrow shape of a boy. You have to read the dialogue to feel the intensity of its charm: the erotically charged atmosphere of the gym, the Dionysiac entrance of the beautiful and well-born boy with his rout of followers, the ludicrous eagerness of the men pushing each other off the benches so he'll sit by them. Since he's Critias' cousin and ward, Critias calls him over on the pretext that Socrates can cure some morning headaches he's been having. Chaerephon has let loose a bon mot and is heard from no more: If the boy stripped, he says, you would think he had no face-his beauty of form (eidos) is so perfect. Socrates says soberingly: The man-not "boy"-would be impossible to beat in battle if he had one tiny additional thing, a well-grown soul; that soul is 84 BRANN what we should undress. Now Charmides looks at Socrates ' and his mantle falls open (or he lets it fall open). Socrates confides something that is rare to the person to whom he's telling this event. We know from other dialogues that he can be passionate for his beliefs, deeply contemptuous of incurable ignorance, and angry with conceited cleverness. But now, just once, he's on fire, burning-so he says-and no longer "in himself"-that is, he is ecstatic and beyond self-control. I must stop here to say something about that notorious Socratic irony. The Greek word means "pretending, dissembling," in Socrates' case pretending for pedagogical purposes to know a good deal less than he does. The Romantic concept of irony, set out by Kierkegaard in his doctoral dissertation on Socratic irony, makes irony a kind of non-committal hovering above the issue, a deliberate withholding of commitment. I have a feeling that here, in this one dialogue, Socrates comes close to the modern notion: He may well be aroused by a charming boy who is what we vulgarly call "coming on" to him. At the same time he's looking at himself smilingly, ironically, from a safe place beyond. At any rate he collects himself quickly and admits to the boy (who's been advertised to him as philosophical and also "wholly poetical") that he does have a headache drug, but the guru from the northern provinces who gave it to him also told him that it is ineffective unless accompanied by an incantation. Socrates has taken an oath never to administer the drug without it. At first Charmides wants to take this charm down in writing so as to use it at will; laughingly he agrees to do it only with Socrates' consent. Socrates asks him: "Do you know my name accurately?"-! pointed out before that Socrates means "Sound in power" or some such thing. All this byplay is amusing-and also ominous, as we will see. There's a game and a battle here, in this direct Platonic mime of Socrates. Now Socrates expounds a theory of treatment which we would call holistic medicine: You can't treat the eyes without the head, the head without the body-and the body without 85 �ENERGElA the soul. The implication is plain to us if not to the boy: His headache betokens that his soul isn't well. You don't have to know the boy's future to conceive a suspicion of this young celebrity. The incantation consists of beautiful words-dialectic conversation-which will engender soundmindedness. Here the governing word of the dialogue appears. Critias bursts in to say that his nephew outdoes all the other boys in this virtue-never mind that temperance and modesty aren't very good candidates for competitive possession. Socrates asks Charmides directly if he's so very soundminded, and like a well-bred boy he weasels; he can't, after all, prove his guardian a liar and he won't praise himself. Here begins the dialectic part of the dialogue. In reading it we must work our way through the arguments, but we don't need to like them. They are often, as here, intended to be refutational, to show people 1. that they hardly know what they're talking about and 2. that they can't even defend the skeletal thoughts they do have from picky and tricky attacks. I think this refutational testing is intended to evoke the intelligent outrage of the alert reader and to drag into the conversation the concatenation of terms needed to carry on the inquiry. You might say that refutational logic is the spinach of the dialectical diet: It's good for you. Socrates starts with the two necessary conditions for such talk: experience of the thing (we are to think that Charmides has some perception of soundmindedness) and a common language in which to articulate the experience (Charmides speaks Greek). Then Charmides is to say what he thinks soundmindedness is. His first notion is that it is a sort of quietness, a subdued decorousness-a funny perception for a boy who has been led into the gym by a noisy bunch of squabbling kids. Socrates quickly shows that this notion is nowhere near the center of what ought to be, whatever else it is, a good thing, since nervy quickness is often a better mode than elegant languor. Charmides tries again: Soundmindedness 86 BRANN is modesty, bashfulness. This is indeed how upper-class European children used to be brought up: to be shy, seen but not heard, on the hypothesis that an inhibited youth makes for a self-possessed maturity. Socrates points out that shyness is not always a virtue-by an appeal to the Otjyssry, where Homer has someone say that bashfulness is no good for a needy man. Charmides has been dialectically driven to the end of his own experience, not because what he says is wrong-in fact, in its ordinary use sophro.ryne encompasses ·the features he picks out-but because it comes to him too easily. Now he tries something second-hand. Socrates knows right away that this formula comes from Critias, but both cousins deny it. It's a playful white lie but also something darker: an intrusion of caginess where it is least wanted, in a philosophical inquiry. The formula Charmides remembers is that soundmindedness is "doing one's own thing." Readers of the Republic will recall that this is its operative notion· of the virtue of justice. In its application to the soul it means knowing oneself, that is, knowing how one's soul is constituted and then letting each capacity do its work, in particular letting the desires reach out for possession, the spirit tense and tone the psychic fabric and the reason issue restraining commands to the whole. In the Republic soundmindedness is the harmonious adjustment of these three parts, so in that dialogue justice and soundmindedness are not so easily distinguishable: Justice seems to belong to each capacity in itself; soundmindedness seems to belong to the three in their relation to one another. But out of this psychological context the formula "doing one's own thing" is unintelligible, and Charmides is soon reduced to perplexity. It can't mean, as Socrates suggests, that a scribe is supposed to write only his own name or that you're supposed to make your own shoes. Again Critias explodes. Charmides is garbling what has suddenly become his definition and is ruining his reputation. Socrates switches partners, and from now on he talks to the sophistical and savvy older cousin, Critias, who appeals to the poet Hesiod for some tricky word-mongering of the sort 87 �ENERGElA he has evidently learned in the school of Prodicus the Sophist. · The upshot is that "doing your own thing" is now turned into "doing good things." It doesn't mean making your own shoes or scribbling only your own name but doing useful and noble things. But, Socrates pushes him, don't the craftsmen and professionals often get useful, helpful results without quite knowing what they're doing? Yet things done helpfully are done soundmindedly. (Socrates introduces here a term important for later use: ophelimos, "helpfully" or "serviceably.") Well, if that's so, couldn't someone be acting soundmindedly without knowing what he was doing? Critias is scandalized: that's impossible. Critias demonstrates, as he will again later, that ready flexibility in argument can be a token of being fundamentally disengaged. He withdraws his previous claims, and, this time appealing to .the famous inscriptions on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, comes up with a new formula: What the god means by "Know thyself!" is "Be soundminded!" By means of some silly sophistry he argues away the other famous inscription on the temple: "Nothing too much." Two points are to be remarked. Once again Critias feeds back to Socrates formulas that are Socrates' own, but without the Socratic context which gives them meaning. Socrates makes no mystery of what he means by the injunction to self-knowledge. He doesn't mean rummaging around in your own "subjectivity" but getting clear knowledge of your soul's constitution, so that you'll know whether you are a complex monster or a quieter, simpler creature (Phaedrus 230 a). Nor does he mean something terrifically abstract, some purely logical self-reflection-as Critias will later on. The second point is that for the moment Socrates lets Critias get away with setting aside the most normal understanding of moderation the "Nothing too much " that Golden Mean that is for ' ' Aristotle (who always takes his departure from normality) the master schema according to which all the virtues are means between extremes. Socrates himself regards such 88 BRANN balanced, steady self-control as the master virtue in the Gorgias (507 b f.), and he makes its absence a specific vice of tyrants in the Republic (571 ff.). This straightforward moral virtue is the one Critias pushes aside. The translators of my favorite version of the Charmides, Thomas and Grace West, note this crucial fact. Critias wants Socrates to agree to all this derivative cleverness, but Socrates balks. He's trying to mount an inquiry and doesn't know the answer without taking a moment to consider. Socrates is introducing in his own conduct the possibility of knowledgeable ignorance. So here begins the serious dialectic, a difficult but trick-free investigation. It will bring into the world at least two incipient notions with huge futures. In the Middle Ages one of these will acquire the still current name of intentionality. Intentionality means the capacity for "aboutness," and it can be claimed that all thinking possesses it preeminently. I don't know if it can be proved, but I believe that on!J thinking has it, which would mean that wherever there is aboutness there is thought, for instance that feelings which are about something are necessarily thought-imbued. Here is what I mean by aboutness. Thinking always has an intention, an object at which it is directed. Even if you think of nothing, then Nothing becomes your object. When we ask "What was all that about?" we are implying that someone had something in mind. The non-conscious world isn't about anything except by our attribution; for example, we may impute an intention or feeling to nature (which imputation is called the Pathetic Fallacy). In short, to think is to think about something, and to know is to know something, and this aboutness is the exclusive mark of thinking. That's exactly Socrates' next thought. If soundmindedness is knowledge at all, it is knowledge of something. Yes, of itself, says Critias. Well, objects Socrates, how come all the other kinds of knowledge have objects other than themselves, as medicine has health? Critias tells Socrates he is inquiring incorrectly. Geom- 89 �ENERGEIA etry for instance has no independent product. But, says Socrates, it does have a separable subject. Now really, what's temperance a knowledge of, what is to be known that's different from temperance itself? Critias blows up again and accuses Socrates, who is now certainly in the inquiring mode, of being in the merely refutational mode. Soundmindedness, he claims, is simply different from all the other kinds of knowledge. It is-not his own term-reflexive, its own object. But Critias slips in an addition to gain not one but many objects for his soundmindedness as well: It is the knowledge of itself and of other sciences. Socrates pacifies the beleaguered Critias, who concedes that what Socrates says "observes the mean"; he unwittingly uses a term reintroducing the sense of moderation that he had excluded from consideration. If soundmindedness is a knowledge of itself and of other knowledges, it must also be a knowledge of ignorance. This little addition is a characteristic Socratic ploy; it makes apparently innocuous little shifts that turn out to have large consequences. So I must stop again to point out that the question of the knowledge of ignorance is really a serious preoccupation for Socrates, for on it depends the possibility of inquiry. The dialogue Meno is concerned with this very question: How is discovery of the unknown possible, how do we recognize a new truth how do we know what it is we do not know? So ' also Socrates' notorious claim to know that he knows nothing is not a discountable bit of Socratic irony but the formula for a lifelong question: What do we know if we know our ignorance? To Socrates soundmindedness is not a set of abstracted impersonal notions. When he summarizes the inquiry so far, he humanizes all the talk of knowledge and self-knowledge and products and subjects: The soundminded human being will know himself and will discern what he knows and doesn't know, and will have some judgment about what others know and don't know. But again, in the presence of these cousins all the issues 90 BRANN are being stripped of their Socratic pathos and put in the service of a perilously hollow agenda. For what Critias is formulating is a perfectly self-aware master-knowledge which will give him total control with minimum effort and will, on top of everything, bear the grand name given it by that mythical "law-giver," the originator of names: sophroryne. Whoever possessed this virtue, this power, could certainly tyrannize the world. Cloaked in the good name of a moderating virtue, he could direct for his own ends and from afar all the work of the world, judging it by a knowledge abstracted from all concrete objects and totally imbued with the sense of its own knowing-a self-certifying knowledge, isolated and impregnable to the influence of human circumstances. The good old-fashioned tyrants, from those ruling the early Greek city-states to certain Roman emperors, were, it seems, given to sensuality and sadism: Socrates describes the type of the tyrant in the Republic as self-tyrannized rather than self-controlled, tyrannized, that is, by his own ravenous appetites. But Critias, as Socrates gets him to reveal himself to us, seems to have in him a hint of a more austere modern type first fully seen, apparently, during the French Terror, a fierce purifier of all opposition and exterminator of all opponents, an ideologue with a master knowledge, a knowledge of kn owledge which enables his regime to regulate all knowledges without knowing any of their objects, to judge and censor ignorance or falsehood without knowing how ignorance is possible. More concretely, it is a characteri5tic of the most destructive modern tyrannies that they are ideological, in the sense that in them one knowledge, one schematic idea-it could be any-certifies itself and all other knowledge as within or without its pale, while human good and bad are mere derivatives of these mental figments. In a word, this knowledge, objectless because indifferent to its object's truth, has one true intention: power. Critias, to my mind, prefigures the modern totalitarian ruler, a creature who rules by 91 �ENERGEIA abstractions, an austere ideologue albeit with excessive and · inhuman appetites. What I'm saying is a hunch, a speculation, but based on an eerie sense of watching an inchoate evil, one that will emerge more clearly at the end of the dialogue. Socrates begins the third and last part of his inquiry with Critias. The first part dealt with Critias's claim that soundmindedness was doing one's own thing. The second was the transformation of this borrowed formula into knowledge of itself and of other knowledges and of ignorance. Now Socrates asks whether such a knowledge, a knowledge of nothing other than itself and of other knowledges and non-knowledges, is even possible. Socrates thinks it is impossible. He cites all kinds of disparate examples of aboutness. Socrates shapes this inquiry as a question concerning the genitive relation, really the preposition "of." ''Vision of," "opinion of," "desire of"-none of these can be completed reflexively: vision of vision, opinion of opinion, desire of desire-none of these capacities seem to apply to themselves. But Socrates doesn't trust himself to be up to analyzing this question further. Like an infectious yawn, this perplexity seizes Critias as well. Here is the second future-fraught issue of the dialogue. We modems might not agree that these second-level capacities are so unthinkable: "Desire of desire" is a well-known Romantic notion, that of self-excitation. "Opinion of opinion" pretty exactly describes opinion research, a respectable second-level subject in political science. But "knowledge of knowledge," above all, is more than a mere possibility for us, for the chief task philosophers of the 17th and 18th century set themselves was to establish a knowledge of knowledge, even a science of science, and its name was epistemology. Its great aim was not only to certify the discoveries of science and thus to be truly a master-knowledge, but also to set the limits of human knowing, to be a knowledge of ignorance. I name Descartes and Kant to remind you of what I'm speaking about; this epistemological project is checked by Hegel's grand critique of 92 T i [ BRANN it in his Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit. (I omit the "thought of thought" [noesis noeseos] that is the activity of divinity at the apex of Aristotle's world, for it is not reflexive but self-penetrating: It does not turn on itself as an instrument for working on an object, but rather its activity has become identical with its object-the thought of being and the being of thought are at one.) Socrates does not so much deny this reflexivity (which is the turn toward the future) as he finds himself not up to affirming it. No thoughtful person could call the Greek philosophers simple-minded, but they do seem to have a certain soundminded simplicity. I think it appears in the Socratic rejection of reflexive self-intention, the mind's fo cusing on its own functioning. But I'm far from having thought that out, although it does appear that some things seem hardly possible to Socrates that are a staple of our common opinion. He cannot believe, for example, 1. that anyone should willingly and knowingly choose evil; or 2. that any human thinking can be free of value; or 3. that ab outness in its abstraction should gain independence from and mastery over its original objects. For Socrates, recall, the master knowledge, the knowledge of his philosophizing kings, is not the knowledge of knowledge but the knowledge of the Good (Republic 540 a). Because clever Critias has no great interest in the good that his epistemic soundmindedness might bring, Socrates now calls him by his father's curious name: son of "Callaeschrus," which means "Beautiful-Shameful." But to help Critias over his shame at appearing inadequate Socrates concedes for the moment that a knowledge of knowledge might be possible (although he finds it in principle unintelligible that knowing should turn on itself when empty of an object). Yet how does such a knowledge help a human being to know what one knows or doesn't know? Surely, Critias says, a man who possesses such a reflexive science will be similar to what he has, and thus he will also know himself. Socrates concedes this too, though he can scarcely believe it. 93 �ENERGElA It is, as we would say, too abstract. This reflexive knowledge · is not Socratic self-knowledge; just to know knowledge is not to know one's human self. Yet even with this concession, Socrates, who is, as he says, "always the same,'' still doesn't understand how such knowledge can help him know anything substantial about himself or other subjects. By Critias's knowledge he can only know that he knows, not what he knows. Socrates clearly thinks that this is a fairly empty thing to know, but again he is both broaching and rejecting a future doctrine. When Kant establishes the limits of reason in his Critique of Reason, he argues repeatedly that there are things beyond our experience-he calls them "things in themselves"-but that we are, ipso fatto, unable to lmow what they are. It is the Socratic formula with a positive sign. For what Socrates considers unintelligible, that we might claim that we know something without a clue to what it is, that the question of existence might be answered without any reference to essence-this very possibility is positively asserted by Kant so that he might be able to delineate the farther side of the limits of human reason. If there were a knowledge-call it soundmindednessthat knew the "what" of all the other knowledges, it would truly be a science for rulers, be they the rulers of homes or city states; soundmindedness would rule so that all that was done was done for the best, because no one would try to do what he was not competent to do, and everyone would let those who knew how to do it better, do it instead. But this is probably attributing too great a power to soundmindedness, Socrates says, and so our inquiry has found nothing useful. Critias thinks Socrates is saying something very strange. Socrates agrees, using his very own oath: "By the Dog."- The Dog is apparently Anubis, the Egyptian god of the underworld, whence come dreams. So Socrates tells his dream; it may be from the underworld gate of false dreams or of true dreams, he doesn't know. Suppose soundmindedness regulated everything, and there was no pretense in the professions. We would indeed be healthier and safer and have better 94 BRANN utensils. But in always acting knowledgeably, would we necessarily do well and be happy? That's what we haven't yet been able to learn, my dear Critias, he says. Critias can't really argue that shoemakers and brassworkers and other specialists are particularly happy. Supposing there were someone who knew everything. Which of all the things he knows would make him happy?-N ot prophecy or playing the dice or even health science, they agree. Critias finally coughs up what Socrates has been after: It is the knowledge of good and bad. Socrates bursts out in pretended indignation-or perhaps rather in a pretense of pretended indignation, for he knows Critias's soul. "You scoundrel!" You've dragged me around in circles, hiding the fact that living knowledgeably does not make us happy, and that your soundmindedness is not helpful. Socrates blames himself: If I had been useful to a noble inquiry, then what is agreed by all to be the noblest thing would not have come out seeming unhelpful to us. We've made unwarranted concession after concession: that there was a knowledge of knowledge, that it would know what other knowledges know, and most unreasonably of all, that a man can know what he doesn't know. (Recall here that Socrates in fact has a memorable way of making us believe that we can know what we don't know, set out as the Myth of Recollection in the Meno.) Socrates concludes: Although the inquiry found us so simple-minded and flexible (a euphemistic description of Critias's sophistic slipperiness), it hasn't been able to find the truth but, helped by our agreements and constructions, has "hybristi.cally" sh own us the unhelpfulness of what we posited that soundmindedness was; Critias's soundmindedness has no necessary relation to the human good. With this mention of the tyrant's flaw of f?ybris, "impertinent pride," in conjunction with "unhelpfulness,'' Socrates ends his passionate summary. The whole conversation has been one of illuminating false starts. Using terminology that is at once anachronistic and appropriate to this future-fraught 95 �ENERG EIA conversation, we ourselves might summarize it this way: A · value-free consideration of human virtue is going to get us nowhere. It is Socrates' conviction-not a conclusion but rather a point of departure for his more conclusive inquiries-that the Good is the source of all knowledge (Republic 507 ff.). Since virtue is knowledge (a proposition argued in some form in many dialogues), it is, of course and even primarily, under the aegis of the Good. Furthermore, "all knowledge divorced ... from virtue is villainy"-Socrates' word here is panourgia, "all-doing" (Menexenus 246 e). It is the necessary goodness of all genuine knowledge, and so of the virtue here discussed, that is occulted in this conversation with clever Critias, the prospective "all-doing" tyrant: As he has an empty, if all-encompassing, view of knowledge, so his understanding of temperance is divorced from goodness; it is intended as mere potency. Here is my last chance to say clearly what is so significantly unusual about Socrates' dialectic in this dialogue. Almost always in other conversations he insists that the discovery of what something is, particularly a virtue, what its name signifies, must precede all other inquiries: how it's acquired, what it's good for. Here, in the Charmides, he would have reversed the order if Critias would have allowed it. Why? Because, it seems to me, his conversational partners are usually decent-minded if unthinking folks, who, although somewhat clueless about the meaning of the terms they live by, hold them in proper reverence. They know that soundmindedness, selfcontrol, temperance, moderation are good, are what we call "values," whatever they may be. But in Critias Socrates is facing an opponent who seems to have no notion that any understanding of a virtue must include some sense of its making life good. Hence he has to wish to reverse his usual order of inquiry, though without success. So Socrates turns back to Charmides: In your behalf, Charmides, he says, I am very anxious. That for you who are so remarkable in physical form and so very soundminded in 96 BRANN soul-that for you this soundmindedness should be of no help in your life!-if indeed you have this virtue, which I think is a great good. Socrates manages to concede and deny the virtue to the boy in the same speech. And Charmides picks up this hesitation. I don't know, he says, whether I have it or not. But I do need your incantation. Critias chimes in and unilaterally commits his ward to Socrates' companionship; Charmides will obey his guardian. Evidently they are whispering at this point. Socrates wants to know what they are plotting. The language becomes increasingly political. So you'll take me by force, Socrates says, without even a proper arraignment? I'll use force, Charmides says, since Critias has given the order. And he asks Socrates: What's your plan? Here is how Socrates reports the parting words of this ominous conversation. Socrates: There's no plan left to me. For onceyou set out to achieve anything by force, not.a man can oppose you. Charmides: Then don'tyou oppose me. Socrates: Then I won't oppose you. Some three decades later Charmides was a middle-aged member of that public conspiracy called the Thirty Tyrants. They ordered Socrates, along with four other men, to go and arrest a certain Leon of Salamis whom they wanted to kill. The others went to do it, but Socrates, risking his life, did in fact oppose the tyranny by refusing to execute the order. Instead he just went home (Apology 32). And no one dared touch him-at the time. That event is, I think, the ominous subtext of this strange little dialogue with its unwontedly personal setting and its oddly abstract dialectic. 97 �ENERGEIA Windmi//Farm, Oklahoma Sara White Wilson 98 �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>Energeia</em> Description An account of the resource <em>Energeia</em> is a non-profit, student magazine, which is published once a year and distributed among students, faculty, alumni, and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis.  Staff welcome submissions from all members of the community -- essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context energeia Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kelley, Kathleen (Editor) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Energeia 2003 Energeia Student publication