1 20 46 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/291e68a756953aa4d2481d8b07cd3db7.pdf 50c63d7bd42d3515b0272103ec5d4f68 PDF Text Text Energeia 2003 �. 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. 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. 98 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 2003 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in 2003. 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 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. 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. 112 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 2002 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Spring 2002. 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. 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 2002 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. Untitled IN ate Oesch �Serenade Luke Russell Andanie " \ ·i o'.in I _t::-....._ __r... ~ ~ ~-/':'I ,_.. - ''-I mp PP ~-t:'I '"""I !Dp i mp r.-. .-:'> ~ I,'=" U" "Cr mp Anda.nit pp Pl' & ' I';', °' mp PP I'~ ~~ I r.- Imp pp mp L mp PP I';', & pP mp l:f"¥<J 'PP -- "=" I b I & Anc!.a.01t U" mp lPP - .. Cc:lo B.:.~ ·~ mp lPP ~ o'J'!!:c - ' . ' Anda.noo \ hla 1 ~ mp I j'=" a :~ ~::I a~ ~Jl. :~-- -::~- :~ r D'~ ~; mp. r.... \ 1. Fl 1 ; ; I: ; : : 1: : : ; I : :; 1· illi ::::s (D >-i aq (D ,_.. ~ p ~ .c~ r ~ J (D mp PP ,~ 1~ I J ~ I ~!~ ~ I .:::.::c..'. I l'ffi =......, --- I VI• ~ v •. I~- ---- ---~- ._-;._-;a.-... ,.. 12::.;d. t::t:frl- L...1..-1-J -~- -- fl.f&.~~ • 4!:_.fL ,._ 'J:,.:L:..J::J - --+-- -.J-:==.: c.: .: !. ===j====-=:=:===t===========t=======d --=----- - - ~--. D.B. \'Jo. ~) VL. - --Ve. D.B. ============:;;;;;;;;::==:::::::===ff O') -.] �"'T"' I I ener geia 68 (· • . · ·~ - Russell { { (· · • 69 , ~ - ~~ '\ ·' \' \ ' -- -I / '• a · ~r ~- \ i; • , I 1 .. (• .. 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( "ll ·l ,·' . ._ , (.! ~ / ·t i • ~·; !. ..i ( ~ \\ ~. ·~ -ll t' 1 '1tU / k ·ll ·t i t i.1 ,• v ·ll- .. . ··p ·ti \ (. (, ·li 11 (: • ·ti .. 4 •Ill. ( ,. i ·ll r~ - t..i J \'I. "' Ii. ( .... { / ~. ,., ft.ti f i. '" ~ \. ... . t. •tl ·'1 ., :..I. § ' ·tL ·ll ~;, ~ -p ,, I, - I . Ill I 1 ' i ·•L - (• .I ~ ,·~-. ,.,. 1 I /~· ; J : ...... • { .~ ) (~ .•d ( i .., l, A• .~ -~ f,- I. § E I ~ i1 1· 71 :'g . I . : A t: l I Russell ~ ' rtj a <: "' -;i .. ~ ' ~ ,., , ' I i" ~· < ' ~ --~ ,t ' - 'l . tl ... .. · ll ·'1- . ~ ~ ~ K ' I �energeia . I ·tl I,, ~- ·ll. . r/ .1 ·ll l . i+ I• \,, " 1 ,' ·~ ·l~ 1 ·~ t T ·ll A (• ... ·t.J. ·U. ·ll . • ' I l t '·· ·t.L ·U \ •~ (: B ' I . . ii . •lJ. I ·ti ·l.1 ·ll ·'1 l\.• .! (• ·ti- ·ll I, • ' \ i• 'i. Il "~ ,9 .. ~ ·~ ~ ~ ··~ ·~ i f g ··~ l ·t! .J -~-1 . ~ ') ·•J • (.1 • , Russell ' i ' 73 ,, "' \. /'1. �74 energeia 1 Russell <: I (~ ('. ('. ~ (:ell 75 (: ri~ J II 1. : t ~ t -! ( ( ('. -~ I. ';" t I ~ . ) b ~ 4l ~ ¢~ (: ~ (: <:(II ~ ( ·'-· ~. r. 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. 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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. 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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. 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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. 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(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. 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, 50 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 1987 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Spring 1987. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cooper, Laurie (co-editor) Macfarland, Joseph C. 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 1987 Energeia Student publication 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/9279a6f36c90df57dc3fb28aaf822e3f.pdf 3c32c03bfbbbe12127a2c286c19b2bd7 PDF Text Text • energe1a spring 2013 �• energe1a spring 2013 �3 2 • energe1a editors Nathan Goldman Ian Tuttle staff Daniel Gilles John Henry Fahey Reilly Ekemezie U che faculty advisor Fawn Trigg cover by Daniel Gilles: Eroica �4 5 contents Erik G. Neave 7 To the Heart of a Nation Jam es F ackino 8 On !Wythd and Mythol.ogy artw-ork originally by Paul Valiry Robert Schuerman 19 It Seem-r1 Ad If I Do William Loder 20 &number Peggy Bair 6 65 Thorndike !Waine Think Caleb Bernard 18 37 61 dky turkey vuLture red-taiLed hawk Ekemezie U che 24 32 ALLwner fed Merd Treetacfed Elizabeth Janthey 56 Enierging from the Cave originally by Alfred de MuMef Margaret Matthews 25 The '1nvention n of Speech in Hobbe/ Leviathan Alexander Djalal 33 Untitled Sonnet Ekemezie U che 34 Modt Wonde1fuLMan from, Sophoclu' Antigone Connor Callahan 36 And How Long u a Noveniber Day? Charles Zug 38 Idthmian 3 originally by Pindar 42 lc1thmian 3 -An Interpretative E:May Shayna Jenkins 57 Why I Go to St. John J · Giirer Giindondii 62 Lavinia originally by O:idem.ir Ada/ Robert Schuerman 64 A Poem • �6 7 To the Heart of a Nation Erik G. Nea (Je To the heart of a nation and back, Circular pulsation across glass wet roads, Bending the beginning to the end. Through rearview mirrors facing backwards The coming and the leaving behind Begin to blur and fade until all that is seen Is the empty space that separates: the One from the other The lion from the lamb The body from the corpse The blood from the river. And that space shrinks so small That it is no distance at all. Like the drops of rain on the Rear-viewed road never altogether Disappear, but only lose their Separation in the dangling threads of Sky to soil to man-made; ever returning To be woven, lace-like, on the surface. They support the snaking journey As a quilt protecting and a scaffold Lifting us from earth and putting Each piece in its place: The jaw to the teeth The wool to the fleece The heart to the breast. The red lonely stream returns again From hung veins in the sky. Thorndike Maine I Peggy Bair j �9 8 Sur les Mythes et la Mythologie Paul VaLiry ... Mythe est le nom de tout ce qui n'existe et ne subsiste qu' ayant la parole pour cause. Il n' est de discours si obscur, de racontar si bizarre, de propos si incoherent a quoi nous ne puissions donner un sens. Il ya toujours une supposition qui donne un sens au langage le plus etrange. Imaginez encore que plusieurs recits de la meme affaire, OU des rapports divers du meme evenement VOUS soient faits par des livres OU par des temoins qui ne s'accordent pas entre eux . quoique egalement dignes de foi. Dire qu'ils ne s' accordent pas, c' est dire que leur diversite simultanee compose un monstre. Leur concurrence procree une chimere ... Mais un monstre au une chimere qui ne sont point viables dans le fait, sont a leur aise dans le vague des esprits. Une combinaison de la femme et du poisson est une sirene, et la forme d'une sirene se fait aisement accepter. Mais une vivante sirene se fait aisement accepter. Mais une vivante sirene est-elle possible? J e ne suis pas du tout assure que nous soyons deja si experts dans les sciences de la vie que nous puissions refuser la vie aux sirenes par raison demonstrative. Il faudrait bien de l' anatomie et de la physiologie pour leur opposer autre chose que ce fait: Les modernes jamais n' en ant peche ! Ce qui perit par un peu plus de precision est un mythe. Sous la rigueur du regard, et sous les coups multiplies et conv ergents des questions On Myth s and Mythology tranJ Lated by Jini F aclcino Myth is the name for all that ex ists and subsists only having speech as its cause. There is no discourse so obscure, no talk so bizarre, no remark so incoherent, that we cannot give it meaning. There is always an assumption that giv es meaning to the strangest language. Imagine, still, that several narratives of the same affair, or diverse reports of the same event, have been made for you in books or by witnesses that are not in accord with one another, although equally trustworthy. To say that they are not in accord is to say that their simultaneous diversity composes a monster. Their competition procreates a chimera ... But a monster or chimera, though not viable within 'fact,' is at ease in the vagueness of minds. A combination of woman and fish is a mermaid, and the form of a mermaid is easily accepted. But a living mermaid~is she possible? I am not at all assured that we are already so ex pert in the life-sciences that we can refuse life to mermaids by demonstrative reason. Much anatomy and phy siology would be needed to oppose them with anything other than this fact: moderns have never caught one of them! That which perishes by a little more precision is a myth. Under rig or's look, and under the multiple and convergent blows from questions and categorical interrogations w ith which the wakeful m in d arms itself on all sides, you see myths die and �10 11 et des interrogations categoriques dont I1 esprit eveille S arme de toutes parts VOUS voyez les mythes mourir, et s appauvrir indefiniment la faune des choses vagues et des idees ... Les mythes se decomposent a la lumiere que fait en nous la presence combinee de notre corps et de notre sens du plus haut degre. 1 1 1 Voyez comme le cauchemar compose en un drame tout-puissant toute diversite de sensations independantes qui nous travaille sous le sommeil. Une main sous le corps est prise; un pied qui s est decouvert et delivre des langes, se refroidit au loin du reste du dormeur; de matinaux passants vociferent a l1aube dans la rue; l estomac vide s etire et · les entrailles fermentent; quelque lueur du grand soleil levant inquiete vaguement la retine au travers des paupieres abaissees autant de donnees separees et incoherentes; et personne pour les reduire a elles-memes et au monde connul pour les organiser, retenir les uns 1 abolir les autres 1 ordonner leurs valeurs et nous permettre de passer outre. Mais toutes ensemble sont comme des conditions egales, et devant etre egalement satisfaites. Il en resulte une creation originale, absurde, incompatible avec la suite de la vie, toute-puissante, tout effrayante, qui n a en soi-meme aucun principe de fin, point d issue, point de limite ... I1 en est ainsi dans le detail de la veille, mais avec mains d unite. Toute 1 histoire de la pensee n est que le jeu d une infinite de petits cauchemars a grandes consequences, tandis que dans les sommeils S observent de grands cauchemars a tres courte et tres faible consequence . 1 1 1 1 ••• 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 the fauna of vague things and ideas grow impoverished indefinitely . .. Myths decompose in that light produced in us by the combined presence of our body and our sense of the highest degree. See how the nightmare composes into one all-powerful drama all the diversity of independent sensations that do their work on us in sleep. A hand is caught under the body; a foot uncovered, and delivered from the blankets, cools far from the rest of the sleeper; some early morning passers-by shout in the street at daybreak; the empty stomach stretches out and the bowels ferment; some ray from the great rising sun vaguely disturbs the retina through lowered lids, ... so many givens, separate and incoherent; and no one to reduce them to themselves and to the known world, to organize them, retain some, abolish others to put their values in order and permit us to pass beyond. But all are together like equal conditions, and have to be equally satisfied. It results in an original creation, absurd, incompatible with what follows in life, all-powerful, all-terrifying, which has not in itself any principle of end, issue, limit ... It is thus in the details of waking hours, but with less unity. All the history of thought is nothing but the play of an infinity of little nightmares of great consequences, whereas in sleep are observed great nightmares of very short and very weak consequence. 1 �12 13 Tout notre langage est compose de petits songes brefs; et ce qu'il ya de beau, c' est que nous en formons quelquefois des pensees etrangement justes et merveilleusement raisonnables. En verite, il ya tant de mythes en nous et si familiers qu'il est presque impossible de separer nettement de notre esprit quelque chose qui n' en soit point. On ne peut meme en parler sans mythifier encore, et ne fais -je point dans cet instant le mythe du mythe pour repondre au caprice d'un mythe? Oui, je ne sais que faire pour sortir de ce qui n'est pas, cheres ames! Tant la parole nous peuple et peuple tout, que l' on ne voit comment s'y . prendre pour s 'abstenir des imaginaires dont rien ne se passe ... Songez que demain est un mythe, que l'univers en est un; que le nombre, que l' amour, que le reel comme l'infini, que la justice, le peuple, la poesie .. .la terre elle-meme en sont ! Et le pole meme en est un, car ceux qui pretendent d'y etre alles n' ont pense y etre que par des raisons qui sont indivisibles de la parole .. . J'oubliais tout le passe ... Tout l'histoire n'est que mythes, et n'est faite que de pensees auxquelles nous ajoutons cette valeur essentiellement mythique qu' elles representent ce qui fut. Chaque instant tombe a chaque instant dans l'imaginaire, et a peine l'on est mart, l'on s'en v a rejoindre, avec la vitesse de la lumiere, les centaures et les anges ... Que dis-je ! A peine le dos tourne, a peine sortis de la vue, l' opinion fait de nous ce qu' elle peut! All our language is composed of little brief dreams; and what is beautiful about it, is that we sometimes form strangely right and marvelously reasonable thoughts from them. In truth, there are so many myths in us, so familiar, that it is nearly impossible to separate cleanly in our mind anything that may not be one of them. One cannot even speak of it without further mythicizing, and am I not at this very instant making the myth of myth, in reply to the whim of a myth? Yes, dear souls, I know not what to do to escape from what is not! So much does speech populate us and populate all, that we cannot see how one is to undertake abstaining from the imaginary things that none get past ... Dream that tomorrow is a myth, that the universe is one; that number, that love, that the real as well as the infinite, that justice, people, poetry ... the earth itself are some! And even the Pole is one, for those who claim having gone there have thought it only for reasons that are indivisible from speech ... I was forgetting all the past ... All history is nothing but myth, and is made only of thoughts to which we add this essentially mythical value: that they represent what was. Each instant falls upon each instant into the imaginary, and one is hardly dead before one goes off with the speed of light to rejoin the centaurs and the angels ... What am I saying! Hardly the back turned, hardly escaped from view, before opinion makes of us what it can! �14 15 J e retourne a l'histoire. Comme insensiblement elle se change en reve a mesure qu' elle s' eloigne du present! Tout pres de nous ce ne sont encore que des mythes temperes, genes par des textes non incroyables, par des vestiges materiels qui moderent un peu notre fantaisie. Mais apres trois ou quatre mille ans en de9a de notre naissance, on est en pleine liberte. Enfin, dans le vide du mythe du temps pur, et vierge de quoi que ce soit qui ressemble a ce qui nous touche, ~ l' esprit assure seulement qu'il ya eu quelque chose, contraint par se necessite essentielle de supposer un antecedent, des « causes », des supports ace qui est, OU ace qu'il est, ~ enfante des epoques, des etats, des evenements, des etres, des principes, des images et des histoires de plus en plus nai:ves, qui font Songer, OU qui Se reduisent aisement a cette cosmologie si sincere des Indous, quand ils pla9aient la terre, afin de la soutenir dans l' espace, sur le dos d'un immense elephant; cette bete se tenant sur une tortue; elle-meme portee par une mer que contenait je ne sais quel vase ... Le philosophe le plus profond, le physicien le mieux arme, le geometre le mieux pourvu de ces moyens que Laplace nommait « les ressources de l'analyse la plus sublime », ~ ne peuvent nine savent faire autre chose. C' est pourquoi il m' est arrive d' ecrire, certain jour: au commencement etait la Fable! Ce qui veut dire que toute origine, toute aurore des choses est de la meme substance que les chansons et que les contes qui environnent les b erceaux. I return to history. How insensibly it changes into dream as it removes itself from the present! Near us, they are still only temperate myths, hindered by some not unbelievable texts, by some material remains that moderate our fancy a little. But beyond three or four thousand years before our birth, one is at full liberty. Finally, in the void of the myth of pure time, virginal to whatever it may be that resembles what we touch, the mind~ assured only that there was something, constrained by its essential necessity of assuming an antecedent, 'causes,' supports to what is, or to what it is,~ gives birth to epochs, states, events, beings, principles, images and histories more and more ingenuous, which make one dream of, or which easily reduce to, that so sincere cosmology of Hindus, when they used to place the earth, so as to sustain it in space, on the back of an immense elephant; that beast holding onto a tortoise; itself carried by a sea that was contained by I know not what vessel ... The deepest philosopher, the best-armed physician, the geometer best equipped with those means Laplace named "the resources of the most sublime analysis," ~cannot and know not how to make anything else. That is why it came to me to write, one certain day: in the beginning was the Fable! Which means that every origin, every dawn of things, is of the same substance as the songs and tales that surround cradles. �16 17 CJ est une sorte de loi absolue que partoutJ en tout lieu) a toute periode de la civilisation) dans toute croyanceJ au moyen de quelle discipline que ce soit, et sous taus les rapports, ~ le faux supporte le vrai; le vrai se donne le faux pour ancetre, pour cause, pour auteur, pour origine, sans exception ni remede, - et le vrai engendre ce faux dont il exige dJetre soi-meme engendre. Toute antiquite, toute causalite, tout principe des etres sont inventions fabuleus.es et obeissent aux lois simples de Vinvention. Que serions-nous sans le secours de ce qui nJexiste pas? Peu de chose, et nos esprits bien inoccupes languiraient si les mythes, les fables, les meprises, les abstractions, les croyances et les monstres, les hypotheses et les pretendus problemes de la metaphysique ne peuplaient dJetres et dJimages sans objets nos profondeurs et nos tenebres naturelles. Les mythes sont les ames de nos actions et de nos amours. Nous ne pouvons agir quJen nous mouvant vers un fantome, nous ne pouvons aimer que ce que nous creons. It is a kind of absolute law that everywhere, in every place, at every period of civilization, in ev ery belief, by means of whatever discipline it may be, and beneath all reports, -the false supports the true; the true gives itself ov er to the false for an ancestor, for a cause, for an author, for an origin, without exception or remedy, - and the true engenders the false, from which it itself demands to be engendered. All antiquity, all causality, every principle of beings, are fabulous inventions and obey the simple laws of invention. What would we be without the help of what does not exist? Not much, and our very unoccupied minds would languish if myths, fables, misapprehensions) abstractions, beliefs and monsters, hypotheses and the so-called pro bl ems of metaphysics did not populate our depths and natural darkness with beings and objectless images. Myths are the souls of our actions and of our loves. We can act only by moving toward a phantom, we can love only what we create. �18 19 It Seems As If I Do Robert Schuernian I won't say why life is the way it is, Some say it's gleaned in dreams by one who knows Where conscious things may go, once they are gone, But is there really some place else to go? I dare not hope to show you of these things Although at times, it seems as if I do Look through our lives, till seeing, somehow, we Are of a dream where we are dreaming too, For then, by god, as if we all are one, Have many different pointed points of view Which makes me feel I'm mad ... as off I go Upon this quest called life, to sally forth With both eyes smiling on one sorrowful face In faith ... to share this crazy plot of grace. sky I Caleb Bernard �20 21 Rappelle-Toi Remember AL/red de Mu: Met tranJ Lated 6y WiLLiani Loder (Vergiss mein nicht.) (Forget me not.) Paroles Faites Sur La Musique de Mozart Remarks Made on the Music of Mozart Rappelle-toi, quand l' aurore craintive Ouvre au Soleil son palais enchante; Rappelle-toi, lorsque la nuit pensive Passe en revant sous son voile argente; Al' appel du plaisir lorsque ton sein palpite, Aux doux songes du soir lorsque l' ombre t'invite, Ecoute, au fond du bois Murmurer une voix: Rappelle-toi. Remember, when the timid Dawn Opens to the Sun his enchanted palace; Remember, once the pensive night Passes away in dreaming under its silvery veil; To the call of pleasure when your heart beats, To sweet dreams of the evening when the shadow invites you. Listen, from the deep of the woods A voice murmurs: Remember. Rappelle-toi, lorsque les destinees M'auront de toi pour jamais separe, Quand le chagrin, l' exil et l' annees Auront fletri ce creur desespere; Songe a man triste amour, songe a l' adieu supreme! L'absence ni le temps ne sont rien quand on aime. Tant que man creur battra, Toujours il te dira: Rappelle-toi. Remember, w hen our destinies Will have separated me from you forever, When sorrow , ex ile, a n d the years Will have made this hopeless heart go dry; Dream of my sad love, dream of the final adieu! Neither absence nor time is anything when one loves. However much my heart will beat, Always will I tell you: Remember. l_ �22 23 Rappelle-toi, quand sous la froid terre _ on creur brise pour toujours dormira; M Rappelle-toi, quand la fleur solitaire Sur man tom be doucement s' ouvrira. J e ne te verrais plus; mais man ame immortelle Reviendra pres de toi comme une sreur fidele. Ecoute, dans la nuit, U ne voix qui gemit: Rappelle-toi. Remember, when under the cold earth My broken heart will sleep forever; Remember, when the lonely flower On my tomb will gently open its petals. I will no longer see you; but my immortal soul Will return to you like a faithful sister. Listen, in the night, A voice that sighs: Remember. �24 25 The "Invention" of Speech in Hobbes' Leviathan Margaret MatthewJ "But the 17Wdt noble ano profitable invention of aLL other Wad that of SPEEC~ condi.:Jting of named or appeLLationd, ano their connexion, whereby men regt'.:iter their thoughtd, recaLL them, when they are pMt, ano auo oecLare them, one to another/or mutuaL utiLih.J ano converdation, without which there hao been amongdt nien, neither conunonweaLth, nor docieh.J, nor contract, nor peace, no more than amongdt Liond, beard ano wof1,ed.' (Leviathan, ch. iv) 1 1 Allumer les Mers I Ekeniezie Uche In chapter iv of the Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes introduces speech with the remarkable claim that it is the source and foundation of civil society. Without speech, not only civil society, but common experience too is impossible for man. We cannot genuinely live together nor be of any use to one another in a world without speech. Hobbes' other assertion is that speech has a kind of nobility and utility to which no other invention may lay claim. It is useful because it is what allows us to think and relate to one another in the first place. It is noble because it opens up the possibility of human excellence. Hobbes' characterization of speech is striking in a number of ways. First we might ask: Why does Hobbes choose to characterize speech as an "invention" at all? Hobbes cannot be alluding to All quotations are from Thomas Hobbes, "Of Speech,}} Leviathan: with deLecteo variantd from. the Latin eoition of 1668, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), 15-22. 1 �26 27 any specific time or place in history in which man thought to invent the spoken word. Deliberate mental discourse, as described throughout chapter iv, depends on speech itself. Hobbes' genealogy of speech is a logical rather than temporal one. That is, Hobbes is not giving a strictly historical account of the development of civil society out of the development of speech. Rather, he is taking human nature and dissecting it so that he may order its many layers. At the bottommost layer speech may not be found, but this does not necessarily mean that there was ever any time or place in which man as such existed without it. Hobbes suggests that it is by means of speech alone that man has the power to drastically change his natural state. He says "as men abound in copiousness of language, so they become more wise, or more mad than ordinary." Language is a product of human nature that has a unique power. Unlike sense, or imagination, for instance, which are merely given, language is presented to us to be llded~that is, either well or poorly. How we use it determines whether we will be more "excellently wise" or "more mad" than ordinary. With the invention of language, there is suddenly a lot more at stake. Creativity and deliberation, for instance, must always be involved in the way we use words. Hob bes shows this in his careful construction and deconstruction of definitions throughout the Leviathan. He also argues that a meticulous care for definitions can improve our reasoning. It is only by providing accurate definitions that we are p rovid ed w ith a solid fou n d ation for our reason- ings. Hobbes' claim is that these developments have the power to improve both our public and private lives. How exactly does "the invention of speech" help us live in society? Of course, the promises and agreements that life in society depends upon could never take place in a world without words. But when Hobbes speaks of the utility of speech, he seems to mean something much deeper than that. He says: "The general use of speech is to transfer our mental discourse into verbal, or the train of our thoughts into a train of words." In this statement, he posits two worlds: the world of thought and the world of words. These two worlds, through their separation and connection, seem to provide the metaphysical basis of common experience. The private mental world can be made public, either for one s own use or for the use of others, by means of words. The public world of speech can then be made private, and provide the content for thought. This separation of realms, while helpful in accounting for our use of spoken language, is only a separation in speech. For us to engage in "mental didcourde" at all, we must do so by means of speech. By this I mean that there cannot be any genuine separation between thought and language. We speak our thoughts and we think in speech. Concerning this impact of words on the human mind, Hobbes says: "By this imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter signification, we turn the reckoning of the consequences of things imagined in the mind into the consequences 1 �28 29 of appellations.}) Hobbes admits to the existence of some sort of cognitive activity in which words have no place. However, this activity is not discursive, but simply perceptive. Before the advent of speech, man could not extend his thought across time. He is stuck in his immediate perception of the "now.}) It is only through the invention of speech that man's perception can be transformed into apperception. That is, it is only out of speech that self-consciousness arises. The significance of this development is monumental. Through the deepening of man's private life, a public life is made possible. The transfer of mental discourse to the spoken word allows man to be reflective, that is, to speak his thoughts to himself so as to behold them as if from the outside. Once these words exist on the outside, they may be shared. The public signification of words allows us to partake in a kind of communal self. Public discourse, or communal thought, comes with new benefits as well as burdens. The benefit is the possibility of common experience. The burden is that we can now be held accountable~ by ourselves and by others ~to the things we say. Speech allows for accountability because of its inextricable relationship to time. Hob bes says of the role of time in the development of mental discourse: "And thus the consequence found in one particular comes to be registered and remembered as an universal rule, and discharges our mental reckoning of time and place, and delivers us from all labour of the mind, saving the first, and makes that w h ich was fo und tr u e here and now, to be true in aLL tinier:J and pLacer:J. n When the spoken word transfers our mental discourse outside ourselves, it permits us to transcend the particularity of our immediate perceptive experience. When we reflect upon, or even simply hear spoken words, we encounter something said then from the standpoint of now, and something said there from the standpoint of here. When the same connection between sets of words is preserved regardless of our position of time and place, the notion of generality is born. Abstraction from the particular to the universal is what makes another "invention)} possible, namely truth. According to Hobbes, truth enters into human experience as soon as two names are joined together as a consequence or affirmation. If the latter name signifies all that the former name does, the consequence or affirmation is true, and if not, it is false. This suggests that the truths we tell are formally tautologous. That is, whenever we tell a truth, we are joining one definition to another and making the claim that their significations are the same. Once man is capable of telling truths, he is also capable of telling lies. This is why the invention of the spoken word makes us accountable in a way that natural perception and imagination did not. Through speech, we are capable of error. Regarding this significance of the spoken word, Hobbes says: "Nature itself cannot err.'' It is only by means of words that we have the power to deceive both ourselves and others. In fact, three of Hobbes' four "abuses of speech}) ar e modes of de- �30 31 ception. The first, is self-deception, or the inconstant signification of words. The second and third are the deception of others by means of metaphor and lies. These abuses are considered as such because they prevent men from living together in a society. If words cannot be granted some constant meaning, mental discourse, or in fact any discourse at all, is impossible. The essential problem of deception is not that words are given new meaning simply, but that they are given new meaning privately. For Hobbes, it is private judgement on the signification of words and not public reform that destroys meaning. Words must have public signification if they are to be useful at all. Language can certainly be changed or reformed. In fact, Hob bes allows and even encourages such reform when he says, "it appears how necessary it is for any man that aspires to true knowledge, to examine the definitions of former authors, and either to correct them where they are negligently set down, or to make them himself." Linguistic reform is entirely different from deception. It is conducive rather than d~structive to civil society, because it seeks to pronwte rather than dubvert meaning. Once Hobbes has introduced the notion of truth into his account of human nature, he is quick to remind us of the metaphysical status of truth and falsity. He says, "true andfaue are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor fauehood." Hobbes insists that the true locus of truth is in speech and not the world. However, this might lead one to wonder: W h ere does t h is leave th e connection b etween words and things? Hobbes' intent does not seem to be to sever the connection between language and world. Words and definitions, he believes, are not simply arbitrary. In fact, throughout chapter iv, Hob bes catalogues the kinds of things that are properly subject to names and definitions. If words had simply no connection to the world they represent, the project of a more accurate philosophical language would be unnecessary. Given this, it seems clear that there must be some correspondence between the truths we tell and the things they are about. Hob bes, however, does not further develop his notion of the relationship between truth and the world. Instead, he continues his exposition of truth and speech as they relate to civil society. Hobbes initially turns to these topics because of their relationship to man. He makes no attempt to remove our perspective on the world to some place outside or beyond human nature. To understand man, we must look at truth and speech as they relate to him exclusively, that is, as invention,c1. This means that we must investigate these inventions in terms of their power and utility. Hobbes attempts this throughout the rest of the Leviathan by showing us what these inventions make possible, namely civil dociety. �32 33 Untitled Sonnet Alexander DjaLaL Why, o Venus, do you in my heart find An arbiter of your romantic will? Such faith is placed in pumps and valves designed, Not for Love, but to keep from growing still My body's steady life blood beating. Is Love constrained away by chamber's chains, Or by vital vessels made less fleeting? Just constant coursing life my heart maintains, Until that pump does cease my veins entreat Them to refresh their fragile flow inside. Desire, by design, must skip a beat But in this case my heart cannot preside. On Love's behalf my heart I must forsake; Too much inclined is he to beat and break. Treetacles I Elwnezie Uche �34 35 Palla Ta Deina From SophocLeJ ~Antigone J'COAAa 'ta CELVa xov6£v av8gcbrcou CELVO't'EQOV J'CEAEL. 'tOU'tO xat J'COALOU rc£gav J'COV't'OU XELµt:Qlcp v6-rcp XWQEL, J'CEQL~QUXLOLOLV J'CEQWV im' ot6µaCTLV. 8£WV TE -rav UJ'CEQ'ta-rav' rav a¢8nov, axaµa-rav, cXJ'CO'tQUE'taL l'A'AoµEvwv ag6-rgwv £-ro~ El~ £-ro~ LrcrcElcp y£v£L rcoAEuwv. Most Wonderful Man tranJ Lated by Ekemezie Uc he Many are the wonders, but none are so wonderful as man Across many stormy winds and grey seas, this Wonder doth span Meandering through the engulfing swells The greatest of the gods, Earth the immortal, the untiring, he fells With ploughs tumbling back and forth across the years So man overthrows Earth, by means of a brood o' mares. �37 36 And How Long is a November Day? Connor Callahan Already old, the seasons change without passing perceptibly, an indication that our lives~ steadfast in their resolution to resolve, dissolve and be reanimated, at once concentrated purely but so artfully contrived~ survive from one tenth of a second signal to the next. All interior measurements divulge divergent values, because our personal equations simply can't match up. It's a positive result based on a priori necessities, which only necessitate, barely explicate, and in fact regurgitate, that the supposition has been both lost and found, in and out of boundaries that must not be crossed. We drag our humming crosses to the wheel so we may sharpen our stakes, clearly marking out this little plot of time and space that has been offered to us. We must b ear t h is seasonal cross . tu rk ey vulture I Caleb Bemaro �38 39 Isthmian 3 Pindar Isthmian 3 tranJLated by CharfeJ Zug "For Melissos of Thebes: Winner, Chariot Race" £L 'tLs av6gwv £vi-vxf]ams 11 auv cv66~oLs a£8A.oLs ~ a8£v£L nA.oui-ov xai-£x£L cpgaatv alav11 x6gov, a~LOs £VAoylms aai-wv µcµCx8m. Zcu, µcyaA.m 6' ag£i-at Svai-o'Ls £novi-m EX a£8£v: ~w£L 6£ µciaawv oA.~os 6rtL~oµEvwv, nA.ayCms 6£ cpQEV£CTCTLV ovx 6µws navi-a xg6vov SaA.A.wv 6µLA£L £vxA.£wv 6' £gywv anmva XQll µEv uµvf]am i-ov ECTA6v, xgi] 6£ xwµa~ovi-' ayava'Ls XCXQLL£CTCTLV ~CXCT'taCTm. ECT'tL 6£ xat 6L6U µwv a£8A.wv McALCTCTQ) µo'Lga rtQOs cvcpgoauvav i-g£'ljJm YAUX£LCXV ~i-og, Ev ~aaammv 'IaSµou 6£~aµEvcp ai-ccpavovs, i-a 6£ xolA.<t Movi-os Ev ~a8vai-£gvov vart<t xagv~£ 8f]~av (Strophe) If any man is fortunate, either in glorious prizes Or power of wealth, and holds down direful satiety from his mind, Worthy is he to be mixed with the fine words of his townsmen. Zeus, from you great virtues follow with mortals; Blessedness lives longer in pious-living And shares company with treacherous minds, Though not flourishing for all time. (Antistrophe) In recompense for deeds of good repute It is necessary to laud the brave man, Necessary, reveling, to bear him up with mild graces. And destiny of twofold contests is with Melissos, To turn his heart to sweet well-mindedness; In the glades of Isthmos he accepted the crowns, And in the hollow glen of the deep chested lion he proclaimed The bes �40 41 bmoOgoµlct 'XQfftEWV. avOgcbv ()' cXQE'taV av µcpvtov ov xatEAEYXEL. tate µav KA.ecovuµov c56sav JtaAmav agµaCTLv: xat µatg68E Aa~oax(OmCTLV auvvoµm nA.ovtov OLECT'tELXOV tEtgaogLav n6voL~. aLcbv ()£ xvALVOoµf,vm~ aµ£gm~ a AA' aAAO't' £s aAAasev: cl'tQCO'tOL YE µav JtaLOE~ 8ewv. (Epode) By conquering in the chariot race, . But the congenital virtue of men he disgraces n~t. Surely you all know Kleonumos's ancient glory m chariots, And his maternal side, as relatives of the Labdakidai By wealth went their way to toils with the fourhorse chariot. But a lifetime, by days rolling-over from one time to another, Changes. Surely the unwounded are children of God. �42 43 "I sthm1an 3" . An Interpretative Essay CharfecJ Zug On its surface "Isthmian 3JJ is an ode to Melissos of Thebes, winner of the four-horse chariot race. Yet a closer look at Pindar's praise reveals amid the odeJs seemingly simple moral message several incongruences that suggest Pindar is not merely concerned with praising his patron and providing an historical account of the winner of the Isthmian Games. Why does Pindar appear to distinguish between the blessed man and the man who is "worthy to be mixed in the fine words of his townsmen))? What is the worthy man like, and who determines that he is worthy of being an example to his city? In this essay I argue that Pindar employs the form of the "Victory OdeJJ 1 to articulate the poetJs role (as opposed to the godJs role) in determining morality, and that Pindar is thereby raising the question of the origin of morality in general. The question that drives the entire ode is a moral one: What constitutes the worthy man? The strophe proposes two answers: the first discusses the kind of man who is worthy of his cityJs praise; the second discusses the man who is blessed by the gods. We will compare these ideas to see whether Pindar indicates a preference. The conditional statement that opens the ode suggests two factors in evaluating what kind of moral quality in man ought to be praised by the city: "power of wealth)' and "glorious games .)) To understand how these factors relate to "direful satiety/' and ultimately to the manJs moral quality, we must understand what these factors mean by themselves. What is "power of wealth))? The phrase is ambivalent: it could mean the power wealth equips men with, or the power wealth has over men. As for "glorious contests, )) Pindar means all notable contests. His language could have been more precise had he wanted to refer specifically to the Isthmian Games and the victory of Melissos. All glorious contests are contests known to an audience, hence their "glory)) (6o ~ a, or as it occurs in line 2, EU66 ~mi;). A man fortunate in such a contest will be widely known in the city) and it is likely that he will remain well-known in the city for a long time~ long enough for the city to witness either his continual prosperity or his decline. Alas) while a man may be fortunate in wealth or contests) "direful satiety)) will attempt to rise up in his mind; his reaction must be to hold it down (xa-tEXEL)J i.e.J to maintain authority over himself by suppressing inner rebellion.2 Here "direful1' ( aLavf}J derived from aELJ "ever))) implies lasting and enduring dreariness. The word for satiety) 'XOQOVJ 3 means fullness) or surfeit~the relaxation that follows a big dinner) but also its attendant w eakness) particularly of self-restraint. And satiation signifies not just an overabundance but a mishandling of overabundance. So understood) it is in the power of wealth t o cause satiety �44 45 in wealthy men. Yet satiety also causes men to lose their power of wealth. The relationship between "power of wealth" and "satiety" points to a problem all prominent men must face: What causes a decline in power? Is wealth itself the cause, or is the cause its mismanagement? Does the power of wealth corrupt, or is wealth the plague of certain susceptible men? "Glorious prizes" raise a similar problem, though this seems less general than the problem of wealth. How does satiety follow on glorious contests? The only prize awarded at the Isthmian Games was a laurel crown; it would seem impossible to become satiated on such a prize. Rather, Pindar seems to be referring to the swollen pride that often overwhelms successful contenders. This results in complacency; the vigor and prowess that were the instruments of victory diminish. With regard to both "power of wealth" and "glorious contests" it is important to distinguish between satiation and pride. For example: Achilles was proud, arrogant, and "full of himself," but he was certainly not satiated, incapable, or "full to the brim." Coriolanus was fortunate in power of wealth and glorious contests, but success did not satiate him; it encouraged him. 4 The same can be said of Thucydides' Periclean Athens, which decided to pursue the Sicilian expedition. What Pindar says about satiation recalls Book 8 of the Republic, in which Socrates mentions the sons of oligarchs who become "drones" and allow oligarchy to become democracy (556e; 557a). D rones are lazy; t hey are soft a nd vulnerable to the lean and tanned poor ready to rise up (556d). When he speaks of satiety, Pindar means the man who, after gaining victory, falls prey to stagnation and laziness; he does not mean the proud and the enterprising who remain hungry for glory and wealth. Pindar presents his moral teaching in the apodosis of the sentence: If any man manages to hold down satiation, then he is "worthy to be mixed in the fine words of his townsmen" ( U~LOt; EVAoy(mi; cXCT'tWV µcµ(x8m). A mere congratulations for the wealthy or victorious man is one thing, but for him to be mixed in EVAoy(a (finewords) is another. Fine words are not merely wreaths for his brow or songs for his glory. Rather, as wine is mixed in water, 5 so is this man "mixed" (µcµ(x8m) in the words of his city. How? He becomes the subject of poetry. When the poet sings his praises, the celebrated man ceases to be merely an individual; he is made inseparable from the fine-words of his city. In the language of Aristotle's Poetic.:J, he becomes "universal" as opposed to "particular." 6 The poet, then, not only has the power to make men the subject of poetry, but to decide what kinds of men are fit to be the subject of poetry. This seems to be the issue at stake in the Republic: the poet wields immense power because he holds sway with the mob and determines in large part who the city will hold in good repute (493d). Yet the Republic itself is an example of such poetry: Plato, the poet, determines that Socrates, the philosopher, is worthy of being mixed in the words of the city. 7 Thucydides is the sa me kind of �46 47 poet, making Periclean Athens known to all ages. So is Homer, who poeticizes Achilles and Odysseus. 8 Thus in line 4, Pindar the poet and singer of eulogies brings himself into his own poetry-albeit in a most subtle way. In the protasis of the first strophe Pindar describes a kind of man: one who keeps down direful satiety in spite of "power of wealth" and "glorious prizes." In the apodosis he presents his moral teaching, declaring that kind of man "worthy to be mixed in the fine words of his townsmen," i.e., worthy to be eulogized by the poet. Pindar is describing his own task and responsibility. It is crucial, then, that we understand precisely what kind of man Pindar has described in the apodosis . In line 1 he says "if any man is fortunate, either in glorious prizes or power of wealth .... " Pindar is interested in the moral qualities of men, the qualities that enable powerful men to hold down satiety. Pindar is speaking directly to the task poets are charged with: not merely eulogizing victorious athletes on account of their victories, but eulogizing men on account of moral superiority. The superior man is taken up again in the . antlstrop h e. Th e "b rave man " must b e "l au d e d" (literally, iJµvf]om or "sung about"). Lauding, singing, and "mixing in fine words" are all tasks of the poet. The brave or good man (tov £oA6v) of whom Pindar now speaks is certainly not satiated, but rather is consistently bold in the face of danger. EOAO~ is Doric Greek for E08Ao~, which is similar to aya8o~ and can mean brave, good, wealthy, and fortunate - qualities of the man w ho "holds down direful satiety." The good man is lauded- nay, "it is necessary" (XQ1l) to laud him because he is a moral example for the city, and it is necessary for the city to preserve such a man in speech, i.e., to mix him in its fine words. XQ1l occurs twice here, for it is necessary both to laud the brave man and to "bear him up" (~ao-taom). "Bearing up" and "mixing" are contrasting images . On the one hand, the man is mixed and made inseparable; on the other hand he is borne up and set apart. This contrast further articulates the poet's task. While the poet must raise the morally superior man to a sufficiently lofty height, he must also assure that the man is spoken of by the townsmen. Only in doing so can the poet properly instruct the masses. Until now we have heard Pindar speak about the best moral qualities of men: bravery, goodness, and vigilance against satiety. All of this is set in contrast to the second half of the strophe, where Pindar introduces the gods. Here, he discusses the way in which "pious living" and "treacherous minds" affect man's relationship with Zeus. The extremely significant9 word here is ErtoV'tm, coming from EJtW , which means "follow." Pindar says that great virtues "come from" Zeus and "follow with" mortals ("mortals" in the dative). Here we must read between the lines. Pindar is neither making a mere causal statement about the beneficence of God and God's will, nor is he declaring, "God rewards the good and the bad, the just and the unjust." Rather, he is saying: Great virtues neither meet mortals face to face and �48 49 lead them, nor overwhelm and transfigure mortals into virtuous men; they follow with mortals. Does "following" here mean following behind? This would imply that Zeus's virtues follow unperceived by mortals. Virtues from Zeus cause men to look over their shoulders in suspicion~ and ignore what is ahead. Men are not forward-looking when they are hoping, or waiting, for Zeus's virtues to appear. Pindar further indicates mankind's shaky relationship with Zeus when he speaks about OA~Os ("blessedness") in line 6. Blessedness "lives longer (µacrcrwv) in pious living," he writes. But this temporary quality comes to virtuous and "treacherous minds" alike. It is tempting to see the same morally superior man in each half of the strophe, so that the man who keeps down direful satiety is also the blessed man. But it is not so clear-cut. Pindar says that the man who keeps down satiety is "worthy of fine words," which means that he is morally superior to the satiated man, but Pindar does not indicate a connection between that moral superiority and blessedness. We might even say that the moral superiority of the man who keeps down satiety is at odds with blessedness. Only the former is said to be worthy of fine words; nothing of that sort is said about the blessed man. Regarding blessedness we must let Pindar's imagery guide us. Recall how Zeus's great virtues "follow with" mortals. Even if this means that great virtues follow "in the company" of mortals, Pindar's meaning is clear: virtues from the gods do not lead mortals or craft their ac- tions. Man's pedagogical relationship with the gods is entirely unreliable. As Richard Sewell says in The ViJLon of Tragedy, "Though some gods behaved better than others toward men, the Greeks expected perfect justice from none of them." 10 The gods will not provide man with a clear moral teaching, so the man who expects to win contests or gather wealth by being pious has deluded himself. The poets, though, because they laud the good man, are much more reliable moral teachers~ if the poet can properly understood. Pindar's morality is concerned with the management of satiety. We understand from the start of the ode that the worthy man is mixed in the words of his townsmen, that he is well-known in his city. The antistrophe tells us that it is necessary for him to be well-known in his city, i.e., that the good man must necessarily enter into the domain of political things and become an example. This happens through the poet, whose task is eulogize. According to Pindar, the poet is concerned with moral and political things insofar as the poet determines who, and therefore what, is good for the city. Concerning moral and political things, the poet is in contradistinction to the gods. The gods bestow great virtues in the form of blessedness upon both good and bad men. Blessedness is as flighty as the whims of the gods: it lives and dies with the mortals themselves. Blessedness does not preserve the excellence of the worthy man; blessedness does not mix his name in the fine words of the city; blessedness does not make him immortal. The w orthy man is made good in the �51 50 eyes of his city by the poet. The most important quality of the good man is his ability to keep down direful satiety. When Pindar begins his teaching, he has a type of man in mind: that man is either wealthy or fortunate in contests, which implies that he is already established in some capacity. The test of his moral substance is whether or not he can keep what is already his own, whether or not he can remain established. This is why, in his praise of Melissos, Pindar regards both the worth of the individual athlete and the athleteJs venerable family. The victorious Melissos is proof of his familyJs aristocratic right. He is the living embodiment of his famills ability to hold down satiety. Here we understand the forces that are truly at play in the struggle between satiety and power. Satiety is decay, the timeless force that threatens to destroy w hat is established. Ancient power is the best power (indeed, aruto-cratic), because it has managed to defy the timeless force of decay, because it has held down direful satiety for the longest time . The moral principle at work here is this: All ancient things are defiant inasmuch as they resist timeless decay. Good, brave, virtuous men are no exception, and it is therefore all the more remarkable and morally commendable when an established family produces a virtuous man, since such a virtuous man assures the preservation of his familyJs aristocratic right. Thus at the beginning of the epode: "But the congenital virtue of man he disgraces noe ( aVCQWV c ' cXQ£'tcXV µqnrtov OU 'Xa"tEAEYXEL). This virtue opposes the virtues of av Zeus discussed in line 5. Congenital virtues (aQE'tUV ovµqnrtov) are inborn, natural, innate. They are v irtues that are held in aristocratic blood, in EUYEVELCX. They are the virtues that have enabled the aristocratic family to preserve its pow er and thus hold down direful satiety. They are not the flighty, shifty virtues that come from gods and follow with mortals and die with them. The aristocratic virtues are the virtues that are necessarily tested by the forces of satiety and decay. As Dante says: 0 our poor nobility of blood ... Truly thou art A mantle that quickly shrinks) so that if we do not Add to it day by day time goes round it with the Shears. 11 Good blood on its own cannot resist the tide of decay or) in Pindar's language, the "rolling-over}) of days. Goodness is required for the preservation of good blood. Thus those who triumph over the tide of decay and remain unwounded in the rolling-over of days are "children of God,)) inheritors of immortal blood. They themselves are not gods, nor are they necessarily blessed, but their congenital virtue is immortal insofar as it is sustained generation after generation. Achilles and Aeneas are both inheritors of immortal blood) and while AchillesJs destiny is to die in glory, AeneasJs is to found a great r a ce . A eneasJs congenital virtue �52 53 endures for a thousand years in the form of Rome; he achieves a kind of immortality. When Pindar speaks of the "children of god, n he is pointing to the cross-generational preservation of virtue. Preservation of virtue across generations is the closest man can come to divinity. Pindar}s praise of Melissos is a particular instance of the moral principle that poets determine what is good. Praise is a sign of victory, which of course requires glorious contests. Yet if poetry is to be written and the moral good cultivated, victors cannot remain permanently locked in contests. Praise and poetry occur after the contest, when the victor dons his laurel crown and assumes his lofty place among the worthy and glorious. The poet} in turn, cannot ascend to his even loftier height until the victor has secured victory for himself. Peace and pride allow poetry to flourish. Toil and rest are both necessary for a city to become moral; they must be mixed properly in order for poetry to be cultivated and good morals to flourish. This is why Pindar}s comparison between the rolling wheels of the chariot and "days rolling-over}} is so apt. Melissos}s Isthmian victory in the four-horse chariot race is a metaphor for the long and arduous victory that his aristocratic family has won in the ancient contest between power and satiation. As a man worthy of praise, he has successfully negotiated the constant, cyclical alternation between toil and rest. By lauding Melissos}s victory, Pindar is making an historical event poetic; he is mixing Melissos in the fine words of his townsmen ~ and we are t h ose townsmen. EndnoteJ 1 Pindar}s "Victory Odes}} were commissioned by victorious athletes} and therefore are addressed to particular men, whereas the odes of, say, Horace or Keats are not addressed to particular men. How might this have affected the poetic license of Pindar, who was presumably constrained by what his patrons expected? For further reading on Pindar}s form, see: D.S. Carne-Ross. Pindar. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). Gilbert Norwood. Pindar. (Berkeley: University of California Press} 194 5) . 2 In the RepubLic, Plato uses the same verb to describe one political party}s "holding down)} another (360b, 552e, 554c). nauoµm: aL'l)J11go~ ()£ XOQO; 'XQUEQOLO y6mo " ... for surfeit of gloomy lamentations comes quickly ... n [Homer, The OdyJJey of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore. (New York: Harper & Row} 2007), 4.103.] 3 4 Plutarch} LiveJ, trans. John Dryden (New York: Modern Library, 2001)) 1:291 -321 xg11i:11QL 6£ olvov ~t ioyov, <hag ~aCTLA£Dmv vbwg EJtL XELQa~ £xcuav. " .. .the proud heralds ... in a great wine bowl mixed the wine ... )} [Homer, The !Liao, trans. Richmond Lattimore 5 (Chicago: Univ ersity of Chicago Press } 19 51) ) �.. 55 54 And often poorly translated: Race renders it " comes to "Latt1more choases "d escen ds upon. " . ; Pindar, Neniean O'JeJJ I.:1thniian O'Jer:1) FragmentJ, Vol. 2, trans. William H. Race. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). Pindar, The O'JeJ of Pin'Jar, trans. Richmond Lattimore. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1947. 9 3.269-270.] 6 Compare Aristotle's use of "universal" with Strauss' use of the same word in the passage innate 7 below. [cf. Aristotle's Poeticr:1, (1451 b6-10)] 7 Consider Strauss: "Both Plato's dialogues and Thucydides' history have something most important in common: both present the universal truth in inseparable connection with the particulars. The part played in Thucydides by the Peloponnesian war was played in Plato by Socrates. Thucydides starts from the experience of the biggest unrest; Plato starts from the experience of the serene citizen philosopher." From Leo Strauss, "Thucydides: The Meaning of Political History, The Rebirth of Clar:Jr:1ical Political Rationalum, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 97. 11 8 Strauss again: "Not Periclean Athens but the understanding which is made possible on the basis of Periclean Athens is the peak. Not Periclean Athens but the work of Thucydides is the peak. Thucydides redeems Periclean Athens. And only by redeeming it does he preserve it 'forever.' As little as there would be an Achilles or an Odysseus for us without Homer, as little would there be a Pericles for us without Thucydides: the everlasting glory for which Pericles longed is achieved not by Pericles but by Thucydides. From Leo Strauss, The City an'J Man (Chicago: University of Chicago P ress, 1964), 229-230. 11 Richard B. Sewall, The Vu ion of Trage'Jy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 26. 10 Dante Alighieri, Para'Juo, trans. John D . Sinclair (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939), 3: 229. 11 �56 57 Why I Go to St. John's Shayna Jenlcin.:1 To tell you why I go to St. J ohnJs I must first explain my paranoia. I have this fear} constantly lurking inside me} that I cannot think . I have this fear that the words I string into sentences are simply meaningless ramblings ~the empty thoughts from empty feelings of an 18-yearold trapped in the vanities of youth. I think this is probably true. I should mention another persistent fear: that I am nothing. It is inescapable. Because what do I have to show for who I am besides some mediocre artistic talent and a lot of unfinished tasks} thoughts} pursuits? I am a fearful person. My worries for myself and for the world} for family and friends and relationships ~they control my thoughts. To deal with them I obsess over learning the perfect braid or the ideal way to do cat -ey e eyeliner. Stilt despite all of this} I chose St. John 1s College} where the superficialities of human nature only come out late at night} when the large cheese pizza is gone. Don t get me wrong. St. JohnJs is like most other colleges in America} where the residents} lives are regularly consumed with the pursuit of easy pleasures. But in the leftover time, when students at other places are gazing lifelessly at computer screens, St. John's students are off searching for something. I t s hard to identify the object of that search, because it 1 1 Emerging from the Cave I ELb:a6eth Janthey �58 59 seems to fluctuate so wildly, vacillating between the worldly (but perhaps gluttonous) pursuit of Truth and Virtue, all the way to the respectable (but disgustingly practical) search for a comprehensive education . It can't be pinned down. It's as hard to capture as a butterfly in the wind. Which leaves me with that first question: Why St. John's? Because however much happiness it has brought me, never before have I felt such a powerful urge to see it all end in a strong Lunesta cocktail and a long, long sleep. My name is Shayna Morell Jenkins. I am 18. I m from Litchfield, Connecticut. My favorite book is Looking for A!tuka. I can 1t cook, and I also can t clean. I can draw portraits that kind of resemble people, and I can almost kind of keep a beat to a Rihanna song if the music is loud enough and the hour is late enough. Am I qualified to be a Johnnie? Because I remember from my pre-application visit that everyone at St. John 1s looked like they shopped at Goodwill but somehow managed to find the one cute shirt lying under all the XXXL tees that could pass for scrubs. But here I am, in my sophomore year, still shopping in the American Eagle clearance, listening to the same bad music I always have, reading the same trashy magazines. But this year I am a Johnnie, whereas just a moment ago I was Shayna Morell Jenkins, the 17-year-old who listened to bad music and wore Baby Phat perfume. So I 1m beginning to think I 1m a Johnnie (maybe) not because of my age or my irresponsible clothing choices, but because of someth ing more, someth ing less ta n gible 1 1 than the polyester shirt in the clearance bin. Something changed from where I was to w here I find myself now. And I m beginning to think that it's because I'm pursuing something, searching for something both in myself and in the world. Last year I was searching for a good time and for a way to think, because I gave up thinking. I gave it up because I realized that when I thought about myself and the world and the interaction between the two, a feeling of purposeless and emptiness began to eat me from the inside out (alas, this didn't help me lose any weight). And I wanted to think again, because as much as I hated standing in front of that window trying to convince myself that if I did, in fact, end it right then, someone left behind would, in fact, regret me, there was something refreshing in recognizing the reality of my world. It made me feel vibrant in the same way it made me feel dead. But then that dead thing became too powerful, and I retreated into the familiar world of hookups, breakups, and eyeliner, comfortable reminders that I still existed. I had a place within the world, even if my mind could have floated away at any minute on a moth's breath. But that's not really satisfying, is it? I'm searching, sure, but what for? That is the question. But it's only one of the questions that I hope is driving me towards some sort of an end. Everyone says that w hen y ou come to St. John 1s you don t get answers, you only get more questions, so perhaps when I graduate I ll have more of an idea of w h at it is I'm looking for, and t h at w ill enable 1 1 1 �60 61 me to ask what it is I'm searching for with some optimism about finding an answer. I don t know, though. Maybe the end is not quite as important as it seems. Maybe it s just as much about how we get there. There are moments when everything is crystal clear. And it s in those moments that I realize that I m at St. John's because I want to prove to myself that I 1m aLi(Je. Regardless of w hat I do, or where I go, it always seems to come back to this: How do I know that I 1m alive? How can I make myself feel it and know it? I have always gotten so easily caught up in the world around me: relationships and friends, clothes and future; shiny things, shinier things. But they don't fulfill. They don't pulse with the rage and motion of the world I find when I look away from their hypnosis and really dee. So I guess I could say that I go to St. John's because I want to know that I m alive. And since my life---living---hasn't shown me this, I want to understand what makes up living and a life, so that I can prove to myself every day that I 1m alive, and that somewhere, behind my straightened hair and the racks of season-appropriate fashion, is a person and a heart vigorously beating with a primal humanity. St. John's is not the school for everyone. 1 And I m not going to lie and say that I 1ve never thought about leaving. But in all honesty, if I left right now, what would I have to show for w ho I am besides some half-cooked notions about why it is I lose all connection to the world when the music st arts, and some skills with a curling ir on ? 1 1 1 1 1 red-tailed hawk I CaLeb Bemaro �wwww l 62 Lavinia Oz deniir Ac1af 63 Lavinia tranc1Lated 6y Giirer Giindiindii 11 Sana gitme demeyecegim. -0 siiyorsun ceketimi al. Giiniin en giizel saatleri bunlar. Yanimda kal. I will not say "Stay! to you. You are cold, take my jacket. These are the most beautiful hours of the day. Stay with me. Sana gitme demeyecegim. Gene de sen bilirsin. Yalanlar istiyorsun yalanlar soyleyeyim, Incinirsin. I will not say "Stay! to you. But, however you wish. If you want lies, I would tell lies. You would get hurt. Sana gitme demeyecegim, Arna gitme, Lavinia. Adini gizleyecegim Sen de bilme, Lavinia. I will not say "Stay! to you, But don't go, Lavinia. I will hide your name, Nor you shall know, Lavinia. 11 11 �ws:: ·-~-- -. 65 64 A Poem R.o/Jert Schuernian To capture all the characters I've met, And roll them up into one epic verse Would be an easy task ... to ask a god, But since I'm but a character myself, About as good at reading folks: as prose Which folks believe, without their looking in To what it is that truly comes to ask, For something as elusive as a fact And so, perhaps, to penetrate a thought Might find it too contains what's not so strange To one who's come to see, what can be known, A knowing thing is not the thing it knows, And so connotes of something more than prose, In a life whose character now becomes ... a poem. Think I Peggy Bair �energeia st. john's college p.a. 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. 65 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 2013 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Spring 2013. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goldman, Nathan (editor) Tuttle, Ian (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 2013 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 2013 Energeia Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/07fdb5c9c48b5ffa1e2d0043ece85dee.pdf 0752ef755d68b92a35673689e63a61f1 PDF Text Text • . energe1a spring 2014 ��2 3 cover �5 7 8 a 6 �7 6 !" did weep, and for sorrow sung Bair �8 �1 1 �12 13 Yo soy tan distrafdo que el dialogo que acabo de referir no me hubiera llamado la atenci6n si no lo hubiera recalcado mi primo, a quien estimulaban ( creo) cierto orgullo local, y el deseo de mostrarse indiferente a la replica tripartita del otro. Me dijo que el muchacho del callej6n era un tal Ireneo Funes, mentado por algunas rarezas coma la de no darse con nadie y la de saber siempre la hara, coma un reloj. Agreg6 que era hijo de una planchadora del pueblo, Marfa Clementina Funes, y que algunos dedan que su padre era un medico del saladero, un ingles O'Connor, y otros un domador o rastreador del departamento del . Salta. Vivfa con su madre, a la vuelta de la quinta de los Laureles. Los afios ochenta y cinco y ochenta y seis · veraneamos en la ciudad de Montevideo. El ochenta y siete volvf a Fray Bentos. Pregunte, coma es natural, por todos los conocidos y, finalmente, por el "cronometrico Funes." Me contestaron que lo habfa volteado un redom6n en la estancia de San Francisco, y que habfa quedado tullido, sin esperanza. Recuerdo la impresi6n de inc6moda magia que la noticia me produjo: la unica vez que yo lo vi, venfamos a caballo de San Francisco y el andaba en un lugar alto; el hecho, en boca de mi primo Bernardo, tenfa mucho de suefio elaborado con elementos anteriores. Me dijeron que nose movfa del catre, puestos los ojos en la higuera del fondo o en una telarafia. En los atardeceres, permitfa que lo sacaran a la ventana. Llevaba la sober b ia hasta el punto de simular que I am so distracted that the dialogue I have just related would not have called my attention had it not been emphasized by my cousin, who was stimulated (I believe) by a certain local pride, and by the desire to show that he was indifferent to the other's tripartite reply. He told me that the boy from the alley was one Ireneo Funes, oft-mentioned for a few oddities such as that of involving himself with no one and of always knowing the time, like a clock. He added that he was the son of an ironing-woman in town, Marfa Clementina Funes, and that some used to say his father was a doctor at the meatsalting house, an Englishman named O 'Connor, and others a horse-breaker or a scout from the Salta Department. He lived with his mother, right around the country house of the Laurels. The years eighty-five and eighty-six we spent the summer in the city of Montevideo. In eighty-seven I returned to Fray Bentos. I asked, as is natural, about all my acquaintances and, finally, about the "chronometric Funes." They told me that a half-broken horse had overturned him on the San Francisco ranch, and that he had remained crippled, without hope. I remember the impression of uneasy magic the news produced in me: the only time I saw him, we were coming on horse back from San Francisco and he was running on a high place; the fact, in the mouth of my cousin Bernardo, felt much like a dream elaborated with anterior elements. They told me he did not move from his cot, his eyes fixed on the fig tree in the back or on a cobw eb. In t h e evening s, at �5 santonina. ica. raron que no, que eran cosas �16 7 �9 que en p1eza �2 �minima. copas en una mesa; rac1mosy SU �contrario me en- ��menos sus cioso y mas vivo que nuestra goce corriente. r":>rrit:>T--.nl �3 gestures. muri6 en una con- In a �reconstruct my set out once more ��accunt: �38 39 l I forces outside of theinselves. They jockeyed with externals by virtue of an internal strength. In the poem, the struggle is internal: the converging exotic winds have placed a hold on the speaker's mind, rather than his body. How can we resolve this apparent discrepancy between the poetic and Biblical images? Perhaps the poem is positing an interpretation of these Scriptural passages. Just as the hand that Jes us commands us to sever from our body is not our literal hand (at least not until Stevens' graphic rendering), but is, rather, a part our mind, the forces that Jacob and Jesus contend with are not external foes. The setting of these characters against great external forces is a figurative expression of our own endeavors with aspects of our nature. This interpretation of these passages recalls the double nature that Jesus teaches in the quoted passage from Matthew. With this in mind, how are we to understand these winds that have attacked the speaker? Can they, too, be seen, like the windstorm and Jacob's opponent, as aspects of ourselves with which we must contend? Does this interpretation work with the rest of the poem? In the third stanza, the speaker recapitulates the wind's assault on his person. This is followed in the third and fourth line by the return of the first stanza's imagery. Before it was blood from the severed hand that fell to the floor, but now it is the "blood of the mind" that flows to the ground. Has the speaker done some violence to his own mind, analogous to the butcher's work on his hand? If the winds are some aspect of the speaker's own mind, has he made an attempt to sever them from himself? If this is the case, then his efforts are apparently as futile as the butcher's. The 1 I · third stanza's final image - "I slept" - lands with a dull thud after the dramatic imagery of the previous stanzas. Although it might remind the reader of the way Jes us peacefully sleeps during the storm, this sleep seems more akin to the sleep of Peter, who lacked the strength ("OUK Tuxucmtc") to stay awake as his Lord prayed (Matthew 26:40). The sleep comes from a weakness, an apparent inability to persevere. It recalls the title of the poem. This is the weak mind, unable to live up to the task articulated in the Sermon on the Mount. The final stanza appears to offer some solace in the face of this failure. The speaker assures us (and perhaps himself) that "there was a man within" him that could have accomplished a series of actions that are all Christ-like. This man within the speaker could have "risen," as Christ does on the third day; could have touched the winds, thereby conquering them; and "could have stood up sharply in the sky," bringing to mind the striking image of Christ on the cross, his silhouette standing out against the sky. But while these assurances are hopeful, they sound hollow. If the speaker actually had this man within him, as he tells us he did, then the speaker's struggles with himself would not have ended in the ambiguous failure of the third stanza. It is precisely because of this failure that he is not the man he describes in the last stanza. These last lines sound like the assurances we give ourselves in the aftermath of an apparent failure. We courJ have triumphed, we say in the face of defeat. The series of conditional statements are the expectations of a foreseen greatness that obscures the speaker's understanding of h is own nature . O ne �4 Cast Aside I Elizabeth Janthey ��a ��as meant. meant to �5 �mance. �more ��ears, �Untitled I Elcemezie. Uche �energe1a st. john's college 60 college ave annapolis, rnd 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. 60 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 2014 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Spring 2014. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Goldman, Nathan (editor) Tuttle, Ian (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 2014 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 2014 Energeia Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1efb31e2b66a38236bd33d4de7779091.pdf 9542edd8f8bd370577818ee2590bf1b5 PDF Text Text FALL, 1989 �[ ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself. 11 •.. vou Evtpytia ~ro11 ... (Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1072b) Cover: "B. GOODE" Photographed by John Silver '89 Staff: Jennifer Accardo Carolyn Barndt Eugenia Bergeron Akiba Covitz George Dolan Bryan Frost Brian Levy Laurae Melbin Ray Rivera Laura Webner Printed by the St. John's College Press St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland Editors: Rhonda Datcher Ken Paradis Faculty Advisor: Henry Higuera With special thanks to: Ray Gifford Geor ge Tu rner Ty Yancey Chris Colby Energeia is a non-profit, student magazine which is published two times a year and distributed among the students, faculty, alumni and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis and Santa Fe. The Energeia staff welcomes submissions from all members of the community--essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. + �l CONTENTS THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI AND TACITUS: THE PROBLEMS OF ETHICS AND POLITICS (Honorable Mention, Sophomore Essay) 5 GRAND L UNA L OVE Ned Dobner 12 "GRACE COMES SOMEWHAT VIOLENT ... THROUGH THE WRECK AND THE BLOODSHED" (Prize-Winning Freshman Essay) Michelle Nicoll 13 CLASS DAY ADDRESS John Verdi 20 Part One of: TRAGEDY, PHILOSOPHY, COMEDY: A VISION OF TRANSCENDENCE IN EURIPIDES, KANT, AND HEGEL (Honorable Mention, Senior Essay) Michael McShane 22 ARISTOTLE'S WHEEL Cherie Craig 33 THE BEGINNING OF TIME Eugenia Bergeron 35 THE CAVE Seung Ahn 37 BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD: CHRIST AND MEN IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN Kev in Graham 38 UNTITLED POEM Laurae Melbin 47 COMING TO IN THE FATHERLAND (Prize-Winning Original Poem) • Alexander Lo Jessica Lamb 48 �•. Thoughts on Machiavelli and Tacitus: The Probletns of Ethics and Politics Alexander Lo ('90) Preliminary Discussion The antithesis between Machiavelli and Tacitus cannot be more apparent than in their works, both in terms of their views of history and their methods of inquiry. In many striking passages, they explicitly spell out their intentions and motives. For Tacitus, the historian's highest task is essentially a moral task. He does not "relate at length every motion, but only those such as were conspicuous for excellence or notorious for infamy." History's highest function is to let "no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds." Thus history, or rather historical reconstruction by the historian, is essentially a series of moral lessons: the historian is a moral critic of the actions of individuals and the events of particular historical periods. In the writings of Machiavelli, political history or analysis becomes a part of politics and is not apart from politics. He too is critical. He analyzes politics as it is practised, but not how it ought to be practised. It is customary to view Machiavelli's writings as 'value-free', as free from ethical consideration. But this is clearly not the case, as even a casual reading of Machiavelli will show. He is full of praise and blame for the political and the historical actor. Clearly, his ethical criterion is that of the good and the bad, as opposed to the good and the evil. But this is only the 'surface' antithesis between the two authors. At a deeper level, there is a common denominator which is shared by all historical and political writers. (I shall use history, politics and political history interchangably.) Regardless of their moral and ideological persuasions, they all aspire to objectivity, historical knowledge, and authentic historical reconstruction. Of course, both Tacitus and Machiavelli, and all of us, are aware of propagandistic writings. Very frequently writers conceal such events as would reflect disgrace upon their century, whilst magnify and amplify those that lend lustre to it. The majority of authors obey the fortune of conquerors to that degree that, by way of rendering their victories more glorious, they exaggerate not only the valiant deeds of the victor, but also of the vanquished. (The Discourses, New York: the Modern Library, 1950, p. 271) The history of Tiberius, Caius, Claudius and Nero, while they were in power, were falsified through terror, and after their death were written under the irritation of a recent hatred. Hence my purpose here is to relate a few facts about Tiberius ...without either bitterness or partiality, from any mo tives to which I am far removed. (The Annals, New York: the Modern Library, 1942, p. 3) Nevertheless, all historical writers assume the intelligibility of history. History is both a reality and an object of knowledge, is simultaneously that which is experienced and that which can be known. Thus, we have reduced the apparent antithesis betwen Machiavelli and Tacitus to the common assumption of historical intelligibility. In 5 • �order to praise Germanicus and to denounce Tiberius, in order to praise the grandeur of Rome and to denounce the corruption of the Italian pr inces and republics, it must be assumed that the policies of governments and the actions of individuals are historically intelligible. One assumption, two ethical views on history: it is at this level of history as a formal study that the problem of ethics and politics becomes interesting. The two ethical views, which we have discussed briefly at the beginning, lead to two different approaches to historical reconstruction -- in other words, two different ways of making history intelligible. We shall discuss t he limitations and the ad vanta ges of the two approaches and those of the two ethics within the context of historical intelligibility. By limitation, I mean practical intelligibility, the limited extent to which the intelligibility of a historical event is revealed. By advantage, I mean the extent to which the intelligibility of a historical event can be revealed. Machiavelli's Ethics and Method In discussing the two forms qf ethics, it is tempting simply to use the formula of ends and means. While the one emphasizes intentions, actions, and the means by which goals are achieved, the other emphasizes results in tended and consequences resulted. The latter seeks to determine not whether the means a re desi rabl e but whethe r the results produced are desirable. Commenting on Romulus' murder of his brother, Machiavelli expresses the latter ethics elegantly: "It is well that when the act accuses him, the result should excuse him" -- the murder being n ecessar y to the fo u nd ing of Rome (p. 139). Christian ethics is a particular manifestation of the first type of ethics. Significantly, Machiavelli does not condemn "our religion", namely Christian ethics, which " places th e supreme happiness in humility, lowliness, and a contempt for worldly objects." He simply realizes that these [Christian] principles have made men feeble, and caused them to become an easy prey to evil-minded men, who control them securely, seeing that the great body of men, for the sake of gaining Paradise, are more di~posed to endure injuries than to avenge them. (p. 285) Without the qualities of the lion and the fox, "our institutions" do not "teach us to love and honor our country", or to expand our domain of influence. On the other hand, "the other religion", namely the Romans', renders men formidable by emphasizing "grandeur of soul and strength of body" and by attaching the highest esteem to honors and possessions. The latter is the ruthless pursuit of power, whether for oneself (the prince) or for one's community (the republic). The two ethics are incompatible and Machiavelli knows which one he perfers. Nevertheless, Machiavelli does not exclude the possibility of political greatness for the Christian state. It is Machiavelli's realization of such a possibility that prompts Max Weber to comment thus: further than, Mach iavelli. Not sur prisingly, even clergymen in Machiavelli's time had said it, in internal documents of course: When the existence of the Church is threatened, she is released from the commandments of morality. With unity as the end, the use of every means is sanctified, even cunning, treachery, violence, simony, prison, death. For all order is for the sake of the community and the individual msut be sacrificed to the common good. (Dietrich Von Nieheim, Bishop of Verden: De Schismate Libri III, A.D. 1411) Nieheim's passage is almost an exact duplicate of Machiavelli's: Machiavelli, in a beautiful passage of the History of Florence, has one of his heros praise those citizens who deemed the greatness of their native city higher than the salvation of their souls. For where the very safety of the country depends upon the resolution to be taken, no considerations of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, nor of glory or of shame, should be allowed to prevail. But putting all other cosiderations aside, the only question should be, What course will save the life and liberty of (_The Discourses, p. 528) the country. (Politics as a Vocation, New York: Oxford Univer- · sity Press, 1946, p. 126) It requires exceptional lucidity and humility to Literate and cultured men have been, and still are, prevented from fallowing the "new route" because of their reading of Socrates' decisive arguments against Callicles in the Gorgias and Thrasymachus in the Republic, because of their faith in Christianity, and because of their being shielded from the reading of internal documents. On the basis of the formal ethics of responsibility, to borrow Weber's phrase, Machiavelli is in an unique postition to analyze power as it is practised, as it should be practised if goals are to be realized successfully, but not how it ought to be practised so as to conform to the ethical norm. This is apparent throughout The Prince and The Discourses. He is less interested in individual characters than in the decisions that they have to make, in the actions that they have to carry out, and in their assessment of existing situations. This is partic ularly so in the case of the Prince. U nli ke Tacitus, rarely does he give minute portraits of his characters' thoughts and motives, beyond such general categories as courage, cowardice, and magnanimity. He analyzes in detail material causes as opposed to individual motives. For example, he analyzes the usefulness, or rather the uselessness, of money and fortresses in warfare, and the Roman emphasis on infantry as opposed to cavalry. He is more interested in large social and political movements than in individuals, except to the extent that a knowledge of individuals is necessary towards an understanding of these movements. Book One of formalize the two positions in no uncertain terms, to choose one while recognizing the legitimacy of the other. This by itself is an admirable quality. Max Weber, who formulates the two ethics in contemporary language,_ says, "one cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethics of absolute ends (Christian ethics) or an ethics of responsibility (Machiavellian ethics) or when the one and when the other." (ibid.) . This ethics is prerequisite to the particular type of analytical method of history and political analysis on which Machiavelli's fame rests. In the introduction to the first book of the Discourses, Machia vell i sa ys what h e has done here may prove for the common benefit of all; I have resolved to open a new route, which has not yet been followed by anyone, and may prove difficult and troublesome ... I shall have shown the way to others, who will carry my views with greater ability, eloquence, and judgement. (p. 103) His "new route" is "difficult and troublesome" not because of the intr insi c intellectual depth of this type of political analysis. Rather, the new formal ethics, incompatible with the Christian ethics into which political writers and cultured men are trapped, has yet to take hold of our moral and intellectual constitution. This ethics is nothing new; it probably has been practised from time immemorial. Platonic characters Callicles and Thrasymachus have voiced it. The Indian classic Kautaliya Arthasastra has gone as far as, if not The Discourses is concerned with Roman internal politics, while Book Two deals with the expansion of the empi re. Thus, he gives detailed analyses of Roman institutions such as the tribunate (which represents the people), the senate (which consists of the nobles) and the consulate. A brief comparison between Machiavelli's account of the Roman agrarian law and Plutarch's account of the conflict between Pompey and Caesar will illustrate the differences, both in method and style, between Machiavelli and morally motivated historians such as Tacitus and Plutarch. Plutarch tells us next to nothing about the larger historical and political context out of which the conflict between Caesar and Pompey arose. For him, the conflict was simply the personal rivalry between the two greatest Roman politicians of the day: Caesar had lond ago resolved upon the overthrow of Pompey, as had Pompey, for that matter, upon him ... (I)f the one of them wished to make himself the greatest man in Rome, he had only to overthrow the other; and ifhe again wished to prevent his own fall, he had nothing for it but to be beforehand with him whom he feared. (Plutarch's Lives, "Life of Caesar," Chicago: the University of Chicago, 1952, p. 588) From Plutarch's account, we learn that the people were generally behind Caesar while the aristocratic Pompey was greatly respected by the noblemen. But this state of affairs had its origin in the passing of the agrarian law, which, according to Machiavelli, caused the fall of Rome. As decreed by the law, "no citizen could possess more than a certain number of acres of land," and that "all lands taken from their enemies should be divided amongst the Roman people." The law worked to the disadvan tages of the nobles. First, "those who had more land than the law allowed (which was the case with the greater part of the nobles) had to be deprived of it; and by dividing amongst the people the lands taken from the enemy, it took from the nobles the chance of enriching themselves." (Discourses, p. 209) The law caused constant conflicts between the people and the nobles, first in the civil war between Marius, whom the people favored, and Sylla, whom the nobles favored. Later, Caesar joined the party of Marius, while Pompey u pheld the pa r ty of Sylla. It is typical of Machiavelli that he should pay more attention to the agrarian law, while Plutarch simply related the personal rivalry between Caesar and Pompey. 7 6 • �Characteristic of his method, Machiavelli "demonstrate(s) by ancient and modern examples, rather than attempt(s) to do so by arguments, which will not do as well." (Discourses, p. 375) He chooses particular historical situations as examples, and on those bases he abstracts general rules. What he says of the common people, so he thinks similarly of the historical writer: ''Men are apt to deceive themselves in general matters, yet they rarely do so in particulars ... The knowledge of things particular had removed from their minds that delusion into which they had fallen by looking at things in general." (Discourses, p. 233, 236) For example, it is well to argue about equality and the just distribution of power. When it comes to particular actions, such as the election of common citizens to the Roman Consulate, the citizens know that not one of them is suitable. Similarly, it is well to advance Socrates' argument according to which suffering evil is better than practising evil. We all know where this ethical viewpoint will lead to in real life power-politics. Good does not necessarily result in good, and evil does not necessarily lead to evil. How can we know that the initial good deed will reslult in morally desirable consequences, and that those consequences will result in further desirable consequences? As Isaiah Berlin says, in matters such as these, humility is called for. Those who insist that evil must be resisted at all cost, such as Socrates, and those who say arrogantly that if they have to choose between the lesser of two evils, they will choose neither, such as the Austrian writer Karl Draus, have no calling in politics and should stay out of it altogether. Machiavellism is at once an ethics and an analytical approach. It is the vulgar understanding of Machiavelli's works that leads us to equate Machiavellism with the ruthless pursuit of power. In reality, it implies vigor of thought and a profound knowledge of history. It implies moderation and humility which realize the inconclusiveness of political actions and the necessarily limited knowledge of past and present. Machiavelli himself says that it is "a fact that we never know the whole truth about the past." Machia vellism is a mirror of politics as "the art of the possible". It does not hesitate with the use of violence and other morally dubious means. However, it fully realizes the allpervading unpredictability which we encounter in the political realm: "Before deciding upon any course, therefore men should well consider the objections and dangers which it presents; and if its perils exceed its advantages, they should avoid it." (Discourses, p. 245) Since it does not demand perfection, does not claim scientific understanding of historical processes, and does not profess moral purity (Machiavelli is fully aware of the antiChristian, or the evil, character of his teachings), it is the opposite of fanaticism and idealism. Machiavelli says in the introduction of The Discourses that "I shall at least have shown the way to others, who will carry out my views with greater ability, eloquence, and judgment," a subject to which we will return. We shall now turn to Tacitus. which he ascribes to his characters fit in so nicely with the consistence of his protraits, that we wonder whether we are reading dramatic writings or authentic historical reconstructions. In Tacitus's eye, Germanicus could do no wrong. In his own words, Germanicus "was a young man of unaspiring temper, and of wonderful kindliness, contrasting strongly with the proud and mysterious Tiberius." "The nearer Germanicus was to the highest hope, the more laboriously did he exert himself for Tiberius, and he made the neighbouring Sequani and all the Belgic states swear obedience to him." (p. 24) Tiberius, on the other hand, even if he acted expediently on several occasions, as any competent politicain would have done, is nevertheless criticized on those occasions. On the occasion of Augustus's death, when all the religious rituals had been performed, when the nobles urged Tiberius to succeed Augustus, Tiberius delivered a "routine" speech which expediently expressed obviously false modesty as to the greatness of the task, his own inadequacy in the presence of so many capable men. Nevertheless, Tacitus has to comment thus: Tacitus' Ethics and Method I have quoted Tacitus as saying, in the beginning of The Annals, that his purpose is "to relate a few facts" about the Roman emperors, without bitterness or partiality, or any motives . other than for the sake of genuine history (as distinct from romance). But few historians have consciously revealed more about themselves, their moral sentiment, and their preferences and prejudices than Tacitus. He is quite bitter and is far from being impartial, as he himself tells us later: by My labours are circumscribed and inglorious; peace wholly unbroken or but slightly disturbed, dismal misery in the capital, an emperor careless about the enlargement of the empire, such is my theme ... I have to present in succession the merciless biddings of a tyrant, incessant prosecutions, faithless friend ship, the ruin of innocence ... and I am everywhere confronted as wearisome monotony in my subject matter. Tiberius' language even in matters which he did not care to conceal, either from habit or nature, was always hesitating and obscure, and now that he was struggling to hide his feelings completely, it was all the more involved in uncertainty and doubt. (The Annals, p. 11) The animosity that Tiberius had for Germanicus is understandable enough. On the other hand, one wonders whether the latter's unfailing loyalty to Tiberius is as simple as Tacitus thinks. What Machiavelli says of Scipio, the same can be said of Germanicus: (The Annals, p. 162-163) Nevertheless, it is the historian's moral task, or history's highest function, "to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds." Thus, "there must be good in carefully noting and recording this period, for it is but few who have the foresight to distinguish right from wrong or what is sound from what is hurtful, while most men learn wisdom from the fortunes of others." (p. 163) With such a didactic view of history as Tacitus's, it is not surprising that he should be more interested in characrter-analysis, in the thoughts and the motives of his protaganists, and the struggles between individuals, than in social and political movements, ins ti tu tional changes, and other objective or material conditions which make possible individual rivalries among political players. This quality is apparent in his protraits of Germanicus and Tiberius. His characterizations are so consistent, the feelings, motives and thoughts Scipio had conquered, from the great reputation which his victory after so long and perilous a war had given him, from the rapidity of his actions and the popular favor which his youth, his prudence, and other remarkable virtues had won for him. All these were so great that everybody in Rome, even the magistrates, feared his influence and authority, which offended the intelligent men of Rome as an unheard of thing. (The Discourses, p. 191) Tacitus's didactic view of history leads him to paint a Manichaean (good and evil) picture of the conflict between Tiberius and Germanicus. But Tiberius's distrust was manifest even in the golden age of Rome, with the rise of Scipio. And it would be man if est in any age, however corrupt or glorious. Writing about the recent corrupt past, 8 Tacitus cannot conceal his nostalgia for the glorious days of the Roman empire: "How few were left who had seen the republic!" (p. 5) In the words of Marcellus, "I do not forget the times in which I have been born, or the form of government which our fathers and grandfathers established. I may regard with admiration an earlier period." (The History, p. 598) One cannot be in disagreement with Tacitus in one respect: the intelligibility of a historical event cannot be revealed without taking into consideration the thoughts and the motives of individual actors. The problem for the historian is to find out in what way it is possible to know the actor's thoughts and motives. Tacitus assigns speeches to his protagonists which they could not have deliv ered, motives and thoughts of which Tacitus could not have known except through conjecture. For example, according to Tacitus, Tiberius had "a mind which brooded over its resentments even though the first impulse of his displeasure had subsided." (p. 156) He explains Tiberius's final leap into cruelty and tyranny as the resu lt of the influence of Aelius Sejanus, whom he describes in the following terms: Sejanus careless and freespoken ... It was not through his craft, for it was by this very weapon that he was overthrown; it was rather from heaven's wrath against Rome, to whose welfare his elevation and his fall were alike disastrous ... He was as cringing as he was imperious; before the world he affected humility; in his heart he lusted after supremacy, for the sake of which he was sometimes lavish and luxurious, but oftener energetic and watchful, qualities quite as mischievous when hypercritically assumed for the attainment of sovereignty. (p. 144) It is reassuring that Tacitus the historian knows about heaven's wrath which naturally explains Sejanus's rise and fall. We have to conclude that his delineation of Roman personalities, his analysis of their thoughts and motives, possess far greater literary and dramatic merits than historical authenticity. Historical Method and Historical Intelligibility The problem of historical intelligibility is a large question and it goes beyond the scope of this essay. Therefore, I shall not treat the problem independently but only within the context of our discussion, namely Machiavelli's and Tacitus' respective ethics and methods. 9 + �Specifically, there are two problems which I would like to discuss. The first is what I shall call the problem of Tacitean analysis. In line with Machiavelli's maxim, according to which general matters often prove to be confusing, we shall begin with a specific example: Why did Caesar cross the river Rubicon? The very act itself, in this case Caesar's decision to cross the river, possesses a plurality of meanings which is inexhaustible (Raymond Aron, History, Truth, Liberty, "Three Forms of Historical Intelligibility" Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, I 98 5). A historical explanation of the act might conceivably take into consideration what we have called Tacitean analysis, namely the thoughts and the motives behind Caesar's decision, the subjective meanings which Caesar himself experienced and which led to his decision. But the subjectivity of another mind of a different historical epoch and of a foreign culture is complex and probably impossible to discern. How can the historian discover the subjective meanings experienced by the historical actor as distinct form true historical meanings of which the actor himself is probably unaware? One would have to consider the psychological makeup of the actor, his knowledge of the situation, his decision and actio·n within the system of values -- ethical, religious and symbolic · · of the society on culture of which he is a member. This leads us back to the formula of ends and means: within a particular historical and cultural context, what means are morally acceptable? what ends are morally desirable? This implies the application of sociological concepts to history. As such it is beyond history proper. But the application of sociology to history, sociological history, implies that we do not see the individual actor as an independent actor, but as an expression of his time: his action and decision can only be discerned within the larger political, historical and cultural context. The historian must respect facts, which means that he can only explain a historical act on the basis of what is known and what can be known. The Machiavellian historian would be justified in tracing the conflict between Caesar and Pompey back to the passing of the agrarian law, since this is what he knows. On the other hand, we argue that in principle, Tacitean analysis is impossible, since it implies a knowledge of the subjectivity of the historical actor, to whom we have no access (Perhaps psychoanalysis will give us the necessary tool, as Erik Erikson had done in Young Man Luther. I shall say no more on the subject). On the question of Tacitean analysis, it seems that the historian can only give a negative answer: one should not transfer one's motives, thoughts and moral preferences -- one's system of values -- to one's historical subject. To give a crude analogy, a writer should always aspire to tell his readers more about the subject in question than about himself. This leads us to our second problem, which has to do with value judgement. As Leo Strauss says in Natural Right and History, history, or any social science without value judgment, or as a value-free science, would be not only dull but meaningless. Here, I want to argue that value-freedom and value judgment are not the same thing, the confusion of which lead many "scientific students of society" as Strauss complains, "to be unwilling or unable to . make value-judgements." (Thoughts on Machiavelli, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, I958, p. I I) As he says of Max Weber, "Weber, like every other man who ever discussed social matters in a relevant manner, could not av oid speaking of avarice, greed, unscrupulousness, vanity, devotion, sense of proportion, and similar things, i.e., making value judgments." This is true. But to bring out more explicitly the issue at stake, let us pose this question to both Strauss and Weber: in what way should value judgements be made in the fields of social science and history? Certainly, they should not be made in the sense of Tacitean analysis -transference of one's moral feelings to one's historical subject. Weber, and all of us, know that valuefreedom is an ideal and is impossible to be realized fully. Essentially, a value-free system does not prohibit value judgments. Rather, it provides a certain rigor to value judgment and the analysis of the historian or of the social scientist. In short, there is nothing to prevent the value-free historian from condemning or praising Tiberius or Germanicus -- in Strauss's words, to speak in the language of praise and blame. To give a contemporary example, instead of adhering to the battered notions of totalitarianism and democracy, French writer Rayond Aron coined the terms monopolistic and constitutional-pluralistic, tw o terms which are like a breath of fresh air to the student of modern history. The. new terms at once minimize the possibilities of disagreement by eliminating controversial and disputable vocabulary in contempory political language. This does not prevent Aron from favoring Western democracies over the Soviet state. Value-freedom is actually implicit in, and an extension of, what I have called Machiavellism as an analytical approach. I say this in the sense of the rigor which Machiavelli displays in his analysis of politics. Often, Machiavelli uses valuewords, such as humility, cruelty and cunning, as if they are value-free words. For example, in Book 3, ch. 19-21, Machiavelli considers whether it is better to rule the multitude with humanity or with severity. He arrives at the conclusion that in the case of republics, it is better to rule with humanity towards one's own citizens. In the case of monarchies, it is more appropriate to rule with severity. He is not deterred by the usual moral preference for humanity over severity, nor does he automatically choose severity as the better of the two. It is only through a lucid analysis of the two words within the context of military affaris and government that he settles the matter. Another example can be found in Book 1, ch. 5, in which he asks the following question: "As every republic is composed of nobles and people, the question arose as to whose hands it was best to confide the protection of liberty." As always, he gives historical examples, analyzes circumstances under which it is better to confide to the people. Examples of this kind abound throughout his works. Machiavelli is always lucid, reasonable, never dogmatic. If his examples are often extreme, it is because he maintains that political essences are revealed most precisely in such cases. If it is misleading to think of Machiavelli as a scientist, as someone who is free from ethical judgement, it is equally misleading to think of him as a teacher of ev ii. It is true that his writings ab oun d with value judgements, and he praises those who practised what we may call evil. However, and I think this is all -important, he does not praise the practice of evil as such, but only within the context of prudence and ability. So it is true that he teaches us to kill Brutus, Brutus' sons, and their sons until the line is exhausted. He also teaches us not to kill Brutus if we are not read y to kill his sons. Decisions must be made, actions must be carried out, all of which require prudence, ability, and courage. It is prudence, ability and courage which he praises, the practices of which may turn out to be evil. But action and thought, and their intentional and consequential good and evil, are all constituent elements of reality; they are inherent in the realm IO of politics, namely the realm of power, violence, and crime. As such, it does not help us to understand Machiavelli by calling him a teacher of evil. Those issues that are raised by Machiavelli will inevitably confront every intellectual or thinking person who participates in politics. The two ethics which we discussed are not necessarily incompatible in all situations. But they tend to be so in extreme cases -- life and death, peace and war. In such cases, we are compelled to choose: either success over moral convictions, or moral con victions over success. I have, in this essay, praised Machiavelli at the expense of Tacitus. Strauss may well be right, that we cannot see the true colour of Machiavelli's teachings because we live in the age of Machiavellism, and we are all heirs to his teachings whether we choose it or not. Nevertheless, as the unfortunate sons of Machiavelli, we should not be deterred from appreciating the morality and nobility of Tacitus, as Machiavelli himself regards Tactitus as a supreme authority. To have discovered one's calling in politics and history, to interpret this calling as a moral endeavor against evil, and to consider as its highest function the remembrance of past excellence and nobility, these by themselves constitute nobility and moral excellence. 11 • �"Grace Cotnes Somehow Violent ... Through the Wreck and the Bloodshed'' Grand Luna Love Michelle Nicoll ('91) Ned Dobner ('91) In Platonic theory, dialectical inquiry arises out of duality and is conducted by reversal. Being is attained when the false hypotheses employed in the search are destroyed to give way to a true beginning, an end to the cycle of reversal and destruction. Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy shall be viewed in terms of the dialectical search. The protagonists utilize a form of hypothesis, the decision to act. Their drive to act is rooted in a duality inherent not simply in the things they perceive but within themselves. These conflicts are between: what an individual demands of others and how he acts himself; perception of disorder and the true state of affairs; the desire for permanence and inescapability of mortality; individual and universal order; and self and others. This paper will illustrate the role of the hypotheses created for the sake of justice and self-interest and the nature of the reversals that occur within the trilogy. I will discuss the murders in order to explore the correlation between judgement and destruction and the consequences of using violence as a means to achieve justice. Specifically, the behavior of Clytaemestra and Orestes will be contrasted to explicate the synapse between suffering and wisdom, or the generation of hypotheses and the dialectical process of casting off the falseness. This comparison will support the redefinition of freedom, pride, and authentic selfhood in terms of the dialectic. Grandmother was today a blooming beauty, breathtakingly alive with the promise of new dawning and ever so alluring in her knowing mystery of unaging timelessness. Her mantle, spread in glimmering wavelets, was tossed in a tassled, fanciful, flitting expanse -- playful and at ease with such soothing sensual languor. Like a pearlescent bouncing ball, she called her tune with a voice serene and melodious, a lulling note, laden with still blooming fragrance of gardenia and first blush of morning. She whispered your name to the cloudless twilight that spread your sound to the farther seagulls soaring near the shore. And they laughed and danced in your grace, blessing the day. Blessed with a luminous shining love. The pervasive theme of the Oresteia trilogy is the rise and fall of man as not only inevitable but necessary for the eventual establishment of equilibrium. Inviolable constants govern this world: man needs to show proper respect to the gods by accepting the will of the gods, or the yoke of necessity, in a manner that is yielding and not high vaunting, and man falls when he commits an action of high daring. At some point the characters decide to strike down the proud and enact these imperatives. They judge othe rs and, in an attempt to stabilize their own world, destroy that which they see as a threat to their order. In lifting a hand to strike those who dare, the one striking dares; but the one striking has perhaps first crossed the line of daring in making a judgement. By satiating their desire for destruction the judges may seem to correct the household temporarily, but they only harm themselves. As they judge, so are they judged; as they destroy, so are they destroyed. The theme of the necessity of destruction of the proud is evident from the beginning of the trilogy. By marrying Helen, Paris disrupted not only the order within the Argive kindgom but also a greater order, the order of moral imperatives, or the "things inviolable". He fractured the established pattern of the guest-host relationship -- a theme common among other killings, for example, Atreus's killing of Thysestes' children. His great daring insured his destruction. 13 12 • �In the end the Black Spirits of Vengeance bring to obscurity him who hath prospered in unrighteousness and wear down his fortunes by reverse; and once he hath passed among them that are brought to naught, there is no more help for him. Glory in excess is fraught with peril; 'tis the lofty peak that is smitten by heaven's thunderbolt. Agamemnon functions as the thunderbolt of the gods when he seeks to destroy not only the man Paris but also the entire Trojan city for their "pride of wealth". By judging the Trojans and seeking to destroy them, he is placed in the position of pride and strength that is not equated with moral virtue but egotism and earthly power. He becomes like that which he tries to destroy. Blackmailed by the gods, he undertakes the "daring" of immolating Iphigenia so that his forces will remain strong. Ironically, it is this sacrifice, endured for the sake of his kingdom and demanded by the gods, that produces disorder within his own household and is thus one of the stimuli for his own death (or even sacrifice) at Clytaemestra's hands. However, it is not the intrinsic value of yielding to the god's dictates that is the daring element of the action; it is the manner in which he performed the action. But when he had donned the yoke of necessity, with veering of spirit, impious, unholy, unsanctified ... For mankind is embold ened by wretched delusion, counsellor of ill, primal source of woe. In this sense, it can be said that he wove his own nets of destruction. Clytaemestra perceives Agamemnon to be the creator of turbulence within the household and her life. She implies that her own internal balance was injured by his actions, saying that his long absence was not on ly a sou r ce of worr y t hat prevented her from sleeping, but also "evil and a thing of terror." He has violated her definition of the conjugal relationship and her desire for permanency by placing warfare above fami ly lif e. By sacrificing Iphigenia, Agamemnon sacrificed that which was a part of Clytaemestra and an extension of her identity. By br inging home the concubine Cassandra, he has introduced a further element of discord, a threat to the ex cl usi veness of the marriage relationship. Thus, he has reduced parts of the identities ':lytaemestra attempts to portray in front of oth ers , h er rol es as mot her an d wife. As a consequence, he damaged her sense of self hood by curbing her strength and capacity fo r control, an injury that makes her desire to lash out in passion to reestablish identity and order. Clytaemestra's passionate actions are provoked both by h er hypocritical condemnation of Agamemn on for faults that are within herself and by he r blame of him fo r actions that she herself has imitated. Clytaemestra plays out the role of faithful wife when greeting her husband upon his return from the war, yet she criticizes him for not appearing as he is. Ref erring to his "hateful [disguise] in seeming tenderness," she more accurately comments on herself than on him. She perhaps carries out the acting of her role to excess, yet feels a need to destroy the excess of Agamemnon's proud warrior pose. Angered that he has brought Cassandra h ome, she has alre ady brought Aegisthus into the household. Although criticizing Agamemnon for his treatment of their daughter, she later sends their son into exile. Clytaemestra th us does not live by the patterns she demands of others, but places herself outside the sphere of moral imperatives by which she judges others. Seeing herself above the order she would have others uphold, Clytaemestra raises her estimation of herself to that of a god. Indeed, she claims to serve as an agent of a god by taking it upon herself to "set aright what fate ordained," that "he who long time ago was great, throbbing with gigantic strength, shall be as if never were, unspoken." She plays many roles both before and after the slayings: dutiful mother, faithful wife, hostess, mu rd eress, judge, prosecutor. In this way, she creates and continually recreates selves and identities, thereby approaching the function of a god. Through the actions undertaken during the fulfill ment of these r oles, she repeatedly reasserts the importa nce of herself as a standard by which to measure others as though she were an absolute value. She is able neither to discern the difference between herself and an absolute standard of justice nor to temper passionate reac tions with objective delibe ration. Clytaemestra does not see; she imagines. She works from a fixed premise, from a need to view things acco r ding to a preconceived notion. The Agamemnon she sees in the chariot must be made to concord with her image of him, for it is necessary that she justify her actions based on her judgement, such as her relationship with Aegisthus. In laying down the carpet, Clytaemestra furnishes the means by which Agamemnon can visibly uphold his image as the proud warrior who must be shaken down. She sees that as he tramples down the carpets, so has he trampled down wid er moral imper atives because·he is so proud. (Later, she refers to the "rage and strength" of Cassand r a as r eason fo r her elimination.) She creates a situa tjon in order to evoke a specific response from him, allowing him no opportunity to act differently than her plans for him. He even protests walking on the carpets, yet she persuades him because it is her will that he do so. He has become a vehicle for the enactment of her imagination, an object to be subordinated. This is a way for her to reduce things around her to terms to which she can relate from a position of superiority and control, thus achieving part of her stru ggl e to actuali ze h er vision. To an extent, Clytaemestra depends on Agamemnon's pride to secure the reality of her imagination. She needs to say "No" to him, to refute what she would like to view as false. This scream of renunciation directed toward Agamemnon was farmed prior to her actual encounter with him. Judgement has preceded perception, a break from a logical order in which pe rception precedes judgement. She thus grants undue importance to her subjective view of her husband, placing it above considerations of fairness or rationality. Agamemnon is not granted an identity outside of Clytaemestra's private world, for she cannot separate her p rejudices about him from his reality. She views Agamemnon not as he is but as she wants him to be, encountering him as an image of her own cr eation a nd no t as a person. Her judgement does not fluctuate but has become a thing that must be upheld . In this way, she does not adapt her vision to the situation but allows her vision to shape the situation. Her perception and judgement have acqui red an undue importance; they are not simply means to ends but hav e become ends in themselves. Distortion of perception regarding the world around h er entai ls the creation of a world of her own. By inventing a situation for Agamemnon to confirm her perception of him, she shares in the formulation of his action. In this way, Clytaemestra has created her own sphere of existence, her own realm within which she provides the standards for justice and enacts her own judgements. She thus chooses isolation, the distancing of herself from the reality of others to immersion within herself and separation fr om others. T his is done not out of strength but out of fear and weakness. Her frantic need to maintain selfhood and to achieve identity and purpose by dehuman- 14 izing others arises out of a weak sense of identity. The demand for order from others is founded upon imbalances or weaknesses within herself. Her own vulnerability allowed Agamemnon undue influence in infringing upon her sense of order, and she must therefore lash back to reestablish her self hood and superiority above him through violent action. This is not actually the independence or superiority of postition that she strives for but rather dependence on others as standards to be superior to, as objects to renounce and to subject. She derives selfrighteousness and pride not from a well-founded belief in herself or in an absolute but from her need to view others as wrong. Although her pride is a building up of self, it is also a self-destruction. "Standing above the corpse, obscene as some carrion crow she sings the crippled song and is proud." Even her speech is "a clamor of pride." In committing an action of daring and thus becoming a "towering mountain," she provides for her own destruction, because the judge shall be judged and the destroyer shall be destroyed. In fact, as Orestes says when killing her, "It will be you who kills yourself. It will not be I." Furthermore, because she shares in the creation and enactment of the image for which she punishes Agamemnon, she appears to be resisting the actualization of her vision when she destroys him. Therefore, her conflict is not only between her vision and reality but also between her desire for the endurance of her vision and her tendencies toward self-destruction, her vulnerability and scramble to project the illusion of strength. Despite these conflicts, Clytaemestra has dared to impose her plan for order by harming others. She pushes aside awareness of her even tu al fall by means of faulty reasoning and a deluded sense of self-accomplishment. Confusing the immediate with the permanent, she triumphantly decl ares, " I swe pt f rom these halls th e mu r d er, the sin, and the fury ." She who has a "lust for conflict" and a tyranny of fury within the brain actually presumes to impose her sense of order while in a state of disorder herself. She has created false hypotheses: that killing Agamemnon and Cassandra will balance the order within the house and that violence is an appropriate means to protest violence. As Cassandra prophesizes, "Rescue is far a way," for Clytaemestra's act of evil will only breed similar acts of evil. By shedding the blood of others, Clytaemestra does not set the course of the house straight but bends it to further destruc- 15 • �tion. She has set a pattern of judgement a nd destruction in which bloodshed is piled upon bloodshed. Oddly, she achieves a t ype of permanence, although it is not the perma nence that she envisions. Such inaccuracy of vision and lack of realism about her actions is further evident when she sends an envoy to pour libations on the grave of Agamemnon. Ostensibly, this movement is toward repentance or sincere grief. In truth, she designs this token gesture out of self-interest, "to ward off ill...", indicating some concern regarding appeasement of the gods and a measure of respect, eve n f ear, fo r th eir power. However, be ca use she does not sorrow sincerely and openly, she merely effects a ''graceless grace" and not "the blessing of tears worked soberly from a true heart." Hindered by the burden of her pride and her immersion in her own private system, she cannot see the ramif ications of what she has done to perceive her true distance from the realm of the divine. Her offering is "too small for the act done" because she cannot show remorse. Instead of proving her deference to the gods, she commits an action of daring. The chorus comments, "Pour out all your possessions to atone one act of blood, you waste your work, it is all useless, reason says." This illustrates how irrevocably distant from reality and rational objectivity she has become. Caught in a web of her own manufacture, she has become so enmeshed within her system that she cannot see beyond it, as her portrayal as a shadow in Eumenides shows. Despite the suffering she has undergone and her construction of hypotheses, she has not achieved wisdom because she cannot see beyond herself to cast off the falseness and reach a true beginning. Electra and Orestes react to the duality and excessive elements exhibited by their mother in a manner similar to that in which Clytaemestra deplored th e disru ptive eff ect of Agamemn on's actions on the household. Both children and mother sense the need for destruction in an attempt to balance the order of the house, concerning themselves largely with the violation of their personal positions. Electra, for example, asks, How shall we be lords in our house? We have been sold, and go as wanderers ... Now I am what a slave is ... while [Clytaemestra and Aegisthus] go proud and live in the high style and luxury of what [Agamemnon] worked for. Electra wants Orestes to "win [their]father's house again," seeming to have less conce r n for the i nfractio n of morality than for the immediate effects of their mother's actions. Like her mother, Elec tra is willing to sha re in a mu r der but does not wish to di e fo r it; she also feels immune to recipr ocal judgement. Orestes' motivations are not restricted to the type of blind personal reaction that may be seen in Electra and Clytaemestra. He says, "The loss of my estates wea rs ha r d on me; the thought that these my citizens, most high renowned of men ... must go subject to this brace of women." His anger toward his mother is not so much due to her violation of his identity but because of her infraction of moral imperatives; his vision transcends perception of the violation of the household order to see that civil law has been disobeyed. He kills Aegisthus for this end. His concern lies with the good of the state which has been usurped by the "twin tyrannies" that have overthrown the normal course of right. He seeks to correct his mother's "daring" saying: "You killed, and it was wrong. Now suffer wrong." Orestes seeks to correct the breach of Justice that has occurred, taking it upon himself to enact the god's dictate that those who dare to assume power for themselves, the mountains of strength, must be checked. Orestes thus acts for the sake of earthly justice as well as a higher standard of justice. He was "in the guidance sent by the god." "His hand was steered by the very daughter of Zeus; Right we call her." One senses that he is playing out the role of savior-by -violence because he "must strike and prove [his] destiny." One does not know, however, if the murders are an action he wittingly condoned, because he speaks of "spells that charmed me to such daring." The chorus' repeated mention of an O r estes "harnessed to the chariot of suffering" adds to this effect. The central image is Orestes' burden of carrying out the roles of savior and avenger: "[Clytaemestra] wrough t so, in h is bu r ial, to make his death a burden beyond your strength to carry." Orestes' role playing is minimal, however, because he has a greater range of vision concerning his action. His attitude closely resembles repentance. Immediately after he murders, he cries, "I grieve for the thing done, the death, and all our race. I have won; but my victory is soiled; it has no pride." Orestes' attitude contrasts Clytaemestra's pride and delusion about the capacity for violent action to balance disorder. Rather than cling to his need for position and identity, he transcends immersion in himself and is able to view himself and his relation to the a bsolutes with accurate vision. This is shown when he kneels a t the temple of Athena. He realistically accepts his humanity and capacity fo r erro r. Humili ty, knowledge of the consequences of his action, and sincere sorrow for the falseness he has created exempt him from the thunderbolts of Zeus. There is no need for him to be destroyed; he is merely removed from the action near the end of Eumenides. In passing from his posture of pride and judgement to that of suppliance, Orestes has enacted for himself the reversal of position necessary after an act of judgement and destruction. He does not falsely conclude that violence will end violence, but knows that in assuming a role of judgement over others he will face reciprocal judgement. He acccepts the reversal of his role from judge to that of the one being judged. Yielding to fate rather than blindly overstating his importance, he goes outside of himself fo r a standard by which to measure his actions. He says to Athena, "This is my case. Decide if it be right or wrong. I am in your hands, Where my fate falls, I shall accept." The judges that Orestes first faces are the Furies, the final storm of potential bloodshed in the house. As a matricide, Orestes supposedly has committed an act of high daring, thus violating the order of justice and incurring the Furies' wrath. Their instantaneous judgement is similar to the type of blind reaction demonstrated by Clytaemestra and Electra, although the Furies concern themselves with an order larger than that of a household -- the sphere of justice and absolutes. The Furies assume the role of those who strike down the proud and relentlessly pursue those who "assume outrage of own hand in violence." Like Clytaemestra, they demand of others standards that they do not uphold. They say, "The man who does right, free -willed, without constraint shall not lose happiness nor be wiped out with all his generation." However, they do not promote this ideal because their method encourages men to become just out off ear, not out of a love for what is just. Athena justly accuses them; "You wish to be called righteous rather then act right." Their anger has its source in their distorted perception, their hypocritical attribution to Orestes for faults in which they sha re. Their blame of Orestes is not precise; Orestes is not proud of what he has done nor is he godless, because he has acted with the approval of Apollo. By gu id ing Or estes, Apollo supposedly infringes upo n the Furies' orde red world. The Furies feel that he has sullied the temple of Athena in sheltering the matricide Orestes. They say, "He made man's way cross the place of the ways of god and blighted age-old distributions of power." (It is interesting that they are also said to disturb the sanctity of the temple.) Apollo's disruption of the temple is also see n as a personal attack. The Furies remark to Apollo, "A young god, you have ridden down the powers gr ay with age." and accuse him of "destroy[ing] the order of an elder time." Thus, the conflict between Apollo and the Furies, representatives of the young and the old generatio n, is heightened by the old order's resistance to the natural progression of the new order. In their method and in their persistent concern for the continuance of their own position, the Furies resemble the killers in the house of Atreus. They choose destruction as a means to achieve balance and maintain order as they see fit, while not actually being in order themselves. They are an "unlyric threnody" that attempts to create harmony while in a state of disharmony. Although they preach to others that it is unfavorable to have a tyranny within oneself, they are victims of their desire for revenge and bloodshed. The hypocrisy continues: they would overthrow the houses of others yet not have their own house, the House of Justice, overthrown. Like the other killers, the Furies aim to strike down the proud but in doing so become proud themselves. Their reiterations about "my old rights" and their indignation and refusal to accept the natural progression from the old order into the new merely highlight the fact that they have become that which they wish to destroy -- the proud and the disturbers of order. The outcome of the trial of Orestes determines which order shall be validated. When the verdict is given , the Fu r ies a ga i n reac t in the mien of Clytaemestra and Electra; for their concern is voiced in terms of "me" -- my order, my rights, my Although they would appear to be position. indomitable destroyers, they display a vulnerability to overthrow: "I, the mind of the past, to be driven under ground, out cast, like dirt! They have wiped me out and the hard hands of the gods and their treacheries have taken my old rights away." The Fu r ies would do well to listen to their own words: "The all is bigger than you." It seems that they must realize the necessity of adapting to the changing nature of things, rather than attempting 17 16 • �to derive function and permanence by continuing the house of Atreus's cycle of judgement and destruction through violence, ruin heaped upon ruin. By clinging to their identity and personal system (or "hypotheses"), the Furies show that they are one in the series of false hypotheses that must be "cast out" or "be stilled to sleep, be done with." The silencing of the Furies is only a silencing of their hatred and not their utter destruction: they are allowed to decide their transformation for themselves. Ostensibly realizing that destruction is not the means to grace, they say: "Let there blow no wind that wrecks the trees. I pronounce the words of grace... let no barren deadly sickness creep and kill." "Civil war fattening on men's ruin shall not thunder in our city ... Let them render grace for grace. Let love be their common will. Let them hate with a single heart." They let go of their concepts of violent vindiction for violent crimes in favor of notions of grace and peaceful justice. It is unclear whether their conversion has been made out of fear of Zeus's thunderbolts or a true vision of themselves and their false hypotheses. It is fitting, howevr, and part of the pattern of reversals throughout the trilogy, that the ones who have spurned others to justice by instilling fear are themselves brought to justice by this method. As they have treated others, so are they treated. By presenting the Furies with an alternative to hateful wrath and an opportunity to take a place in the new order, Athena harmoniously assimilates their old order into the new order of Athenian justice. She accomplishes this without either the violence or the bloodshed that requires more blood to be spilt. Before the trial she says: The matter is too big for any mortal man who thinks he can judge it. Even I have not the right to analyse cases of murder where wrath's edge is sharp ... Since the burden of the case is here, and rests on me, I shall select judges of manslaughter, and swear them in, and establish a court into all time to come. Thus I advise my citizens to govern and grace, and not to cast fear utterly from your city. Be ca use she defers to reason and is able both to yield and to assert her authority, Athena shows that she has acheived freedom. She projects an identity that lacks pride and does not depend on the violent subjugation of others. She is not immersed in her role and does not need to remain in a position of superiority separate from others. Athena can say to the Furies, "Put to sleep the bitter strength in the 18 black wave and live with me and share my pride of worship." The new system that Athena establishes puts an end both to the hasty reactions to the actions of another and to the hypocrisy which characterized the judgements of the Atreiadae killers. Enactment of justice becomes more than a personal attack on someone who is seen as having violated the world of another or the order of the household. The "me" voice of pride is dissipated; rationality has replaced the subjective reactions of soul in conflict. Because the judges are a plurality rather than a singularity, the element of personal vendetta and attacks ad hominem will be subdued. Prosecution will be based on evidence that is not generated by the ones judging. Emphasis in the new court will be placed upon objective analysis and deliberation combined with the subjective judgement of the jury. This harmonious incorporation of the old with the new and the elimination of the majority of the false elements allows for permanency, a tribunal established "into all time to come." Justice has become more than an exchange of wrong for wrong; it is also an exchange of good for good. "For good things given, your hearts' desire be for good to return." A state of grace has been brought about through the wreck and the bloodshed of the house of Atreus. This is said to be brought about by Zeus, "all through Zeus, Zeus, first cause, prime mover. For what thing without Zeus is done among mortals? What is here without god's blessing?" Like the dialectical process outlined in the Republic, equilibrium is gained after a cycle of generation of hypotheses and destruction of the false hypotheses. The false elements in the household have been cleansed and purified through deliberation and reason, not passionate destruction. Thus, "With well-measured cast, caution [has heaved] over boa r d a po r tion of th e gathered wealth, the whole house, with woe overladen, doth not founder nor doth it engulf the hull." It is an earthly sort of grace, not to be confused with the absolute state of wisdom and grace that is attained by the most complete dialectical search, one which necessitates separation from the corporeal world. In dialectical terms, the leap between suffering and wisdom, or disorder and the attainment of equilibrium, is the casting off of the false hypotheses. The characters' progression from the formulation of hypotheses to wisdom is impeded by their resistance to what necessity has dictated. In a sense, they resis t limitations inherent in thei r human condition, seeking to overcome mortali ty by resisting the inevitability of their fall. Their struggle to establish identity depends upon their subjugation of others under the guise of exacting justice according to inmperatives which they violate themselves. Thus they necessitate their own destruction by confusing their ends, the enactment of the god's will, with the means they use to attain that end, the immersion in selfhood and personal vision. This pride can be viewed as a clinging or enslavement to the false hypotheses. What, then, is freedom in terms of the dialectic? Freedom entails self-knowledge, knowledge of one's placement with respect to the gods, accurate assessments of reality, and the realization that, as a human, what one does is necessarily imprecise and does not reflect the absolute. Freedom means holding onto one's own as much as it leads one to the good. It also entails yielding or letting go of selfhood and the actions, or hypotheses, one has created. One cannot decide fate but one can decide the manner in which one encounters it. All of this necessitates acceptance of one's humanity and of one's limited capacity to achieve permanence. It also involves a form of knowledge of self that necessitates viewing what one has done and the false hypotheses one has made, and accepting that one has chosen to act in a certain way that one may regret for its falseness. Regret cannot consist only of a "me" voice -- "I have suffered, I have accepted the yoke of necessity, I cannot bear what I have done, I have borne what cannot be borne." One must progress form this state of regret and shame to place oneself in a larger context; one must look beyond oneself to one's relationship with a higher power. This involves supplication, a voluntary reversal of the position of pride that one has put oneself in. Thus the synapse between suffering and wisdom is bridged through repentance. Repentance is a form of rendering an account of what one has done; it is a transcendence of the limitations inherent in the human condition because it is a realization of those limitations. Through humility and acknowledgement of one's position with respect to the gods, true identity is reached instead of the separation from oneness that occurs due to pride and concern fo r eart hly identity. Thus the self is truly elevated through kneeling, an action that is a posture of lowering. Fullest actualization of identity is found by an apparent abandoning of that identity. Afterword The idea for this essay began when the violence in the Clouds reminded me of the violence of the dialectic (for example, the destruction of the false hypotheses in the Republic, the renunciation of the body in the Phaedo, the sting-ray quality of the Socratic method.) Other themes from the tragedies seemed to support a discussion of tragedy in the terms of philosophy, such as: the relationship between violence and false reasoning; cycles of judgement, violence, hypocrisy, pride, and selfabnegation; fate, will, responsibility, and punishment; the boundary between ambition and tryin g to reach the good and arrogance; the separation of mortals from the realm of the divine; the attempt to escape mortal conditions and the rejection of Necessity. I saw a way to understand the tragedies in terms of the dialectic, choosing the Oresteia as the most complete vehicle for the discussion of this correlation. It was then my intention to understand the Platonic dialogues as tragedies and Socrates in the terms of a tragic character who judges and destroys others (the Sophists, the poets) although being somewhat similar to them himself, then renounces necessity (rejection of the body in Phaedo, when both soul and body pass under the throne of Necessity in the Republic), and thus necessitates his own destruction, becoming like that which he tries to destroy, just as the characters in Oresteia. It would be interesting to discuss the Sacra tic method in terms of a false hypothesis that must be destroyed because of its emphasis on discursive reasoning at the cost of poetry, and then introduce to Christianity as the hypothesis which supplants it. Such was my intention. The constraint of time and the magnitude of the task prevented me from completing this project. One final note. The human characteristics I have discussed as protrayed in the Oresteia are by no means exclusive to the nightmarish world of Aeschylean tragedy; I believe there is a trace of Clytaemestra in all of us. •All citations are from the Richmond Lattimore translation, with a few from Smyth's. The passages ref erred to from the Re public are: 5 lOb, 511 b, 524d525a. 19 �importance of intellect to ourselves and those around us. Though admiration and love are frequently found together, they are, and must remain, independent of one another. Maybe a friendship suffered because you expected your friend to be a better person than he or she was. And this is certainly understandable. But not everything has to be made of gold -- silver, too, has its value. Or was it that you expected too little from your friends? You were content simply to be "sociable," to rub against one another in order to create the illusion of intimacy and contact, as if this was all one could hope for from others. But like any improper use of your spiritual energy, such activity often left you merely exhausted, and no richer than before. By "socializing" you hoped to mask your aloneness, rather than stare it in the eye. And so it is your constant companion. Maybe a friendship failed despite the attention and generosity you showed your friend. You were always around to help, to go out of your way, to give to him or her, but you watched confused as the friendship seemed to slip away. Maybe your generosity was meant to exact a debt, and thereby to bind the other to you. But even if this was not the case, it is still more important and more difficult to be able to receive a gift generously than it is t o make a hundred sacrifices. More is done to help a friendship by receiving a gift in a way that graciously returns it to the giver than by any amount of giving we might do ourselves. I know this may at first sound paradoxical, but hasn't it been your own experience that in living, healthy friendships, each friend is always finding new ways to all ow the other to give? And then there have been those potential friendships, where you knew the seeds were present, and all you had to do was scratch the soil a little, and you didn't, because busyness and distracti~ns had made you r h ea r t rou gh and ra gged. Even today many of you, I'm sure, can think of people you regret not havin'g gotten to know here at the College. Of course, you can't cultivate friendships with very many people, but you can be wary of dissipating your energies fruitlessly. I have myself failed others in all these ways. And what is worse I have often allowed myself to forget my former friends, making the excuse that it's difficult enough to attend to those who are a part of my life today without having to attend to memories of those who shared by life yesterday. And by forgetting, I fail them again. Class Day Address, May 21, 1988 John Verdi I was very moved to be asked to talk to you today. Many of you have been students in my classes, and I've worked closely with some of you on essays and other odds and ends over the three years since I came here from Santa Fe. I've grown fond of this class and will miss you come Monday. When I realized I'd be speaking to you in the Great Hall, I thought back to the last time I stood here, about a year ago, when I was married. The words I spoke then were a public declaration of the most important friendship in my life, and of my hope for and commitment to its future. Today, however, before you all leave St. John's, I want to talk to you about how friendships die, not exactly a subject filled with humor and optimism. Maybe I chose this topic because of the way I've been feeling lately, knowing that our life together will soon be finished. It's also the case that a few days ago marked the third anniversary of the death of someone who had been my friend for over twenty years. Our friendship had very rough times, and it was only during the last year, after we knew he was to die of a particularly painful and insidious disease, that we drew inseparably close. Thinking of him invariably forces me to confront the numerous ways in which my friendships have failed , and to accept the bitter irony of my relationship with him, which was rescued only by the imminence of death. I also want to urge on you that we must do everything we can to keep friendships alive, but that, even after we have exerted the greatest efforts, if we find we have failed, we must discover ways to mourn the death of a friendship just as we would the death of a friend. During your years at St. John's you've lived and worked in a community with people your own age, who have shared many of your interests and enthusiasms. In such surroundings friendships flourish, for friendships are founded on and nourished by common activity, even more so than by common ideas and sentiments. But even in this most fertile of environments, you have witnessed the death of friendships. Sometimes you were yourself involved, and other times you watched from a distance. In either case what happened was upsetting to see, for it laid bare the fragility of human relationships. I want to tell you what I think just a few of the causes are for such failures, and you can then get some idea of how you might try to prevent them. And I know that by speaking in this way, I am revealing to you more about myself than a bout friendship. Perhaps you didn't cultivate that kind of humility which ought to come from the awareness that other people care about you. Instead you wished to be admired as well as loved by your friends. And when you were not, you were disappointed and hardened your heart to them. But we must always seek to allow ourselves to be loved without being admired, which for many of us at St. John's is extremely difficult, aware as we are of the 20 I have known many of you who are sitting here. Some of you I have known for two or three years, and some longer. I know too that you are about to leave people who have been dear to you for a long time. Perhaps you've promised to write one another letters, and that is a very good thing. But we write letters as much to ourselves as to our friends. The written word does not foster friendship. At best it sustains it until that time when friends can see each other again face to face. After you leave St. John's, try to be physically present to your friends as much as possible. Exert yourself to see them and to talk with them. And though no human being is a permanent source of happiness to another, still the love of our friends and families is the most divine gift we can be given. It alone, if anything, gives meaning to our lives. And above all, as St. Theresa of Avila says, "Never grow weary of receiving". I want to leave you with a Neapolitan proverb my mother taught me. It goes like this: "Piu lundana du cammina, a cha d'aspetta." That means, "No matter how far you walk, I'll wait for you here." 11 21 • �seems to me that everyone can clearly recognize the human suffering depicted there. If a dialogue can be established between the tragedian and the philosopher, then perhaps it can be seen that they are talking about the same questions in different ways. The body of the essay will come in three sections, on Euripides, Kant, and Hegel, and in that order. Besides the obvious historical considerations, there is another reason for proceeding in this order. Perhaps it is not giving away too much of the argument if I announce here that this progression is one of gradually increasing optimism about the possibility of human tran scendence. Euripides' vision is almost unrelentingly dark; Kant's is guardedly optimistic; and Hegel's is almost grotesquely cheerful. Yet, as will be seen, these three transcendent writers sha re much in their visions of the nature and possibility of human transcendence. Tragedy, Philosphy, Co111edy: a vision of transcendence in Euripides, Kant, and Hegel Michael McShane ('88) Nothing, however, can continue to give us pleasure always, because our natures are not simple, but contain a second element (which is what makes us perishable beings), and consequently, whenever one of those two natures is active its activity runs counter to the nature of the other, while when the two are balanced, their activity feels neither painful nor pleasant. Since if any man had a simple nature, the same activity would afford him the greatest pleasure always. Hence god enjoys single simple pleasure perpetually. For there is not only an activity of motion, there is an activity of immobility, and there is essentially a truer pleasure in rest than in motion. But change in all things is sweet as the poet [Euripides, Orestes] says owing to some badness in us; since just as a changeable man is bad, so also is a nature that needs change; for it is not simple nor good. Nonescapist Nonfiction: Tragedy and Transcendence in Euripides' Hippolytus Nicomachean Ethics Then if this most perfect mastership and most perfect knowledge are in the god's world, the gods' mastership can never be exercised over us, nor their knowledge know us or anything in our world. Just as we do not rule over them by virtue of rule as it exists in our world and we know nothing that is divining by our knowledge, so they, on the same principle, being gods, are not our masters nor do they know anything of human concerns. Nor ought we to obey those who enjoin that a man should have a man's thoughts and a mortal the thought of mortality, but we ought, so far as possible to achieve immortality, and do all that a man may to live in accordance with the highest thing in him; for though this be small in bulk, in power and value it far surpasses all the rest. But surely, said Socrates, to deprive the gods of knowledge would be monstrous. Parmenides l 34d-e Nicomachean Ethics Introduction This paper will discuss arid criticize the treatment of the theme of human transcendence as it appears in certain works by Euripides, Kant and Hegel. Specifically, it will focus upon the problem of the human suffering of "external" conditions, and the possibility of transcending those conditions. Now "transcendence" is a big word and its sense is not immediately obvious. The term is loaded with heavy connotations, both metaphysical and theological. Yet, I will argue that in the form of such things as forgiveness, learning, and maturation, a limited form of transcendence is certainly present in the everyday world. Since, then, the meaning of "transcendence" is itself at stake in this paper, I hope I can be forgiven for not giving a precise definition of it here. If the essay is successful, the significance of the concept will emerge more clearly as the paper progresses. In more than one tragedy, Euripides has his choruses deliver speeches such as this one from the Hippolytus: One thing should be discussed in advance, however; even though this paper will pay much attention to the writings of Kant and Hegel, it is not about "philosophy" in any narrow sense. This essay will constantly run the risk of losing itself in the intricacies of highly abstract philosophical arguments, but its subject matter actually concerns questions of concrete human suffering -- matters close to everyone's real life in the real world. If this essay succeeds, then, it will be because discussions of the "transcendental unity of apperception" or of "Absolute Spirit" will have revealed something recognizable about the problematic nature of human identity. In fact, one subsidia ry goal of this paper is to try to show how I understand philosophy itself as being a part of the real human world. It is partially for this reason that I have chosen to write about the tragedy of Hippolytus. For it 0 to escape and lurk high under Steep crags, At the touch of a god to rise, A wing'd bird among flying flocks! To soar over the swell of the Adrian coast, Above the waters of Eridanos Where, in lament for Phaethon, His sisters drop their piteous tears Which glow like amber in teh dark stream; And then to reach that shore planted with Apple-trees Where the daughters of evening sing, Where the sea lord of the dark shallows Permits to sailors no further passage Establishing the solemn frontier of heaven Which Atlas guards; Where divine fountains flow beside Zeus' marriage bed, Where holy earth offers her choice fruits to enrich the blissful gods. 22 Typically, such speeches express the chorus's desire to escape altogether from the horrible scene of tragic action unfolding around it. Such speeches attract attention in a variety of ways. First, they are often among the longest sustained passages of writing in Euripides' plays. Their length affords the tragedian the op portunity to freeely display his transcendent poetic talent. Consequently, speeches of this kind often prove to be among the most beautiful in his plays. Yet, because of their length, and because of their subject matter (which is frankly escapist), such escape passages present readers with problems. I have heard it suggested, for example, that such long passages amount to little more than beautiful ornaments -- speeches that are somewhat digressive and ultimately irrelevant to the unfolding of the tragic plot. Such escape speeches can seem like selfenclosed poems, somehow adventitiously lodged in Euripides' dramas. In at least one Euripidean play, however, the question of escape and its possibility emerges as a central motivating theme. This first section of the essay will try to show how escape comes to mean transcendence in the Hippolytus. The section will examine generally the presence and significance of the human yearning for transcendence expresseed in the tragedy. Now, each of the play's major characters seeks escape from their circumstances, but Hippolytus presents this desire most clearly and selfconsciously. Thus the paper will first discuss how the theme of transcendence relates to the Nurse, Phaedra, and Theseus before focusing more closely upon Hippolytus's strivings. Finally, this section will examine the most general vision of transcendence in the Hippolytus: that of the chorus, as expressed in the passage quoted above. Now it is perhaps obvious that, wittingly or not, what all of the characters of the Hippolytus desire to flee is Fate itself. Euripides sets up the problem of fatedness in a particularly brutal way: he has Aphrodite walk on stage at the outset and simply announce (nearly) everything that will happen throughout the tragedy. The play itself then seems to be little more than a horrible repetition of the scenes she describes so coldly at its outset. The chorus summarizes the inevitable end: "The wheel has turned, disaster follows upon disaster. Fate is irresistible and there is no escape." (125 2) But to say that Fate is what all the characters desire so desperately to escape sounds a little 23 • �unsatisfying. The claim is certainly true but a little vague. Bare fate is an abstraction modern readers have difficulty with. The play does offer some help to us by providing mo re concrete ways of thinking about fate and what it would mean to try to escape it. We shall try to see more clearly how fate is expressed in the play. The escape theme first arises explicitly early in the drama. The nurse is confronted by Phaedra's mysterious suffering, and she commiserates. The nurse mourns, The whole of our life is full of pain, And sorrow finds no relief. And after this life, is there a happier world? That is concealed from us, wrapped in clouds and darkness. The truth stands plain: that we blindly love, Such as it is, our little gleam of day. For we know nothing of any other life; The world below is a mystery; And we are carried along by foolish tales. happy unless one's living friends and descendents are also content. Thus, in a tragic turn, it seems as if the only way for her to escape the trap is to entrap innocent others. Phaedra thus makes her fin al escape only by binding Theseus and Hippolytus together in a horrible maze which can only result in destruction. If it has been established that Phaedra desires to escape something, we must then ask what it is that she so desperately seeks to flee and what a successful flight would mean for her. Most immediately, Phaedra desires to escape a fate that expresses itself in her passion for Hippolytus. That passion exists inside her but it is an alien thing: she did not desire it, did not encourage it, and indeed sought to repress it. In every sense Phaedra's fateful love for her son was a passion which she suffered and before which she was nearly powerless. She desired to escape it and could not. Another expression of fate as an external controlling force for Phaedra concerns her family his tory. Interrogated by her nurse as to the root of her problems, Phaedra mentions her mother, who had a "craving for the bull." (322) Then she in vo kes her siste r "whom Dionysus loved." The nurse asks, "Why raise these evil memories of your family?" Phaedra responds, "I am the third, the curse that struck them now kills me." And she conc ludes, "My wretched fate began with them; it is not new." Thus we see that Phaedra desires to esca pe the history of her own family. Like her passio n, her family is something which is both inside her and outside her, both her and not her. It represents something which confronts her from the outsid e; she can have no control over the things wh ich happened in her family's past. Yet her family histor y somehow fo r ms and predestines her inner nature. Finally, it is because of her family's future in the shape of her sons that Phaedra cannot simply 'escape to oblivion,' but must entrap Hippolytus. Phaed ra's understanding of family history or fa tedn ess is also conveyed by her discussion of wha t will happen to her own sons if she die s dis honored: the nurse's escape vision, Phaedra's desire for escape is expressed not in terms of some future time or otherworldly place, but instead in terms of a nostalgia for pleasant places and activities that Phaedra has known. If Phaedra's and the Nurse's escape fantasies differ in terms of past and future orientation, however, they are united by a common yearning for absent times and places. Also, it should be noted that Phaedra's three nostalgic dr eams (of the wild place by the fountains, the sport of hunting and horse racing) share an element off ertile purity. All three are unstained by human social intrigue. But for Phaedra the op portun ity to dream of escape from an unbearable present through nostalgia for past places and pleasures soon proves to be an unsustainable luxury. As soon as her nurse, unbidden, reveals Phaedra's obsession to Hippolytus, Phaedra's dreams of escape turn again to a terrible future: (187) 'Chorus: This passage treats a specific kind of escape from the pain of the world -- that is, an escape to a happier world after death. The nurse is characteristically pessimistic here. She seems to entertain the idea of a happy afterlife and to long for it, but only briefly; then she dismisses the possibility of such an escape as being merely "foolish tales." The interest in an escape to an afterworld here is not accidental, for the nurse is addressing the deathly sick Phaedra who has strong inclinations toward such an escape route. Phaedra herself expresses her desire to escape her present -- although unidentified -suffering in a series of fantastic speeches immediately following the nurse's meditation upon suffering and the afterlife. Phaedra here gives three short speeches: the first one expresses a desire "to k neel by a fo untain in the fre sh dew and drink a cupful of clear water!" (218-231) The second takes the form of a rhetorical command to her followers to "take me out to the hills!" where she "longs" to hunt deer. This "command" is merely the expression of a longing, not a real order, for it is obvious to all concerned that the sick Phaedra is in no shape to go anywhere. Phaedra's third speech expresses an equally unrealistic desire to ride race horses on a race-track. Although both Phaedra and her nurse conclude that these escapist speeches expose Phaedra's madness, they do have significant content. Unlike Phaedra: What then?: Do you see any way out? What will you do? I know only one thing, that death must End this torture as soon as possible. There's no other remedy. (599) It is significan t tha t once Phaedra's conf ession-by-proxy has occurred, and her incestuous appeal to H ippolytus rejected, ther e is no longer any ques tion of escaping to something. Phaedra no longer dreams of better places or times to which she might flee. Moreover, in desiring death, Phaedra does not speak of an afterlife such as the one her nu rse speculated about before. Instead death re presents to her only a n escape from an intolerable r eality, an escape into oblivion. By now, mortal escape itself has become merely the least bleak possibility for her. Moreover, matters become even worse f or Phaedra. She recognizes that even her death will not release her and hers form the labyrinthine ramifications of her situation. Once Hippolytus has announced that he does not consider himself bound by the oath of silence "sworn only by his tongue," Phaedra is in deep trouble. For she then realizes that not even her death can salvage her reputation and the reputations of her sons. In order for her to obtain their excape too, she must implicate Hippolytus himself. Phaedra sees the terrible wisdom of the claim that Aristotle makes in the Ethics that even after death one cannot be I want my two sons to go back and live in glorious Athens, hold their heads high there and speak their mind like free men, honored for their mother's name. One thing can make the most bold spirited man a slave : to know the secret of a parent's shameful act. ( 421) 24 Here again we see the aspect of fate ensla ving people by means of pregiven conditi ons over which they have no control. Phaedra's dreadf ul fam ily history in some way leads to her own destru ction, which in turn will enslave her sons. Is there any reaso n to hope fo r an end to the se fa ted fa milial chains of destructi on? One of the most horri fying aspects of this tragedy is the potentially infi ni te reach of its horror. We shall see thi s theme of infinite horr or recur later in the play. A final conditi on which Phaedra desires to escape is her femininity. In one speech Phaedra says, "I was a woman -- a thing hated by ever yone." (95) In an other place she exclaims, "How cruel a curse it is to be born a woman. Wh o wou ld not pity us? What shift, what resource ha ve we, what words, once we have stumbled, to und o a knot a word has tied?" (667 ) Phaedra recognizes her femininit y as another pregiven condition which someh ow re nd ers her powerless. Again, we see that Fate is somet hi ng which confronts the sufferer as on the one hand someth ing which is external a nd unchosen, bu t on the other hand is something wh ich cond itions her inner nature. In the play Phaedra cannot esca pe the feminine aspect of her fate an y more t han she can flee her passion or her fami ly histor y. But the nurse and Phaedra are not the only charcaters of the Hippolytus wh o dre am of flight. Theseus, too, is moti vated by a desi re to escape his conditions. Now Theseus ha s had a ver y checkered career. On the one ha nd, he has been a grea t hero, killing mo nsters, ba nd its, etc. On the other , he has been a noto riously faithless man , given to deceit, ra pe, murd er. Theseus's ma r riage to Phaedra is founde d upon such cri minality; he married her only afte r marooning his savio r, her siste r, Ariadne. During the pla y, an d throughou t his life, one of Theseus's ma jor charac teristics is his absence from home. It seems reasonable to inf er that Theseus leaves his home so often because he is ashamed of what it rep resents to him -- that is, his past, with its hauntin g viciousness. In fac t, Theseus's very presen ce in tra gic T roe ze n came about as part of a plan to a tone fo r his past criminal bloodletting. (Aton ement is a ki nd of esca pe. ) In general, T heseus desi res to escape the ongoing ramifications " f rom sin commi tted in time lon g past." (8 31) After reading Pha edra 's letter cha rging his son with raping her, he cries, "I am crushed; wh ere can I esca pe?" (87 4) 25 • I I I �As in the case of Phaedra, Theseus's attempt to escape the conditions he suffers leads him into trapping others. Theseus wants to escape from the contaminated presence of his son, who he believes has defiled his wife and home. Yet, because Theseus is king, he believes he can make good his escape without actually having to flee himself. Theseus believes he has power so he attempts to secure his own escape not by leaving his surroundings but by making them leave him. Hence, he banishes and curses Hippolytus, thus ensuring the horrible death of his own son. At the moment Theseus banishes Hippolytus, this significant exchange takes place: Hippolytus: Theseus: If you were my son, I your father, I would not Have corrected you with exile, I'd Have seen you dead if you'd thought fit To lay a finger on my wife. Your words are worthy of you! You shall not die that way-According to a law you've laid down For yourself. Many an outcast would Be glad of a quick death. No, you shall Wander exiled from your native land And drain on alien soil the bitter lees of life. (1074) As father and king, Theseus is in the position to condition others. Here Theseus asserts the dependence or conditioned nature of his son vis a vis him. In attempting to preserve his own power and freedom while actively escaping his surroundings, Theseus necessarily must deny freedom to his son. The key sentence in the exchange is: "You shall not die that way -- according to a law you've laid down for yourself." Here we find Theseus denying his son's autonomy. And, as we shall see, autonomy here is defined almost exactly as Kant and Hegel will define it centuries later: as obeying laws laid down by oneself for oneself. To be autonomous is to be unconditioned by alien powers. We have thus far examined the escape dreams of the Nurse, Phaedra and Theseus. Let us collect their common elements and try to reach a conclusion about fatedness, escape and transcendence before turning to see how these issues are involved in Hippolytus' story. First, it should be noted that while abstract Fate is a concept difficult for readers to grasp today, the play certainly provides a more concrete way to understand fatedness. For surely the idea of someone being radically conditioned -- or fated -- by their gender, political environment, passions, acter is his longing to escape the necessity of honoring "a god worshipped at night" (108) -Aphrodite. Jealously, the goddess describes how Hippolytus "abhors the bed of love; marriage he renounces." (13) It is clear that in attempting to reject these things -- which he regards as impure - Hippolytus is attempting to flee his own sexuality. Surely Hippolytus suffers from a hatred of something in himself -- or at least one of his selves. Yet, in Hippolytus's case, his disdain for his own sexuality issues in a hatred for something seemingly external to him -- women. Outrageously, Hippolytus rails at Zeus for having "established in the sunlit world this counterf cit coin, woman, to curse the human race." ( 617) "Women," he concludes, "it seems are always evil." (695) They are the ones responsible for his lack of freedom. Hippolytus expresses a desperate desire to escape half the human race and enter into a fantastic scenario in which men buy their children instead of requiring women for conception. Again, one wonders whether the feminine is as contingent and external t o Hippolytus's soul as he might believe. A third conditioning factor that Hippolytus desires to flee is the political realm. He says to his father and king, Theseus, personal past or family history, does not sound foreign to modern ears. Each of these conditioning factors seems to come with its own set of laws and determinations. These laws themselves deny the autonomy of the characters, and together they dictate the inescapable Fate of each character in the Hippolytus. If it is established that the characters of the Hippolytus desire to escape such fateful conditions, it then becomes appropriate to examine the relationship between escape and transcendence, the theme of this essay. Certainly not all escapes are examples of transcendence. For instance, if a rock is about to fall on your head and you step ou t of the way and thus escape the rock, it is not appropriate to say that you have thereby "transcended" it. This is because the rock represents a force entirely external to its prospective victim. In the case of the characters of the Hippolytus, however, things are different. They all desire to escape conditions which are in one sense external -- otherwise they would not be perceived as escapable conditions. But in another sense these conditions are internal to the identities of the people who wish to escape them. (To varying degrees, such conditions as gender, passions, personal and family history, political environment, etc., all work to inform the inner nature of the characters who suffer them.) An escape from conditions such as these -- with their ambivalent interior / exterior status -- represents transcendence. From these considerations two related things follow which shall remain important throughout the whole of this essay. The first is that to speak of transcendence implies the overcoming of something internal to the identity of the person who transcends. Another way to put this is to say that often freedom for self becomes freedom from sel f. This consideration leads to the second critical conclusion: Assuming that one's identity in some way remains constant, the transcending self has been internally split. For one aspect of the self transcends; the other is transcended. The identity of these two selves, and their possible relati onship, will become a thematic question for this essay as a whole. Let us now turn to the central character of Euripides' drama, Hippolytus himself. Like the other characters, Hippolytus desires to escape -- or transcend -- a variety of conditions. The most immediately obvious aspect of Hippolytus's char- Do you think a throne carries attraction For a balanced mind? None; since to feel delight in kingship is to be Corrupted by it. No, my wish is to come first In Greek games, in politics to take second place, Secure in happiness, with the noblest of my friends. (1013) By contrast to Phaedra's desperate death wish into oblivion, we see in each instance of Hippolytus's escapism the dual aspect of an escape from something he fears to something he loves. He wishes to flee from Aphrodite to Artemis and the activities she sanctions, such as hunting and riding. (Like Phaedra, Hippolytus seems to be motivated here by a desire for a kind of pureness or innocence he believes to characterize the wild natural world.) He wishes to flee from politics and Athens to Greek games, his noblest friends, and Troezen; he wishes to flee from the presence of women to a fictional world in which the feminine never existed. In each case, Hippolytus dreams of retreating from a realm that is characteristically human; and as the play's ending reveals, in each case his bid to gain freedom from these human realms fails. We will return later to the question concerning the general nature of the realm Hippolytus desires to fly to. Hippolytus's wish to transcend his political and sexual nature can plausibly be traced to his ambivalent attitude toward his nearly-alwaysabsent father, Theseus. As mentioned above, Theseus's history of dealing with women and with his own sexuality is not exactly savory. He is said to have raped Helen when she was thirteen, for example. Hippolytus himself was generated as a result of an illicit affair between Theseus and the Queen of the Amazons, whom he also raped. On the other hand, Theseus is justly famous for his heroic deeds. He is widely recognized as Hercules' successor. Also, he is a great and powerful political figure. [For a fascinating and illuminating account of Theseus's past, see Plutarch's Life of Theseus.] Against the overwhelming background of his father's history, it is Hippolytus's problem to try to establish his own identity. For all sons, paternity itself represents a kind of determining condition. Again, the inside / outside problem arises: Fathers externally pre-exist sons. They first cause their sons and then literally rule them for many formative years. Genetically and psychologically speaking, fathers pass on much of their own identities to their offspring. Thus, like other conditions mentioned previously, all fathers both internally and externally ground the identities of their sons. For Hippolytus, however, this problem is particularly acute, for his father is a much more intruding figure than most. Hence, Hippolytus's rejection of sexuality and politics can be seen as an attempt to transcend the conditioning of his father's past and thereby to establish his own autonomous identity. The stakes are high for Hippolytus (as for all sons) in this connection; if he cannot ground his own identity in himself, then it could regress from him infinitely. In this case, Theseus cannot provide solid ground in either a moral or a theoretical sense. For Theseus, although father, is also himself the son of a father who was a son, etc. Thus, if Hippolytus tries to discover his identity in the identity of Theseus, his quest will be thrown back by an ineluctable logic -- through all of genealogical time. [N.b.: The problem of the infinitely regressing identity is not unique to Hippolytus; it is common to all sons, children and finite entities in general. This problem will emerge thematically in the Hegel section of this paper.] The fin al and most general kind of condition that Hippolytus desires to escape concerns his 27 26 .. �mortal law-boundedness. This is shown at the beginning of the play, when his servant is trying to persuade Hippolytus to recognize Aphrodite. He asks Hippol ytus if he knows "an old law laid down for mortal men." Hippolytus responds, "I don't ..." (91) The argument concludes with Hippolytus claiming that "since gods may choose whom they will honor, so may men." (88) With the question of mortal law and fate versus an escape to autonomy, we can see the most general form of Hippolytus's desire for transcendence. Hippolytus wants to govern himself as he sees fit. He desires to escape the laws imposed upon him (as he sees it) from outside which condition his mortal nature. Now these "laws laid down for mortal men" include the determinations inherent in all the previously mentioned conditions that Hippolytus wants to transcend, but they go mu ch fu rt h er. F or Hippolytus is nothing if not an ambi t io us f ell ow. In order to get a sense of how radical Hippolytus's desire for transcendence is, let us examine what he says about how he believes he will (has) tran scend( ed) these "laws laid down for mortal men." In his second speech of the play, Hippolytus addresses Artemis directly and announces: Goddess, for you I have twined this crown of flowers, gathered Fresh from a virgin meadow, where no shepherd dares To graze his flock, nor ever yet the scythe swept, But bees thread the spring air over the maiden meadow. There with clear stream-water Chastity tends the flowers; And those whose untaught nature holiness claims entire May Gather garlands there; and the impure may ~ot. Dear mistress, take this circlet for your golden hair, Offered with reverent hand. I alone among mortals Enjoy this honor, I am your companion, speak with you And hear your voice, only your face I do not see. And as my life's course has begun, so may it end. (78) This is a very important speech and it contains many important aspects of Hippolytus's dream of transcendence. First is his most striking claim that he is the companion of Artemis, a deity. This apparently is not idle bragging, because Artemis later confirms that the two a re "friends." Now Aristotle argues that in order to be someone's friend -- or to relate to another on any level -- one must in some way stand on the same ground as that person. This would indicate that in some way Hippolytus has at least a limited aspect of the divine present within him. (As we shall see, the text bears out this indication.) "Limited" because he is not able to en joy her full friendship -- ."on ly [her ] fac~ [~e] cannot see." It is t hrough this resort to the divine -- both ins ide himself and externall y in the form of A rtem is -- that Hip polytus believes he can t ran scend the conditi ons of h is mor tality. This a r gument abou t t h e internal presence of the divine helps answer a question posed above. F or we recall that transcendence imp lies a d ual self -- one that is free to transcend and the o~ he r that is con d itioned and , one h opes, tran scended .. I n the case of H ippolytus, at least, it becomes clear that th e free and tran scendent internal self co r responds to some d ivine as pect in the huma n soul. And, in fact , the presence of two selves, one divine an d t he other empirical and conditioned, w ill become th ematic in each account of transcen d ence discussed in this essay as a whole. Let us return to Hippolytus's transcendence speech. The second question it ra.ises concern.s ~he zone in which Hippolytus's relat10n to t he divine tak es place. The "virgin meado w" is a place that is u ntouched by impure mortal s. T h is pla ce that is no human place is ch a racte r ized by an abundance of innocent n a t u ra l th in gs: bees, flowers , clear stream-wate r. For Hippolytus the move to transcendence in volves a reso r t to th e sub-human -- the natu ral -- and the super h u man -- th e divine. He wan ts to be either com plete ly fr ee, in the case of the divine or so en ti re ly conditioned that he no longer kno'ws i t or ca res, as in the case of the animalistic. It is th e mortally human lying between these two r ealms tha t h e ca nnot abide. Both extreme realms are somehow united in the figure of Artemis, the nature goddess. They are also united in the fig ure of Hippolytus himself, who possesses both an animal and a divine self. If Hippoly t us d esi res to flee human space, he also desires to flee human time. In fact, he claims to have alre a dy partially succeeded at this. One might say that the noti on of ''a lrea dy" is central here. For H ippolytus claims that thi s zone is only for those "whose untaught nat:ire .holine:s claims entir e." The thing about teachmg 1s that 1t takes time, and sufferi ng. (I n fact, Socrates argues that learning is itself a transcendence of ignorance.) Hippolytus's claim to be "untaught" then means that he has always known what he knows and thus been what he is -- partially divine. The passage ends with Hippolytus's praying that he. can always remain outside of time: "And as my hfe~s course has begun, so may it end." Of course, this prayer is emphatically not granted, at least in the ·, sense Hippolytus had in mind. Thus several important things have emerged from Hippolytus's transcendence speech. First, Hippolytus's attempt to transcend his conditioned and finite self is contingent upon a resort to atemporal and aspatial divinity, both internal and external. Second, that the "laws laid down for mortal men" which Hippolytus desires to transcend go far beyond the laws of the various external / internal conditions already mentioned, such as family history, etc. In fact, the laws Hippolytus is concerned with pertain to the most basic conditions defining him as a mortal man -- those of human spatio-temporaltiy. To desire, as Hippolytus does, to be independent of those laws is to desire the autonomy of divinity. The desire for divinity, then, is at the heart of the exchange between Hippolytus and servant that starts with Hippolytus wondering, rhetorically, "If we mortals use the same laws as the gods" and ends with him concluding that "Since gods may choose whom they will honour, so may men." The ending of tragedy suggests that, despite what he believes and prays, Hippolytus has a lot to learn and a lot to suffe r. For like all the characters of the play, his dreams of full transcendence are dashed. In light of the play's ending they appear to be exactly as the nurse diagnosed them -- mere "foolish tales." Let us then turn to the play's tragic conclusion. As it turns out, the Hippolytus has two endings. One is narrowly concerned with the destiny of Hippolytus himself and the people around him. The second ending is not an ending and could involve anyone or everyone in the world. First, what happens to Hippolytus: his death reveals a central problem inherent in Hippolytus's attempt to transcend the things that fatally condition him. His very dying itself indicates that he failed to transcend the laws of mortal human space and time. In the death scene , Euripides systematically shows the failure of Hippolytus's attempts to transcend his paternity, his political nature, "his" femininity, his sexuality. For his death was caused by his father's curse, his political exile, his (female) mother's and nurse's conspiracy, his sexual passion [as symbolized by the bull from the water and the past]. Worse, Hippolytus' death was caused by the very elements he desired to escape to -- the divine and the natural. For his death came about through the divine plotting of Aphrodite and the tacit consent of his "companion" Artemis; Hippolytus is killed by means of the natural horses he had used to escape from human society. It is ironic that the very things Hippolytus tries to escape from and to ultimately conspire to kill him. But perhaps this irony should come as no great surprise. For, as we have seen, Hippolytus tried to transcend the various conditions of his mortality by means of flatly rejecting them. But this is problematic: for Hippolytus's revolt against his conditions means a revolt against himself. Thus, in attempting to secure an identity by means of simply negating his conditions, Hippolytus in effect negated his identity; his very attempt to find himself led Hippolytus to kill himself. All of this is closely related to the central problems of transcendence: the interiority /exteriority of conditions, and the dualism of selfhood. The ending of Hippolytus is tragic; however, it is not as grim as it could be. For one possible transcendence does occur there. This transcendence involves the only major event of the play not initially predicted by Aphrodite -- Hippolytus's forgiveness of his father in the moving final scene. The dialogue goes: Theseus: Hippolytus: Theseus: Hippolytus: Theseus: Hippolytus: Theseus: Dear son, what are you doing to me? Will you break my heart? I see before me now the gates of the dead world. And will you leave me guilty, with unholy hands? No, you are free. I here absolve you of my death. I am free? You discharge me of bloodguiltiness? I swear it by the conquering bow of Artemis. 0 dearest son, how noble a heart you show your father! (1454) Now forgiveness is a form of transcendence. It indicates a kind of freedom from the human laws of cause and effect involved in endlessly tragic cycles of violence and counterviolence, transgression and re venge. Forgiveness does mean a kind of negation of history, as Hegel suggests. The fact that this forgiveness is n ot preannounced by Aphrodite at the beginning of the play indicates that it is a kind of break from fatedness. For a variety of reasons, the transcendence involved in Hippolytus's last minute forgiving of his father is hard to interpret. First, it only occurs after much horror, including the suicide of Phaedra. The final forgiving might seem a merely minor bright spot against an overwhelmingly dark background. Yet it does represent a significant accomplishment. Second, it is hard to tell what his forgiveness means to Hippolytus in terms of his transcen- 29 28 - �de nce quest. If it is true that "to fo r give is d i vine," it is also true that to fo r giv e is human. For Hippolytus to recogn ize hi s fa ther 's guilt and still accept h im an yway indicates that he has suffered himself to lea rn. It means Hippolytus has adopted a new attitude towards mortal humanity and thus t owards himself. Previously Hippolytus's whole attitude t owards his father and the rest of the mortal wor ld has been one of rejection and denial. He had re garded himself as beyond the whole finite world, w h ich he accordingly despised. Thus Hippolytus's forgiving Theseus indicates a kind of acceptance of the mortal world, with its viciousness and external cond itioning. Now, forgiveness is good, so, on the one hand, this new acceptance is good. On the other hand, it represents Hippolytus's abandonment of his perhaps unrealistic dreams of radical transcendence. So, th e first ending of the Hippolytus, with its hor rible death and with its transcendent forgiveness, is hard to understand. There is some good the re but the ove rall picture remains tragic. The second and more general "ending" of Hippolyt us will be discussed below. But, before leaving the fi rst ending, and with it Hippolytus and his famil y, per haps it is worth making one remark on how to rea d the character of Hippolytus, the "tragic hero." It is a naive and hubristic mistake, I believe, to understand him as simply a naive and hubri stic you ng man. It is also a mistake to search for his "tragic flaw," as if it were some trait idiosyncra tic to him that we could identify as the contingent cause of his downfall. To do this is to change the Hippolytus from a human tragedy into a mere morality pla y about the downfall of a flawed man. The moti va tion behi nd this way of reading the "tragic h ero" is the h uma n desi re to esca pe tragedy -- i.e. to keep i t safely external to us. We want to say "it couldn't happen to me;" or (as Racine's H ippolyte puts it when speaking of himself), we wa n t " to watch a ship wreck as if we were safely on shor e." To hubristically read a tra ged y in this fashi on is to try to change it into a comedy for us. As both Hi ppolyte and Hippolytus discovered, to deny tragedy is not only foolish, but dangerous. Iro nically, then, the naive reader's very attempt to escape tragedy's "laws laid down for mortal men" only mor e emphatically re-inscribes him into th e r ole of "tr agic hero." Para do xi cally, one way for readers to perhaps tran scend the role of the "tragic hero" is to recognize th emselves in his identity. That is, to 30 recognize that his problems and concerns are theirs, only perhaps on a larger scale. In the case of Hippolytus this means recognizing that he is not merely a fantastic fictional monster. Instead, despite his particularities, Hippolytus was a man who was profoundly concerned with the great potentialities and flaws of human nature. He risked everything to actualize the human potentialities and transcend the human flaws present in himself. From Euripides' point of view, Hippolytus's failure to achieve his end means something, not only for a fictional character, but for all those governed by the "laws laid down for mortal men." T o fail to recognize oneself in that category means to attempt an escape from tragedy; such attempts ofte n have tragic consequences. The possibility of a reader's denying his involvement in tragedy is the subject matter of the "second ending" of the Hippolytus. This second "ending" actually precedes the first. It is even darker than the first ending and literally infinite in the scope of its horror. The second ending comes right before another chilling moment in the play's fin al scene. That is, when Artemis denies her involvement in the tragedy and aband ons her "friend" Hippolytus, saying "I may not look upon the dead, nor strain my sight with the anguish of departing breath." (1465) Two thing s seem to follow from this. First, gods cannot be relied upon to aid humans in their quest for transcendence. Second, it would seem as if Euripides' gods, at last, can escape human tragedy. The "second ending," however, will call into question even the gods' ability to remain external to the laws of tragedy. The tragedy's most general "ending" comes earlier in the same horrifying speech; its moment is when Artemis blithely announces to Hippolytus that, Though you lie in the dark of earth, that Wrong which Aphrodite's angry purpose wreaked on you Shall be repaid, to vindicate your piety And noble spirit. I will requite her, striking down Myself, with this unfailing bow, whatever man Her heart holds dearest in the world. (1446) It is hard to comprehend the brutal significance of these words. At the very least they mean that there is yet another tragedy in store; this tragedy will be an identical repetititon of the Hippolytus, but with Artemis and Aphrodite reversing roles. One imagines this play beginning with Artemis speaking the fateful words spoken· by Aphrodite in the beginning of the present tragedy "To those who reverence my power I show favor, and throw t o the earth those I find arrogant and ~roud." (5) This new tragedy will continue, being httle more than a horrible repetition of the first just. as the Hippolytus itself was little more than ~ horrible repetition of Aphrodite's first speech. · But this promised second tragedy is not all that Artemis's fateful words portend. I think we know enough about the horrible logic of revenge in tragedies to see that Aphrodite will respond to Artemis's vengeful gesture in kind, thus mechanically generating yet another horrible Hippolytus, etc. (If this is true, then even the gods themselves can become locked into the infinite tragic regression.) What is more, there is no reason to think that our Hippolytus is the original link in the chain. Perhaps, like the sin Theseus desires to escape, the "original" act of the series occurred "in a distant age" infinitely long ago. Thus we face the prospect of the Hippolytus being a mere moment in an infinite series of tragedies, extending backwards and forwards forever. Like the bull from the past that killed Hippolytus, the play itself has suddenly crashed through its bounds and roams freely through history. It could re-emerge from the waters of time at any moment. Thus, no longer can we guarantee ~hat the Hippolytus is not written about us today JUSt as much as it is about its ancient Greek characters. Thus, the second "ending" is not an ending. As sons are also fathers, this "ending" is also a beginning and middle. Thus it calls into question those comfortable Aristotelian Poetic categories: beginning, middle, and end; inside and outside; player and spectator. The second ending thereby implicates us in the tale. After the second ending, transcendence is no longer the pressing c?ncern only of Hippolytus and his tragic family; smce we readers are possibly in the play, it is now our concern too. Like Hipp olytus, Phaedra and Theseus, we readers ourselves are challenged by Euripides to transcend the "mortal laws" of our own violent histories; failure to recognize this challenge means running the risk that our personal endings turn out as tragically as Hippolytus's. [My recognition of my own implication in the Hippolytus inspired this essay. M.M.] From the tragedy's double ending we have seen the urgency of the question of transcendence in the Hippolytus, (not only for its characters but for its readers as well). Thus, perhaps we should return to Euripides' most compelling vision of the problem of transcendence, that vision arises in the choral words quoted at the beginning of this paper: 0 to escape and lurk high under Steep crags, At the touch of a god to rise, A wing'd bird among flying flocks! To soar over the swell of the Adrian coast Where, in lament for Phaetohon, ' His sisters drop their piteous tears Which glow like amber in the dark stream; And then to reach that shore planted with Apple-trees Where the daughters of evening sing Where the sea lord of the dark shallows Permits to sailors no further passage Establishing the solemn frontier of heaven Which Atlas guards; Where divine fountains flow beside Zeus' marriage bed, Where holy earth offers her choice fruits To enrich the blissful gods. (731) The first feeling this poetry suggests is one of a longing for great freedom. Flying as a bird, one escapes gravity and earth-boundedness. One has escaped one's conditions, sailing above and beyond the particular places, laws, and tears of one's fated existence. Certainly, for all the characters in the Hippolytus escape means a kind of freedom. When Phaedra announces h~r escape plan to kill herself she says, "[I plan] to die, but how I'll order it is mine to choose." (724) As we have seen, freedom here means both the negative freedom of simply evading the conditions that predetermine or fate one and also the more positive freedom of autonomy. The character of the transcendence depicted in the chorus's escape speech means more than soaring freedom, however. For this freedom comes as a result of a total transformation from human to bird -- a kind of animal -- by means of the interceding "touch of a god." The plight of the characters in the Hippolytus is so desperate that the transcendence they desire must be completely radical. There seems to be no way to escape the horrible conditions of humanity and still remain a recognizable human being. The conditions and complexities of being mortal seem so horrible to the chorus that, like Phaedra and Hippolytus, it envies the wild simplicity and freedom of the sub-human 31 �animal. The fact tha t-a god is required to perform this substantial transformation indicates even more fully that the chorus believes there is no possibility of independent human transcendence. Yet, as the play's first ending shows, gods cannot be relied upon in the mortal human world. What's more, it is not clear that even they are sufficiently beyond it to escape tragedy anyway. We have seen the theme of a longing for escape through animality and divinity already in the Hippolytus. Phaedra's escapist dreams of wild places, hunting, and horse-racing indicate a certain abhorrence of things human. Hippolytus also attempts to escape through hunting and riding animals. He believes he can achieve this through his ill-fated friendship with Artemis. The second stanza of this escape poetry reveals that even the freedom of soaring animality does not suffice for a full escape of mor tal conditions. To fully escape the conditions of human mortality the chorus yearns to pass into a radical Beyond -- a place where sailors are permitted no further passage past the Atlas-guarded frontiers of heaven. Again, as with Hippolytus's vision, this is a place characterized by an unearthly mixture of the subhuman natural and the superhuman supernatural, or divine: "Where holy earth offers her choice fruits to enrich its blissful gods." In the second stanza the bird's eye view is dropped and the chorus seems to long to be present with blissful gods in almost a divine fashion. Here then, we find complete transcendence of all things miserably mortal. All verbs in the passage are either infinitives or in the blank . present tense. There is a sense of timelessness in this condition Beyond -- beyond human being, beyond human determinations, beyond human places, beyond human times, beyond human suffering, beyond human mortality. This poetry of longing seems to me beautiful and I think one reason for this is the sense of yearning, nostalgia, sadness that pervades it. The passage is beautiful for the same reason the play itself is successful -- we recognize the human desire, suffering, and failure it depicts. The chorus delivers the poem at a moment of great horror in the play -- just after Phaedra announces her plan to kill herself and destroy Hippolytus too. This escape passage seems to serve as a moment of sublime relief in the plot. It focuses our a tten ti on on some safe, peaceful, and fanciful Beyond just as matters grow nearly intolerable on stage. Yet, the 32 manifest futility of this escape dream, combined with the contrast its content provides to the action onstage, only serves to heighten the horror of the tragedy as it unfolds. Even the escape to the poetic sublime provides no escape, no transcendence. The dream of timeless immortality only renders more painful the drama's depiction of finite human suffering. The beautiful dream of escape and transcendence expressed in this passage is radically impossible for mortal humans, just as all the other escape dreams presented in the Hippolytus are impossible. That very impossibility of transcendence is what renders tragic the tragedy of Hip- Aristotle's Wheel Cherie Craig ('89) polytus. 1Editor's note: Due to space limitations, only the first two parts -- the introduction and the Euripedes section of Mr. McShane's prize winning essay -- are included here. The complete work is available on file in the College Library. The problem involved in the paradox of "Aristotle's wheel" is one of geometrical correspondence. However, in order to understand what actually is occurring geometrically, one must understand the motions involved. It is clear that the two concentric circles of figure 1, travel an equal horizontal distance. (For now, let those two distances be represented as Ll=L2. ) Also, the smaller circle, being carried by the larger, must rotate at the same angular rate as the larger, (Rl =R2). We also know that if the larger circle makes one complete rota ti on, the distance it travels will be equal to its circumference, (Ll =Cl ). Since RI equals R2, the circumference of the smaller circle also makes one complete rotation; but since Cl does not equal C2, then LI should not equal L2 and C2 should equal L2. We seem to be left with a circle rolling through a distance equal to its circumference, yet moving farther than the length of its circumference. Fig. 1 B D c However, the smaller circle is, in fact, not rolling. When we say that the larger circle rolls, we must recognize the two distinct motions involved: its rotation and its horizontal movement. The hori zontal movement of the larger is acquired solely by virtue of its rotational movement, because it cannot rotate while resting on a surface without moving forward. Therefore, if it rotates through a distance equal to its circumference, then Cl equals LI. The horizontal motion of the smaller of the two circles is not due to its rotation, but due to the horizontal motion of the larger circle, and therefore C2 does not equal L2. Thus the smaller circle's rotational movement is not acquired from its horizontal motion, but from the rota ti on of the larger circle. The larger circle imparts exactly as much motion to the smaller circle as it itself possesses. The smaller circle, then, is being moved horizontally while being rotated, rather than itself actually rolling. Rolling seems to occur when there is a special correspondence, that is, equality, between the length travelled and the length rotated. The problem still remains, though, to account for how it is that the smaller circle rotates through a smaller distance than it travels while its circumference is actually in contact with the line traversed. A point on the circumference of the larger circle travels the same distance on that circumference in a given time as the center of the circle moves horizontally in that same time. Therefore, they move with the same velocity. On 33 �the circumference of the smaller circle, a point travels a shorter distance than the center in that same amount of time and conseque ntl y moves with lesser linear velocity. (The angular velocity is the same as that of the point on the larger circle, but the linear velocity is not the same.) In reference to figure 1, it becomes clear that as every point on arc AB has a corresponding point on arc EF, geometrically as well as in time, and as AB=AC=ED, then every point of ED must correspond to a point on arc EF (even though they are of unequal lengths). This same "type" of correspondence is illustrated [figures 2 and 3] by two points moving along two unequal straight lines, or a curve and its chord, in a given time. -----<--- B E c A Fig. 2 Ref erring to Figure 2, we may move line BC such that point C will coincide with point A, while BC remains perpendicular to AC. In Figure 3 we may meet the requirement by moving both the line and the curve with two given velocities in a given time. However, the curve, being longer, must be moved at a faster rate in order for the motion to be completed in the same time. The semicircle AOB rotates counterclockwise 18 0 degrees such that point B of the curve passes through point 0 and rests at point A. The segment AB slides to the left such that point B of the segment passes through point E and rests at point A. Figure 1 also requires two motions with differing, yet uniform, linear velocities. In a given time, we may slide the segment ED to the left such that D will coincide with E, at the same time moving Eat a slower rate a long the arc EF such that it corresponds with F [figure 4]. In this latter example we may obtain the same effect, or relative motion, using motions which are equal but opposite to those mentioned. 34 Instead of moving segment ED to the left, we can move the circle to the right, and instead of moving E counter-clockwise along arc EF, we can rotate the circle clockwise through arc EF. We thereby obtain the two motions of the smaller circle and their seemingly paradoxical effect. We expect there to be the same relationship between the two motions (namely, liner and angular) in the smaller circle as between those of the larger circle, simply because they are both circles. As a result, we fail to see that, although one of the motions of the larger circle is dependent on the other, the two motions of the smaller circle are independent of each other. Once we recognize this , the behavior of the smaller circle should no longer surprise us, and it is found to be no more problematic then the correspondence without equality as we saw with Figures 2 and 3. Out of this, it must be said that in order to understand what is occurring geometrically when geometrical figures are set in motion, we need to take the natures of the motions involved into account. Geometry cannot be separated from mechanics; rather, mechanics is inherent in geometr y. D ~-------~ E I \ / Fig.3 G The Beginning of Titne Eugenia Bergeron ('92) Eo-A ustralopitheca leather scraped fish dried herbs brewed her man away on a hunting trip suddenly leisured sits on sand before sparkling sunlit water (notices playful progress of three dolphins moving east to west halfway between her feet and the horizon) Eo-Australopitheca my sister my double perfectly acquainted with the Shaman's view on eternity transmitted through measureless eons that then and now are one never having questioned the wisdom of ageless antiquity at this hour in this place permits herself to listen to her senses F D' D E Fig. 4 35 �Eo-A ustralopitheca having observed the evenings and the mornings of many days remembering the playful progress of three dolphins (moving east to west halfway between her feet and the horizon) here then there now she sees as if afresh unhurried unstopping unhastening diagonally advancing waves implying sequence implying time Eo-A ustralopitheca (as all the waters under the firmament wave by curling white-embroidered wave approach her feet each covering one tiny fraction more of sand) chooses the evidence of her eyes over the testimony of tradition ·knowing that soon water will cover the island of sand left by last night's low tide glimpsing a small pale conical shell pierced near the point filled with sand she speculates that held aloft the shell will empty before the water touches her toes 36 37 �request as a gift, and asks him about its source, saying, "How is it that thou askest drink of me," i.e., "What enables you to ask a favor of me?" Behold The Latnb of God: Christ and Men in the Gospel ofJohn Kevin Graham ('90) I. Introduction Halfway through the first chapter of John's Gospel, Jesus enters the narrative in the wilderness beyond the Jordan River, where John is preaching. 1:29 The next day John seeth Jesus corning unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. 30 This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me. 31 And I knew him not: but that he should be manifest to Israel, therefore I am come baptizing with water. John comes to baptise us with water and to say to us, "Behold the Lamb of God," in order that the chosen people of God may see Christ manifest. Whoever Jesus is, he is identified by a relation to us, as the Lamb who, sanctified, will take our sin away. And whatever John's annunciation may mean, John announces him to us for our sake. Thus the Evangelist claims that we should want to know who the Lamb of God is. And if we want to know ourselves, we must consider what it means to have sin which this Lamb must take away. In this essay, I hope to discover just these things: Who is Christ, and what are we that we need such a Sa vi or? To this end, I will read a few of the stories in John's Gospel closely, hoping to hear our need articulated in the words of Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter and others, and to hear Christ's fulfillment of that need spoken in his words to them. I am not asking whether we need Christ, but why, according to John, we need him. This essay 38 can only prepare us to answer that larger, more fundamental question. II. Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well 4:5 Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground thatJacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. 7 There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. 8 (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) 9 Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. The scholars off er many explanations for the Samaritan woman's surprise at Jesus' speaking to her: religious and political feuding between the Jews and the Samaritans, the social unacceptability of a Jewish man speaking to a woman in public, the ritual impurity of all Samaritan women. 1 Jesus' words immediately break down these walls of defensiveness and hostility, which normally prevent words exchanged between members of enemy races from becoming conversations. He accomplishes this by an act of humility, forsaking the high social rank a Jewish man would normally assume in this situation in order to allow the Samaritan woman to become his benefactor. I think she wonders not so much at his simply speaking to her, but more at the charity which allows him to ask a favor of her. She recognizes his 4: 10 Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. 11 The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence hast thou that living water? 12 Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus confirms her recognition of his gift, and promises her that she does not know the whole of it: his charity, which makes their conversation possible, is of God. Moreover, he who speaks to her is more extraordinary than she could know from his simple words. Had she seen him for who he is she would have known that he is the source of wha~ she needs most, Ii ving water. Though Jesus offers no explanation of what this mysterious living water is, the woman asks not what it is, but whence he would get it. He cannot draw it from the ground, for he has nothing with which to draw even ordinary water from the well. He must speak of a water not drawn from the ground at all -- a water not of the body, but of the spirit. Jesus seems to claim to be able to provide more than the water and fer tile land she and her people inherited from Jacob. The woman relies on such blessings of God for preservation and prosperity. Now she asks Jesus whether he offers her a greater gift of God. 4: 13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; 14 But whosoever drinketh of the water I give him shall never thirst; but the water I give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life . In asking Jesus about the source of the living water, the woman implicitly asks him about its character. Likewise, in speaking about the character of the living water, Jesus speaks implicitly a bout its source. Jes us says that the quenching power of living water is different in kind from that of ordinary water. While ordinary water leaves the body temporarily satisfied but dependent on a well dug in to the ground for replenishment, living water becomes a perpetually sustaining spring in the spirit. Bodily thirst cannot be quenched thus, nor can the life of the body be sustained everlastingly: this must be a water of the spirit, springing forth from the Spirit of God. The woman's hope is confirmed: Jesus speaks of a new blessing from God for His people, which will truly sustain them in spirit, and not just in body. She need no longer rely on the well dug by Jacob for Jesus offers her a new source of life, or perhaps a new kind of life altogether. 4:15 The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. 16 Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hit her. 17 The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast said well, I have no husband: 18 For thou hast had five husbands; and he whome thou now hast is not thy husband: in that thou saidst truly. 19 The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive thou art a prophet. The woman asks for the water which Jesus offered and claimed she needed. Jesus seems to have succeeded in showing her who he is and why she needs him. Yet he withholds her fulfillment telling her to go fetch her husband. The woma~ neither lies to cover up her shameful string of living arrangements nor leaves in shame as though to call her husband, sulking in the misery of her unworthiness of Christ's gift. 2 Rather, she makes the least embarrassing statement she can of her situation, "I have no husband." Jesus praises her for speaking as well as a person can under the circumstances and says that he knows all about her past husbands and her present lover. The woman's first surprise is at Jesus' diviner's knowledge of her life; she cannot doubt that he is a seer as well as the bearer of the new gift of God. But perhaps her second surprise is the greater: though this prophet knows her life intimately, he does not condemn her for her sin. To discover that God knows us perfectly is terrifying, for we know we bear the mark of our sin. But to discover that God knows us intimately and yet loves us is joyous, for such a God would almost be a friend. The woman is beginning to think that she has discovered just such a God in Jes us' words; now she asks about this friendship with God. 4: 19 The woman saith unto him, I perceive that thou art a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship the Father. 21 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, and now is, when neither in this mountain, noryet in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father. 22 Ye worshipye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. 23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers 39 �shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. 24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. By stating what she and Jesus both know about the religious division between the Jews and the Samaritans, the woman hints at a question that springs from a hope so great and so dear that she dares not give her question a voice: "May even we, the outcasts of Israel, rejoin the family of God?" Much of her life must have been shaped by being outcast, as a Samaritan, as a woman, and as an adulterer. The charity of Jesus' words has kindled hope in her. To no one else could she voice her desire to rejoin the family of the chosen. Jes us speaks about the true worship of God as he spoke about living water: as he compared ordinary water, which sustains the body temporarily, to living water, which sustains the spi rit everlastingly, so he compares the worship of the Father in many places to the worship of the Father outside of place, in spirit and in truth. Spirit and truth will unite true worshippers with one another and with the Father across all barriers, and will lift them to a higher worship which is impossible in the bodily world. And Jesus specifically says, "The hour cometh when ye shall worship the Father thus: "the community of God shall indeed include you, the outcast and despised. Jesus' words fulfill the woman's desire and reward her hope. What began as a casual conversation has revealed the Kingdom of God to her. She stands in awe before the man who has released her from. e.xile an? welcomed her into the community of sp1nt. The JOY of her soul tells her that he is God · again, she dares not voice a hope so dear in ~ question, but masks it in a declaration. 4:25 The woman saith unto him, I know that Messiah cometh which is call~d Christ: when he is come , he will tell us all things'. 26 Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he. 27 And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked with the woman: yet no man said, Whatseekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her? 28 The woman left herwaterpot, and went her way into the city and saith to the men, ' 29 Come, see a man, which told me all things that I ever did: is this not the Christ? The evidence the woman offers that Jesus is the Christ is that he knows everything she ever did. Knowing her enables Jesus to minister to her deepest need, the nee'd for communion. She needs a M~s~iah who knows her and yet loves her by forg1vmg her. Jesus fulfills her need by promising 40 her the gift of the Spirit, which will sustain her everlastingly and enable her to join the community of spirit in God. III. Christ and the Man Born Blind In the beginning of the Gospel's seventh chapter, Jesus sends his disciples to the Feast of the Booths in Jerusalem, saying that he will remain in Galilee; but he follows them to the feast in secret and comes to the Temple to teach openly. The Feast of Booths, or of Tabernacles, is a memorial of Israel's wandering in the wilderness, when Abraham's children were purged of their wickedness.3 Appropriately, Jesus speaks of the Jews' need for his redemption beyond what the Covenant of Abraham and the Law of Moses give them; the p~ople take up stones to kill Jesus for putting himself above Abraham, but he passes out of their midst and into the streets. 9: 1 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man who was blind from his birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? 3 Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. 4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day : the night cometh when no man can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. 6 When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. 7 ~d said u~to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is, by mterpretatton, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing. Jesus answers the disciples' question about the cause of suffering not by explaining the necessity of punishment for sin, but by healing the man outright. The man, Jesus says, was born blind so that the work of God might be made manifest in his healing; something of God is revealed in the healing of the man's impairment which could not have been seen were he not impaired. But to whom is the work of God revealed, to those watching or to the man who is healed? And what is seen in the work of God? 9:8 The neighbors therefore, and they which before had seen him that he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged? 9 Some said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he. 10 Therefore they said unto him, How were thine eyes opened? 11 He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, a?d anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight. 12 Then they said unto him, Where is he? He said, I knovi not. 13 They brought to the Pharisees him that was afore time blind. The man's neighbors do not wonder that he sees, but that he has been healed. To see is not uncommon; but to restore the sigh t of the blind is unheard of. Such a wonder seems inexplicable so the man's neighbors forego asking, "How co~ld Jesus do that?" Instead, they ask where Jesus is. Perhaps they are merely curious about a worker of wonders. But might they not want to seek Jesus out .themselves, hoping that he might heal their spuits?. Such a longing to be made whole in spirit ':ould imply a deep feeling of incompletion and sickness, so close to the core of our souls as to be almost unspeakable. When the man fails to direct them to Jes us his neighbors bring him to the leaders of th~ church. Surely they do not desire to convict him of being healed by an unknown, unauthorized prophet. It seems more likely that they seek the Pharisees' opinion about whether the one who opened the eyes of their blind friend might be able to heal them too. ro: 9: 13 They brought to the Pharisees him that was aforetime blind . 14 And it was the sabbath day, when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. 1~ 1'.1en again t~e Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. He said unto them, He put clay upon mine eyes, and I washed, and do see. 16 Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he.kee~th not the sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that Is a smner do such works? And there was a division among them. 17 They say unto the blind man again, What sayest thou of him, that he hath opened thine eyes? He said, He is a prophet. A student of the Law might respond to the man's story by saying that a man with power such as Jesus' must be divine, or by noting with surprise that Jesus worked the miracle on the Sabbath. But Jesus' app~rent divinity should overshadow any legal quest10ns about the conditions of his work and it is troubling that the Pharisees see th~ situation in reverse. The skeptical Pharisees accuse Je~us of a. literal violation of the Law; the sympathizers voice their wonder only in the context of the legal question. The man born blind perceives God's work more clearly; his simple statement "He is a prophet," reflects an unshakeable visi~n of the great wonder of Jesus' healing. 9: 18 B~t the J~ws did not believe concerning him, that he had been blmd, until they called the parents of him that had received his sight. 19 And .they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blmd? how then doth he now see? 20 His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind: 21 But b~ what means he now see th, we know not; or who hath opened his .eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself. 22 These words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. 23 Therefore said his parents, He is of age; ask him. I~ order to corroborate the man's testimony, Phansees seek testimony of the healing, from parents who know well that the Pharisees seek evidence about Jesus' work not in order to believe but to condemn, and to threaten their opponents with expulsion from the synagogue. Now, the man's parents know their son, and that he sees; and surely they do not doubt that he speaks honestly a?out t~e healing. Why, then, do they not support his testimony? As parents, they should rejoice that Jesus has opened the eyes of the son they bore into darkness. As human beings, they should rejoice in the hope that Jesus can make them whole in spirit as he made their son whole in body. Their reticence may signify that they do not yet feel this second joy because they fail to see how Jes us' power to heal the bo~y might also be a power to heal the spirit. For wh1l.e fear ?1ight quell their joy over bodily healing, the JOY of seeing Jesus' power to redeem overwhelms all fears, as their son's boldness shows. t~e hi~ 9:24 Then again called they the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise: we know thatthis man is a sinner. 25 He answered and said, Whether he is a sinner or no I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now see. 26 Then they said to him again, What did he to thee? how opened he thine eyes? 27 He answered them, I have told you already, and ye did not hear: wherefore would ye hear it again? will ye also be his disciples? i Facing conclusive evidence of the man's healing, the Pharisees advise him to attribute his healing to God and not to Jesus. In doing this they probably seek both to control Jesus' popularity, and to teach the man the truth about the agency of his he~ling. The ~an responds that he knows only one thmg, that he is healed. By this he seems to mean that whatever may make sense and whatever he may not understand about healing, he knows that he has been made whole. The knowledge that a prophet of God has made him whole and that this 41 �healing implies the promise of spiritual restoration must be so great and so brilliant that all other knowledge looks dim and shabby by compa r ison. Jesus proposed himself to be the light of the blind man's world by doing this healing work of his Father. When the man sees such a light, he sees that in order to know anything he must see it in this light. Just as the light of the world is the first principle for the man born blind, so is the Law of Moses the first principle for the Pharisees. The man born blind has told them a new thing, but they hear only an apparent violation of the Law. They offer th e man th eir best counsel a bout his healing in li ght of the Law, and he discards it. Again they ask for evidence with which they may convict Jesus under the Law, and thus serve the Law. The man refuses, saying that he has already told them his story, which is far more important to them as potential believers than it could ever be as lawyers; they will not hear it in any important way if they listen so as to con vi ct rather than so as to be restored. 9:28 Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple: but we are Moses' disciples. 29 We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is. 30 The man answered and said unto them, Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes. 31 Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if a man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth. 32 Since the world began it was not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. 33 If this man were not of God, he could do nothing. 34 They answered and said I unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out. The Pharisees love the Law because through their study of it, God converts their souls and enlightens their eyes by revealing His will to them in its perfect purity and righteousness [Psalm 19:711]. But thei r love of the Law has grown out of proportion: they have taken it not for a guide toward the light of the world, but for that light itself and are therefore unable to see the true light which is come into the world. When God works a new thing by restoring sight to the blind, they see it not as something surpassing the Law, but only as something outside the Law. When the man born blind challenges them to see God's new work of healing, they cast him out. They fail to see the main lesson of the Law: that all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory, and cannot share in that glory without the healing Christ offers. Their vision of God, to which they steadfastly cling, is partial. 42 IV. Christ and Mary Magdalene at the Tomb · 9:35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? 36 He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? 37 And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. 38 And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him. Jes us does not ask the man, "Do you believe that I am the Son of God?" but more generally, "Do you believe that there is a Son of God, a Redeemer of men?" The man asks Jesus to identify the Redeemer. For if Jesus is not the Redeemer, then he must wait for the Redeemer to come to fulfill the promise contained in his healing. The man has, however, been enlightened, he knows that his bodily restoration signifies the spiritual restoration to come. Jesus fulfills this hope, he says that the man has both seen the light of the world in his own healing by Jes us, and now hears the Son of God identify himself with that light. Somehow we all need both to see the Light and to hear the Word. When Jesus restores us to our natural wholeness, and in his healing of us we see the Light, we are ready for Jesus to talk with us. Jesus offers to speak to all of us, even those who did not walk with him as contemporaries. This is the work of the Spirit of Truth, whom Jesus sends us in order to tell us all things. 9:39 And Jesus said, For judgment.I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. 40 And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also? 41 Jesus said unto them, Hye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore, your sin remaineth. By "the blind," Jesus probably means those whom he heals by removi ng their si n, thus revealing to them the Light. But by "the sighted," Jesus cannot mean people altogether unimpaired by sin; perhaps they have a partial vision of God, such as the Pharisees gain from their study of the Law. It is their claim to complete vision which prevents them from admitting their need for Christ's healing. The Pharisses fail by not tempering their delight in the Law with a feeling of imperfection and of need for a healing which the Law cannot provide. The disciples scatter into the night when Jesus is betrayed and arrested. Only Peter and another, most likely John, follow Jesus to the palace of the high priest, where Peter denies Christ]. Only John is present at the crucifixion; he stands before the cross with three other followers: Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary, wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. This is John's first mention of Mary Magdalene; Luke says that Jesus cast seven deamons out of her and that she and some other women Jesus healed supported him and the disciples by their own means. She is also presumably one of the women who help bury Jesus' body. 4 20:1 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. 2 Then she runneth and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken the Lordoutof the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him. The joy of the Resurrection begins in bewilderment and despair. After the wild joy of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem has fallen into the darkness and despair of the betrayal, the trial, and the crucifixion, Mary comes to the tomb, immediately after the Sabbath, presumably to anoint Jesus' body and finish her ministry to his worldly needs.5 She comes out of love, and out of devotion, not knowing what else to do. Yet even her last service to Christ is denied her, for she finds an open tomb. In her despair, she can only conceive of one explanation, that grave robbers have taken the corpse of Jesus. Now the darkness of Mary's world is complete, the last ember of its light having been extinguished. She must tell someone, find support somewhere, she runs to tell the disciples. 20:3 Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. 4 So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. 5 And stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes; yet he went not in. 6 Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, 7 And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. 8 Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed. 9 For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead. 10 Then the disciples went away again into their own home. Peter and John's reac tion to the news of the open tomb is not despai ring, as is Ma r y's, but hopeful. Either the hope that Jes us has escaped the tomb or the fear that his body has been stolen could bring them running to the tomb, but only hope could carry Peter into the tomb itself to examine the burial garments. Fear would ask no more than to see the empty linens from the door. Once Peter has entered the tomb out of hope and steadfast love for Jesus, John can follow. In the dim light of the early morning, John sees exactly what Peter saw. By the guess of most scholars, the reason Peter and John conclude that the corpse has not been stolen is because grave robbers, not wanting to carry a naked corpse around, would not have bothered to unwrap the body. 6 Most of us, like Peter, would now be able to hope that the body had not been stolen. But without seeing the living Jesus, we could hardly believe that a man has overcome death, would not this imply that men are no longe r mortal? Yet John puts faith in Jes us' resurrection. John has been chosen to possess both great vision and great belief: the Evangelist calls him both "the disciple whom Jesus loved" and the disciple "which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee?" Yet remarkable as his faith here is, one thing is denied him -- to see Jesus risen. And only this vision brings understanding of the resur rection and its place in God's plan as shown in the Scriptures. 20: 11 But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, 12 And see th two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Christ had lain. 13 And they say unto her, Woman, whyweepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. 14 And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. When Mary summons her strength to look within the tomb, she sees two angels, who ask her why she weeps. Their question prepares her to see Christ resurrected by prompting her to voice her need to find Jesus. But they cannot console her. So overwhelming is her emptiness that messengers from Heaven seem but a shadow of what she has lost. She turns from them, failing even to wonder at their presence: could Heaven fail to notice the extinguishing of the light of the world? Now Mary feels the deepest sorrow and the deepest need that 43 �any human being has ever felt, and perhaps possibly ever could feel. She is prepared to see the risen Christ. them, I ascend to my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. 18 Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her. 20: 14 And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him h ence, tell me where thou h ast laid him, and I will take him away. 16 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni.: which is to say, Master. Now the work of Christ on earth is almost complete: having been raised up and having drawn us up to him to become sons of the Father, it only remains for him to breathe forth the Spirit into us and send us forth into the world. When we have seen the r isen Christ with Mary Magdalene, our work as disciples, or learners, is complete, and we are ready to become apostles, or, those sent forth. Mary is at first unable to see Jesus, who, seemingly, has been transfigured. In her despair, an y unfamiliar man would look like someone wh o mi ght have taken Jesus' body. 7 Jesus begins to re ach out to her in order to reveal himself to her, asking, "Why do you weep? Whom do you seek?" Mary's answer, "Where have you taken him?" shows that she can't imagine anyone failing to know wh ose tomb is empty and that what she seeks is not Jesus' body, but Jesus himself. Then Jesus says, "Mary." She hears him, and turn s her soul to see him. He speaks her name with the breath of divine charity. He is nowhere in what he says. Where before he revealed himself by saying "I am he," now the first person in n o way enters his words. Thus he gives himself over to her com pletely, to be her healer and comforter. He ope ns himself completely to show forth his glory as div ine love. Her deepest need is filled by the revelation of Christ to the ears and the eyes of her sou l. Mary sees the risen Christ and says, "Rabbi," which must be understood to mean "Teacher." A teacher cannot simply reveal things to his student. He must know her and reach out to fill her need with a word spoken in char ity; for onl y such a word can truly fill the need of an animal with speech. Mary is prepared to hear the word because she knows that Jesus is the source of her life and because she feels the sorrow appropriate to the loss of that sou rce. Hearing that word enables her to turn to see the glorified Christ as our Teacher, and to see something of the Father in him. T o teach is to speak the word of love and thus reveal something of the Father to the hearer,: it is the mos t perfect of Christ's works. To learn is to prepare ourselves to receive his word , so that he can make us whole and reveal the Father to us. 20:17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren and say unto 44 V. Christ and Simon Peter at the Sea of Tib erias After appearing to Mary Magdalene before the empty tomb, Jesus appears twice to his discip les, once during the evening of that same day and again eight days later. John concludes his Gospel after recording these events in the twentieth chapter, but goes on to write the following epilogue. 21:1 After these things .Jesus showe d himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias; and o n this wise shewe d he himself. 2 There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas calle d Di dymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee , and two other of the disciples. 3 Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with th ee. They went forth, and entered into a ship immediate ly; and that ni ght they caught nothing. 4 But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore: but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. 5 ThenJesussaith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answere d him, No. 6 Then Jesus said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast the net therefore, and now they were not able to draw it in for the multitude of fishes. 7 Therefore, that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Nowwhen Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him, (for he was naked,) and did cast himself into the sea. The image of food first appears in John's Gospel after Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman at the well. When the disciples return from the city with food and urge Jesus to eat, he replies, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of... My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work." Bringing the Samaritan woman into the Kingdom of God nourishes Jesus' spirit: acts of love sustain the spirit's new life which living water begets. Jes us tells the disciples to look upon the fields of the world, ripe for the harvest of the food men need most, "the fruit unto life eternal." Later, following the feeding of the multitude, Je sus speaks of himself as the bread of life, meaning that the belief in the redeeming power of his crucifixion sustains our spirit into eternity. Now the Son of Man has been raised up, and has ~rawn us up to him; the disciples, having eaten of his flesh and drunk of his blood fallow Peter into the field of the world to reap ~hat God has so~n, and onto the sea of life t o draw up the meat which dwells therein. They toil fruitles sly all night until Jesus ap pears on the shore at dawn.8 At his urging, they persevere to cast once more· when their net fills to overflowing, John percei ;es that the one who made possible and then rewarded their final eff ort must be the Lord. John tells Peter what he sees, and Peter leaps into the sea to swim to Jesus: so strong is his love for the sower whose harvest he reaps. 21:8 And the other disciples came in a little ship; (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits dragging the net with fishes.) ' 9 As soon as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. 10 Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught. 1.1 Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken. 12 Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine . And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord. 1_3 ~en ~esus cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish hkewise. 1~ 1:llis is now the third time that Jesus shewed himself unto the d1sc1ples, after that he was risen from the dead. Jes us invites the disciples to add some of their_ abundant harvest to what he is already cook mg, and to share with him the feast of life of whi~h ~e told them beside Jacob's well [4:36]. The y eat m silent wonder at the t oil of the night, at the bou?ty of the morning, and at the transfigured Chnst who made their labor and their harvest possible. I wonder what it was like to eat of the feast of the Kingdom of God, on the shore of the world into ~hich they were about to set out, sharing that feast with a Son of God unfamiliar to them in looks, but unforgettable to them in acts of love and gifts of grace. 21: 15 So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon,. son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my Iambs. 16 He saith unto him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love th~e. He sa~th unto him, Feed my sheep. 17 Hesa1th untoh1m the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, Iovest ~?ou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he saith unto him Lord thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love th~e. J~sus saith unto him, Feed my sheep. . J.esus singles out Simon Peter from among the disciples and asks him for an aff irma ti on that his love is greater than that of his fellows. Throughout the Gospel, Peter is the disciple of steadfast love and the leader of the faithful as the beginning of this story illustrates. When' Jesus' followers dwindle, after his discourse on the bread of lif7, and Jesus asks the disciples whether they too will leave him, it is Peter who says, "Lord, to ':horn shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal hf e." Jesus' question points out Peter's need to love Jes us before all others and more than all others if he is to found the church in the world. Jesus' question changes when he repeats it. Rather than reminding Peter of his special duty to the commandment of love, Jesus seems to be doub~ing Peter's devotion to him altogether. Peter's react10n changes from puzzlement to pain as Jesus prods. him with his guilt and weakness, asking his question once for each of Peter's denials: The prospect of setting out to fish for men seems much less promising to him now; he remembers well how hope c_an fail during night's toil. How can he hope that his love for Jesus will sustain his spirit once Jesus has departed? 2!: 18 Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girded thyself, and walked whither thou wouldest: but when thous~alt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. 19 This spake he, signifying bywhat death he should glorifyGol And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him, Follow me. By his strange, vague statement about Peter's destiny, John, and I suppose Peter as well understands Jesus to propesy that Peter will suff e; martyrdom, perhaps by arrest and crucifix ion. The sea's darkness grows deeper in Peter's mind. He must steel himself against the possibility that his night's toil will end not only in fruitlessness but also in pe rsecution and a painful death. The darkest specters man knows, spiritual barrenness and bodily suffering, never loomed more ominous than they do before Peter now. 9 Then Jesus says to Peter, "Follow me." He ~peaks not of a lonely journey, but of a guided Journey, and this makes all the difference. Even the first disciple cannot toil through the night alone and hope to succeed. But the image of the 45 �apostles setting forth, leaving Jesus behind on the shore, or absent altogether, is wrong, for Christ's role in it is insufficient. Where Peter expected to seek his own way, Jesus promises to lead him. Darkness may sometime come upon us as we labor, because of failing love or fear of death, but the Light of the world goes always before us, that we may work in his eternal day. VI. Conclusion These four stories do not speak of what Christ offers each of four different kinds of people, those who are like the Samaritan woman, those who are like Simon Peter, etc. The need for redemption which we all share is far greater than what sets us apart from one another. This is why each of us can join the one fold which the Good Shepherd guides and protects. Though most of us do not share the political and religious exile of the Samaritan woman, exile from the family of God is common to all people because all have sinned. Jesus welcomes us into the community of spirit by saying to us that he knows us and our sin, but for gives us and loves us as brethren and friends. To receive the Spirit and enter the Kingdom of God is to drink of the living water which becomes a well springing up within us to sustain us everlastingly. We share the blindness of the man whose sight Jesus restored, if not in body, then in spirit, by virtue of our sin. But Jes us says that we are blind in order that we may see the God's healing work manifest in us. Once we se.e this work in Christ's being raised up and taking our sins upon himself, we, like the man born blind, know only one thing: whereas we were blind, now we see. When we know this, we are ready to receive the Spirit, so that Christ may talk with us as well as be seen by us. When we share with Mary Magdalene both the knowledge that Christ is our very life and the sorrow appropriate to the loss of that life, we feel the deepest sorrow and the deepest need that a person could ever feel. Then we are ready to hear Christ speak the word of love and to see him as our Teacher. In order to begin the work of Christ in the world, we must, along with Peter, know the weakness of our love and see the dark specter of the trials we must face. Then we are ready to hear Jesus' command, "Follow me," the promise that he will light our way and make our toil fruitful. 46 \ Christ is the Redeemer who forgives our sins and restores our sight, welcoming us into the Kingdom of God; moreover, he is the Teacher who lifts us out of our deepest despair to hear his word of love, to see him revealed in glory, and to reap the harvest of the field he has sown. We are the exiles with whom Christ reunites, and the sick whom he makes well; moreover, we are the disciples who need to hear Christ's word of love and to see him revealed, and the apostles who do his work in the world. Untitled Laurae Melbin ('92) 1:12 But as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become the sons of God ... she argued everything he said refused to agree or even listen to him but he loved her anyway. 1Raymond Brown, The Anchor Bib le: The Gospel According to John, I-XII, vol. 29, Gardern City, NY: Doubleday & Cop., Inc., 1966, note to 4:9, p. 170. 2Jews, and presumably their Samaritan relatives, were only permitted three marriages; thus, her past two marriages and her present co-habitation would all be considered adultery, a capital offence. [Brown, op.cit., note to 4:18, p. 171. Leviticus 20:10.] 3Deuteronomy 16:13-15 and 31:9-13; Leviticus 23:39-43. she slapped him in public because of her irritation numbly he stood back and waited for her to stop screaming and slapped her back and she held him while he cried he became proof to himself that people he had scorned women who remained with abusive men henpecked husbands were helpless and he was guilty of hypocrisy 419:38-42; Matthew 27:57-61; Mark 15:42-47; Luke 23:50-56. SMark 16:1, 2; Luke 24:1. 6Brown, The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John, XIII-XX!, vol. 29A, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co pl, Inc., 1970, notes to 20:5, 7, pp. 985-987. ?The simplest explanation of the slowness of Mary and, later, of the disciples to recognize Jesus after the resurrection if that he just looks different. This argument is supported by this passage, John's story of the appearance at Tiberias, and by Luke's story of the appearance on the road to Emmaus. 8Darkness falls only three times during the Gospel: when the disciples set out across the Sea of Tiberias without Jesus, when Judas leaves the supper to betray Jesus, and in this scene .. 9Brown, op. cit., note to 21:18, pp. 1106-1108 Bibliography Brown, Raymond, The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John, vol. 29 (I-XII) and 29A (XIl-XXI), Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1966 and 1970. The Holy Bible, Oxford: University Press. he loved her he wanted her to have their children and she would kiss his face gently and repeat that it would make her fat so much more fun this way sometimes he didn't know how he could stand it he suprised her with dinner he loved to cook she laughed and called him a wimp you're not a real man she said he despised her he became a symbol of chains and she was the only way out but she wouldn't let him near her she curled a way from him in bed sometimes put pillows between them he knew her indifference fascinated him and held him and despised himself for he believed that he was weak she would block her ears humming loudly to discourage his attempts to communicate finally when he gave up she found the house empty sat in a chair humming loudly with her hands over her ears. �of the predatory birds. But the dead he says frowning slightly, avoiding my eyes, never let you stop loving. Corning To in the Fatherland Jessica Lamb He has been away what seems like a lifetime, in Africa stalking rhinos with arrows, like a native, and thanks to his native stealth, he returns wealthy, though weathered and past his prime. "Just missed a tusk in my gut last safari," he tells us . "I took that as a sign. Not fear sent me home, but recognition of time's flight." A dangerous business for a man getting on in years. We are sitting on the front proch watching the rain move over the mountains, flashing; he is recalling the violent deaths of wild animals. A difficult recognizance begun carefully with anecdotes. An antelope fled headlong through his window, once, and bled to death on the living room floor. The stripped green of his gaze sharpens with humor. It happens, he says, to this unprotected flesh. And holds towards me, embarrassed, his hand to be quickly clasped. "'Nature is a bloodthirsty mother," he explains, and goes on to tell of tiger attacks on elephant herds , of the constant stench of carrion, I am wearing ivory earrings made from his last kil1. For his son he brought a leopard skin. Peace offerings. How his little on es have grown. We notice the acuteness of his elbows, the starved babble of his fingers , and imagine him in Africa carving arrowheads from tusks, claiming tusks with arrows. We were babies when he left and have imagined him in more unlik ely places: on the moon , under the sea, next door, silently scoping us from behind his devious disguises . He wonders how long we mou med him after his supposed death. I show him the garden I staked out and planted when I was old enough to know my loss. He would return, I believed, by the time the sweet peas grew to my bare I y four foot height. They shot above my head and blossomed, and the lettuce stretched in stalks as tall as I and went to seed; tomatoes , cucumbers and carrots were harvested and canned year after year , "to eat if we're ever stranded here," my mother said in jest. At thirteen I added herbs: savory, oregano, sage; and then asparagus which ripened slowly and would give him time. When it first bore I was f u II y grown. On the hill to the south I planted fruit trees and berries. For five years we've eaten amply from them. 49 �Now as I stoop to cut a spa ra gus for his homecoming feast (that vegetable's seventh season I remark -- all that time in anticipation, not in mourning), he wants to know why mother up and died a f cw years back. "It happened in her sleep. Au topsy said a clot of blood in her brain." After a pause he says unsteadily, "Think of her death as a dcv ia tion . To stay on course is no easy feat. It is hardly human ... " "Yes," I reply. "You arc lucky to find us, at least, still here where you left us, when we could all so easily be worlds apart." We sit down to eat, hands clean, linen in our laps, and the long awaited return has grown already ordinary. I had wanted to greet him fully grown in the garden, or under the apple tree, my lap full of fruit. But it was a father not a king came home. Who knows were he has been. He thinks he has come full circle, finally, back to his point of departure. But this territory cannot be reclaimed. For there were times when I too cou Id have disappeared. Podding peas now while the men build the barbecue, I watch the piece of road pressed into the wilderness off the front porch, as familiar as the press of my own lips against each other, and I remember winters when a long, frostbitten stillness seemed to stretch as far as foreign countries out my window; the day my brother, barely eight, and I, nine, set out over the ridge towards town on skis and emerged terrified at dusk too exhausted to breathe relief, in a valley ten miles fom home. Childhood perils, not worth boasting about, perhaps. But grown inevitably into the strange places and postures of pubescence, I found the greater risks of love to shy from. I have hoped to live perfectly, without storm or shipwreck. Yet I am ashamed that Father found us, waiting, brother and sister, ma rr icd to the same land he left, ma rrooncd there. 50 51 � 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. 51 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, Fall 1989 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Fall 1989. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Datcher, Rhonda (Editor) Paradi, Ken (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 1989 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 Fall 1989 Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/924796add137ab5c36edcd43f8d1366e.pdf e37b4b15422eb7cf2819d801075b9e76 PDF Text Text �- - --- -·- - ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself. ~ ... vou EVEp"fEta ~ro~ . . . (Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1072b) Staff Sara Gama Marie Pelczynski Amy Thurston Senior Editor Douala Dennis Junior Editor Jeff Seidman Faculty Advisor Henry Higuera Special Thanks Tina Davidson Curtis Davis Chris Colby Don Murchak:e Don Smith Energeia is a non-profit, student magazine which is published two times a year and distributed among the students, faculty, alumni and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis and Santa Fe. The Energeia staff welcomes submissions from all members of the community - essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. �Contents Spring 1992 Truth and Teaching Eva T. H. Brann, Dean 1 Ode to an Hour at Summer's End Thomas Madden, '91 4 Knowledge and the Two Faces of God (Prize-Winning Sophomore Essay) David Walter, '91 5 The Divergence of Acute Angles: A Proof in Absolute Geometry Bryan Dorland, '92 10 Front and back cover photographs by Rakesh Brennig Untitled (photograph) Greg Francke, '92 12 Desktop Publishing and Printing by the St. John's College Print Shop Rex to Wretch: Transfonnation and Riddle in Oedipus Tyrranos (Prize-Winning Freshman Essay) Zena Hitz, '94 13 Nick (photograph) Greg Francke, '92 17 The Day of Picking Melissa Bond, '94 18 From Ambiguity to Epiphany: A Qairvoyant Reading of ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (Prize-Winning Senior Essay) Ange E. Mlinko, '91 20 Untitled (photograph) Rakesh Brennig, '93 29 Animals in Motion: the Flattery of Becoming in Plato's Timaeus (Lecture) Peter Kalkavage, tutor 30 Time the Dominant (photograph) John Dunn, '92 39 Origami David Ruy, '91 40 ''The" Exponential Curve Henry Higuera, tutor 41 Balance (photograph) Jeff Seidman, '93 47 Two Humors (Prize-Winning Preceptorial Essay) Ellen M. Myers, GI '90 48 The Wrath of Aeneas (Prize-Winning Preceptorial Essay) Donna Schueler, GI '89 53 Ricardo J. H. Beall, tutor 60 The Other Face of Darkness J. H. Beall, tutor 61 Angel and Quill (photograph) Nathan J. Humphrey, '93 62 �Truth and Teaching Eva T. H. Brann What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness [cogitationum vertigine], and count it a bondage to fix a belief .... The quotation is from the essay "Of Truth" that heads Bacon's Essays, Civil and Moral (1625). Bacon's borrowing is true to its source, the Gospel of John (18 : 38). Jesus has just spoken to Pontius Pilate of the truth; the Roman says: "What is truth?" and goes out to tell the Jews that he can find no blame in Jesus. He does not impugn the truth of Jesus but truth in general; he does not stay for an answer since he had asked no question. And though we may doubt that the Roman governor took delight in cognitive vertigo, we may well believe that he counted it a bondage to fix his belief. But whatever was Pilate's case, Bacon has given two motives, obverses of each other, for setting truth aside: the positive pleasure in a levitating skepticism and the willful resistance to a settling of the mind. He immediately associates these with lying: But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth; nor again that when it is found it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that does bring lies in favor; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. Here we hear in Bacon a voice from a golden time when the proper antithesis of "truth" was "lie" - golden, since every genuine lie confirms the actuality of truth. Our condition is more difficult: the foil of truth now is not falsehood, intended or unintended, but honesty. I. Honesty Honesty, I must argue, though it is a civil and moral virtue, can be an intellectual and pedagogical scourge - both honesty and its even more subjectivized mode, sincerity. I say "even more subjectivized" because it seems to me that there is a cognitive spectrum here: truthfulness is the desire to find the truth and to tell what can be told of it; honesty is a scrupulous determination to say all that one knows and no more; and sincerity is attention to the pure-heartedness of one's meaning. Truthfulness is concerned with what is, honesty with unexceptionable speech, and sincerity with purity of intention. Thus truthfulness pertains to the speaker's accord with the object of knowledge, while honesty involves the candor of the person and sincerity the intimate integrity of the self. Now I am saying that the sophisticated attack on truth mounted so successfully in the last hundred-some years is not in the name of truth - its assailants are too acute for such a logical solecism - but under the banner of painful explicitness and agonized resolve. Think of the personal modes of the two founders of our condition, one in the last and one in this century, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. Why would one cavil at so noble a cognitive stance? Well, just because it is so centered on the self, so unswervingly bent on public self-examination, so unforgivingly fixed on inner unexceptionableness. Because it puts the self before the world, turns all knowledge into epistemology, is always masterful and rarely receptive. Because it eschews the play that permits wild surmises, the analogies that draws truth from images, even the hypotheses that make contemplation possible. But above all, because this noble and even exquisite way, since it requires a peculiar! y fine and high-strung personal nature of a sort not common in academia, is prone to a particularly racy corruption: while the older philosophies of truth would suffer degradation into rigidity, the contemporary debasements have a galvanic vigor. However, these are descriptions and not analyses, so let me start again. II. Truth What is truth? We too cannot stay for a thorough answer, but there is a least time for a distinction. If the word has any meaning it has at least two: there is truth of being and truth in speaking. The tradition used to be preoccupied with the relation of these two: what things must be like so that they can be told and what speech must be like so that the telling might be true. Let me offer here merely the grossest pedagogical conditions for maintaining the tradition of truth-directed inquiry. Iflearners are to conceive an interest in this activity, they must come across at least some objects that are natural and some opinions that are traditional. If truth-seeking is to have an even chance with them, they must have experience of some things that are grown rather than constructed - trees rather than pylons - and of some beliefs that originate in the community rather than with the intellectuals - faiths rather than theories. Again, if teachers are to guide such a search they need the help of some books that take nature and tradition seriously while they make the discovery and telling of truth their aim. I mention these inchoate points only to show how well I know that the pursuit of truth is not without conditions and presupp0sitions - of the strongest sort. 1 �III. Doubt It is these that the party of honesty throws into doubt. What I want to do now is to sketch out four points of attack on these presuppositions (A), to delineate their noble original versions (B), to characterize their debased outcomes (C), and to offer a saving mean, saving that is, for truth (D). A. 1. Quandaries of knowing 2. Consequences of formalism 3. Disposition of mind 4. Reading of texts c. B. => => => => 1. Perspectival viewings 2. Undecidable propositions 3. Vertiginous positions 4. Hermeneutic problems dogmatic relativism willful suspension settled indifferentism arbitrary construal D. 1. Aspectual inquiries 2. Perennial questions 3. Tensed dialectic 4. Direct reading Let me try to clarify these somewhat opaque rubrics. 1. Cognitive quandaries concerning the possibility of reaching the objects of knowledge go back to antiquity. Protagoras gave them their starkest expression, as reported by Plato: He says that the human being is the measure of all things, of those that are, how they are, and of those that are not, how they are not .... [He says that] as each thing seems to me, such it is for me and as it seems to you, such it is for you. [Theaetetus 151] Strong as this relativism is, it is not total, for there is reference to the things - albeit unknowable - that are, and what is relative is only their perceived quality. It is a modern radicalization that phenomenal aspects might be all there are, that no true thing underlies the perspective views from which individuals construe their mundane and moral solids. This perspectivism is deeper and more complex than the notion that the world is appearance; it involves the claim that the appearances themselves, which to ancient relativists have at least the practical inertness of thingbased variability, might from time to time shift radically and out of all recognition as the human viewpoint shifts, making older knowledge obsolete and inaccessible: Since some temporary trust in science is necessary to modem life, the stabilizing of opinion devolves on society, and the doctrine that wins the apptoval of the social group concerned with it is not, indeed, verified but rather justified. The vulgarized version of cognitive perspectivism and social justification is well known to teachers: it is a dogmatic relativism in which the all-too-comfortable doctrine of the impossibility of principled choice becomes the occasion for succumbing to inarticulate social pressures. 2 The saving mean between surrendering to the sophisticated or succumbing to the debased version of cognitive perspectivism seems to me to be an inquiry beginning very literally, namely with an investigation - even calling to aid some projective geometry - of the "perspective" metaphor, to go on to ask what the world must be like so that it may present views, what society is such that it might serve as the guarantor of opinion and how opinion comes about such that a human being should defer to it. In short, teachers might invite students to a serious program of what I would call "aspectual inquiries." It would amount to a critique of the critique of knowledge, and it would at least recall the presuppositions of truth-seeking to the scene of learning. 2. One of the several sophisticated intellectual discoveries of this century that have been victimized by careless extension is the formal undecidability of certain propositions in arithmetic. (The special theory of relativity is another such.) The highly technical context of the astounding fact of such undecidability is set eagerly aside and hasty application is made to the wide realm of human thought: certain questions are in principle unanswerable and hence there is no point in asking them. The questions so classified are of course those taken up over and over in the history of reflection and supposedly always unanswered. Thus the historical experience appears to coincide with the logical theory, and the permanent suspension of truth-judgement, willing and willful, becomes universal doctrine. I would propose the mediating approach of inquiring into the nature of the putatively perennial questions. What are they? What must one know to pronounce such questions unanswerable? Do questions represented as unanswerable incite effort or induce lassitude? Have the questions themselves endured, or have they changed? Does the questioning activity itself evolve or only its object and context? Does the fact that questions have contesting answers mean that they are unanswered? It seems to me once again that such a regimen of questioning questions would at least make room for the hypothesis of truthseeking. 3. It is an uncontestable part of the contemporary frame of mind to enjoy what Bacon calls the "giddiness" of the liberation from the obligations of truth. For serious thinkers there once was the choice intoxication of rope-dancing over the abyss, of assuming difficult vertiginous positions. The original efforts at retaining balance on the rope and integrity on the knife's edge were fierce and compelled admiration. But more relaxed followers found that falling off was no calamity, that the abyss was a soft bed to all positions, that the hard landing was as yet out of sig?t, and that settled attitudes of light-headed indifference were quite comfortable. It seems to me that there is a third position between the strenuous refusal of all truth and the easy unconcern with any deep issue. It is the tensed condition of actual dialectic, liv~g conversation. It means that teachers help students to find the vital element in many contesting opinions including, of course, the denial of the possibility of truth. It means helping learners to bring the positions to life so that they do not confront each other as petrified neutralizing opposites but respond to each other as moments of thought. And again it may be found that such revivified responsiveness has implications not unfriendly to the hypothesis of truth-finding. 4. Almost all thinking past a certain naive stage, certainly all thinking in institutions of learning, takes place with the aid of books. In the last century certain tricky problems with the interpretation of texts began to be formulated. For instance, it became a concern that every text is written into a context and that the reader needs some prior knowledge to construe the text adequately. Moreover, the reader's own presuppositions were shown to shape readings powerfully. Such hermeneutic insights were eventually pushed to extremes. Books were interpreted not in their context but by their context, authors' personal or social histories were used to nullify their intended communication of truth. The difficulties of getting at"the true text were so recklessly and sophisticatedly exaggerated that the flashy art of creative interpretation began to replace the modest effort to read receptively. A hopeful mean between the subtle difficulties of serious hermeneutics and the inesponsible resolutions of deconstruction, is, I think, an ever-present possibility for students in particular: the direct reading. Teachers of present-day students need expect so little common learning and so few deep-rooted opinions that, if only they succeed in focusing interest on the text, they can almost count on a certain immediacy of reading. In fact, making students face books directly, in amazed alienation, as if they were monoliths just now shot up from the earth, is about the only practical beginning I can think of. It also happens to offer the fairest chance for the truth-telling claims that most serious books make. I do not of course mean that the teaching of truth, its knowledge and belief, will become fashionable in academia. That would be worse than the near-universal suspicion of the possibility of truth-telling we live with now. What we may rather be ready for is a revival of the inclination to seek being and of the presuppositions that make "the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making and wooing of it," again a respectable enterprise. But why wait for that? ****** [Y]et truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it, the know ledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. ["Of Truth"] That the finding, having, and enjoying of truth is the highest good - that is the teaching of truth itself for Bacon, though for recent generations the proposition has become systematically dubious. Yet we may not be in the worst position for a revival of the hypothesis of truth-seeking. There is a zest in destructive doubt for the several generations that are still supported by the learning, the faith and the tradition they are opposing. But when the branch on which the destructionists sit is finally sawn through, then there may well come a moment of grasping for the trunk itself, a wish to find something to hold on to. We may possibly be at such a juncture. 3 �Ode to an Hour at Summer's End Knowledge and the Two Faces of God Thomas Madden St. Thomas, the Church, and Aristotle David Walter Ah, in Shakespeare's garden there was surprise: diamonds scattered among the leaves, and stars perched, pregnant, atop grass-blades. She and I we both could see the rain as a benediction. It was to be our last night, and the rain had come - a mother's hand upon a fevered brow, the breath of a promise. Giddy with the air's approval, we chased after a wrong turn and walked into sudden, cultivated vibrancies of shadow. The shape of a garden stands and grows, and restores wine of memory to a shattered heart. A steeple's cap kept watch in the curtained sky. And we came to a fountain, and accepted the consciousness represented in the winding of a wet branch. I danced over flagstones trying to find expression as this moment, this season, this year all melted - resolved into the seal of forever. Awake to the measure of the dream, her fingertip's gesture across my lips never said goodbye. We never gave a name to our desire. 4 Preface The Church, in the time of St Thomas, was very conservative. Seeking to preserve their authority, church members were very wary of writings, both ancient and modern, which threatened the vitality of its written Creed. Certain writings were altogether condemned as heretical works, while the writings of others were considered dubious and held under close scrutiny. Such were the writings of Aristotle. Aristotle's writings were accessible to intellectuals at that time, because he was considered to be primarily a natural philosopher. Aristotle was concerned with the causes of natural events. He traced events logically to God as a First Cause. Thomas Aquinas found Aristotle's logic very compelling, and very pertinent to his Christianity. Although there were certain subjects on which Aristotle and the Church disagreed (such as whether or not the universe had been created), Thomas thought that he could incorporate the Aristotelian philosophy to suit the demands of the Church dogma. It remains to be seen whether Aristotle himself would have approved of the mysteries of the Church, which are not according to reason, but according to tradition based on revelation. Nevertheless, given what Aristotle left in writing, Thomas enthusiastically set out to found a theology, based on Aristotle's philosophical thought. The question of his success will be considered in part in this paper. ***** For St. Thomas Aquinas.knowledge is concerned with things as they appear to us. The method of science, by which we gain knowledge, begins with the appearance, or the thing as sensed (The Summa Theologica I, 12, A12). The sensible world constitutes our primary "reality." What is "real" to us is the particular object of sense - the entity existing apart from all other entities. The intellect seeks to know the "causes" of a particular thing, by abstracting universals from that thing. Hence, our knowledge of universals, while not given, is inferred from our perception. Consequently, we are born with no prior knowledge or understanding of universals; we gain such knowledge or understanding through a process of inference from repeated individual experiences. Of course, Thomas' view that we come to know about things through first having sensed them is not the only possible one. We know of others, most prominently Plato, who posit a reality apart from sense perception. Thomas, presumably aware of other possible view points, such as that of Plato, chose this characteristically "Aristotelian" epistemology. It seems to be a curious choice, in some respects, because it results in limitations in talking about God. We get knowledge about things from our interaction with them, and the problem lies herein: we have no direct interaction with a transcendental God.We only know Him through His "effects"(!, 1, A8, rep.1). We are separate from Him because of our "mode" of being - separate in action, and separate in speech: "Nothing temporal can be in God, for He is above time"(I,13,A7). On the other hand, the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, depict a God who has an intimate relationship with creatures. He speaks directly to them. In short, Thomas' choice limits the knowledge we can have of God; and these limitations seem to bar the type of intimate interaction between God and creatures presented to us in the Scriptures. At first glance, Thomas' choice seems to present us with an irreconcilable conflict between the impersonal God of Aristotelian logic, and the very personal God of the Scriptures. The Aristotelian God spends all His eternity thinking about Himself. He does not involve Himself in our ethical struggles. The Scriptural GodisaLaw-giver, andaLaw enforcer. He has an undying devotion to His people. The two concepts appear antithetical. But there is a subtle strategy underlying Thomas' choice. On the one hand, Thomas wants to show how the Christian faith can increase and perfect our scientific knowledge. But also Thomas wants to show us the limits of scientific know ledge, inasmuch as recognizing such limits reinforces our faith. Faith perfects knowledge; knowledge reinforces faith. The Aristotelian epistemology yields concrete limitations, which Thomas can exploit. Working from the Aristotelian assumptions themselves, we can subsume the Aristotelian epistemology into the Christian doctrine. We can make it conform. In natural science, we reason from abstractions of particular events, to conclusions about those particular events, by means of demonstration from first principles inferred from experience. Sciences are differentiated because different classes of knowledge deal with different classes of events. The physicist deals with physical objects; the mathematician deals with mathematical objects; the metaphysician deals with metaphysical objects. These are formal objects, two of which may inhere in the same body, in different respects. Each of the respective classes of objects is abstracted from the real objects of sense. Reason classifies these objects, and investigates them according to the first principles of demonstration. But, what if the object of our knowledge is God? Is God abstracted from objects of sense? It is not possible to classify God as we classify mathematical objects. When we classify a thing, we give it a definition according to its essence, or nature. But we cannot do this with God. We do not know His essence. We have no direct experience of God through our senses. However, we are aware of Him indirectly, through His effects. Hence, because of our mode of knowing, which is grounded in the senses, we (natural scientists) can only see Him as if through a mirror; as in the saying from I Car.xiii: "We see now through a glass in a dark manner," a favorite quote of Thomas'. Nevertheless, as natural scientists, drawing our principles from natural reason, we are able to know some things about God. 5 �For instance, that He exists can be demonstrated in His absence, from His natural effects. Now one of His effects is motion. So, if we are able to ascertain the essence, or nature (formal quality) of the event of motion, and then to apply to it our first principles of reason (cause and effect, non-contradiction, impossibility of infinite regress), and arrive at a conclusion, then this constitutes a demonstration. The demonstration will allow us to arrive at a primary source of motion, i.e., the First Mover. And we may ·"understand"(!, 2, A3) this First Mover to be God, in the sense that we identify God as the First Cause of motion. But knowledge of the fact that God exists (as a First Mover, as a Primary Efficient Cause, as necessarily always existent, as Greatest in Being, as Supreme Intelligence) is not enough for the theologian. He is interested in God "not only so far as He can be known through creatures just as philosophers know Him ... but also so far .as He can be known to Himself alone and revealed to others" (I, 1, A6). The theologian is interested in uncovering particular truths concerning the nature of God. But in order to obtain a fair amount of such truths, he needs more than what he can gather from his senses. Since he does not have the capacity to discover knowledge of the supersensible on his own, it must needs be given to him immediately, by God, through revelation. The Scriptures and the Articles of Faith contain principles revealed directly by God. Man is directed to God as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason ... But the end must first be known by men who are to direct their intentions and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths should be made known to him by divine revelation.(I, 1, Al) And this gift of revelation christens a new science - the divine science. The Articles of Faith are "given" to the theologian (divine scientist) just as, say, the mathematical objects (points and lines) are given to the geometer; or as the physical objects (stars and planets) are given to the astronomer. And they are as certain to the Christian as any of the things we perceive by means of sense. As a formal body of objects the Articles of Faith have relationship to one another that is rational, as do all the other objects of science. We can infer principles from them, just as the natural scientist infers . principles from his particular class of objects, by virtue of their being formally classified. Just as music accepts on authority the principles taught by the arithmetician, so sacred doctrine accepts the principles revealed by God. (I, 1, A2) So the divine science obtains its principles primarily from a divine source (revelation), and only secondarily from a natural source (reason). This is what separates Thomas' science from the strictly natural theology of others (Aristotle, for example). Our knowledge of God may be confined to what we can know of Him through His effects, but Thomas finds compensation for this: God gives us a special set of effects manifest in the Scriptures, and in the Articles of Faith. They are certain, in that they have been revealed to the Christian by God. This gives the theologian a great advantage over the strictly natural scientists. It allows him to infer certain principles which cannot otherwise be obtained by the scientist (such as that God is both three and one). These principles taken from the body of the divinely revealed texts are the highest principles available to man. They deal with the acts of the Christian in respect to the First Truth, God (II, 1, Al). Theology, which considers such acts which terminate in God, presides over all other sciences, which consider only natural acts. He who considers absolutely the highest cause of the whole universe, namely God, is most of all called wise. (I, l,A6) But what happens when we treat the Articles of Faith as objects of science? As canons of faith, they are primarily to be believed. In what sense do they invite our knowledge of them? To answer this, Aquinas makes the distinction between what we believe, and how we believe it. What we believe is a reality. We imagine the object of our belief to exist. Like every real object we perceive, it exists singularly. Existence is in the individual thing. But we are compelled to represent that belief as a proposition; just as when I say "this giraffe is an animal," as if there were two entities, when, in fact, there exists to my eyes only one. Consider the object of faith from its two perspectives. First,from the perspective of the reality believed in, and then the object of faith is something non-composite, i.e. the very reality about which one has faith. Second, from the perspective of the one believing, and then the object of faith is something composite in the form of a proposition. (II, 1, A2; emphasis added) The thing believed is simple (non-composite). The believer expresses his belief in a composite manner. He divides the thing believed into components of a proposition, as he is accustomed to do with objects. A proposition about a thing distinguishes between the thing and its essence: the predicate signifies a part of the essence of the subject. A proposition is composite. To make things clear to ourselves, we may distinguish between (1) the reality provided by the act of faith: "I believe in God eternal;" and (2) the proposition which signifies the reality: "God is eternal" (c.f. II, 1, A2, ob.2). The only way we get knowledge of a real thing put before us (1) is to predicate essential qualities of that thing (2). This necessary operation is the restriction occasioned by our own mode (modus proprius humani) of knowing (II, 1, A2). Thus, if the object of faith is to be considered by theology just as the real thing we sense is to be considered by science, then we need to understand the object of faith as we understand the things we sense - in the form of a predication. As an object of belief, the Article is self-evident. As an object of knowledge, the Article is not self-evident. With respect to the mode of the knower/believer, a principle is only self-evident if it is "seen," i.e. if it is inferred from perception (II, 1, AS). Now, the reality signified by the Articles of Faith is not seen by us only imagined. The principles derived from the Articles (such as, that God exists) are self-evident from the standpoint of that reality. But that is not a reality which we see. Clearly, then, no belief or opinion can have as object things seen, whether by sense or by intellect. (II, 1, A4) We only believe in it. The angels, who see higher things than us, may actually see that which we only take on faith ; c.f. II, 1, AS. Therefore, the divine principles revealed by the Articles of Faith are self-evident only from the perspective of the reality represented in our belief. In turn, any proposition found in the Articles is evident with respect to the divine principles obtained from the Articles. It follows that it (the proposition) is not evident with respect to the natural principles (or "seen" principles) which we obtain through experience. Therefore, in order that the proposition be of knowledge to us, it needs to be made clear, apodictically, in terms of principles which are evident to us through sense ("seen" principles). The task of the theologian, then, is not to demonstrate the Articles of Faith per se, but to make them clear to us in tenns of our natural knowledge of things. He shows that in principle, they do not contradict one another; for the principles revealed by the Articles of Faith will not fail the test oflogic. It is very important to understand that the Articles do not compromise themselves to science; they maintain their divine status. Man ... ought to believe matters of faith, not because of human reasoning, but because of divine authority . (II, 2, AlO) Each Article has a reality all its own, which is manifest in the act of belief. The act of belief is simple (non-composite). The process of knowledge is complex, because the believer is complex. The way the known exists in the knower corresponds to the way the knower knows ... the way of knowing truth proper to the human mind is by an act of combining and separating. For this reason the human mind knows in a composite way things that are themselves simple [i.e. non-composite]; this is quite the opposite of the divine mind, which in a non-composite manner knows things that are themselves composite. (II, 1, A2; emphasis added) Knowing involves "combining and separating." The intellect understands the Articles as (composite) propositions, just as the intellect understands the objects of sense as (composite) propositions. These propositions may be brought forth and verified by demonstration from logical principles. As has been mentioned earlier, concerning all t~ings, it should be understood that when we are talking about the thing as a real and particular being, and again, about that thing in its formal sense, as the object of science, we are not talking about two different things. Rather, we are talking about two different senses of the same thing. The formal thing has no separate existence apart from the particular being. It is abstracted from that being. As rational creatures, we must make predications concerning abstractions of the individual thing. This is in order to have actual knowledge of that thing which is "given" to us either sensibly, or supersensibly. As is clear from its language, the Creed expresses the things of not have a proposition as its term, but a reality, since, just as with scientific knowledge, so also with faith, the only reason for formulating a proposition is that we may have knowledge about the real. (II, 1, A2, r2) As has been stated, knowing is a process of combining and separating. And it is in this necessary operation that theology justifies itself. The Articles of Faith exist simply in the Christian attitude. But in order to bring them down into our domain of knowing, we consider each as it predicates something of God's essence. As the mediator between ourselves and the divine principles, theology secures its role as the highest of sciences. And, more importantly for Thomas, it insures the pre-eminence of revelation. Science does not tread on God's territory. Faith forms the body of Thomas' theology. Faith is a simple act, unquestioned. But this gift of belief makes it possible for the scientist who believes, as one would trust his senses, to know principles about God which the natural scientist could not discover on his own (such as that God is both three and one, c.f.I, 12, 13), and to formulate propositions from these principles concerning the complex points of faith. The topic of knowledge has to be discussed in more detail. It was said that the thing believed is non-composite. But it is expressed in terms of the believer, as a proposition which is composite: "God is eternal." A proposition can be demonstrated, and thereby it is known. Thus, God is believed in some respects, and known in others. In order to see more precisely what, according to Thomas, is our relationship with God, we have to ask, "What does it mean for a thing to become known?" "How do we know it?" We can only know things that are by nature composites of form and matter. When we sense, we sense that particular thing, which exists apart from all others. Now, a particular thing consists of a form which is individuated in matter. Form and matter make up the object that we sense. We take the step towards knowledge of that thing by abstracting from it its form . That is to say, we differentiate between the thing in particular, and its essence, or formal quality. We categorize it. The form makes it intelligible to us. To abstract from a thing is to "inform" ourselves of that thing, quite literally(c.f. I, 12, AIO). We replace its matter existing outside of us with "matter" in our minds. Hence, the thing becomes whole again in the mind - wholly composed of its abstracted form, and the "mental matter" we provide for it. Thus, "Each thing is known in so far as its likeness is in the one who knows" (I, 12, AIO). The thing becomes "reproduced," as it were, conceived of form and matter in the mind. A form on its own is not known or sensed by us. The mind is always housing it in matter of its own. As has been said above, form can never be "stripped" from the object itself. It always exists in conjunction with the thing particular to it. In short, we are able to know something because it (like ourselves) is composite of matter and form. faith as they are the term of the believer's act. Such an act does 6 7 �Our soul, as long as we live in this life, has its being in corporeal matter; hence naturally it knows only what has a form in matter, or what can be known by such a form. (I, 12, Al 1) Things which are not individuated in matter (non-composite things) are not suited to be informed in the mind. We do not have the capability to conceive them in our minds. Form is intelligible only in conjunction with matter. God is pure form, and contains no matter; so He is unsensible and unknowable by us. We depend on the compositness of a thing in order to know it. God is non-composite (I, 3, A2). We depend on differentiation between a thing and its essence. In God there is no such differentiation (I, 3, A3). He is the same as His essence. Hence, we cannot comprehend His pure form: "God cannot be seen in His essence by a mere human being, except he be separated from His mortal life" (I, 12, All). We cannot inform ourselves of Him; so no likeness of Him can exist in our minds. To know God, we would have to be Him. This is obviously impossible, since He is a purely transcendental being. Consequently, we only know of Him through sense experience, with the help of principles given by revelation. What do we know of Him? That He is simple, that He is eternal. The reason can know that a simple form is, even though it cannot attain to understanding what it is. (I, 12, 12, rl) But we can only express these qualities of Him "by way of temporal things, because our intellect has a natural proportion to composite and temporal things" (I, 13, 1, r.3). We know Him as everything natural and sensible is ordered to Him; as far as every natural event we perceive can be traced to Him as a permanent and unchanging Cause. How, then, is it possible to speak of Him as having changing relationships with creatures, or having conversations with them? "Moses asked 'If they should say to me, What is His name? What shall I say to them?' the Lord answered him, 'Thus shalt though say to them, HE WHO IS hath sent me to you"'(I, 13, All, from Exd. iii). How is it possible to say that He was speaking with Moses at one time, and not speaking with him at another, when, according to Thomas "God is above time" (I, 13, A7)? In general, how are we to reconcile the logical God of Aristotle with the God who appears in Scripture, as giving commands, or the God who handed down the Articles of Faith in written words? Can God dictate? We have, broadly speaking, answered this question. There are some things which we cannot, and were not meant to know concerning God and his mysteries. Our mode of knowing prevents us from passing beyond a certain point of comprehension. If we could know these mysteries, then faith would no longer be meritorious (I, 1, A8). The challenge for the theologian is to come up with some logical, or analogical explanation of our particular relationship with God. Thomas wants to "place" himself, and hence his new-found science in a proper relation to God. He has to try to give an account of this relationship with God in tenns that we can understand. 8 In Article seven of Question thirteen of the Summa Theolo gica, Thomas addresses this matter concerning our proper relationship with God. To follow his discussion, we must first make clear what a relationship is. Thomas gets his notions of relationship directly from Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book Delta, section 15. For Aristotle, it seems that a relationship is not something which subsists outside the things related. It exists in each of the terms. This will become clear as we go on. It must be understood for now that if we define a relationship between two things, then we say "x is related to y," and "y is related to x", not simply "x and y are related." We always consider a relationship from the point of view of its distinct components. Thomas proceeds to expound the different possibilities for a relationship based on what Aristotle has set up for him. The singular component of a relationship may have a relation to the other component (assuming still we have only two terms) which is only in thought, or it may be an actual "real" relation which inheres in the thing itself. Hence, there are three types of relationships which are possible, according to Thomas. The first is a strictly mental coupling of two terms, in which each has to one another a relation because of some trick of the intellect: such as identity - mentally reproducing one thing we can say "the same is the same as itself'; or extrapolation - such as the relation of a "thing" to "nothing," which involves mentally conceiving a negative term; or selection - whereby the intellect pictures a set and a subset, a genus and a species, etc. None of these relations are formed in reality, but only in thought. The second type is an actual "real" relation between two terms, because there is something common to both in reality. Quantity is given as an example as that which inheres in each of the objects themselves. The "being bigger than" and the "being smaller than" are "really" related to one another because they share the sensible property of magnitude. So with "being double" and "being half." The "being what is changed" and the "being what changes" are "really" related because they both share in a real causal action. This dichotomy between what is "real" and what is only an idea may seem to be an artificial and confusing distinction to some, but it really conforms to Thomas' notion that primary reality is in the thing sensed. Thinking refers to internal operations. The mind can think up relationships between things which do not inhere in nature and are outside of sense. The third possible relationship is the one Thomas is most interested in. It is the hardest to understand, because it relies on the clear distinction between "real" things and ideas. Thomas also discusses this relationship in his commentaries on the Metaphysics, which is the source of the notion as far as I can tell (c.f. Commentaries on the Metaphysics, V. L.17: c 1001-1032). I will try to point out the main tenets of this crucial relationship as Thomas explains it in Article 7, question 13 of the Summa. A relationship may occur in which one of the components has a real relation to the second; but the second does not have a real relation to the first. This is the case, Thomas says, with the "being knowable" and the "knowing." As we have explained, when something is known, a likeness of it is created in the mind; it itself remains outside the domain of knowing. Hence, the "being knowable" itself has no real relation to the knowing, but from the perspective of the "knowing," there is a real exchange taking place between it (the "knowing") and the "being knowable." The relation qualifies as "real" from the standpoint of the "knowing," because the "being known" is external to it. It is not merely a relation in thought, it is a genuine interaction. Hence, the knowing has a "real" relation to the knowable. To repeat: taking separately our two terms: From the perspective of the "knowing," there is areal relation between itand the "being knowable." From the perspective of the "being knowable," there is no real relation between it (the "being knowable") and the "knowing," but only in thought. So, when we think about something, or when we sense something, the relationship betWeen us and the thing can change. But the thing does not change in itself, as a result of our thinking . it, or sensing it. It only changes from our perspective, with respect to our change. As we move and change, we have a real relation with the external object. As the object neither moves nor changes in reaction to our change, it has no relation with us at all. The pillar, standing still, is at one time "on the right" because of my relation to it. Then I turn around, and it is "on the left." This is due to no change in the pillar. The situation applies analogically to the relationship between God and temporal creatures. God, unchanging, is at one time "speaking with Moses," we say, because Moses is being spoken to; then Moses is not being spoken to - so we say God is not speaking to him. There has been no "real" change in God, as we well know - only in Moses. God's temporal relations to creatures are in him only because of our way of thinking of him, but the opposite relations of creatures to him are realities in the creatures. It is quite admissible to attribute a relation to God because of something that takes place in the creature, for we cannot express the reality in creatures without talking as though there were matching relations also in God, so that God is said to be related to a creature because the creature is related to him, just as, according to Aristotle, the knowable is said to be related to knowledge because knowledge is related to it. (I, 1, 13, r4) knowing Him. Yet from our standpoint, we have a relation to Him sine qua non, as created beings, as recipients of salvation, as lorded beings, as beings who are moved. And from our standpoint, His relation as Creator, Savior, Lord, Mover, is real. It is the relationship of lordship in him that is supplied by our minds, not the fact of His being Lord. (I, 1, 13, r5) Hence, he "really" is the Creator, Savior, Law-giver, and Mover, as we are all ordered in respect to Him; also though, He really is the unmoved transcendent God, who is ordered only in respect to Himself. Out of Thomas' rational account of the relation between creatures and God, God emerges startlingly as both impersonal, and personal, as unmoved, and mover, God of philosophy, and God of the Scriptures. The two-faced God that Thomas set out to reconcile has turned-out to be none other than Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. Thomas' argument in defense of the active God of the Scriptures is drawn directly from Aristotle's formal discussion of relations in book delta of the Metaphysics (ch. 15). This gives it incredible weight. Using the Aristotelian assumptions of how a thing is known, Thomas manages to justify (analogically) his relationship with the Christian God. Of course, due to our knowledgeable limitations, it is impossible for Thomas to provide an explanation in logical terms of how the transcendental God speaks to us - that would imply the contradiction of knowing God's essence. Itis just the nature of God to transcend such logic. This has been Thomas' assumption all along. If God were not what He is (absolutely unknowable), theology could not subsist as Thomas wants it. However, if we accept Thomas' analogical argument, based on Aristotle's naturally-founded assumptions, then we have thoughtfully reconciled the problem of the two notions of God - the one which falls under the Aristotelian epistemology, and the one which falls under the Christian dogma. Which is what we have set out to show. The reasons which are brought forward in support of the authority of faith are not demonstrations which can bring intellectual vision to the human intellect; and so the unseen is not removed. But they remove obstacles to faith, by showing that what faith proposes is not impossible; and hence such reasons do not diminish the merit or the measure of faith. (II, 2, AlO, rep.2) The only real relations which exist in God are those that are predicated of Him eternally, insofar as He exists outside the domain of sense and knowledge. As He is portrayed as having anything to do with creatures in the temporal world, there is no relation in Him to us. We "import" this relation, because it is impossible for us to conceive of having a real relation with something which has no relation to us. He exists independent of us, just as the "being known" exists outside of knowledge. To recount our analogy: from the standpoint of the "knowing," knowledge does not exist apart from the "being known." From the standpoint of the "being known," it (the "being known") does exist apart from knowledge. So, from the standpoint of God, who exists absolutely outside our knowledge, He has absolutely no relation to us, not even in our sensing and 9 �The Divergence of Acute Angles: A Proof in Absolute Geometry Bryan Dorland I suppose we all went through the same test in our first semester at St. John's. "Can you independently prove Euclid's fifth postulate?" asked our devious tutor, all the while knowing full well that the task is impossible from within merely plane geometry. Euclid was not being coy when he "asked" ('Ht't~aeco let it have been asked) for the fifth. He seems wiser, in retrospect, than that legion of geometers which followed him who thought it necessary to prove the fifth. Lobachevski reveals why this is so. The positive form of the postulate is logically simultaneous, not posterior, to plane geometry. Lobachevski's Theorem 22 represents the resolution to the problem of parallelism as a decision the geometer must make. The geometrical road has come to a fork. Either the angle of parallelism 1 is rt/2, or it is less. If we take the former path, we will arrive at the plane geometry of the Elements, and if we choose the latter, we will enter the realm of the imaginary. Euclid has truly "asked" us to journey with him by granting him the positive form of the Fifth Postulate. Similarly, we grant the specific negative form (i.e. the angle of parallelism is less than rt/2) to Lobachevski, and we leave the well traveled path to follow him. We are not forced to make this choice at the outset of the journey. We may choose to linger on that stretch of road which leads up to the fork. Here, every property we discover must prove true later, regardless of where we go, for the discoveries here must not make any assumptions regarding parallelism. This region has a name - it is the realm of absolute geometry. Any geometrical property we discover should fall into one of three categories. It should either be true in plane geometry and false in imaginary, false in plane and true in imaginary, or true in both. A property in either of the first two categories should involve specific assumptions about the angle of parallelism, while one from the third should be free from such strictures. This is to say that a geometrical property true for both systems must properly belong to absolute geometry. Or should it? The problem of the limitless divergence of acute angles presents itself to us as paradigm. In a Euclidean formulation (vid. fig. 1), the problem is sufficiently self-evident as to not require a proposition. If I call BC the distance between lines BA and AC (which form some acute angle at A), it is clear that I may increase this distance beyond any limit. Extend AB to AB', drop the perpendicular to C' on AC extended, and B 'C' will be in the same ratio to BC as AB' is to AB. Because I can construct increasingly larger, yet similar triangles , I may exceed any limit for B'C' by sufficient augmentation of AB'. This demonstration relies on specific properties of triangles whose lineage may be traced to the angle of parallelism. These properties are not present in imaginary geometry, and we know from Lobachevski 's 23rd Theorem that Euclid's similar triangle construction is specific to plane geometry. The "Non-Euclidean Geometry" manual we use in the ~enior year presents a proof for the boundless divergence which is specific to imaginary geometry. We have a problem: the divergence seems to be a property in both systems, while at the same time being specific to both. Is this possible? Are there some properties which are not absolute, but true in both systems? 2 If the unbounded divergence of the sides of an acute angle can be shown without recourse to parallelism, then it is a property of absolute geometry. This is what I shall show. Proposition: The sides of an acute angle diverge without limit. d' >1.D 2 C'E=D B'F= B'E c Fig.1 C' If in the quadrilateral ABCD, the angles at A, B, and Care right, then the side DC must equal or exceed the side AB. 1. Here I use Lobachevski' s formulation. By the angle of parallelism, I mean the angle a formed with a first line when a transverse cuts a second line with aright angle~. i.e.: 2. The system of absolute geometry is posited as comprehending two subsystems - euclidean and non-euclidean. Now if a property can be found which is proper to both subsystems yet not to the system itself, then the existence of more subsystems, for which the property does not hold, is implied. But in his Theorem 19, Lobachevski argues that there are only the two subsystems. Hence the problem. 3. This means properties which can be established without recourse to the angle of parallelism. Examples of such properties are propositons 1 through 28 of the "Elements", and Lobachevski's Theorems 1 through 22. 4. I can say by Euclid I.26 that if D is a boundary, it must be a member of the class of distances which d can never attain. In other words, D cannot be the greatest distance for d, but must always exceed d. Therefore to solve the reductio, I need only show that d can equal D. 5. In a systematic treatment of absolute geometry, the lemma would take the form of a proposition and would appear prior to the acute angle proposition. It is included here as a lemma because it is necessary to the main proof. B' a B G F Fig.3 d A c d" d' C' D J Fig.2 A Lemma5 quadrilateral ABCD, the sum of the angles exceeds 2rt, or four right angles, which is impossible. [This follows from Lobachevski Theorm 19.] Therefore the side CD can not fall short of AB. H E B' B distance which distanced will neither meet nor exceed. 4 Extend AB to B' such that the perpendicular B 'C', or d', is greater than 1/2 D. Extend C'B' to point E so that C'E equals D. Cut off on B 'C' some length B 'F equal to B'E. Erect from point F some line FG perpendicular to EC' at F. FG will fall on AB' at some point other than either of the vertices [Lobachevski Theorem 4]. From point E, erect some line EH equal to FG and perpendicular to EC'. Connect B' to H with a straight line. By construction, lines FB' and FG equal lines B'E and EH respectively. The angles at E and Fare both right. Therefore triangle B 'EH is congruent to triangle B 'FG and angle a equals angle ~- Therefore line AB' lies evenly with line B'H, so AH must be line AB' extended to H [Euclid I .13]. From H, drop some line HJ perpendicular to AC. The angle EID can not exceed the angle at E [Lobachevski Theorem 19], therefore EC' can not exceed HJ [vid. lemma]. Distance HJ is d' '. Thus some d'' has been found which is either equal to or greater than the limit D, which was supposed impossible. Therefore there is no limit to the divergence of the lines which constitute an acute angle. Given line AB meets line AC at some acute angle, it is necessary to prove that the distance between the two lines grows without bounds according to the precepts of absolute geometry. 3 From some point B on AB let fall a perpendicular to AC [Euclid 1.12]. This distance shall be called d. Let there be some other distance D which bounds the divergence, i.e. D is the least If not, let DC be less than AB. Extend CD to CD' such that CD' equals AB. Draw straight lines AC, BD'. CD' was constructed equal to AB, the right angle at B equals the right angle at C and BC is common. Therefore triangle ABC is congruent to triangle D'CB and AC equals BD' [Lobachevski Theorem 10]. Draw the common line AD '. Therefore triangle BAD' is congruent to triangle CD' A [ibid.], and angle BAD' equals angle AD'C. Angle D'AB is greater than rt/2, so AD'C must also be greater. But angle ADC is greater than AD'C [Euclid 1.16], so angle ADC must be much greater than rt/2. Therefore in the 10 11 �Rex to Wretch: Transformation and Riddle in Oedipus Tyrannos Zena Hitz 1H0o<; au0pro1tro Oatµoru. -Heraclitus,frg.1211 Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannos is a play fundamentally composed of opposites and motions between them. The principal motion, of course, is the transformation of Oedipus from king to wretched old man, but contained within that are many more: sight becomes blindness, ignorance becomes knowledge, hubris becomes humility, master becomes suppliant, foreigner becomes native. The play consists of a series of scenes in which Oedipus is set up against people of varying positions and objectives, and through dialogue the character underlying these transfonnations is gradually and subtly drawn out. The play also involves a series of riddles that are like nested boxes, beginning with the solving of the Sphinx's riddle, ending with the solving of Oedipus' riddle, and leaving us, circularly, with the first one again: the riddle of the nature of man. Is man recmsive; do all of his actions eventually fall back on himself? Is he merely bronze for the sculpting hands of the gods? Is he a victim of a world of blind chance, his will meaningless? This paper will analyze the transformations and reversals within the play to try to get at their meaning in the context of these questions. The most external change that occurs in Oedipus is his loss of sight. He calls out as he strikes out his eyes with Jocasta's brooches: "They [his eyes] will never see the crime I have committed or had done upon me! Dark eyes, now in the days to come look on forbidden faces, do not recognize those who you long for!" (1271)2. He seems to be avoiding the horror of the visual recognition of his crimes (namely, his children) - a futile task, since mental recognition is quite enough to send him raving in disgust. The relation between vision and knowledge is taken to its full metaphorical extent in the dialogue between Teiresias and Oedipus. That scene involves a complex interplay of physical vision, that is, the vision for which one uses one's eyes, and supernatural vision, with which one derives information beyond normal human perception. Teiresias, physically blind, proclaims that he sees the truth, that he knows the answer to the riddle of the ,plague. Oedipus, eyes in full working order, denies that answer, opposing his own riddle-solving powers as demonstrated by his conquest of the Sphinx to those of Teiresias: "I solved the riddle by my wit alone. Mine was no knowledge got from birds" (398). He repeatedly tries to discredit Teiresias' vision, asking first why he could not answer the Sphinx's riddle and, after the prophet leaves, why, if his accusation is correct, he did not speak sooner. Teiresias answers neither of these ques1translated "A man's character is his daemon." Untitled Greg Francke 12 2Unless otherwise marked, all translations are by David Grene, University of Chicago Press, 1954. tions, but merely spouts more riddles: ''This day will show your birth and will destroy you" (438), and "You have your eyes but see not where you are" (413). Although to the reader familiar with the myth the meaning of these riddles is painfully obvious, to Oedipus they are bewildering: "How needlessly your riddles darken everything" (439). This line shows a particularly interesting reversal: Teiresias, who offers the first answer to theriddle of the plague, instead of shedding light on the question so that Oedipus can see for himself what the answer is, rather darkens it, answering riddle with riddle. It may seem as if Oedipus is stupid for not seeing the truth; however, Teiresias never once states that Oedipus either married his mother or killed his father, let alone showing a circumstance in which that could have occurred, but only says that he killed Laius after Oedipus demands that he clarify his first answer. Even then the answer is cryptic: "You are the murderer of the man whose murderer you seek" (363). By the end of the scene, Oedipus is not only clearly blind to his origin, but blind to his blindness as well. Rather than being convinced of his own guilt, he is convinced of the guilt of someone else. This discrepancy between what he should know and what he does not is a principle irony of the play. It is a reversal explicitly connected with sight: at the end of the play, when he sees the truth of where he is, he blinds himself, crying out that he wishes to avoid his crimes but actually confronting and answering his own previous blindness to them. The reversal of sight and knowledge is also demonstrated when Creon presents the riddle of Laius' murder to Oedipus at the beginning of the play. Oedipus responds to the name, although Creon has posed no question, with "I know of him by hearsay. I have not seen him" (105). In his attempts to solve the murder, he first inquires of an oracle, then a seer, then eyewitnesses. All the information he receives, however, is hearsay, sometimes two or three people removed from the actual source. Once again, the proper roles are reversed: Oedipus himself, he who has seen, learns of the event from people who have not seen. Oedipus and those around him, however, have no reason to trust Teiresias' judgement over that of Oedipus. Teiresias is the man who could not solve the riddle of the Sphinx, a blind man who speaks in riddles. Oedipus, on the other hand, is the great riddle-solver with functioning eyes and a keen wit. Because the reader is acquainted with the story, he believes Teiresias and laughs at Oedipus' foolishness. The person in events offstage, however, has neither true prophet nor any other way of discerning what is to come. The second major transformation of Oedipus is that of parentage and place. This issue begins in the title with the word 'tUpmmoc;. The word means "master" or "ruler," but it specifies a ruler without traditional political legitimacy, one who did not receive the crown by parentage, but by some other means. This is clearly true of Oedipus at the beginning of the play. He is king 13 ��by wit and riddle-solving ability; indeed, he is a foreigner. As he learns the truth of his parentage, it becomes clear that he is not only a native of Thebes but a legitimate heir, a Kpetcou (king). However, at the same time that he learns this, he learns that he is a moral atrocity, and thus sentences himself to exile, to be a foreigner without title, and Creon (Kperou) becomes king, due not to direct lineage but as the brother to the queen. Oedipus' sons are not mentioned, indicating that Oedipus' transformation back into foreigner at the end is complete. Just prior to his final realization, though, comes word from Corinth that he will be king there. Oedipus thinks at the time that this is a position acquired by birth; in fact, it is a position acquired by association and perhaps character, similar to his rise to power in Thebes. Oddly enough, it is this second rise to power that is the key to his downfall: the same messenger tells him that Polybus and Merope are not his parents. So what should be a confirmation of heritage, an inheritance of a throne, is in fact a double dethroning. Thus Oedipus lives another contradiction: he is a "tyrant" both at the beginning and the end of the play, although he is also legitimate heir throughout. We see the importance of parentage and lineage to personal identities for Greeks in the Iliad, when each person is considered not only the sum of his achievements, but of the achievements of his forefathers. Indeed, to the heroes of the Iliad, the names of one's forefathers serve as inspiration to overcome fear of death, as reasons for preferential treatment by the gods, and in general, indications of honor and character. Thus far Oedipus has four parents: two biological and two adopted. But by proclaiming himself a "child of fortune (1tUXTJ)" ( 1080), Oedipus offers us another way to understand his parentage. Aristotle describes fortune as an "accidental cause of things done according to choice andfor the sake of something" (Physics 197a), a sort of displacement of final cause. This describes Oedipus' actions and their results: Jocasta gives away the child for the sake of its death; the child lives. Oedipus runs away from Corinth to avoid a prophecy; he runs straight into it. He marries the queen of Thebes for the sake of power and greatness; he instead marries into moral atrocity. In requesting Oedipus' help at the beginning of the play, the priest describes him as having brought fortune with him to Thebes, telling him to "be now no less in fortune" (53) 3. However, this is an unsatisfying answer not only because it is thematically empty, but because it does not 3Along with fortune, the gods are sometimes used to explain the discrepancy between Oedipus' intention and his actual deeds; however, unlike in the plays of Aeschylus and Euripides, the gods never make a physical appearance in the play. They are frequently referred to as those to whom men are suppliant and as revealers of information beyond human knowledge. The gods in this way are extremely important they reveal the limitations of man and his thought and perception. However, it seems that they lack the role of definite agent. They do not chase characters with whips, or set up courts of judgement as in the Oresteia. They do not vow punishment on stage as in the Hippolytus. They are seen solely through the filter of human perception and action. They are always off-stage. 14 account for Oedipus' character as determining the choices he makes, which fortune may displace. He solves the riddle of the Sphinx, as he says, by his "wit alone." Although the priest says he did so by fortune, this seems an implausible way to solve a riddle. Solving a riddle requires thought and perhaps intuition, but fortune seems to be something outside of these, something beyond the power of human choice and skill. The priest also says Oedipus solved theriddle "in virtue of no knowledge we could give you, in virtue of no teaching" (38), which implies that either it came by "some god" or from within Oedipus himself. Sim~larly, he kills a man, out of the same irrational temper we see displayed in his encounters with Teiresias and Creon. He discovers his origin due to his own thirst for knowledge and blindness to the warnings around him. Considering Oedipus' character as a cause also involves understanding him as a parent. This is shown in the fact that he not only destroys his lineage through his father, but that he marries his mother, essentially replacing that lineage with him- , self. He is husband to his mother, brother to his daughters, and therefore father to himself. He is thus the ultimate self-made man, the character without bonds of lineage or history. The chorus expresses this, saying "Cithaeron was mother and nurse to you" (1094). It is as though Oedipus springs fully grown from the earth, like the men sprung from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus to found Thebes. However, it is his lineage, indeed the fact that he was generated, that is his destruction. His discovery of his parentage is at the heart of the play. This brings with it the knowledge that the he is the murderer he seeks, that he is the plague on the city. Thus he proclaims at the end," the hand that struck me was none but my own" (1331 ). Even those actions and events attributed to fortune throw Oedipus back on himself. The shepherd sends Oedipus to Corinth to rub away his lineage; he ends up returning to it and tangling himself within it. Oedipus runs away from the prophecy of who he is and what he will do, and heads straight - not to Nicaea or Megara or Athens - but to his home town. He kills a man at a crossroads; it is his father, and thus he replaces his lineage with himself. He marries the queen of Thebes; he does not know that it is his mother, but he yet again throws himself back on himself, like a stone tossed upward, only to return with multiplied velocity. Oedipus' transformation over the course of the play replicates the same pattern of the return to the self. He begins a search for the murderer of Laius as "one who is stranger to the story as stranger to the deed" (220), an outside investigator, aware only of his ignorance. His search for' a solution to the plague progresses into a search for parentage and thus self-knowledge through his dialogues, first with the priest: "why the plague?"; next Creon: "who killed Laius?"; then Teiresias: "what is going on?"; and finally and fatally with the messenger and the shepherd: "who are my parents?" The truth that he discovers is no longer the answer to any one of these questions, but an answer to all of them: the answer to a simple "who am I?" Thus, although he begins the play investigating something seemingly foreign, he ends completely inside himself, all-knowing, all-responsible. "To this guilt I bore witness against myself..." (1384), he proclaims, and therefore testifies against himself, judges himself, and punishes himself. He blinds himself, cutting himself off from outside stimuli, and making himself so gruesome none can look at him. ("I shudder at the sight of you!" [Chorus, 1306]) He is recursive, he is isolated, he is wretched. All tools and events in the play - his blindness, the discrepancy between intention and recursive result, and all transformations, yield Oedipus himself, Oedipus the man, and thus man himself. The riddles thus come full circle: 1) The riddle of the Sphinx (what is man?) 2) The riddle of the plague (what is being done wrong?) 3) The riddle of the murder (who killed Laius?) 4) The riddle of parentage (who is Oedipus?) 5) The riddle of Oedipus (what is man?) Oedipus is then the great riddle-solver both as supplier of answers and as answer himself. Similarly, Oedipus underlies the contradictions and motions between opposites in the play - sight to blindness, ignorance to knowledge, hubris to humility, master to suppliant, foreigner to native. He is both seeing and blind to himself, both ignorant and all-knowing, both close to god and near to beast, both in control and completely powerless, both legitimate heir and tyrant. These extremes cancel to yield simply Oedipus the man. For example, consider the opposites previously discussed of Oedipus' birth and Oedipus' position at the beginning of the play: KPE"QN 'OIAI"TIOYL What, then, is the nature of Oedipus? What is it that remains constant? The most literal answer is his name. oiot7tOU~ is composed of two words: 01.ocro, to swell, and 7tOU~, meaning foot. Forms of oioeco can also be used metaphorically to mean 'of inflated style.' It is also related etymologically to tumors and diseases e.g. ot&i,µa, swelling or tumor. He is the infant left on the hill to die with his feet bound, the disease of the city, and he is also the one who truly "knows" as in "o1Ba ",the perfect of eioeco, to see. The term 'swollen' or 'of inflated style' is a way of speaking of something inflated, something out of shape, and perhaps of a sense of transience, since the swelling will go down. Oedipus' rise to power is such a swelling. Oedipus is he whose feet were bound; the secret of his birth is contained in his name and yet o!oa, he knows and has seen, he is the city's disease and its cure, he is swollen with greatness and yet he is wretched. He in some way contains king and wretch, heir and tyrant, master and suppliant. However, there must still be an underlying material that undergoes these transformations. This material, then, is that which constitutes Oedipus' character and physical form. As man, he is neither of foreign nor noble birth, but he is born. He can see physically but has neither eyes for the future nor eyes to look inside himself. Many raised and conditioned him, but he is ultimately descended from no one except himself. He seeks mastery but much is beyond his control. He seeks knowledge but much eludes his grasp. He does everything in his power to be moral and good: to save the city from the plague, find a murderer, keep himself from killing his father and marrying his mother. The three major character traits that underly these actions are a thirst for knowledge not easily quenched, a desire to do what is good, and a fierce temper. It is his thirst for knowledge that leads him to ask his parents who he is after a drunk calls him a bastard, to ask the oracle when the answer is unsatisfactory, to try to answer the riddle of the Sphinx, to solve the murder of Laius, and to discover his parentage, despite multiple warnings as to its result. It is his desire to do what is good that leads him to leave the city where he was raised, to avoid killing his father and marrying his mother, and it is that desire which motivates him to decipher the cause of Thebes' plague. It is evident from the way the town and priest beg him to solve this problem that he is under no obligation to do so but does it only out of concern for the city. It is his temper which flares when he is pushed out of the road by King Laius, and thus he kills him and his entire company. When Teiresias pushes him out of the riddle-solving him of road, so to speak, his temper flares again and he accuses_ conspiracy. "Perhaps it was a sudden gust of anger that forced the insult from him, and no judgement" (Chorus, 523). These are the very characteristics which define man. His lack of foreknowledge in making his choices reflects that of all men. Although in the play the audience has the blueprint of what will happen, Oedipus does not, and neither do we in everyday life. Indeed, Oedipus' characteristics are similar to the three parts of the soul presented in Plato's Republic: the contemplative and rational part, the part concerned with honor and duty, and that ruled by the passions. Oedipus passes through all stages and extremes in which people find themselves, thus demonstrating that all of those extremes - king, wretch, master, suppliant, etc., flow from man, and are not imposed from the outside. The tragedy of the play, then, is that which all mankind experiences, much more tragic in its universality than it could be specifically: the tragedy of the impossibility of foreknowledge of events, and the tragedy of all knowledge, all mastery, and all greatness being inescapably transient, likely in the space of a day to collapse into its opposite. Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy southwind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him; and Earth, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied, does he wear, turning the soil with the offspring of horses, as the ploughs go to and fro from year to year. And the light-headed race of birds, and the tribes of savage beasts, and the sea-brood of the suiface, he snares in the meshes of his woven toils, he leads captive, man excellent in wit. And he 15 �masters by his arts the beast whose lair is in the wild, who roams the hills; he tames the horse of the shaggy mane, he puts the yoke upon its neck, he tames the tireless mountain bull. And speech, and wind-swift thought, and all the moods (6P'YtlJ that mould a state, has he taught himself; and how to flee the arrows of the frost, when 'tis hard lodging under the clear sky, and the arrows of the rushing rain; he has resource for all; without resource he meets nothing that must come: only Death can he not flee from; but from sicknesses without cure he has devised escapes. Cunning beyond fancy' s dream is the fertile skill which brings him, now to evil, now to good. When he weaves the laws of the land to that justice which he has sworn by the gods to uphold, he is high in the city: no city has he who.for his rashness, dwells with sin. Never may he share my hearth, never think my thoughts, who does these things! - Chorus, Antigone, 332-372 Slightly modified from the translation of Sir Richard Jebb. Nick Greg Francke 16 17 �The Day of Picking Melissa Bond I was ten years old the day we picked the com. My brother and I had been waiting for it all summer. Going out each afternoon, behind the rusted chicken house and up the small muddy path to our beloved garden, we would wonder if it was time. I could never tell if the corn was tall enough. Dad always said it had to be just a sprinkle above my head, whatever that meant. I would ask Kenyon if it was a sprinkle yet, but he would just squinch his face, raise his eyebrows for a minute and then return to catching the Japanese beetles that he always fed to the fish. It was a Sunday in late July when the day of picking came. Kenyon and I were pretending we were dead when Dad came in to get us out of bed. "Ready-Up!", he shouted dancing around the room. He was humming to himself and had a half-lit, fivepenny cigar sticking out of his mouth. "Hmmmm-uhhhhhmmm-hmmm." His hands glided through the air, tracing wind currents back and forth, back and forth. "Hmmm-uhhh-hmmmhmmm." Kenyon and I began to giggle. Dad leapt over the small footstool I used to reach the bookcase, and farted exquisitely upon landing. "My dearest, loveliest children," he began, ''Today is a day of infinite grandeur. The air is stilled to perfection, the sun has warmed the back of the earth and all is toasty and content." I looked at Kenyon who was smiling and blinking his eyes at the flurry of our father's arms. Kenyon's head inclined slightly toward me as he rolled his eyes. Dad was given to making speeches. " ... the grasshoppers make lazy love sounds, the honey is sweet and the magnolia's smile. My dear, beloved children, today the corn is sprinkle high. Today is the day of picking." Kenyon and I jumped up on our beds and began running in place. "Wooo-woooo-woooo," Kenyon yelled. "Wooo-wooowooo." With a great exhalation, our father stopped us. "First," he said with all seriousness, "breakfast." Kenyon and I yelped. Dad clomped off toward the kitchen, cigar clenched firmly between his lips. The day of picking had begun. Breakfast consisted of sourcream poundcake, buckwheat pancakes with real maple syrup, fresh strawberries from the garden, and big glasses of Tang. Dad was waiting at the table when Kenyon and I began to heap food on our plates. As I reached for the strawberries, dad grabbed my wrist. "Homage to all grasshoppers, the sky and every silk thread we find." he said gently into my eyes. "Understand?" I nodded my assent. He let go of my hand slowly, becoming distracted by the maple syrup. Kenyon's amber eyes looked into mine. "Pass the strawberries," he mouthed. The following six hours Dad, Kenyon, and I spent Hauling manure water. Kenyon and I were given three foot yellow plastic shields to drape over our bodies for protection as we hauled five gallon pails of water and horse shit from Clay Odom's house to the garden. "We must replenish before we consumeth," said Dad, slopping a big turd around his zucchini plant. "We must replenish before we consumeth," Kenyon and I 18 echoed, trying to splash each other. Each haul took several hours as Clay Odom lived a little over three miles away. The three of us walked to Clay's house swinging our buckets. Kenyon and I then waited for Dad to finish the cigars he smoked with Clay on all days of picking. They shared two cigars, passing them back and forth and commenting on the quality of corn that season. "Got Silver Queen this year." Dad said scratching his ear. "Swee test damn com you ever put in your mouth." "Yup," Clay answered, sucking his grey teeth, "I ain't never got it off the stalk fast enough though. You got to get it off the stalk while it's still green, while it's still alive if you want that sweet honey taste." "Yup," Dad said. He stood up, extinguishing his cigar. "I think it's about that time." Kenyon and I picked up our buckets, waved goodbye to Clay, and followed our father's intent body up the road. After thorough scrubbings, Dad gathered Kenyon and I in the kitchen. It was about four o'clock and the afternoon heat had dissipated into a slow, contented warmth. Dad was pulling all the pots from the cupboards and examining them. He pulled each one out, holding it away from himself for inspection. After inspection he would gingerly place it back in the cupboard, pulling out the next one for examination. He finally decided on an old chili pot Clay had given him at a Bar-B-Q three years before. The pot held five gallons, was made of stainless steel and had huge handles on each side. "Yes. Good. Good." Dad whispered turning it. He filled the pot with water and set it on the stove to boil. Kenyon's foot was wagging back and forth as he stared at the garden. Dad put a stool in front of us and sat down. He ran his hands through his dark hair and then clasped them together, grinning at us. "My most beloved children," he began. "Today is the day of picking, it is a day of honor. We must honor... ". He trailed off, his eyes locating a butterfly outside. The air was quiet, only the sun and our breath beating through the silence. He began again, "Fivecobbseach. Only five. Don'tpick them until I tell you to. Once you have picked them, run as fast as you can to the kitchen. Shuck them and throw them into the water. You want them to be alive when you put them in. They have to have life to get that sweet honey taste. Okay?" "Okay," Kenyon and I whispered, vibrating. The water began to boil. Dad, Kenyon, and I walked to the garden with deliberate slowness. "You don't want to cleave the air too fast on a day like this," Dad said "it makes for bad pickin' ." we arrived at the garden. The stalks were golden with feathery blooms for heads. The sun made slats through the rows, taking its place with all fairness. Nothing pushed too fast here. Kenyon and I began to walk slowly, caressing the dark green and the light. "Homage to all grasshoppers, the sky, and every silk thread." I thought. We took our time, cleaving the air slowly, finding the com we thought would be the biggest and sweetest. "Has everybody found their corn?" Dad yelled from somewhere to my right. "Yes!" I yelled. "Yup!" Kenyon yelled. Okay," Dad said, "on the count of three, I want everyone to pick, shuck, and boil! Ready! One! Two! Three!" Kenyon and I screamed. I rushed to each of my beloved com cobbs and picked them with all the delicacy I could muster before rushing to the next. At the fifth one I ran down to the house, my lungs screaming in my chest more from laughter than from exertion. Dad was shucking like a madman and throwing the naked cobbs to Kenyon who dropped them into the boiling water. I joined the shucking and within minutes all fifteen cobbs were rolling around in sweet, aquatic, Clay Odom's chili pot bliss. Dad smiled and nudged me, "Did you hear them sigh as they went in?" he asked. "I think we got them alive. I believe we are going to have us some Silver Queen com shooting sweet honey straight down our throats." We set the table with three plates and one big bowl of fresh butter. We didn't even use knives, we just jabbed those com cobbs straight in and let the honey mix with the butter until it was just right. It was sweeter than honey when that sigh shot straight down my throat. Dad said, butter glistening on his beard, that the magnolias must be smiling. 19 �From Ambiguity to Epiphany: A Clairvoyant Reading of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" Ange E. Mlinko Introduction A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they had not much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched; and since they had no root they withered away. Other seeds fell upon thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear. (Mat. 13:3-9) Jes us told this parable by the seaside. He speaks here of his own mission to convert, but the parable might apply to all storytellers, whose words fall likewise on shallow and fertile imaginations. Stories aim to teach, but their subject- the mystery of life - defies simple or literal language. Instead the language of parable or poem circles around its subject, approaching the vortex with circumspection. This is not, however, our usual method of acquiring knowledge about the nature of things. We think of communication and inquiry as arrows with a target: information. The following passage by a seventeenth-century theologian exemplifies this: I can easily believe that there are more invisible than visible beings in the universe. But of their families, degrees, connections, distinctions, and functions, who shall tell us? How do they act? Where are they found? About such matters the human mind has always circled without attaining knowledge. - T. Burnet These exact questions of category belong to the natural philosopher. Yet man's most "natural" approach fails when applied to spiritual inquiry. It is ironic then that this passage begiris the long epigraph of Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," a parable about a man who goes off in search of the unknown, violates its mystery with his blundering arrow, and undergoes an astonishing penance: initiation into life-indeath, the prophet's condition. To become prophetic one must attain clairvoyance, the ability to apprehend the invisible. For one who wishes to know at all costs no suffering is too great. The Mariner is doomed to wander the land, exiled from spiritual and human society, sowing his tales among other chosen men and thereby sundering those men from human society. Similarly, we the readers of ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" must attain some degree of clairvoyance in order to "see" what the poem means, but does not say. Our minds, drawn to its beauty and then to its mystery, circle around its ambiguities until we experience the same epiphanies the Mariner experiences. The epiphanies are three: seeing in the dark, hearing the invisible, 20 and feeling the wind of welcoming, the creative breeze. It is my hope in this essay to chart the progress from the "circling" mind to the "clairvoyant" mind first in the Mariner, then in the poem's reader. And I hope throughout to impart the sense of danger that permeates the quest for knowledge lying beyond the realm of natural philosophy. II - The Circling Mind and the Mortal Eye The Mariner thwarts the Guest's purposeful passage the way the elements thwart the purpose of his ship. His first lines express the initial excitement of the mind venturing forth into regions unknown: The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the light-house top. Below, below, below; the ship sails off with ease, as the word "drop" indicates. Yet the very next stanza counterpoints downward motion with upward motion, straight line with circle: I -The Wedding on the Periphery Outside the frame of the Mariner's story is a second story wherein will lie the real moral. The Mariner must tell his parable to someone, like the sower tossing his seed. He diverts "one of three" from the doors of a wedding feast, and that man, the Wedding-Guest, must hear him. But he must conquer the will of his victim, first with a "glittering eye" and then with bewitching words. The Mariner brings the sea into the Wedding-Guest's ken with his very person: "glittering eye" and "long grey beard" suggest the hypnotic moon, and the stretch of ocean beneath it. And when the Wedding Guest cries, "And thou art long, and lank, and brownj As is the ribbed sea-sand," we think of something washed over and over by a motion as inexorable as the tide. Indeed, the Mariner later reveals: Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns: And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns. Over and over he experiences that eroding fever. The Mariner's voice and features bring the natural elements into a wedding feast. Marriage is the cornerstone ritual of society, which is itself man's greatest bulwark against the elements. And as the Wedding-Guest puts it: The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin. This next-of-kin enjoys the protection societies and marriages give to individuals. With protection comes cheerful ignorance. The Mariner, by not allowing the Wedding-Guest passage across the threshold, breaks the spell that sheltered ignorance holds over his heart. The Wedding-Guest "beat his breast" at the sound of music and laughter coming through the doors. He and the Mariner must remain outside the human domain, as must the knowledge they come to share. mind's eye confuses its nature; he circles, like the mind in the epigraph looking for "families, degrees, connections, distinctions, and functions." As the Mariner builds his stanzas toward the revelation that he killed the bird, the pace heightens. But at the crucial moment when he might have given away his motive, the Wedding-Guest preempts two and a half lines to cry, God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plague thee thus! Why look' st thou so? Whatever the Mariner might have said is lost in the drama of cry crashing on cry: "With my crossbow/ I shot the Albatross!" What caused the Wedding-Guest to cry out just then? The stanza prior to it goes: The Sun came up upon the left, Out of the sea came he; And he shone bright, and on the right Went down into the sea. Instead of saying "we headed south," the Mariner incorporates the rolling motion of the orbit in his words. "We headed south" conveys purposeful ease, which Nature will subvert. So as soon as the ship goes beyond "the line," or equator, it can no longer navigate itself. A storm-blast causes it to lose its bearings. This storm, "tyrannous and strong," is likened to the ship's "foe." And in the absence of men and ·beasts, the very landscape takes on a malevolence; the ice "cracked and growled, and roared and howled." The ship finds itself in the land of mist and snow where eye and mind flounder in confusion. The simple compass needle, which so scientifically points north, spins. The Mariner cannot see shapes for the mist; this is a physical indicator of a mental condition. Most importantly, he does not know he has drifted into the territory of the Polar Spirit. Coleridge wrote in the marginal gloss that it is "one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels .... They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or more." This might remind us of the world of the Odyssey, where one must be on guard against the capricious wrath of the many immortals and semi-mortals who inhabit the seas and islands. But the characters in the Odyssey know quite well that such beings exist; the Mariner does not, and so incurs their wrath by killing their messenger, the Albatross. The Mariner's tale is told in retrospect. Hence when he tells us it came like "a Christian soul" we think of the bird as a good omen. But the Mariner amid the mist and snow cannot tell if an omen is good or bad. He tells us "the ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around" - and we picture him spinning dizzily about, overwhelmed on all sides. Whence comes the Albatross: "Through the fog it came," "It ate the food it ne'er had eat," "round and round it flew." And round and round the Mariner's mind goes, first describing it as spirit, then as bird. His In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, It perched for vespers nine; Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, Glimmered the white moon-shine. The obscured moon-eye, the magical nine nights, the mist, the shroud - all theses serve to fill us with vague dread. Is it bird or ghost? If the bird is a ghost, an arrow won't draw blood. So to answer the question, "What manner of beast are you?" the Mariner draws his bow. When the senses fail to inform us, we proceed to experiment; that is the way of the human mind. The shot arrow attempts empirically to penetrate the mysteries to which reason cannot gain admittance. Afterward, the crew cannot decide whether the bird is innocent or the Mariner heroic: For all averred, I had killed the bird That made the breeze to blow. Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, That made the breeze to blow! But: Then all averred, I had killed the bird That brought the fog and mist. 'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, That bring the fog and mist. Minds still circle around the issue of the Albatross' goodness or evil. The Polar Spirit, who "loved the bird," enters the dreams of the sailors: And some in dreams assured were Of the Spirit that plagued us so. 21 �Because the soul's eye sees what the mortal eye can't, the Polar Spirit appears to sleeping men. The dreaming eye tells the truth. By day, the Mariner once more mistakes the nature of an apparition on the waters: At first it seemed a little speck And then it seemed a mist; It moved and moved ... A speck, a mist. a shape, I wist! And still it neared and neared: As if it dodged a water-sprite. It plunged and tacked and veered. Frenzy rises in the Mariner; he desires to name what he sees, but his eye renders nothing clearly. Once again he draws blood in his mental tonnent; he savagely sucks the blood of his arm to cry "A sail! a sail!" - apparently to engage the eyes of the other crew members. He wants confinnation: Do you see what I see? Blindly. the crew follow his example, and drink likewise. There• s no indication in the poem or gloss that they see the skeleton ship bearing Death and Life-in-Death. ill - Two Epiphanies [Seeing in the Dark] Twice up to this point the Mariner draws blood, twice as a way to answer his uncertainty regarding the nature of what he sees. Twice this act fails. In part III, the poem makes a distinction between the carnal and spiritual eyes, symbolized by the sun and moon. The carnal, or mortal, eye of the Mariner has thus far mistaken a bird for a phantom. and a phantom for a ship. The new world he has trespassed into demands the growth of a new eye - one that, like the moon, sees in the dark. In part II, the ship bursts into the doldrums at the equator; there the "bloody Sun" stands above the mast like a judging eye. But the sun's great telling moment comes when the skeleton ship drives "suddenly/ Betwixt us and the Sun." The Mariner's eye, entrenched in his body, is unable to judge right. The setting sun now symbolizes the judging eye as the imprisoned eye: And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, (Heaven's Mother send us grace!) As if through a dungeon-grate he peered With a broad and burning face. The carnal eye is shown to be imprisoned in flesh. Furthermore, the "bars" that obscure it are the "ribs" of the ship. At the invocation of "Heaven's Mother," that blue-mantled Mary, another apparition answers: the Mother of Flesh. Red-lipped and golden-haired. her skin "white as leprosy," she is the Muse's 22 alter ego: if the Muse gives immortality, she gives mortality. If the Muse inspires with the Breathe of Life, Life-in-Death provides the unregenerate clay. We could explore her extensively, or shudder and pass by, knowing that she is meant to touch an oxygen-less depth in us. The human eye sees by the sun; another eye. akin to the moon, must take over the senses when darkness falls, as it does very suddenly after the spectral ship takes off. First "four times fifty living men" drop dead, each with a curse in his eye meant to repel the Mariner's bodily eye and spur the development of his spiritual eye. He says: An orphan's curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is the curse in a dead man's eye! By the Moon the Mariner finally attains his first epiphany~ How goes the movement from damnation to grace? He mourns the dead: The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I. The Mariner can still see the dead men; but he cannot see the "thousand thousand slimy things" that live in the deep. His confusion about the nature of things he can't see begins to resolve when he closes his eyes. First "I looked upon the rotting sea," "I looked upon the rotting deck," "I looked to heaven, and tried to pray." To no avail, until, "I closed my eyes." He does not say when he opens them again. Then like a moon rising in the night, a new eye causes him to see through the darkness. Again he looks at the sky, the deck, the water, and finally sees: Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off in hoary flakes. "Slimy things" have become, with epiphany, "water-snakes."No longer does the sea "rot:" Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam, and every track Was a flash of golden fire. As the Mariner looks for the first time in fearless wonder, the Albatross falls away. He comes to know something without desiring possession of its very nature. What is it that he now knows? He has seen the essence of Creation; he understands a universal order, born in beauty as well as chaos. As a result he realizes the futility of apprehending beings with scientific instruments and faculties. When he looks down at the circling, flashing creatures. he sees through the dark; he succumbs to the circling. the confusion, that prepares the mind for its flash of understanding. [Hearing the Invisible] Beast and man take their places in the cosmos for the Mariner; now he must learn to comprehend the spirits. After seeing into the depths, the Mariner hears the music of the spheres. In part V, the spirit world perfonns an opera. The Moon and stars are still out. but joined by stonn clouds, lightning, and torrential rain. And soon I heard a roaring wind: It did not come anear.... And the coming wind did roar more loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge; - and, in the commotion The dead men gave a groan. Under these supernal auspices, the dead rise, possessed by an angelic troop, to work the ship. Like the Albatross. they give it t~e means to go, and they also steer. The Mariner works alongside them and pulls "at one rope" with a spirit. He becomes one of them even as they become one of him in their borrowed bodies. Their steering represents what happens when spirit joins man to overcome the dead, chaotic matter of Nature: a direction may be taken. This is exactly his second epiphany. For at dawn, when the troop departs, Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies passed. Around, around, flew each sweet sound. Then darted to the Sun; Slowly the sounds came back again, Now mixed, now one by one. After the opera of chaos, true music plays. The Mariner compares these sounds to three things: angels' song (a bow to the supernatural), songbirds (a bow to Nature), and musical instruments (a bow to man's art). The possible harmony of these three reahns - so unfortunately sundered, only seen together through the power of clairvoyance - transfonns the Mariner again. He hears the Invisible. IV - The Two Epiphanies in the Ideal Reader . :r?e Mariner's epiphanies. seeing in the dark and hearing the mv1s1ble, are repeated elsewhere - in the heart of the reader reading the poem. The reader sets forth on the sea of Coleridge's cosmos, and comes to the last of its 625 lines. She more than likely will begin again; her mind acts out the circling and circling that is confusion. Too much remains unsaid or invisible to her. But as she begins to penetrate, she comes to clairvoyance. We achieve our first level of understanding when we "see in the dark" - order inchoate images in a coherent way. We have been doing that quite a bit up till now. One of the first questions we asked was, "Who is the Mariner?" Putting images together, we created a picture, made him visible to us. Through another image, we answered for ourselves the question of why he killed the Albatross. Seeing in the dark requires, for us, letting images answer to the unsaid; we allowed ourselves to imagine obscurity, ambiguity, mist and moonlight, until we realized that ambiguity compelled the Mariner to test his senses. After we learn to see the meaning in recurring images, we learn to hear meaning in recurring rhythms. The ability to do both results in a kind of clairvoyance. The paradigmatic pattern of the poem is the circle, a continual return to the same places, same images, same rhythms. The archetypal wanderer is not so much the time-traveler, faring ever forward, but the earth traveler, following the circles of latitude and longitude. Thus the hill, lighthouse, and kirk in the beginning of the tale recur at the end. On the outskirts of that tale, we come to a wedding, depart, and return to it. The Mariner must repeat his.story again and again. The ship crosses the line once, twice, thrice. The sun rises, the moon sets, the sun rises. These are motifs, macro-rhythms in conjunction with micro-rhythms like meter and rhyme. We will speak of the latter presently; first we must look at just a few recurring images and see what insights come to clairvoyant eyes. [Seeing in the Dark] Repetitions of images occur in disguise, for instance these images of chaos from parts II, III. and IV respectively: About, about, in reel and rout The death-fires danced at night; The water, like a witch's oils, Burnt green, and blue and white. Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam. and every track Was a flash of golden fire. I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, 23 �And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off in hoary flakes . The upper air burst into life! And a hundred fire-flags sheen, To and fro they were hurried about! And to and fro, and in and out, The wan stars danced between. A Witch's oils, water-snakes, and lightning stonns are all described by Coleridge in such a way as to conjure up the same flickering patterns each time. The death-fires and the dancing stars are also imagistic kin. We think of all of them as images of chaos. And yet by being orchestrated, they appear to us as chaos half-ordered. Such is the effect of another recurring image: that of a multitude set against a lone one. The many, or chaos, is constantly contrasted to the one, or unity. "One," aloneness, is always left. In the first two lines of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," one meets three; as if by mitosis four divide into two, and by the very end the last two also divorce. In a poem of two's - a groom for a bride, a sun for a moon, an eye for an eye - one is the remainder. We never see the bride and groom together through the doorway. The spirit world never mingles with the human. The sun and moon never appear together. The Mariner can neither hold the Albatross nor the listener. This is a poem of matter dissolving into atoms: Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. Four times fifty living men ized number is a recipe for incantation. Numbers like three, seven, and nine occupy the space between unity and chaos where man's mind lives, makes patterns, an out of patterns, magic. This seems to be the message encoded in the following stanza regarding the skeleton ship: The ice was all between. The naked hulk alongside came, And the twain were casting dice; ''The game is done! I've won! I've won!" Quoth she, and whistles thrice. Is it real gambling going on? In the words themselves, numbers riddle: the dice are two (because one is a die), and dice rhymes with thrice. Dice signify chance, but a witch who whistles thrice invokes its opposite, magic. Done rhymes with won, a homonym and double entendre (the Mariner is the crucial one to be won); and both eye and ear follow the progress of twain to one (twain wanes into one). The gambling image- connoting chance - is counterpointed by the play of number. What is said and what is unsaid conflict, with the greater weight of truth resting on the unsaid, the hidden. Hence Coleridge seems to be making a bid for order underlying chaos. While there is an order, one must practice magic to learn it. [Hearing the Invisible] After looking for epiphanies in patterns of image, we look to patterns of rhythm for another kind of epiphany. Coleridge incorporates the music of the sea into his hypnotic poem: V / I.I / V v ,, v ,,. v / / V / The Sun came up upon the left y / The Sun now rose upon tne right VV 1..1 ,/ / V And a good south wind sprung up behind ...the stars rush out, At one stride comes the dark; And the good south wind still blew behind And now 'twas like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute. The orchestration of many-dropping-to-one prepares us for disbelief at the Mariner's ending prayer. God may love "all things both great and small," but even they will drop "one by one" someday. But between unity and chaos is the kind of half-order that orchestrated images represent. A detail like number gains significance: In nature, number is random; in language, it is purposeful. Chosen numbers are reiterated in the poem: "one of three," "three-years child," "I saw a third," "vespers nine," "nine fathoms deep," "seven days," "seven days, seven nights." Symbol- 24 Vl..I / V ""'v The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around. The overcrowding of "ice was" conveys exactly the crowding in of the ship. But in the next example, we hear the isolation of: Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! Here repetition conveys a great deal of space. The long o's sound like a lone wolf baying. The echo about all-all one-one goes on and on. The rhythm of "the ICE was ... the ICE was ..." sounds like teeth gnashing compared to "a-LONE, a-LONE ... ," which is all vowel. Echo also conveys both weariness and excitement: There passed a weary time. Each throat Was parched, and glazed each eye. A weary time! a weary time! How glazed each weary eye.... The alliteration of passed/parched, the assonance of time/eye, each/weary, and the repeating of glazed and weary all weigh the stanza down. But the following is an exciting stanza because as the Mariner waits with bated breath for the skeleton ship to close the distance between them, so do the lines: /V/ They dropped down one by one. And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I. sometimes it is used to accelerate the heart. Echo, rhyme, and meter provide the tools. Echo, for instance, is used to convey crowded or empty space, weariness or excitement. Here the echoing of "ice was" crowds: .;' i..J / These iambic lines imitate the periodic motion of the sun, gusts of wind, and ocean waves. Hence the bewitching quality of the words that force the Wedding-Guest and us to listen "like a three years' child." Rhythm carries amazing powers of suggestion. The lines quoted above are near-repetitions from parts I and II of the poem. The difference is that between each repetition a crucial act, the Albatross' murder, has occurred. Immediately after the murder we are told "The Sun now rose upon the right" as if the world has taken an 180-degree tum. But in fact; the universe takes no notice. The turnabout of the sun is really the turnabout of the south-bound ship, and the underlying rhythm of the sun, wind, and waves - and of the above lives remains the same. Nature is oblivious to man's drama. Just so, rhythm is oblivious and inexorable. Coleridge can, however, half-order that rhythm. At times it is perfectly regular, giving us a stifled and monotonous feeling; At first it seemed a little speck, And then it seemed a mist; It moved and moved, and took at last A certain shape, I wist. A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist! And still it neared and neared.... and forward bends his head, The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, And southward aye we fled. Here the bumper-to-bumperrhymes of prow/blow/foe mimic the intense chase. It is a timely variation that segues promptly into our established pattern after a caesura between lines 4 and 5. The internal rhyme in line 5 is typical as well. This is musical virtuosity! The tension between regularity and variation in rhyme as well as meter illustrates the tension between the chaotic "dead" matter of the elements and the "inspired" matter of the mind. One may say, for instance, that this is a poem of ballad stanzas, that each stanza contains alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines, but that is only so when Coleridge wants to convey weariness or calm: /VV "'Vv .I' V "-'.I' V/V .I' We stuck, nor breath, nor motion; VIJ/ V" V / As idle as a painted ship v.l'V.I' V.l'V Upon a painted ocean. ~_,. V""V/V/ I woke, and we were sailing on ""' ~ / / I.I v V/IJ ,,. V As in a gentle weather: With sloping masts and dipping prow, As who pursued with yell and blow Still treads the shadow of his foe, t,J u / ,.. 'Twas night, calm night, the moon was high; v ,, v ,,. I.I ,,,. I.I The dead men stood together. These lines are very regular and iambic, with alternating masculine and feminine end stresses. The fact that feminine, that is, unstressed syllables end each stanza contributes toward a low-key, fading-out feeling. And in the painted ship stanza, where each line is so symmetrical and droning, the long a's and o's, the multiple p's, don't segue into other sound patterns; they, and the stanza, go nowhere. But just eight lines prior to this withering stanza came this blood-rush: V/"' ""'V .;' / / The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, V/1.J/v The entire stanza closes up like a fan, underscored by '·'neared and neared." Rhyme is another "echo" constantly bouncing on the ear. Rather than have meaning in specificity, it has meaning in its generality, a constant ABCB, DEFE that creates expectation in the reader of an endless wave-like motion. Sometimes Coleridge varies with a six-line stanza that rhymes AAABCB or ABCBDB. Take this stanza: / Day after day, day after day, / The furrow followed free; v v .Y VV V "'V v ; ,, v "' We were me first that ever burst / Into that silent sea. The variation here takes the fonn of a regrouping of stresses, all masculine, into what sounds like a longer stanza of shorter lines. The former stanza was one lone iambic stream: "As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean" seems like a long sentence, but the strong stresses of "The fair breeze blew/ The white foam flew" break the stanza into short, fast-moving phrases. In addition, the alliteration moves us forward: from 25 �breeze, blew, burst (from the air) and foam , flew , free (from the waves) to the deflated sibilants of ~ilent sea. A similar pattern energizes this stanz~: v ,,- _, " V/ / ,- The sun's rim dips, the stars rush out: °""' " / V / At one stride comes tlie dark. V/ /; v / v/ With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, I./ / V It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek Like a meadow-gale of spring It mingled strangely with my fears, Yet it felt like a welcoming. /V~ Off shot the specter-bark. The first line breaks into two fast-moving lines of three stresses each; the next line pitches three stresses together to counteract the tendency of a four-line stanza to sound symmetrical, and the fourth line metes out four stresses such that the line still strikes the ear as trimeter. All the way the stanza fights regularity and symmetry. It is a stanza of wind-gusts rather than waves; inspired matter, not dead. No wonder we can go from "The fair breeze blew" to "day after day" in a few short lines. As the rhythm is apt, our emotions keep pace. And so we learn to hear. Rhythm buttresses surface meaning and subtly complicates it; it is like another voice muttering behind the stage voice. It is difficult to hear, much less make m~aning o~t of it. But doing so constitutes a second epiphany, without which the overall meaning of a poem is incomplete. V - The Final Epiphany The Mariner endures still more suffering after his epiphanies. The Polar Spirit gives his ship one last kick, the dead men still wear a curse in their eyes, two daemons visit the ship while the Mariner lies paralyzed; they reveal the motive of the Spirit: He loved the bird who loved the man Who shot him with his bow. ~ter the ship reaches the "line" for the third time, it is driven on wmdlessly by angels. The Mariner is in a state of great uncertainty and isolation; meanwhile, "The dead men stood together." All stood together on the deck, For a charnel-dungeon fitter: All fixed on me their stony eyes, That in the Moon did glitter. Here the living dead seem to stand in condemnation of the Mariner; he seems utterly forsaken and alone. But without warning, "soon there breathed a wind on me." Nor sollild nor motion made: Its path was not upon the sea, In ripple or in shade. 26 This_is the Mariner's third and last epiphany: a life-giving breath or wmd that blows on him alone, even as the ship moves without a breeze. The Mariner, who has finally looked and seen, listened and heard, is indeed being welcomed. It is the spirit world welcoming him. Indeed it ought to mingle with his fears; the life of a man divided between the human and supernatural realms is both a blessing and a curse. He is no longer wholly human. Even so the wind is like "a meadow-gale of spring," that time of year V:hen the air warms things to life. Thus the wind is both unsettling and comforting to the Mariner. Yet he is welcomed even as he is bid farewell by the souls who bring his ship into his home port. After the inspiration lifts him "sweetly," he turns to the dead men who filled him with dread and sees with shock: Each corse lay flat , lifeless and flat, And, by the holy rood! A man all light, a seraph-man, On every corse there stood. The spirits have bared themselves one last time for the Mariner to see before they depart. "Each waved his hand" to the Mariner. The inspiration he had enables him to divide spirits from dead matter, the angels from the corpses; he now is himself a hybrid: a human body with a supernatural eye. The Mariner is Wlequivocally exiled from the spirit world. His ship is sunk with all two hundred corpses. No physical evidence remains of his voyage; proof is impossible. No more does the Mariner belong to men, either. Rescued from drowning by three men in a skiff, he promptly drives two of them to the brink of madness. I pass, like night, from land to land; I have strange power of speech; That moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me: To him my tale I teach. Only one out of three may receive the terrible truths the ~ner knows: This knowledge of the larger world encompass- mg and governmg man's small and myopic one is taboo; it has the power of ruining man's order. Thus does the Mariner "pass like night:" night is also anarchic and taboo, and we would rather receive its witch's truths in dreams. "Say quick," gasps the Hermit who saves the Mariner, "I bid thee say - what manner of man art thou?" This, the question that silently accompanied the arrow to the Albatross, cannot be answered quickly or forwardly. It is answered with a riddle this poem. Plain language, simple and natural categories, are preposterous things to use to describe the plenitude of the universe. VI - The Reader's Final Epiphany How are we to speak of the third epiphany, L'le experience of a life-giving breeze, as it applies to the reader? This breeze is as individual, and inexplicable, as vocation. It is the breath upon the face of the deep prior to Genesis. It is inspiration. Let us return, briefly, to the gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, which began this essay. When asked by his disciples why parables were his method of teaching, Jesus replied: Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given .... Therefore I speak to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. We can imagine the effect of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" on the soils of various imaginations, some rocky, some thorny, and some fertile. Those who read hoping for an easy moral constitute shallow soil, where nothing grows. They leave the poem disturbed and dissatisfied with its ambiguities. Others might attain the epiphanies of sight or sound and yet not feel the breeze that bestows fertility or creativity: these are the readers who constitute thorny soil, where new life flourishes briefly, but withers from neglect. But how does one explain the fact that some fertile souls take the Mariner's seed to heart? In other words: Reading ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" will leave some of us confused and frustrated; some of us will pore over it till it yields its secrets, and some fewer of us will be compelled to make our way into the spirit world ourselves. We do so by setting sail, by putting ourselves in the hands of a larger power beyond the shores of the known. And there is no question but that we too must shoot the Albatross, succumb to Nature, pass through the initiation of the spirits, and live to tell the story. Our achievement of clairvoyance depends on our willingness to go to any length to penetrate mystery. So Coleridge seems to believe. The Mariner deliberately sails off into the unknown. Having gone beyond "the line" and to a realm bordering on the spirit world, he cannot make out the nature of things with his mortal eye. When the Albatross arrives to guide him, he cannot put his faith in it, and shoots it to answer his own inquiry into its soul. This violation incurs the wrath and reward of the spirits: on the one hand the Polar Spirit pursues him in vengeance; on the other hand Life-in-Death rewards his pursuit of knowledge with a knowledge of the order and plentitude of the cosmos. Thus he becomes a clairvoyant, cursed and blessed. Myopic man, the natural philosopher, shuns prophets such as the Mariner, perhaps because prophecy could drive him mad, or perhaps because there is no way to make a man see. Yet I do not doubt that sometimes it is well for the soul to contemplate as in a picture the image of a larger and better world, ~est the mind, habituated to the small concerns of daily life, limit itself too much and sink entirely into trivial thinking. But meanwhile we must be on watch for the truth, avoiding extremes, so that we may distinguish certain from uncertain, day from night. By the poem's end, Coleridge has made a mockery of his chosen epigraph. Here, the supernatural is presented as a tonic for the natural philosopher who has overdosed on prosaism: The academic mind is told to read a few poems once in a while. The warning against extremes seems especially fllilny to the readers of Coleridge, who said, "Grant me a nature having two contrary forces," and "Extremes meet." VII - The Wedding on the Periphery, Part Two What loud uproar bursts from that door! The wedding-guests are there: But in the garden-bower the bride And bride-maids singing are: And hark the little vesper-bell, Which biddeth me to prayer! Looking through the doorframe, we glimpse a singing bride enveloped in a protective bower. How frail that bower seems after such a tale! How vulnerable the bride, how deceptive the prettiness of gardens and the strength of human covenants like marriage! The daemonism of the cosmos lurks palpably near. At the moment that a bell rings, the Mariner utters a prayer: 0 Wedding-Guest! This soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely ' twas, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be. 0 sweeter than the marriage-feast, 'Tis sweeter far to me, To walk together to the kirk With a goodly company! To walk together to the kirk, And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends, Old men, and babes, and loving friends And youths and maidens gay! 27 �Farewell! farewell! But this I tell To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both bird and man and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all. This prayer, so seemingly sentimental that even Coleridge regretted ending the poem with it, is in fact not sentimental: it is a gesture of propitiation, an ancient display of piety that runs the gamut from human sacrifice to crossing oneself in a thunderstorm. The impulse to walk with a goodly company is that ancient impulse to ward off evil with sheer number. "Farewell," he tells his listener, but is it like the farewell of the spirits on the ship - that is, just another covert welcoming to the fold of the blessed and the damned? And why does he repeat "thee, thou Wedding-Guest!" as though he were mocking the fact that his listener will not cross that threshold, will not join the company, is no longer the Bridegroom's kinsman but the Mariner's? Why tell him to love, and to pray? This moral lacks power. We have seen what the real cosmos is like, and "God himself/ Scarce seemed there to be." The Mariner has come from the land of Cain to turn this wedding's wine to vinegar. It is fitting that a tale about the world outside the world is told through a frame within a frame. Herein lies the real moral: the Wedding-Guest never goes through those doors; he is sundered from his kinsmen. He rises the next morning "a sadder and a wiser man" and we feel almost as though another story is beginning. But it would only turn out to be the same story in the end. Untitled Rakesh Brennig 28 29 �Animals in Motion: the Flattery of Becoming in Plato's Timaeus Peter Kalkavage ...it has appeared to me more fitting to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the imagination of it. And many have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in truth ... Machiavelli, The Prince XV Towards the beginning of the Timaeus, Socrates articulates a most unusual desire. He tells Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates that he wants to see the just city go off to war. Socrates describes his feeling - his mx0o~. as he calls it - through an image. Here is what he says: It's as if someone who gazed upon beautiful animals somewhere, either fashioned by the art of painting or truly living but at rest, ~ived at the desire to gaze upon them moving and struggling m some contest that seemed suited to their bodies. (19b4-cl) Socrates' desire gives rise to a barrage of questions. Why does he want such a vision? What is there about it that would gratify him? Is an animal more beautiful- or more of an animalwhen moving than at rest? And where is this someone to whom Socrates compares himself? Is he in the wild looking at real animals or only at the movies looking at their images? That is, is he in the sunlight or in the cave? Apparently, it makes no difference. It is the motion that counts, the motion as such that is the object of desire. Socrates wants to gaze upon, to contemplate, beautiful animals in motion. He is resting from his customary passion for inquiry. With the desire for such contemplation, the Timaeus moves us from the serene realm of being to the troubled and turbulent world of becoming. It moves us away from the speeches of the dialectician and towards those of the historian, statesman, poet, and physicist. The man who gazes upon beautiful animals is the central image of the Timaeus. If only we could understand it, we would then understand the entire dialogue. This essay is an attempt to see how the famous likely story of Timaeus responds to Socrates' curious desire. The Timaeus presents itself as a sequel to the Republic. And yet it is far from clear why a sequel is at all necessary, still less clear why the sequel should have a physics as its centerpiece and jewel. What is abundantly clear is that the Timaeus is above all a political dialogue. Whereas the Republic moved from the practical-political question of justice to the transpolitical nature of philosophy, the Timaeus returns us, with a vengeance, to the passionate concern for the political as such. We see this in a number of ways: in the opening "summary" of the Republic, which concentrates on the political nature of that dialogue to the exclusion of the higher life of philosophic virtue, in Socrates' 30 desire to see the best city brought to life in the arena of mortality and war, and in the eminently political nature of Socrates' three hosts. Of these three, it is perhaps He.. nocrates, the least talkative of the group, who best exemplifies what the Timaeus is really about - the transition from mere speech to living deed. Hermocrates is one of the most illustrious heroes in Thucydides' account of the war between Athens and Sparta, the Syracusan statesman whose rhetoric unifies Sicily and plays a central role in the ultimate defeat of the Athenian forces. In the Platonic drama Hermocrates plays a similar role. His two brief speeches - one in the Timaeus and the other in the Critias - are both intended to beget action, specifically, to goad Critias into telling his story about the once glorious Athenians, to draw Critias out, as it were, into the battlefield of speech. Critias is the focal point of the dialogue. It is he who claims to have just the speech to satisfy Socrates' desire, a story about an Athens grown young and beautiful. Critias makes it very clear that for him the just city in speech was nothing but a fairy tale. He tells Socrates: "the city and citizens that you went through for us yesterday as in a myth, we shall transport back into the truth" (26c7-dl). Critias identifies the truth with what the politically-minded call "the real world," the world of body and motion. In this he agrees with Machiavelli that the truth is to be found not in the imagined republics of the philosophers but in the deeds of history. Critias is the dialogue's radical spokesman for the claims of becoming, for the claim that truth is fact. Through the character of Critias we see how the project underway in the Timaeus, far from attempting to complete the Republic, is in fact an attack upon that dialogue' s praise of philosophy. Nothing is more characteristic of Critias than his lack of imagination. The story of Atlantis is as far-fetched a tale as we are likely to hear, and yet Critias insists that it is "true in every way" (20d8). He refers to it repeatedly as a A.6ruc; rather than a µueo~. In short he confuses history and poetry. The author of this confusion seems to be none other than Solon, the famous poet-lawgiver, who brought the story back from Egypt. No sooner does Solon get his hands on the story in praise of Athens than he proceeds to compose a poem about it, a poem which, if only Solon had completed it, would have made him more famous than Homer (21c4ft)! In contrast with Critias, who scorns all images only to fall victim to their power, Timaeus comes forth as one of the greatest defenders of images and imitation in all the Platonic dialogues. The account he will give Socrates is not "true in every way" but a likely story. Timaeus gives two reasons why physics must take the form of a likely story. The first is that becoming, the object of physics, is inherently unstable. Whereas being is always what it is, becoming is always ceasing to be what it is and coming to be what it is not (27d5-28a4). The second reason is human nature. Here is what Timaeus says: But if we provide likenesses inferior to none, you should be happy with them, remembering that I who speak and you my judges have a human nature, so that for those who are receptive to the likely story, it is fitting to search for nothing more beyond it. (29c3-d3) The like!y story emerges from the context of human imperfection and vulnerability. As Timaeus says later, when he mixes up the natural order of soul and body, "we who have a great share in the chancy and random do so also when we speak" (34c2-4). We recall how the dialogue opens. Socrates' ability to count the human order also allows him to know that something is missing: "One, two, three - but where, dear Timaeus, is the fourth?" Timaeus' answer is the very first likely story he gives. "Must be some infirmity," he conjectures (17a4). The dialogue opens, in other words, in a way that playfully mimics the world as Timaeus sees it - _ athematically ordered but at the same time imperfect. m Socrates' count mirrors the inescapable togetherness of strength and weakness, calculation and the incalculable, in all matters pertaining to the physical world. It is a prophecy of the drama to come. When Socrates asked for a speech about the just city at war, he was not asking to be informed. It was not as though the Republic left something out. What Socrates wanted was to hear his city and citizens praised. He wanted, as he says, an encomium and confessed his inability to supply it (19d2). Now an encomium is just what Critias provides, namely, an elaborate flattery of his own city's glorious ancestors. But Timaeus too fits into the drama of praise. The word Kocrµo~ means not only order but also ornament. It suggests the heightening and embellishment of looks, a beautification and flattery. This is just what Timaeus does with the cosmos - he makes it look beautiful. The cosmos of Timaeus is not just an ordered whole but an animal, and not just an animal but a god. It is, he says, a happy god (34b8-9). Timaeus goes so far in his beautification of the world as to deify it. The whole likely story is a hymn of praise to the god Kosmos, who, as we hear in the dialogue's closing lines, is "the greatest and best and most beautiful and most perfect" of all generated things (92c7-8). Clearly, Timaeus intends not merely to speak about the cosmos but to arouse our love and admiration for it. In the prologue, Critias refers at one point to the Koureotis (21 b2), the festival in which Athenian youths were welcomed into the fold of the city. The youths compete in the recitation of poems, among them the poems of Solon. We must imagine that the impressionable souls of these youths, through the music of Solon's poetry, become knit to the fabric of the city, rooted in the v6µot of their fatherland. Something similar is happening in the likely story. In being receptive to Timaeus' speech, we are assimilating ourselves to the cosmic regime that transcends our more narrowly conceived political communities; we are enacting the proper and respectful relationship between the human soul and the divinely established order. Socrates, it seems, was being prophetic when he called the likely story a voµ0<;, a word that means both "law" and "song" (29d6). He seems to have divined that the music of Timaeus, while extolling an order that goes beyond all cities, would nevertheless have a quasi-political end - the instilling of piety towards our cosmic fatherland. The entire likely story is a grand act of imitation. Timaeus imitates the divine work by which the unmelodious chaos became an artfully arranged whole (30a2-6). In the first part of the story, he imitates the construction of the highest visible things - the cosmic body and soul, the circular motions of the heavens, time, and all the stars and planets. This whole first part is ruled by the supreme goodness of intelligence. Such goodness manifests itself for Timaeus in the objects of mathematics, particularly in the binding power of 'auaA.o)'La or proportion. The mathematical objects have a primarily political function; they are appointed as the guardians of all decency and good character. In their provision of boundaries, they are to the world what laws are to the city. They make the cosmos just. The moral and political goodness of the whole is rooted, mythically, in the moral goodness of Timaeus' demiurge or craftsman. This craftsman, we are told, lacked envy (29el-2). He did not cling to the perfection in himself but wished to pass it on to his offspring. The divine craftsman thus comes to resemble a political founder like Solon or Lycurgus. The world for Timaeus is an altogether noble poem written by a morally wise and generous poet-statesman. And yet, like any human poet-statesman, the divine craftsman must surely be filled with the love of begetting, with the l£pmc; wu ')'EWW which Timaeus describes at the end of the dialogue (91b4). Why else would his passion turn from seeing to making? As the craftsman gazes upon the world's intelligible archetype, he must be longing to see it become a beautiful animal in motion, an animal that will, in being generated, reflect his own good looks. The lack of envy sounds suspiciously like the human desire to beget beautiful images of oneself. Timaeus is out to praise imitation. The method of the astronomers gives him an excellent opportunity to do so. Referring to the astronomer's attempt to plot the heavenly motions, he says: "to speak of these things without looking at their imitations is vain labor" (40d2-3). Timaeus is referring to the astronomer's mathematical hypotheses, to something like Ptolemy's eccentric circle and epicycle. Such hypotheses are not meant to be taken literally, as the actual mechanisms by which the stars accomplish their motions. Ptolemy himself calls them "likenesses manufactured by us" (Almagest XIII.ii). To construct such likely stories about motion is precisely what it means to "save" the appearances. But more is being saved here than just the appearances. The human good for Timaeus is our assimilation to the divine order. It is through astronomy that this assimilation is brought about. In Timaeus' words, "through learning and sharing in calculations that are by nature right, by imitating the absolutely unwavering motions of the gods, we might stabilize the wanderings within ourselves" (47cl-4). By giving the heavens a divine soul, Timaeus gives the world interiority and good judgement. Circular motion becomes an outwardly displayed image of thinking as a turning inward upon oneself. The fact that we sometimes refer to thinking as a reflection, that is, as a bending back, reveals the implicit connection between thoughtfulness and circularity. The circles of Same and Other are the motions of good judgement (37a2-c5). When we look up at the stars at 31 �night, we are gazing not outward but inward; we are looking at the best and most precious part of ourselves. Since we originated in the stars, we are also gazing into our own glorious past. What Critias is doing in his praise of the ancient Athenians, Timaeus is doing for everyone in the likely story. Astronomy is the true homecoming of the human soul. It returns us to what Timaeus calls "the look of our first and best condition" (42d2). As long as Timaeus stays with the heavenly things, he is in a realm that is virtually problem-free. To be sure, the heavenly motions are very complicated in how they appear to us. But in themselves they are divine motions, good motions, and are therefore friendly to mathematical inquiry. We must never forget how successful Ptolemy is in accounting for all the motions that can be seen with the naked eye. All this changes once Timaeus descends from the heavens, once he enters the realm of becoming and mortality, the realm of being-at-war. But he must enter this world; he must descend from the heavens or the heavens themselves will be incomplete (4lb7-8). The descent of Timaeus begins with the construction of human nature. The human condition reminds Timaeus that the whole account so far has been one-sided in its devotion to goodness and beauty. There is another principle or beginning, another hpxfi without which the world as a whole could not have been made. This principle is necessity. Timaeus calls it "the look or form of the wandering cause" (48a6-7). Necessity is the unpredictable realm of power, expediency, and war. It is the realm on which Machiavelli so likes to gaze, and indeed Timaeus' wandering cause in part resembles what Machiavelli refers to as "fortune." Timaeus has tried to build the world from the top down. Now he must try to build it from the bottom up. In his new beginning - the most interesting and most problematic moment in the whole likely story - he will give us a more accurate portrait of what it means to imitate. Socrates' desire was for a vision of beautiful animals in motion. He wanted to see what would happen in taking the leap from the serenity of being to the turbulence of becoming. With the excursion into necessity, Timaeus encounters becoming in its strict meaning, becoming as process. Here, more than anywhere else in the dialogue, Socrates is treated to the vision he desired. Now beauty is king of the likely story, not beauty as that which incites erotic love, but beauty in its political aspect, as the fine or noble which restrains the notorious disorder of erotic love. This political good is made to shine forth in the guise of beautiful mathematical structure. For Timaeus, beauty is always connected with stability. To be beautiful is to be solid, that is, dependable. Indeed, in his first founding, Timaeus crafted the world as an image of changeless being, not to ground the world in a truth available to the intellect but to make the world as stable as possible (28a6-b2). Timaeus strongly disagrees with the poets who would have us believe that a rose is all the more beautiful for being mortal. But becoming is pure process, pure flux. How in the world can such a thing be rendered beautiful and stable? It seems to be like trying to grab hold of Proteus, the old man of 32 the sea. Timaeus knows that here he is up against an especially elusive problem of saving the appearances. He calls on the help of Zeus, the Savior (48d4-5). Timaeus uses an image to capture the fleeting look of becoming; the image is that of a new demiurge. Becoming, he says, is like a man who molds all possible shapes out of gold (50a5 ff) . The man does not stop when a figure is completed but continually transforms every figure into every other figure. In the process of a figure's coming to be what it is, the figure is already passing away. What Timaeus is describing here is the transmutation of the four elements of body - earth, air, fire, and water. To give an account of becoming is to say how these four elements are involved in the continual process of turning into one another. The problem of becoming is this: to save the restless look of becoming as process while at the same time saving the distinct and quasi-stable looks of earth, air, fire, and water. The problem is that of knowing how to harmonize motion and form. That the medium of becoming is likened to gold, a beautiful and precious metal, is important. It expresses Timaeus' unremitting passion for adornment. The flattery of becoming is already underway. Timaeus first tackles the problem of the fluid medium. He refers to this medium in a variety of ways. He calls it the receptacle, fntoBoxil, and space, xropa (51a5, 52a8). Its nature consists in its exquisite receptivity to form,.its power to capture the looks of earth, air, fire, and water. It is like the shiny surface of a mirror or better - since Timaeus endows it with motion (53a3-4) - like the surface of a rippling pool. In order to reflect the looks of the elements, the receptacle must itself be pure, void of all form. We might say that the only real looks that the receptacle has are the ones it steals from somewhere else. The receptacle is like any human imitator, any poet or sophist. Again using an art that aims at flattery and beautification, Timaeus compares the receptacle to the neutral base used by the makers of perfumes (50e4-51al). In his first account of beginnings, Timaeus had distinguished two factors involved in imitation-the original form or archetype and the image that was patterned after it. He made no mention of the reflecting medium. In his new beginning, he revises the account of imitation by introducing this third and necessary factor. The whole truth about imitation is that imitation requires three things: the image that comes to be, that from which it is likened, and that in which it comes to be. Once again Timaeus uses an image to clarify his meaning, only this time the image is that of sexual generation rather than craftsmanship: the original e'tooc; is like a father, the receptacle like a mother, and the resulting image like their offspring (50c7-el). With this simile, we are being reminded that sexual generation is, among other things, a form of imitation. We are also being reminded that the word for becoming, ,,Evecm;, is also the word for generation and birth. The receptacle not only provides room for all things; it also gives them their fleeting life. It is the womb in which all mortal things live, move, and have their being. In descending from the stars to becoming, we are passing from one region of life to another, from the intellectual cycles of the heavens to the biological cycles of organisms. We are descending from astronomy to embryology. Timaeus braces us for his account of the elements. He calls it "strange and uncustomary" (48d5-6). At this point Timaeus shifts from the phrase "likely" µue0<; (29d2) to "likely" AO)Ut (48d2). Story has become account. Timaeus is starting to sound like Critias! He tells us that the "account" will be even more likely than what has come before (48d3). What this means, however - as we shall see - is not that the account will be closer to the truth, but that it will be more imitative, more mythical, more removed from the truth. Apparently, Timaeus' speech at this point will be even more like a beautiful animal fashioned by the art of painting, life-like but not truly living. The construction of body is one of the two most impressive architectural feats in the likely story. The other is the composition of the soul out of the musical ratios. Now the soul is an intelligible being, not a body. It makes sense that an intelligible being should have an intelligible structure. What, then, are we doing when we turn our intellectual gaze to body? What does it mean to think body? Is this not a contradiction in terms? In Book IX of the Republic, Socrates commands Glaucon to mold an image of the human soul in speech. Glaucon responds: "since speech is more easily molded than wax and the like, let it be molded" (588dl-2). In his account of body, Timaeus takes full advantage of this demonic power of human speech, this capacity for imitation. He reconstructs body, founds a body in speech, so as to make body thinkable. He treats physical body as though it were a mathematical body in motion. The "as though" is the most important thing here. Timaeus is being playful. He knows full well that sensed bodies cannot be built up literally out of mathematical objects. He warned us beforehand that the account of body would be strange! In mathematicizing body, in making it a fit object for gazing, Timaeus blurs the distinction between two senses of body - body as geometrical solid and body as physical solid. He defines body as that which "has depth" (53c5-6), thus locating the solidity of body in three-dimensionality rather than in impenetrability. Armed with this slippery definition, Timaeus can shuttle back and forth between the properties of geometric body and those of physical body, between the body in speech and the body in deed. Mathematical physics in this way comes to be founded on a pun. It is this pun that allows body to shine in the mind's eye. In Timaeus' earlier account of body, the four elements were beautifully arranged in a double mean proportion: fire: air:: air: water :: water : earth. They did not interact and waged no wars. They held fast to the integrity of their own forms. Most interesting was fire. In the first account of body, fire was not violent at all. It was put in its best and most serene light as the source of the world's visibility, just as earth was defined not in terms of its stubborn resistance to change but as the cause of tangibleness (31b4- 32c4). Air and water came on the scene there only for reasons having to do with orderliness, because the cosmos is solid in shape and because a solid requires the presence of two mean proportionals. Their physical properties were completely suppressed on behalf of their mathematical function. In this first account of body, body is altogether noble; it is the natural friend of intelligence. In the second founding body changes its character. The receptacle is not by nature a friend of intelligence, although it can be persuaded, as Timaeus says, to take on beautiful forms (48a2-5). Apparently, the mother of becoming is susceptible to flattery. This persuasion of necessity seems to be none other than Timaeus' mathematical construction of the four elements. Timaeus' account, like the divine intellect of the story, aims at persuasion. It will attempt to elicit our trust in beautiful images, to win us over to its poetry. The eliciting of our trust begins with the selection of the regular Platonic solids. Four of the solids are assigned to the four elements: the pyramid to fire, the octahedron to air, the icosahedron to water, and the cube to earth (55d6-8). The regular solids are chosen because of their consummate beauty; they are "the most beautiful bodies" (53el). Next to the sphere, these bodies are the most regular of three-dimensional objects, the very picture of lawfulness. In English the adjective "becoming" sums up Timaeus' dual use of the beautiful. When someone says, ''Those earrings are becoming," he means both ''They suit you" and "They flatter you." This is exactly the function of the regular solids in the likely story: they are designed to fit the appearances and also to flatter them, that is, to make them more beautiful than they really are. The regular solids are, as we say, becoming. The fifth regular solid, the dodecahedron, has an extremely suggestive use in the likely story, especially when we recall Socrates' desire for a vision of beautiful animals in motion. The god uses it in making the zodiac or, as Timaeus puts it, "in decorating the whole with paintings of animals" (8ta~roypa<J>rov, 55c4-6). The dodecahedron is given scant attention and would seem to be superfluous: since there are only four elements, we presumably need only four of the five solids. The god takes the fifth solid and- gratuitously, almost whimsically- tosses it in the sky, aligning its twelve pentagonal faces with the twelve "animals" of the zodiac. But this gratuitous use of the dodecahedron really brings out what Timaeus is doing throughout the likely story and especially in his elaborate treatment of necessity - he is attempting to persuade us that the only world worth contemplating is one that goes beyond the merely useful, one that has been beautified by the mathematical arts. Now Timaeus discovered that he needed necessity when the gods were making our eyes (45b2 ft) . Vision exists for the sake of a noble end the contemplation of the heavens (47al ft). But without the mechanism of the eyes - without the necessary powers of earth, air, fire, and water- vision cannot come into being. The noble end requires necessary means. Now why spend so much time beautifying the elements if all that really interests us are their powers and functions? The beautiful comes to light precisely in the gratuitous, that is, in the luxurious, in what goes beyond the useful and necessary. The dodecahedron tells us loud and clear that neither Timaeus nor Timaeus' god would have been at all 33 �happy in the city of sows, the city of "utmost necessity," in the Republic (II.369dl 1, 372d4-5) . Quite apart from how useful the receptacle and its four powers are, the receptacle's plain but supple face is simply begging for something unnecessary that would "complete its look." No wonder Timaeus gets carried away in his extensive treatment of necessity. He has made necessity as such beautiful, necessity apart from the noble ends that necessity was supposed to serve. Earlier we noted that the problem posed by becoming was to save the phenomenon of transmutation while also saving the quasi-stable looks that entered into this process. Timaeus finds his solution in the regular solids. The elements can change into one another because, unlike the atoms of Lucretius, they are not simple uncuttable bodies but have parts. A given arrangement of parts may be said to define a given element. The pyramid is a certain arrangement of triangles that now, in speech, defines the element of fire. Change the arrangement and you change the element. In this mythical mathematics of body, the intelligible . look or effoc; of an element is being located in its geometric shape. The thing's being now lies in its structure. When that structure changes, the being or whatness changes; the element turns into a new element with altogether different properties from what it had before. This structure gives each element the integrity of a highly distinctive look, in fact, a flattering look. At the same time, the structure is mortal, vulnerable, in so far as it can be taken apart, decomposed. The fascinating transmutation of the four elements has been rationalized as a reshuffling and displacement of structural parts. Timaeus' method of construction is highly interesting. It shows us the precise sense in which Timaeus is an imitator and poet. First he constructs the geometrical analogues of the four elements. Only afterwards does he show how the various affections and motions of the elements could be conceived, imagined, as the result of mathematical structure. The same procedure can be found in the Almagest. Ptolemy first constructs his mathematical hypotheses and afterwards fits the appearances into them. It is almost as though the appearances exist so that we might see in them the beautiful painted animal of our hypotheses. Once Timaeus constructs the regular solids, he proceeds to establish a correspondence between the geometrical properties of the one and the physical properties of the other. All proceeds by way of analogy. The whole account lies in this playful construction of a mathematical analogue and the establishment of correspondences between this analogue and the appearances. Here is what happens in the case of fire. The pyramid, Timaeus says, is "the element and seed offire" (56b3-5). He reminds us in passing that fire, although conceived as a mathematical object, is nonetheless part of a living whole. Fire is the Achilles of the elements; it is the swiftest, most penetrating, and most terrible. The reason or cause - Timaeus would have us believe - is found in fire's pyramidal shape: the pyramid has the smallest base, the smallest volume, and the most acute or "sharpest" angles (56e7 ft). The pyramid is fire in speech, the painted image of a beautiful animal in motion. By displacing our passion for the truth with our love 34 of beautiful animals in motion, Timaeus has fashioned an image of becoming on which it would be a pleasure to gaze. At one point Timaeus tells us that w ,enever we look towards space, that is, towards the receptacle, we become dreamy or, as we would say, "spaced out" (52b6 ft) . But as mortals we are constantly looking towards space. Dreaminess is our human condition. We are constantly thinking, quite unreflectively, that bodies are real and ideas are fairy tales, that bodies are "concrete" while ideas are "abstract." We fail to distinguish the dreamy and evanescent nature of body from what Timaeus calls "the truly sleepless nature" (52b7), by which he means the ungenerated and purely intelligible e1ooc;. Bombarded by images, rocked to sleep by the swaying motions of Mother Becoming, we become anaesthetized to the difference between images and originals. Because of this powerful and ceaseless anaesthesia, we do not know what it means to be truly alive. We confuse life with motion and wakefulness with being excited. We come to resemble the man in Socrates' image who does not seem to care whether life is real or imaginary so long as it is motion. The anaesthetic power of space has a special relevance for the likely story itself, which, after all, is constantly directing our intellectual gaze towards space. Does Timaeus want to wake us up, convert us to the "truly sleepless nature?" To answer this question, we note what Timaeus tells us about space. Space, he says, is not apprehended through the senses, nor is it an object of reason. It seems to hover between the senses and reason, to be in a sort of twilight zone. Timaeus says that space is apprehensible "by a kind of bastard reasoning with non-perception" (52b2). It is "barely to be trusted." The word for non-perception here is CxUat09TlcrtCX, the word from which we get our "anaesthesia." By non-perception, Timaeus seems to mean simply the imagination. Through the power of the imagination, we "see" things that are not presented to our senses. The geometric construction of the elements was non-perceptive in the sense that it generated beautiful pictures in the imagination. Indeed, the account of how space came to be mathematically ordered is really the beautification of our own imagination of body. Timaeus begins with the truly sleepless nature - that is, the purely intelligible form - but it is not his intention to lead us back there. That would be at variance with his praise of the god Kosmos. The mathematical disciplines in the Timaeus are not being used, as they are in the Republic, to turn us towards dialectic. They are being used instead in their political capacity - to order the unruly cosmos and the warped imaginings of the human soul. Timaeus is attempting to persuade us of the goodness of mathematical order, but he is also telling us to be happy with this conception of goodness and not to search beyond it. One must not step beyond the laws of one's fatherland. In being receptive to the likely story, we are still asleep, but at least we are having better dreams. As we saw earlier, the likely story of becoming is based on a noble lie. To render body thinkable, Timaeus cooks up beautiful geometrical models and then shuttles back and forth between the two senses of body. He reasons about physical body as though '· it were geometrical and about geometrical body as though it were physical. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Timaeus manufactures a new theoretical object that illegitimately combines the conflicting natures of the sensed and the intellected, the body in deed and the body in speech. This is a technically refined version of the bastard reasoning that for Timaeus characterizes our relation to the poetic sophistry of space (52b2). Even the noblest mathematical physicist is subject to the conditions of the world on which he gazes. In his noble beginnings, Timaeus is always very careful to draw a sharp distinction between image and original. But as he goes on, as he descends from those beginnings to the various particulars, he seems to become increasingly caught up in the pseudo-explanatory power of his bastard triangles. His disturbing playfulness takes the form of treating these triangles more and more literally, as though they actually were the cause of physical body. As the likely story unravels, the distinction between image and original is more and more blurred, the painted animal more and more confused with the truly living one. Timaeus is the poet lost in his own poem, the sophist persuaded by his own bastard reasoning. The sophistry of Timaeus' account of body is a mirror of the sophistical nature of space itself. Space seduces us into thinking that to be is to be spatial (52b3 -5). Let us see how Plato dramatizes this seductiveness of space in Timaeus' account of dimensionality. In his first founding , Timaeus informed us that the cosmic body was three-dimensional. It befitted the All, 1tPOmlKT\V, to be, as he said, "solid-looking," oi:EpEoEtofl (32bl-2). Had it been fitting for it to be two-dimensional (apparently a real possibility for Timaeus!), the god would have needed only one mean proportional rather than two (32a7-bl). The second founding seeks to remain true to the the solid look of body, to body's appearance of having depth. It constructs geometrical solids. But what is the origin of their depth? When we examine the inception of the solids as Timaeus constructs them, we see that their origin is the plane: "it is a complete necessity that the plane-nature comprehend depth. And the rectilinear plane is put together out of triangles" (53c6-8). Timaeus' solids are built by stitching together their two-dimensional faces. The construction seems harmless enough, yet it is worlds apart from the one we find in Euclid's Elements. Euclid begins with the sphere and proceeds to construct the solids within that sphere. That is to say, Euclid postulates a naturally existing three-dimensional space of which the plane and all plane figures may be said to be abstractions. For Timaeus, on the contrary, the nature of two-dimensionality is prior to, more natural than that of three-dimensionality: the plane, strange to say, is more comprehensive and in that sense more real than the solid. It is very important to remember that in the likely story, body is not "given;" it must be constructed. This means that the third dimension of depth, too, exists by construction, by art rather than by nature. When Timaeus introduced us to the receptacle, he compared it to gold. This flattered becoming in two ways: first by making the kinetic material of becoming sound and look like a precious metal, and secondly by making the receptacle sound and look three-dimensional. Looking three-dimensional and "solid" is, after all, more beautiful than looking two-dimensional and "flat." To stick with Timaeus' gold simile, solid figures are simply richer, worthier, more valuable than flat ones. The demiurge of this simile sounds at first like a sculptor rather than a painter. But what are the shapes that appear in this golden medium? Timaeus' example is -the triangle (50b2). Here he betrays his preoccupation with the plane as opposed to the solid. He as much as tells us that the receptacle is by nature flat, that it is all surface and no depth. Bodily depth, then, is an illusion, the cunning product of artfully arranged perspectives within the plane, and Timaeus' flattery of becoming is the technically beautiful accomodation to that illusion. The regular solids merely seem to give depth to the receptacle. In fact, these solids appear to be no more than a cosmetic re-arrangement of the naturally existing plane. Indeed, as we see from Timaeus' account of the human body, it is the triangle rather than the solid that dominates and grounds all the motions and affections that pertain to body. In the warfare between inner and outer that defines metabolism, it is our triangles that defend the body from invasion and corruption, just as it is the collapse of our triangles' structure that spells our death (8lb5 ft). The triangle is Timaeus' beautiful animal in motion. Contrary to all appearances, the receptacle is not at all a three-dimensional container but a movie screen that captures the beautiful appearance rather than the being of depth. In its natural two-dimensionality, the receptacle sounds very much like the cave wall of Republic VII, the medium in which the cave-dwellers, fascinated and "held" by the spectacle of animals in motion, locate their exciting and solid-looking "real world." The confusion between plane and solid had been prepared, in fact, invited, by Socrates' opening image. The man who gazed on beautiful animals did not care whether these animals were painted or truly living, that is, two-dimensional or three-dimensional. Socrates underlined a distinction only to erase it. Now what does it mean to be happy with the plane, to rest content with the appearance and not the reality of depth? It means to be superficial, to be content with surface and with opinions undeepened by inquiry. In the Timaeus, this contentment with surface appears as the love of praise and the concomitant suspension of dialectic. To praise something or someone is to dwell at the beautiful-seeming surface and, to quote Timaeus, "to search for nothing more beyond it." In the Symposium, the dialogue whose dramatic form most resembles that of the Timaeus, Socrates tries to break through the surface preoccupation with the praise of eproc; in his cross-examination of Agathon. In the Timaeus, he not only does not break through the surface but encourages and even compels his hosts to be superficial, to engage in flattery. When Critias accused Socrates' city of being merely mythical, he was saying in effect that it was two-dimensional and dead, that it lacked the solidity of a really existing bodily city. Ironically, what appears in Critias' own story is the flattest, deadest city of them all - the Egyptian city in which the 35 �depth of philosophical inquiry has been squashed down into the plane of unreflective v6µrn; or custom, and in which a materialist physics replaces the "vertical" inquiry into cause with the mere observation of the whale's customary motions, the whale's surface (22clff). Perhaps it is only fair that those who accuse Socrates of being a two-dimensional animal be challenged to produce what they take to be three-dimensional, solid, and truly alive, that in doing so they be compelled to reveal their own lack of depth. The deepest and in a sense truest part of Timaeus' story is his description of the receptacle apart from its mathematical ordering, the part in which Timaeus is not trying to flatter becoming with the illusion of depth but simply tries to tell us what the receptacle is. As we see, the receptacle is not just the unstable context for the four elements. It is, more importantly, the medium and cause of all mortal life. Our humanness inheres in and grows out of the receptacle. It is thanks to the receptacle that individuals, families, cities and even whole civilizations come to be and pass away. It is here in the play of powers that animals fight and cities make war. In Socrates' opening image, someone gazes upon beautiful animals somewhere, nou (19b6). This somewhere is the receptacle. But where exactly is this "somewhere?" As we have seen, Timaeus' ordering of space is virtually indistinguishable from the ordering of our imagination of space. Within the mythical context of the likely story, the "outer space" of sensed body is effectively replaced by the "inner space" of the imagination. Crudely stated, it is the body in speech that counts - not deeds per se but stories about deeds. Now it is typical of the likely story to recreate the outer as something inner, to cause the surface of body to seem imbued with the depths of soul. According to Timaeus' first founding, the heavenly motions are only apparently outside us, "up there" in the sky. But in the meaning conferred on them by the likely story, they become the inward thinkings of the whole. The entire realm of outer body, the so-called "external world," is actually within the all-embracing contemplation of the soul (36d8-e5). The cosmos in speech is an altogether inward world, the world as contemplated world, or more accurately, as the world reconstituted and flattered by the mathematical arts. The receptacle must be seen in light of the likely story's attempt to transform the outer into the inner. At its very deepest level, the receptacle is the soul in its receptivity to images. In its turbulent and eminently plastic nature we are being invited to contemplate the excitable and highly impressionable part of our own souls. One can even go so far as to see in the four elements a bodily projection of our emotionally charged nature: we are ambitious like fire, faithless like water, as light-minded as air, and as incorrigible as earth. In short, the four elements are bodily µu0ot about the human soul. When Socrates fashioned an image of his desire and affection, he was gazing upon the just city as though it were a body capable of motion and rest. But he was also gazing within himself, contemplating the very part of the soul that desires and is affected by images of body. The "some- 36 where" of Socrates' image is this inner "somewhere," the emotional and unreflective "space" within us that longs to be filled with moving images. The more deeply we examine the likely story, the more we see that its true object is not the cosmos but the human soul in its relation to the cosmos. Timaeus prepared us for this fact when he reminded Socrates that "I who speak and you my judges have a human nature." We recall that human nature was the goal of the likely story as announced by Critias. Timaeus was to generate the cosmos down to human nature, to make man a citizen of becoming so that Critias could then make him a citizen of ancient Athens (27a2-b6). Timaeus celebrates the Koureotis for man's cosmic indoctrination, after which Critias celebrates this same festival for his full-fledged political one. This is the drama of the Timaeus-Critias. In Timaeus' flattery of becoming, human nature is given a decidedly unflattering portrait. The demiurge does not set out to make man. Man is not a natural end but rather a necessary means by which the cosmos attains its perfection (41b7 ff). The god washes his hands of the whole business at this point, goes into retirement, and bequeaths the unenviable task of making man to his dutiful sons (42e5-7). Timaeus defines the invention of man through an oxymoron: the gods are described as O'E~6µeuot µtat VEtv 'tO 0Eiov, "being reverentto pollute the divine" (69d6). The self-contradictory phrase captures man's ambiguous place within the whole, not to mention the ambiguous character of the whole itself. Man is a desecration of the divine who, for that very reason, accords with and even fulfills the divine plan. With the story of human nature, Timaeus reveals his most central paradox: the cosmos cannot be beautified, flattered to the hilt, without a descent from the beautiful to the monstrous and the grotesque. The gods put us together piece by piece, starting with our heads and working their way down to the sexual organs. The whole account is meant to impress us with how much forethought and artistry went into our being. But at the same time, it tends to remind us of Dr. Frankenstein stitching together his new man. Timaeus takes human nature as he understands it and does something extraordinary. He concocts an outrageous pseudo-scientific myth that compels the depth of soul to show its true colors at the surface of the body. He does humorously with the whole body whatErwin Straus does more seriously with our upright posture. In bringing depth up to the surface, Timaeus shows once more his connection with the art of painting: he projects the "deep" or "three-dimensional" soul or principle of life into the two-dimensionality of body's surface. Simply stated, he wants being to appear. In the account of human nature, the tone of the likely story suffers an erosion: the noble poetry of the astronomer gives way to the black comedy of Aristophanes in the Symposium. This is especially evident in Timaeus' funny and yet not at all funny treatment of our sexuality (90e6-91d5). Timaeus' cosmos, we recall, has two'apxaL, two principles or beginnings. The good pulls the world up towards the starry life of intelligence; the necessary pulls it down into the "mighty river" of becoming (43a6). The likely story dramatizes, in its two beginnings, this fundamental tension and incoherence within the cosmos. It mimics its object through a pun on the word hpx~. Now man, for Timaeus, combines the good and the necessary in his nature and his outward shape. He is the whale's necessary incoherence rendered visually explicit. His sphere-shaped head contains the circles of Same and Other, the divine circles of reflection and sound-mindedness. The rest of him is elongated, the outward sign of his exile from the spherical heavens. In an unmistakable reference to the receptacle, Timaeus calls our lower passions "terrible and necessary" (69c8-dl). They are housed in the torso - spiritedness in the chest and the desire for food and drink in the belly. The pollution of the divine is this joining of the divine and the bestial. To mitigate its bad effects, the gods cook up an invention - the neck. The neck, by far the most striking example of our radically artificial nature, is the only thing that holds us together. It anchors the head to the body while at the same time sequestering the head for its divine life of astronomy. The neck is our constant reminder that our being is the sacrilegious togetherness of two things that should not be together but must be together if the cosmos is to be complete. The mouth is the clearest expression of our contradictory and profane nature. It was invented for the sake of the noble stream of speech that flows out and the necessary stream of nutriment that flows in (75d5-e5). Human nature is caught in the middle of two streams flowing in opposite directions, pulling human nature simultaneously towards its two cooperating yet conflicting origins. The fact that we cannot eat and speak at the same time shows how profoundly incoherent we are. For Timaeus, to be human is to be altogether tragic. The only cure, short of death, is the study of astronomy, the study in which we tum away from our monstrous nature and seek refuge in the act of noble imitation, in the life of the head. The truth about Timaeus' cosmos is not contained in any of the things he says about it. It is revealed in the motion of the likely story, in the path of the construction by which the cosmos is made. The being of the cosmos lies in its becoming. This motion is downward; it is tragic motion. If Timaeus' godKosmos had a voice, he would say with Shakespeare's Richard II, "Down, down I come, like glist'ring Phaethon" (III.iii). The whole likely story is one grand descent from deathless being down to the stars and from the stars down to human nature. As the likely story moves towards its end, human nature degenerates into all the various beasts. It gives birth at last to all the animal possibilities that sleep within it. The hierarchy of beasts, born of human degeneracy, completes the whole and causes it to be in full agreement with its intelligible archetype. As the cosmos degenerates, it becomes more perfect. This is the paradoxical truth about Timaeus' cosmos. Like man, the god Kosmos, in spite of his beautiful ordering, is in the end a tragic hero. When Socrates announced his desire, he warned against the deficiencies of poets and sophists (19d3 ff.). Poets are too rooted in their own cities. That is, their tendency to imitate the familiar and conventional holds them back from contemplating a city that is good by nature. Sophists, on the other hand, wander too much. They transcend the poets' attachment to place but end up utterly placeless, that is, lacking the experience of being political ani- · mals. Their failure to be political is exposed in the Gorgias, where the sophists are portrayed as teaching technique without the proper use of that technique. The sophists show us that being outside the city is not necessarily to be above it. Neither poets nor sophists, it would seem, know how to move vertically into the third dimension of "depth;" they are rooted ultimately in the "flatland" of conventional cities. The center of the likely story is the treatment of the receptacle and the four elements. It is there that we come to see what a likely story really is. We see that it shares in the natures of poetry and sophistry. It is µuern; masquerading as A-6'){)<;. As poetry, it begets .beautiful images of animals in motion. As sophistry, it uses a pseudo-science to get us to believe that its images are real. But Timaeus' relationship to poets and sophists runs deeper than his scientific methodology. It enforms his whole perception of the human good in relation to the intellect and the city. Timaeus is a combination of noble extremes. On the one hand, he is immersed in conventional political activity: he runs his city and enjoys its honors (20al-5). On the other hand, as an astronomer, he soars high above all political regimes... or does he? As the likely story shows, Timaeus seeks to ground our being in a new and higher regime. He seems to want to redirect our political spiritedness and piety away from conventional cities and towards the natural "city" studied by the astronomers. Instead of Solon's political poetry, we now have Timaeus' political poetry. It seems that Timaeus, even when he soars, cannot escape his political perspective. Just as he apparently cannot get beyond the love of honor, he cannot transcend the noble opinion that the highest human good is stability of character and obedience to law, political qualities eminently displayed in the stars. Coming from a city with excellent laws, Timaeus "imitates well the things on which he has been reared" (19d5-e2). This is the poetic deficiency of his soul. It helps us to see why Socrates calls the likely story a v6µrn;, thereby suggesting that Timaeus, no matter how much he seems to be the lover of natural order, is still bound by the right opinion of conventional cities. The astronomical side of Timaeus is sophist-like: it wanders through the heavens with no thought for political rootedness. All cities are banished from the likely story: there is no fellowship or community among men but only the individual and the cosmos. In the character of Timaeus, Plato has painted a moving picture of the poet-sophist at his best and most magnificent, a poet-sophist who seems to be a combination of philosopher and statesman. Timaeus is at once apolitical and ultrapolitical. His noble extremes do not temper one another. There is missing that mean position in which the soul, in leading the philosophic life, soars above the political perspective without losing sight of its political rootedness. The Timaeus inevitably brings us back full circle to the Republic, the dialogue that the Timaeus had pretended to surpass. Socrates' desire was for a sophistic poem. He wanted to see beautiful animals in motion. He wanted to be fooled into thinking that these moving animals were truly alive, to lose himself in the 37 �beautiful image in the way that we all tend to lose omselves in a truly great poem. Socrates stressed the irrationality of his desire by repeatedly using words related to feeling and being affected. He presented himself as "pathetic," as a man at the mercy of poets and imitators. What is Socrates doing here but imitating the souls of his hosts? articulating the desire and the 1t6:0o~ that is theirs? What is Plato doing through Socrates but painting a moving picture of our own nature in its love affair with moving pictures? What, then, is Socrates' true desire? Perhaps, it is to see in what precise ways the human souls before him will show their true colors in the act of being painters. The silence of Socrates is really the contemplation of Socrates. It is the philosophical and ironic distance at which Socrates places himself with respect to the realm of all doings and makings. In being entertained, he is placing himself outside the "real world" of his hosts. As Socrates himself tells us, he is "at peace'' (27al) while his hosts go off to war, gratifying the desire that is really theirs. They are the turbulent object of his serene contemplation. In the Timaeus, Socrates is gazing, as usual, upon the human soul. He is reflecting on the animal that beautifies itself in order to forget that it is a monster. Time the Dominant John Dunn 38 39 �Origami "The" Exponential Curve David Ruy Henry Higuera The swan comes to life. A paper-folded splendor. The wings flap slowly with a rhythm that could only be life. The wings flap with caution; a babe-like vanity prevents it from grace. But the wings flap with a careful wonderment. Suddenly, a winged flutter; a fluttering sound echoes through my room. I can only shudder with a blaze of paranoia. I run to the door and tum the lock; chain the door. There is interested motion outside the door... What was that noise? It was me. What are you doing? I am dancing. Dancing, as is usual. Why are you dancing? I dance because I need to. Let me in. I wish to see you dance. ... can only back away. I am not dancing. I have never danced. I s.it inside this room and fold these pages into swans, only to wait for them to come to life. I have been waiting for a long time ... Tell me if you need anything. ... I need nothing now. The swan flutters. It turns its head from side to side. Does it see? Does it smell? I sit and watch the paper-folded swan. I am nervous, pricked by a thousand needles of crazed anticipation. The.swan is flying. It took the air with such nimble agility. I am excited. I watch the swan. It is beautiful. It is flying. . I ~m looking through my drawers; I look for string. Once I f~d It, I shall be able to tie the swan down. I am going to keep this swan. I am catching the swan; I hold it in my hands. It struggles. This paper-folded swan. I am tying the string around the neck of the swan; I tighten th~ noose. I tie the other end to my own wrist. I am going to keep this swan. The swan circles ·the room counter-clockwise. Continuously. The room is about ten feet by ten feet. A cage. A sheet-rock cage. For the bird. For me. But I am delighted. I have the object of my childhood fancy tied to my wrist. I sit down and watch the beautiful thing as it flies. I remember seeing a child yesterday. I find much in common with the memory of that child right now. 40 The child was sitting on a park bench with a wonderful red balloon tied to its wrist as his parents were walking about the paths somewhere in the park. The child stared with joyful wonderment at the red balloon - bouncing it up and down with the string; it was a tantalizing feast for the child - the balloon so close to escape; it was ready to soar towards the heavens, to crush the finnament- saved by the subjugation of a child's jealous fancy. I find myself in the memory of that child. The swan is getting stronger. And stronger... Please, let me see you. ... stronger. The string starts to cut into the flesh. The pain grows strong ... Please, I want to see what you've made. ...stronger. The flesh starts to rip. Blood, dropping by droplets, splashes and stains a wooden floor. And the swan is growing stronger... Why won't you let me in? ... stronger. I frantically search for something to cut the line. My blood is dropping by droplets onto the floor. And the swan is stronger... Those who have taken Sophomore Mathematics may have come across the fact that all pru·abolas are similar - identical in shape, differing only in size. This is very easy to prove once Apollonius establishes that every parabola has an axis, and every so often a Sophomore Math Tutor will ask the class to try and prove it for themselves. Recently, I discovered, much to my surprise, that "exponential" curves have exactly the same property: they' re all similar. Stated algebraically, all equations of the form or x'= x +Ina (see Fig. 1), so that x = x' - Ina. Now, a= elna, so that y =aex =(elna)ex' =ex+ Ina. Now substitute for x: = e(x' - Ina) +Ina =ex. define similar curves for all values of a and k. This surprised me because different exponential curves certainly don't look similar near the origin, but hey, proofs don't lie. I'm first going to establish this fact algebraically. I don't consider these proofs especially pretty, and (in the typical way of algebraic proofs) they don't give much intuitive insight into why these curves are indeed similar. So, I will follow my algebraic proofs with a geometrical discussion which, while not quite rigorous, helps one see why it is that all exponential curves are similar. In fact, unless you like algebra, you might consider skipping ahead to Part II. Are you alright in there? ... stronger. The blood streams from my wrist. The string becomes singed of redness and the redness slowly climbs the length of the string as the cotton string slow1 absorbs y the redness of my blood. Chairs are being overturned. Drawers are being pulled from the desk and thrown. Piles of papers are thrown. I am searching desperately for something to cut the line. As I frantically search, I notice many paper-folded swans, come to life, flying within the room, as if they can feel the opportunity, building to a climax, to escape from this sheetrock cage. I finally find a razor. As I take it to the line, I hesitate for a moment and remember the child. But the pain finds me. Someone is banging on the door as I cut the line. With a crash of glass, the fluttering sounds build to a din as the swans fly through a window. The fluttering echoes from the distance. From a greater and greater distance, a fainter and fainter echo catches my ear. The blood flows quietly from my wrist as I walk to look beyond the smashed window. I can only vaguely remember the words that were written on the pages of those paper-folded swans as they fly towards the town over the landscape that I see beyond my broken windowa landscape composed by some loving hand, so barren and subjunctive. Then Part I. Algebraic Geometry Prop. 1. Every curve y = aex is identical for all positive values ofa. For, let a new origin be chosen on the x-axis, defining new x-coordinates, x-, and placed a distance of Ina to the left, if a is greater than 1, or right, if a is less than 1; keep the size of the xand y-units the same. >"leW ]-y.I y- t\X is And this means that in relation to the new origin, with identically-sized x- and y-units, this curve is simply an ex curve, identical to the ex curve which was relative to the old origin . Q.E.D. In other words, trying to vertically "stretch" or "flatten out" an ex curve doesn't stretch or flatten it out at all, it just moves it over! Prop. 2. The curve y = ekx is similar to the curve y =ex for all positive values of k. For, let a new origin be placed on the x-axis and new units be defined: y' = ky, that is, the new y-units are 1/k as big as the old; while x' = kx +Ink, that is, the new x-units are also 1/k as big as the old, and the new origin is at a distance of Ink from the old (to the left or right depending on whether k is greater or less than 1). new l"---1 y- 0ixis J ! I I 1. ~K::o x'-;. In°' new LA nit FIG.1 Ink FIG.2 41 �Then y=t_ k and 1 x = k (x' - lnk). Now substitute for x and y in order to describe y = ekx in terms of the new coordinates. Y =ekx v' L.=e k ~(x' - lnk) k y' = kex' - Ink = (elnk)ex' - Ink = ex' - lnk + Ink =ex'. Therefore, in relation to the new origin and measured in the new units, this curve is simply the ex curve. Q.E.D. Now, I haven't shown that such curves exists; there might be a hidden impossibility in the definition. Even if they do exist, I haven't shown that they're continuous, there might be gaps in them. But let's assume such curves exists and are continuous. I also haven't shown that this corresponds to an equation y = aekx; but in fact with suitable choices of a unit length and an origin, you can set up coordinate axes such that the curve will correspond to this equation. An illustration of how to do this is given, without proof, as Appendix I. Let's also assume that the perpendiculars or ordinates increase continuously too. That is, let us assume that as one ordinate gets closer to a second without limit, the two will differ by less than any given length. Not assuming this would amount to allowing "jumps" in an exponential curve: for if the difference between the smaller and the larger were always greater than or equal to some finite length, no matter how close together they were, there would have to be a jump up to the larger - see Figure 4. So in effect what we 're doing is ruling out jumps in our curves. . N_ote that ekx = (ek)x = Kx, where K = ek. Thus this proposition is also about changing the base of the equation: changing the base of ex both moves the curve over and blows up or shrinks down the entire picture, but it doesn't alter the shape of the curve. Prop. 3. The method used in Prop.1 shows that aekx is simply the ekx curve moved over either to the left or the right. Prop. 4. Finally, if a or k are negative, that merely reflects the curve around the x- or y-axi.s, respectively, so no new shape occurs. Part II. Geometry DEF!N1TION. An exponential curve is one with the following relat10n to some given straight line, called the axi.s: perpendiculars erected until they meet the curve from any set of equidistant points on the axis will form a series of continuously-proportional lines. In Fig. 3, if A,B ,C and Dare equidistant, then The proofs that such "corresponding parts" actually exist run to a couple of pages, so I have relegated them to an Appendix. If the claims seem obvious to you from your impressions of exponential curves, you might skip Appendix II entirely. If you have doubts, however, or love rigor, I do try to give real proofs. AB: CD :: AE: CG :: BF: DH (see Fig. 5). AE: BF:: BF: CG:: CG: DH . FIG.3 42 FIG.6 the same ratio, as Euclid never proves but Heath does; and the general case is clearly true, even though I don't know of a general proof. Anyway, since this is so, in our two series of continuouslyproportional ordinates that constant ratio which every ordinate has to the next is the same for both series. But there are also exactly as may lines intervening between DH and LN as there are between BF and KM. Therefore you have a huge ex aequali: the ratios BF: KM and DH: LN are both determined by the same ratio compounded with itself the same number of times. Therefore they're the same: BF: KM :: DH: LN or BF: DH:: KM: LN. Q.E.D. Thus far I've only handled a special case, ordinates situated at commensurable distances. But now let there be ordinates at K and L, and let BK and DL be proportional to but incommensurable with AB and CD. I say that KM and LN are still proportional to BF and DH. For, 0 and P exist on the axes such that the distances BO and DP are proportional to and commensurable with AB and CD, and also such that the ordinates OQ and PR are closer to KM and LN than any given distance. (See Figure 7.) Therefore OQ and PR can be chosen closer in length to KM and LN than any given length. Now OQ and PR can be chosen closer in length to KM and LN than any given length. Now OQ and PR, as I've just proved, are proportional to BF and DH. If KM and LN were not proportional to OQ and PR, then one or both of the former would have to differ from one or both of the latter by some finite length. But this is impossible, since for any finite length we can find an OQ and a PR closer in size to KM and LN. Therefore they must be proportional. Q.E.D. BK: DL :: AB: CD; AE: BF:: CG: DH and also C D KM: LN :: BF: DH , which will show the similarity of the curves. It is actually rather easy to prove this, at least in a special case: let there be two exponential curves, with "corresponding ordinates" AE and BF on the first curve and CG and DH on the second, and let K and L be two other points, one on each axis, situated so that AB and BK are commensurable, CD and DL are commensurable and (see Figure 6) Having made these assumptions, this in brief is how I will go about showing the similarity of all exponential curves. I will first set up "corresponding parts" of any two curves, as follows. Let us assume that on any two exponential curves there is a pair of ordinates on one which are proportional to some pair of ordinates on the other, and also that the distances between them are in that same ratio. That is,·corresponding to A and B on the first axis let's say that there are C and D on the second such that T?e purpose of this section is to provide intuitive clarity, not A 8 then FIG.4 full ngor: we want to understand enough about these curves to get a feel for why they are similar. I'll start by defining them. {~xis Now, given these corresponding parts, I will show that if any other points are similarly placed along the axis, then the corresponding ordinates will be proportional as well - that is, if in Figures BK: DL :: AB: CD , 1 A B K L FIG.5 then I say that KM: LN :: BF: DH . For, since they are commensurable, AB and BK have the ratio of some number to some other number (Euclid X. 5), and so do CD and DL; but they're in the same ratio, so they are to one another as the same number is to the same number. Therefore, a unit exists on the first axis which measures AB and BK, and another unit on the second which measures CD and DL, and AB contains the same number of its units as CD does of its units, and BK the same number of its units as DL of its units. Therefore on each curve we can set up a series of continuously-proportional ordinates including all our ordinates, with the same number of new ordinates intervening between the corresponding original ones. AE: BF and CG: DH are the same ratio. Each of these ratios is produced by a smaller ratio (the one between any two adjacent ordinates) compounded with itself the same number of times. Now, if two ratios which are compounded with themselves the same number of times give the same ratio, they too must be the same ratio. For example, "subduplicates" of the same ratio are M Q c. D LP FIG.7 I hope that this treatment, especially the device of imagining a crowded series of continuously-proportional lines, will help you visualize what it is about exponential curves that makes them all similar. 43 �By the way, it is easy to see why ex and aex are not only similar but identical if one uses some things proved in Appendix II. As a bonus for those of you who read that Appendix, I include as Appendix III a proof that those two curves are identical. I'd like to close with a remark about the significance of the famous number e, 2.71828 or whatever. As we have seen, there is absolutely nothing geometrically unique about the ex curve, as opposed to 2x or any other base. The ex curve is not a special case in a family of curves: it's exactly the same curve as all other exponential curves. Consequently e has no geometrical significance whatsoever, as the base of a special exponential curve. As a special base, the importance of e is entirely an artifact of algebra, and above all the calculus. On the other hand, e does have a geometrical significance, and in fact one which extends over the exponential curve as such - so that e is both more and less important than one might think at first. That significance has to do with the tangent. On any exponential curve, the segments cut off on the axis by the tangents at any points and the ordinates to those points are all equal, no matter where the points are on the curve. I give proofs of this in Appendix IV. That segment can be taken as a fundamental measure of the "size" of the curve, like the parameter to the axis of a parabola or the diameter of a circle. Well, it turns out that on any exponential curve, any two ordinates that are just that constant distance apart are in the ratio e : 1. Thus, in its own way e is as indissolubly linked to all exponential curves as pi is to all circles. Now it is obviously convenient, in algebraic analysis of exponential curves, to pick that length as the unit; and so it is this geometric fact which underlies the immense convenience of the number e in the algebra and calculus connected with these curves. Appendix II: Auxiliary Proofs PROOF 1: Proportional pairs of orc. J nates exist on any two exponential curves. For, in any series of increasingly long, continuously-proportional lines, each increment is longer than the last (in fact each such pair of increments is in the same ratio as the lines themselves, by Bue. V. 12). Therefore, since you're adding ever-increasing increments without end, the longest line can be made longer than any given length, no matter how small the shortest line is. Thus the ratio between some two of these lines can be larger than an~· given ratio. Furthermore, we are assuming that on our curves the ordinates increase continuously, so that you can get any ratio in between. Therefore, all you have to do is pick a reasonably large ratio on the first curve, and you 're assured that two ordinates exist in that ratio on the second. PROOF 2: On any two exponential curves, there exist proportional ordinates which are situated at proportional distances. One way of seeing this is by first establishing a preliminary fact. Indeed this fact will be so important in understanding these curves that I'm going to call it a theorem. THEOREM I. On any exponential curve all pairs of ordinates that are at equal distances are proportional. I must first restrict myself to commensurable distances. That is, given an exponential curve and random ordinates AB and CD, pick ordinates EF and GH, such that EG=AC and also such that AE is commensurable with AC. That being the case, I say that N B_~ ---1r, t[_ ± A AC= EG- E C. G- Case 1- overlappin!J se9»unts y-t).X/5 FIG.8 FIG.10 Now we can prove that somewhere on our two curv~s we c~ find proportional ordinates which are also at proportional di~­ tances. For on each curve, given a pair of ordinates in any ratio whatever, other pairs of ordinates exist in that same r~ti~, getting longer and longer without limit as we move to the ngh~, but all at the same distance from each other. Therefore, smce the ordinates increase but the distances between them do not, by suitable placement the ratios AE: AB and CG: CD can be i;nade as great as we please. Thus, picking a reasonably large rati~ on our first curve, we can be assured that on the other curve pmnts can be found such that AC.= EG- FIG.6 bis Appendix III: That ex and aex are the same curve. For, for given any numbers a, p and q, and so ex and aex can be described geometrically as curves which have the same axis and for which any two pairs of ordinates from the same two points on the axis are proportion~. Consequent!!, however, any two ordinates on one curve are m the same rat10 as any two ordinate at an equal distance on the other curve, by Theorem I. fun' Now the ordinates on both curves get longer without It, as also ~roved in Appendix I, so that for any ordinate AB on the higher curve there must somewhere be an ~qual ordi.nate CD on the lower curve, as in Figure 11. But now if any ordinate on the lower curve is at the same distance from CD that another o~ the higher curve is from AB, these two will be in the same ratio as AB and CD, again by Theorem I. Therefore they're e_qual: all ordinates at equal distances from AB and CD, respectively, are equal. AE: AB :: CG: CD Ct1se 2- Non-overl11p;iir19 5egr'Ylenf-s AE::CGor, alternating, ( aJ< : J< : : (). : 1 ) rl AB: CD:: EF: GF. Appendix I: Fitting an equation to the exponential curve. Call the axis as defined above the "x-axis;" pick an origin at random; pick a unit length at random. The numerical value of a is then determined by the ratio between the unit and the ordinate to the curve at x = 0. Now go out one unit to the right. The ratio of the ordinate there, at x= 1, to the unit, then determines the numerical value of aK (or aek). By suitable choices for both origin and unit you can get any values for a and k. For because of the commensurability there is a unit of length whi~h measures the whole interval AG and the smaller intervals AE, EC and CG (or AC, CE and EG). Therefore there exists one series of continuously-proportional lines, which includes our four ordinates and a bunch of intervening lines. But EG = AC, so each pair of our ordinates has the same number of ~ontinu­ ously-proportional lines between them. So the tw~ ratios AB: CD and EF: GH are compounded of the same ratio the same number of times. Therefore, ex aequali, they're the same ratio. The same is true of any other equidistant pair in this series. Thus far I have only proven this for commensurably-situated ordinates. But these can be found as close as we like to the location of all pairs of incommensurably-situated ordinates the same distance apart. So, if EG = AC but AE and AG are not commensurable with AC, it is possible to place Kand Min such a way the KM is commensurable with AC, it is possible ~o place Kand Min such a way that KM is commensurable with AC, KM= AC= EG, and KE and MG are smaller than any given distance. Therefore KL and MN can be chosen closer in size to EF and GH than any given difference. Now KL and MN are proportional to AB and CD; and ifEF and GH weren't proportional to KL and MN (and thus to AB and CD), they'd have to differ from them by some finite lengths. This is impossible, however, for given any finite differences we can find a KL and MN closer in length to EF and GH than them. Therefore EF and GH must be proportional. Q.E.D. AE: CG :: AB: CD , which is what we needed. FIG.11 FIG.9 44 45 �Appendix IV: That all tangents and ordinates cut off equal segments on the axis. Algebraically, this follows from the famous fact that the derivative of ex equals ex. Recall that the derivative gives you the "rise over run" of the tangent, while the function itself give just the "rise," i.e. the height of the point of tangency, above the x-axis. So for all x, the "rise over run" equals the "rise" from the x-axis: therefore the "run" along the x-axis everywhere equals 1. A geometrical proof can also be given. This, too, depends on Theorem I from Appendix II. Let EFGHefgh be an exponential curve, with ordinates AB, DF, ... ae, df &c. as in Figure 12. Let AB equal ab. Let the line AGK touch the curve at G, so that it and the ordinate CG cut off AC on the axis. Let ac equal AC, and draw the line agk. I say that agk is tangent to the curve. so that DM: DF :: dm: df, Euc. V. 9 and alternating. Similarly BN:BH::bn:bh, and so on for all ordinates at equal distances from A and a, respectively. Therefore, if DM is less than DF, then dm is less than df; if BN is less than BH, then bn is less than bh, and so on for all such pairs of ordinates. Therefore the line amgnk is below the curves everywhere except g, just as AMGNK is below the curve everywhere except G. Therefore amgnk touches the curve at g; and it cuts off, with its ordinates cg, ac on the axis equal to AC cutoff by AMGNK. Therefore &c. Q.E.D. Actually, I haven't proved that the line AMGNK is indeed everywhere between the curve and the axis, but if you go back to the definition of the curve and use Euclid VI, it's pretty easy to see for yourself. k FIG.12 For, by Theorem I the ordinates at equal distances are proportional, i.e. AB : ae :: CG : cg :: BH : bh ; but now by Euclid Bk. VI (I'm not going to go through all the steps; they're quite easy) AGK and agk, as they cross ordinates at equal distances, cut off proportional segments on them, all of which are in the same ratio as CG: cg. For example, if D and d are placed so that AD = ad, then DM: dm :: CG : cg . But since AD= ad, Theorem I also applies, and DF: df:: CG: cg , Balance Jeff Seidman 47 46 �Two Humors Ellen M. Myers Machiavelli opens a chapter on the creation of the Roman tribunes with the remark, "All writers on politics have pointed out, and throughout history there are plenty of examples which indicate, that in constituting and legislating for a commonwealth it must needs be taken for granted that all men are wicked and that they will always give vent to the malignity that is in their minds when opportunity offers" (Discourses 1.3). This sounds as though Machiavelli has decided to dismiss the populace as worthless and dangerous. But a few lines later, he summarizes the _history of the offenses of the nobility against the plebeians, saymg, But, no sooner were the Tarquins dead and the fears of the nobility removed, than they began to vomit forth against the plebs the poison hid in their hearts and to oppress them in every way they could. This bears out what has been said above, namely, that men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are too free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become everywhere rampant. (D 1.3) It is clearer in this second passage that when he refers to the men who "never do good," he has primarily the offenses of the nobility in mind; although perhaps the aristocracy and the masses are jointly guilty of causing "confusion and disorder." These remarks open an extended discussion of the difference between these two groups, here beginning in sections 1.4 through 1.6, but recurring throughout The Prince and The Discourses. He makes this one of his themes very early in Discourses 1.4 when he writes, "Nor do they [readers of Roman history] realize that in every republic there are two different dispositions [due urrwri diver si], that of the populace and that of the upper class and that all legislation favourable to liberty is brought about by the clash between them." But what are these two different dispositions, that is, what is the character of each group? Surprisingly, it turns out that rather few generalizations are made about the nobility apart from contrasting them to the masses. A number of specific examples are given of the behavior of the nobilities of Rome, Athens, Sparta, Venice and Florence in different events, but they are not much discussed in the abstract. The nobilities of two aristocratic cities, Venice and Sparta, are singled out for further consideration in Discourses 1.6. The oligarchy in Venice was "due to chance rather than to the prudence of its legislators," in that it was based on early residence in the city; latecomers became the general populace, and could not dispute established custom. In Sparta, the nobility was also defined early, and was distinguished by its equal distribution of (and comparative lack ot) luxury. In both cases, however, the oligarchical government could be maintained because, first of all, the plebeians did not engage in warfare, and hence never became dangerous; and secondly, the number of foreigners admitted to the city was strictly limited. So in no fashion were 48 either the numbers or the ambitions of the plebeians augmented. In Venice, this was possible due to a certain geographical isolation and continued numerical superiority: "Besides, there were not many who came later to dwell in Venice, nor where they so numerous as to upset the balance between rulers and ruled; for the number of gentlefolk was either equal to, or greater than, that of the newcomers" (D 1.6). In Sparta, this isolation took more the form of a cultural separ~tion from the rest of Greece. Thus, in history, the most successful oligarchies are isolationist and conservative in character. Sparta and Venice are used throughout The Discourses as examples of successful, long-lived, and relatively benign oligarchies. Far more instances are quoted of foolish, wicked, and self-destructive groups of nobility; for example: For since such a state [an oligarchy replacing a formerly free city] has been created by that prince, it knows it cannot stand without his friendship and power, and it has to do everything to maintain him. And a city used to living free may be held more easily by means of its own citizens that in any other mode, if one wants to preserve it. (P 5) That is, a formerly free city may be held by the treachery and sycophancy of its nobility. On the whole, however, there are rather few general descriptions given of the upper classes, except of their tendency to oppress the masses. So it is easiest to consider the two groups by examining the differences Machiavelli points out between them. Machiavelli's "populace" is seen in a surprisingly favorable light, when all is said and done. They may be sheep, they may be gullible, and he may say rather less than the average political writer about the Common Good, but a close reading reveals quite a number of times in which he assumes and counts upon their essential decency. They exhibit, collectively, a baseline level of common sense, tolerance, and enlightened self-interest that could stand as an example to their wealthier counterparts. They are sometimes fickle: " ...the nature of peoples is variable; and it is easy to persuade them of something, but difficult to keep them in that persuasion" (P 6). On the whole, though, they can be counted on to acknowledge good sense and act on it: "And though, as Tully remarks, the populace may be ignorant, it is capable of grasping the truth and readily yields when a man, worthy of confidence, lays the truth before it" (D 1.4). This common sense and good judgement are what often save the city in times of trouble, and should be the desiderata of any good ruler: "I will conclude only that for a prince it is necessary to have the people friendly; otherwise he has no remedy in adversity" (P 9). Not only is the populace a bulwark against adversity (hostile nobles, external invasion). In some sense it is also the standard against which successful government is measured: " ...I look upon those rulers as unhappy who, to make their government secure, have to adopt abnormal methods because they find the masses hostile" (D 1.16). Machiavelli has a great deal to say about these abnormal methods, the dictatorial authority necessary to reform a state or lead it in time of war. He speaks approvingly and at length about the leader who has the virtu and audacity to take command in such a situation. Yet here he acknowledges that, after all, such methods are abnormal and unhappy to the one forced to make use of them. The basic difference between the humors of the people and the nobility is in their ambition, of which the populace has relatively little: "The demands of a free populace, too, are very seldom harmful to liberty, for they are due either to the populace being oppressed or to the suspicion that it is going to be oppressed ..." (D 1.4). And, says Machiavelli, the impression is rightly founded, because as he has already said, the nobility will only do right by the masses under the force of necessity. Or, as he says in the Prince, For in every city these two diverse humors [umori] are found, which arises from this: that the people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the great desire to command and oppress the people.... Besides this, one cannot satisfy the great with decency and without injury to others, but one can satisfy the people; for the end of the people is more decent than that of the great, since the great want to oppress and the people want not to be oppressed. (P 9) It is true that, if sufficiently provoked, the masses will attempt to avenge themselves on their oppressors: " ...What I say is that he [a prince] ought first to ask what it is that the people desire, and that he will always find that they desire two things: (i) to avenge themselves against the persons who have been the cause of their servitude, and (ii) to regain their freedom" (D 1.16). This vengeance can be bloody, as when Cesare Borgia had his minister sliced in half in the city of Cesena: "The ferocity of this spectacle left the people at once satisfied and stupefied" (P 7). But it is Cesare's action; to the people, it is a spectacle that overwhelms. This look at the difference between the two humors of populace and nobility, I hope, will shed some light on some similar contrasts which Machiavelli draws in other areas. On the level of states, for example, there are two major considerations: what the city itself desires, and what it believes its neighbors desire. In large measure, it is its own disposition and its perception of others' dispositions that will control how aggressive it is. "For war is made on a commonwealth for two reasons: (i) to subjugate it, and (ii) for fear of being subjugated by it" (D 1.6). If a state appears fearsome, it will trigger the same fear of oppression in its neighbors which the plebeians feel in the face of their opponents the nobility. Machiavelli warns against giving this impression unnecessarily, as it invites attack. On the other hand, the attacking city may simply be of an expansionist disposition; in which case, the only defense is to appear strongly defended, or not worth conquering. Similarly, independently of its neighbors, a city can have one or both of two general goals: " ... a city in which freedom prevails has two ends in view. One is to enlarge its dominions; the other is to keep itself free. In both it can err by excess" (DJ .29). The excesses and dangers of expansion are obvious, and Machiavelli spends a number of sections discussing them. The excesses of freedom are harder to imagine, and Machiavelli is not especially persuasive. His major point seems to be that one can be unnecessarily suspicious; this would seem to be related to his discourses on ingratitude: ''The vice of ingratitude arises either from avarice or from suspicion" (D 1.29). Avarice, a greedy desire to enrich oneself at the expense of someone to whom a debt of gratitude is owed, is far more a failing of the prince or any small ruling class, where the personal impact will be felt, than·it is of the people as a whole. Suspicion can be a failing of either a prince or the populace, though it is more likely that the prince will be guilty of it. But in either case, more than avarice, suspicion is an essentially conservative and defensive trait. One fears that the successful general may become the oppressor, like the aggressive neighboring state, or like the nobility against the plebeians. In summary thus far, Machiavelli posits two different sorts of temperament to be found within a city, and two sorts of interests in the city as a whole. In both cases, one is essentially conservative, isolationist, and negatively defined: the city wishes to remain free, and fears its expansionist neighbor. The populace wishes only not to be oppressed. As Machiavelli describes it in The Discourses, this is "the possibility of enjoying what one has, freely and without incurring suspicion, for instance, the assurance that one's wife and children will be respected, the absence of fear for oneself... " (D 1.16). This impulse is to preserve the status quo in a peaceable fashion, whenever possible. In opposition to this live-and-let-live attitude is the equally universal one of aggrandizement. The nobles are ambitious; they wish to expand their privileges at the expense of the masses. States, in general, keep one eye on the weakness of their neighbors and exploit it as soon as it becomes evident. It's a dog-eatdog world, and the meek are likely to have the worst of it. The very nature of life ensures that. "Nor have I the least doubt that, if this balance [the status quo] could be maintained, there would be genuine political life and real tranquility in such a city. Since, however, all human affairs are ever in a state of flux and cannot stand still, either there will be improvement or decline, and necessity will lead you to do many things which reason does not recommend" (D 1.6). We would somehow expect, from what we've seen so far, that the expansionist city would be found in tandem with an expansionist form of government, i.e., an oligarchy. At this point, Machiavelli's analysis is astutely based on experience rather than reason and similarity. In The Discourses 1.4 - 1.6, he points out that this is exactly the opposite of the real situation. A city, even an empire such as Venice's or Sparta's, which has an oligarchy in charge generally assumes a defensive character. Its acquisitions are strategic, designed to protect the existing interests of the city; and it poses no threat to its immediate neighbors for at least long stretches of its lifetime. On the other hand, for a 49 �republic to expand, it should be governed in large part by the people: Should, then, anyone be about to set up a republic, he should first inquire whether it is to expand, as Rome did, both in dominion and in power, or is to be confined to narrow limits. In the first case it is essential to constitute it as Rome was constituted and to expect commotions and disputes of all kinds which much be dealt with as best they can, because without a large population, and this well armed, such a republic will never be able to grow, or to hold its own should it grow. In the second case it might be constituted as Sparta and Venice were, but, since expansion is poison to republics of this type, it should use every endeavour to prevent it from expanding, for expansion, when based on a weak republic, simply means ruin. This happened both in Sparta's case and in that of Venice. (D 1.6) An oligarchy may prove to be expansionist, but will probably prove too weak, as Machiavelli's later image of trnnk and branch illustrates. But in order to expand, a large, armed and active populace is essential. "In the first case it is necessary to do in all things as Rome did. In the second case it is possible to imitate Venice and Sparta... " (D 1.5, emphasis mine). A large populace is essential to expansion, and expansion will prove essential to a large populace. Though they individually desire only "not to be oppressed," the simple pressure of population growth will force them to grow larger; and the example of a large, active, and growing city will probably encourage at least some of its neighbors to choose alliance or union over enmity and defeat. Still, it seems perverse in some way that the nobility, which has expansionist tendencies within the city, should be essentially conservative in dealing with outsiders. This is explained, however, by the Hobbesian remarks Machiavelli makes in his section on the "haves" and the "have-nots:" There arose considerable discussion as to whether the 'haves' or the 'have-nots' were the more ambitious, for the appetites of both [l' urw e l' altro appetito] might easily become the cause of no small disturbance. Actually, however, such disturbances are more often caused by the 'haves', since the fear of losing what they have arouses in them the same inclination we find in those who want to get more, for men are inclined to think that they cannot hold securely what they possess unless they get more at others' expense. (D 1.5) So we realize that, although property often becomes ours through an acquisitive instinct, it remains ours through a conservative one; in fact, it is the very occasion of a defensive posture. How can we defend what is ours if we have nothing to lose? On the other hand, if we have nothing because we are essentially peaceable and unambitious, then we are almost certain to need and want something that isn't ours already, even if it is only freedom from oppression. Thus, the two humors of the city are not only in tension with one another, but in a real sense, they create one another. This reminds us of a phrase in The Prince. In speaking of these two dispositions of the city, Machiavelli talks about their results: "For in every city these two diverse humors are found, which arises from this: that the people desire neither to be 50 commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the great desire to command and oppress the people. From these two diverse appetites one of three effects occurs in cities: principality or liberty or license" (P 9, emphasis added). This is very similar to what he has already said about the Roman republic, that its liberty wasn't threatened by the tumults of the populace; in fact, liberty was the very result of the constant quarrel between the nobility and the people. "All legislation favourable to liberty is brought about by the clash between them" (D 1.4). Nor would Rome have been outwardly successful if this had not been the case. If Rome had preferred internal peace, then "in seeking to remove the causes of tumults, Rome would have removed also the causes of expansion" (D 1.6). Rome obtained the happiest of the three possible outcomes, liberty rather than license or principality. The liberty is the result of a balance between the two humors. Excessive domination by the people would lead to license; by the nobility, to principality. But is this true? Perhaps, on the other hand, excessive domination by the corrupt nobility is what can lead to license, since the people are rather conservative in comparison. As he writes in Discourses 1.3, " ...when they are too free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become everywhere rampant." Or, perhaps the increasing license of a democracy would cause a revulsion into tyranny, as Machiavelli suggests in Discourses 1.2. How confusing these two dispositions are! Every time we seem to be in a position to apply labels to two oppositions, the answer eludes us. It is interesting that a third option, liberty, is available within the city, and that it derives (in the case of Rome) from hammering out the differences between the nobility and the plebeians through the public institutions. Liberty, or at least stability, is also possible through the intervention of a strong man with a clear vision of the reforms and balances he wishes to institute. It seems that the two dispositions within a city can arrive at a useful compromise if there is some common authority to which they are both accountable. In the case of Rome and many other republics, this authority lay in the agreed-upon institutions with their dynamic balance. In other cities and during transitional times, the authority generally lies with one person. But some control is exerted on both dispositions. Why doesn't this work in the relations between whole states? Because they have no common authority. If they did - if two or more cities could appeal their disputes to a higher authority, they would not be independent states, but parts of a larger whole, and the dispute would be an internal one that would fall into the natural jurisdiction of the common ruler. In the terminology of Hobbes, the men of a city are in civil compact with one another, but cities are in a state of nature or (frequently) war among themselves. Let's consider another instance. Machiavelli spends a tremendous proportion of both The Prince and The Discourses on Livy's discussion of the methods of foundation and reform. One of his primary concerns is the consideration of when, whether, and how change should be introduced, and on what principles a city should be organized in the first place. One of the institutions necessary to a city is the ability to reform itself within law, so that extraordinary measures will not be required. Change is seen as inevitable, and so it must be accommodated. Ideally, such change could grow out of the inherent tensions between the two humors of the city, as it did in Rome's case. Very often, however, drastic change will require the intervention of some strong individual (whether inside existing institutions, as the Roman dictatorship, or outside when the institutions are inflexible or the populace is corrupt). The degree of authority that Machiavelli is willing, indeed eager, to bestow on this individual is quite extraordinary: One should take it as a general rule that rarely, if ever, does it happen that a state, whether it be a republic or a kingdom, is either well-ordered at the outset or radically transfonned vis-avis its old institutions unless this be done by one person.... Wherefore the prudent organizer of a state whose intention it is to govern not in his own interests but for the common good, and not in the interests of his successors but for the sake of that fatherland which is common to all, should contrive to be alone in his authority .... It is a sound maxim that reprehensible actions may be justified by their effects, and that when the effect is good, as it was in the case of Romulus, it always justifies the action. For it is the man who uses violence to spoil things, not the man who uses it to mend them, that is blameworthy. (D 1.9) We will come back to the question of a ruler's severity later. For now, it's interesting to note that Machiavelli is actually talking about two sorts of change, foundation and reform. And when we examine reform itself more closely, we find that a portion of his comments apply to renovation, while others apply to innovation, and that there is a considerable difference between the methods of the two, though both aim at promoting stability. Innovation is both easy and difficult, because men are both attracted to and worried by novelty: " ... Men are by nature inclined to look with favour on new enterprises; a favour which is likely to be bestowed, above all else, on enterprises which seem to have in them a certain virility and which are taken up by young men" (D 1.33). Current interests drive out considerations of the past: "For a new prince is observed much more in his actions than a hereditary one; and when they are recognized as virtuous, they take hold of men much more and obligate them much more than ancient blood. For men are much more taken by present things than by past ones, and when they find good in the present, they enjoy it and do not seek elsewhere ..." (P 24). On the other hand, the novelty value (which appeals to men's expansive, audacious nature) can wear thin when faced with the fears and suspicions of man's natural conservatism: Those like these men, who become princes by the paths of virtue, acquire their principality with difficulty but hold it with ease; and the difficulties they have in acquiring their principality arise in part from the new orders and modes that they are forced to introduce so as to found their state and their security. And it should be considered that nothing is more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than to put oneself at the head of introducing new orders. For the introducer has all those who benefit from the old orders as enemies, and he has lukewarm defenders in all those who might benefit from the new orders. This lukewarmness arises partly from fear of adversaries who have the laws on their side and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not truly believe in new things unless they come to have a firm experience of them . Consequently, whenever those who are enemies have opportunity to attack, they do so with partisan zeal, and the others defend lukewarmly so that one is in peril along with them. It is however necessary, if one wants to discuss this aspect well, to examine whether these innovators stand by themselves or depend on others; that is, whether to carry out their deed they must beg or indeed can use force. In the first case they always come to ill and never accomplish anything; but when they depend on their own and are able to use force, then it is that they are rarely in peril. From this it arises that all the armed prophets conquered and the unarmed ones were ruined. (P 6) This long quotation spells out very neatly the problems of introducing "new orders." Men are unable to believe what they have not yet seen, and they continue to anticipate and fear the powers of the old order. Despite their attraction to the opportunities offered by novelty, their essentially conservative fears usually win out and they hold back to see the outcome of the confrontation. This resistant passivity, and the tendency of the people to be won over to new ideas but not steady in these new convictions, means that the ruler must use whatever force is necessary to accomplish his ends. Reason and persuasion are not enough; good intentions are not enough. He must enforce his vision on a reluctant population. That is, in order to overcome the passive, unaggressive humor of the people, he must employ his own active virtu to force the innovations he sees as necessary. If effectively done, the results will be praiseworthy - regardless of the means. In contrast to the innovation of new institutions, whether as part of founding a new society or as a much-needed reform, the renovation of a state is essentially a conservative process. The need is to return to the virtues of one's ancestors: " ...Those changes make for their conservation which lead them back to their origins .... The way to renovate them, as has been said, is to reduce them to their starting-points" (D 3.1). In this section, Machiavelli does not even point out that the starting-point must have been a sound one; the assumption seems to be that any lasting institution was originally founded on good principles, and these need only be rediscovered. Often enough, these principles are either explicitly religious or, at very least, moral in nature insofar as "moral" in Machiavellian terms means "not corrupt," that is, neither effeminate nor bribable nor devoted to selfish pleasures and luxuries. The reason for this return to origins seems to lie very close to Machiavelli's appreciation of history- at least, of the great and successful examples in history: For since men almost always walk on paths beaten by others and proceed in their actions by imitation, unable, either to stay on the paths of others altogether or to attain the virtue of those whom you imitate, a prudent man should always enter upon the paths beaten by great men, and imitate those who have been most excellent, so that if his own virtue does not reach that far, it is at least in the odor of it. (P 6) 51 �Imitation becomes a reasonable substitute for active virtue of one's own. If a prince hasn't the type of brain which sees for itself, he must at least have the sort which can judge the reports which others bring to him. From examining the two humors and the two goals of the city, as well as innovation versus renovation, we seem to have arrived back at Machiavelli's perplexing use of the word virtu. At times, Machiavelli uses this term as if it implied nothing more than strength and audacity, for example when speaking of Agathocles (Prince 8) or Cesare Borgia. At other times, he talks as if it has what we would term a moral connotation, as when he finally concludes of Agathocles: For, if one considers the virtue of Agathocles in entering into and escaping from dangers, and the greatness of his spirit in enduring and overcoming adversities, one does not see why he has to be judged inferior to any most excellent captain. Nonetheless, his savage cruelty and inhumanity, together with his infinite crimes, do not allow him to be celebrated among the most excellent men. Thus, one cannot attribute to fortune or to virtue what he achieved without either. (P 8) There are thus at least two sorts of virtue for Machiavelli. He writes of whether a ruler should prefer being loved or feared, whether he should rule with mercy and sociability or cruelty and severity (Prince 17; Discourses 3.22). He praises Romulus and Tullus for their warlike nature, but Numa who came between them for introducing religion. There are two forces at work here, both of them important and valuable, and each having its function. In Discourses 3.9, he speaks of adapting to the times. Piero Soderini, that decent man, failed because he did not exercise sufficient virtue (audacity). Pope Julius II, who succeeded because of his audacity, would have failed had the temper of the times changed. Both things need to be kept in mind. "Very rarely do Men know how to be either Wholly Good or Wholly Bad" is a shocking title for Discourses 1.27, but it summarizes his view that both are necessary and effective if applied in turn, at the right time. It is the attempt to compromise between the aggressive and the peaceable, the active and the passive, the cruel and the tolerant, that leads to disaster. Balance must not be construed as wishy-washiness. Even Fortune itself has aspects of both the conservative and the audacious. On the one hand, he says that "it is bette1 to be impetuous than cautious, because fortune is a woman; and it is necessary, if one wants to hold her down, to beat her and strike her down. And one sees that she lets herself be won more by the impetuous than by those who proceed coldly" (P 25). On the other hand, in the letter in which he writes to his friend Vettori that he has just completed The Prince, he praises the quiet and disciplined life his friend is leading: "And because Fortune wants to do everything, she wants us to allow her to do it, to remain quiet and not give trouble, and to await the time at which she allows men something to do; and then it will be right for you to give more effort.... " An amazing contrast in the images of Lady Fortuna! Yet it makes sense when we begin to realize that, in 52 fortune, as in cities and in individuals, there are two humors. We cannot ignore either except at our peril. Sometimes these two humors are in constructive competition. Sometimes they tear one another apart. In some respects, each begets the other. At times audacity is called for; at other times, a cool head. Sometimes the two dispositions are so confused (in the literal sense, fused together) that we cannot be sure which is which or what the outcome may be. "So that this is just one of those things in which evil is so closely associated with good, and so bound up are they one with the other, that it may easily happen that he who thinks he will get one, gets the other" (D 3.37). Given all these difficulties, it seems we can only summon both our courage and our wits, draw on the examples of history, and do the best we can to balance the two humors: Nor should any state ever believe that is can always adopt safe courses; on the contrary, it should think it has to talce them all as doubtful. For in the order of things it is found that one never seeks to avoid one inconvenience without running into another; but prudence consists in knowing how to recognize the qualities of inconveniences, and in picking the less bad as good. (P 21) The Wrath of Aeneas Donna Schueler Near the beginning of this poem that sings of a man and his fate, Virgil wonders, in horror, about the gods - are their minds moved by unrelenting wrath? Aeneas, sings the poet, is a man remarkable for goodness; by poem's end, he will have become a man of whom it can be said, his wrath is godlike. Pious Aeneas, hounded by the wrath of Satumian Juno throughout the poem, is, at its end, caught in the unyielding grip of Saturnian rage, a rage which fills the poet with horror. The wrath of this good man will be as unrelenting as that of the goddess. It is a redoubtable transformation the poet gives us; why does he give it? A man remarkable for piety, and his fate - does fate require of this man more than piety; is piety insufficient to his hard fate? Our first encounter with Aeneas in fury is not in the present tense; nor does his fury play itself out. He is recounting for Dido the tale of his city's fall. In his narration, he has come upon Helen. She is crouched in terror beside an altar, the altar standing among the fifty bridal chambers of Priam's daughters. Seeing her there, a fire bums in Aeneas' mind, anger spurs him to avenge his falling city. He knows that he is mad, that to kill a woman, even the Laconian woman, is at best a dubious thing. But the bitterness in his heart drives him after her. And then Venus comes between them; the fury of this man remarkable for piety gives way. The poet has not made us witnesses; we hear, with Dido, an account of forestalled violence, of a fury that relented. What can happen, so that by poem's end, pious Aeneas comprises a rage equal to the rage of High Ones, equally relentless? Aeneas remains with Dido for a full year. What could make him so heedless, knowing what the future holds in Hesperia, for him and all his line? The need to resupply stores and revive his weary men would not want so long a time. Such needs as these would not keep him the whole year at Carthage, building Dido's walls, heedless of his own great walls, which have still to be raised in Aussonia. This is pious Aeneas, son of Venus by Anchises; he bears with him the household gods of Troy, entrusted to his keeping by great-hearted Hector, and he is not building the walls which are his fate. It will want much to make this man stray so far from his fate that Jove must send Mercury with high remonstration. It will want much, and yet Aeneas' lingering, his role in the love-story, is not the result of divine machination. Did~, on the other hand, has been seduced by a power larger than herself or Aeneas. It is necessary that she abandon her pious vows to the dead Sychaeus, and this has required the intervention of Venus. The goddess has sent Cupid in the guise of Ascanius: Dido has dandled him on her lap, kissed him tenderly. And all the while Cupid/Ascanius invades her body with the fiery poison his mother has prescribed. No such inflammatory measure has been taken with Aeneas. When he comes to their encaved 'marriage,' Apollo to her Diana, (see N, 172-210) no god has impassioned Aeneas. What Venus wakes up in Dido is present in her already, waiting there susceptible of arousal, ready for the divine ruse. But it has wanted the divine nudge. On the other hand, what Dido's beauty arouses in Aeneas is wakened solely by her. It has not been necessary that Juno devise the infiltration of his soul when he mates with Dido, he is entirely his own man. It is true that Juno and Venus have brought them to the cave, but to Aeneas himself they have done no more than this. We take new measure here of Aeneas' greatness; for all nature attends this marriage. Primal Earth aids Juno, fiery lightning flashes, and the upper air is witness when Dido and the son of Anchises mate. To achieve this, Dido has been inflamed by Venus, but the psyche of Aeneas has needed no divine push. It has not required the gods' contrivance to rouse Aeneas to so great a passion, but it will want divine intervention to recall him to his reason. Jove must send Mercury to rebuke him, to recall him to his fated walls and the glory waiting for Ascanius. When he is mindful once again of who he is, Aeneas burns for the onward-going, burns to be underway. This is the first time we have seen him impassioned for the walls he must raise in Latium. But before he can go, there is Dido. Who knows. She lashes out at him in fury, denouncing him as a deceiver and breaker of vows. Aeneas' reply to her is heart-wrenching; we see his heart wrenched. He protests his love for her in a way bitterly ironic in light of what is to come; and yet what more could a lover who is compelled to leave behind him his beloved ever say? These are his words: "I never shall regret remembering Elissa for as long as I remember my own self, as long as breath is king over these limbs." (N, 451-54) Strange words. For this is Aeneas, a man for whom (despite his Carthaginian exile) self and fate are inextricable: To remember himself is to remember his fate; to remember his fate is to leave her; remembering his fate he will remember Dido - what do they mean, these words? He tells her that Apollo's oracle, and Mercury and his father's anxious image urge him; Lycian prophecies tell him that Italy must be his love. It is not his free will, says Aeneas, that leads him to that other love. Dido reviles him. Growing more and more delirious, she says that truly this is the work of High Ones. In fury she tells him to go; heaping curses, she says she will not keep him back. She leaves Aeneas groaning, "shaken in his mind because of his great love." (IV, 542-43) She leaves him hesitating, in fear, and longing to soothe her. But his piety turns him toward his ships, toward that other love, to Italy. When Anna comes to him to make Dido's plea for empty time, even in his great strength, Aeneas is shaken. He stands as a great oak, its crown touching the stars, its roots reaching to Tartarus, the poet says. But Anna's assiduous words are like north winds. The great oak shakes in this wind; it does not fall. Dido wakens in Aeneas for the first time in the memory of the poem an elemental, even a bestial, passion. When he leaves her, he can say for the first time that he loves Italy; for the first time he burns to accomplish his fate. Virgil makes Aeneas tell the reader, in his reply to Dido's accusations, how this has come about: love for Italy derives from love of Dido, love of Dido is 53 �transformed, to love of Italy. That irrational energy which she has aroused, the passion which love of Dido sets loose in his soul is now set toward Italy, transferred to his hard fate. Now Aenea~ has what it talces. I believe this is what Virgil signals when he says in Book VII, "Sing Erato." Sing not the passion of your ~sual song, sing rather what such passions can become. Sing that m some fundamental way it is all one. Without the unfated, uncivilized marriage with Dido, the fateful and lawful marriage with Lavinia might not come to be. Aeneas has begun to learn the significance of the not-good, of the irrational. Until his time with Dido, all that Aeneas has known comes ':ithin the scope of civilization. When he arrives at Carthage he fmds scenes of Troy, splendidly wrought scenes of his greathearted city that fell. When he looks back on Carthage from his ~eeing ship, he sees a sight which can only look to him like Troy m flames. Between the two simulacra of Troy lies a space of time he ~o~~d nei~er tame, no~ prevent, a time unfated and utterly unc1~ihzed. Like the mamage of Paris and Helen, the marriage of Dido and Aeneas - bestial, elemental, pointedly uncivilized - has destroyed civilization. Does Aeneas need to live the violence of such passion himself before he can know that while it has nothing to do with civilized ways, it is yet ge~uinely human, and so, ineluctable as any fate? He arrives at Carthage knowing all there is to know about pious ways and civil man. Does his uncivilized marriage say to us that this is insufficient to secure his long line's fame in the great city he will raise? Does Aeneas need to know that elemental passion is always latent, even in the most civilized breast? Must he know, before he can father great Romans, that which can never be sanctioned in a great civilization, yet is never separable from it? It is as if, before Anchises can inflame the soul of Aeneas with love of Roman glory, Dido must set the kindling. In Book VI Aeneas, obedient to Anchises' command, descends to the Underworld - to seek a meeting with his father, to learn of his coming race, of his walls in Latium. Anchises directs Aeneas to Avernus, to the Sybil; she will guide him past Tartarus to Anchises in the Elysian fields. She will turn out to be a wildly irrational guide. The temple over which the Sybil presides is housed in a cave; the poet has shown us already what irrationality is housed iri caves. When Aeneas and his company are at the threshold, the Sybil's wild heart heaves with frenzy, and .she cries out to him: "Are you so slow with vows and prayers, T~oJan Aeneas? Are you so slow?" (VI, 73-4) Tartarus, she raves, will never open its jaws without his vows. We think of Dido, raving about broken marriage vows. We remember that Aeneas denies having made such vows. . Now the power of the god closes in on the Sybil. His breath ts upon her, but she cannot yet speak, she has not yet yielded to Phoebus. The lines in which she does yield are lines of sexual innuendo: She tries to drive Phoebus from her breast but "he tires out her raving mouth, he tames her wild heart, he shapes by crushing force." (VI, 112-13) He "urges the reins as she raves on; he plies the spurs beneath her breast." (VI, 139-41) Would the pious Aeneas have been willing to consign himself to the 54 guidance of this madwoman if he had not known Dido? Until the point at which he submits to the Sybil, his piety has not been one of access to the inner workings of di vi.Le madness, his piety has been, with a single powerful exception, one of good and proper observance of the rites demanded by household gods - his pious ancestors at Troy. But with submission to the Sybil his piety grows more complex. He is coming to know the value, the sanctity, of this kind of wild irrationality, of high passion. Aeneas' submission to the Sybil's guidance is linked still more directly to his submission to his passion for Dido. After he has retrieved the golden bo•1gh, Aeneas and the Sybil stand at the opening of Avernus; she calls upon Hecate, queen of heaven and hell, and he sacrifices to Night, the mother of the Furies. We have heard Hecate invoked before this - when Dido placed on the pyre their couch, and Aeneas' effigy, clothed in his clothes and armed with his sword. At that moment, she called upon Hecate and the triple-shaped Diana, triune goddess of female initiation to marriage, of whom Hecate is one third. She called upon Hecate, night fell, and Dido was consumed. Her death, like the Sybil's possession by the god, is given to us in lines of sexual innuendo. Dido lay upon the couch that was their bed and, pressing her face into it, murmured endearments to the Trojan's clothes, while she took his sword into her body. The goddess called upon to witness this deadly consummation is the goddess upon whom the Sybil calls to open the way to hell. The Sybil his guide, Aeneas proceeds. At the middle of Book VI, in the Fields of Mourning, he sees Dido. He swears by the gods above and by whatever there is of trust in this netherland, his unwillingness when he left her. Brutally consumed in brutal waste, Dido will not raise her eyes to him. Nothing he can say will move her, though he so clearly wants to move her. When she turns from him he follows with tears and pity. He will at last "struggle on his given way again." (VI, 627) His guide brings him to the Blessed Groves - to his father, who had feared Sidonian Dido, feared that the kingdom of Libya might do so much harm to Aeneas. In the course of the poem we will not hear again that Anchises is frightened for his son's fate; only the Sidonian passion scares the great father. Aeneas catches sight of the river Lethe, and the swarms of heroes flocking to its banks. He wonders. These, says Anchises, are the spirits to whom fate owes a second body, they have gathered here at the river to drink deep drafts of forgetfulness before returning to the upper earth. Aeneas is shocked. Who so mad to long to leave these fields, to long for the light of earth? For answer, Anchises tells his son a tale of the human soul. In the soul, he says, are fiery seeds whose source is heavenly. But these are housed in a dark prison of mortal members and earthly limbs; the body is a plague to the soul, causing sorrows and fears, and joy. Even in death these bodily plagues do not relent, "for taints so long congealed cling fast and deep in extraordinary ways." (VI, 973-75) And here below, each must pay with fresh torment the price of his old taint - each suffers his own shade, the shade his life has merited. It requires the cycle of ages to anneal a soul's stain. When this has been accomplished, shades are summoned by Dis to a great Lethian assembly, where they drink deep and forget the plight of the soul in the flesh, its longings and pains - its joys. Forgetful, they long to return to upper earth. This purification through loss of memory is at the middle of the poem; and it is what Aeneas, not dead but living, must accomplish in order to emerge again to the light of day. Moreover, Aeneas, a living soul, has begun already this arduous purging of the longings and joys of the flesh. In the upper air of Carthage he renoWlced Dido, stood like an oak in the face of their mutual love, her entreaty, his own longing to remain. Alive, he has paid already, in the manner of shades below, a great price of torment for his stay with Dido. Aeneas will forget, in the way of shades departing Lethe, the name. of Dido, but unlike the shades, he will not have been granted a cycle of ages in which to cleanse his memory. Because he lives while he forgets, something will remain. Anchises will fire his son's soul, but it is Dido who has laid this fire. His tale of the soul's cycle complete, Anchises reveals to Aeneas "the fame to come from Dardan sons," (VI, 1000) the Trojan shades who will become the great Caesars of Rome. These names too, he forgets. When he sees the history of Rome bossed on the shield his mother brings to him, he is moved, greatly, but does not know what it is he sees. Anchises brings Aeneas and the Sybil to the Twin Gates of Sleep for their departure from Hades. Through the gate of horn true shades rise to earth. Through the gate of polished ivory, Spirits send false dreams to the world above. Anchises sends Aeneas back to his fate through the gate of polished ivory. Why, why? His departure in this way is almost more harrowing than his descent. Two possible explanations come to mind; but they do not relieve the reader's uneasiness. One: We remember that Aeneas seems somehow to have to do what the shades by the banks of Lethe must do, he too must forget. But he is alive. He will not utter Dido's name again in the course of the poem; and when he sees the scenes on his Vulcanmade shield, he is moved with wonder, but uncomprehending. Aeneas forgets, but something irrational remains with him, something to which he could not put a name, some vague intuition moves his soul. It is true that Aeneas emerges from hell a new man, annealed and ready. But he is not, like the Lethian shades, a clean slate. Though he cannot say what it is that moves him, Aeneas remembers. And we remember his words when he abandoned Dido: for as long as breath moves his limbs, when he remembers himself, he will remember Dido. Does Aeneas rise to earth through the gate of false dreams precisely because some stain oflonging for Dido even now "cling(s) fast and deep?" (VI, 974) Two: In showing the great Romans to his son, Anchises does point out to him the elder Marcellus, but he hopes to pass over Marcellus the younger; Aeneas must persuade his father to name the young man and say something of him. Anchises does so in tears. Marcellus will be but shown to the upper air, fate will not allow him a full lifetime. For ''The line of Rome, o High Ones, would have seemed too powerful for you, if his gifts, too, had been its own." (VI, 1161-63) Anchises' purpose in exhibiting for the soul of his son the future of his long line is to fire his soul for the exigence of that which, shortly, he must do. And to that end, Aeneas must believe that the city which will come from the labors of his progeny will be the proper place for such a one as Marcellus, that it will be such a place and, that the High Ones will not harrow it with their ferocious passions. He ascends, believing in the pious greatness of Rome, through the Gate of False Dreams. He comes to Latium, to the fated place. His arrival there has been safeguarded by Neptune, who has guided the ships safely past Circe's island. (The Trojans are not men to be transformed to raving beasts.) And here it happens that, the men hungry and rations short, they consume their tables. With this, Aeneas realizes where they are. He rouses his men to pour their cups out to Jupiter, the High One, and the household god of Troy, father Anchises. And Jupiter grants them omens: thunder out of a clear sky, a cloud flashing great light and gold. Here the Trojans will raise their new walls. The next morning, Aeneas sends to the king of Latium an embassy of one hundred men, led by Ilioneus. He himself remains behind. At last in the place where he belongs, he stays behind to lay the site of the Trojans' first Latin settlement. We should note that it is not a logical landfall. That is, Aeneas is, at last, in the place that is his, fundamentally his because fated to be so. Yet it is not his. Latins live here. This place that belongs to Aeneas, must be conquered. The embassy comes to the Laurentian palace, a place, it turns out, of great irrationality. It is now the palace of Latinus, but it is called the palace of Picus, Latinus' grandfather, whose father was Saturn. And before Virgil permits Latinus to speak to the Trojan embassy, we hear about Picus - that his bride, Circe, in the clutch of lust, transformed him into a speckled bird. Latinas welcomes the Dardans, saying to them that they have come to a people who need no laws to guarantee their righteousness, for they are sons of Saturn. The Latins hold themselves in check by their own will, he says. The Trojans shall have what they ask of Latinas, but he wants one thing first, to clasp the right hand of Aeneas. He is remembering the oracle of Faun us, that his daughter Lavinia must not marry from among her father's own, but marry with a stranger, for great things await her. He regales the Trojans with gifts, sending to Aeneas a chariot with a pair of fabulous stallions, horses bred by Circe on a mortal mare with seed she stole from her father's stallions. Strange bastard horses, they come to Aeneas from a palace which has seen strange · things. Juno cannot rest. Aeneas is in his place, but she will not rest, for she hates his race. She sends Allecto to break the peace, to "let sudden quarrel spur young men to want, demand and seize the sword." (VII, 449-50) These peaceful sons of Saturn, who need no laws to restrain them, are to be waked to the fury of Juno by the stratagems of Allecto. It is significant that for the most part, as she goes about her hideous task, Allecto does not need 55 I �to implant violent passions, she needs only to rile them up. The snake that winds its way between the breasts and dress of Amata, into her bowels, breaths its serpent breath into a frenzy Amata feels already. Allecto can inflame Ascanius so that he is over avid in the hunt because of his own inherent love of honor. The farmers who respond to Silvia's loss, the young men who rally to Turnus, the mothers who rally to Amata, all have in them something waiting to be stirred. Only Turnus resists. Although he knows that Trojan ships are in the Tiber and is aware that his betrothal is endangered, he laughs at the Fury in her disguise as an old woman. She must assume her full furious strength to rouse him, she must cast a torch of fury into his breast. This torch does not burn brightly there; it smolders with a murky light. But it has its effect. At the Laurentian fortress Turn us lifts the flag of war. Meanwhile, back at the camp, Tiberinus appears to Aeneas and exiles his cares. He gives Aeneas further proofs: the white sow with her sucklings, the sign Hellen us had said to watch for, is nearby. The very earth and all her waters have awaited Aeneas - his household gods are secure. This is his home. But he must set out from home, he must now fulfill the words of the Sybil and seek a Greek city. Tiberinus says he will tell Aeneas what he must do to conquer this land that is his home, this land that has waited for his arrival. He must journey to Arcadia, to Evander's great city, to Pallanteum. What Aeneas will find there are deeper, even more ancient roots and, his future. Aeneas and his men arrive at Pallanteum on the feast day of Hercules. The son of Evander leaves the ceremonies to confront the strangers; he asks to hear who they are, of what tribe? Aeneas tells the young man who he is, and Pallas clasps his right hand in fast welcome. Pallas brings the strangers into his father's city, where Evander will reveal to Aeneas still more about who he is. He tells him that they are relations through Atlas, who props the stars. The king relates for Aeneas the history of the Arcadians, and we who have been guided along the way by Virgil see that Evander is telling Aeneas still more about who he is, that their relation is still closer. Evander says, these groves once were inhabited by a race of men sprung from sturdy oaks, men who had no civilization. We remember that when Aeneas' soul was buffeted by the entreaties of Anna, the strength he found was the strength of an oak. We remember, too, that the great and remarkable piety of this man, who bears with him what remains of a great civilization, was interrupted by a fierce and heedless passion; that, for a time, Aeneas and the queen of Carthage lived outside the bounds of a civilization; that their love destroyed Carthage. The analogy with Paris and Helen is obvious. What is not so obvious is why Aeneas, in the haste and urgency of fleeing a Troy that was burning and falling all around him, should have carried away with him the gold-worked tunic and saffron-fringed veil that belonged to the hated Helen. Was something inexplicable moving in him even then, even as this man remarkable for piety preserved what he could of his great city? Who are you, Pallas asked? 56 The history of Arcadia includes Saturn, who found sanctuary here when he was driven from Olympus by his son. The exiled god came to this land and made a natim. of its untamed men and gave them laws. But Saturnian law is notlike theJ avian law Dido gave at Carthage, not like the law Aeneas gave at various settlements along the way. The law of Saturn is a law of revenge and passion, its guardians are the Furies. Will Evander and Aeneas turn out to be related through Saturn as well? Evander explains to Aeneas how it is that his people honor Hercules with such solemnity, lest he think that the Arcadians neglect the older gods. On ~e, their land was ravaged by the monster Cacus; the ground was always warm with the blood of slaughtered Arcadians. Hercules smashed the monster in his own cavern, opening up that foul place to the light of day, delivering the Arcadians from ferocity. Above all, the Arcadians celebrate the slaying of Cacus. Aeneas is permitted to witness the holy rites in honor of the hero who accomplished every labor set him by the Saturnian Juno. · Evander offers Aeneas an alliance; he will make him chieftain over thousands of Latins. A new Cacus is on the scene; the king Mezentius devises particularly foul and inhuman tortures for his victims. His subjects have driven him from his city, and now Turnus gives him refuge. Augury has revealed to Evander that a successful force against Mezentius must be led not by an Italian, but by a stranger. Like the husband of Lavinia, the deliverer must be a stranger. When he has delivered Latium from Mezentius, Aeneas will have conquered the land that is his, the land that has awaited him. And like Hercules before him, he will have delivered Evander' s people. Aeneas will conquer this land, he will bring the rule of Jovian law into Latium. But he is kinsman, through Atlas, of Evander, whose Arcadia is ruled by Saturn, by that older law which erupts with sudden fury. And now, Aeneas has made an alliance with his kinsman. Evander sends his son, Pallas, with Aeneas. As their galley glides through the night, Pallas clings close to him, and asks to hear his history, his deeds and trials on land and sea. He clings, we have a picture of the young man hanging on every word the great Aeneas says. Like Dido before him. It may be disputed, but in what follows I shall assume that Pallas is the beloved of Aeneas, that the love of Aeneas for Pallas is not only the pious love of father Aeneas who has given his right hand to Evander, but the passionate love of the lover. It is at this point that Venus brings to her son the great shield forged by Vulcan. It is the offspring of a night of love: his wife takes Vulcan into a "soft embrace," (VIII, 509) instantly he catches "the customary flame." (VIII, 510) And in the morning, early, he sets to work. The shield of war born of love has at its center the battle to come at Actium: Antony faces Caesar, his Egyptian wife close behind. The shield's center pictures a man who turned his back, for love of a woman, on Rome - as Aeneas himself, for a time, has done. Sing Erato, of passion and the irrational, Sing the link of love with war. When she presents Aeneas with the shield, Venus, who throughout the poem has held herself aloof from him, shows herself freely and reaches out to embrace her son. Why has she held herself from him before this, and why does she now open her arms? What has changed? Aeneas has allied himself with Evander; he has found that force by which he will conquer Latium. His alliance turns out to be, at some level, an alliance with the law of passion and revenge, that law older than the law of Jove. Because Arcadia is the land of Saturn in exile and the land delivered by Hercules, Aeneas has pledged his right hand to the adamantly passionate. Has Venus found Aeneas, before now, wanting in filial devotion? (Harsh as this sounds! ) Now Aeneas has begun his approach to the rage of the High Ones now, she may embrace him, now he is worthy of this mother's tenderness. Moreover, Venus knows that he has clasped the hand of the boy who will become his ·lover, and be the occasion of rage. She opens her arms. The battle will rage this way and that. Pallas will be notorious in battle, dealing terrible slaughter to the Latins. But he will be killed by Turnus. As he faces him, Pallas calls on Hercules to let the dying Turnus see him, Pallas, strip the bloodied weapons from his enemy. It will not be so. It will be Turnus who takes bloody spoils from Pallas: the fateful belt, on which are engraved fifty slaughtered bridegrooms, an image resonant with the defamation of the inner chambers of Priam's palace. When Aeneas learns of Pallas' death, time slackens its pace: "Pallas... Evander... all are now before his eyes ...." (X, 710-11) The pious hero is infuriated. Before this he has been dutifully valiant, now his warrior's rage is something more than human. In Book XI, Turnus will say to Latinos that he would go boldly to meet Aeneas, though he be "as tremendous as Achilles." (XI, 580-1) By virtue of the huge force that the death of Pallas has for him, Aeneas has taken that name, that rage. Like the death of Patroclus, the death of Pallas sends into battle a ferocious warrior. We turn to the poem's end, to the slaughter of Turnus. Turnus has been defeated in single combat, the fate of Aeneas is accomplished, land and bride are his. Now, as he dies, Turnus implores Aeneas for that which piety cannot deny. He asks the return of his body to his father, saying to Aeneas, remember Anchises, your father - which is to say, remember the household gods of your piety. Aeneas in his goodness wavers, moved in his soul by Turnus' words. But he is moved two ways. His eye falls upon the belt on Turnus' shoulder, and he is enraged; not by the guile of a god, but by the sight of fifty bridegrooms slaughtered there on the belt of his beloved. And it must be that everything at once rushes into his mind: Priam's hundred daughters, the bridal chambers near which Pyrrhus slaughtered Priam, the brutal murder of Deiphobus at Helen's hands. And this: Pallas, son of Evander, Pallas killed by Turnus, Pallas his beloved, Pallas' plundered belt. Frenzied, he butchers a man already dying, attacks the already vanquished in a rage like the rage of High Ones. His fate already accomplished, Aeneas butchers needlessly. Acting outside his fate, and once again, outside the scope of civilization, Aeneas is as a god-like Hercules before him. We remember it is not any young man who has aroused his ferocity, it is the son of Evander whose death Aeneas avenges. He grants the impossible dying wish of Pallas, who called upon his father's guest friend, upon Hercules, to let him slay Turnus. The god heard Pallas' plea, and wept for its impossibility. It is a plea Aeneas could not have heard, and yet, slaughtering Turnus, he cries - Pallas does this! When he kills Turnus, the protector of Mezentius, Aeneas is the new delivererofEvander's people. He is the new Hercules, who grants the dying wish of his beloved Pallas. If such fury waited even in Aeneas, how shall Rome sustain a Marcellus? Rome will not be the place to exclude such gods as Virgil has figured here, they will not have cause to fear that their vengefulness and cruelty will be excluded from the Roman empire. We might even say that with the establishment of the Jovian, the Saturnian is restored; for if Aeneas brings the Jovian into Latium, he does so by overt alliance with the king whose people received Saturn in exile. Moreover, in Book XII, we see Jupiter himself recourse to the Saturnian in order that Aeneas and Turnus face each other unaided by any divinity. He calls on a Fury to terrify Turn us' helpmate, his sister Juturna, into quitting the battle. It is Jupiter who does this. Pious Aeneas as Rome, as the Rome Anchises says they will build together, is not simply pious; he has within him a great store of passion. Because one face of that passion is furious, impious and cruel, Aeneas has had to depart the underworld through the gate of False Dreams. The glory of the Rome to come with which Anchises has inflamed the soul of his son is not unequivocal. When Anchises says, "My sons, do not let such great wars be native to your minds ... cast down the weapon from your hand!" (VI, 1105-1109) and exhorts Aeneas, "Remember Roman ... to teach the ways of peace to those you conquer," (VI, 135-6) the irony is bitter. The shade to whom Anchises speaks, before he returns to earth's upper air, must forget all that he has learned below. By the poet's own device, Anchises' words are as ciphers to the forgetful shade, are like the leaves of the Sybil blown by the wind. And yet his words are necessary. For Anchises must inflame his son not with any fire, but with appropriate fire. To temper, to steel the soul of Aeneas for his arduous fate it must be pious flame Anchises fans. For when Aeneas leaves his father, he does not yet know that he is capable of a violence which ordinary piety could never condone. He must ascend through that gate passionate for what his piety can approve. He must ascend through the Gate of False Dreams. When he drives his blade into Turnus, the wrath of Aeneas is like the wrath of Hercules when he killed the monster Cacus. It · is like the wrath of Juno at the beginning of the poem. Can the mind of pious Aeneas hold such wrath? To ask this is to paraphrase the horrified wonder of Virgil at the beginning of the poem. How can a man remarkable for goodness be made to endure such torments as Juno will devise for Aeneas? "Can such wrath hold the minds of gods?" (I, 18) By the end of the poem the poet will be constrained to ask which god is it can help him to sing the bitterness and the butchery in the minds of Turnus 57 �and Aeneas. He asks Jupiter, can it have been your will that, despite the fact that these two nations were destined to live in peace, they unleashed such brutal, indiscriminate fury - so many men dead? At the close of the poem, Virgil will ask no question to help us with the horror he has presented us. Upon the flight of Turnus' resentful life to shades below, Virgil is silent. Even as our horror is shrieking at us, Virgil is silent. The only words the reader can find to give expression to his shock are a paraphrase of Virgil's opening question. Can such wrath hold the mind of pious Aeneas? It can. And when it does, when Aeneas' piety is coiled round with fury, when he is still plunging his sword into Turrms 'chest, the poem closes. The song is finished. The poet has shown us Rome will rise. what we need to see. 59 58 �Ricardo J.H. Beall The Other Face of Darkness -for Harry Golding J.H. Beall Her hands, the saddened darkness touched once. The future is history: her hair, the curve of her neck gently following spaces held between muscle and bone as though tension were the only metaphor for love. Look back. The mind is filled with shards of glass green of their own volition, or her eyes in a moment's repose before sleep, bruited of that color which sits above the horizon, culled from a litany of distance and blue. Of the future's hue, that opalescence we confined in, nothing serves but the tin-cup smell of water, warm on a dry, hot day, as it parts our lips like another's tongue, without words. In beginning, the trees mimic the colors of the fall. Though subtler, shades conspire and cut the throat of the bud's reticence. Then green is poured into the flagon of the air. Our eyes swill the mind's declension of the tongue's delight - green as a liquor. Thoughts hold tightly the fact that green is poured into the flagon of the air. All of this - the meridians' convergence, the circumstance of the sun's other motion into summer - like arteries pump green liquid into the flagon of the air. And we see the other face of darkness - light penitent for the winter' s sorrows, and with spring become contained by an emerald light poured into the flagon of the air. 60 61 I I �If you are not currently working at or attending St. John's, and you would like to continue receiving Energeia by mail, be sure to return this slip to: ENERGEIA St. John's College P.O. Box 2800 Annapolis, Maryland 21404-2800 Your name: Angel and Quill Nathan J. Humphrey 62 Address: � 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. 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For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Energeia, Spring 1992 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Spring 1992. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dennis, Douala (Senior Editor) Seidman, Jeff (Junior 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 1992 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 1992 Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/41ca83e7d4697ba19586b96932869f9c.pdf efe5b8a09f4cad31825ceb03a9208413 PDF Text Text SPRING 1993 . �ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself. fl ... vou £Vepyeia srofl ... (Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1072b) Staff Laudelyn Asinas Amy Flack Aimee Lalone Kristen Riddlespurger Senior Editor Rachel Blistein Junior Editor Yvonne Belanger Faculty Advisor Abe Schoener Special Thanks To the St. John's College Print Shop: Chris Colby Tina Davidson Andy Long Don Smith Energeia 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. The Energeia staff welcomes submissions from all members of the community - essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. �Table of Contents Kristen Riddlespurger Untitled [Photo] .. 2 Elliott Callahan Attacking the Image . 3 Panayiotis Pappas Salome and John 11 Eugenia E. Skarstrom Window [Photo] 12 D. Jennings Descartes' Interpretation of the World as Arising from his Method . . 13 Stacie Slotnick Orion outside my window . . . . . . . 18 Nancy Marcus An Investigation of Key Characters (and Character's Keys) In Mozait's Don Giovanni . 19 Sara Valentine Untitled [Sketch] . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Kathleen Wilson The Reeve's Tale by Geoffry Chaucer 29 Jean Holman Untitled [Poem, Photo] 33 Rachel Blistein Greek Urn . . . . . . . 34 Laurence Berns An Introduction to Kant . 35 Burton Blistein The Visual Arts and the Liberal Arts 39 Eugenia E. Skarstrom Ancient Ones [Photo] . . . . . . 53 Francie Roberts Her Hair by Charles Baudelaire 54 Susanna Beiser Choosing to Believe: Free Choice and the Knowledge of God in St. Thomas . . . . . 57 Eva T. H. Brann Cover Art-Eugenia E. Skarstrom, GI '94 Front: "Euclid and Stella" Back: "Journey" On the Relation of the Speech of Alcibiades to the Other Speeches of the Platonic Symposium ......... 61 Nedalina Dineva Hope in Sophocles' Antigone 63 Jean Holman Untitled [Photo] ...... 66 Janice Thompson Human Nature and War in Thucydides' by Nietzche History of the Peloponnesian War 67 Kristen Riddlespurger Untitled [Photo] 73 J. H. Beall Two swans .. 74 J. H. Beall Morning-for Mary Ruth Clance . 75 �Attacking the Image U Elliott Callahan '92 Where are you going, Don Quixote? What demons have you in your heart that incite you to assault our Catholic faith? Devil take me! Look, it's a procession of penitents, and that lady they're carrying upon the bier is the most blessed image of the spotless Virgin. Look out, sir, what you're doing, for this time you've made a real mistake. (p. 453) Loving and reading are acts of faith. In order to be seduced by the beloved, or enchanted by the book, we must place our faith in the imagination, and believe what it, and no other, can tell us. It is important then, from time to time, to have our faith tested and our beliefs questioned. The imagination, it appears, needs to be roused from its slothfulness, exerted, and provoked. For it realizes its potential when it unexpectedly finds itself towering over reason-when it is twisted and contorted until it discovers itself creeping up on its own shadow-and surprising us, its not very attentive keeper. Then we can revel in the imagination, for clearly it is most delightful when we discover that, unbeknownst to us, it had been busily working away, seducing our more reasonable halves. Reveling in the imagination fortifies our faith in it, and hence, our capacity to love, read, and believe. Don Quixote, "mirror of knight errantry," is the champion of the imagination. He reads with the same amount of passion with which he loves, and vice versa; a degree which is clearly beyond our grasp. Don Quixote's superior imagination and unwave1ing faith, display labors of love rivaled only by the labors of Hercules. It is possible that Don Quixote is the greatest lover the world has ever known. For unlike most of us, for whom it is true that "love is not loving," Quixote is capable of loving love and Dulcinea del Tobosa at once, and yet somehow remains conscious of both without contradiction. He is able to allow the image to enchant him and, at the same time, to recognize it as an image. Quixote is the embodiment of the paradox that we spend our lives trying to resolve. In the author's prologue, Cervantes says: Don Quixote's final adventure represents the culmination of his exploits. Throughout the course of his enterprise, the Knight of the Sad Countenance has attacked the objects of what the reader considers the "real world," mistaking, or understanding them to be images of his imaginary world. Now, instead of attacking reality, he attacks images. The consequences of Quixote's attack upon an image, and especially an image of the Virgin, are essential to understanding our relationship with this "lean, shriveled, whimsical child" (p. 25). The final episode is a crucial point in the story where Don Quixote's character begins to emerge in a new light. This new perspective is the result of the transformation that occurs in the relationship between Quixote and the reader. The events in the last adventure force the reader to reexamine his notions of reality and imagination, upon which are based his dual relationship with Quixote-both as a character and as a book. In his earlier adventures, Don Quixote attacks windmills and various innocent travelers whom he meets on the highway. He mistakes squalid inns for castles, whores for ladies, and a barber's basin for a helmet. In those adventures, Don Quixote's imagination overpowers his perception and transfonns everyday ordinary objects-"real" things-into the cast and props of knight errantry. In the final episode, Quixote is no longer the only one to recognize and incorporate images into reality. He is joined by his companions, and although they disagree on the basis for admitting this image in to the real world, they all perform the same act. In the eyes of the other characters-Sancho, the barber, the priest, and especially the penitents who scourge themselves-Don Quixote does not merely attack their wooden statue, but also attacks the Virgin herself. This adventme is the pinnacle of Quixote's movement from the real world, that is the real world of the characters as seen by the reader, to the imaginary. Although his comrades obstinately resist being seduced by the realm of the imagination, Quixote has forced them, albeit unwittingly, into a battle in which they cannot resort to the experimentally verifiable world. For the first time, the battle in which Quixote is engaged is no longer between the real and the imaginary, but takes place solely within the bounds of the imagination. The battle is a contest of faith, and Quixote has dragged his companions down into the murky cave where he can But I, though in appearance Don Quixote's father, am really his step-father, and so will not drift with the current of custom, nor implore you, almost with tears in my eyes, as others do, dearest reader, to pardon or ignore the faults of this child of mine. For you are no relation or friend of his. Your soul is in your own body, and you have free will with the best of them, and are as much a lord in your own house as the King is over his taxes. So who is the bigger liar, Cervantes or Benengeli? For Quixote is our fiiend and brother, and we love him dearly: he is the great mirror of our imaginations, and his adventures are the reflection of our faith. * * * In Book I, Chapter LII, in which is related Don Quixote's last adventure, the enchanted knight leaps on his steed and gallops off to offer combat to a band of kidnappers abducting a noble lady. Sancho says: 3 2 �challenge their beliefs just as they have challenged his. For Quixote's companions, attacking the image of the Virgin is tantamount to attacking the real, flesh-and-blood Mother of God. For Quixote, the statue is also equivalent or parallel to a living, breathing maiden, but not to the Holy Virgin. Both Quixote and his companions have granted the image, through their faith in it, the certainty and significance reserved for the "real" object it represents. In their minds the image is no longer an image, but a living woman. Thus their disagreement is only in terms of the particulars of the imagination, and the battlefield has shifted from one between the two separate worlds to the imaginary world alone. By attacking the image of the Virgin, Quixote also attacks the Catholic faith. Thus by denying or misperceiving a single idea, Don Quixote inadvertently attacks the foundations of his comrades' beliefs. In one fell swoop Quixote deals a decisive retaliatory blow to his comrades' beliefs. He suddenly shoves their world into the same perilous position into which they have forced his throughout the novel. The tables are turned when Quixote, who is continually forced to defend his system of beliefs throughout the course of his adventures, requires his persecutors to defend their own beliefs. The same questions with which his comrades have challenged his beliefs, he now unwittingly forces them to ask themselves about their own beliefs, namely their faith in Christianity. How sacred is their image? Can it be any more sacred that the image of Dulcinea del Toboso? Quixote's actions force us to compare the sanctity of the Virgin with the sanctity of Dulcinea. It seems that in the minds of their respective champions they are equal. How then can we assert our faith in one image over another? And how can we be certain that the faith we put in any system of beliefs is anything other than quixotic madness? Don Quixote's last adventure is crucial in exposing the absence of reason and the dependence upon the imagination that is integral to all our beliefs. When Don Quixote attacks the image of the Virgin, he not only challenges his companions, but, as we will see, he challenges the reader as well. We are too drawn into battle with Don Quixote-and this battle is important in the determination of our relationship with him. Like Quixote's companions, we have insisted that Quixote is a madman. But when his image (Dulcinea) is compared with theirs (the Virgin), and they appear equally legitimate, we are compelled to consider the validity of our own. First, we must address our relationship with Don Quixote up to this point. Then we can examine how the last adventure draws us into battle with him, and finally, how the results of that conflict change our relationship with Quixote. It appears that before this pivotal adventure, our relationship with Don Quixote is a fairly simple, almost superficial one. We love and admire Don Quixote because he has an unshakable faith in his principles. Moreover, they are principles that Quixote easily convinces us are noble and true. Like the priest, the barber, and the others, we are surprised by the sound reason Quixote displays when discoursing on the virtue of his profession. In these moments of lucidity, when Don Quixote does not endanger the lives of innocent people as well as his own, it is difficult for us to deny the logic which underlies laws of chivalry. But because it is universally agreed that the profession of knight errantry is half fiction, half nonsense, Don Quixote is considered a madman. Even though his arguments are sound and persuasive, the laws of chivalry are incongruent with our system of beliefs: His hearers were moved once more to pity at seeing a man, apparently of such sound intelligence and with such understanding of everything he spoke of, lose it so entirely on the subject of his foul and accursed chivalry. The priest said that there was much justice in what he said in favor of arms, and that he was of the very same opinion himself, although a scholar and graduate. (Ch. XXXVIII, p. 345) Both Quixote's companions and the reader perceive Quixote as a madman because the focus and foundation of his apparently sound reason and judgement is chivalry. We do not consider chivalry in any serious fashion, so any man who treats it so rationally and with such conviction must be insane, despite his seeming intelligence. But this apparently raving lunatic is a charm and delight in part because he is no threat to us. Many others have good reason to bear some animosity towards the "mirror of chivalry": Andrew, who is doubly beaten by his master for Don Quixote's interference; the innkeepers in whose inns Don Quixote wreaks havoc; and all the various travelers and shepherds, who fall victim to Don Quixote's outlandish escapades. But the knight's ardent conviction, his physical vulnerability, and his tender heart, soften our judgement of the damage that he does. We are in no danger and can thoroughly enjoy (from a comfortable distance) the spectacle of the havoc that he wreaks upon the innocent. Despite his imperviousness to the destructive effects of his actions, Quixote is also a tender, caring man. He offers the same courtesy to whores at an inn, as he does to the Duchess; every woman he meets is a damsel in distress to whom he extends his unconditional service. ... the first man of our times, of these calamitous times of ours, to devote himself to the toils arid exercise of knight errantry; to redress wrongs, aid widows and protect maidens, such as roam up-hill and down-dale with their whips and palfreys and their whole virginities about them. (Ch. IX, p. 76) Don Quixote is also a faithful lover and friend-a lover who must be admired and ranked amongst the best. His faith and devotion to Dulcinea del Toboso, whose honor he places above his own life, are flawless. And despite his sometimes harsh treatment of Sancho's drolleries, Don Quixote's unfaltering resolution to find his squire an island and the paternal tenderness with which he attempts to instruct him on the laws 4 of chivalry, testify to Don Quixote's noble intentions and tender heart. It seems important that Quixote be a character whom we neither fear nor dislike. On the contraiy, as our relationship with the Knight of the Sad Countenance begins to change, it becomes essential that we love him. This relationship with Don Quixote, that we establish early on in the novel, changes in the last adventure. It changes not because of any alteration in Quixote's character, but indirectly with the reversal in the status of his companions' beliefs. Tluoughout d1e adventures, we have been more or less in agreement with Sancho, the barber, and the priest. They, like us, love the knight, but consider him a lunatic whom they are obligated to restore to his senses, his family, and proper way of life. This diagnosis, namely that Quixote is insane, excludes us from his world (the imaginaiy) and includes us in the world shared by the otl1er characters (the real). We have shared with Quixote's companions a common system of beliefs loosely based on the description of our experiences primarily through inductive reasoning. Quixote, on the other hand, describes his experiences deductively from the fictional "laws of chivalry." But when Quixote attacks the image of the Virgin and we see our allies ascend into the imaginary world where the image is tantamount to the living Virgin, they too begin to paiticipate in Quixote 's deductive reasoning. Regardless of whether or not we are Catholic, or even Christian, we are forced to realize that the beliefs of our cohorts, which we were certain were just as rationally grounded as our own, are now indistinguishable in kind from Quixote's. The world of Quixote's companions, which we supposed was entirely rational, and wid1in which we included ourselves , suddenly manifests this quixotic ai10maly, thus undermining its rationality and certainty. Hence we must doubt the original certainty which we have placed in our own world. This world in which we ai·e left in becomes even less certain with the disintegration of the alliance we had formed with Don Quixote's companions. As they ai·e drawn into the imaginaiy world through their belief in the image of the Virgin, we are left alone in the world that only recognizes the image as a wooden statue. Hence what was once the imaginary world in the view we shared with Sancho, d1e barber, and the priest, and the penitents, is now their real world, and we are left suspecting that they, including Don Quixote, imagine our world, which recognizes the image as a mere image, as imaginary. Because we do not participate in the belief that the image of the Virgin has any special significance, we are immediately excluded from the world of the bai·ber, the priest, and the penitents, in which we originally included ourselves. But it is the awareness of exclusion that allows us to realize that we had believed in a different image-the image presented by the book- but we were completely unaware of the belief. In a single moment we are excluded from the world of the characters because we have not embraced the image of the Virgin, and at the same time brought back into the world with a whole new insight. We sudden Iy become aware of our belief in literary images. We are able to be enchanted by the book, and thus to have that spell broken by our exclusion from the characters' beliefs, only because we were initially able to transcend the literary images of the characters through the imagination and to allow them to become as real to us as the image of the Virgin is to them. Our relationship with Don Quixote is dramatically changed. For we are now unable to approach Quixote with the same objective rationality as before. Ouroriginal analysis that Don Quixote is insane, is no longer valid. We see that we ai·e like Quixote in many ways we never suspect until the certainty of our own world begins to deteriorate. It is Quixote then who demonstrates to us the uncertainty of our world, or that the certainty we put in our beliefs can only be as absolute as the certainty Quixote puts in his own . This revelation has the potential to be a frightening one. If Don Quixote were evil, if the enactment of his beliefs required murder and robbery, the discovery that we are unable to condemn his beliefs with any legitimate judgement would be teffifying. But we love Quixote, and now that he has led us to this self-discovery, we love him more. Don Quixote, the "mirror of chivalry," is also the mirror of ourselves. For without Don Quixote, we have no means of examining the certainty of our own beliefs. Without Don Quixote we are stuck in the so-called "real world," forever peering into the imaginary world, ai1d separated from it by an insurmountable distance. An analysis of tl1e last adventure, in which Don Quixote attacks the image of the Virgin, reveals to the reader the almost imperceptible barriers that separate the imaginary world of the book from the so-called "real world" of the reader. The bar1iers only become apparent after Quixote, albeit unknowingly, indirectly trespasses into the reader's world by questioning our unexamined beliefs. His attack upon the image allows us to recognize our own participation and faith in certain images by highlighting our lack of faith in a particular one (the Virgin). Our distance from the image of the Virgin reveals our intimacy with the characters, which can only be achieved through faith in d1eir literary images. But "The Last Adventure" represents a simple, isolated case of a more complex and thorough subordination of our unconscious faith in the literary images. For in the discussion of the authorship of Don Quixote, another, more effective, and more disturbing, attempt is made to subvert our faith in the image. At the beginning of the book, in the author's prologue, Cervantes claims the title of authorship for himself, declaring in the opening line: "Idle reader, you can believe without any oath of mine that I wish this book, as the child of my brain, to be the most beautiful, the liveliest and the cleverest imaginable" (p. 27). The perfectly rational assertion that Don Quixote is Cervailtes' brain-child, which any reader would easily grant, turns out not to be so cut and dry. A few sentences later, Cervantes tells us that though he appears to be Don 5 �the author and the character may confront one another, and second, that the author may confront the reader. The author's presence in the story is a constant reminder to the reader that he is reading-that the reader's involvement with the characters is an act of faith. The author is the craftsman who has created this image. His presence within the form of his own creation undermines our faith in the story and accentuates our willingness to let this creator of images seduce us, the believers. The remainder of Book I is taken from the work of Benengeli and the discussion of authorship is dropped. But the origin of Don quixote's history has been thoroughly convoluted and demands some explanation. There is some evidence to indicate that Quixote himself is at the bottom of this endless chain of narrators. Don Quixote is aware of the necessity of a knight errant to have a personal sage who will direct and record his adventures, and states this a number of times. When Sancho dubs him Knight of the Sad Countenance · he says: Quixote's father, he is really only his step-father (p. 27). Already, before the story has even begun, the identity of the author is cast into doubt. This is a strange way to write a story, but as this subtle departure from our expectations lies somewhat inconspicuously in the prologue, the importance of this subtle departure from our assumption of authorship is easily overlooked. The question of authorship becomes unavoidable in Chapters VIII to IX, which relate the stupendous battle between Don Quixote and the Basque. At the height of their combat, Cervantes abruptly interrupts the narrative: "the unfortunate thing is that the author of this history left the battle in suspense at this critical point, with the excuse that he could find no more records of Don Quixote's exploits than those related here" (p. 74). We are forced from this statement to conclude that Cervantes is not the original author of this history. Rather, he is narrating the work of a previous author, who based his version of Don Quixote's history on certain documents and records whose origin is a complete mystery. Cervantes goes on to describe his search for the conclusion to Don Quixote's battle with the Basque, and how by chance he found it amongst a heap of old parchments in a silk merchant's shop. A tattered old book which catches his eye miraculously turns out to be the "history of Don Quixote de la Mancha, written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, Arabic historian" (p. 77). Cervantes relates how he had the book translated for him by a Spanish-speaking Moor. The conclusion of the story is Cervantes' account of the translation of Benengeli' s work. Unfortunately, there are two points which further complicate the origin and veracity of Cervantes' Don quixote. The first difficulty is Cervantes' own doubt as to the veracity of the original which he expresses immediately after relating his discovery of Cide Hamete Benengeli' s history: ... the sage whose task it is to write the history of my deeds must have thought it right for me to take some title, as all knights did in olden days ... the sage I mentioned has put it into your thoughts and into your mouth to call me now The Knight of the Sad Countenance . .. (Ch. XIX, p. 147) If Don Quixote is the original author, then it is he who has put these words into Sancho Panza's mouth. Despite Sancho's wit, "Knight of the Sad Countenance" does not sound like a title that the squire we are familiar with would contrive. But, the explanation Sancho gives for the title, namely Quixote's shriveled up, pathetic appearance, does. It is not unreasonable, then, to suppose that Don Quixote might have given himself the title for another reason: his eternal longing for Dulcinea del Toboso. Don Quixote knows that, according to the books of chivalry, which form the foundation of his beliefs, his adventures should be carefully guided and recorded. Since the laws of chivalry demand it, so does Quixote's system of beliefs. It is possible to cite that Cide Hamete Benengeli is this omniscient, omnipresent sage, and he is actually referred to as "the sage Cide Hamete Benengeli" at the very beginning of Chapter XV (p. 111). But it is more likely that Quixote himself is his own sage-and that Benengeli, a liar, distorted the famous deeds of the Knight of the Sad Countenance. If this is the case, then in the original account of Don Quixote's adventures, written by Don Quixote, though Sancho may actually dub Quixote "Knight of the Sad Countenance," he is inspired to do so by Quixote's appearance rather than his love for Dulcinea. In the original work, we speculate, Sancho is perhaps slightly more informed of the laws and customs of knight errantry. But this, of course, could only be a figment of Don Quixote's imagination, which the Arabic historian Benengeli uncovers, and reveals in his own account of Don Quixote's adventures. The disastrous ramifications of this Now, if any objection can be made against the truth of the history, it can only be that its narrator was an Arab-men of that nation being ready liars, though as they are so much our enemies he might be thought rather to have fallen short of the truth rather than to have exaggerated. (Ch. IX, p. 78) The second difficulty arises in Chapter VI, but is only manifest in light of the entire discussion concerning the authorship. During the inquisition that the priest and the barber hold in Don Quixote's library, Cervantes describes how a copy of one of his own works, Galatea, is spared from the flames by the priest, who says: ''That Cervantes has been a great friend of mine for many years" (p. 62). Suddenly Cervantes and Don Quixote become contemporaries. The notion that Cervantes is the original source, the metaphorical biological origin of the hero begins to collapse. Time and priority become confused. the author finds himself in the mind of the character that was supposedly his brain-child. The reader is forced to consider two disturbing possibilities: first, the possibility that 6 hypothesis lead us to conclude that Benengeli is less of a liar than we had initially supposed. Don Quixote is well-read, and apparently not without some literary talent of his own. According to Chapter I, "often the desire seized him to take up the pen himself' (p. 32). On more than one occasion he displays the ability and inclination to write. His sonnets are found carved in trees in the Sierra Morena and he has a propensity for literary criticism. Furthermore, Don Quixote knows that, according to the laws of chivalry, as a knight errant, he is obliged to be a poet: " . .. for I would inform you Sancho, that all or most knights errant in the olden times were great troubadours and great musicians as well" (Ch. XIII, p. 185). If Don Quixote is the original author of his history, he could not have begun recording his adventures until the time of his penance in the wilderness, when he first comes into possession of Cardenio' s notebook. But it is possible that he had already begun composing his personal history in his mind. Quixote spends many of the nights awake, while the other characters, especially Sancho, are asleep: "Sleep yourself, for you were born to sleep, or do what you will. I will do what best suits my profession" (Ch XX, p.152). One of the essential requirements of Don quixote's profession as "knight errant" is chastity, which, in this story, is the equivalent of being a poet. Throughout Book I of Don Quixote, Cervantes devotes special attention to distinguishing the literate characters from the illiterate. But this peculiar detail is discussed only in connection with certain characters---characters that must be recognized as lovers, or distinguished as non-lovers. The first time this distinction is made is in Chapter X, when Don Quixote and Sancho Panza discuss the laws of chivalry. This discussion exemplifies the author's treatment of lovers and non-lovers, literate and non-literate. Don Quixote, as we already know, is the most well read character in the book. On the other hand, we might asswne that Sancho, as a peasant, is illiterate. At first this distinction between the knight and his squire hardly seems to matter. In fact, however, it does. For in their conversation in Chapter X, Quixote repeatedly insists that if Sancho had read the "histories" he would know the practices of knights errant. Sancho insists that he can neither read nor write. The emphasis put on the respective literacy of knight and squire gains added significance from the interpretation of the pair as lover and non-lover. Quixote is clearly the most ardent of all the lovers in the book because he alone is capable of passionate faith in the image of Dulcinea del Toboso, a woman whose noble qualities he invents despite all appearances to the contrary. Dulcinea is nothing more than an image of the ideal maiden who holds a knight errant's heart captive. None of the other characters can claim such zealous, unceasing love in such a distant, ungrounded idea. Quixote's passion for Dulcinea finds expression in poetry, a highly developed form of literacy. By contrast, Sancho, an illiterate laborer, though he loves his wife, daughter, and ass, is not capable of the faith, devotion, and complete selflessness that is required of a lover. Sancho is capable of loving only what is physically real. It is impossible for him to place his faith in Dulcinea, giants, or any other characters which people the world of knight errantry. It is evident from their many conversations that Sancho, because he is utterly ignorant of the laws of chivalry, has no concept of being a lover. 111is connection is made clear in Don Quixote's tirade on him in Chapter XXX: ... excommunicate rogue! For that you certainly are, for defaming the peerless Dulcinea. Do not you know , you clod, you ignominious vagabond, that but for the power she infuses in my arm I should not have the strength to kill a flea? Tell me you viper-tongued villain, who do you think has conquered this kingdom and cut this giant's head off-if it is not the might of Dulcinea, employing my arm as the instrument of her exploits? She fights and conquers through me, and I live and breathe and have my life and being in her. (p. 264) The connection between love and literacy is not accidental. Immediately following Chapter X, Don Quixote and Sancho meet a group of shepherds, with whom they spend the night. One of the shepherds entertains them that evening with a song which he sings for them; naturally, it is a love song. This shepherd, according to his comrades "is a very clever lad and very much in love; and, what is more, he can read and write, and plays the fiddle as beautifully as can be" (Ch. XI, p. 87). Again, love and literacy appear in relation to one another. Shepherds seem to attract love-sick literates, for no sooner has this shepherd finished his song than another arrives to tell them of the death of Chrysostom, whose funeral Don Quixote and Sancho attend the next day along with the other shepherds. Chrysostom is yet another shepherd-student whose fierce love of Marcela, the beautiful shepherdess, has consumed his very life. Chrysostom is a poet as well as a fervent lover, he "was a great one for making verses , and was so good at them that he used to write carols for Christmas Eve and the plays for Corpus Christi" (Ch. XII, p. 92). The story of Chrysostom provides us with the beginnings of an explanation to the apparently invariable little between lovers and poets. At the shepherd's funeral, one of his comrades reads aloud one of Chrysostom's poems, in which he complains "of jealousy, suspicions, and neglect" (Ch. XIV, p. 107). But one of his fellow shepherds claims that Chrysostom "was tormented by imaginary jealousies and suspicions, as fearful as if they were real" (Ch. XIV, p. 107). It appears that imagination is somehow necessary to the experience of becoming a lover. Returning to our paradigm of lover and non-lover, we find in Don Quixote an unnaturally powerful imagination and hardly any at all in Sancho. Imagination seems to depend on literacy, because reading and being seduced or enchanted by a literary image require imagination. 7 �In order for the reader to give life to the dormant ideas and lifeless words that fill the page, he must exercise his imagination. He must transform the static images of the words and sentences into living motion. Don Quixote, the most voracious reader in the novel, has exercised his imagination to the point where it no longer depends upon the literary image. His imagination is no longer constrained to roam the pages of books and corridors of the mind, but has broken its fetters and lives independently of the books. But his imagination remembers its origins, and occasionally frequents its old haunts for renewed inspiration. When Don Quixote serves his penance in the Sierra Morena, he debates with himself over what route his penance should take, and which knight errant's example he should follow . Quixote's debate over whether "to imitate Roland's downright madness or Amadis' melancholy moods" (Ch. XXVI, p. 214) depends on how Dulcinea has injured him. But it is uncertain if Quixote has ever seen Dulcinea del Toboso, and it is certain that she is totally unaware of his existence, so that Don Quixote's injury, and thus his extravagant penance, like Chrysostom's, are completely dependent upon his imagination. Furthermore, since the entire notion of retiring to the wilderness to serve this penance is inspired by the fictitious histories of the knights of old, it is also dependent upon literature. Sancho, on the other hand, has no imagination at all. while his master gallivants around the meadows, carving poems into the trees, the dutiful squire sets off to Toboso with a letter for Dulcinea that describes the knight's afflicted heart. Sancho, of course, never gets to Toboso because he is intercepted by the barber and the priest. The three men set about concocting a plan to retrieve Don Quixote from the mountains, and return him to his home, where his madness might be cured. Later in the story, when Don Quixote asks his squire about his mission to Toboso, Sancho is unable to describe Dulcinea, whom he can only imagine as Aldonza Lorenzo, in terms of ordinary, peasant activities. Sancho describes Dulcinea, winnowing wheat, smelling "rather mannish," and, moreover, unable to read Don Quixote's letter because she is illiterate (Ch. XXXI, p. 268). The imagination and literacy are inextricably connected. Sancho, an illiterate, has an utterly weak imagination. The ability to become a lover also depends on the imagination. As Quixote says: Dulcinea, an image, is very real. Quixote's love for Dulcinea follows from the rules of chivalry: Quixote is a lover because he must be; his profession demands it. As Cervantes relates: Now that his armor was clean, his helmet made into a complete head-piece, a name found for his horse, and he confirmed in his new title, it struck him that there was only one more thing to do: to find a lady to be enamored of. For a knight errant without a lady is like a tree without leaves or fruit and a body without a soul. (Ch. I, p. 34) Dulcinea del Toboso is part of the larger scheme of his faith in a system of beliefs which he finds irresistible. Since being enamored is such an integral aspect of knight errantry, one can make the claim that Dulcinea is not merely incidental; rather, that Don Quixote's priorities really lie in becoming a lover. Whatever the relation between lover and knight errant (perhaps they are ultimately equivalent), as a lover, Don Quixote is in love with love, and not Dulcinea. In this sense, the relationship between love and imagination essentially signifies faith in a system of beliefs. Don Quixote's system, like Chrysostom's, requires that he be injured by his lover (inadvertently or intentionally). And like the beliefs held by Cardenio, another great lover-poet, Quixote's love requires a temporary suspension of reason. When we speak of Don Quixote as a lover, we mean a lover of ideas: " ... and so, carried away by the strange pleasure he derived from these agreeable thoughts, he hastened to translate his desires into action" (Ch. I, p. 33). The two stories that are told in the inn confirm the connection between lovers and their imaginations. "The Tale of Foolish Curiosity" illustrates the disastrous effects of unhealthy imagination, and a general lack of faith in the imagination when combined with passionate love. "The Captive's Tale" exemplifies a healthy imagination, and the faith that is rightly placed in it. Accordingly, its characters find love, happiness, and good fortune. In "The Tale of Foolish Curiosity," the characters demonstrate the dependence of love on faith in imagination, and the tragedy that results from warped imaginations in would-be lovers. Anselmo wants to prove that Camilla's faith is that than which no greater can be conceived. It is not enough to believe that his wife is the most faithful, circumspect, and modest woman in the world; he must prove it empirically. His fanatical insistence upon a demonstration of Camilla's virtue and dedication renders Anselmo incapable of being a real lover. His friend, Lothario.tries to persuade him against his foolish enterprise: Most of [the poets' mistresses] were invented to serve as subjects for verses, and so that the poets might be taken for lovers, or men capable of being so... I imagine all I say to be true; neither more nor less, and in my imagination I draw her as I would have her be, both her beauty and her rank... (Ch. XXV, p. 210) You seem to me, Anselmo, to be in the position of Moors, who cannot be convinced in the error of their sect by quotations from the Holy Scripture, nor by arguments drawn from intellectual speculation or based on the canons of faith, but have to have examples, Don Quixote's love of Dulcinea is possible only because of his faith in his imagination. But although her "beauty and her rank" may be subject to Quixote's imagination, his love of 8 palpable, simple, intelligible, demonstrable, and indubitable, with irrefutable mathematical proof like: If equals be taken from equals ... (Ch. XXXID, p. 287) taken place at the inn, the captive's story is not only incredible, but continues in the audiences' own lives, leaking out of the past into the present; from the world of the story into their own. The captive, Ruiz de Viedma, and his Moorish bride, Zoraida, both have faith in their imaginations. Ruiz's imagination contrives that attached to a beautiful white hand is a beautiful woman who will be his deliverance and his bride. He also imagines the renegade to be an honest man who does not double-cross him. Zoraida imagines that the captive is a gentleman who will take her to Christian soil, have her baptized and marry her. But all of Zoraida's imaginings depend upon her faith in her visions: Anselmo's lack of faith in his imagination render him incapable of loving, just as the Moors' disbelief in the scriptures render them incapable of Christian love. Love, as we have witnessed in Don Quixote, requires the lover to imagine and truly believe in the beloved. Since Anselmo has become obsessed with obtaining proof of his beloved's fidelity, Camilla is incapable of being truly beloved. She no longer moves Anselmo to believe what can only be accepted as a matter of faith. Just as Anselmo is incapable of loving, he is incapable of friendship. For, like his supposed love for Camilla, the great friendship he once shared with Lothaiio depends upon trust and faith. Anselmo refuses to take sincerely honest and solli1d advice his friend offers him, because it would require him to believe in "intellectual speculation." Even when Lothario finally yields to Anselmo's pleading and promises to attempt to seduce Camilla, Anselmo does not even believe his friend's word, but spies on him through the keyhole. But Anselmo is not entirely without imagination; he is merely incapable of placing ai1y faith in it. Unfortunately, the imagination he does possess is unhealthy. The fact that Anselmo derives so much pleasure from pushing his scheme as far as it will go, suggests that he needs to live vicariously through his f1i end. Even when Anselmo claims to be satisfied with Lothario's attempts to seduce Camilla, he has him write love sonnets to an imaginary lover, and then read them in front of her. It seems Anselmo's perverse imagination has already decided that Camilla is unfaithful and will allow herself to be seduced by Lot11ario. But Anselmo's lack of faith in his imagination is so weak that he must convince his friend to enact it for him under the pretense of demonstrating Camilla's modesty. Eventually Lothario and Camilla use Anselmo's weakness to their own advantage and enact the tragic scene with the dagger in order to hide their affair. Undoubtedly, within the context of the novel, a character like Anselmo would be despised, and destined for ruin. It is important to observe the reactions of the characters who listen to "The Tale of Foolish Curiosity" When I was a girl my father had a woman slave, who taught me the Christian prayers in my own tongue, and spoke to me often about Lela Marien. This Christian died, and I know that she did not go to the fire but to Allah. For I saw her twice afterwards, and she told me to go to Christian lands and see Lela Marien, who loved me very much. I do not know how to go. I have seen many Christians out of this window, but none of them except you has seemed a gentleman. (Ch. XL, p. 358) The story of the captive and Zoraida is received quite differently than "The Tale of Foolish Curiosity,'' which is almost completely rejected by its audience. The only comment is the priest's brief critique of the latter tale concerning its plausibility. There is no further discussion because there is no sympathy or love for the chai·acters. Zoraida and the captive, however, are exalted by t11e audience: ... Cardenio and all the others offered him their utmost services, in such warm and sincere language that the captain was thoroughly convinced of their goodwill. Don Ferdinand, in particular, offered to make his brother the Marquis stand godfather at Zoraida's baptism if he would return with him, and himself to provide enough money to appear in his country with suitable dignity and decency. (Ch. XLII, p. 381) Their story is marveled over and the women in the group delight in Zoraida's beauty. this scene is entirely charming, while "The Tale of Foolish Cwiosity" evokes nothing but disdain. The fact that two stories whose treatment of the imagination is the same, but whose endings are almost exactly opposite, are told before the very same audience and elicit opposite reactions, demands that we consider the relation of the reader as part of the audience to the story. This question returns us to the discussion of the aut110rship and the consequences of the attack upon the image. The mysterious treatment of the authorship of Don Quixote confuses the relation of the chai·acters to authors. Cervantes, Benengeli, and Quixote all act both as authors of the story and characters within it. Don Quixote is a narration of a narration of Don Quixote's own writings. Since Cervantes is trapped I like the tale, said the priest, but there is something unconvincing about it. If the author invented it he did it badly, for it is impossible to believe that there could be a husband so stupid as to want to make the costly experiment Anselmo did. If it were the case of the lover and his mistress it might pass; but between husband and wife there is something impossible about it. Though for the manner of its telling, that does not displease me at all. (Ch. XXXV, p. 324) But "The Captive's Tale," which is equally fai1tastic, is received by the same audience with enthusiasm and belief in its credibility. On top of the already astonishing events that have 9 �n Salome and John within the consciousness of the very character he claims to have created, we are lost in a circular history that has neither beginning nor end; neither author nor characters. This labyrinth of characters and authors forces us to think about where the story really begins. In whose imagination does the story begin? Perhaps it begins in our own. Until we actually engage ourselves in the process of reading the story, it is nothing but a collection of dormant ideas. Reading those ideas activates them and our imagination breathes life into the characters, bringing motion into their movements, depth and meaning to their thoughts and feelings. When we exercise our imagination we become a little like Quixote.Just as he invests his faith in the image of Dulcinea, we put our faith in literary images. We bring the images to life in the real world of action and consequence. When we believe in the image, we translate it in our mind into this real world of action. It is possible, however, and even probable, that we will not recognize such a translation unless someone, or something, forces us to. Don Quixote, which has one, three, or no authors, demands that we attack the image of the story and thus realize our own participation in its creation. The same thing happens when authors become characters. They step into the imaginary world of the novel and thereby at once blur and clarify the boundaries between the imaginary and the real world. Faith in the imagination is the essential element to reading a story. This faith, as we have seen, is also essential to loving. Reading, then, becomes an act of love. When we read a book, we cannot be like the priest, who, by failing to observe his own reflection in Anselmo, is doomed to read as the characters love in ''The Tale of Foolish Curiosity." Instead, we must turn to the captive and Zoraida as our models of faith. When the literary images of the book fall under attack, our faith in the imagination is questioned; our love of the characters and our willingness to believe in them is challenged. Such an experience is disturbing because we are forced to declare our loyalty to the imagination. When we read, the imaginary and real worlds blend together, but when that delicate balance is disturbed, the reader must make a choice between the two. Unless we close the book, we choose to put our faith in the world of the imagination. The aversion that we experience when the images are attacked lasts only as long as we allow ourselves to doubt our belief in them. When we read Don Quixote, however, we are required to rise to a higher, more complex model of faith. We must imitate Quixote himself. In addition, our faith in its images (like any other story), Don Quixote constantly challenges them and makes us conscious of our faith. As we become aware of our faith, we become aware of our kinship with Quixote: we are bound together by our faith in imagination, and our belief in images. by Panayotis Pappas '93 A dragon lifts his misty head out of the cumbersome clouds of rapture and scatters them across the dusty halls. Dance now, dance here. Sway like a swallow, with wings woven of silk, sweep through the royal chambers alight before king Herod's feet. Unfold, bend back and rise again a woman. SuITound the fires and veil their radiance; the night grows deeper in your gown's tint. And dance. Move slowly, lightly graze his hair, flow like a soul-thieving fiery breeze. What is your fee ethereal meander? John of fire loudly poking the silent ashes of Jerusalem; bring forth your charcoal eyes, restful upon this silver platter, as you soak in, and scorch, these your last visions. Leaping, twirling, crouching, writhing, within a divinely orchestrated se1mon, you rattled your tambourine of words; a fire lasting against all desert winds, tlu·ough water spreading your spirit-consuming Lord. Waiting you were for the serpent to rise out of the cumbersome clouds of rapture, and scatter your embers across the Heavens. 10 11 �Descartes' Interpretation of the World as Arising from his Method D. Jennings '93 methodological doubt. This doubt, the subject of the first The world problem is, stated simply, the consideration of how we are to interpret the world as a whole. Our answer to this problem entails an explanation of the phenomena of consciousness. For experience to be possible there must be a "coming together" of entities both in the world and in the "I." Accordingly, this coming together is conditioned by both the nature of the entities and the nature of the " I." In an analysis of philosophical works, one is rarely in the position of exposing blatant illogic or even sophistry. The ultimate point of interest in such an analysis is rather how the thinkers see the world. The presence of the world problem and the attempt to resolve it form the core of human thinking, even "everyday" thinking. The world problem according to Descartes arises in the context of his method. The essence of Descartes' philosophy is method. As early as 1620 (Descartes was only 24 years old at the time) Descartes observes that the use of "definite rules" is a fundamental part of solving mechanical problems. In the Regulae, composed eight years later, he posits method as the sine qua non of scientific and philosophical investigation. He writes in rule four, "By a 'method' I mean reliable rules that are easy to apply and such that if one follows them exactly, one will never take what is false to be true... but will gradually and constantly increase one' s knowledge (scientia) till one arrives at a true understanding of everything within one's capacity." The aim of philosophy is scientia, a systematic body of indubitable knowledge. The possibility of such a system is grounded upon method. The purpose of critiquing Descartes' method is to find the guiding principle which serves as its foundation. This foundation itself acts to reinterpret the world. The text most conducive to analysis regarding the world-problem, then, will be the one that is closest to being a "world-text,'' a text that presents the world as a problem. It is the Meditations that serves this purpose both inlrn- and extra- textually. The Meditations is not about method or physics, but rather it is an application of the method to the world problem intent upon finding what is true and un true in experience. Through the Meditations the resolution of the world problem is presented extra-textually to the world. Thus Descartes sees fi t to dedicate his book to the " doctors of the Sorbonne" as judges. The Cartesian resolution of the world problem, one that is to a certain exten t our own, arises within the course of the Meditations. This resolution is itself at the core of the method. The first step in the method is the implementation of 12 Meditation, is the radical leveling of past opinions. The purpose is to destroy what came before in the guise of scientia and to startover"from the foundation s" to build a true scientia that is "stable and likely to last." The leveling is not conducted in regard to the viability of independent acts of thinking, but rather it throws out old opinions on the force of the doubtfulness of their common foundations as a scientia. Cognitions ("cagnitianes") as Descartes names acts of thinking, are themselves internally unaffected, meaning Descartes does not question what a thought is or what value it has independently of its place in the overall scheme of the scientia. Descartes lays the ground for truthfulness-"is this indeed the case?"in principle distinct from considerations of the qualities internal to the cognition in question. As a result, Descartes asks two questions concerning entities that the mind takes under consideration. He asks what an entity is (quid) and whether it is (quad). These two questions are always distinct. The quid question concerns the internal aspects of the cognitions formed with respect to entities under consideration. The quad question, on the other hand, concerns whether or not the cognitions concerning an entity fall within the larger scientia. If they do then we can admit that (quad) the entity truly exists. Descartes' application of the method not only reveals the quid/quad distinction, but it also shows that the quid precedes the quod in the proper methodological order of inquiry. In the methodological exercise with a piece of wax in the second Meditation, Descartes takes up the wax and investigates its quid while its quod is still under the effect of leveling doubt. This procedure consists in the suspension of belief in the existence of some thing under consideration. In other words, a cognition formed concerning something is investigated before that cognition is given a place in the scientia and its existence granted as true. The precedence of the quid over the quad is expressed in the Discourse on Method as the division of "difficulties" into "as many parts as possible .. . in order to resolve them better." Here the "difficulty" is the thing under consideration. The division of the difficulty into parts is an approach to the quid question. The resolution of the difficulty, a resolution that takes place after division, is the resolution of the quad question. The quid question is fundamentally an ontological one, meaning one that proposes "what the thing is" as a problem. (The quod question, on the other hand, is a factual one. Whether or not some thing exists is a matter of determining 13 �whether or not that thing can be encountered in the world.) Descartes, in the investigation of the piece of wax, present this investigation as a process of reduction to "what the wax is really made of." Already, we see that Descartes in posing the question allows the thinking subject an intimate knowledge or ontological access to the thing. This access, i.e., this ability to approach and know the thing, is extra-experiential in principle. Descartes does not even know whether or not the wax exists, but he nonetheless endeavors to find "what it is really made of." (There is a question as to how much "what a thing is really made of' provides an ontological account of the thing. The confounding of "what a thing is" with the logically distinct question of "what a thing is made of' may indeed be at the heart of Descartes' understanding of the world problem.) The thing's presence in the world is temporarily passed over to allow for a reduction of an item of experience to its real make-up. The mind reviews all the stages of appearance of the wax as it is heated by a candle. At first the wax tastes of honey, smells of flowers, is hard and cold to the touch, and so on. When this same piece of wax is put to the flame, however, the taste of honey disappears, the wax becomes soft and warm, and all of the other sensible qualities of the wax change into others. That which remains of the wax is the ontological characteristic of things in the world, namely extension. This extension, because it assumes an infinite number of manifestations, cannot be comprehended by the imagination. What Descartes calls "pure mental scrutiny" reveals the knowable aspects of the wax. The "pure mental scrutiny" provides the ontological access to the wax. The act of this "mental scrutiny" is "knowing" itself. Descartes' interpretation of knowing follows directly from the precedence of the quid question in the method. ff we do not know that a thing is then our interpretation of what it is will necessarily take on an extra-experiential character. The quod question, because it concerns matters of fact, carries with it considerations of context. Facts, because they appear in the world, occur within the context of experience. For example, if one said that there are clouds in the west today, then that person has made a statement concerning clouds within a specific temporal and spatial context. Without this context the statement makes no sense. The quid question, however, lacks any experiential context. The quid question is, in effect, a reduction of experiential data to "what things are really made of." The ontological make-up of a thing stands independently of any context. In following the method, we raise the question of what a thing is as if its quod were not apparent, even when it appears in an "everyday" manner. The smell, taste, etc. of the piece of wax suggests its quod to the everyday consciousness. Descartes' method, however, rules that this consciousness has no bearing upon any real knowledge of the wax. The richness of experience is reduced to a knowledge of extension. Because the quid of extended things has priority over the quod in the order of analysis, we will not prove that some thing in the world that is cold and has the smell of flowers as its ontological make-up exists. Instead, we will prove that what we can know, i.e., extension, exists. What we can know to exist determines what we do know to exist. This statement is a truism adopted by Descartes. What is important, however, is not the truism itself, but Descartes' sense of the word "know." Since the scope of knowledge is confined to extension, so are entities in the world. For instance, we can no longer say that there is a true, ontological foundation for, e.g., smell when smell is no longer an item of know ledge (scientia.) The precedence of the quid question over the quod question, then, entails that the entities met with in the world be of a determinate kind. Experience is predetermined by the understanding of the quid. The experience that goes beyond the bounds of the quid is seen merely as an accident of subjectivity. The resolution of the quid question regarding a thing is in effect the judgement of what holds true of the thing. The conditions of true judgement are in turn the determinate factors in the quid analysis of a thing. At the beginning of the third Meditation Descartes states the condition under which judgement is valid. He writes, "So now I seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true." A true judgement is made when the object of that judgement is seen "clearly and distinctly." But in the fourth Meditation that deals with truth and error specifically, the judgement and the will are taken as one faculty while the faculty of producing ideas provides for know ledge. The judgement will' s sole function is to recognize that something is true. This recognition is merely the recognition of a correspondence between idea and object. The faculty of judgement, then, adds no know ledge not already provided by the mind's production of ideas. Judgement itself is given the material for judgement, i.e., the idea and the object to which the idea corresponds, and simply pronounces "yes" or "no." The result of the dominion of ideas over both the quid and the quod is that the existence of an object becomes interpreted in light of the idea which corresponds to it. An object to which an unclear idea corresponds cannot be said to exist; hence, an unclear idea cannot be said to correspond to an actual given thing. A smell, for example, does not indicate a real object. The greater part of experience becomes in some sense unreal. A question remains, however, of what is meant by "clear and distinct." Descartes shows his meaning in the course of the Meditations by trying to discover an item of knowledge that is "clear and distinct" on its own. In the second Meditation he turns to the "I" as the first object of this self-evident certainty and the only object whose quod can be resolved before its quid. He achieves the certainty of the "I" by formulating a series of questions regarding what he can know with 14 certainty: "Can I know God? my body? myself?" His only the last question that Descartes can, indeed must, answer affirmatively. It is the pure subject, the "I," that is unavoidable regardless of the validity of what the "I" thinks. An "evil genius" cannot deceive the "I" as to its own existence so long as the "I" thinks. From this point Descartes turns to the quid of the "I," asking likewise what cannot be denied of it. The answer is that thinking cannot be denied the "I" regardless of whether what is thought is ever true. "I feel," "I doubt," "I think" all indicate that feeling, doubting, and thinking cannot be denied the subject and are thus of the quid of the "I." Undeniability is itself what constitutes certainty. Clarity and distinctness are to be found in the certainty of the existence of the " I" and in the certainty of the different types of thinking as constituting the quid of that "I." In the course of the rigorous subjection of the world problem to Descartes' method, the idea of the "I" is the first clear idea to arise. The argument of the existence and characteristics of the "I" show that clarity and distinctness are to be found in undeniability. What this means is that whatever is clear and distinct cannot be self-consistently denied. But hitherto we have dealt only with the metaphysical "I." Extension, on the other hand, can only be undeniably attributed to a thing under investigation if we assume beforehand that the thing is extended. We must assume that "thing" means "extended thing" if the denial of"this thing has extension" is self-contradictory. Descartes, therefore, bases his judgement of what is true of the wax upon a pre-existent notion of the true make-up of entities in the world. Descartes, in investigating the quid of the wax, rejects its mutable characteristics, those that change when the wax is heated. It is the permanent aspect of the wax for which Descartes searches. It is assumed beforehand that intelligible in order to conform to a "form of instruction." The presence of the wax is the condition of its know ability. And because knowing a thing is equivalent to knowing what a thing is, the condition that allows a thing to be known must also be a condition of its being. In other words, the presence of an entity is an ontological as well as epistemic presence. How, then, are entities present to our analysis? How are entities present in their being? Ideas under mental scrutiny must fulfill certain criteria implicit in the task of analysis. Only then can they be considered clear and distinct, considered to correspond to actual entities. The work of analysis is to start with some given entity and from there to discover its underlying principle, its ontological make-up. "To start with an entity" means to isolate the items under scrutiny as entities. Isolation is a tactic central to the method. An entity is present, in isolation, and its ontological make-up is such that it is utterly transparent before "mental scrutiny." Such transparency itself entails that an entity is answerable to the quid question. Descartes calls the special sort of entity in the world that is thus isolated and transparent a "body." According to the sixth Meditation, any body that is "intimately present" to the mind "therefore exists." For an entity in the world to qualify as existent it must be "intimately present," meaning that it must be a body in Descartes' sense. The question ofbodies-"how are we to account for these bodies in their isolation and materiality?"-is a new ontological problem, the body problem. The body problem acts as Descartes' principle of judgement concerning entities in the world. When he asks "what is true of entities in the world?" Descartes in essence asks what is true of them insofar as they are bodies, i.e., insofar as their knowable and real constitution is accounted for by the sort of "presence" that bodies have. The question of the existence of entities in the world, and of the manner in which they exist, becomes more specifically a question of bodies. According to Descartes, the world presents itself in bodies to the subject, and the subject unveils the world, finds out the truth about the world, in terms of those bodies. The world is extension, and the phenomena of things-the totality of which make up our intimate experience of the world-are phenomena of extension. The world problem is reduced to a body problem. All entities in the world are taken to be bodies, and thus all entities are required to assume the conditions of body, viz. permanence and presence. All problems of experience are thought of in terms of extension. Hence the smell of wax is ultimately explained by the motion of extended substance, while the fundamental question of that experience"what is it about my being that underlies this experience called smell?"-is left unanswered. Under the dominion of the body problem, we account for the experience of smell completely in terms of extension, the object of experience, and not in terms of the subject. The Cartesian explanation of a pleasant smell, for instance, would read as follows: "I smell something this permanent aspect indicates what the wax is "really made of" Descartes' notion of permanence as that which characterizes the ontological make-up of a thing determines his judgement of what is "clear and distinct." This determination in turn determines what is true, and thus what things really are. In judging specifically of things in the world, Descartes combines with the notion of permanence a notion of space. The result of this combination is the notion of permanence in space. This permanence in space, this "materiality," is assumed as the condition underlying the existence of things in the world. Permanence in space, or "materiality," is precisely what Descartes "discovers" in the piece of wax that allows him to ascribe extension to it as its ontological condition. The piece of wax presents another condition of its knowability, another principle of judgement. This condition is that which first presents the wax to investigation. The form of investigation, as prescribed by the second plank of Descartes' doctrine of method, is analytic. According to Descartes' second set of Replies, analysis is "the best and ttuest form of instruction." The wax must present itself in such a way that it can be analyzed. This "presence" must in turn be 15 �nature. The investigation of this relation culminates in the "real distinction between mind and body" found in the sixth Meditation. the resulting picture is the anthropology of experience. This anthropology interprets the place of the "I" in the world according to the scientia commanded by the quid of bodies. The body problem determines the interpretation of all things, including the "I," insofar as it exists in the world. According to Cartesian analysis, the "essence of material things" is shown in the illustration with the piece of wax. The existence of material things follows easily: if I perceive the existence clearly and distinctly then they do, in fact, exist. Also, I perceive clearly and distinctly that I have a body, and I perceive clearly and distinctly that this body is distinct from my mind. Hence man's position in the world, his anthropology, comes to light. The physiological body supplies the subjective constitution that allows for the "intimate presence" of bodies before the consciousness of these bodies. Hence, the body is temporally prior to the mind in the order of the apprehension of objects. The mind, however, is necessarily prior to the body in the principles of knowledge, i.e., in the foundation of a scientia. It is in the mind that the possibility of an object as knowable is established. We have already seen how the true character of a·piece of wax is revealed not through sensation or imagination but through "mental scrutiny." This scrutiny also surveys the physiological body in terms of the body problem. The fact of the body's existence only enters a survey of the world through the scientia. The physiological body is, like the wax, an "intimately present" object, even though the physiological body obviously has a special attachment to the mind that the wax does not have. The physiological body, then, is itself seen in terms of the body problem. Experience is, in tum, seen in terms of the physiological body. Descartes, the physician who in his Discourse posits medicine as the end of the scientia, clears the way for an explication of the experience of phenomena in terms of the body problem. The practice of medicine must be raised to a scientia. This transition is made possible by the method. The unclear ideas surrounding the body, and the subjective experience of the body, give way in accordance with the method to the clear ideas, and in particular, to the overreaching idea of extension. A body's "presence" becomes the startingpointforthestudy of the body. Wedonotaskwhat a smell means, nor even what a smell indicates, but rather we ask what conditions, i.e., what bodies in extension, give rise to the physiological impression called "smell." Through an investigation of imagination Descartes offers an anthropological account of the "intimate presence" of bodies. Descartes in the sixth Meditation defines the imagination as "nothing else but the application of the cognitive faculty to a body that is intimately present to [the mind.]" This "presence" is the condition that makes imagination possible. "When [the mind] imagines," writes Descartes, "it turns to- pleasing when bodies in extension emanate from one body and affect my body in such a way that it benefits." The "I" that is not a body or my body or my brain but "me," is passed over in this account. The condition of entities that gives rise to analysis is made plain, but the condition of entities, including the "I," that gives rise to the phenomenon of consciousness is passed over. The world problem, which amounts to the fundamental question behind experience, is raised from the level of consciousness to the special question of God's existence, beyond the level of consciousness. The "I" and God are both discovered through the analysis of ideas, and these ideas are assumed to stand in relation to the world from a vantage point outside of the world. God is radically separated from the world and the understanding of God is cast in terms of verification. "Is God a deceiver?" becomes Descartes' most radical formulation of the world problem. The question, however, refers directly back to the body problem-"does my assessment of bodies reveal the truth of entities in the world?" The question of whether God is a deceiver does not stem from the usurpation of the world problem by the body problem. On the contrary, it is the body problem that initially determines the formulation of the question of whether God is a deceiver. The effect is that the world is thought of in terms of body, while the "I" and God are radically separate from the world. When the world problem is resolved into the body problem, the deeper question of what kind of being underlies the consciousness of entities is left unanswered, and indeed unquestioned. It may be argued, however, that extension does serve as an account of consciousness. Consciousness, it is said, originates in the brain. The passions, for instance, are specifically accounted for by the action of the pineal gland. This account is in one sense correct, but it is not complete. The theory behind the functioning of the pineal gland may admirably account for the appearances, but it cannot account for the "I." I am not a pineal gland or a brain or any bit of extension, no matter how important they are to how I carry on in the world. Following Descartes we regress into a labyrinth of extension looking for the point at which the "I" itself enters the world, but we never find it. Only in a world ontology that includes the fundamental "I'' are the real phenomena of the world capable of explication. Indeed, the possibility of these phenomena is itself inconceivable until the "I" is fully explained. Because Descartes passes over the question of the "I" in the world, any account of experience can only be made in terms of the body problem that is in terms of action and reaction in the world of extension. The quid of bodies as determined by ideas is now the universal quid of the essential and true being of bodies. In other words, the world is extension. The result of this assertion is that the question of experience is necessarily referred to a notion of extension. Man's relation to the world becomes fundamentally physiological in 16 ward the body and looks at something in the body that confo1ms to an idea understood by the mind or perceived by the senses." It is the "something" that is "present" which the imagination surveys, and this "something" in turn "conforms" to some idea. This something, then, must be a body that conforms to some idea. Such a body, insofar as it is imagined, must in tum be in contact at some point with the physiological body. In Descartes' anthropology "a body" (corpus) and "the body" (corpus) are such closely connected terms that in some passages of the sixth Meditation it is unclear which one is intended. The physiological body seen in this light is a sort of tabulation of information about bodies that is yielded up to the imagination (as tabulator) and the pure "I" (as judge) to build the scientia. The process of tabulation is easily explained: hard bodies are impressed upon soft membranes; nerves are pulled and severed; extension affects extension. Ultimately, ideas determine the whole view. To say that bodies are intimately present can mean nothing more "anthropologically" than that their essence is accessible to the mind via the body. An intimately present body can be unclear, but it cannot escape some sort of place on the tabulation. The imagination itself is a corporeal or semi-corporeal faculty. It is conspicuously absent from Descartes' roster of purely mental faculties featured in the third Meditation. Furthermore, it is of no avail in those metaphysical matters concerning God and the "I." The imagination is strictly "an application ... to a body." According to Descartes, any body is first accessible through the imagination. When Descartes turns to the wax, he pictures it in his mind and then reduces that picture to the underlying extension. This act of picturing is imagination. Hence, we see the significance of the imagination in the quid question. This significance is especially apparent when we remember that questions about the world are ultimately questions about bodies. The concerns with God and the "I," though central to the plan of the Meditations, are themselves not part of scientia proper. Problems beyond the scope of the imagination, i.e., metaphysical problems, are special ones relating to the foundation of the scientia while the problems of the imagination, i.e., physical ones, constitute the body proper of the scientia. Although mention of the imagination appears late in the Meditations, and is not considered explicitly until the fiftl1 Meditation, this faetµty is all important in the quid analysis of physical things. The imagination is of no avail, however, in the realm of the metaphysical, and the realm of the metaphysical is itself entirely out of the world. Thus tl1e imagination determines the boundary of the material world by indicating where the physical (imaginable) ends and the metaphysical (unimaginable) begins. Descartes' anthropology of method is therefore clear: the physiological body is referred to the body problem, and the "I" is refeffed through its physiological connection to the world. Man in physicality is interpreted according to his role in the resolution of the body problem. The pure "I," the one that accords most closely not with "my body" but with what I mean by "me," is not a concern of the anthropology, but rather, is a metaphysical concern, i.e., one outside of the world. In Descartes' method, the world problem becomes the body problem while the "I" and God are radically separate from the world. The consequence of these distinctions is that Descartes passes over the fundamental questions of the ontological basis for a coming together of the "I'' and entities in the world. Descartes replaces this question with a physical interpretation of worldly phenomena and a physiological interpretation of subjective experience. The ontology of consciousness, meanwhile, is neglected and relegated to an other-worldly sphere. Descartes depicts the "l" peering from a distance upon a world of bodies, explaining the phenomena of the objects in terms of bodies. his "I" does not, however, attempt to explain its own consciousness in terms of world ontology. This description is itself implied in the method insofar as the method assumes the body problem as a principle. Do we, then, reject Cartesian methodology? A defender of Descartes would say that such a rejection would be foolish. One does not, he says, dismiss the method and its body problem on the force of a vague desire for the resolution of some world problem that may not even be expressible, useful, or even existent. The Cartesian revolution of thinking consists largely in what Descartes (in the Discourses) proposes as the replacement of the "theoretical philosophy of the schools" with "practical philosophy." In common language, we say that the Cartesian revolution is motivated by the desire to disregard the world-problem thinking of the Scholastics and replace it with the body-problem thinking of the Method. Further, says the defender, any attempt to reject Descartes' method and its conditions seems to oppose rational thought. Our response to this would-be defender is that the critique of Descartes' rationalism is not one of the contents of that enterprise, but rather is an investigation of how that rationalism directs us in an interpretation of the world. If a rejection of Cartesian methodology carries with it a rejection of the findings of that methodology applied to the world, i.e. , the findings of natural science, then such a rejection would be unwarranted. Keeping our science, however, does not necessarily entail a compete dismantling of the world problem. Instead, the meaning of our science is called into question, as is our understanding of the world. It is that understanding that is here of interest. Our ability to formulate the world problem is enough to make that problem of importance. Our inability to conclusively resolve this problem may not be of any real significance. The question in its very open-endedness, in its very lack of resolution, carries with it meaning not provided by the body problem. To raise such a question is indeed within our rights, and is, perhaps, even our duty. 17 �~ Orion outside my window U Stacie Slotnick '94 And tonight I met my guardian angel. It is not enough to be kindone must be armed (at all times). It is not enough to pleadto plead for any reason beyond the stars. Plead to them. They see you, they know you, and they may answer. Now I know this. Now I understand. He is no Beatirice. He cannot save me. But he told me to stay on guard (at all times), to aim carefully when I shoot, and to stand up very straight when Ido. ("One must never slouch," he said.) Tonight I woke up and saw Orion outside my window. He smiled at me. He straightened his belt and inquired: "How are you?" And I asked him: "You know me?" He laughed. So I asked him to show me how to shoot straight. So, I have no guardian with white wings and a gauze gown. So he does not play a harp and gaze benevolently. But he's betterbecause his arrows move quickly and his eyes gleam with cunning held in check. An Investigation of Key Characters . (and Character's Keys) in Mozart's Don Giovanni Nancy Marcus '93 Opera is a creative combination of two expressive mediums, a happy union between literature and music. When an artist has a sufficient understanding of both realms, the dramatic and the musical, he can enhance one with the other, uniting music and drama into a single unified and aesthetic whole. Such a successful marriage of mediums is made in Mozart's opera, Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni, because of its operatic form, has advantages over both non-textual music and non-musical drama, in that it can use music to expand the drama and character development of an already powerful story. Mozart's music, by itself, can easily affect the moods and emotions of those who listen to it, without providing any literal ideas to accompany its effects. The drama provided by the plot of the opera, on the other hand, contributes an abundant supply of ideas and literary themes which correspond to Mozart's musical themes. While the theme and plot of Don Giovanni's story are complemented by Mozart's music, the opera's music is most crucial to dramatic progress in the area of character development and the portrayal of the characters' emotions and personalities. In the arias and vocal ensembles of Don Giovanni, the characters express their sentiments as much though their music as through their words. Music is able to suspend and expand their emotions, resulting in a deeper empathy in the outside audience toward the characters within the drama. Even when the characters are physically absent from the stage, their presence can be sensed through the music. This transposition first occurs in the overture of Don Giovanni. In Don Giovanni's overture, the music foreshadows future conflict between the characters of the Commandant and Don Giovanni. The opening chord of the opera, a powerful, tremulous D minor chord, embodies both the characters and their conflict: The conflict between the Commandant and the Don can be felt in this solid declaration of the key of D minor, which is to become their "key of conflict" throughout the course of the opera. The Commandant's foreboding presence can also be felt in this opening chord through the oscillating octaves in the lower voice of the orchestra. The same descending D octave heard here is later heard again with added significance, and will play an important role in the finale, when the two characters are reunited for their final, most horrific scene together. The first thirty measures of the overture continue to foreshadow the future conflict between the two characters, as several key themes are played: These motifs will not be heard again until the climactic scene in the finale. Direct parallels can be found between the first eighteen measures of the overture and the first eighteen measures of the Commandant's appearance in the finale. The overture's ominous beginning loses its grim tone after thirty measures: as the mode changes to major, the tempo picks up, and the strings and woodwinds engage in a frantically playful game of tag. One such game of tag occurs with the frequently appearing phrase: Lower Voices I" 19 18 �but they are also revealed to be deceptively final by their immediate succession by the aforementioned "stalker" phrase: Whenever this phrase occurs, it is either split between two different voices that chase one another with the same musical figure or conflicts with another musical phrase. Wind s St rin gs 1 - if f1ff~1 1 fn 1 r1 1F f1 2$#F n:r, 1 4~# F which resumes the musical chase each time. These unresolved dominants might suggest that the conflict between Don Giovanni and the Commandant is not easily resolvable. The overture itself is never quite resolved. Such a lack of resolution rarely appears in the overture of an opera. The overture starts in D minor, but ends on a C major chord, not the predominant key of the overture. Instead it segues directly into the F major key of the scene immediately following the overture. The modulation from D minor to D major to C major to F major (which is the relative major, and thus an extension of D minor) is incomplete until the eventual return to D minor. This completion of the modulation culminates at the moment of the Commandant's entrance in the first scene. With the Commandant's entrance, the cycle of modulations begun in the overture is completed, the "key of conflict" (D minor) returns, and the conflict between the Commandant and Don Giovanni becomes a musical reality. In this first scene of the opera, Leporello's entrance begins the action with a bit of comic relief, called for by brooding intensity of the overture. Leporello is portrayed, both literally and musically, as a shallow character, capable of only the simplest melodies. In this first scene he seems to hopscotch around with basic intervals, revealing no ("No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!") dramatic or melodic substance. As is seen in his character throughout the opera, his simplicity shines through most brilliantly in the "Catalog Aria," a humorous depiction of Don Giovanni's amorous exploits, and also a revelation of Leporello's pathetic lack of melodic capability. But Leporello's character is not the focus of this first scene; his character is too weak to do anything more than introduce a scene. Leporello' s arietta, and the transitory key of F major with which he enters the scene, lasts only seventy measures. Don Giovanni and Dona Anna then enter the scene, bringing with them a key change to B flat major, the penultimate step of the series of modulations begun in the overture. The passionate but brief exchange between Donna Anna and Don Giovanni is the first glimpse we receive of the Don's romantic habits, and the only time we see him before his fatal confrontation with the Commandant. In this scene, we see a man and a woman engaged in a violent battle of wills: Donna Anna snuggles to unmask the man who has "attacked" her, and Don Giovanni to quiet the furious woman. Yet one hears something more than this battle in the music between the two, which may as well be a duet l e t c . 1 ~ndJ1333 I f tt U(!rrrtrrr nt t 1 This second musical conflict, one between the stem, condemning stalking motion of the descending octaves and the flightier, carefree tease of eighth notes again exemplifies the musically metaphoric representation of the Commandant (in the first phrase) and Don Giovanni (in the second). The overture is filled with images of a similar nature such as the unsettling occurrence of unresolved dominants, which may suggest another unresolved conflict that lies ahead. The first two of these unresolved dominants are especially striking, for not only do they sound like convincingly final cadences: 20 between lovers. The music here reveals a bond between Don Giovanni and Donna Anna which the libretto alone cannot elucidate, a bond which is revealed by Don Giovanni and Donna Anna' s musical distance from Leporello, the only other character present. Though all three characters sing simultaneously, Leporello is musically detached from Don Giovanni and Dona Anna. The latter two characters, oblivious to Leporello's eighth note ramblings beneath them, alternate between echoing one another's melodic phrases and singing together, rather romantically, in parallel thirds. IJonna IJon As the scene continues the two men duel and Don Giovanni mortally wounds the Commandant. An andante trio between the Commandant , Don Giovanni, and Leporello accompanies the Commandant's death. This trio further reveals the nature of the bizarre bond between Don Giovanni and the Commandant. Just as Leporello was musically detached from Donna Anna and Don Giovanni in this scene's earlier trio, he is similarly separated, musically and lyrically, from the Commandant and Don Giovanni in this later trio. A. G. Leporello's signing is typically hasty, rushing along with dotted eighth note-sixteenth note combinations beneath the slower rhythms of the Commandant and Don Giovanni, sun together at a mournful, pensive pace: Having thus introduced Don Giovanni's character to us through the characters of Donna Anna and Leporello, Mozart finally brings the Commandant onto the stage. With the Commandant's first physical entrance the D minor "key of conflict," anticipated since the overture, reappears. The fatal struggle between the Commandant and Don Giovanni that occurs in this opening scene results in the old man's death and eventually, in the Don's damnation. By killing the Commandant, Don Giovanni precipitates his own downfall; all the action in the remainder of the opera evolves from this fateful scene and brings Don Giovanni closer to his second fateful encounter with the Commandant. The first musical suggestion of this strange bond between them occms at the beginning of the battle scene, on "Misero !", the word sung by Don Giovanni to commence the duel. On " Misero" (miserable or wretched one) , aimed by Don Giovanni at the Commandant, Don Giovanni sings a descending octave on D. That musical figure, first heard in the overture, becomes the trademark address of the Commandant to Don Giovanni in the final scene between them. It is through descending octaves that the Commandant condemns Don Giovanni in the finale and it is upon the same descending D octave that Don Giovanni eventually falls to his damnation. lt is ironic, therefore, that the first time this descending D octave is heard, it is sung by Don Giovanni, and not by the Commandant. When Don Giovanni curses the Commandant with the falling D octave, he in effect curses himself, hastening his own descent into hell. The Commandant's later curse upon Don Giovanni with the same descending octave suggest that the two enemies have, like a pair of lovers , become as one. I Do n G. .. :; - I ;:: :.. ;:: r Com. l ep. ~ :.. :; -fft-· ..- 1 ~ ... - ,.. ~ ~ )" - . . ~ ~ ;;; r r == The libretto further separates Leporello from the other two characters. Don Giovanni and the Commandant's words in this scene are nearly the same. While the Commandant is singing, "I feel my life ebbing away from my throbbing breast," Don Giovanni is singing, "I see his life ebbing away from his throbbing breast." Leporello, however, is far removed from the sentiments of the other two men; he sings, "I can feel my heart pound with terror in my breast." The contrast between Leporello' s isolation from the other characters, and the intertwining of Don Giovanni ' s character and with the Commandant's is most vividly portrayed by the music in the last few measures preceding the Commandant' s 21 �aria is a fast-paced whirlwind of sensual indulgence, as Don Giovanni excitedly anticipates the party eh is to throw that evening, and all the new girls he will soon add to his list. The frenetic rhythm of this aria mirrors the restlessness in Don Giovanni's soul. While other characters, when given an aria, reflect upon themselves in a somewhat leisurely tempo, Don Giovanni is incapable of the inner stillness required for such reflection. The cause of his perpetual motion may be his unquenchable desire for pleasure. But, as Pascal might observe, it may also be seen as a desperate pursuit of distractions which might forestall the approach of any quiet moments during which he would be forced to confront the darkness within himself. Whatever the cause of Don Giovanni's restless presto pace, it contrasts greatly with the slow, deliberate pace of the Commandant, the ghost of whom, though not yet materialized, may well haunt the Don in all his actions, as the audience is haunted, unable to forget the dark, foreboding music of the overture and the first scene, despite all Giovanni's attempts at distraction. Don Giovanni's second aria, "Meta di voi qua vadano," is sung to deceive MaBetto and the other armed villagers set upon the Don's death that he is Leporello. This is an aria of deception in two respects: Don Giovanni lies to his pursuers by pretending to be Leporello, but he also lies to himself on a deeper level. Just as he sees everything else as a game, even his own destruction becomes a mater of humor to Don Giovanni, as he sings in this aria, "If you hear a man with a maid... making love beneath a window, then strike out hard." The fact that Don Giovanni takes nothing seriously, even his own life, becomes a matter of fatal consequence later in the opera. Both of these arias sung by Don Giovanni are devoid of the serious emotion which can be found in the arias of the other characters in the opera. Don Giovanni's arias, although musically adroit, are comparatively shallow in content. Don Ottavio' s "Dalla Sua Pace" is a slow, heartfelt song which concerns his love for Donna Anna. The aria's music, which wavers between major and minor, reflects Ottavio's love, a mixture of joy and suffering. Though Don Giovanni frequently sings about love, with seeming passion, he feels nothing but momentary flirtation and conquest, nothing nearly as substantial and pennanent as Don Ottavio' s love for Donna Anna. Donna Elvira's aria, "Mi tradi quell'alma ingrata," reveals not only Donna Anna's conflicting feelings for Don Giovanni, but also a profound understanding of the dangers of which he seems completely oblivious. The aria is preceded by a prayer-like recitative, in which Donna Anna accurately prophesies, "The wrath of Heaven must be at hand; its justice will not tarry. I see the deadly thunderbolt raised above his head! I see the fatal abyss open before him." Of her own feelings for the Don, she sings in the recitative, "Unhappy Elvira, what conflicting emotions strive in thy heart! Why death. Leporello is tonally static, maintaining one pitch per measure, but ascending slowly from one measure to the next: Meanwhile, Don Giovanni and the Commandant are both dying musically, singing descending chromatics: I :J= &'F D 11p I&~ ~ 1 ~ IF ' ~ F ' DIF F Veg-go l'a-ni-ma par-tir (Comm. )C ~ ~ I IC:J:&F nal l'F1le1 ~1 IE sen-------tola---n1-----ar-----t1r Di es) omm. This musical death shared by both characters emphasizes the transfonnation of Don Giovanni's curse on the Commandant to a fatal curse upon himself. Her it appears, at least musically, that by killing the Commandant, Don Giovanni kills some part of himself. Don Giovanni's tonal descent, or metaphorical "death" actually begins several measures before the Commandant's, and on the final note, Don Giovanni falls to an F, while the Commandant rises up to the same note. Though the Commandant physically dies on this note, he is not completely destroyed. His spiritual (or musical) presence lingers on through the course of the opera, and his physical presence is also resurrected at the end of the opera. The music relays the shadowy inconclusiveness of the Commandant's death in the four measures after he sings his final note. In these measures, the orchestral music continues its chromatic descent, which ends on a G major chord in its first inversion, results in a lack of resolution. In the dialogue that follows, Leporello' s comic question, "Who's dead? You or the old man?" echoes the musical confusion which characterizes the previous tragic scene. This crucial step adds an element of imbalance to the basic conflict between Don Giovanni and the Commandant, which proceeds from the questionable pennanence of the Commandant's death, and the foreshadowing of Don Giovanni's own self-propelled destruction, which has yet to be actualized. Don Giovanni's self-destructive nature is variously shown throughout the rest of the opera. Although Don Giovanni is the central figure in this opera, present in almost every scene, he is rarely seen alone with his thoughts. He has only two arias, both of which he sings for the entertainment or mockery of those around him; in both he reveals neither serious emotion nor introspection. The first one of his arias is the presto "Finch 'han dal vino calda la testa," better known as the "Champagne Aria." The 22 these sighs? Why this distress?" Her emotions, wavering between selfish hurt at his injustice toward her and selfless pity for his soul, are echoed in the music, which alternates between her sighs of pity- Even the threat from the apparition of his mortal enemy fails lo shake Don Giovanni's casual attitude; the statue's warning is to him just one more challenge in the game of life. As this scene concludes with Leporello' s aria, which Don Giovanni forces him to sing, in order to invite the statue to dinner, Don Giovanni's path to his inevitable damnation in the finale approaches its fatal end. Undaunted, Don Giovanni opens the finale in a spritely D major key, feasting and drinking in preparation for a dinner guest from Hell. Don Giovanni's humor is contagious; even Mozart cannot resist making fun of himself with a musical pun. and her angry cries to God about the wretchedness Don Giovanni has brought upon her. 1 Leporello That's a song ,.,~rchestr:a 0 Dio! mi fa, (theme from Moz11r~'s Figaro) , infelice I r o· r r r r 1 0 Dio! 1 etc. The sighs outweigh the angry outbursts in this aria, and Donna Elvira remains the one character, apart from the Commandant, concerned for the salvation of Don Giovanni's soul. It is appropriate that this aria is immediately followed by the "statue scene." The "statue scene" (Act II, Scene XII) again displays Don Giovanni's flippant attitude towards death. In this scene, his extreme tendency to laugh at everything, coupled with his inability to fear his soul (as Donna Elvira does for him in her aria), leads him to literally invite the form of his own damnation to dinner. This scene begins with Don Giovanni's laughter, which resounds throughout his duet withLeporello, as he recounts the trouble he's made, and the girls he's recently encountered. Leporello,w ho in earlier scenes occasionally expresses mild disapproval of his master's lifestyle, becomes truly offended in this scene, when Don Giovanni relates an amorous exploit he had with one of Leporello's own love interests. Under the shadow of the Commandant's moonlit statue, Leporello demands of Don Giovanni, "Supposing she had been my wife?" and then Don Giovanni callously laughs in response, "Better still!" At this moment, the statue of the Commandant comes to life, supported by the forceful harmony of a brass ensemble, and sings a warning to Don Giovanni: "Your jest will turn to woe ere it is morning!" The playful mood of the scene's opening is broken as Donna Elvira rushes in with one last attempt to convince Don Giovanni to change his ways. Don Giovanni's response is typically mocking, and Donna Elvira finally surrenders her hope for him, singing, "Monster! Then remain a horrible example in the stinking pit of your iniquity!" She sings this denunciation on a descending octave, the same musical figure (though in a different key) with which Don Giovanni curses the Commandant in the first scene, and which the Commandant repeats as he enters in the final scene. 23 �The orchestra ushers the Commandant's ghost to the stage with two dissonant chords of thunder, which the Commandant resolves into D minor in his address to Don Giovanni: Lepore/lo ~I Ort i w Ah! I 2: ~ uJ ron! ) With his entrance, the Commandant brings about a complete key change to D minor, the "key of conflict," sobering the tone from the relative F major that preceded his entrance. This entrance, as foreshadowed in the overture, begins the culmination of the conflict between the Commandant and Don Giovanni. The struggle between the characters in these first eighteen measures of the Commandant's entrance, which parallel the first eighteen measures of the overture, is depicted in their music more forcefully than in their words. The Commandant's forceful, regular rhythms and condemning descending octaves are engaged in a musical battle against the more agitated, syncopated rhythms shared by Don Giovanni and Leporello, which are confined to a span of five pitches , as if to escape the fearful octaves sung by the Commandant. The orchestra supports the Commandant with the rhythmic phrase, 1 @~ Ah! Padron! Pad- 'Ah! ~Padron! ~ Siam tutti ~~ ~ ~ q;§rn§mdn The source of the agitation which the two display musically differs in each of the two men. Don Giovanni is not (at least externally) afraid; he is rather beside himself with the excitement of playing host to such a tremendous dinner guest, singing in response to the Commandant's appearance, "Truly, I did not believe it, but I'll do what I can. Leporello, serve the table for my guest-bring another platter!" The source of LeporeHo's agitation, however, is his understandably extreme fear, which separates him from his master, and reveals him to be the wiser of the two. Voicing the fear which Don Giovanni mocks, Leporello exclaims, "Ah, master. ..we are all dead men!" Don Giovanni, having no patience for the cowardice of his servant, rebukes Leporello, singing, "Go, I say!" Vanne d1co in his address to Don Giovanni, and throughout the scene. The dotted rhythms beneath the Commandant emphasize the downbeats of his phrases, and further reinforce the adamance of his weighty half notes. The orchestral music which accompanies Don Giovanni andLeporello, is, in contrast, rhythmically syncopated, stressing the agitated response to the Commandant's appearance: Ferma un po' T (stay) In this brief moment of rebuke, Don Giovanni loses control, taking on that same musical phrase with which the Commandant addresses him upon his arrival. The Commandant does not miss the irony of Don Giovanni's unintentional musical slip; he repeats the descending D octave back to Don Giovanni, reclaiming his authority, and reversing Don Giovanni's order to Leporello: /Jon Giovanni 12=~ , p· ~ Vanne, 24 t This demanding invitation results in a musical struggle between the ghost's octaves and Don Giovanni's rising fornths, which, in conjunction, add up to the musical figure, The final musical battle of wills between the Commandant and Don Giovanni having now commenced, the ghost of the Commandant begins to explain his purpose in coming to dinner: "Earthly food he no longer desireth, who of heavenly food hath partaken! Another purpose more grave than this, another mission, brought me here." The orchestra's music accompanying this ominous statement is a powerful succession of chromatically rising scales, each one bringing increasing tension to the scene, while the Commandant's voice, unmoved by the turbulence he creates beneath him, remains stolid in his slow, deliberate composure of constant half notes and minimal tonal movement. I affectionately dub this the "tragic hero motif," for contained within it is the triumphant fourth representing the hero, and the falling octave which symbolizes his downfall. It is with this musical figure that the Commandant addresses Don Giovanni upon entering the finale, and with the same musical motif Don Giovanni finally falls to his damnation. In the musical struggle here presented, the motif is split between the descending octaves just heard in the Commandant's invitation and the rising fourths in Don Giovanni's proud, heroic-sounding response: m r 1r r ~ ) 14tj'gpl ~ QIJj J@1@j~!ij I Commandant Al-tre gra- pi~ cu-re, vi di que- . , ii 111J mpd I th n filste pD Dlq! rn p Irln p I A torto di viltate tacciato mai sa- The musical battle continues as the Commandant's deliberate rhythms and monotonic speech oppose the other two characters' agitated inte1Tuptions. WhileLeporello's interruptions fear, Don Giovanni's become bursts of increasing impatience with the presumption of his dinner guest. Don Giovanni's impatience soon begins to mirror the Commandant's own impatience; the speech of the two characters becomes increasingly similar, leaving poor Leporello behind in his trembling triplets. Don Giovanni continually repeats, "Parla, parla, ascoltando ti sto," ("Speak then, I am listening.") and the Commandant similarly repeats, "parlo, ascolta, piu tempo non ho,"(" speak, listen, my time is short.") The climactic moment of the finale begins when the Commandant sings his most forceful speech, a speech abundant with descending octaves, as he demands that Don Giovanni accept a reciprocal dinner invitation to Hell. The commandant responds to Don Giovanni's rising fourths with minor tenths, which suggest an even more demanding imperative than does the octave. In response to the Commandant's last question ("You'll come?"), Don Giovanni attempts a final musical moment of triumph, grandly singing, "My heart is firm within me, I have no fear, I'll come," before he takes the Commandant's hand. This moment of glory is short-lived; as soon as he takes the hand of the Commandant, he cries out in horror: him~! p I His fourth, no longer heroic, has become diminished! 111is is the first sign of a strange musical transition that begins to occur between Don Giovanni and the Commandant as they stand, bonded together by a deadly handshake. The di co 25 �by singing the pitch a mere halfstep below the tonic, a C#. In response to this near realization of the tonic, the Commandant sings, "Si! Si!" on an A and an F, which forms the top part of a D minor triad. Don Giovanni's completion of this triad is almost inevitable. Don Giovanni cannot, indeed, avoid singing the Don his next "No!", but he does so with a horrible scream an octave above the expected D, and without any verbal repentance. Though he tries to escape the D he is forced to sing by succeeding it immediately with an A, it is too late. He has sealed his doom by singing the tonic, as the Commandant makes clear, singing, "Ahl Your time has now come!" The Commandant ends this damning proclamation with a clear return to D minor, accompanied by the fires of hell and a chorus of demons, who sing, "No doom is too great for your sins! Worse torments await you below!" After bringing the hellfire and demons to the stage, and reintroducing the key of D minor, the Commandant departs the action of the opera. His purpose fulfilled, he leaves Don Giovanni surrounded by infernal wrath, the fires of Hell lapping hungrily at his soul. Don Giovanni finally confronts the darkness which surrounds him as he sings, "My soul is torn in agony, my body is in torture! What torment! What madness! Ah! What hell! What terror!" Just before the flames engulf Don Giovanni, bringing a most horrifying end to his earthly existence, he sings: Commandant, no longer accompanied by the dotted rhythms of the orchestra, loses the rhythmic regularity he possessed up until this point, and instead sings with the same rhythmic figures as Don Giovanni. The effect of this musical change is the Commandant is that he seems to take on some of Don Giovanni's agitation, losing his statuesque composure. The orchestra's tremulous forte music is also agitated in this incredible moment which embodies the musical suggestion made earlier in the opera of a bond between Don Giovanni and the Commandant. For the first time, Don Giovanni grows fearful, losing his ability to control the moment at hand, capable only of singing "No!" to each "Yes" sung by the Commandant.; the struggle between them becomes more fierce even as they become more unified musically. In this struggle for Don Giovanni's soul, during which the Commandant actually tries to save Don Giovanni by allowing him a last chance for repentance, the music metaphorically illustrates the conflict between them and the conflict between the characters' cries and the tonic D of the D minor key, the "key of conflict." Each of the Commandant's cries "Si" points diatonically to a resolution on D, the tonic, but each of Don Giovanni's "No" sidesteps the admittance of the resolving D. But each time he refuses to sing the D that the Commandant demands of him, he does so by an increasingly narrow margin. ....0... Ah! l -n~! This solid cadence concludes the saga of Don Giovanni in D major, not minor. This big change in no way mitigates the finality of his demise, but rather restores to the world the joy that Don Giovanni's existence detracted from it. The happy ending is further celebrated in the scene that follows Don Giovanni's fall. In the last scene of the opera, all the remaining essential characters come together to sing about living (more or less) happily ever after. While this opera might appear to some to be primarily about Don Giovanni's romantic adventures, I would argue that it is instead an opera about the conflict within a man who has no conscience. The conflict that occurs within Giovanni's soul may be metaphorically represented by his conflict with the Commandant. As the music reveals, in killing the Commandant, Don Giovanni kills a part of himself. It may well be that in the battle between them, Giovanni murders his own conscience. In some obscure part of his soul, Don Giovanni's conscience lingers on throughout the action of the opera, though as embodied by the Commandant, it is not physically present. Eventually, Don Giovanni is compelled to confront this part of himself one last time, hoping to destroy it completely (or, at least, to get it drunk). But the Commandant, the embodiment of his conscience, can never be destroyed, for he (it) is as much a part of Don Giovanni as the music he makes. Unwilling to part with his libertine lifestyle and unable to completely destroy his conscience, Don Giovanni can only destroy himself, and join his conscience-the Commandant-in Hell. It is highly significant that Don Giovanni's character falls to its damnation on this musical figure, the earlier mentioned "tragic hero motif;" this is the only time Don Giovanni embraces this phrase in reference to himself. There can hardly be any doubt that in this moment, when Don Giovanni sings the damning D octave, surrounded by the fires of Hell, his end is conclusive. Unlike the inconclusiveness of the music that follows the Commandant's death, the orchestra's cadence at the end of Don Giovanni's scene is deliberate and final. The first "Si" that the Commandant sings in on a C, in response to the B natural of Don Giovanni's "No" that precedes it. The natural response to this progression from B to C is the next successive pitch, the tonic D, but Don Giovanni avoids that resolution; his next "No" is on an F#. This F# is, however, closer to the impending tonic that the B natural of his earlier "No." The Commandant then proceeds to edge Don Giovanni even closer to D with his next "Si" which falls on a G, but again Don Giovanni sidesteps an easy resolution on D Music typesetting by John Allanbrook. 26 27 �~ The Reeve' s Tale by Geoffry Chaucer Lines 321-375 translated from Middle English and paraphrased in Native Rural Texan Kathleen Wilson GI '93 Up at Ingram, up the road from Kerrville at the Quinlan Creek crossing there's a low-water bridge. Back from the road a piece, right where the bridge runs by a thick cedar brake, there's a saw mill for cedar choppers, still work.in'. Now this is the truth of it. There was a ole chopper operatin' it years ago. May still be there. He was a big old boy, prouder of hisself than any chopper around those paits. Strutted like a fanned-out peacock, could bring down a deer with a bow and arrow on a foggy morning after a beer bust. Never got too drunk to fish , either, and wrastled for the joy of it. He was always decked out with knives. He'd stick one in his belt, one in a scabbard on the belt, and a ole Sheffield knife down in his sock. Them knives was honed sharp e,1ery day, ready for him to use. Didn't nobody mess with this chopper who didn't want to die. His face was big ai·ound as a big moon pie, with his nose flat in the middle of it. He was bald as a gorilla besides, and brought hisself into town pretty regular, swaggering and blustery. Didn't nobody want a thing to do with him, what with his being such a nuisance and mean to boot. People pretty much stayed clear of him, as they didn't want him toting a grudge against them. The truth of it is, he was nothing but a slick thief, and could cheat a rancher in a cedar deal by just looking and acting as dumb as any other old chopper. He was a sly one, all tight. He was used to turning a living that way. He was called Scornful Simon, and didn' t tolerate any foolishness about his name. Which everybody knowed, so Simon it was. When Simon got hisself a wife, it was a girl in the town. Her momma considered her fine , and she thought so herself. Even the preacher from the Holiness Church, who was the best preacher that Holiness crowd had seen in a coon's age, took an interest in helping the girl, sending her to the Holiness school on scholarship and such, and the family was proud about it., The fact of it was that the girl took her looks from the Holiness preacher. Which everybody knowed. Simon was a fine one for her. He had high aspirations that way; ai1d since it was time for her to get mai-ried and he was there and willing, the Holiness Church had a shower at the preacher's urging, and loaded her up with pot-, and pans and whatall, as a little enticement to get the wedding done. So Simon got hisself a suitable wife for a third-generation chopper, and a virgin to boot, what with the Holiness crowd watching out after her all that time. That girl was a cheeky thing, brazen as a jaybird, and she detennined to have a show of it. At the Holiness Church revivals, of which there was a few more than would suit most 28 folk, Simon marched right down to the front row of folding chairs under the tent, wearing a custom-creased Stetson. She was right behind, decked out in polyester chiffon, red of some kind as it was her color, al ways matched to the feather trim in Simon's hatband. Which everybody knowed was show, as snakeskin is enough for a hatband and a feather is painting the lily. It was "Yes, sir" and "yes, ma'am" to the two of them when they got with that Holiness crowd. The men of the church was a cautious lot around that pair. Nobody looked twice, passed the hymn book special, or talked over the goings-on with Miz Simon for her chopper was a jealous man, and he come prepared to exact a price from any who got out of line, what with his knives tucked around him. He was a dangerous man when his jealousy was roused. And even if he wasn't everybody thought he was. Which Miz Simon knowed, and was careful about it. She kept her nose in the air anyway. She was a stink with pride, bad as water in a ditch. She knowed who she was, special and all, with her special looks and special education. So she scorned 'most everybody in the town and in the Holiness Church. She was superior-like. That pair got themselves a daughter, and when she was about 20 there came another one, a fine looking boy laying in its cradle. the girl was a chubby one, with glass-grey eyes, fine pretty hair, but Simon's same flat nose parked in the middle of her face. She was a big-boned girl, and had a behind any quarter horse would take pride in, and a bodacious set of ta-ta's. As some people say. And that was the family. The Holiness preacher, who put much stock in family values, took a constant interest in Simon's girl, though he did it quiet-like. He intended to leave her all his worldly possessions since he had no offspring of a legitimate nature, and since he was interested in matching her up with someone of a like ancestry he wanted her undefiled. After all, his worldly possessions come from the Holiness Church, whether direct from salary or from more round-about ways, and he intended for his own blood (which would be considered holy if the Holiness Church ever inclined to think that way, which they wasn't as it was idolatrous) to be rewarded no matter how bad he had to bleed his congregation. Getting back to Simon and his business sense, he was shrewd about taking in juniper logs for fence posts, or sweet cedar for milling. He charged a heavy toll per load, but what was brought in at one end of the mill for preparing and selling was not always what come out at the other. Now one of his best customers was the college in town, which owned considerable land and which also was devoted to the education and 29 �where Simon strips the cedar logs. I don't know one thing about the lumber business. I believe I'll just st.and here and watch." Alan allowed as how that was such a good idea that he'd just stand at the foot of the mill and watch the sweet cedar come through as Simon sawed it into fine two by fours. Simon just smiled, and his brain was a-spinnin'. "So they want a honest deal," he thought to hisself. "I guess they got it all worked out in their college-educated brains. Well, I ain't the learned sort, but my mama didn't raise no fool. Let 'em try to keep a eye on me. Those two are going to haul h?me twisted-up juniper that wouldn't make a fence post and milled wood that ain't fit for nothin' but to fuel a fire. Simon was out the door fast as a hog on ice. He headed straight for the horse and wagon. He sidled up to that horse friendly-like, unhitched it, and eased off the bridle. He give it a little slap on the behind for encouragement, and off it run. Didn't take long for that horse to figger out they was. a herd of wild mares nearby. Bein' the horse of preachers, he had the appetites of preachers, and headed right toward 'em a mile a minute. The chopper headed back inside to his sawmill and did his jobs as good as he'd ever done, with Alan and John awatchin'. When the posts was bound together,and the lumber stacked John headed out to get the wagon, and he was pretty pleased with hisself. That is, until he saw he'd lost his horse and was well nigh stranded in the cedar brake. It was not a desirable place to be stranded, which everybody knowed. "Lord help us, Alan," he hollered. "We've gone and lost the horse! Get out here quick! We're done for!" "What? Lost? We got to find him! Which way was he headed?" Alan yelled. He ran outside and didn't think no more about the sorry enterprises of old Simon and how he was going to prevent 'em from occurring. "Where's our horse?" he wailed. Those fine ways of talkin' went out the window, and they both commenced to hopping up and down, they was so distressed. Out come Simon's fine wife, looking mournful and holding the bridle and reins. "Your horse has done gone past the cedar break and into the clearing. He's found the wild mares, and there's no getting him back now. What sorry soul tied him up so sloppy?" She stared at 'em accusing-like. Alan looked at John and John looked at Alan. Finally John spoke up. "Throw that knife down outen your belt, Alan. We look like regular fools here. I'm fast as a roadrunner and soareyou. We'regettin' ourhorseback." Andtheybothflung down their knives and headed into the cedar brake. Simon commenced to talking to hisself even as he waved goodbye to 'em. "They may be smart and scholarly enough to handle the High Church crowd, but they aint learned enough to trick the likes of me yet. Them two will be hauling home some cedar post not fit to wrap a wire around." and he swapped out their cedar for a pile he'd got thatnobody'd buy, what with it being so gnarled and twisted. training of future preachers of the Protestant persuasion. They was viewed as a High Church bunch to the Holiness crowd, and proved to be easy pickings for Simon's particular business practices. Especially the building and grounds man, who was on the simple side. He hauled in cleared cedar on a regular basis, bringing it by horse-drawn wagon since the roads was too rough for much else, transportation-wise. Which everybody knowed. When the building and grounds man took sick Simon was like a hog at the trough. His profits from the college doubled and doubled again. Where he once had held back a little, as one who believed in honor among thieves, now he turned hisselfloose. The director of the college made a fuss, writing letters and all, but that was nothing to Simon, who even took to bragging about his business sense, and allowed as how anybody who had serious complaints could settle them the Holiness way, with knives and such. Which nobody from the Protestant bunch much wanted to do. Two of them Protestant college boys, figuring theirselves to be pretty smart and being restless for a little adventure, got the school to send them out to the saw mill so as they could keep an eye on that cedar chopper when he took their fence posts in to the mill to get the bark stripped. They figured they'd easy catch him trying to cheat them by swapping their good straight posts and sweet cedar for old bent and wormy wood. They was named Alan and John, and they had charming High Church ways. They had a way of talking that was much admired, especially in a pulpit man. It also weighed a good bit as part of their skill for persuasion. They was allowed to go. Alan and John hitched the horse to the wagon and loaded it up with cedar for posts and cedar for sawing. They even stuck knives in their belts, figuring they was to have more advantage if they looked like they was used to dealing with all kinds. John took the reins and headed for that creek like a bee to honey, for he knew the way from secretly admiring those Holiness girls any chance he got. When they got there Alan took to hollering. "Hey, Simon, how y'all? How's the wife? Where's that girl of yours?" "Well, my Lord!" Simon was at his sociable best. "If it ain't Alan and John! What're y'all doin' here?" He lounged at the door to his mill grinnin' a big 'possum grin. "Our building and grounds man has took sick and we think he's ready to give up the ghost. That's how bad it is. So we can either do this job ourselves or get took for fools. We've got the finest straight cedar logs for you to peel for fence posts, and sweet cedar to go through the mill. You fix it and we'll carry it home again, as we can use it at the college. What we don't use we' ll sell in the town. Quick as you can get it done, we '11 be out of your hair," J oho spoke up. "You want it, you got it!" Simon crowed, for he had spotted a business opportunity for hisself. "What you boys want to do while I'm workin' fer you?" "Look here," said John, a'starin' into the mill. "Here's 30 Meanwhile, John and Alan was galloping after their horse, yelling "Whoa up!" and "Halt!" but they never caught him till nightfall, when they'd run him all the way back to the road and chased him into a borrow ditch. They was all three spent and had sweated a right lot besides. "I wish I'd never been homed," yelled John. "Look at the fix we're in. That old fool has for sure swapped out our good cedar posts, and the whole town will know soon enough we 're fools, not to think of the laugh the Holiness crowd will have on us." He dragged the horse by the reins, Alan bringing up the tail, till they got back to the cedar mill. There was old Simon, asitting by his fire and looking serene as a saint at the gate. Seein' as it was night, they appealed to Simon's Holiness trainin' to take 'em in. And with some cash thrown in to seal the deal, he did. "My house ain't much," Simon opined, "and you are educated folk, but you are welcome to a spot in it. Talk it bigger if it ain't grand enough." Alan andJ ohn began to soothe their host, taking his invitation as a great and clever joke, and saying that, after all, a man can have one of two things- such as he finds or such as he brings. They was willin' to settle for what they found. Hoping as they were for some meat, some home brew, and a bed, the two of 'em was happy to cough over a little cash money in return. Simon set to roasting a goose, and charged his daughter with rounding up the bread and brew, and the whole family saw to it that the horse was tied and hobbled so as not to get loose agai11 . That chopper made up a bed with sheets and quilts for the town boys, not twelve feet from his own bed. The daughter slept nearby, all of ' em light in the same room. They ate and talked, and took in all the ale they could hold and then some, what with needing to cheer themselves up. Around midnight the lot of them headed for bed. The miller had done oiled hisself up, and was white as a sheet from drinkin', havin' passed the red stage altogether. He belched a good bit, then pulled his wife over to the bed to lie beside him . She was stirred up as a cat stalking a jay, the ale having a opposite effect upon her, but settled in after tuckin' the wee one into his cradle at the foot of the bed. She needed to keep him handy, in case he needed rockin' or suckin' in the night. The daughter also headed to bed, but not until she'd used the last drop in the jug, and Alan and John went down also. A dead quiet fell over the room, for nobody needed a sleeping draught after all they'd pulled from the jug. Simon had done took in so much ale that he begun to snort and whinny in his sleep, workin' both ends as if they was musical instruments. The wife soon joined in with a powerful bass snore, and it was a blessing there were no near neighbors, for the sound would have kept the countryside awake. Alan poked John. "Are you asleep? Have you ever heard the like? They're singin' Wednesday night prayer service among 'em. It's a fire in their lungs. Well, that redneck may have our good logs, but they'll all have the worst of it in the end, for I'll not rest my eyes this long night; but no matter, for I'll have justice done us. For, John," he said," I intend to have that chopper's daughter. I'll swivel her proper before this night is done. It's the law, ain't it?" For he was forgettin' that fine coatin' of high church ways. "For the law says it clear that if a man's grieved on one point he's to be relieved on another, and by God I'm gettin' into that gold mine tonight." "Aw, hell, Alan!" hissed John in Alan's ear. "That chopper is a dangerous man. If you git that girl, he's like to wake up and then we're both done for." "He don't scare me," Alan hissed back. 'Tm as scared of him as I am of a house fly." And up he rose, and crept in like a coachwhip snake in the hen house, close beside her. By the time she woke up, it was too late to c1y out, and she soon found that she didn't want to give a warnin ', for he was artful as clergy are wont to be, and they was soon the same as one. And while Alan played, John lay still, thinking dark thoughts. "This is tumin' out to be a bad joke," he brooded, "with the laugh on me. I'm left over here lookin' like a regular ape, but Alan has got repayment for the harm done him. He's got that chopper's girl to lay with. He took the chance, but I lay like a log in my bed. When this joke gets spread 'round town I'll sound like the sissy and the fool. Well Iain 't havin' it. I can take a risk, too. They say a coward has no luck. Well, I'm beginnin' to feel lucky." And up he rose, got hold of the cradle, and carried it back to the foot of his own bed. Not long after, that wife left off snoring and woke up, for she needed to take a piss. She headed outside to the outhouse, and soon come back in, groping for the cradle in the dark and not finding it. "Lord God," she whispered to herself, "I like to got in bed with those two boys. Wouldn't that have ripped Simon's britches!" She felt around some more in the dark and finally took hold of the end of the cradle. She crawled up into the bed and laid herself down close beside young John, where she would have gone back to snoring but for John's sudden activity. He rolled right on top of her and took to showin' her a good time such as she hadn't had in many years (for that chopper carried his manhood more in his blades than in his trnusers, as tl1e size of his family attested to. Which nobody knowed but the wife, and she was wise not to mention it). John rogered her like a madman, and in fact those two young cocksmen kept at it till the cocks crowed at dawn. Alan was raw and weary by this time, for he had met his match on the mattress and had been at it all the night. "Farewell, Molly my sweet," he said. "Here comes the sun, and I'll be leaving. But wherever I go, remember that I am your own true man, and I do hope for your happiness." "Goodbye, sweetheart," she cried. "But before you go, know this one thing. As you head out, stop by the right of the sawmill. You'll find a pile of fine straight cedar post, peeled and ready, that is your very own load of cedar which I helped my daddy steal. Take it back, and God save you, my big fine man." And she commenced to weeping. 31 �n [Untitled] Alan rose up and headed back to the bed where he knew his friend was layin." But he put his hand on the cradle at the foot of the bed and thought, "Oh, Lord, my head is still spinnin' for I outdid myself this night. I've nearly got in the bed with Simon and his wife." So he crept 'round, with the devil's own luck, and got into bed with the chopper when he thought he was in with John. He grabbed that chopper by the neck and began to whisper soft to him. "Wake up, John, you hog's head, for the love of Christ, and hear a brave game. I swear on a stack of Bibles that I have three times this night had the chopper's daughter, and in ways that didn't occur to no missionaries. I'm a man and not afraid to prove it, while you lay abed scared." Up rose Simon, eyes buggin' out, screamin'. "You sorry bastard! Is that what you've done? You ain't fit to be a preacher, dishonoring my fine daughter and defiling her fine family tree!" And the cords bulged out on his neck as he screamed. He grabbed Alan by the throat, and Alan grabbed him right back and socked him on his flat nose. The blood flowed down like a river on Simon's chest. Down they rolled onto the floor, rollin' around like two hogs in a waller. Up they got, down they went, till finally Simon fell back onto the bed where his wife slept, exhausted from her own night-long workout with John. Jolted wide awake, she began to bray like an ass. "Lord, take me home! I'm ready to give up the ghost! Help, Simon! Wake up! These preacher fiends has started a fight and one has fallen on me!" John rose up quick and groped along the walls hoping to find a walking stick. She rose up at the same time, and knowing the walls better than the young preacher, latched right on to a stick. Seein' a little shimmer of light, she picked out the fighters. She honed in on what appeared to be a scrap of white cloth, which she took for the young preacher's nightcap, and took aim and smashed down with that stick. Down fell Simon, clutching his bald head and hollerin', "I'm done for!" Alan and John jumped on him as quick as they'd jumped on his women, and beat him soundly, and left him layin' there on the floor. They quick got their horse, hitched their wagon load of cedar post to him, and headed back to civilization as they knew it. And thus was the proud chopper well beaten, and poorer by one load of cedar post and enough groceries to feed a crowd at a church supper. His wife had been rogered, and his daughter too, and that is what happens to a dishonest chopper. He should have expected it, for he who does evil is repaid with good in the Bible but in the world it is a different story. The truth is, the lot of 'em - Holiness and High Church- was common as pig tracks. Which everybody had suspected and now everybody knows. by Jean Holman There in the half-light in the shadow of her brain they drank straight vodka from paper cups By candle light And he noticed that her eyes were more than blue "And what is in that head of yours," he said As the candle flickered across the starkness of her cheek Like a searchlight passing on an asylum wall "Constellations saclificed across the sky Virgins crucified in starlight," She said, "You will go to heaven when you 're dead But I shall live forever here in dim light With my stany lovers." 32 33 �An Introduction to Kant D Laurence Berns Most introductions to Kant begin with his modifications of the doctrines inherited from Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Hume and others whose philosophies can be associated with modem mathematical physics. This procedure is certainly correct, but is it sufficient? We suggest that it is not, because it tends to obscure a part of the whole, if not the, fundamental stratum of Kant's thought. By emphasizing those modifications, the premises which those thinkers all share, in particular those premises formed in opposition to the classical PlatonicAristotelian approach, tend to be taken for granted, to be insufficiently questioned, and thereby to be insufficiently clarified. 1 Itis, nevertheless, generally acknowledged that the issues between the "modems" and the "ancients" were fundamental issues for Kant. The following inb·oduction was designed to approach the study of Kant in such a way as to clarify these issues and to see how dealing with them shaped his philosophy as a whole. The key to this approach is the articulation of the very close connection of Kant's thought with the thinking of Thomas Hobbes, for Hobbes seems to be unrivalled for the lucidity with which he stated his oppostion to classical thought while working out what have come to be called the foundations of modem thought. " ... whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they be not there, but are seeming and apparitions only." What we think are the characterisitics of things in themselves are rather the effects upon, or appearances in, ourselves of causes or things which are in themselves utterly unknown to us. As for intelligibles, the realm of ideas, Hobbes tells us that universals are not in rerum natura (Elements . .. , 5.6); "there being nothing in the world Universal but Names; for the things named, are every one of them Individual and Singular" (Leviathan, ch. 4 ). In his logical and methodological chapters he frequently criticizes Aristotelian philosophy for taking logical distinctions for metaphysical distinctions, for mistaking discourse about our thoughts and the ordering of our thoughts for discourse about things in themselves. Traditional metaphysics from this point of view is absorbed by logic, if not by psychology. Kant continued and developed this critique. According to him we can have no knowledge of things in themselves; science, the study of nature, is concerned only with what appears to us, with what lies in our experience and as far as we can know, lies only in our experience. We may be forced to think, but we have no way of knowing, that what lies in our experience exists outside of or beyond our experience. We can know only "phenomena," the Greek word for appearances. Sense intuition, furthermore, is the only intuition available to us, there is no such thing as intellectual intuition for man. To bring this point home Kant contrasts phenomena, which we can know, with "noumena," the Greek word which he knew meant objects of nous, objects of intellectual intuition. In his Critique of Pure Reason he defines noumena negatively, as a word to refer to that which we can in no way know, an unknowable "x," the unknowable thing in itself. Yet Kant differed from most of the earlier modems; he seemed to aim at restoring certain aspects of classical thought. He is often regarded as the man who reinstated thinking as the most authoritative element of experience. He insisted that to identify the source of our thoughts with the source of our sensations is "intolerable." He claims to have demonstrated that although we can know only phenomena, we can have objective, universal and necessary judgements about them. His famous phrase is "Concepts without intuitions are empty and intuitions without concepts are blind." Thought, the "concept," is what forms and makes meaningful the unorganized material of sense data. There is something like a "realm of ideas" in Kant, but it in no way exists outside of the human mind. Kant's substitute for "ideas," "concepts," have no special purely intellectual objects of their own; they are valid and meaningful theoretically only in application to human I On the supposition that genuine knowledge is attainable for human beings Plato, Aristotle and their followers argue that human beings are endowed by nature with two kinds of intuition or insight, two intuitive faculties, sensation, or sense intuition, and intellectual intuition, or intelligence (nous). These faculties when used correctly, according to Alistotle, enable us to understand and to know the sensible and intelligible characteristics of the things to which they are applied, that is to say, the characterisitics of the things themselves. While both faculties are indispensable for humans, the intelligence is most athoritative; to be in the fullest sense for Plato and Aristotle is to be intelligible, and, perhaps, intelligent. The ideas , intelligible forms, the universals, are the most stable elements in the world and in the most fundamental Vfay, shape the character of the world. The intelligibles come to be the primary objects of the highest kind of inquiry, tl1e study which came to be called metaphysics. The great modern opponents of the classical tradition, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, and Locke seemed to regard this presupposition of harmony between the mind of man and the nature of things as a kind of naive optimism. Nature is not a kind mother, she deceives us; the cognitive equipment she has endowed us with conceals rather than reveals the true character of things. In Hobbes' Elements of the Law, 2 2.10, we read, 35 34 �experience, meaning sense experience. Reason, the ultimate source of understanding, and its concepts, is not intuitve, but legislative; it provides rules for the meaningful organization of sense experience, these rules we call concepts. Thus Kant can say paradoxically that "Reason prescribes to nature its laws." Kant was probably thinking of how in Newton's Principia . .. mathematical reason prescribes to nature its laws. A consideration of Hobbes might help make this connection more clear. According to Hobbes, geometry, the model for all science and philosophy, is the ony well grounded body of knowledge we have recieved from the ancients. Geometry is, or mathematical hypotheses are, the demonstrable core of physics. He defines it broadly: "Geometry is the science of determining the quantity of anything, not measured, by comparing it with some other quantity or quantities measured" think scientifically we must think that the succession of appearances in our experience is connected necessarily, that is, that the prior is cause, the latter necessary effect. In other words, our scientific understanding imposes the law of cause and effect, the concept of the relation of necessary connection, upon the succession of appearances in experience. Kant spoke of his "critical philosophy" as part of the Copernican revolution of modem science. To take the most important example: we see the sun rise, move across the heavens and set each day. The Copernican hypothesis accounts for the apparent movement of the sun by the activity or the movement of the observer, by the rotation of the earth. Kant accounts for the meaningfulness of sense experience in terms of its conformity to the rules set by our own conceptual activity, just as physicists try to make sense out of physical phenomena by seeing whether they conform to the laws they have deduced about them from their mathematical representations. Hitherto, Kant says, it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects, but Kant reverses the priority by asking whether it is not rather that we attain knowledge of objects when those objects, sense objects, conform to the conditions that our concepts and understanding set for all objects of experience. The principle common to Kant and Hobbes might be said to be that we can know fully only what we make. 4 Sense intuition itself takes on a new meaning in the context of Kant's argument. Generally speaking, for Aristotelians intuition means an essentially passive reception by the soul, more or less adequately, of the things intuited. To maintain oneself in the proper state of openness for the reception of adequate intuition may be arduous, but the actual process of intuition itself is essentially passive. Intuition for Kant too is, in part, receptive, but for him that is the least interesting part of the process. The receptivity is merely the capacity of the subject to be affected, to be impressed, by objects. Mere sense impressions must be worked up into meaningful objects of sensible intuition by the synthesizing activity of the imagination and the understanding, the faculty of judgement, that is, in sum, by the synthesizing or composing activity of the thinking subject. Locke's words towards the end of his chapter on property come to mind, where, in discussing the value of property, he tells us that nature furnishes only "the almost worthless materials." We are indebted for the meaning we find in the world, not to a beneficient nature, according to Kant, but to our own cognitive activity. (Six Letters to the Professors of the Mathematics . . . , Molesworth ed., English Works, vii, p. 191). It includes the study of the quantity of time, of swiftness of motion, and weight, as well as the usual subjects. As it was for Newton and Kant, it is very important for Hobbes that the geometric entities be defined operationally, for "of true and evident definitions the best are those which declare the cause or generation of that subject, whereof the proper passions are to be demonstrated" 3 (Ibid. , p. 212). Emphasis supplied. Consider the beginning of Newton's article on "Quadrature of Curves" and Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B740ff). Why should geometry, or mathematics, have this privileged status for Hobbes? Of arts, some are demonstrable, others indemonstrable; and demonstrable are those the construction of the subject whereof is in the power of the artist himself, who, in his demonstration, does no more but deduce the consequences of his own operation. The reason whereof is this, that the science of every subject is derived from a precognition of the causes, generation and construction of the same; and consequently where the causes are known, there is place for demonstration, but not where the causes are to seek for. Geometry therefore is demonstrable, for the lines and figures from which we reason are drawn and described by ourselves; and civil philosophy is demonstrable, because we make the commonwealth ourselves. But because of natural bodies we know not the construction, but seek it from the effects, there lies no demonstration of what the causes be we seek for, but only of that what they may be. (Op. cit., pp. 183-184). II Morality, as such, was hardly recognizable in most modem philosophy before Kant. The virtues appeared as passions in Hobbes and Descartes, as emotions in Spinoza, and as sentiments in smith and Hume. Once again, Kant seems to be restoring something that had been lost with ancient philosophy. But agian the differences are more striking than the similarities. The watchword of classical morality is virtue, the What geometry, or mathematics, does for the science of physics is very much like what, according to Kant, human reason in general does for our experience of the natural world. Let us take the concept of cause and effect as example. It is meaningless, according to Kant, to talk of things in themselves causing and being effected by each other. Yet when we 36 watchword of modem, or Kantian, morality is freedom, freedom understood as self-legislation. The older notion implies that we can discern a natural hierarchy of human desires, culminating in the desire for the highest happiness. This, in turn, presupposes a natural hierarchy of human achievements, or ends, correlated to a natural hierarchy of human faculties, or pwers. The modem notion, with one eye to non-teleological mathematical physics,5 presupposes no such fixed order of ends, ends that might allow for one man, who understands them, to decide what was better for another, who does not understand them. Human beings are subject to rules, but, as far as morality is concerned, only to those rules they impose upon themselves. Morality is self-determination, autonomy (the Greek word for self-legislation); it cannot, for Kant, be based on any form of heteronomy (the Greek word for legislation by another), whether that other be nature, God, or some other man, no matter how wise. Human beings, as moral beings, are subject to nothing, or to no one but themselves, or to the practical reason themselves. The first man to explicitly formulate the new defintion of freedom was Rousseau, and Kant has acknowledged his great debt to Rousseau, occasionally speaking of him as the Newton of the moral world. Once again, however, it would be best to begin with Hobbes. Why should we obey the sovereign, according to Hobbes? Because through the social contract we have covenanted to allow his will to represent our wills, to take his will for our wills; his legislation, through social contract, is legally considered, our own self-legislation. In obeying him, we are really obeying ourselves. This construction is necessitated by a more fundamental principle: as Hobbes says in the Leviathan, "there being no Obligation on any man which arise th not from some Act of his own; for all men equally, are by Nature Free" (ch. 21). All genuine legislation then becomes a form of self-legislation, and injUiy, or injustice, is like a self-contradiciton, willing to do that which one has already willed tlu·ough contract not to do. In the Social Contract (bk. I, ch. 6) Rousseau puts it as follows: will, having to express one's will in such form that it coincides with the wills of all others, moralizes the will, frees it from the irrationality and immorality of selfish desire. For example, I selfishly decide that I do not want to pay taxes. Then I generalize that desire and put it in the form of a law: No one ought to pay taxes. But then I consider that the police, public schools, etc. would disappear, and I become aware of the iffationality of my original inclinaiton. The form of general or universal law not only guarantees the freedom of the subjects, but guarantees that the will itself will be rational and moral. 6 The moral law sets down one fundamental imperative for Kant, the categmical imperative: so act that you can will that the maxim of your action can become a universal law. Another example: A man is hard pressed. Kant has him ask, May I not make a promise with the intention of not keeping it? But under the categorical imperative he asks again, Should I be content that my maxim of getting out of a difficulty by making a false promise should hold as a universal law? Should everyone make false promises when they can extricate theselves from difficulties in no other way? Kant goes on: I then become aware that I can indeed will to lie, but can in no way will a universal law of lying, for by such a law there could properly be no promises at all. No one would trust in any promises and my maxim, as soon as universalized, would contradict and annul itself. When seen in contrast to the naturalistic ethics of Plato and Aristotle, the legalism, egalitarianism, logical formalism and the emphasis on will common to the moral docttines of Hobbes and Kant can be understood as rooted in their common depreciation or rejection of purposive nature as the ultimate source of ethical standards. In Hobbes the goals and character of moral and political life are still determined by reference to naaaature, especially human nature, but in a way very different from the way of the classical n·adition. The "state of nature," according to Hobbes, is a state of war, a war of all against all; its only relieving feature is the possibility it holds out for leaving, and by means of the social contract, entering into the state of civil society. Instead of serving as a direct guide to human goodness, the idea fo the state of nature is meant to clarify what in human nature is to be overcome. It becomes a source of negative standards, part of a plan leading to the more general conquest of nature. For Kant, the student of Newton, nature is, or must be understood as, a mechanism. If morality is to be saved, it must be traced to a source, or sources, altogether independent of nature. This source Kant calls practical reason. Only as a moral being, acting in accord with practical reason, when one is, and can know oneself to be, the cause of what one does, can one see oneself (and therefore others) as a noumenon, as a thing in itslef, as outside the chain of mechanical causation, as free. Kant claims to have proved that practical or moral reason and theoretical reason, which sees everything, including human beings under the aegis of the concept of mehanical The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, meanwhile uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before. This .is the fundamental problem for which the social contract provides the solution. The solution is a society in which all are subject to the general will, to the law, and in which each contributes to the making of that law. All are subject to laws which each has in part imposed upon himself. Thus Rousseau could conclude that direct democracy is the only perfectly legitimate form of government. For Rosseau and for Kant this generalizing process of the 37 �nThe Visual Arts and the Liberal Arts Notes: cause and effect, do not contradict one another; they simply do not meet. This carefully elaborated solution, we can only note, leads in turn to one of the greatest difficulties with which Kant's philosophy as a whole is beset: the realm ofnature and the realm of freedom having been separated, how is one to understand how natural man and moral man come together. How do the realm of freedom and the realm of nature come together in one and the same world? These problems are among the chief concerns of his philosophy of religion and his reflections on history. However close the main argument of Kant's moral philosophy is to that of Hobbes, the moral earnestness that permeates this writings on morals and politics is far from the "impish" spirit we find in Hobbes. Though both seeme~ to share in the hope of the Enlightenment, that populanzed philosophy would supercede biblical religion, Kant's incorpration of Christian elements into his moral philosophy seems to do much less violence to the spirit of his sources. Yet however much he may have believed that philosophy can learn something from Christianity, it is clear that for him Christianity can never be more than a hand maid for practical reason. That the good will, or moral law, or practical reason exists in all men can be seen by considering what men say and do when others behave badly, or unjustly, toward themselves: the rules then spring easily to mind. The problem is, according to Kant, that under the pressure of their inclinations and desires men exempt themselves from those rules which they can so easily discover and apply to others. Acting on the basis of natural inclination, under the heteronomy of nature, has nothing to do with morality for Kant. Thus happiness, the goal of our natural inclinations, according to Kant, has nothing to do with morality. In fact, one can never be sure that one's motive is moral unless one acts contrary to inclination. An action may be moral and coincide with one's inclinaitons, but if that is the case one can never know whether one was acting on the basis of pure respect for the moral law itself, which would be moral, or on the basis of inclination, which would not be. The only subjective determinant, or feeling, that has anything to do with morality, according to Kant, is respect, or reverence, for the law itself. Duty is defined by Kant as the necessity to act out of respect, or reverence, for the law. Respect, however, is a very special feeling.7 For Kant, respect is the basis of all true love. Respect differs from all other feelings: it is not recieved from outside influences, but is · self-produced, he says, by a rational concept. Our respect for the moral law is complex: in so far as we are subject to it we have a feeling towards it analogous to fear; in so far as we produce it ourselves we have a feeling towards analogous to love. This combination of fear and love is not altogether unfamiliar. It is the combiantion of feelings that pious believers associate with the God of the Bible. 8 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 38 For example, the question, why did Kant reject intellectual intuition? Reprinted without epistle dedicatory in Thomas Hobbes, Body, Man, and Citizen, ed. Richard S. Peters, Collier Books, 1962. "Operation" here is meant to include mental operation: for example, Hobbes does not define line, like Euclid, as breadthless length, but as the way of a body moved, in which the magnitude, the dimensions of the body, are not considered. He emphasised the "considered," "not considered" means "not put to account in demonstration." Cf. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1953) pp. 169-177; Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and The Origin of Algebra, (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1968); and David Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry: A Genealogy of Modernity, (New York and London: Routledge, 1989): The other eye looks to the "ego cogito": cf. Swift's Laputans. Leo Strauss, "The Three Waves of Modernity," in An Introduction to Political Philosophy. Cf. H.J. Paton, The Categorical/mperative, ch. v. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, ch. 1, note 2. lJ Burt Blistein signified both the craftsman and the student of the liberal arts. The Renaissance inherited this view. Hence the numerous artists who were also mathematicians and scientists--Piero della Francesca, Leonardo, Alberti. They too assumed that the "work of art" was a work made by art, that is, in accord with rational principles. Our doctrine of "art for art's sake" would have been unintelligible to them. The fine art of painting and liberal art of poetry were long regarded as "sister" arts, sharing the same subject matter and objectives. 2 Their association can be traced, in Western civilization, at least as far back as Homer. It is suggested by the language. Grapho in Greek means "to draw" and "to write." Poetry in this tradition is characterized by clear and precise visual imagery, painting by narrative, didactic or symbolic subject matter (as a rule the three occur together) each of the arts in that respect borrowing from the other. Visual images serve the same function as poetic narrative. Poetic accounts of pictured events-such as Homer's description of the shield of Achilles-stress the imitation of continuing action, and explication of motive that we associate with poetry or drama. The visual image is made to move and speak. Carved or painted figures think and feel: I. History The arts designated as "liberal" by the ancient Greeks and Romans differed at different times. They included disciplines that we now number among the fine arts (drawing, painting, architecture) and disciplines that we now consider neither fine arts nor liberal arts (medicine). For long the classification was ambiguous and even when finally codified continued to be disputed. During the Renaissance many humanists and critics argued for the inclusion of the visual arts-excluded from the liberal arts in the Middle Ages-and it was at length generally acknowledged that the visual arts were liberal arts. We now study in colleges of the liberal arts disciplines that would have been excluded earlier-experimental science, for example. Many liberal disciplines-such as music-have been so transformed that, as presently studied, they would probably have been rejected by those who first proposed including them among the liberal arts. We find, moreover, that the liberally educated were often exceedingly well-versed in, and in fact practitioners of, the arts classified as "illiberal." The medieval clerics actively participated in the design of churches and cathedrals and determined the "program" or meaning of the sculptures and paintings which they contained. This history should make us wary of applying the current classification arbitrarily, and in particular of excluding certain disciplines, such as the visual arts, from liberal education simply because they once were excluded. We tend to think of the fine arts as the products of intuition, and the liberal arts and sciences as the products of reason. That distinction is often used to justify the exclusion of visual art from the liberal arts curriculum. It is argued that visual art lacks a logos, or rational component. The Greeks and Romans thought otherwise. Techne and ars-their nearest equivalents to our term "art"-signify" 'organized knowledge and procedure applied for the purpose of producing a specific preconceived result,' or simply 'rational production."' 1 Aristotle observes that "Art is identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning" (Eth. Nie. 1140a 10). Such "reasoning" could be reduced to first principles and communicated. It was eminently "teachable," differing from other forms of knowledge only in that it was ordered to a practical or productive end. All art-not excepting the visual arts-was then a rational means to a predetermined end, (as in "the art of bricklaying"), not an end in itself; and that end could be a product, an activity, or a change of state. Poetry and music (our liberal arts), painting, sculpture, engineering, architecture, shoemaking and carpentry, horsetraining, dance and medicine were all equally arts; the sophists proposed to teach the art of virtue or excellence. Medieval man also assumed that ars sine scientia nihil: "without science art would be nothing." The term artista then They were leading the brides along the city from their maiden chambers Under the flaring of torches, and the loud bride song was arising. The young men followed the circle of the dance, and among them The flutes and lyres kept up their clamor as in the meantime The women standing each at the door of her court admired them. Iliad 18. 492-496 Rhetoric and the visual arts were once closely linked. Greek and Roman rhetoricians-notably Cicero and Quintilian-use the same terms to describe stylistic and formal characteristics of the visual arts and rhetoric, and emphasize parallels in their historical development. 3 Liberally educated citizens of Byzantium delighted in ekphrasis-elaborate descriptions of paintings and sculptures employing all the tricks of rhetoric. The results closely resemble our example from Homer. 4 Paintings and mosaics quicken with life; painted figures speculate, act and react. In Medieval Europe, the injunction to follow Christ or identify with Him, led to equally vivid verbal recreations of painted or sculpted images of biblical events. Such exercises assumed thorough familiarity with one's subject matter; the liberally educated rhetorician was of necessity a student of the visual arts. Not to be outdone, 39 �cated, skilful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists, and be acquainted with astronomy and theory of the heavens" (De architectura I, 1.3). Such criteria reflect the belief-common not only in antiquity, but, as we shall observe, during the Middle Ages and Renaissance-that a building must image the mathematical relationships responsible for the beauty and stability of the cosmos if it is to be beautiful and enduring. The Greek architect did not supply the builders .197'with a plan and elevation (that did not become commonplace until the Hellenistic period) but with a mathematical schema8 incorporating the proportions thought to mirror macrocosmic relationships. The temple thus became a "model" of the cosmos. For similar reasons classical sculptors and painter-potters sought canons of proportion which would embody "the beautiful."9 The visual arts were then in effect the realization or embodiment of truths derived from the liberal arts. And the liberal arts borrowed from the visual arts, or from the same sources that visual artists exploited. Aeneid and Republic incorporate in the numerical division and grouping of words and lines the very proportions that determine the dimensions of certain temples. 10 The medieval belief in the unity of the visual arts and the liberal arts is exemplified by the cathedral which derived its form from the quadrivium-in particuJr,rlJ .,,,,;, lar mathematics and music which supplied the essential ratios that determined the proportions of the building-its expressive content from the trivium and from scripture. 11 For there is a "rhetoric" of architectural form just as there is of words. I la The Renaissance inherited and perpetuated belief in this unity. During the Renaissance, the painters enriched their works by incorporating gestures drawn from the repertoire of the rhetmicians.5 Belief in the unity of the arts was as durable as it was pervasive. Caesare Ripa (c. 1561-1623), writing nearly three thousand years after Homer, emphasizes the same unity:[ see illustration] The woman with the gag, who represents painting, rests her arm upon a symbolic portrait of poetry which she is in the process of completing. In the words of Ripa's editor, "the cloth bound over her mouth indicates that painting is a silent art, conveying its mess age by other means than CXCVll. words-it is mute poetry." 6 Painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, drama, and rhetoric were then all thought to share the common end of rectifying or perfecting human character. Beauty of ornament and of form, whether visual or verbal, could awaken and nourish one's desire for the Good. IL is valued--0r, we are told repeatedly, ought to be valued-as a means to that end, not as an end in itself. This conviction deeply influenced medieval and Renaissance thought about the arts and indeed, persisted well into the eighteenth century. Such a system excluded in theory both "abstract" beauty or a rhetoric without content, and art that appealed primarily to the senses. These did not become completely respectable until the divorce of the visual arts from the liberal arts, and the isolation of the former from theology and philosophy. (Much early art that seems to us erotic is religious in intent; early "abstractions" frequently symbolize religious or philosoph- xi.rlthr. Jtl ical concepts.) We know that there were many classical texts dealing with sculpture and architecture regarded as "liberal" or mathematical arts. Vitrivius (first centwy B.C) lists twenty in his De architectura, twelve concerned specifically with "symmeteria" or proportion. (Unfortunately, none save the writings of Vitruvius have survived.) These treatises suggest that Greek architects were by and large liberally educated men. The fourth-century Greek architect Pytheos proposed that architects "should be all- round experts who beat the specialists in every field."7 Vitruvius requires that the architect be "edu- theorizing on literature and on arl coincided in many ways and on many levels ... the aesthetic problems which may be traced to antiquity and which interested the poet and painter alike were the same for each-art 40 vs. nature, instruction vs. delight, form vs. content, ancient vs. modern, imitation vs. invention. Such problems were debated in much the same terms in the literary academy and in the artistic atelier. Petrarchism and Neo-Platonism affected the imagery of the poet exactly as they did the iconography of the artist. Michelangelo as artist "imitated" Dante, Villani, and the Dies /me-whereas writers "imitated" plastic sources. Witness how Sadoletus strove to imitate the classic craftsmanship of the newly unearthed Laocoon in "elegant verse," even though, as Lessing pointed out, the marble group was already an imitation of a Virgilian passage. And Giovanbattista Zappi "translated" Michelangelo's Mose into a sonnet ... Unusual as it may seem, both poets and artists drew upon the same treatises of antiquity for their theoretical ideas about their crafts. The Poetics of Aristotle and theArs poetica of Horace, which were the archsources of Renaissance literary thinking, were also the primary influences upon the artistic thinking of the day... If in our time the bridge between belletristic and bellartistic aesthetics is not quite so easily crossed, the crossing was a much simpler matter in the sixteenth century. Not only were the issues similar, but even a single vocabulary served both types. 12 human figure, and would need to be familiar with the primary religious and historical texts for subject matter and iconography. (Pheidias remarked that his Zeus was suggested by Homer's description in the /Iliad. Quintillian observes that this figure "added something to traditional religion; to such an extent [was] the majesty of the work equal to the majesty of the god.") The complex systems of proportional relationships that Greek arhitects, painters, sculptors, and potters incorporated in their works derived from the study of what one might characterize as a mathematical physics. Unlike our physics, however, theirs comprehended the good and the beautiful, the organic as well as the inorganic. The physician Galen, who considered medicine a liberal art, is able to include discussion of the Canon of the Greek sculptor Polyclitus-a system of proportional relationships which reputedly enabled one to attain "the beautiful"-in a passage devoted to bodily health because he thought both sculptural beauty and health instances of symmetria, a certain harmony, equilibrium or proportionate relationship of contituent elements. Pliny the Elder (first century A.D.) tells in his Natural History of the painter Pamphilos (teacher of Apelles, the most famous of Greek painters), erudite in all branches of knowledge, especially arithmetic and geometry, without which, he held, an art could not be perfected .. . As a result of his prestige, it came about that, first in Sikyon and then in all Greece, free-born boys were given lessons in drawing on wooden tablets... and thus painting was received into the front rank of the liberal arts. And indeed it has always been an honorable feature of it, that it was practiced by free-born men, and subsequently by distinguished people, while there has been a standing prohibition against slaves being instructed in it. Hence neither in this art nor in the sculptural arts ... are there any renowned works done by someone who was a slave. 14 The artists of classical antiquity, of the Middle Ages, and of the Renaissance were either liberally educated or were directed by others who were. As the body serves the soul, and the hand obeys the mind, so the artist's activity was free or "liberal" to the extent that he was responsible for the idea of his work, and servile to the extent that he was responsible for its execution. Thus the artist could be both freeman and slave in the one person, or he could be merely an artisan who realized the ideas of others. In either case his art expressed or embodied the liberal arts. Hephaestus, artificer of the Shield of Achilleus which depicts the cosmos, Daedalus (whose statues were reputed to move of their own volition), and Odysseus are early examples of the first type, the liberal artist who is also a maker. They obviously reflect a tradition in which craft or skill in making, craft in the sense of "craftiness" or cunning, and craft as knowledge of the principles which order the cosmos are held to be one and the same. Diodorus Siculus (first century B.C.) observes that "because of his genius [Daedalus] was honored with great fame, and, after having made many discoveries, he attained honors equal to the gods. For on one of the islands of Memphis there exits even today a sanctuary of Daedalus, which is honored by the local inhabitants." 13 A master such as Pheidias, in charge of complex building programs requiring a multitude of skills ( v. Plutarch, "Life of Pericles") must have had what we would today call a liberal education. He would need knowledge of geometry and physics to insure that his structures would fit, would stand, and would embody the essential proportions responsible for the beauty of temple and cosmos. He would need knowledge of anatomy to render the The artifacts that survive from antiquity, despite all hazards, testify by their number to the profound interest of the liberally educated in the visual arts, and by their quality to the informed taste of those who commissioned them. The collaboration of Pericles-student of the philosopher Anaxagoras and paradigm of the liberally educated-with the sculptor Pheidias, to whom Pericles assigned the task of overseeing the rebuilding of the Acropolis-exemplifies what was probably a commonplace relationship of patron to artist. The Romans had what amounted to factories for the copy of Greek originals, produced outstanding visual art themselves, and wrote voluminously about the visual arts. In this connection it is noteworthy that architecture was included among the liberal arts by the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro (c. 116 B.C.) and by Vitruvius, painting by Pliny and Galen, and drawing by Aristotle, who recommends it as a way to gain knowledge of "the beautiful" (Politics VIII. iii. l, 10, iv. 9; in 41 �Those "geometrical laws" had been decreed by God who had "ordered all things in measure and number and weight." They were manifest in His creation, and had been revealed to the Pythagoreans, to Plato, and to Augustine. All good artwhether visual, verbal, or audible-incorporated them: fact, drawing was for a long time part of the school curriculum in ancient Greece 14a): [F]irst the painter, then the sculptor. . . was recognized more and more as a privileged and blessed individual. Painting .. .. was expressly received into the liberal arts (i.e. art worthy of a freeborn person) , art connisseurship and art criticism began to flourish, the collector's instinct was aroused, and the favor of princes and the rich did more to raise the prestige of the arts .. . . Philostratus [3rd century A.D.] says in the introduction to his Eikones, ... "He who does not love painting, does an injustice to truth and does an injustice to wisdom." This statement shows that the higher valuation of the arts in all outward appearances was connected with a greater esteem for the internal values of art-that ever more general recognition was accorded to what Plato was inclined either to deny completely or to consider attainable only by a sacrifice of artistic freedom and originality: the autonomy of art in relation to deceptive and imperfect reality. 15 Boethius points out that the proportions of double and half, triple and third-those, in other words, that yield the perfect consonances on the monochord-are as readily perceived visually as they are acoustically, for, he continues, echoing Plato, "the ear is affected by sounds in quite the same way as the eye is by optical impressions." Boethius does not confine this doctrine of synesthesia only to proportions of line or surface; he discovers "geometrical harmony" in the cube, since the number of its surfaces, angles, and edges, 6:8: 12, contains the ratios of the octave, fifth, and fourth. But the Platonists of Chartres expounded not only the aesthetic excellence of these proportional relationships but their technical importance as well. . . they maintained, with the Timaeus, that the indissoluble stability of the cosmos is grounded in perfect proportion ... . Since art is an image of nature "Must not the ideal church be constructed according to the laws of the universe?" In other words, application of the "perfect proportions," determined by rigid geometrical means, became a technical necessity as well as an aesthetic postulate if the building was to be stable as well as beautiful. 17 The design of the medieval cathedral and the programs of sculpture, painting and stained-glass which it housed were often conceived by the clerics-who had of course studied the liberal arts preparatory to the study of philosphy and theology-in collaboration with the architect. The execution of that design was the responsibility of masons, sculptors, glaziers and the like. The artist was thus a composite creature. In his head reposed the liberal arts, in his hands the practical, the first directing the second: The liberally educated man of the thirteenth century could reduce the visual arts to first principles, relate the use of the builder's square and sculptor's compass to the constitution of the cosmos. Can that be said of his counterpart today? As then conceived, the liberal arts constituted a remark ably flexible system capable of unifying the most disparate expe1ience. Such a system had many points of contact with the visual arts. Music, for example, was not, as it is for us, the study of musical composition or compositions, but of "those 'numbers' which govern the temporal and spatial intervals of creation and reflect, ultimately, the supreme Equality." Such numbers could be expressed visually as well as audibly, and the use of the monochord, which represents intervals as lengths, encouraged this. Hugh of St. Victor (c. 1100) defined music as a "concord of dissimilar things reduced to one." Wherever he perceived the Divine Hamony he perceived music. Hence for Hugh music existed in the four elements, in the planets; in periods of tin1e; in weight, number, and measure; in the alternation of day and night; in the waxing and waning of the moon; in the changing seasons; in the humors of the body; in the spiritual virtues of justice, piety and temperance. "In short, the study of music was the study of those aesthetic principles which govern the universe and the activities of man": Quite apart from the writings of Vitruvius, kn own and respected since Carolingian times, it was Au gustine who kept alive the classical definition of the architect. His distinction betw een the mere practicioner and the true architect who deliberately applies scientific principles occurs in at least three differe nt treatises, all studied and admired throu ghout the Middle Ages. While this definition permitted the medieval application of the term "architect" to even the mere craftsman, it left no doubt that only the "scientist" who had mastered the liberal arts was truly entitled to it. Boethius, moreover, had illustrated the intellectu al dis tinction by a metaphor that was bound to have its effect upon the social status of the medieval artist. He had compared the practical execution of a work of art to a slave, the science th at should guide such work lo a ruler. This meant, of course, that what counted in a work of ar t was not the humble knowledge of the craft but the theoretical science that laid dow n the laws to which the craft had to conform. It is no wonder, therefore, that we find so many "architects" among medieval ecclesiastics: the "science" of architecture was a purely theoretical one-the development of a plan in accordance with geometrical laws-and the knowledge of the quadrivium that it required was for a long time and with relatively few exceptions the privilege of clerics. 16 A few illustrations may make the pervasive relevance of musical theory clear. The ratio 1:2, or the octave, is said by St. Au gustine to represent the concord 42 made possible by Christ between Himself and the inferior nature of man (On the Trinity, 4.3). Christ died once and was resurrected once. But we die two deaths: a death of the spirit and a death of the flesh. In the same way we undergo two resurrections: a resurrection at baptism and a final resurrection. Thus there is, in both instances, a ratio of 1:2 or an octave between Christ and man. So far as times are concerned, Sunday is not only the first day of the week, but, counting musically, it is also the octave, and here the octave again recalls the Resurrection, which took place on the Lord's Day. And this meaning is said to have been foreshadowed in the Old Law by the Circumcision, which took place on the eighth day. A numerical calculation also makes an octave of Pentecost. If we project our calculations on a larger scale, the eighth age of the world, following a seventh, which is sometimes made to stand for the age of purification in Purgatory, is eternity; and in general, seven, which represents temporal things, is followed by an eternal eight. Hence the inscription on the eighth tone as it is carved on a captal of the abbey church of Cluny reads, appropriately, "Octavos sanctos omnes docet esse beatos." Throughout the terza rima of Dante's Commedia, the ratio 1:2 keeps the underlying lesson of the poem always before our eyes. But the octave had more striking visual results. Octagonal baptismal fonts, symbolizing the harmony which they established between the faithful and Christ, stood in churches and cathedrals throughout Christian Europe during the Middle Ages . . . . Whether the eight sides of these fonts, or, for that matter, the eight sides of towers and lanterns which had a similar significance, were more appealing to the eye than five sides would have been a matter of small importance. It was important that a number be suggested which led the mind to contemplate a harmony established by an Artisan whose handiwork in the human heart transcends anything man may do in stone. 18 The close collaboration of the artist and of the liberally educa,ted theologian, philosopher, or patron is also characteristic of the Italian Renaissance. Consider, for example, the association of prominent artists with the Platonic Academy of Florence established by the philosopher Marsilio Ficino. The profound influence of Platonism and Neoplatonism upon visual art of the period has been amply documented and is indisputable.20 Widespread interest in the impresa or device-an enigmatic visual metaphor, combining image with text-reflects the same intimate association of fine and liberal arts. As this example suggests, the liberal artist frequently detennined subject matter and symbolism to which the fine artist or artisan gave concrete form. 21 However,itwasnotlong before the artist himself-perhaps as a result of the spread of secular institutions of learning-acquired a liberal education. Then, as in the case of Leonardo and Alberti, head and hand belonged to the same individual. Visual artists insisted upon, and received, recognition that their profession was a liberal art. Leonardo, paradigm of the learned artist, is not in that respect unique, but typical. He is the perfect embodiment of a tradition that has its roots in classical antiquity: What characterizes the period is not only the quality of the works of art but also the close links that were established between the visual arts, the sciences, and literature. The appearance of a distinguished artist who also was a humanist and writer of merit, such as Alberti, was no coincidence in a period in which literary and classical learning began, in addition to religion, to provide the subject matter for painters and sculptors. When a knowledge of perspective, anatomy, and geometrical proportions was considered necessary for the painter and sculptor, it was no wonder that several artists should have made important contributions to the various sciences. On the other hand, ever since Filippo Villani, the humanists, and their journalist successors in the sixteenth century, looked with favor upon the work of contemporary artists and would lend their pen to its praise. From the end of the fourteenth century through the sixteenth the writings of the artists and of authors sympathetic to the visual arts repeat the claim that painting should be considered as one of the liberal, not of the mechanical arts. 22 The system of seven liberal arts, first proposed by the African barrister Martianus Capella in the fifth century A.D. (whose heliocentric theory, described in the same work, may have inspired Copernicus), was accepted by the Church (whence it was transmitted to us) in part because there were seven arts. "[T]he Seven Arts recalled the Seven Petitions of theLord'sPrayer, the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost, the Seven Sacraments, the Seven Virtues, etc. The Seven Words· on the Cross, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom [Prov. ix, 1], the Seven Heavens might also suggest particular branches of learning." 19 Clearly neither mathematics nor music then meant quite what they mean to us; nor, for that matter did astronomy or the other liberal arts. It is also evident that the use of certain numbers and ratios in the dimensions of a building, altar, sculpture, or painting could convey profound meaning, and in fact be regarded as manifes tations and confinnations of the truths of the liberal arts, and of the disciplines which they served, philosophy and theology. Finally we should note that belief in a sacred mathematics constituted an essential link between the the liberal arts and the visual arts during the Renaissance, just as it did in classical antiquity and in the Middle Ages, The visual arts were thought to embody or give physical fonn to the proportional relationships that, according to the liberal arts, were responsible for the harmony and stability of the cosmos: The conviction that architecture is a science, and that each part of a building, inside as well as outside, has to be integrated into one and the same system of mathematical ratios, may be called the basic axiom of Renaissance architects . . . . the architect is by no means free 43 �depdved-in theory at least-of any function save that of giving pleasure. Lessing assumes this in his Laocoon (1776): to apply to a building a system of ratios of his own choosing, ... the ratios have to comply with conceptions of a higher order ... [the demand that] a building should mirror the proportions of the human body ... became universally accepted on Vitruvius' authority. As man is the image of God and the proportions of the body are produced by divine will, so the proportions in architecture have to embrace and express the cosmic order. But what are the laws of this cosmic order, what are the mathematical ratios that determine the harmony in macrocosm and microcosm? They had been revealed by Pythagoras and Plato ... 2 3 We laugh when we hear that with the ancients even the arts were subject to municipal laws. But we are not always right when we laugh. Unquestionably the laws must not usurp power over the sciences, for the ultimate purpose of the sciences is truth. Truth is a necessity of the soul; and it is nothing but tyranny to offer her the slightest violence in satisfying this essential need. The ultimate purpose of the arts, on the other hand, is pleasure, and pleasure can be dispensed with. So, of course, it may depend on the law-giver what kind of pleasure, and in what measure any kind of it, he will permit. Painting too was ordered mathematically, not only through application of the laws of linear perspective, but, like architecture, according to the ratios of the musical intervals. The transformation of audible into visual relations was "the great achievement of 15th century artists .... A familiarity with musical theory became a sine qua non of artistic education." This "was no mere theoretical speculation; it testifies to the solemn belief in the harmonic mathematical structure of all creation. "24 We can perceive from the foregoing how it was in the past possible for the liberally educated to have a profound interest in the visual arts, indeed to participate in their creation, yet to renounce the activity which we regard as essential, namely the manipulation of material substance, as not befitting a free man. All evidence suggests that during the periods W1der consideration knowledge of the visual arts by the liberally educated was assumed, whether or not training in those arts was required. The beautiful, the true, the intelligible, and the good were not neatly separated, but seen as one or as emanations of the One. Familiarity with the liberal arts necessadly implied familiarity with the visual arts. A science of aesthetics or sensation was not needed and so did not exist. The manner of representation or style, of which we make so much, was less important to artist and patron than what was represented, what was represented less important than meaning, and meaning less important than the connection that it established between becoming and Being. Not until the eighteenth century do we encounter the term "aestl1etic" (coined by the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten) in its modem signification. "It is also generally agreed that such dominating concepts of modem aesthetics as taste and sentiment, genius, originality and creative imagination did not assume their definite modem meaning before the eighteen th century." Then too, in all probability, originated "the term 'Art,' with a capital A and in its modern sense the related term 'Fine Arts' (Beaux Arts)."25 This development was coupled with the separation and isolation of the beautiful, the true, and the good. The beautiful became the domain of the new science of aesthetics, truth became the possession of science, and the good became the responsibility of moral philosophy. To each realm was assigned a separate faculty of the soul. Art was thereby Lessing eliminates from the realm of visual art the spiritual and "significant" as well, on the grounds that doctrinal requirements inhibit the artist and prevent the fulfillment of what should be his chief and highest aim, to give pleasure: If in individual cases we wish to compare the painter and the poet with one another, the first and most important point is to observe whether both of them have complete freedom, whether they have, in the absence of any outward compulsion, been able to aim at the highest effect of their art. Religion was often an outward compulsion of this kind for the ancient artist. His work, designed for reverence and worship, would not always be as perfect as if he had a single eye to the pleasure of the be holder. Superstition overloaded the gods with symbols, and the most beautiful of them were not everywhere worshipped for their beauty .... I should like the name of "works of art" to be reserved for those alone in which the artist could show himself actually as an artist, in which beauty has been his first and last object. All the rest in which too evident traces of religious ritual app~ar, are unworthy of the name, because Art here has not wrought on her own account, but has been an auxiliary of religion, looking in the material representations which she made of it more to the significant than to the beautiful. ... The extraordimnily rich and complex art of classical antiquity, of the Middle Ages, and of the Renaissance originated when there was no science of aesthetics as we understand that term, or a category known as the fine arts. When, in the eighteenth century, the "aesthetic" became of pdmary concern to artists, philosophers, and patrons, the quality of visual art-as measured by the profW1dity and scope of its subject-matter-began to decline. We can attribute this in large measure to the separation of the fine arts from the context that gave them meaning and substance, the liberal arts, philosophy and theology. The new categories were both symptom and cause of the movement of visual art from the center to the periphery of 44 human concerns.26 That movement did not cease until art became in the twentieth century "a thing of of no consequence," an entertainment or diversion merely. 27 Conditions were ripe for a visual art that aspired chiefly to please the senses, and that is what, in the main, visual art became. fixed and stable cosmos. He argues that we probably derive our notion of unchanging Being from vision. The belief that we receive visual impressions as soft wax receives a stamp has been proved false. Vision is not passive but active and inherently rational. We now know that the eyes, in conjunction with the mind, make of sensory input an orderly, coherent whole. The appearance of even a simple object metamorphoses continuously as our vantage point changes. Yet we see a relatively fixed, characteristic shape. Eye and brain simplify, abstract, and geometricize visual experience. We perceive discontinuity as unity, imposing upon fragmentary experience the visual form that is the simplest and the most regular. In the illustration below we see not three unrelated dots, but a triangle. Yet there is no triangle: II. Theory We have seen that in the past the liberal arts and the visual arts were closely allied-were in fact virtually one thing, as nearly W1ited as body and soul, the visual arts being the concrete embodiment and expression of the liberal arts. We have noted that the liberally educated were then thoroughly familiar with the visual arts and that study of the visual arts often formed a part of liberal education. The magnificent artifacts which survive confirm the educated sensibilities of those who commissioned them; for the artist was then not nearly as free as he is today. He was required to gratify the wishes of his patron, and elaborate contracts were drawn up to insure this. We have observed that the ancient unity of the visual and liberal arts was in our own time obscured by those who applied the cdteria of the present to the past, thinking the visual artist one person as he is now (and thereby confusing him with the artisan who may well have lacked a liberal education), whereas he was then often two or more beings-a liberal artist and a mechanical artist-acting in concert. But even allowing the traditional alliance of the visual and liberal arts, ought the visual arts be part of contemporary liberal education? Let us review a few of the arguments for and against this option. Visual art is frequently compared to music, whose status as a liberal art was never questioned. It is argued that music is more closely related to the other liberal arts than the visual arts and that consequently music should be the fine art included in liberal education. We will begin with consideration of the relative merits of the visual arts and music. I have put the arguments against in italics; my reponses follow: • • • All of the senses, share with intellect the task of ordering experience. They do not merely transmit experience, but, like the eyes, make it intelligible. Two phrases that we often use, but rarely appreciate, come to mind in this connection. We speak of "making sense of' something when we understand it, and say "I see" to signify that we understand. When the senses discover the order that they always seek we experience pleasure. When they fail to discover such order we experience discomfort, dissatisfaction, even pain. Certain objects possess in the highest degree the order that the senses always seek and thus are, potentially, capable of producing the greatest pleasure. We call such objects works of art. The ear takes pleasure in ordered, mathematically related sounds; the kinesthetic sense that tells us the position of our limbs in space takes pleasure in measured or rhythmic movement- tapping, swaying, and so on. Music satisfies both senses. Touch takes pleasure in surfaces that possess a certain order and intelligibilty, whether by nature or by design. The ability of the senses to order experience and the pleasure that they take in such order is deeply rooted in our evolutionary past. For survival depends upon the organism's ability to "make sense of' its environment. In the work of art sensual order is divorced from such urgent practical considerations. There is an element of freedom, of play, of pure pleasure. We experience simultaneously the order that implies limitation (for without constraint any order is impossible) and liberation or release from constraint. To constitute or perceive order eye and mind must be capable of numbering and measuring. And in fact we can immediately distinguish two objects from three, four from five; we can judge whether one line is twice or three times the length of another. We derive our concept of the fundamental constitutents of mathematics-number and mea- a. The ear is more intimately connected with intellect than the eye. The ear perceives number directly (it senses, for example, the frequency doubling that indicates the octave and the ratios of the musical intervals). The eye cannot perceive numerical relationships. The ancients regarded sight, not hearing, as "the most excellent of the senses. The noblest activity of the mind, theoria, is descdbed in metaphors mostly taken from the visual sphere. Plato, and Western philosophy after him, speaks of the 'eye of the soul' and the 'light of reason.' Aristotle, in the first line of the Metaphysics, relates the desire for knowledge inherent in the nature of all men to the common delight in perception, most of all in vision."28 The author of these lines attributes the Greek belief in the primacy of vision partly to the fact that all other senses convey the external world to us as process or flux. Only vision conveys a relatively 45 �sure-primarily from vision, not from audition. The Greeks quite logically identified the mathematical with the visual. They thought of numbers as points or lengths. Mathematics was for them in large measure the study of geometric or visual shapes. There was of course then no knowledge of the wavelike character of sound. The study of music was the study of quantity manifest as the visual ratios of the lengths of tensioned strings. Vision too conveys knowledge, but immediately rather than sequentially or discursively as words do. The ancients were well aware of this. Vision becomes for them a metaphor for the highest knowledge, surpassing and indeed of a different order than discursive reason, knowledge that must be grasped immediately in its entirety or not at all: Finally, we should note that vision not only orders and connects the information transmitted by our other senses but typically takes precedence over them. In moments of crisis sight usually guides us. If there is a conflict, that is, if different sensory inputs appear to require contradictory responses, we defer to sight. Vision is not only responsible for our conviction that we inhabit a (relatively) unified, orderly cosmos (compare the world as it seems to you with your eyes open and shut) but in large measure for our sense of our own wholeness. If you close your eyes and rub thumb and forefinger together, you will note that your fingers feel oddly detached, almost as if they belonged to someone else. Open your eyes and that sensation vanishes. Stopping our ears isolates us to a degree from the world, but not from our own bodies. b. Musical structures are mathematically ordered and therefore inherently rational; with the exception of linear perspective, the structure ofvisual art is neither mathematical nor rational. This image [of cave and upper world] we must apply as a whole to all that has been said, likening the region revealed through sight to the habitation of the prison, and the light of the fire in it to the power of the sun. And if you assume that the ascent and the contemplation of the things above is the soul's ascension to the intelligible region, you will not miss my surmise ... But God knows whether it is true. Republic 517a-b The ancient belief in the identity of the visual, the mathematical, the beautiful and the true led, as we have seen, to many attempts to embody in visual art the quintessential mathematical relationships. Hence the widespread interest of Greek artists in the Golden Section and other canons of proportion. Medieval and Renaissance visual artists, engaged upon essentially the same quest, also frequently had recourse to mathematical schema- indeed to the mathematics of music. The proportions of medieval and Renaissance churches were frequently based upon the ratios of the musical intervals. 29 The spatial organization of Leonardo's Last Supper is determined by the same intervals. 30 Linear perspective is but a special case of proportionately ordered space (space in linear perspective is in continued proportion). We can attribute its discovery largely to earlier interest in the mathematics of visual art. Our own century affords numerous examples of artists who incorporate mathematically determined relationships in their painting, sculpture and architecture. (Many were influenced by Jay Hambidge [1867-1924], who claimed-perhaps rightly-to have rediscovered the geometric schema employed by Greek polters and architects .31 ) Although we derive pleasure from such art, we are not in the habit of applying calipers and rule to it, and are therefore unaware of the source of much of that pleasure. 32 We are in that respect rather like the Greeks who lived before Pythagoras had discovered the roots of music in number: they enjoyed music but knew not why. The Western listener brings to music an innate sense of the periodic diatonic scale and the ability to locate tones on that scale. The spectator of visual art brings to painting, sculpture, and architecture an innate sense of the absolute vertical and horizontal, and the ability to locate forms with respect to these axes. In practice, this fixed frame of reference is bounded by the limits of the visual artifact, permitting For each manifestation of knowledge and wisdom is a distinct image, an object in itself, an immediate unity, not an aggregate of discursive reasoning and detailed willing. Later from this wisdom in unity there appears, in another form of being, a copy already less compact, which announces the original terms of discourse and unravels the causes by which things are such that the wonderrises how a generated world can be so excellent. (Plotinus, "On the Intellectual Beauty") I think from the keeness I endured of the living ray, that I should have been dazzled if my eyes had been turned from it; and I remember that for this cause I was the bolder to sustain it until I reached with my gaze the infinite Goodness. 0 abounding grace, by which I dared to fix my look on the Eternal Light so long that I spent all my sight upon it! In its depth I saw that it contained, bound by love in one volume, that which is scattered in leaves through the universe, substances and accidents and their relations as it were fused together in such a way that what I tell of is a simple light. Paradiso XXXIII. 76 ff. Compare a modern poet: I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. The Waste Land 11. 38 ff. precise distinctions of higher/lower, left/right, diagonal/vertical, centered, displaced and so on. The center of such structures corresponds to the musical tonic. It is the point of rest or equilibrium. We must wonder at the eye's ability to perceive this center. For it must measure a multitude of distances simultaneously, or instantaneously distinguish symmetric from asymmetric fields: Visual structures can be ordered hierarchically, much as words are in the topical outline. Primary structures control, limit, and define secondary; secondary structures control tertiary, and so on. The Gothic cathedral is perhaps the outstanding example of this, but all good visual art exhibits hierarchical organization. It is another source of unity.33 DD This is but the simplest case of a more complex phenomenon: any visible change at any point in the visual field immediately affects our perception of the all parts of that field: Gradations of value, or of degrees of light and dark, permit effects analagous to scaled musical tones. We can construct a scale of visual tones in which the intervals between values are equal or increase or decrease systematically and which is therefore apprehended by eye and brain as intelligible. We can then use either the entire scale, a portion of the scale, or values widely separate on the scale (e.g. the darkest and the lightest) to render values in the visual work.33a The possible effects of systematically applied color are exceedingly complex; we can only suggests a few. 34 The color wheel provides us with precisely related primary colors, secondary colors (constituted of primaries), and tertiary colors (constituted of secondaries). We can select from that wheel a palette of colors that are immediately adjacent, separated by one or more intervening colors, or on the same diameter. The last are the so-called complementary colors that intensify each other when juxtaposed. Complementarity is another instance of what we have termed field relationships. In actuality, we cannot change any color anywhere in the work without affecting all colors everywhere. We can divide the visual field in accord with any number of mathematical or geometric schema. The eye does not necessarily require certain schema-although it appears to prefer those that are mathematically ordered, such as the Golden Rectangle-but it does demand that the schema selected be internally consistent and to that extent intelligible. Inconsistency is read as disorder, imperfection. It prohibits many of the operations that give the work unity (motif and variation, hierarchical organization, scaled tonality, etc.). The introduction of a new color, line, or texture into an established design can be compared to the introduction of a metallic body into a magnetic field. The entire field is immediately distorted. Field relationships (which may have their own complex mathematics) are characteristic only of art that always confronts us in its totality, that is only of visual art. Sculpture and architecture, which have multiple views and introduce the element of temporal and spatial progression, will exhibit field relationships from any given view. Within such fields we can creat effects analagous to acceleration, retardation, tripartite ABA form, and so on: 0 0 0 0 Eye and mind perceive similar shapes as parts of a larger whole. This permits visual effects analagous to motµ and variation in music. We can combine two or more distinct visual motifs to produce a third possessing features of both yet identical to neither. The process can be continued indefinitely, resulting in a structure in which all parts are in some way related yet in which all are distinct and different. Unity and diversity develop simultaneously: 7 c. Visual art not only lacks a logos or rational schema comparable to the mathematical schema of music, but also lacks clearly defined "elements" such as we find in music. It 46 47 �practical representation. We rely upon vision to convey information too complex for words. Sound is much less useful in this respect. Surely these facts cast doubt upon the thesis that music is more nearly related to thought than is visual art. If classroom discussion were limited to the written word we would have to forgo discussion of the natural world. For it is inarticulate. But we do not find that an insuperable difficulty. We discuss what we observe when we dissect, perform experiments in the laboratory, and so on. Hence, even if visual art were altogether inarticulate it should still be possible to discuss it. But it is not inarticulate. Most visual artifacts embody meanings intended by the artist. Many depict figures from mythology or sacred text that convey specific meanings, and employ a symbolic visual language that is equally specific. The meaning of such visual art is clearly more accessible than the meaning of purely instrumental music. My own experience, and that of many other teachers, is that visual art is eminently discussable, given the right choice of subject-matter and an adequate curriculum. Those institutions that have seriously attempted discussion of visual art have found this to be the case and have successfully incorporated such discussions into their programs. is therefore nwre difficult to develop a program of instruction in the visual arts. Because music is inherently nwre rational it is inherently nwre teachable. We can see from b) that visual art is capable of formal elaboration possibly as complex as that of music. Elementry instruction in visual art traditionally emphasizes the elements that permit this: line, plane, shape, color, value, spatial organization, and so on. First exercises stress the development of visual structures using one or several of those elements. The study of visual art closely resembles the study of music in that respect. d. Music has a natural relation to the words that convey rational thought, whereas visual art, lacking a logos, or intelligible schema, excludes words. For that reason it is difficult or impossible to discuss visual artifacts as we discuss a written text. Those silent entities cannot contribute to the Great Conversation. They have little to say about the primary questions of interest to the liberal artist. It is not true that visual art excludes words, and thus the meanings that words convey, or that there is naturally a more intimate connection between music and the word than between word and image. Writing began with visual images. Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Islamic script, medieval illuminated manuscripts are all instances of the perfect fusion of the visual with the verbal. Early Chinese landscape paintings are frequently overwritten with poems that have become part of the painting and deepen the meaning. In these examples ikon and logos are as closely allied as music and word are in the opera, Passion or lied. Many visual works-the prints of Daumier, for example-are unintelligible without their titles. There is much evidence that the thinking mind utilizes images as well as words. Indeed, images may be primary. The organization of the brain's neural networks appears to resemble the interactive visual field more nearly than it does linearly ordered speech. Those points aside, there is no basis for assuming that music and thought are more closely related than visual art and thought. As the art historian Edgar Wind points out a chief purpose of visual art was, until quite recently, to convey thought. 35 Raphael's School of Athens is not exceptional in that respect, but typical. Painting and sculpture are of course quite capable of incorporating written words and often do. When we add to those words the meanings conveyed by symbolic images (as in Jan van Eyck's Annunciation, which contains symbolic images and painted words) the possible meanings become complex indeed. To be sure the meaning of a painting cannot be entirely expressed in words, but then neither can the meaning of a musical composition. Consider also the charts, graphs, and other visualizations that contemporary science cannot do without. The visual representation of significant relationships is often the only e. Visual art is mimetic, and,nwreover, imitates only the trwst superficial aspects of the sensible. For that reason it of limited significance. Why study a deceptive copy when one can study the original? Music is not mimetic; it is naturally related to the supra-sensible or to Being. This objection is best considered in the context of Socrates'arguments in The Republic, often used to justify the exclusion of the visual arts from the liberal arts curriculum, Socrates asserts that the painter's couch is but an imitation of the cabinetmakers, which is itself but an imitation of the Idea of Couch. He argues that the painter's couch is at a second remove from the Real, an imitation of an imitation, as it were. Visual art is held to be essentially re-presentative. These arguments obscure a crucial distinction: the cabinet maker's couch is made to be slept in, while the painter's is made to be looked at. The latter is not an imitation of an imitation, but a unique entity, whose final, formal, and material causes are very different from those that qualify the cabinetmaker's couch. So inadequate is Socrates' definition that it does not permit us to distinguish between the greatest painting and images that are clearly not visual art at all, such as a mediocre snapshot or a mere reflection (Republic X 596e). The latter could well exceed the painting as accurate representations of the visible, and hence would have to be regarded as more successful examples of visual art. In fact the excellences of painting qua painting have little or nothing to do with conformity to the visible. They are the result of formal and expressive qualities-some of which we have considered-not 48 tripartite being that represents the human soul (Republic 588b) and "moulds the model of a happy state" (Republic 420c); the new Homer who tells of the dangers that confront that City-for the embodied soul is besieged as surely as Troy was-and of the Odyssey that is the soul's thousand-year return from exile in this world to its true Homeland (Republic 621d). But much visual art also satisfies the Platonic criterion, and therefore cannot be rejected on that basis. To loosen the ties that bind soul to body was the chief purpose of the art of Byzantium and of medieval Europe. Those who should know tell us this. Consider the poem which the Abbot Suger (10811151) composed in praise of the golden portals of his church, St. Denis: found in nature, but made or brought into being by the artist. Space, for example, does not preexist in or on the canvas to be "filled" by the painter. The painter creates space. Spatial relations in a painting are analagous to the silences between musical tones. They are shaped, structured, to define and express certain relationships. The complexity of those relationships depends upon the skill and vision of the artist, not upon the intrinsic attributes of the space which we occupy and in which we move. It is more correct to say that the visual artist strives to make visible the invisible than it is to say that he imitates the visible. The artifacts actually produced verify this: the "abstract" art of so-called primitive peoples, such as the African tribes; the symbolically distorted art of our own Middle Ages; the deliberately elongated figures of Byzantine art which occupy a space that intentionally violates the rules of linear perspective; Chinese landscape painting which is "realistic" only in the sense that it expresses Reality; the geometric art of Islam; twentieth-century Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism and the like; architecture, which is intrinsically abstract. While these art forms may imitate the principles or relations that order the cosmos, they clearly do not imitate visible appearances. If, notwithstanding, we accept Plato's criterion we must fault the philosopher equally. The painter has at least the material couch to imitate. Plato did not have the living Socrates before him, but merely the memory of Socrates-itself an image or imitation of the man. Hence the Socrates of The Republic is also an imitation of an imitation. As Plato himself insists, so are the personae of the dramatist and poet (Republic X 598e-599). Philosopher, dramatist, poet, and visual artist are all on an equal footing, in this respect. Plato's criticisms of the arts in Book X stem from his conviction that the images of the poet, dramatist, painter and sculptor corrupt and degrade the soul, strengthening and confirming its bondage to the body. He would have us forsake such images for others that can exhault, purify, and ultimately liberate the soul. The Socrates of The Republic is obviously such an image. It is likely therefore, that Plato's rejection of poetry, drama, and the visual arts in Book X, coming as it does at the conclusion of his own artistic masterpiece, is-notwithstanding its author's keen awareness of the limitations of any text that incorporates images- in fact an appeal to the reader to accept the art of which Plato has just given him an example-the art of The Republic composed of images that encourage ascent from becoming to Being-in place of the images of the Greek poets, sculptors and painters which, in Plato's opinion, lead to the abyss. This is also suggested by Plato's many allusions in The Republic to Illiad and Odyssey, and by his comparisons of Socrates to Odysseus, Heracles, Daedalus and the like. He would replace the ancient myths with his own, the ancient artists and heroes with his Socrates. Socrates becomes in The Republic the new Daedalus who sculpts the Bright is the noble work; but being nobly bright the work Should brighten the minds, so that they may travel, through the true lights, To the True Light where Christ is the true door. In what manner it be inherent in this world the golden door defines: The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material And, in seeing this light, is resurrected from its former submersion. There is much great visual art that even a confirmed Platonist might be hard put to reject. To be sure, in Plato's day Greek art was becoming increasingly concerned with appearances. He was certainly right to protest this through Socrates. But it makes no sense to apply his criticism to visual art as a whole, or to use it as a justification for denying the visual arts a place in the liberal arts curriculum. Finally we must note that if we accept the arguments of Book X we must exclude from the liberal arts not only visual art, but all imaginative literature (save the Platonic Dialogues) . Homer and the tragidians-whom Socrates specifically condemns- must of course go, but also, obviously, Shakespeare and Rabelais and Cervantes, and Dostoevski, and all of their kind. Moreover, it is by no means certain that Plato's criteria would admit much of the music currently studied by students of the liberal arts. Would Wagner survive, I wonder? f. Music affects the soul nwre directly and immediately than visual art and therefore can form character nwre effectively than visual art. The visual "impresses" our souls no less than the audible. Indeed, visual images evoke compassion, sexual desire, anger, fear and so on nwre readily than music. Witness the power of cinema and television to move us, to involve us, to appropriate thought and feeling. The traditional view (the view that prevailed through the eighteenth century) is that all 49 �i. The visual arts were excluded from the trivium and quadrivium during the Middle Ages when the seven liberal arts became the educational norm, whereas music was included and even emphasized. arts, not simply music, shape character. (Had Plato not thought so he would not have excluded the poets, the tragic dramatists, and the visual artists from his Republic.) In the case of visual art that was accomplished directly through depiction of exemplars such as Hercules or Christ, with whom the spectator was expected to identify and whom he was expected to emulate as best as he could, or indirectly through exposure to certain visual relationships that were thought to induce kindred relationships in the soul. It was long assumed that the parts of the "healthy" soul were symmetrically disposed, or in equilibrium, or related by a certain proportion. The symmetrical architecture of classical antiquity was expected to induce such inner symmetry or proportionality. The moralizing art of painters such as Hogarth and Goya is a late expression of that ancient tradition. Its purpose is, in part, to make us admire what we should admire and despise what we should despise. Seeing injustices can sometimes make us betterpersons--can, in fact, move an entire society to benevolant action. Would anyone seriously argue that music could have induced us to aid the starving thousands in Somalia? This objection, too, has been answered under "History." j. There simply is not room in a four-year curriculum/or the liberal arts and the visual arts. To include the visual arts would compell us to sacrifice something more essential. The traditional seven liberal arts provide a rational schema for a compact yet rich and comprehensive program. If we depart from that schema we abandon meaningful criteria for including or excluding subject-matter. Will we next be asked to add the social sciences? Or horticulture? As noted above, colleges that profess to offer a liberal education no longer adhere strictly to the traditional schema of the seven liberal arts. Hence one cannot argue again~t adding the visual arts on grounds that it would violate that schema. Among the criteria actually used to determine the disciplines included we frequently find the following : a) that the discipline promote the good of the individual by perfecting those faculties which distinguish man; b) that the discipline promote the good of society as a whole; c) that it be a primary discipline, that is one which cannot be reduced to more elementary disciplines (as engineering can be reduced to mathematics or medicine to biology); d) that it relate as nearly as possible to other parts of the liberal arts curriculum. Let us apply these criteria to the study of the visual arts. a)While vision per se does not distinguish man from other sentient beings, the kind of vision which he possesses does. His is a "thinking eye." That potential becomes manifest almost as soon as we gain some control of our bodies. All children delight in drawing. Their drawings are schematic or symbolic: a circle represents the head, two dots the eyes, a line the mouth and so on. Children 2-4 years of age "apparently make no attempt to translate their visual images into plastic equivalents (imitative or naturalistic representations), but are fully satisfied with certain graphic signs which they identify with their images." 36 Our ability to draw and to make three-dimensonal shapes is as fundamental and as universal as our ability to form intelligible sounds. It implies that we possess by virtue of our nature as rational beings not two major symbolic languagesspeech and mathematics-but at least three. If one of the purposes ofliberal education is to develop those faculties that distinguish mankind we should study all three languages. Our appreciation of visual beauty is also unique. As noted it possesses a rational component-we admire consistency, regularity, conformity to a schema which we think of as "ideal" and so on. It would appear then that if we are to promote the good of the individual, we should, as Aristotle recommends, seek to "develop an observant eye for beauty of g. Liberal education rightly emphasizes the use oforiginal texts. To study visual art we must employ reproductions. These are inherently innacurate and deceptive. Good reproductions of two-dimensional visual art can be quite accurate. Some are so precise that the naked eye is barely able to distinguish originals from copies (this is especially true of copies of prints). We can make exact copies of sculpture using moulds. Such reproductions are certainly preferable to the translations (which are after all interpretations) through which most students of the liberal arts gain access to the majority of the Great Books. Music always reaches us translated or interpreted-unless the performer is also the composer. And since few students of the liberal arts can reconstitute music by simply reading the written score, and live performances are few and far between, most use recordings or reproductions of performances, further increasing the distance between creator and auditor. Students can of course discuss original works of visual art in local museums and galleries. Unlike music and poetry, which reach us via symbolic notation, such works bear the mark of the maker's hand. They constitute permanently accessible "performances" by the artist. One might compare the experience they afford to hearing Beethoven play his Appassionata or Homer read his /Iliad. To be sure, one must look closely to appreciate this-at the brushstrokes that constitute forms and colors, at the scratchings and rubbings that constitute line and tone. h. The Greeks, who knew a great deal about the visual arts wisely excluded them from the liberal arts. We should follow their example. This objection has been answered under "History." 50 they constitute, alas, lacks a head; or perhaps we should say that it has, like Cerberus, fabled guardian of Hades, too many heads. For the liberal arts are now proposed as preparation for virtually any activity. Moreover, with the passage of time the intersecting ways have tended to become parallel, or even divergent. We note that as we move from study of the ancient texts to study of the modem. Even allowing this, the liberal arts constitute the nearest thing we have to a synoptic, unified educational program that has withstood the test of time. For that reason they have appealed and continue to appeal to educators troubled by the fragmentation of knowledge, the centrifugal forces loose in the modem world especially those who hoped and those who still hope that we might learn through immersion in the works and thoughts of a more coherent past ways to restore or at least to encourage coherence in our own culture. Any addition to, or modification of such a program of study should certainly take into account its original intent and the motives of those who sought to revive it. The visual arts satisfy those conditions. They naturally constitute a point of intersection for other disciplines traditionally among the liberal arts, or closely allied with those arts: mathematics (the form of the visual work, perspective, the golden section and other proportional schema); biology (theories of perception, the contribution of eye and brain, conditions that permit the illusion of reality on a two-dimensional surface, optical illusions); philosophy and theology (symbolic content of the visual work); music (formal analogies and structural parallels between the visual arts and music); mythology, sacred and secular history, and literature (narrative content of the visual work). A proper program of study would not be confined to portable easel painting (the earliest surviving examples of this art-form are relatively late; itisratherlike beginning the study of the Great Books with the Renaissance) but would include fresco and mosaic, architecture and sculpture. There would thus be opportunity to examine artifacts, such as the medieval cathedrals and Renaissance churches that were in their time foci for a multitude of disciplines, and in particular for the disciplines of the liberal arts. Mathematics, philosophy, theology, rhetoric, music, architecture, sculpture, painting all come together here to make one thing. Study of the the Greek temple and of its sculptures (supported by selections from Vitruvius, supplemented by study of the images and proportions of Greek pottery) would have similar advantages. To add such a program to the existing curriculum might require the . elimination or abridgement of certain texts. But that will be outweighed by the more complex and comprehensive whole that results. All of this becomes possible if to books and balances we add calipers and rule, thereby restoring the ancient unity of the visual arts and the liberal arts. form and figure." b) It is abundantly clear that the visual environment influences our moods, dispositions, and thoughts. The colorscheme of any dentist's office testifies to this. Deny people all view of the landscape and most will eventually cease to think about the relation of man to nature. Cage them up in drab high-rises constructed of indistinguishable cells and they will become mean-spirited. The ancients were right to assume that visual art shapes character. Lessing was wrong to assert that the pleasure which we derive from visual beauty "can be dispensed with"; it cannot. A responsible citizenry will promote the creation of a suitable visual environment by commissioning, by advising, by criticizing. We cannot depend upon our artists and architects to do that for us. As we have observed the visual arts and the liberal arts parted company some two-hundred years ago. With few exceptions, artists and architects are now specialists educated in specialized schools of art or architecture that for the most part exclude meaningful study of the liberal arts as rigorously as some liberal arts colleges exclude the visual arts. Architect, painter, and sculptor are not expected to have a liberal education, and are not usually directed by those who have such an education. We need only look about us to see the consequences. For the good of society the liberally educated should resume their historic role as knowledgable patrons of the visual arts. To do so they must be familiar with the visual arts. Liberal education can and should facilitate this. c) Visual art is the mature expression of a unique faculty that all men possess by nature and that distinguishes man from other sentient beings. It presents the perfect object of perception to the most complex of our senses and thereby perfectly exercises that sense. It satisfies the eye in the same way that music satisfies the ear. The field-like organization of the visual artifact is unique. For no other art-form confronts us immediately in its totality. The paleolithic sculptures and cave paintings indicate that mankind possessed from the beginning an impulse to make beautiful and expressive images. For all of these reasons I would argue that the study of visual art is a primary discipline, quite different in that respect from the social sciences, medicine, or any number of worthy studies. d) Trivium and quadrivium, meaning "the place where three (or four) ways meet" are tenns that originally described what we would call highway intersections. The terms emphasize that the disciplines each grouping includes all lead to the same destination. They interrelate, inform each other, and constitute a larger whole. During the Middle Ages, when the trivium and quadrivium first became the educational norm, the seven liberal arts were parts of a still more comprehensive unity. Study of the liberal arts prepared one for the study of philosophy. Philosophy was not then the independent discipline that it is today, but the handmaiden of theology. The seven "ways" crossed in God. We cannot say that of our liberal arts. The body which 51 �18. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. J.J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Ari (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 32. See Rensselaer W . Lee, Ut Pictura Poe sis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting (New York: W.W. Norton, 1967); Mario Praz, Mnemosyne: The Parallel Between Literature and the Visual Arts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974); Jean H. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Pollitt, Ancient View, pp. 60-61 and ch. 7. See Henry Maguire, Art and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). See M. Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators (Oxford, 1971). 14. The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Encyclopedia Press, 1914), vol. 1 p . 726. See Erwin Panofsky, Idea; "The Neoplatonic Movement in Florence and North Italy"; "The Neoplatonic Movement and Michelangelo" in Studies in Iconology (New York: Harper and Row, 1962). See E. H. Gombrich, Symbolic Images (Oxford: Phaidon, 1978), pp. 7-11. Paul Oskar Kris teller, "The Modem System of the Arts" in Renaissance Thought and the Arts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 181-182. Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Hurnanism (New York: Random House, 1965), pp. 101-102. Ibid. p. 117. Kristeller, pp. 163-164. Edgar Wind, Art and Anarchy (New York: Vintage, 1969). See esp. ch. IV, "The Fear of Knowledge." Jose Ortega Y Gasset, "The Dehumanization of Art" in The Dehumanization of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p . 49. Hans Jonas, "The Nobility of Sight: A Study in the Phenomenology of the Senses" in The Phenomenon of Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 135. von Simson, pp. 22-41; Wittkower, IV, "The Problem of Hannonic Proportion in Architecture," pp. 101-154. Thomas Brachert, "A Musical Canon of Proportion in Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper," The Art Bulletin, Dec. 1971. Hambidge, Elements. See "Rectangles and Ratios: Proportion in Art and Architecture," unpublished essay by Frank Carr, 529 Powell Drive, Annapolis, Maryland 21401. See Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholastic ism, (Cleveland: Meridian 1963). John F. Taylor, Design and Expression in the Visual Arts (New York: Dover, 1964), pp. 199-2 12. Ibid. pp. 159-192. Wind, pp. 56-59, 62-67. Herbert Read, Education Through Art (New York: Random House, 1956), p. 121. 20. 21. 22. 23. See Caesare Ripa, Jconologia in Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery, ed. Edward A. Maser (New York: Dover, 1971), p. 197. J.J. Coulton, Greek Architects at Work (London: Elek, 1977), p . 25. Coulton, p. 53. See Vitruvius, The Ten Books of Architecture (New York: Dover, 1960), Book III . Jay Hambidge, The ElemenJs of Dynamic Symmetry (New York: Dover, 1967); Dynamic Symmetry: The Greek Vase (New Haven: Yale University Press,?); The Parthenon and Other Greek Temples: Their Dynamic Synunetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1924). Rhys Carpenter, The Esthetic Basis of Greek Art (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959), pp. 120-130. P.H. Scholfield, The Theory of Proportion in Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958). Pollitt, Ancient View, pp. 14-22, 160-168. Howard Fisher, "Dynamic Symmetry, A Theory of Art and Nature," The St. John's Review, Winter 1985. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. See George Duckworth, Structural Patterns and Proportions In Vergil's Aeneid (Anne Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962). On Plato's Polity, a lecture by John A. Bremer given at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, February 17, 1984 (tape no. 770). 33. 33a. See Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 3-58. 34. l la. See for example John Onians, Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). 12. R. J. Clements, Michelangelo' s Theory of Art (New York: New York University Press, 1961), pp. xxix-xxxi. 13. D. W. Robertson, Jr., A Preface to Chaucer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 122-124. 19. Notes 35. 36. J.J. Pollitt, The Art of Greece 1400-31 B .C.: Sources and Documents (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965), p. 7. Ibid. pp. 162-163. 14a. Thomas Davidson, Aristotle and the Ancient Educalional Ideals (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1899), p. 240. 15. Erwin Panofsky, ldea, A Concept in Art Theory (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 13-14. 16. von Simson, pp. 30-31. 17. Ibid. p. 33 . 52 53 �I Her Hair [] by Charles Baudelaire Roberts '93 translated by Francie La Chevelure by Charles Baudelaire Oh tresses, curling down upon her neckline; Oh ringlets; Oh perfume thick and overflowing with nonchalance; Ecstacy ! This night how I desire, in order to populate this solemn alcove with the memories sleeping in her hair, to shake it in the air like a handkerchief! I will plunge my head so desirous of intoxication, into the black ocean where she is imprisoned, and my penetrating spirit caressed by rolling waves will rediscover you, oh abunant laziness; endless rockings of my perfumed leisure! Blue-black hair, lodging of taut night, you restore to me the azure of an immense, round sky; upon the soft borders of your tangled curls I become passionately intoxicated by the mingled scents of coconut oil, of musk and of tar. Listless Asia and burning Africa, all of a distant world, away from home, nearly lost, lives within your depths, aromatic forest! As other souls go sailing upon music, so does my soul, oh my love, swim upon your perfume. For a long while; Forever! my hand in your thick, heavy hair will scatter rubies, pearls, sapphires, that you may never be deaf to my desire! For, are you not the oasis where I dream, and the wineskin from whence I swallow in great gulps the wine of memory? I will go far away where tree and man, both full of sap, swoon for long stretches of time under the ardor of the climates; long tresses, be the oceanic surge which carries me off! You contain, sea of ebony, a shining dream of sails, of oarsmen, of flames and of masts: 0 toison, moutonnant jusque sur l'encolure! 0 boucles! 0 parfum charge de nonchaloir! Extase! Pour peupler ce soir l'alc6ve obscure Des souvenirs dormant dans cette chevelure, Je la veux agiter dans l'air comme un mouchoir! Je plongerai ma tete amoureuse d'i vresse Dans ce noir ocean ou l'autre est enferme; Et mon esprit subtil que le roulis caresse La langoureuse Asie et la bn1lante Afrique, Cheveux bleus, pavilion de tenebres rencluc s, Tout un monde lointain, absent, presque defunt, Yous me rendez l'azur du ciel immense Yit dans tes profondeurs, foret aromatique! Comme d 'autres esprits voguent sur la musique, Surles bords duvetes de VOS meches tordues Je m'enivre ardemment des senteurs con fondue Le mien, 6 mon amour! nage sur ton parfum. De l'huile de coco, du muse et du goudron. J'irai la-bas OU l'arbre et l'homme, pleins de seve, Longtemps! toujours! ma main dans ta criniere lourde Semera le rubis, la perle et la saphir, Se pament longuement sous l 'ardeur des climats; Fortes tresses, soyez la houle qui m'enleve! An echoing harbor where my soul can drink, in great waves, the perfume, the sound and the color; where ships, gliding through gold and through watered silk, open their vast arms to embrace the glory of a pure sky where shudders the eternal passion. Tu contiens, mer d'ebene, un eblouissant reve De voiles, de rameurs, de flammes et de mats: Saura vous retrnuver, 6 feconde paresse ! Infinis bercements du loisir embaume! t:l rumL Afin qu'a mon desir tune sois jamais sourde ! N'es-tu pas !'oasis OU je reve, et Ia gourde Ou je hume a longs traits le vin du souvenir? u n port retentissant OU mon ame peut boire A grands flats le parfum, le son et la couleur; OL1 les vaisseaux, glissant dans I'or et dans la moire, Ouvre nt le urs vastes bras pour embrasser la gloire D'un ciel pur ou fremit l'etemelle chaleur. 54 55 I �Choosing to Believe: . ree Choice and F the Know ledge of God in St. Thomas by Susanna Beiser '94 It is the intention of St. Thomas to exalt the intellect above every other human power. In this way he is like Aristotle and other ancient philosophers who believed that the acuity of reason would serve to explain every phenomena and solve any problem. Such philosophy preserves and celebrates the nobility of human reason. Aristotle, however, answered to himself alone in regard to the proper pursuit of his science. He answered to no God. Thomas' approach is different because he believes in a God who is a loving creator.a super-intelligent being with absolute governance of the world. We have responsibilities to this God, among which are love and humility. We are not meant to rejoice in our natural abilities while remaining oblivious to their origin and constant source of inspiration. On the contrary, to best love God and conform our actions to His will, we must try, to the best of our abilities, to understand Him and His effects. Thomas' sacred doctrine is established to serve this purpose. As a science, sacred doctrine has as its subject-matter both God and His creation. In the realm of human endeavor, practical guidelines are sought so that we might fulfill our duty to ourselves and to God on both thought and deed. This duty goes beyond belief in God's existence, beyond faith, to require of us our continuous attention to increasing our knowledge of God. This is not a burden, however, on the individual. For when a man has a will ready to believe, teaching based on natural reason (II-II, Q.1 A.7)." These are the premises on which the best human knowledge of God is founded, and only by reasoning from them can we gain, in any measure, knowledge that is beyond our reach. Thomas believes that man's reason is a participation in the perfect intellect that is God. God created man with reason as an essential part of his soul and in this sense the intellect is a natural, rather than accidental, part of us. Our reason is inferior to the divine intellect and comparatively incomplete, but it is the divinity in us. We are created in the image of God insofar as we can have knowledge. Since the human intellect resembles God's, what God knows perfectly through His infinite knowledge should not be inconsistent with the determinations of our own natural reason. In this way man was originally created with the ability to know truth. The fall of Adam altered the functioning of the human intellect. Since the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, man has been in a state of corrupted nature. With Adam's assertion of his free will came disease, so that "since man' s reason is not entirely subject to God, the consequence is that many disorders occur in the acts itself of the reason (II-I, Q.109 A.8)." No longer is the human intellect infallible, even in reference to objects well within the bounds of the visible and the comprehensible. Lesser still is our ability to know anything about God through the natural process of reasoning. How, then, can we pursue this knowledge? Is it in our power to choose to increase our knowledge of God? What is the nature of this science which seems to grasp at know ledge beyond our reach, yet claims to reveal the sw-est truths? In order to answer these questions we must examine in detail the process described by Thomas as the path to knowledge. In explanation of the necessity of sacred doctrine, Thomas writes that "man is directed to God as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason ... (I, Q.1 A.1 )." From this description we are meant to understand the end of man to be a final cause, a result for the sake of which the means to this end are deliberately ordered. According to Christianity, man's true end is life after death in perfect happiness: beatitude. Since happiness is . man's experience of the good, it easily follows that perfect happiness must result from contact with God, who is perfectly good. The exact nature of this contact, however, must be further explored. The best part of man is necessarily what is created to be most like God, his most divine aspect. For Thomas, this is certainly the intellect, both because it resembles the power by which God governs the world and because it is a part of man he loves the truth he believes, he thinks out and takes to heart whatever reasons he can find in support thereof.... (Summa Theologica, II-II, Q.2 A.10) * * * The practice of scared doctrine, although it makes use of reason, does not entail thinking out reasonable explanations for the truths which are believed by faith. The articles of faith are truths about God that are unreachable by means of the reason with which man is naturally endowed. These are the basis of Christianity and include the existence of the Trinity and the mystery of Christ. Such truths are neither self-evident nor demonstrable and therefore require belief without the sure know ledge that arises from the practice of any other science. This does not mean, however, that articles of faith are absurd or inconsistent with reason. They are beyond reason but possess the nature of first principles in the practice of sacred doctrine. "The articles of faith stand in the same relation to the doctrine of faith, as self-evident principles to 56 57 �into different kinds according to its various effects: that seems to be incorporeal. The excellence of the intellect remains essentially unchanged, despite the corrupted state into which we have fallen. If, then, man is to attain the condition of the greatest possible happiness, the condition of experiencing the greatest good, he must do so by means of his most perfect faculty. It follows that "the ultimate beatitude of man consists in the use of his highest function, which is the operation of the intellect (I, Q.12 A.I)." Thomas makes a distinction between two aspects of the operation of the intellect. On the one hand there is the actuality of the faculty. Simply stated, this is the activity of thinking. On the other is the determination of the thinking to a particular object. In order tocontiibute to beatitude, man's intellect must be both active and focused on the greatest good. Beatitude, therefore, consists in thinking about God. Furthermore, perfect happiness requires the perfect operation of the intellect. For this reason a merely general or confused knowledge of God is insufficient. Man must know God as He truly is. Thomas describes the connection established by this contemplation as "the divine essence itself united to their intellect (I, Q.12 A.9) and the effect of this connection as 'deiformity' (I, Q.12 A.6)." The intellect is detennined to its proper object and so takes on, to some finite extent, the infinite goodness that is God. In this way man attains beatitude. This kind of knowledge, a vision of God in His essence, is possible only in the afterlife, for it is not granted that man, still encumbered with his body, may 1ise above his nature to comprehend the incorporeal Being. The human intellect is accustomed to understanding immaterial objects by abstracting from composites, combinations of matter and form. This is impossible when thinking about God because He is infinite and utterly immaterial. The best knowledge of God is beyond the reach of natural reason, for the human intellect cannot change its mode of operation. Therefore man needs assistance if he is ever to know the essence of God. Here enters the crucial factor in the pursuit of the divine science: the grace of God. Grace is the gift of God's assistance, bestowed on man to enable him to rise above his own nature, gain knowledge of God, and thereby attain beatitude. This blessing springs from the love that God, the creator, has for His creation. It is to be distinguished from the care that accompanied the original fashioning of man, whereby he was given the power of reason as a natural part of the soul. So it is said that grace indicates "a special love, whereby He draws the rational creature above the condition of its nature to a participation of the divine good... (I-II, Q.110 A.I)." Grace is in operation throughout man's journey toward knowledge of God, both before and after bodily death. Thomas often calls this power a light: "this increase of the intellectual powers is called the illumination of the intellect" and "By this light the blessed are made' deiform '-that is, like to God... (both from I, Q.12 A.5)." All grace stems from God's love and is essentially the same, but it can be divided Now there are five effects of grace in us. Of these, the first is, to heal the soul; the second, to desire good; the third, to carry into effect the good proposed; the fourth, to persevere in good; the fifth, to reach glory. (II-I, Q.111 A.3) The first four of these are needed to compensate for our corrupted nature. In the state of integral nature man's intellect functioned perfectly. It was originally a natural characteristic of man to tend toward apparent good in both his will and his actions. This aspect of human nature remains. What man has lost, however, is the unening ability to determine this tendency to an actual good, to enact the good, and to continue to do good works of his own inspiration. It is God' s grace, operating throughout his life, that is responsible for moving man to will or enact good. The fifth kind encompasses all the effects of grace that_ specifically pertain to man' s beatitude. In regard to knowl" edge of God that is beyond the reach of reason, grace bridges the gap between the relatively confused and general knowledge of God that man can gain by natural reason and the essential knowledge necessary for beatitude. It is only by faith that man can have this essential knowledge. Thomas describes the aspects of grace that allow a man to attain Christian faith and then to continue in the contemplation of God. The knowledge gained by faith is unlike knowledge that results from natural reason. Faith is a kind of knowledge, inasmuch as the intellect is determined by faith to some knowable object. But this determination to one object does not proceed from the vision of the believer, but from the vision of Him Who is believed. Thus, as far as faith falls short of vision, it falls short of the nature which knowledge has when it is science .... (I, Q.12 A.13) Faith does not permit man to reasonably understand its objects; rather it "signifies the assent of the intellect to that which is believed (II-I, Q.l A.4)."In the normal course of intellectual activity, a proposition that is believed is assented to by a process of reasoning. When a proposition cannot be reasonably understood, it cannot be believed in the usual manner. The propositions about God which constitute the articles of faith surpass human reason, and so cannot be believed without an assent being made possible by grace. God, therefore, grants that man may come to believe the truths of faith that are essential to beatitude. After grace initially acts to establish faith, its continuing presence allows man to increase his knowledge of God. We reason from the articles of faith, our natural intellectual power enhanced by the light of grace. Beatitude is insured by faith and the degree of happiness obtained is heightened as the share of grace increases. The question that now arises pertains not to these operations of grace, but to what precedes them. Grace appears to be the only addition to the soul's natural powers that is necessary for attaining faith. Not every man, however, is a Christian. Hence, it is apparent that some do not receive this grace. Considering that God intends man's happiness, what prior condition in the individual allows him to receive the grace that leads to faith and beatitude? It is reasonable to suspect that the absence of faith in an individual is due to some failing of his own rather than to the will of God. A lack of the proper preparation to receive grace accounts for man's failure to attain beatitude and absolves God of any responsibility for withholding it. The likely source of man's error is his reason because it is functionally corrupt and not necessarily attuned to the will of God. Man's fallible reason is also responsible for the misdirection of his free will. If reason is to have a decisive role in preparing for grace, the course of intellectual progress towards beatitude should include a point at which a free choice is made. This choice would allow each man to take responsibility for the condition of his soul and, by choosing correctly, to prepare himself to receive God's grace. An extension of the grace/light analogy is helpful in determining what must occur in man prior to having faith. Q.109 A.6)." Perhaps these men have a greater desire for God and therefore are more receptive to the initial gift of grace. This explanation, however, is insufficient. According to human nature, every man tends towards good as it appears to his mind. All men also tend toward God, although in a confused and indeterminate way. But no man, his nature corrupt and unaided by grace, can know the truths that would allow his reason, and thereby his desire, to rise above lesser goods to the greatest good, to direct him to God. Thus it is clear that man does not specifically desire or look to God before he first receives grace; "man cannot prepare himself to receive the light of grace except by the gratuitous help of God moving him inwardly (II-I, Q. I09 A.6)." All men, then, appear to be moved in the same way toward knowledge of God. By nature their minds tend to the good; by grace they are focused on God, enlightened, and raised above their natural abilities to assent to the articles of faith. None of these movements, however, appears to involve a choice on the part of the individual. Yet Thomas states that there is a form of cooperation between God and man concerning the gift of grace and that man's part consists in free choice: It is the part of man to prepare his soul, since he does this by his free choice. And yet he does not do this without the help of God moving him, and drawing him to Himself. ... (II-I, Q.109 A.6) Now to prepare oneself for grace is. as it were, to be turned to God; just as whoever has his eyes turned away from the light of the sun prepares himself to receive the sun's light, by turning his eyes towards the sun. (II-I, Q.109 A.6) Man's turning to God is by free choice, and thus man is bidden to turn himself only to God. But free choice can be turned to God only when God turns it. ... (II-I, Q.109 A.6) In one sense, man' s eyes are never turned completely away from God because of his natural tendency toward the good. The problem is that this general leaning is not specifically to God, but toward whatever object the intellect believes to be good. Due to the corruption of the intellect, this determination is often incmrect. This inability to positively identify God as the object of desire was not a part of the first man. In the state of integral nature the human intellect recognized its cause and creator, but "in the state of corrupted nature man falls short of this in the appetite of his rational, which, unless it be cured by God's grace, follows its private good... (II-I, Q.109 A.3)." Because true intellectual vision depends on sure belief and God desires man's beatitude, grace determines the mind to God; it turns man to Him so that he is prepared to receive the light of further grace that will lead him to faith. Since not all men receive grace, it remains to be said what kind of man is moved in this way. Again, we would like to understand how free choice plays a role in obtaining grace. Perhaps the solution is a sirnple form of cooperation: he who wishes to find God will be turned to Him by God. In this vein Thomas writes, "He directs just men to Himself as to a special end, which they seek and to which they wish to cling ... (II-I, In making this choice man has neither alternative objects from which to choose, nor the ability to actively direct his mind to the object of choice. In what sense, then, is the choice free? The solution to this problem is contained in Thomas' understanding of choice as an act of the will. As a power of the intellect, will is characterized by the two aspects mentioned earlier: the activity of the power and the determination of the power to an object. Thomas explains this division: Now the reason why it is possible not to choose, or to choose, may be gathered from a twofold power in man. For man can will and not will, act and not act; and again, he can will this or that, and do this or that. The reason for this is to be found in the very power of the reason. For the will can tend to whatever the reason can apprehend as good. (II-I, Q.13 A.6) These distinctions can be understood by examining our outward actions. For example, a man might read a book of his own choosing. In this case he is the active principle in two senses; he reads rather than not reading, and he determines the object of his action, this book rather than that one. A different 58 59 �case is illustrated by the man who obeys a particular law. It is by his own power that he acts in obeying the law, but the law itself is not of his determination. It has been framed by someone else and presented to him so that the range of his action is limited. Turning to God is an action of the second type. There is no need to determine the object of the action; God is a given. The only options, then, are to turn or not to turn. There appears to be a problem, however, because we know that man does not have the ability to tum to God on his own. he must be turned by God's grace. In the absence of the power to act there appears to be no place for choice. It seems impossible for man to choose to tum to God when, in fact, his role is passive. At this point we must remember that choice pertains not only to action, but also to willing or desiring. Because most of our actions are both willed and enacted by our own power, this distinction might seem unnecessary. It is essential, however, in the context of receiving grace, a situation in which we appear to have no active role. In this case man can choose neither the object of his desire, nor the means of attaining his end, for both are dependent on God. The only choice that remains to be made is to will or not to will. If a man cannot choose God as the object to which he is turned, and he cannot choose to turn himself, his choice consists in willing or not willing the turn. Why, though, would anyone choose not to be turned to God? As Thomas mentions, the explanation for this lies in the condition of man's reason. The will naturally tends toward good, even in our corrupted state. It must rely, however, on reason's frequently incorrect determinations of what is good. Although anyone with clear knowledge of God could not mistake his goodness, any less perfect vision is subject to this error. It is possible for a man who ·is without faith, not yet enlightened by grace, and lacking any clear intellectual vision of God to be blind to the goodness of grace and so to choose not to receive it. The first step towards enlightenment, then, is desire, not for God specifically, because His essence is unseen, but for what is greatest. It is the willful, and therefore intellectual, yearning for the highest knowledge, the first principle sought by the philosophers. Accompanying this desire is the understanding that what is highest is truly beyond our grasp if we attempt the search alone. We must rely on God to enhance our reason and raise our sights to a vision of the truth we seek. The source of our hope for divine assistance is reason itself. Thomas believes that some knowledge of God, known through the images of His effects, is within the reach of our natural faculties. Included is the knowledge that there is a creator and an intelligent being "by whom all natural things are directed to their end (I, Q.2 A.3)." The conect consideration of these truths compels the thinking man to submit his will to that of the creator and to look to the greater intelligence for guidance in his search for knowledge. In this way the lover of knowledge may prepare his soul for the assistance he needs to transcend his limited abilities and gain a vision of his true end. On the Relation of the Speech of Alcibiades to the Other Speeches of the Platonic Symposium by Friedrich Nietzsche (1864) Translated by Eva T. H. Brann [Nietzsche wrote this essay when he was twenty years old. I came on it while helping a senior with his essay on the Symposium. It seemed to me that I should translate it to serve as an encouragement to our students. The German text appears in Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke und Briefe: Historischkritische Gesammtausgabe, Vol. 2, Jugendschriften (18611864), edited by Hans Joachim Mette, Munich: C.H. Beck (1934).] All passages are quoted from Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Anton C. Pegis, ed., Random House, New York, 1945. 60 ladder to the highest eros that he erects I notice this peculiarity, that the different points of view of the speakers recur. Phaedrus is, to be sure, as elsewhere, only the "midwife" of the following speeches. But Pausanias, in whose speech one must never lose sight of his love for Agathon, shows the standpoint of a human being as long as he still loves one beautiful object, be it physical or spiritual. Eryximachus is a lover of all that is beatiful, as it is revealed in the whole of nature. Aristophanes has already advanced to the higher rung oflove for art and science, just as has Agathon, who, as a tragic poet, seems to me to have been awarded by Plato a higher place, above Aristophanes - a judgment with which we would not nowadays concur. The spiritually greater human being by far is Aristophanes. Finally Socrates himself reaches the rung that Diotima has designated as the highest, the love of the Arch-beautiful; we do not doubt that he has reached it, but Socrates himself does not and may not tell us this, true to his own character. What he does describe is how he was once caught in the same error as Agathon is now; that is the great insight he has gained. But how far it has carried over into life, whether it is even capable of being actualized - that has to remain uncertain for the reader of the dialogue. That is why Alcibiades appears, to represent the love for the Arch-beautiful in its effect on the practical life of human beings, that is, the effect of this love in a particular human being such as Socrates, and the countereffect a human being filled with such a love has on others, such as Socrates has on Alcibiades. Here is the reason why Plato chose precisely Alcibiades in order to depict this effect. If any disciple of Socrates had come on the scene to glorify Socrates, the effect would have been incomparably weaker. Alcibiades, on the other hand, is a youth completely apostate from Socrates and wholly alienated from philosophy. The influence of Socrates on such a one, a human being of such genius, is the most wonderful that Plato could have cited in proof of the above-mentioned countereffect. Furthermore, Alcibiades knows nothing of the preceding conversation. To the surprise of the audience he depicts the practical side of the human being consecrated to the Archbeautiful, while Socrates had drawn the theoretical side. Plato represents him as intoxicated in order to let him express himself more freely about things which had to be avoided in serious, measured conversation; their mention was, however, necessary, especially since they were historical facts. Then too the contrast between the speeches of Socrates and Alcidiades is worthy of notice, as is the contrast between their natures, while both are expressing their deepest feelings, the To come right out with how I conceive of the relation of the first five speeches to that of Socrates: It seems to me to be a completely erroneous claim that in those five speeches Plato collected only mistaken opinions about Eros in order to confront them with the only correct one, that of Socrates. Socrates himself does not deny them his applause; he comes back to all of them, assigning to each opinion its appropriate place. I rather believe that from the first to the last speech a definite progress takes place, insofar as each successive opinion substantially increases and broadens that of its predecessor; each speaker sees the concept of eros appear before him with growing clarity, until Socrates, far from overthrowing it, finally rounds off into a dome the edifice they have gradually erected. This holds of course only with respect to the basic opinions of each speaker. What the others add to their exegeses by way of ornament is often rejected by Socrates as unjustified. The speech of Phaedrus only sketches out the area within which the question is moved. He depicts Eros as the oldest god and the cause of the greatest goods. Of course, I here pass over the significance of each individual speech for characterizing the persons and emphasize only the basic thought. Pausanias explains the eros of the heavenly gods as love with the purpose of the active or passive ennobling of humankind. Eryximachus widens the meaning of eros to extend over the all-encompassing life of nature, while the two first speakers represent love only in its operation within the human being. Aristophanes says that eros is based on a necessity of nature, the law of elective affinity. Agathon, finally, calls eros the love of the beautiful, which begets everything good and great, in nature, in art, everywhere. In summary, the concept of eros according to these speeches would be: Eros is love for beauty as natural law, directed to the procreation of the good. Socrates' definition does not sound substantially different: Eros is love directed to the begetting and bearing on the beautiful, which he then characterizes as the instinct for immortality innate in spiritual and physical nature. In the 61 �Hope in Sophocles' Antigone D one through the mouth of the divinely inspired prophetess, the other under the inpiration of wine - their deepest and yet similar feelings for the Arch-beautiful, the one in the Idea, the other in a reference to reality: Socrates is the lover of the Arch-beautiful, but Alcibiades is also the lover of the Archbeautiful. And yet, what a difference of natures - the one as morally elevated as the other is morally fallen, the one as physically beautiful as the other is ugly, the one as sober and self-controlled as the other is intoxicated and excited. It is clear that these points of view are relevant as much to the philosophy as to the artistic conception of the dialogue. Here we should notice that with the entrance of Alcibiades a transformation of tone takes place; it is the most daring of artistic uicks that at the moment when the speech of Socrates has led the auditors as it were onto the high seas of the beautiful, the band of inebriates and revellers breaks in and yet does not undo the speech of Socrates but rather enhances it. The speech of Alcibiades is the work of eros, just as is the speech of Socrates. But the speech of Alcibiades works through facts, as that of Socrates does through ideas. And the facts work more forcefully and more compellingly than the articulated ideas. The speeches of Socrates and Alcibiades are related similarly to those of Agathon and Aristophanes, to those of Eryximachus and Pausanias, only in a higher sphere. Socrates, Agathon, E1yximachus are the greater thinkers; Alcibiades, Aristophanes, Pausanias work through facts and myths - in Pausanias especially we must note that he always keeps his own love for Agathon in view. The three thinkers elevate Eros to the widest circle of the arts and sciences peculiar to them: Eryximachus regards Eros as a physician, Agathon as a poet, Socrates as a philosopher. Through the contrast between Socrates and Alcibiades that demonic double nature of Eros himself finally comes before the imagination, that being-betwixt-and-between the divine and the human, the spiritual and the sensual; just so on the other side, the dialogue itself obtains through the appearance of Alcibiades that wonderful coloration, that oscillation between opposing tints that can be traced into the separate parts of the dialogue and that extends even to the language. Even the wondrous union of philosophical speeches with the enjoyment of wine reminds us of it. Thus the appearance of Alcibiades seems to be the turning point of the artful drama, and at the same time of philosophy, toward the side of actuality. And if I may be permitted to draw an analogy: Plato has pulled all the parts of the dialooue together in this nodal point, just as Zeus twisted 0 . . together the different sides and skins of the human bemg m the umbilibal cord and unified them in a knot. Nedalina Dineva '95 a 'YflP 01'\ 7tOAU7tAfl')'!CtOCT eAmcr n:oUotcr µev characters' actions or an omniscient power able to give a voiced expression of the characters' innermost thoughts and motives? Although this last version is a traditional interpretation of the role of the Greek chorus, it may oversimplify the way in which the play strives to render its meaning. I would much rather view the chorus as someone just like myself, uncertain and puzzled, struggling to unravel the mysteries of human life. The chorus may be seen as a group of aged men whom long experience has made wise but, perhaps, slightly senile. They proclaim truths striking in both the scope and depth of their perception. But a comprehension of eternal truths is not enough for the exercise of right judgment. One must also practically apply these truths to particular situations. The chorus lacks the ability to do so. The reader who would gain a true understanding of the play must bridge the gap between the universal and the particular. In this respect, the play is similar to a puzzle, all the parts of which are present but scattered and obscured so well that their assembly presents a problem, surmountable, we hope, with reason. Though not explicitly discussed, Hope is a constant thread woven throughout the texture of the play. An exposition of its role may provide considerable insight into the characters' development. While hope is a power that no human being can avoid, the volatility inherent in its nature is unsettling. According to the chorus Hope exhibits two contrary effects: ovacno avopcov 7tOAAota an:ma Kou<j>ovorov epCtYtmv et&>n o oou&v ep7ret, nptv 7tUpt Sepµro nooa ncr 7tp00'fl'\)0'1'\. (1.616-20) For indeed, wide-roaming hope is a benefit to many among men, but to many-a deceit for empty-minded passions; to one who knows nothing it creeps, until he bums his foot in the hot fire. As the opening stanza of one of the turning points (a'tpo<j>rt) in a chorus' speech, this passage typifies the generally sententious, truth-pondering character of the chorus' entrances. It appeares in a succession of generalizing statements which obviously bear upon the particular events in the tragedy-the far-reaching and contaminating power of evil and man's helplessness before Zeus' will (fate). Against this background, the appearance of the word "hope" and the optimism which it connotes seem quite striking and unfathomable. This is the first time that the concept of hope is treated as a potentially central concern in the play, and nowhere else does it receive so full a development. Haem on' s appearance on stage immediately after the chorus has finished speaking might lead one to believe that the reference to hope reflects his state of mind. Such an interpretation is emphasized by the connection between passion and hope in the passage quoted above. Hope is presented in an obscure causal relationship with Eros whose primary translation as physical love recalls Haemon's character. At this point the reader could easily understand the chorus' words as foreshadowing Haemon' s hope to save the Iife of his beloved. But this view is too limited in comparison with the broad scope of the other concepts articulated by the chorus. Besides, according to their own words, neither Haemon nor Antigone feels any passionate love for the other. Haemon himself, upon Creon's accusation of serving as "the woman's champion", claims in a guilessly passionate tone that his concern is more for his father than for his betrothed: "If thou art a woman; indeed, my care is for thee (1. 741 ;Jebb)." Such inconsistencies suggest that in the passage on hope the chorus addresses another, broader issue. In order to explore the significance of the chorus' treatment of hope we must first consider the chorus as we would any major character in the play. Is the chorus merely a group of bystanders offering their own subjective judgements on the 62 wide-roaming hope is a benefit to many among men, but to many-a deceit for empty-minded passions; In our experience we can distinguish between a general hope which manifests itself as an optimistic outlook towards the future, and a particular one which deals with the specifics of present situations. General optimism brings "benefit" to man, giving breadth to his horizon and vigour to his actions. The more restricted type of hope, however, is painfully insubstantial and unrealistic. It causes the person in whom it dwells to . forsake reason in his actions and to seek support from something outside of himself that he expects to emerge from the nebulous beyond at the moment of his greatest need. Such hope brings a "deceit for empty-minded passions", and, as it must by definition remain in the realm of the unfulfilled, it inevitably entails disaster. Ironically, the existence of this kind of hope in a person's mind is most clearly manifest by an abrupt change in his behaviour at the point when all hope is forsaken. 63 �We observe radical transformations in the views and actions of all the characters in the play. Antigone and Creon, the two central and mutually opposing figures, best illustrate this transformative process. Antigone, as she appears by the end of the play, is quite different from the strong-minded, resolute woman that we encounter in the beginning. In an earlier conversation with her sister she sees death as a beautiful end, an opportunity to "res t, a loved one with him whom I have loved (1.72-73; Jebb)." Even when confronted with Creon's threats she maintains a defiant attitude and presents death as an escape from her miserable existence: jus tice according to his rigid standards and heedless of any stance which opposes his own. His personality exemplifies yet another collapse of a man 's character after hope, his unsubstantial ally that was supposed to strengthen the belief in the correctness of his deeds, has stealthily departed. Upon the death of his son Creon is subject to the constrictions of a situation in which his hope can no longer thrive and support him. Without the internal instigation of hope he is suddenly humbled. A state of abjection is highly unexpected in a man who in his obstinacy is ready to rave even against the gods. He must doubt the beliefs which inspired his actions and realize the emptiness of his motives. Further evidence that Antigone and Creon are led to their tragic ends by Hope is the fact that they themselves realize, to a certain extent, the faultiness of their resolutions long before disaster strikes. Both characters admit that their decisions are not perfectly justified. Antigone indulgently calls this imperfection "her folly," Creon proudly names it "the power of the ruler." How can one admit the falsity of one's course of action and still follow it? Is the self-destructiveness which such willful blindness entails an intrinsic trait of human nature? It is unbelievable that a sane man could intentionally go towards his own doom. The only other impulse, besides madness, that can explain such behaviour is Hope. It baffles man with empty promises and inflates his pride and courage until the final moment when terror fills the hollow form that Hope has just forsaken. It is this attraction to self-destruction that leads people to great exploits and is often admired by outside observers. Is approval of such behaviour justified if it is not based on one's innate capacities but rather on something external? And should we not deem blind sacrifice a weakness and insecurity rather than strength, when it relies on empty hopes instead of reason? With regard to these questions it is helpful to consider the immediate context in which the "Hope" passage stands. It acts as the counter-movement, the avncnpoqn1, of another passage that treats of fate, represented by the inexorable might of Zeus, and ends with a proclamatory statement, "Nothing that is vast enters into the life of mortals without a curse (l.614615; Jebb)." At first sight, this line seems to refer directly to the extraordinary personalities of the two main characters in the play, condemned to disaster by their own respective natures. If, however, we are to take the following antistrophe as an answer to the vague universality of this statement, the "vast thing"-naµnoA'l)-that comes into life with a curse is in fact "wide-roaming hope"-noA.unA.a:)'K'tOO' £Amcr. A special emphasis needs to be put on the fact that naµnoA.u denotes a thing and not a person, an observation which lessens the immediacy of the application of the word to either Creon or Antigone. It is significant that the adjectives modifying "the thing" and "the hope" have similar connotations and even share a composite part, namely 7tOA1J. Moreover, the manner in which they enter, creeping into life and man respectively, But if I am to die before my time, I count that a gain: for if anyone lives, as I do, compassed about with evils, can such a one find aught but gain in death? (1.463-466;Jebb) At the very last moment, however, when directly faced with the prospect of dying, she mourns her fate and attempts to invoke pity for herself in others. We realize that her previous resignation to the inevitability of death was not securely grounded. Strong beliefs, based on rational thought, would not yield so readily to feelings; but passions, emerging from powerful impulses and obstinate self-righteousness, are easily overcome by like passions. Antigone, as she first appears, is moved by a violent, almost blind, determination to act. This determination is a likely manifestation of OL epffi't£CJ or "loves," "passions." Just as physical love is irrational and uncontrollable, so is any other inexplicably powerful attraction or drive. Antigone is resolved to bury her brother but refuses to consider the destructive consequences of her actions. Hope is what fosters such an attitude-hope in the correctness of one's decision, in the possibility of achieving one's goal, and in the relief which will ensue from its accomplishment. When this hope is not realized (the corpse is still unburied; no approval, divine or human, is granted her), Antigone behaves like a child irritated that events do not accord to her desires. She bewails her fate, the same fate which not long before she eulogized as leading to a most beautiful end in life. She stands uncertain, groundless; her hope is gone and with it, all the principles that have hitherto driven her actions: And what law of heaven have I transgressed? Why, hapless one, should I look to the gods any morewhat ally should I invokewhen by piety I have earned the name of impious? (1. 921-24, Jebb) Creon is also led by a "passion" that is stined by a deceitful hope. He hopes to establish justice in his city, but 64 is expressed by the same verb---epnffi. These two stanzas in ~h~~ juxtaposition, suggest much broader implications than imtially apparent. Vastness and its concomitant curse are at work not only in single, exceptional cases. They are intrinsic elements of the realm of hope of which we all partake. If our firs t impulse is to separate ourselves from the characters and ~he events in the tragedy, deeming them too extraordinary to m any way bear upon our own experience, we must now face the realization that the cause and driving force behind them is something common to all men, by whose disastrous effects we are all endangered. The application of Hope to human existence does not end here but is taken to an even higher level. Its central role within the pl.a~ is further enforced by its presence in the proverbially defm1tive passage, the "noAAcx 'ta Bf:iva" chorus. Once again we ar~ faced ~y an obscure expression and a passing mention of an ~<lea which, when fully explored, might yield important meanmgs: Wonders are many, but nothing is more wondrous than man. Having an ingenuity of art, and wisdom beyond hope, he creeps, now towards evil and now towards good. (1.332,362-363) He~e ~~ is p~esented as wise "beyond hope" (1J7tep ~A.mo) m his mgemous arts. This expression, mysterious in itself, stands in a peculiar relation to wisdom and arts Moreover, it is man this time, as opposed to hope, who. creeps (epmo~, now t~wards evil and now towards good. The commonality of t!ris action to both man and hope suggests a fundamen~ link between them. In the core of their relation stands vastn.ess, which they both share. Man, vastness, and ~ope mer~e mto one and spread over all the instances of tragic ~mpa~se m the play. Once understood, their inseparability illummates the tragedy in the context of human existence as a whole. Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine. 65 �Human Nature and War in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War by Janice Thompson '95 Individuals can oppose individuals, parties can oppose parties, states can oppose states, with impunity. But these levels are interdependent and the hostility in one cannot always be contained in the stratum in which it originated. When enough individuals form an alliance they become a city which can oppose other cities; likewise cities allied together become a state and can oppose other states, while states allied together become an empire. Thucydides begins his History at the end of the greatest state of possible unity in the Grecian world, when all people, cities, and states were united against Persia. He then describes the degeneration of that cohesion through all the strata of human society. Thucydides' views on human nature and the breakdown of law and order are most evident in his analysis of civil war and disunity, particularly in his presentation of the Athenian plague and the civil war in Corcyra. The plague in Athens was a natural disaster that so overwhelmed men that they came to ignore the old structures that had unified them as a city and governed their behavior. Such a removal of the accepted order seems to be the first step into lawlessness. In the new situation created by the plague there was no apparent evidence that the moral ties of virtue and honor that had once guided men's actions still had relevance to the suffering they then encountered. For example, those honorable enough to care for the sick received no reward; instead they usually became sick themselves. The disease struck randomly and relentlessly, inflicting suffering upon both the virtuous and the corrupt. Many of the living stopped caring for the sick or observing burial rites out of fear for their own health. Thus Thucydides describes men as becoming "indifferent" (II, 52) to rules of law and religion when they are no longer able to see the relevance of such rules to their present situation. Thucydides then describes how the state of "indifference" develops into one of fearlessness. He writes: "No fear of god or law of man had a restraining influence." (II, 53) As the disease continued to spread wildly, people lost hope and concern for the future. All were weak in the face of the plague, and no one expected to live long enough to be respected for virtuous acts or punished for crime. For similar reasons the laws of the state quickly followed the laws of morality into disrepair. The greatest value became the pleasure of the moment as they could be certain of nothing else. (II, 53) The citizens acted on this new value by becoming openly self-indulgent and unrestrained. The despair and fear felt by the Athenians when threatened by the plague, an enemy they Human nature is presented as inextricably entwined with history in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides writes in the introduction that: It will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future. Thucydides presents the human motivation that directs the course of history. Throughout time human nature shows its effects in all the different strata of human interaction. Insight into the human spirit is, thus, integral to understanding of the past, and of the relations between nations and individuals. Thucydides' history concerns a time of war. In order to understand the state of war we must understand the human nature that causes it, the human nature that develops under its threat, and the effects of human nature in the political situation. War permeates all aspects and levels of human society, from the social to the moral, from the international to the individual. Human society is unified through "social" ties and "moral" ties. The social ties, necessitated by common interest and self-preservation, are a balancing of strength against strength in order to set up a system in which a society can function. They consist of agreements and rules designed to make aggression unprofitable. Examples of the social structures are such things as laws and alliances. Less obviously motivated by self-interest are the moral ties. These are not based on a position of strength but are a precaution against times of weakness. The benefit for the weak is immediately obvious: security in times of distress, when strength can not save them. The benefits for the strong are less apparent: a good reputation for their virtuous behavior, and the hope of receiving similar treatment in times of trouble. Justice, ethics, 'and friendship are examples of such ties. A state of war depends on the creation and maintenance of a fine balance of unity and disunity, understanding and blindness. A state must be internally unified in order to have the strength and stability with which to direct itself against another state. Such internal or domestic unity allows a state to take an opposing position to another, setting up a disunity on the external, or international, scale. Unity and disunity can develop in all levels of human relations, and their effects on one level spread to others. 66 67 �could not fight, undermined their respect for law. This led to a reckless disregard of their social structure of values. In the absence of such structures they came to observe new values of individual self-preservation and indulgence, values which threatened their ability to act as a society. The societal effects of the destruction and replacement of previously established systems of values are evide?t i.n Thucydides' description of the civil war in Corcyra and m his generalization of the nature of revolutions. The structures of society, in the case of revolutions, are purposely attacked by rival political factions, rather than deteriorating from neglect, as they were in Athens, during the plague. In Corcyra, both the democrats and the oligarchs were supposedly trying to save the city, but through opposite means. They were not interested in compromise and they soon came to act as enemies towards each other. Internal fighting destroyed Corcyra's ability to put forth an organized self-defense against outside forces. Even worse, it released internal forces that destroyed civil unity. At this point in his chronicles, Thucydides departs from his simple presentation of fact and analyzes the aspects of human nature that direct the course of revolution. He begins by describing how the change from attitudes of peace to attitudes of conflict and war come to permeate the whole structure of understanding: "To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings." (III, 82) Along with the logos of speech, the existing logos, or order, of human values was displaced. Aggression was now seen as courage, moderation as unmanliness, consideration prior to action as cowardly inaction, villainy as cleverness, and honesty as simple-mindedness. Thucydides further comments: "The simple way oflooking at things, which is so much the mark of a noble nature was regarded as a ridiculous quality and soon ceased to exist." (III, 83) In language, law, and national character the concepts of virtue were changed from those which benefitted the weak to those which benefitted the individual. It is necessary to understand why this change occurred and its influence in the generation of the resulting situation. The existing structures of understanding are purposely destroyed in times of revolution to allow for structures of hostility and conflict to be established. During the plague in Athens, a time of civil disunity but not revolution, the moral ties of law and religion were disregarded; human nature took advantage of such lawlessness. But in Corcyra and other revolutions, these laws were attacked and replaced in order to destroy the existing social order. A certain type of human behavior was encouraged rather than simply left unrestrained. Revolutions create hostilities and enemies while at the same time they remove the systems of justice that once mediated and restiicted such behavior. Thucydides explains that "Society had been divided into two ideologically hostile camps .. ." (II, 83), thus providing a structure in which indi- victual desires conflicted with another party or individual. People could no longer depend on any common standard or belief or behavior. There could be no confidence in others and so all energy was devoted to individual strength and quickness for self-preservation. Potential enemies were everywhere, and simple survival was so tenuous that to strike first became the best way to be secure. Vengeance and profit became the ideals governing man's behavior. Thucydides asserts that the emergence of the structures of conflict and revenge propel a state further into its own destruction for two reasons. First, the loss of unity permits the emergence of a dangerous form of human behavior: Then, with the ordinary conventions of civilized life thrown into confusion, human nature, always ready to offend even where laws exist, showed itself proudly in its true colors, as something incapable of controlling passion, insubordinate to the idea of justice, the enemy to anything superior to itself; for, if it had not been for the pernicious power of envy, men would not so have exalted vengeance above innocence and profit above justice. (ill, 84) And second, the lawlessness and hostility established by such behavior destroys the means of salvation from the disorder and suffering. Indeed, it is true that in these acts of revenge on others men take it upon themselves to begin the process of repealing those general laws of humanity which a.:e there to give a hope of salvation to all who are m distress, instead of leaving those laws in existence, remembering that there may come a time when they, too, will be in danger and will need their protection. (ill,84) In the revolutions, the "structures" of hostility that encouraged self-interest and revenge in order to dismantle the original unity ultimately could not be contained within an ordered system. The competition for power to further party interests that had corrupted the strata of national unity, eventually spread to individual competition for power, corrupting all strata of the once cohesive city. Thucydides claimed: "Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils." (III, 83) Party programs seemed admirable, but they appealed to public concerns only to gain the support necessary to empower those competing for leadership. Party attacked party and individual attacked individual. Public spirit became a guise for personal ambition; nothing was as it seemed. Hence violence erupted throughout the society. The only way to achieve one' s ends was quickly and forcefully. Other means, such as agreements and unions, could not be trusted as they were assumed to be motivated by aggression. The disorder, fear, and hostility that spread through all levels of organization caused terrible suffering, which could not be prevented as the structures of from weakness she thought she did not need to act with concern for the weak. Thus the other states came to realize that Athens' "justice" could be depended on only when it benefitted her self-interest. Athens also suspected such selfinterest in the actions of others states. Since true justice is difficult (ifnot impossible) to separate from bias, the appearance of justice can easily be used to veil self-interest. By upholding and displaying such attitudes Athens presented herself as superior to other states and to any rules governing dealings between states, such as justice, which could restrict her power. Similar to the early stages of rebellion within a city, initial disunity and a lack of a common structure had been established, this time on the international stratum. Policy had to be based on self-interest, acted out of strength, or avoided through fear. Power now ruled justice and law. Athens had thus begun to dismantle the moral order from the system in which she and other states has to interact. The Athenian speech is followed by King Archidamus' speech to the Spartans advising them on how to respond to the Athenian situation. Thucydides cites fear of the growth of Athenian power as the reason that motivated Sparta to finally declare war (I, 23). King Archidamus viewed the Athenians ' pride as excessive and dangerous. But, most significantly, he feared the effects of such an attitude on the internal unity of the state. He was concerned that the overriding self-interest set up by Athens on the international level might permeate the state level and destroy national unity. King Archidamus cautioned the Spartans against such behavior with the same arguments used by Thucydides in his analysis of human nature at the destruction of Corcyra. To maintain a powerful and unified state he called on them to uphold the social order: to be self-controlled and unified through honor and regard for law and custom. He also warned them not to remove the moral order; they must never become too confident in their own strength; they must realize that success is subject to chance and change. Athenian policy did not address such concerns. Athens saw her strength as the principle of her foundation that enabled her to act according to self-interest. The perpetuation of such strength required that she be unified. Pericles realized this and labored to encourage her confidence and solidarity. In his speech to the Athenian assembly after the Spartan ultimatum, he attempted to show that Athens truly was the stronger. He also argued the necessity that she demonstrate her power by refusing to make concessions to such trifling rewards as included in the Spartan ultimatum. Athens' refusal to concede to the conditions of the treaty was a display of strength to the world. Pericles, in his funeral oration, labored to ensure that Athens truly was strong by being internally unified. Pericles spent a great deal of time praising the special character of Athens as good and noble. In doing so he presented them with the ideal character for Athens and encouraged them, out of salvation had been removed. Civil war in Corcyra destroyed the society. Specific unities (under party lines) were set up to achieve certain ends through the creation of disunities in the city. The structures of justice were removed. But eventually the once directed hostility and disunity between parties grew beyond the control of its creators. Without the structures of justice to stop it, this destructive form of human behavior spread until the whole society collapsed. Such human behavior consists of a mixture of greed, power, hostility, and self-preservation; a combination that seems to be very similar to the attitudes of states on the international level. Athens attempted to avoid a declaration of war with Sparta by presenting Sparta with a justification for her actions. Thucydides first presents evidence of Athens' attitude of hostility in her statement of character to Sparta. Athens described herself as obtaining and maintaining her empire according to three powerful motives, namely "security, honor, and self-interest." (I, 76) Security upheld her social ties, honor her moral ties, but self-interest encouraged her to set up disunities that weakened such ties. Without the external threat of Persian aggression, Athens believed she was strong enough to rule others and no longer needed their cooperation and trust. She also claimed that "it has always been a rule that the weak should be subject to the strong" and that she was worthy of her power. All of these beliefs established specific "disunities." Security and self-interest imply that one state has personal interests that may conflict with those of other states. Each state recognizes the potential for enemies and, fearing for its own safety, acknowledges the need to protect itself. If alliances are made, they cannot be fully trusted, because any state may choose to break the terms of the agreement as soon as it seems more advantageous for them to do so. Thus Athens was forced to depend on her allies' fear of her power. Potential disunity was ever-present due to conflicting interests of states, but a specific enemy had not yet been recognized and an uneasy international unity remained. The formal structures of alliance and Grecian unity established as a result of the Persian conflict had not yet been dissolved. But since the original cause for unity, the Persian empire, was gone, the adherence of states to the alliance was much more tenuous as the faith in such a social order was dismantled. Athenians talked of paying" ... more attention to justice than they are compelled to do so by their situation." (I, 76) This attitude seems to undermine the importance of justice, as justice is presented not as something to which Athens was subject, but as something she chose to respect. honor was still cited as a controlling value in the Athenian character, as it was for the sake of honor that they continue to recognize justice insofar as it didn't compromise their strength. Athens was prepared to undermine the social order existing between states because she believed that she herself was not subject to any moral order. Because she was so strong and protected 69 68 �love for the state and all that is good, to emulate this ideal. He thus gave the citizens a sense of unity based in their own belief. He reinforced this sense of unity by praising and encouraging their respect for the laws. Internal moral structures were upheld, but so as to encourage the Athenian sense of national unity, Pe1icles was careful at the same time to depict Athens as having a very specific and superior charact~r. For example, Pericles claimed of Athens: "In her case, and m her case alone, no invading enemy is ashamed at being defeated, and no subject can complain of being governe? by people unfit for their responsibilities." (II, 41) Penc~es worked to unify Athens, and to give her a distinct and supenor self-image. In this way he tried to mold public attitude into the conditions he needed in order to maintain a strong state capable of successfully waging war. . As Thucydides and the Spartan King warned, strenglh is not infallible: it can be overturned by chance. The Athenian plague is the first illustration of the effects of c~anc~ in the History. Suffeiing from the hopelessness of the situation and desperate for an end to their suffering, the Athenian people began to lose confidence in the leadership, valu~s, and l~ws they had hitherto upheld. Pericles attempted to give meanmg to their suffeiing for them, prevailing upon them to recollect the ultimate benefits to be confeiTed upon all of Athens, for which they had all promised to fight. A hope for the fu~ure was necessary to make the people see beyond present difficulties and to deter them from exploiting the opportunity for lawlessness. Pericles was able to convince the Athenians to continue to follow his policy of war, though they still suffered and were angry because of it. Through such descriptions Thucydides shows how desperate people become to find an end to their suffering. Pericles was able to unify the Athenians despite their suffering because he was such an intelligent and well respected leader, dedicated to the glory of the state. Not all leaders, however, possess such qualities. Even worse, some leaders go so far as to exploit the volatility of human suffering for their own selfish ends. Disorder threatened to destroy civil society during the time of the plague, but strong leadership was ultimate~y able to maintain order. The stability of such order was agam threatened when disunity emerged in Athenian national leadership. Competition for leadership and support is strikingly evident in the debate between Cleon and Diodotus about whether to destroy the population of Mytilene, an ally that failed in its attempt to revolt. Cleon spoke first. He claimed t?at fear ~d conspiracy were permeating the empire, potential enemies were everywhere, and that the harsh treatment proposed for Mytilene would render the other subjects obedient by instilling them with fear. Cleon greatly expanded upon the sense. of superiority that Pericles had initially inspired in the Atheman citizenry. Unlike Pericles, he did so, not for the good of Athens, but for his own quest for power. He tried to frighten the Athenians by the dangers he described so that they would empower him with their trust to protect them through whatever means he claimed necessary. Cleon encouraged fear within the state and violent action against its adversaries. He was not interested in maintaining any" general laws of humanity," structures of justice, or any restrictions on conduct in adversarial relations with other states: As for compassion, it is proper to feel it in the case of people who are like ourselves and who will pity us in their tum, not in the case of those who, so far from having the same feelings towards us, must always and inevitably be our enemies. (Ill, 40) Cleon advocated an extreme structure of hostility, fear, and self-interest from which he removed any consideration for moral law. Both his opinions and his motivations seemed dangerous to the preservation of unity. Diodotu~ prese~ted an outlook in opposition to Cleon's recommendation. D~odo~us was opposed to putting the Mytilenians to death. As did King Archidamus at the debate at Sparta, Diodotus warned the people against acting out of haste and anger. But he also warned them of a new danger, namely that speakers and leaders could no longer be trusted or believed. Not only were moral acts rendered void of purpose and influence on the international level, but basic values such as honesty and oust ceased to function as a means to preserve order within the state. For now that self-interest had spread so far as to corrupt the balance of political power within the state, the citiz~ns h~d to suspect the motivations of every leader. This state of ~faus is strikingly reminiscent of the situation that resulted m the destruction of Corcyra. Good leadership dming the plague maintained among the people a hope of salvation fro°! t~e disorder. In Athens, however, there was no longer the fruth m leadership that might empower it to restore unity to the nation should it fall prey to disorder. Diodotus argued only according to the self-interest of the state, as this was the principle governing Athens' foreign and domestic affairs, but he argued insightfully as to the nature of such a system. He provided evidence that even the death penalty could not prevent men from b eaking laws. Fear of death is not enough to prevent crime if men are truly determined to break the law. Diodotus cited factors of human nature as the cause of this behavior: Hope and desire persist throughout and cause the gr~at­ est calamities-one leading and the other followmg, one conceiving the enterprise, and the other suggesting that it will be successful-invisible factors, but more powerful than the te1Tors that are obvious to our eyes. (Ill, 45) If Mytilenians are given nothing but hopelessness and a well defined enemy to blame, then shouldn't they do everything in their power to destroy their enemy since, at the very 70 were apparently intended to protect the weak, Athens would ultimately hurt herself, regardless of her present strength. The Melians warned Athens: "And this is a principle which affects you as much as anybody, since your own fall would be visited by the most terrible vengeance and would be an example to the world." They suggested to Athens that her attitude was needlessly creating enemies, but Athens was unconvinced. Athens remained confident of her own strength and security, and of the accuracy of her understanding of world affairs. Her attitudes were so ingrained that more dialogue could never convince her that her international relationships would bring about the eventual downfall of the Athenian empire. Despite Athens' assurance of her strength and justness in her international relations, her internal order had been dismantled and could no longer support her interests. Athens' allies came to trust Sparta more than Athens, her leaders manipulated state affairs for their own private interests, and the citizens followed whomever promised the easiest solution to their present difficulties. At the end of her empire Athens was too disorganized to fight her enemy, the Sicilians. Her internal disunity made her externally weak. The ultimate blow to the glory of her state was that she was finally betrayed to Sparta by one of her own leaders. Social ties were in sham bles throughout all levels of society. During the time of Pericles, Athens followed the same principles of strength and self-interest, but her ability to wield such weapons against other states was securely rooted in the internal strength and the unity of her state. Previously, when civil difficulties threatened moral order and national unity, good leadership could contain their spread and redirect the people toward law and unity. When self-interest, revenge, and the exercise of brute force replaced the moral structures which previously protected the weak, the principles of disunity eventually brought about the ruin of the entire society. Thucydides presents war as an establishment of specific unities and disunities in an otherwise stable system so that one state, party, or individual can put forth a unified attack against another. In order to do so, some of the moral and social ties of human interaction must be removed without destroying the whole delicate web of human affairs. Since these ties connect and guide society in all respects and on all levels, the effect of breaking one law, or of setting up hostility on one level of interacting, soon resounds throughout the entire sphere of human affairs. The human motivations of self-interest, power and revenge create and spread the disunity of war because they change the understanding of what is good or most beneficial. Such intentions thereby change the rules that govern all levels of human interaction. The good of the whole, the "common good," is no longer understood to be the good of every individual; individual "goods" are therefore bound to conflict. By removing the order determined by the common good that restricts individual goods, two things happen: hostilities are introduced, and the structures that guide and protect least, their fate could be no worse than if they had never tried at all? This seems to be a good explanation as to why the social conditions generated by suffering are so volatile. Diodotus claimed that once on a certain course human nature cannot be controlled through intimidation (III, 45); physical strength is unreliable as such a control. This comment is significant as it was through Athens' strength and the fear which she inspired that she maintained her empire. Diodotus suggested that Athens' security must not be based on force but on "good administration" (III, 46): maintaining friendships not yet based on fear and keeping a very close wat.ch on those which are based on fear. Diodotus cautioned Athens not to depend solely on her military might. In calling for strength in administration, he also advocated maintaining structure and unity in the empire. Diodotus did not ask Athens to be compassionate. He realized that there was no longer any place for moral considerations in Athenian policy. Athens set out to act according to her self-interests; she could not maintain such interests if she were to recognize the damaging effects of her actions upon others. Although the motion ofDiodotus was passed, the vote was close, indicating that a division was growing among the Athenian population. The national and civil interactions between Athenians began to reflect the disunity of Athenian aggression on international affairs. The Athenian attitude of unchecked self-interest is starkly apparent in the Melian Dialogue. This passage concerns the fate of Melos, an island state that wanted to remain neutral to the Athenian empire. The Athenians refused to recognize this neutrality, as they perceived other states only as enemies or subjugates. The Athenians claimed that justice is based on the distribution of power and that it is the "general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can." (V, 105) Moral justice was rendered valueless, weakness was ignored; opportunity and strength governed all. The Melians were told outright that the only arguments the Athenians would understand had to reflect the concerns of Athenian self-interest. Since their hostility was already assumed, it was useless to argue their neutrality or innocence. The Melians had to accept these limitations. They did, however, raise some important observations on human nature and self-interest. They tried to suggest to the Athenians that it would be useful to Athens not to destroy a principle that is to the "general good of all men": " ... in the case of all who fall into danger there should be such a thing as fair play and just dealing, and that such people should be allowed to use and to profit by arguments that fall short of a mathematical accuracy." (V, 90) The Melian speech is strikingly similar to the general laws of humanity which Thucydides himself describes earlier. The Melians further said that by repealing these laws, which 71 �an individual person or state are removed. The individual must face hostility with his own strnngth and intelligence without hope of protection. But Thucydides shows that strength cannot be relied on as the only bulwark against destrnction; chance and decay can undermine its protective value. Virtue, however, seems to guard against the extremes of fortune and time by directing men to the notions of common good and societal unity. In creating partial disunity, a state of war risks total disunity. Should suffering or destruction result-should the individual need help or protection, the structures of society can no longer assist him. The society has been destroyed; even the "general laws of humanity which are there to give a hope of salvation to all ... "(III, 84) are lost. 73 72 �Two swans D Morning at Midnight- for Mary Ruth Clance · D by J.H. Beall by J.H. Beall A pale blue seen wan across the pale water cries its swan song as the placid pair curve their white necks into the rush weeds near shore, near a tumble of rocks as the long shadows come, long toothed with winter, the occasional, ochre sedge of sea grass a line against the fm1her . burgundy ridge of trees. The other pair A midnight's fancy in its tones resolves a deeper chord and hues the shades would fit on evening lay like cats upon a purry clime. All resonate and thrust upon the tautest edge, would stop and trust to make the evening so. Thus violate, the sleeping lover lies, and in the carnal bed so troubled with repose, tranquility of ages in a breath of sighs eye not the pale blue jumble of the rocks but the darker ebb and current the wind asks where the yielding water sloughs up and is thrown back. Without comment, each wave awash demarking dreams all-literate, "Suppose." Yet here upon the dark incontinence of sleep, mass continents of thoughts the mind itself would not have dreamed, where toppling, high meridians with its own desire, draws weakly up. "Perhaps a will there," they say. Perhaps the pawn of spent breath the way is given to, words being that they are cold comfort under coming winter star. alone in keening silence fall, as should a great tree fall in dark and soundless wood. 74 75 �Non-Prof it Org. BULK RATE U.S. POSTAGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 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. 75 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 1993 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Spring 1993. 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 1993 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 1993 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Blistein, Rachel (Senior Editor) Belanger, Yvonne (Junior Editor) Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/91eb1aeb35150dcc6cf21840907bbd87.pdf a35d551bed9d5e5039da2d2dd2b1f6e2 PDF Text Text WINTER, 1988 c z c Q ~ oi ... "' ::c Ill Ill u z c ~ z u ~ ,,.: Ill: Ill Ci z iii z c ~ ~ u Ill ::c Ill ::c ... �ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself. t1 ... Cover: Acrylic on Paper by Jana Giles Printed by the St. John's College Press St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland vou &vtpy&ta ~coti ... (Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1072b) Staff: Rachel Boyce Carloss Chamberlain Jana Giles Erika Hoffman Daniel Hoh Michael McShane Derick Miller Ange Mlinko Kenneth Paradis Dwayne Rogers Co-Editors: Laurie Cooper Rhonda Datcher Faculty Advisor: Henry Higuera With special thanks to: Tina Davidson Ray Gifford George Turner Ty Yancey 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 Energeia staff welcomes submissions from all members of the community--essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like . • • ,,..., /J....,-'7 �CONTENTS PHOTOGRAPH Greg Ferguson 4 LOIRE-ET-CHER, 1986 Dahra Latham 5 THE THEME OF THE FUGUE INC MINOR Rachel Boyce 6 THE PROPHET Ange Mlinko 8 DRAWING Marcus Eubanks 9 THE WELL OF LIGHT Claudia Probst 10 ANALYSIS FOR THE DETERMINATION OF A PARAMETER FOR THE PARABOLA Mark Ressler 13 Jana Giles 16 17 18 GREEK MYTHS OF RESPONSIBILITY AND OTHER OBSTACLES TO PITY Donna Strow 19 AUTUMN DAY SALON E =MC Scott Vineberg 24 25 PHOTOGRAPH Greg Ferguson 26 SEEING WITH BOTH EYES OPEN Graham Redgrave 27 VARIANT SONNET: AMAZON MOURNING Dahra Latham 33 UNTITLED POEM Sahana Dharmapuri 34 THE RETURN OF OEDIPUS REX: THE METAPHYSICS OF INCEST Michael McShane 35 PHOTOGRAPH Greg Ferguson 39 A MODERN INVESTIGATION OF THE ECCENTRIC HYPOTHESIS Tim McNicholl 40 AN ADAPTION, 1987 Carolyn Barndt 44 THE BOW OF HERACLES John Pronko 45 THREE LOY AL HAIK US Jana Giles 47 THE LEARNED PRINCESS Erika Wilson 48 PHOTOGRAPH Greg Ferguson 52 I. II. III. KE I PO THE FOX T.J. �Loire-et-Cher, 1986 Dahra Latham ('90) I begin poetry in true face coming home, seal away weed-green contact lenses scrub away molten golden color that the world imposes rise through fathoms of falsehood revealing pearl-pale and storm-eyed body stepped out of Renaissance portrait shining like dolphin through ocean through ragged breaker of hair washed sudden} y from red to brown. I take up the pen. And all the hard-birthed beauties I have ever read fall about me an irrelevant rain. 5 4 �throws off expectations and requires that the more instinctive interval be passed. The second playing of the theme, in G minor, which begins " 7 /\. 4 6 1 1 instead of l 7 f 5 6, solves the problem of reaching down to 4 by introducing 4 earlier in the theme. This change takes away part of the theme's beauty and is not at all preferable. I\ I\ After the third repetition of 1 7 1, the center is not reached again. The 4 5 6 movement is heading in the direction of the original 1 but cannot pass the peculiar f?t interval to reach it. The 6 5 4 movement is heading towards tan octave below the original but stops at 3, E flat. Only the very last repetition of the theme allows the octave-lower 1 to be sounded in the chord: The Thetne of the Fugue in C Minor Rachel Boyce ('90) When I hum the theme of Fugue II from Book 1 of J.S.Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, I invariably end up off key unless I am co~cent.rat­ ing. This may not seem particularly .puzzling smce many people have difficulty repeatmg even ~hort, simple tunes accurately. It does bother me. First, I picked up the theme almost ~nadverte~tl.y. It remained in my mind after the piece was f ~nished without any distinct effort on my part to fmd and distinguish it. Second, I have now listened ca ref ull Y to the Fugue ar least a dozen times, and the tendency to slip off key remains. . .. I decided to investigate my mab1hty t.o casually hum the catchy and elusive theme of th~s fugue. Since five of the eight times the th~m~ is heard, it begins on a C, it is written here begmnmg on C: though. The other problematic note, the seventeenth, is only a half step from the sixteenth, and there was no difficulty with any of the half steps between C and B natural. The theme isnot merely a series of intervals, and its dynamic qualities must be conside.red. Perhaps the location of the major sixth and mmor second within the melody produces the dif~iculty. The key signature might suggest E flat maJOr, but the B natural, producing a half. step. b.etween B natural and C,indicates that the piece 1s m .the key of C minor, the relative minor of E flat maJor._The center, t, is then C. The theme can now be written as: 7 5 6 7 2 5 "1 7 2 4 5 6 5 4 3. 1 1 1 1 The final E natural of the fugue is heard previously and more distinctly when the melody of the corresponding prelude ends on the same E natural. That last E natural, supported by the two C's in the bass clef, is pre para ti on for the following fugue. It is a 1i ttle unsettling to realize that the very comfortable sound at the conclusion of the prelude involves a melody ending on E natural in a piece with the key signature of E flat major or C minor. When a second inspection of the theme is done, it does not seem so positively C minor. Although it contains the minor half step between ~'nowhere is there the distinctively minor 23 half step. The B natural creates a ~ half step like that in the major scale, and the final E natural makes the previously minor whole step between 4 and 3 into a major half step. The theme verges on the key of C major. The theme may not be completely in the key of C minor, but neither is it completely in C major. The fourth time the theme is heard, it is played in E flat major with no accidentals, and any mystery or sweetness held by the original theme is lost. What is technically lost by playing the theme in a purely major key is the 56 half step.Similarly, the second I\ /'\ playing of the theme which begins with I 7 I 4 6 sounds less beautiful because it removes a half step. The theme's interest depends on the haunting 56 half step. The only flat in the fugue that has a consistently significant role and is not ever made natural is A flat, the note which produces that half step. The theme of Fugue II is between C minor and C major. Though the key signature points to C minor as the primary key, the theme lacks the half step. Though both prelude and fugue are resolved with a C major triad, the theme cannot be played in a major key without ruining it. This 56 23 "' 1 1.2..3 4S The first problematic note is the fifteenth, the first F played. The interval between the fourtee~th. and fifteenth notes is a major sixth, a more ?1ff1cult interval to duplicate than the other large i~tervals present: the perfect fourth between the thud and fourth notes and the perfect fifth between t~e ninth and tenth notes. There is no rea~on that ~his interval could not be memorized with practice, 6 There are three groups of f 7 f. The first swoop down from that grouping is a perfect fourth from 1 to 5 and the second a perfect fifth from 2 down to 5. The third plunge is, like the second one, from 2, but this time it reaches past the comfo~table 5 down to 4. Combined with the fact that 4 is the only note lower than 5 so far, the si~ilarity. of starting points and difference of endmg pomts In this last twist of the prelude's melody, written in the key in which we expect to hear the fugue, a C is played seven separate times and is held in the bass clef throughout. The next most frequent note is G, played four times. These two notes combine with the final E natural to form the C major triad. Both the C minor and the G minor heard in the fugue are explored in the prelude, evidenced by the many B natural and F sharp accidentals, .but the prelude concludes with the sound of C major. minor /major ambiguity causes my difficulty with casually humming the theme. I cannot lean into a fully minor or major key, so when I do not have the support of strong, easily sung intervals, I falter. Bach has not created an u'n easy sound with this ambuity, nor a problem to be resolved. The theme of Fugue II is compelling and delicately balanced, worth the concentration it takes to hum it properly. 7 �The Prophet ·,,. Ange Mlinko ('91) '/ ,, You want too much. To want Anything in this world is an arabesque Inverted desire to die; run instead While the wind fills your cup After mice visions scurrying Beneath trees across a litter Of skyfall; look up to shadows Brooding yellow in the veins Of every leaf. In the east A purple hand unshirts the sky; Left in the west is a blot of blood Where the sun was shot. If the walls had ears, you'd tell the walls. You have letters to send but no sticks And stones to break words with. Outside you sift the ground but wind, Wind like eternal October makes brick Patterns glide at your feet. A day is dying In this mass movement; on the skyline Collapsed in theatrics a dark soul On the playing field, fast scream like a crow And no one to hear it; the ears of the earth Are filled with wind and river. This the town your walls reflect, where Double doors exclaim men in credit shirts Who pause at the top of steps, become one White column on the portico of eternity And descend to the street. They read The Post and walk away the news rewritten On their hands, and two blocks down Two black-skinned boys face the wind All forecasts and headlines, . -\ \ / ...... ; Unearthing little liquor bottles from Underneath the statehouse shrubs. At night, cars jump like knives To a red light. Long-fingered men Hide their eyes when sirens sear by. f '\ I "·.., . \, / i ( ) ./ You are the confessor of all you see-You cannot dispose of your pu r i ty. Raking through leaves for fragments of sky To lift to your walls and nail there; Raking through words to sound out These secrets that trace with detached caress A lock in your head. And voice is no key. You cannot dispose of this purity. Scream then, back at the wind's scream With all insensate joy; you were chosen Out from under leaves to under sky-The world is burning in the glacial Radiance of your sun: It is a hard light to ask forgiveness from. The cup you hold is teeming, Receiving and receiving. You want Nothing but to hear the truth With the truth you see as the day Dies in pieces around you, asking who Unleashes the siren of the sun Upon all deadly mornings, and who Gives it pause at the portals of all ears? 9 8 �The Well of Light Claudia Probst ('88) Ryan held the zoom lens and wiped it gingerly with a piece of lens tissue before sending a blast of pressurized air across its surface. Having cleaned the last one of his six lenses, he replaced it in the box leather camera bag, zipped it closed around the top, and sat back resigned. This waiting was unbearable, when he knew that the picture of a lifetime might occur without him, that a perfect avalanche might go unframed and unrecorded. He wanted to jump up from the molded plastic orange seat in which he'd spent the better part of two hours, he wanted to grab the ticketing agent by her insolent kelly-green necktie and shake her until her heavily made-up eyes showed anything but indifference. Easy now, he cautioned himself; stay in control. He folded his powerful hands with their square-cut nails and sat up straighter. There was nothing he could do: if the mechanics were working on the plane, the mechanics were working on the plane. Slowly, he sent his eyes sidelong to the woman in the seat next to his. Her blonde hair was cut in layers and teased out in last year's style, so that he could see almost nothing of her profile. What did he have to lose? "Are you on your way to visit Salt Lake City too?" he asked, smiling his most winning smile and leaning back. She turned sharply enough for him to guess that her surprise was feigned, that she had only been resting her eyes on the open book in her lap, while her senses were all attuned to him, the stranger in the next seat. She twisted her florid face IO in an answering smile. "Well, not exactly to visit there. I grew up there, but left it for what I thought would be a more glamorous life ... " "Wait, let me guess. You were raised as a Mormon, and now you're returning to make peace with the church of your childhood." She gaped at Ryan as though he were a prophet. "How did you know that?" she squealed. "Oh, I've spent a little time there and I found the church of the Latter-Day Saints very compelling myself." The lies were coming easier now. The seats in the gate area were arranged back to back in rows of five, and two seats down, with his back to Ryan, Zach Himmelstein sat with his head in his hands, trying very hard to cast himself and his sister Rosa back to a time where the light of memory shone, steady and bright, like the sun of their youth on their family's Rhineland farm. He could call nothing up, though, and instead thought only of the wrenching sadness he'd felt two years ago when Rosa had told him her decision to move west. "Trust me Zachariah, the doctor says it would be better for my lungs, and Salt Lake City is very clean-- not like here" she'd said, gesturing with distaste at the grimy vista outside their Brooklyn apartment. He'd gazed down, not trusting himself to meet her eyes, and unable to speak. What was that piece of paper he pretended to be so taken with at that moment? Oh yes, he'd studied the doctor's scrawl on a piece of paper that showed a stylized mortar and pestle in one corner, healing symbols. The writing had reminded him somehow of how he'd teased Rosa, when they were children, and a favorite trick of dipping the tips of her pencils into hot wax just before they left for school. He now recalled his confusion, too, when she'd paused to let the words sink in, how he'd looked up with an apology that died on his lips for all the childhood pranks he'd played, if only she'd stay. Those weren't the right words, though, and it seemed to him that she'd packed and made arrangements and left before he'd had a fair chance to find the right ones. Yet now, dear Rosa, he thought bitterly, I'm going to bury you in that place of raw mountains and ski resorts and Mormon temples. He shook his head sharply to break that chain of thought, which would doubtless lead him to mull over how senseless her accident had been. It would never have happened, if she had still been living in a community that saw that the sidewalk was cleared and salted before the elderly residents wished to go out. If she'd been living with him in the neighborhood where she belonged. His mind, having reached this familiar dead end, began to drift and take in the voices coming from a few seats down and behind his back. Annoyed at the chatter, he stirred himself and rose, looking around for a destination. Across the waiting area there was a coffee and newspaper vending stand. The woman behind it was leaning on the counter, flirting in low, rich Jamaican tones with a security guard. He was struck suddenly by a feeling of kinship with her; neither one of us wants to be here, he thought. Zachariah made his way to the stand in his stiff walk, left leg dragging slightly. When he reached it he took off his fedora, without irony, to address the lady. "I would like a cup of coffee, please" he asked in his precise English, struggling as always to suppress his Yiddish accent. She gazed at him indolently for a moment, shrugged, and raised herself from leaning on her folded arms to pour the coffee into a styrofoam cup. The blue-uniformed guard followed her movements with narrowed eyes. "That be all?" she asked Zach, putting the cup down in front of him. "Yes, thank you." He pushed two quarters toward her with an almost imperceptible bow and picked up the cup. "Sugar and cream are over there," she added. "Thank you but I have my own sweetener, some saccharin tablets. They help keep me fit, you know, and ready ... " He trailed off. Ready for what? Had he been there to clear Rosa's sidewalk of ice? The woman shrugged again, turned her attention back to her friend. Zach flushed, and hastily picking up a napkin and a small container of cream, he retreated to his seat. Was that the guard laughing? It didn't matter; a young man like that wouldn't understand .. After taking his seat he· pulled himself up very straight and tall, and reached purposefully into his breast pocket. He felt his accustomed satisfaction at the power of these little white tablets, which allowed him to indulge his sweet tooth while staying trim. Rosa always said, it was pride, just pride that made him try to hide his age. She would laugh and sprinkle spoonfuls of sugar over her grapefru!t in the mornings. As he balanced his cup on the armrest, he could again hear his neighbors' con versa ti on. "Tell me about the book you're reading." Ryan commanded. "You haven't heard of this book?" The woman asked incredulously. She paused, considered the apparently daunting task. "It's called The Well of Light, and it's written by John P. Smothers, who left our church fifteen years ago and became the owner of a very successful cruise ship line. He describes how unhappy he was, entertaining rich clients and travelling constantly aboard his ships. He says he fell deeper and deeper into despair, drinking all the time and seeing no way out. But then God" - she paused for effect - "God went to work in his life, buoying him up from the depths of his despair, and making him care again. Care about his family and himself, too. That's what that title's about, you see. It was as though he'd fallen down a well of indifference, but then God put a light at the bottom, a light he didn't expect." "Uh-huh. Is this the book that made you think of returning to the church?" Ryan asked, uninterested in her specific answer, but fascinated that she could speak so feelingly about Smothers' well-calculated effort to make a buck. He marvelled inwardly at how people fool themselves. Zach held his metal box of saccharin tablets between his thumb and forefinger. He slid the lid back and was suddenly overwhelmed by the 11 �memory of a scene captured in a snapshot he hadn't seen in decades. It was of Rosa at a family picnic, squinting merrily up in the black and white photo, her wavy dark hair escaping her hair pins as ever. Her grubby hands held a tinderbox that was a relic even then. Zachariah sat, stunned at the memory of that day more than sixty years ago when grandfather Josef had made a demonstration of the tinderbox's use. How had he done it? Fingers twitching, Zach recalled his clumsy attempts to strike a spark. Hold the flint and steel firmly when you strike, Grandfather had said. Make the sparks dance, he'd said, and Zach had looked up, startled once again by the humor buried just under the somber surface of that beloved face. You had to pay close attention to the tiny flame. Grandfather had showered sparks over dry moss and cupped gnarled hands around it to shield it from the wind. The muffled sound of the saccharin tablets falling to the carpet brought him out of his reverie, but he snatched his drooping hand back too late to retain any of them in the metal box. He bent down on the floor to gather them. His urgency was enough to distract Ryan from the hopeful blonde, who by now was holding up both ends of the conversation admirably. She barely noticed his attention was straying, as she continued to talk animatedly of her native city. "In the spring and summer they open the gates and let the mountain run-off flood the streets, and afterwards everything is so clean and new, not a bit of litter or dirt left ..." Ryan's gaze was now fixed on the figure of an old man on his knees carefully picking up some spilled pills. As he straightened a bit to reach under the chair and find by touch any that his eyes might have missed, Ryan noticed that tears were working their way down the old man's deeply lined face. "Pathetic," Ryan muttered to himself, and turning away, saw with relief that the ticketing agent was about to announce that the plane was ready for boarding. Analysis for the Determination of a Paratneter for the Parabola by Mark Ressler '89 The method of analysis requires the assumption of what is to be proven, so that the truth of the proposition is borne out by the consistency of the consequences of that assumption. A proposition is solved by analysis when an accepted truth forms a necessary consequence of the initial assumption. The proof is established by reversing the sequence of consequences so that the argument begins with the established truth and ends with the statement of what is to be proven. Thus, if I want to establish that virtue is desirable, I would first assume virtue to be desirable. I would then examine the consequences of that assumption, with the hope of fin ding some universally accepted truth as one of the consequences--for instance, the existence of God. Then, if my reasoning is not faulty1, I can reverse my steps and argue that since God exists and since what follows from that would be true, virtue, therefore, is desirable. Consider Appolonius and the parabola: Appolonius can establish a simple geometr ic def inition of the parabola by claiming that if the intersection of a cutting plane and the plane that contains the axis of the cone is parallel to the intersection of the plane that contains the axis and the cone itself, then the intersection of the cutting plane and the cone is a para bola. However, this definition says nothing about the shape of the parabola; it may happen that the shape of a parabola is essentially no different than the shape of a hyperbola. A definition which encompasses this consideration might be more useful than a simple geometric definition like the one above. The establishment of a diameter and ordinates provides the means for an examination of the shape of the parabola, for as the parabola extends out away from the vertex, both the ordinates and the abscissa increase. If there is a direct relationship between the abscissa and the ordinates, that relationship would almost define the shape of the parabola. The abscissa may be to the ordinate or the ordinate to the abscissa in three ways: (I) as a given line to a given line, (2) as the abscissa is to a given line, or (3) as the ordinate is to a gi ve lin e. I proceed now to examine each of the cases using the method of analysis. In his notes on Euclid's Elements, Heath makes the following note concerning faulty reasoning in analysis: "Now Aristotle had already made it clear that false hypotheses might lead to a conclusion which is true. There is therefore a possibility of error unless a certain precaution is taken. While for example, B may be a necessary consequence of.A, it may happen thatA is not a necessary consequence of B. Thus in order that the reverse ingerence from the truth of K that A is logically true may be logically justified, it is necessary that each step in the chain of inferences should be unconditionally convertible." Euclid, The Thirteen Books of the Elements, 2nd ed .. , trans. Thomas Heath (New York, Dover Publications, 1956), p. 141. 12 13 �(I) If the abscissa is to the ordinate as a given line X is to a given line Y, then: A FIG. 1 DE: FE:: X :Y and DH: HJ:: X: Y. Therefore, DE: FE:: DH : HJ. Then D, J, and F will be in a straight line, and triangle DHJ and triangle DEF will be similar triangles. [fig. 2] Therefore, the abscissa cannot be to the ordinate as a line is to a line. (2a) If the abscissa is to the ordinate as the abscissa is to a given line X, then: D FIG. 2 DE: FE:: DE:X and FE= X. But FE will vary while X is given, so the abscissa cannot be to the ordinate as the abscissa is to a given line. (2b) If the abscissa is to the ordinate as a given line X is to the abscissa, then: DE : FE :: X : DE and DE 2 = FE, constant. DH : HJ :: X : DH and DH 2 = HJ, constant and, therefore, DE 2 : DH 2 :: FE,X :: HJ,X and DE 2 : DH 2 :: FE : HJ. But DE 2 : DH 2 :: BE 2 : KH 2, therefore, BE 2 : KH 2 :: FE : HJ. 14 Compounding both sides with the ratio KH : BE, KH,BE2 : BE,KH 2 :: FE,KH_: HJ,BE. Removing the common term BE,HK from the left side, BE : KH :: FE,KH : HJ ,BE. Since, EC = HL, BE,EC : KH,HL :: FE,KH : HJ, BE. But BE,EC = EF2, and KH,KL = HJ 2, therefore, EF2 : HJ2 :: FE,KH : HJ ,BE. Alternately, EF2: FE,KH :: HJ 2 : HJ,BE therefore, EF : KH :: HJ : BE. and alternately, EF : HJ :: KH : BE. But KH : BE :: DH : DE so EF: HJ:: DH: DE. Then D, J, and F will be in a straight line, and triangle DHJ and triangle DEF will be similar triangles [fig. 2]. Therefore, the abscissa cannot be to the ordinate as a given line is to the abscissa, for the statements: HJ2 = KH,HL (FE2 = BE,EC) DH2 = HJ,X (DE2 = FE,X) and DH : DE :: HK : BE are incompatible. (3a) If the abscissa is to the ordinate as a given line is to the ordinate, then: DE : FE :: X : FE and DE= X. But DE will vary while X is given, so the abscissa cannot be to the ordinate as a given line is to the ordinate. (3b) But if the abscissa is to the ordinate as the ordinate is to a given line X, then: DE : FE :: FE : X FE 2 = DE,X and DH : JH :: JH : X. JH2 = DH,X. Therefore, FE2 : JH2 :: DE,X : DH,X OR FE2 : JH2 :: DE : DH. But FE2 = BE,EC and JH 2 = KH,HL so BE,EC: KH,HL :: DE: DH. But EC= HL so BE : KH :: DE : DH, since KH is parallel to BE. segments of the diameter of the circle BFCG, in which EC is fixed in size for the parabola in the cone, whether it appears as DM or HL since DE is parallel to AC and KL is parallel to BC. Now since this relationship has been proven to be possible, the relationship itself may be used as a starting point for the determination of the given line. I then assume that X is already given for a given parabola, so that I may deduce a relationship between X and some known line: DE : FE :: FE : X so FE2 = DE,X. But FE2 = BE,EC so BE,EC = DE,X and BE : DE :: X : EC. But BE : DE :: BC : AC so BC : AC :: X : EC. Compounding both sides with the ratio EC : AD, BC : AC comp. EC : AD = X,EC : AD,EC. But EC = DM and DM :AD :: BC : AB so BC2 : AC,AB :: X,EC : AD,EC and inversely, AB,AC: BC 2 :: AD: X. And AB, AC, BC, and AD are all known lines; therefore, X can be found in accordance with this last ratio. If a line, then, is constructed such that as the line between the vertex of the section and the vertex of the cone is to the constructed line, so is the rectanglee contained by the sides of the axial triangle to the square on the base of the axial triangle, then the abscissa will ha vee to the ordinate the same ratio that the ordinate has to the constructed line. The square on the ordinate will be equal to the rectangle of the abscissa and the created line. Proposition 11, Book I, demonstrates these properties. Therefore, a relationship between the abscissa and the ordinate is possible, and it will be as the ordinate is to some given line. The relationship is similar to the relationship of the ordinate to the 15 �I KEIRO II The Fox (KEIPO) Jana Giles ('88) Jana Giles ('88) I would eat the flesh from your bones, such is my love for you, were it not against the law. It is just as well, thoughyour rotting flesh beneath that still mask would poison me, your stinking, stagnant blood would mix with mineone unnamed, untouchable, unknowable in this grief and sacred passion. In your acidulous smile I saw the wisdom and assurance of cloudless days and changeful moons, bitter Satisfactions's cold enterprise indulged by a dei f ic ac cept an ce. The wind wails, waxing fierce; my cold heart grows old . 1985 16 Sparkle, twinkle, said the fox his black tongue tripped him up his red tail white-streaked tripped him up my car struck him and he burst like a swollen sausage his mouth foaming and spilling blood and sequins and rhinestone jewels. Children squat in the blood their greedy, unsubtle fingers undulating like sea anemones stirred by a watery wind search and grab smeared stones in a noisy herd. Soon the birds of prey shall overcome him, naked as iron-grey clouds engulf the setting sun. 1985 17 �Greek Myths of Responsibility and Other 0 bstacles to Pity III LL Donna Strow ('90) Jana Giles ('88) these words are simple but I have nothing else to off er somehow the tide will pull me along reluctant and ignorant and young I only wish that when I sank beneath the muttering murky moonlit waters the fishes did not have your face 1985 "I would not wish either [to do or to suffer wrong]" says Socrates in Plato's Gorgias (Woodhead 469 c), "but if I had either to do or to suffer wrong, I would choose rather to suffer than to do it." He describes the wrongdoer as miserable and says that he is to be pitied (Woodhead 469 a). Is pity appropriate to the wrongdoer? Is it relevant to ask whether he deserves pity? Socrates h olds that wrongdoing is worse than being wronged (Lamb 473 a). Is it appropriate to pity the wrongdoer who has come to suffer and to regret more than we pity the wronged? That would certainly come as a shock to those who delight in saying, "He (the wrongdoer) got his (just dessert)!" or "(If) you make your bed, you lie in it," denying pity to the wrongdoer because they feel somehow that he does not deserve it. In any event, that is the question under investigation. Plato (Gorgias, Phaedo, Republic) and Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics) will help. Before embarking on this quest, however, it would be good to state just what is meant by "pity." Socrates' word, € >.. € K.oµa i, is very close to our own. In this essay I will recognize two kinds of pity, one meaning a sorrowing over another's misfortune, the other meaning a seeking to end another's distress. because he is wretched), and that he would pref er to be wronged rather than to do wrong, implying that the wrongd oer is more to be pitied than the wronged. Unfortunately, his argument is insubstantial; he simply gets Polus to admit that to do wrong is more shameful and evil than to suffer wrong. Then he asks, "And would you choose the more evil and shameful in preference to the less?" (Woodhead 475 d), to which the latter replies negatively. Would I reply as Pol us does? Yes, I think so, but perhaps this is only because I have been taught to adopt this virtuous attitude. Yet if a wrongdoer were to suffer, either from guilt or from some other consequence of his misdeed, I do believe that his suffering would be the worse because he has himself to blame. Some would say that it is this very notion of "blame" that cancels the wrongdoer's claim to our sympathy. I think that before we subscribe to this notion we should at least determine whether the blame and the pity would both bear the same address if we were to pity the wrongdoer. Does the same man do wrong and then regret it? Is the part of the man that does the wrong the same part that does the suffering? Again, Socrates maintains that to do wrong "is the greatest of evils" (Woodhead 496 a, b), that the wrongdoer is to be pitied (most probably in my mind I have given you a fixed place that you cannot alter from your distance According to Cebes Plato's Phaedo, the body is "continually changing and disintegrating all through life, the soul [replacing] what is worn 19 18 �away" (Tredennick 87 d, e) Now, if we can assume that decisions about how to act are made by a nervous system, which is physical, this readily verifiable observation means that the man who pays for his crime is not quite the man (as he has not quite the faculties of the man) who committed it. In this case, then, we must not blame but rather pity the man who now suffers as a result of the misdeed of his former self. At this point in the dialogue, however, Cebes believes in an entity called the soul which is non-physical and rules the body. Does Cebes then believe that a man (or the soul of a man) is the same throughout life? That would be absurd, for Socrates' willingness to die, which is manifested throughout the dialogue, is founded on his belief that philosophy is carried on in the soul, a belief which all present seem to accept (64 e, 65 a). If a soul can learn, a soul can change. I remain convinced that a man is in fact a different man every instant of his life. How, then, can we blame someone for his past actions, especially one who clearly regrets them? Yet even if the nature of man were such that he remained the same, stagnant throughout life, I would still not be convinced that the faculty that committed the crime is the same faculty that suffers because of it. Both Plato and Aristotle divide the soul into three faculties. Socrates give a good argument to support this assertion in The Republic (Jowett 436): But the question is not quite so easy when we proceed to ask whether these principles are three or one· whether 1 that is to say w~ learn :Vith one pa~t ofour nature, are ;ngrywith another, and with a third part desire the satisfaction of our natural appetites; orwhe ther the whole soul comes into play in each sort of actionto determine that is the difficulty .... The same thing clearly cannot actor be acted upon in the same part or in relation to the same thing at the same time, in contrary ways; and therefore whenever this contradiction occurs in things apparently the same, we know that they are really not the same, but different. To Aristotle, the soul appears to have three parts also, but these are different from Socrates' three parts. Rather, it appears to him that the soul contains a rational principle and irrational, the rational being divided into the calculative or deliberating, part and the scientific part, whi~h is concerned with the truth of unchangeable facts. Given Socrates' argument, it is easy to see that whatever governs the emotions, be it soul or mind of any kind, it must be composed of more than one part, as evidenced by the fact that we some- times experience mixed emotions. We often even act despite misgivings. It seems most likely to me that the part of the soul or mind that suffers is other than the part that prompts us to do wrong. Let me test this idea using Socrates' argument: Are the parts of the mind capable of remorse and the origin of misdeeds respectively affected differently by the same thing at the same time? Yes, insofar as one can regret an action while at the same time perform it. To me this is tantamount to doing something reluctantly. Therefore, it seems that one part misbehaves and another must pay! The objection can be raised, however, that perhaps there is no one part of the soul capable of remorse or misbehavior, that many parts may each be capable of each. In that case it would not matter that one can perform an act reluctantly . It would not prove anything, for it would still be possible f.or the misbehaving element in a certain circumstance to be the very same part that regrets the act later. If this objection is to be sustained, it would seem to me in that case that the one faculty involved had completely changed its nature, as it changed with regard to the same action. I would not, then, blame the new, improved entity for the malefaction of the old. I am willing to assume, however, that one faculty is uniquely capable of remorse, another of action. If, then, the wrongdoer and the one who regrets are two different entities, is it not appropriate at least to pity the latter, both in the sense of commiserating and of seeking to end its pain? But suppose I am wrong and we must regard the same man and the same faculty that did the bad deed as the one that suffers. Many hold notions of justice and r esponsibility that demand this. Let us first examine justice, which some say points to the conclusion that blame somehow renders pity inappropriate, and then concentrate on the difference between th e wro n gdoer an d th e wro n ged , which we will call responsibility. Why do some of us feel it inconsistent to pity the one who is to blame for a misdeed? Can we not blame and pity (in both senses) the same man? Aristotle seems to take it for granted that we cannot (Rackham III. v. 15, 16). Yet, we are all sinners. We all make mistakes. What does the fact that a certain wrongdoer's sin is responsible for his misery have to do with our sorrow over his misery and our willingness to help him to overcome it? Some will answer that the said misery is the fulfillment of justice, and so we should not be willing to help the wrongdoer to escape it. Some will even go so far as to say that we should not even feel sorry fo r someone who suffers according to what they believe to be justice. Socrates and Aristotle present us with many kinds of justice in light of which to examine the above concerns. In the Nicomachean Ethics (Rackham, V. iv. 3) we are introduced to co r rective justice. Corrective justice restores equality between the wrongdoer and his victim by taking from the culprit and redressing, that is, giving to the victim. This serves two purposes. Obviously, it helps the victim, restoring the equality between the wrongdoer and the victim which was lost when the wrong was done. Also, it serves to deter potential malefactors from doing (and actual ones from repeating) crimes. Aristotle says, "la wgivers ...puni sh ... those who do evil... in order to ... repress [it]" (Rackham, III. v. 7). Now, pity of either kind fo r the wrongdoer certainly does no t prevent us from r ed r essing t he wrong for the victim's sake. Does sympathy inter fere with deterrence? I think not. I am sure that many people who have had to mete out justice of this kind have pitied the cr iminals. But what of the kind of pity that seeks relief from the suffering? Recall that the wrongdoer in my i nitial question regrets his action. If this is so, what need have we to dete r him fu r ther? It seems t hat corrective justice is of no use whe re this wrongdoer is concerned, and certainly should not prevent us from pitying him. The Ethics also raises the issue of r etribution. Since either form of pi ty would soften the blow of retributive justice, perhaps neither is appropriate to the wrongdoer if this should prove to be a valid concept of justice. Fortunately, Aristotle does not succeed in proving this. The best he can do is to say, " The very existence of the state depends on proportionate reciprocity; for men demand that they shall be able to requite evil with evil -- if they cannot, they feel they are in the position of slaves" (Rackham, V. v. 6). In other words, man's villainous instinct for revenge is at the root of this so-called justice! The Gorgias, too, contains some possible re ferences to retaliation as justice. Says Socrates, And so again ... supposing it is our duty to injure somebody, whether an enemy or anyone else ... we must make every exertion to trial, or if he does, we must contrive that our enemy shall escape and not be punished. (Lamb, 480 e, 481 a) Socrates, who believes punishment to be good for the malefactor, casually assumes that a man can be bound by duty to injure someone. What else could that be but retaliation? Henry Higuera entertained the idea that the latter part of the Gorgias (523) consists of an attempt on Socrates' part to pay Callicles back for his insulting manners. Callicles has been sarcastic and rude (Lamb 495 d). He calls Socrates "paragon of wisdom." He says also, "You could not speak, I suppose, if there were not somebody to answer you" (Lamb 519 d), and eventually he does stop answering. As Mr. Higuera says, "Tempers [are] high." So why does Socrates start preaching fire and brimstone? It could be that he honors retaliation as a form of justice. Aristotle tries, but in my opinion fails. It will take more than popular demand to convince me that two "wrongs" make a "right." If re taliation is not justice, then the notion thereof should not prevent us from pitying our repentant wrongdoer in any way. The Gorgias also presents Socrates' view of justice as medicinal punishment. "Paying the penalty is a relief from the greatest evil, wickedness" (Lamb 478 d) If this is justice (and indeed it seems to work in child-rearing), we should not seek to ameliorate the wrongdoer's suffering until he evinces his betterment by regretting his evil act, but our repentant wrongdoer is still an appropriate target for both kinds of pity. It seems that no real justice of any kind presented in the Ethics or the Gorgias renders pity for the repentant wrongdoer inappropriate! There are, however, those who insist on the existence of some a priori, cosmic justice involving something like retribution. It may be useful to ask exactly how much suffe r ing and of what kind the wrongdoer must endure as punishment for the satisfaction of this elusive cosmic justice. First let us look at natural consequences. Sometimes a crime will bring these with it. Sometimes, too, the righting of a wrong causes a wrongdoer pain, as in the case of a liar who is made to tell the shameful truth. The pain here is merely a by-product of the aspect of corrective justice that seeks to redress a wrong for the sake of the victim -- not justice itself -- or is it? Does this cosmic retributive justice demand that the wrongdoer of act and word to prevent him from being punished or coming 20 21 �suffer any and all such incidental (not related to the magnitude of the iniquity) consequences? Common sense says that this is ridiculous. Indeed, Socr ates unwittingly poses a broader problem when he suggests that punishment (natural or otherwise) be tailored to fit the crime (Woodhead 480 c,d). Who is to say how much punishment is enough? If the aim of justice is medicinal, the wrongdoer himself is the one to answer. The same goes in the case of justice based on deterrence. If justice means paying back the victim for his loss then the victim should answer. Such it is in the case of constructive forms of justice that the question of how much punishment is enough can be answered. However, if justice is cosmic, who is to answer? The cosmos herself? Does she really have a reputation for being fair and just? It is clear how ridiculous that is. Be that as it may, there are those who insist that blame, or responsibility, renders pity inappropriate to wrongdoers. Yet these same tenacious souls will pity the man who is abused by circumstances (or by a wrongdoer). The best I can do for these is to point out how much alike are those who suffer because of their own misdeeds and those who suffer otherwise, and how shallow and illusory is their concept of responsibility. Aristotelian responsibility is based on the volunta r iness of action, such that a man is responsible for an act that is wrong if he has committed it voluntarily. Again, Aristotle believes that pity cannot go hand in hand with blame. He says, "It is only voluntary actions fo r whiCh praise and blame are given; those that are involuntary are condoned, and sometimes even pitied" (Rackham III. i. 1). I think that this attitude results partly from his restricted use of the word "blame," which he seems to t a ke to mean, "that by virtue of which one is responsible (in the Aristotelian sense)." Aristotle says that voluntary acts are those in which the origin of the movement of the parts of the body instrumental to the act lies in the agent; and when the origin of an action is in oneself it is in one's own power to do it or not. (Rackham, III. i. 6) And again: 'None would be vile, and none would not be blest,' seems to be half false. If it is manifest that a man is the author of his own actions, and if we are unable to trace our conduct back to any 22 other origins than those within ourselves, then actions ... are voluntary (Rackham, III. v. 4-6). If one were hypnotized into committing a base act, I do not think that the act would qualify as voluntary, although we, in so far as we did not know of the hypnotist, would not be able to trace the agent's conduct back to any other origins than those within himself. Therefore I am inclined to believe that Aristotle meant to identify voluntary actions as those which a being equipped with perfect knowledge could not trace back to any origins save the wrongdoer himself. To Aristotle, this would pose no threat to his concept of responsibility, since he imputes spontaneity to our actions (that is, those actions not classified as "involuntary," a concept discussed below); however, the notion of spontaneous action by animals of any kind flies in the face of modern psychology. In a world that is always asking "Why?", searching for causes and patterns and the order of nature which we intuit to be a reality, there is no room for the idea of spontaneity. The truth, I believe, is that our destinies were set before the earth cooled, since nothing transpires without cause and nothing is caused to happen which does not happen, so that strung about the latticework of time and space is an immutable web of cause and effect, the vision of which Aristotle was denied. Thus any actions, theoretically ,should be able to be traced back to origins other than those within the agent. Spontaneity is, as I said before, a chaotic beast which we intuit to be nonexistent. Yet even chaos has intelligent suppo r te rs who point out that the universe may have had a beginning, and, if it did, this beginning would have been spontaneous. Therefore, they claim, spontaneity may be a monster on the loose in our very universe . I n light of the fa ct th at spo ntaneity may be a reality and that human acts may, to spite psychology cruelly, be spontaneous, let us reexamine the notion that, "where we are f ree to act we are also free to ref rain from acting." (Rackham III. v. 2) It seems to me that, while this is in one sense true (in that the action to a large degree depends on the agent), it is possible that the agent may be of suc h a character that he can only choose to act wrongly. If the character of the agent helps to determine his behavior, and the agent is not responsible for his character, it appears to follow that the agent is not responsible for his behavior, in the Aristotelian sense. Is the agent responsible for his character? Aristotle says that he is, since it is our practices that determine our character (Rackham III. iv. 15, 16). And yet, it is our character that determines our practices! It is obvious that, at some point in the past, the agent's character was not his responsibil ity and, therefore, neither are all ensuing actions and modifications of that character. Have I done away with responsibility? Not really. My attack is limited to Aristotelian respon sibility which, some claim, renders the wrongdoer undeserving of pity. I have left ample room for the more pragmatic responsibility that we use in everyday life in conjunction with corrective justice. According to Aristotle, "actions are in voluntary when done (a) under compulsion or (b) through ignorance" (Rackham III. i. 2, 3); ignorance of this kind is ignorance concerning (I) the person affected, (2) the instrument employed, or (3) the result of the action. But Socrates says that all seek the good and act in such a way as they believe will bring it about (Lamb 468 c - 469). In light of this, which seems to me true, are not all wrongdoers shown to act in ignorance of the results of their actions, believing them to be good whereas in reality they are not? Aristotle addresses this notion that the wrongdoer's "aim at his end [which he mistakenly sees as good] is not of his own choosing" (Rackham III. v. 17) by arguing that it destroys the idea of responsibility for good behavior as well as for bad (Rackham III. v. 18, 19). I find the argument insubstantial and Aristotelian responsibility (for both good and bad actions) fictitious. Finally, neither the repentant wrongdoer not the wronged person chooses evil, since "no object of choice belongs to the past" (Ostwald, l l 39b7). It seems that the re pen tan t wrongdoer and the wronged are very much alike, neither of them being responsible for their suffering in the Aristotelian sense, and neither choosing evil. Again, the malefactor is not the same entity as the repentant, nor does justice prescribe that we deny pity of any kind to the wrongdoer. It is clear, then, that the man who is "to blame" for his own suffering and the man who is abused by circumstances and thus suffers are equally to be pitied, both in the sense of commiserating and of seeking to end the sufferer's pain. Bibliography Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics, Translated by Martin Ostwald, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1962; and Nichomachean Ethics, Trans. by H. Rackham, M.A. William Heinemann, Ltd., 1926. Higuera, Henry: Tutor and Advisor Plato: Gorgias, Trans. by W.D. Woodhead, Phaedo,_Trans. by Hugh Tredennick, from Collected Dialogues of Plato, Princeton University Press, 1961; and The Republic, Trans. by B. Jowett, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 23 �Aututnn Day Salon E = MC Scott Vineber g ('88) Scott Vineberg ('88) Combing the follicles of grass, Cleaning-up their natty harvest confetti; Leaves, trees' dandruff. I confess to Boreas My dislike of the season: Petty gossip. But the wind, darling, Is not a good listener. I tease the scalp Of old Miss Nature, Menopausal Spinster Earth, Greying and balding. A last clip. The old bat is just about ready to be embalmed. She's never satisfied with her color: "No," she says, "the tint isn't quite right. I think I want it white for down south this year." I don't think that would be a very good idea, bitch. Well, Then she beckoned to her bully brother Boreas, And he blew the clipping and cleaning Back onto her head. She stormed out. No tip again this yea r. But it was worth it, dear, It was worth it. A gentle, explosive equation. Tight Energy is Mass. Loose mass is energy. The equality flows so easily From dynamic burst power to thick ule. Fire frozen. Stone burning. It works so carefully in the world, Cradling us from inside ourselves And all around us. Papoose wrap Nature Rocks us with minute bursts inside Pinches us with soft solidity. ' We are the naked flame rock babies of the universe. So soft. Gravity is God's kind hand holding me. I feel how we are so cautiously tucked In the dark ch aotic sky; I feel the rigid relenting bed On which I am laid, And I know I am loved. 25 24 �Seeing with Both Eyes Open Graham Redgrave ('90) Both Claudius Ptolemaeus and Nicolaus Copernicus had only their eyes with which to observe the whirling lights in the sky. In addition, each had over a thousand years of pre-Common Era astronomical data at his disposal. Yet Copernicus built an astronomy which is mathematically superi or to Ptolemy's and which has since been shown to be closer to the actual form of the universe. Alth ough some discussion of what makes an astronomy superior is appropriate, this paper will be concerned with the progression of the philosophies of the two astronomers and the links, if any, between each's philosophy and astronomy. Was there, for example, a progression of thought which may have given Copernicus the freed om to see the heavens in a different light than that in which Ptolemy had seen them? A context, in this case astronomical, must be provided in which to judge the philosophies of these two thinkers, for otherwise one would be unable to grasp any possible relevance of the philosophy of the astronome r to his astronomy. Again, in order to make the progression of thought, both astronomical and philosophical, as clear as possible, we will begin with Ptolemy and proceed chronologically to Copernicus. Upon contemplating the Preface to Ptolemy's Almagest, it becomes clear that Ptolemy's conception of astronomy is thoroughly Aristotelian: Aristotle's name appears before the name of any religious entity. Consequently, Ptolemy finds that astronomy is a species of mathematics which, in the realm of theoretical enquiry, surpasses in accessibility both the physical and the the ological; for not only is mathematics the only discipline which "would give its practitioners certain and trustw orthy knowledge ... f rom indisputable procedures"(Pt.,pp.5-6), but also astronomy is "that special mathematical theory [which] would most readily prepare the way to the theological" and make "its followers lovers of that divine beauty"(Pt.,p.6). Irrespective of the virtue in studying astronomy, the fact is that Ptolemy considers astronomy to be kind of mathematics, and therefore subject to the principles of such a discipline, beyond any principles particular to astronomy. With this delineation in mind, let us examine several of Ptolemy's expositions to evaluate their mathematical and / or astronomical excellence. Before we sift through some of his specific ideas, let us first examine his conceptions. Ptolemy, in laudable Aristotelian manner, starts "from the things which are more knowable and obvious to us and [proceeds] towards those which are clearer and more knowable by na ture"(Phys., l 84a 16-1 7), ie., he observes the appearances of heavenly motion, both firsthand and from his charts, and proceeds to find the order in their movements. In accordance with his method, Ptolemy first asserts that the movement of the heavens is spherical (Pt.,1.3). What Ptolemy actually proves is that the heavens appear to move around 27 26 �the earth with spherical motion. Now without a powerful telescope to observe parallax, there is no way to prove which is moving, the heavens or the earth, but Ptolemy says not a word about any other possibility. Ptolemy's proof for the spherical nature of the earth (Pt.,1.4) is reasonable, as is his assertion in Chapter Six that the earth has the ratio of a point to the heavens. But in Chapter Five we encounter another difficulty. The fixed stars are so far away, as he himself says(Pt.,I.6), that there is justification for calling them fixed and saying that we appear to be in the middle of them; but the variable appearances of the sun and the wandering stars, i.e., the planets, seem to suggest that, even if the relationships between the earth and these stars are regular, the earth is not necessarily the center of that regularity. Furthermore, Chapter Six reinforces the contrast between the planets and the sun on one hand, and the planets and the fixed stars on the other (something prevents Ptolemy form postulating that the whole geocentric system might be as a point to the heavens--but what is that hindrance and where else in the Almagest does it manifest itself?). I do realize that hindsight affords a better vista of the problems in a given situation, but at the same time, Ptolemy was not proving what he claimed. As a result of finding the earth at the center of the of the center of the celestial sphere, he reasonably assigns no movement to the earth(Pt.,1.7), which is perfectly in accordance with Aristotle's ideas regarding the relative weight of the earth and the innate tendencies of the simple bodies. Thus far, though his premises are clouded enough to make his proofs almost reasonable assertions, Ptolemy's arguments are self-consistent and logically sound. After he deals with the earth's relationship with the sun and moon, Ptolemy orders the planets and the sun with respect to their closeness to the earth (Pt.,IX. l ), a process which seems substantially less sound than his proofs so far. Indeed, Ptolemy gives no reason for his order except concurrence with all the other top mathematicians of his day. The order is, of course, not without value; the appearances of the planets have begun to be explained. Mercury and Venus, the two planets placed below the sun, are tied to it in that they move with the same speed as the mean sun and, as a result, can never be more than certain elongations (longi tudinal distances) from the sun. This restriction on their movements accounts perfectly for their heliacal anomaly, the first of two anomalies of the 28 planets. Ptolemy's method appears valid: he isolates one appearance of the planet at a time, explicates it, and, if further explication are needed, he takes each in turn and gradually compounds the appearances (anomalies) together. Ptolemy puts both Venus and Mercury on epicycles of specific sizes which move on eccentric deferents at specific rates, in order that the planets appear to retrograde (they appear to stop, move backward, stop again, and then continue forward) at the appropriate time and that their elongations vary correctly (their zodiacal anomaly). He constructs similar hypotheses for the outer planets, at which point strange things begin to happen. To understand the problems which now emerge, let us review the appearances of an outer planet. First, outer planets can be at any elongation from the sun, and retrogradation may happen anywhere in the zodiac, as long as the planet artd the sun are in opposition (i.e., they are 180 degrees from one another). The fact that retrogradation occurs only at opposition ties the planet to the sun in much the same way that the inner planets have limited elongations. The outer planets' zodiacal anomaly arises from the fact that the severity of retrogradati on is contingent upon what part of the zodiac the planet is in when retrogradation takes place. Finally, a coincidence arises which haunts the Ptolemaic universe. For each of the three outer planets (Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars), "the sum of the cycles of longitude [the movement of the epicycle on the deferent] and the cycles of anomaly [the movement of the planet on the epicycle] always equals the number of solar years in which these cycles take place"(S=L+A)(p.24M). The resultin g table looks like this: Saturn Jupiter Mars Solar Years 59+ 7179+ Cycles of L 2+ 6- 42+ the amount by which the d'e f erent's center is displaced from the earth. But in proving that whenever the planet is in opposition it is at its true perigee, he assumes the existence of the equant. What is the equant? When Ptolemy calculates the eccentricity of the inner planets, the data he has gives him an amount of arc which corresponds to twice the amount of eccentricity he had previously calculated. Ptolemy is forced to posit the equant, the center of regular angular motion for the planet, at a point equidistant from the center of the eccentric deferent as the earth. The equanfs existence is problematic at best, since the planet whose regular motion the equant is describing is not on a circle about the equant. The planet, then, relative to the circle it is moving on, is moving with irregular motion! After assuming the equant's existence for the outer planets, Ptolemy makes accurate predictions concerning those planets; but how valid is the equant, an assumed equant at that, even if the predictions made with it are accurate? In summarizing Ptolemy's astronomy, I will say that the nobility of his philosophy far outshines the applications of his mathematics to such a philosophy. His clear, Aristotelian thoughts soon become tangled in an ill-supported muddle, at the heart of which lie three problems. The first is the fact that under the Ptolemaic system, according to the appearances, an outer planet must be at perigee when it is in opposition to the sun. Placing an outer planet on an epicycle, however, does not necessitate this phenomenon, as is shown below (Cp., p.525): Cycles of A 57 65 37 . . I -- - conJ nct10n apogee This coincidence gives rise to the discovery of another, namely that retrogradation occurs only at perigee. Ptolemy's constructions to make the epicycles fit the appearances of the outer planets are fairly complex and hard to capture visually. More imporantly, they are more difficult for him to do simply because the outer planets have unlimited elongations. Ptolemy must determine the correlation between the planet's perigee and its being in L Sun / ' opposition/perigee L - - '\ b ......... " \ \ Earth There is nothing in Ptolemy's mathematics that necessitates that Mars be in opposition at perigee; for it is clear that Mars could be anywhere on the epicycle. It is the appearances that dictate the necessity of having perigee at opposition, but Ptolemy does not construct a system in which this must happen. The second problem is that no explanation can be made for why the number of solar years equals the sum of the planet's cycles of longitude and anomaly. For Ptolemy this is a coincidence which, when explicated according to the appearances, produces the configuration of perigee at opposition, another coincidence! These two configurations would seem to make a strong argument for heliocentricity, simply because it is clear that the orbits of all the planets have far more to do with the sun than they have to do with the earth. The last problem, that of the equant, is more subtle, more elusive. It seems clear that if one wishes to maintain the purity, both from a philosophical and a mathematical viewpoint, of the orbits of the planets, one must use only perfect circles in the explication of phenomena. For without such purity of form, not only is the mathematics far more complicated, but also the philosophy (at least the Ptolemaic/ Aristotelian philosophy) becomes besmirched with something less than divine. Perhaps some discussion of the philosophical principles guiding Ptolemy's thought is here appropriate. In Book Thirteen, Chapter Two, Ptolemy states: But it is proper to try and fit as far as possible the simpler hypothesis to the movements in the heavens; and if this does not succeed, then any hypotheses possible. Once all the appear ances are saved by the consequences of the hypotheses, why should it seem strange that such complications can come about in the movements of heavenly things? (Pt., p.429) The first clause harmonizes with Ptolemy's determined reliance on the most simple and perfect mathematical figure, the circle. Simplicity is desirable beca.u se the simple is pure and therefore divine. And in the heavens, as Aristotle (De Cael~, i,2; Metaphys., xii,8) and Ptolemy (Pt., p.429) say, the simple bodies (stars, planets, etc.) are di vine. It does seem strange, however, that Ptolemy should think that we, as definitely non-divine creatures, should have such direct access to understanding this divine simplicity. For Aristotle says, at least of scientific enquiry, "the natural way [of discovering first principles] is to start from the things which are more knowable and obvious to us and proceed towards those which are clearer and more knowable by na ture"(Phys., l 84a 16-17). Indeed, it seems inconsistent to build a system with the simple elements, viz~, circles, for simplicity's sake, only to 29 �condone the use of those simple uni ts in the building of an edifice of such complexity that simplicity is nowhere to be found in the end product. Saying that the edifice is simple because it is composed of simple elements becomes a bad joke. It is not clear, in all fairness to Ptolemy, whether he is attributing the complications found in the explications of the movements of the planets to the planets themselves, or to man's inadequate astronomy. I cannot help but feel, though, that here Ptolemy is trying to apologize for or rationalize the equant, a step which I may feel necessary but which he may not. Later in the chapter, Ptolemy says that we should "judge [the heavenly occurrences'] simplicity from the unchangeableness of the natures in the heavens and their movement"(p. 429). I find a more subtle revelation of doctrine in this passage, which again is Aristotelian. Man's most exalted faculty, that of reason, is for Aristotle the driving force of the cosmos (Metaphys ., xii,8-9). Aristotle and Ptolemy both posit the unchanging nature of the heavens in order, it seems, to have the universe reflect the supremacy of reason, viz .., in the divine motion of the stars, which, when deified, has recognizable power in the heavens and endows men with the privilege of being able to gaze upon it in its manifestations. This belief in Reason makes Man in a very real sense the measure of all things, at ieast insofar as inquiry is concerned. A man, even recognizing the power of Reason, would still be confined in an inquiry not only by the limitations of his own intellect, but also by the particula r beliefs as to what Reasonable things are. He would only discover as much about the manifestatiosn of Reason (in this case, the heavenly bodies) as his belief in the particular capabilities of Reason (e.g., the setting of the stars in motion) would allow him. His belief would hinder his intellectual pursui t wherever a particular concept (e.g., the planets moving in quasi-circles) seemed un-Reasonable. It seems, then, that Ptolemy was hampered by his philosophy. But surely no man's mind is free to wander about the cosmos unfettered, without any form to shape and direct it? If a man must necessarily have some form of mind, what will be that form, that predisposition, which will work best to enable that man to see truth? And this paper is concernd with astronomical truth; therefore, if one were able to find a verifiably superio r astron ·· omy, one might be able t o compare the philosophy or predisposition of the astronomer in question 30 with that of Ptolemy. But what will be the requirements, at least mathematical if not empirical, by which to judge a work superior? Ptolemy's system is dubious in those places, as has been said, where he cannot produce a mathematical construction that necessarily provides the appearances. If an astronomer could structure his universe to allow for the one correct set of appearances, would not his universe be mathematically superior and probably closer to the truth? Copernicus, of course, is the magician of necessity who solves at least two of the three problems of Ptolemy's system. To reiterate, those problems are: 1) that the outer planets are only at perigee at opposition and vice versa, 2) that there is 'no explanation for the coincidence S=L+A, a coincidence which, in Ptolemy's universe, is intimately linked with the first problem, and 3) that the equant comes dangerously near, in the eyes of some, to astronomical heresy. Problem three is still a problem after Copernicus finishes with it, but in a different respect than it is with Ptolemy. In order to understand how Copernicus solves these problems, we shall summarize the Copernican exposition of the uni verse. To begin with, most of the Ptolemaic ratios dealing with the earth's relationship to the hea venly bodies are kept, for a very good reason . The calculations deriving these ratios are based on fairly accurate observations. The calculations now merely ref er to different relationships; for example, the size of Mars's epicycle now becomes the earth's orbit, while the size of the deferent refers to the size of Mars's orbit. The sun is at the center of the universe, and the planets, proceeding out ward, are ordered thus: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. All the planets are moving in the same direction around centers located very close to the sun, while the earth has three movements which p r eserve the appearance of the zodiac and the daily rotation of the celest ia l sphere. But now to address those three problems-first that of the oppositions and perigees of the outer planets. All we need do is diagram the situation according to Copernicus's system (Cp., p.525): It is clear that Mars (or any out er planet) can ony be at opposition at perigee. The second problem is solved when L is understood to be the speed of the slower planet and A the difference in speeds between the two planets (i.e., the number of times the faster overtakes the slowe r ). Now the planets are ordered from observati on by their angular speeds from the slowest to the fastest, outermost orbit to innermost. Thus, when Saturn has completed two orbits (L), the earth, the faster of the two planets, will have overtaken Saturn fifty-seven times (A) and will have taken fifty-nine years to do so (S). It is also evident that whenever a planet overtakes or is overtaken by the earth, a retrogradation will occur. Whereas Ptolemy had to calculate the rates for each planet and its epicycle and engingeer retrogradations, so to speak, Copernicus shows that with their observed rates of revolution around the sun, each planet must retrograde where and when it does. Copernicus's solution t o the problem of the equant is the most astounding of the three solutions. For Ptolemy, the necessity for the equant arose when he had to compound the heliacal anomaly with the zodiacal. In addressing the same problem, Copernicus, rather than resorting to the equant, changes the shape of the planet's orbit to a quasi -circle, a curve "diff erring imperceptibly" from a circle. Here Copernicus makes a radi cal leap away from Ptolemy. Where Ptolemy understood there to be a necessity for perfect circles in affirmation of the divine simplicity of the heavens, Copernicus sees the necessity for a very different kind of simplicity, namely that there be no loopings or spirals in a planet's movement (which Ptolemy and Brahe posit, respectively). This simplicity requires a denial of the fundamental divinity of the heavens--or does it? Copernicus's opening remarks are more fervent that Ptolemy's, full of praise for the virtue of astronomy and the "godlike" motions of the heavens. Copernicus is anything but an atheistic mechanist out to rend all the spirit from his art. Copernicus has shown himself to be master astronomer over Ptolemy, but what of his philosophy? At the end of Book One, Chapter Nine, in Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Copernicus says, "And the ratio of order. .. teaches us [the astronomical] truth, if only--as they say--we would look at the thing with both eyes." It is doubtful that Copernicus thinks that Ptolemy made his observations with one eye, one physical eye, shut. This being the case, Copernicus might well be making a statement about the mind of the astronomer, a mind not fully utilizing its ability to apprehend truth. But what would the hindrance to that mind be? Earlier in this discussion, Ptolemy was seen to be restricting himself by deifying reason. Copernicus appears to be claiming that his mind is unrestricted in comparison to Ptolemy's, but to investigate the meaning and validity of Copernicus' assertion, we must look at the commentary on Copernicus in Johannes Kepler's Epitome of Copernican Astronomy,JV. In the remarks To the Reader (Kp., p.848), Kepler indirectly quotes Christ in Matthew 24:35: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." Kepler, in proclaiming his Christianity, is making a distinction about the term "heavens," which he goes on to explicate: "But his Most Supreme Highness will not pick a fight concerning the heavens; for he knows that the philosophers speak of the visible heavens; and Christ of the invisible heavens." It seems, then, that Christian dogma dictates that the universe, while "stamped with the adornment of harmonic proportions"(Kp., p.850), is as ephemeral as the ground upon which we stand. Christians are free to think not only of the earth as being related to the stars in a fundamental way, but also of the stars as not eternally moving in their perfect circles. As far as Christians are to be concerned, Aristotle's arguments resulting in the divinity of the (visible) heavens must be false, because he fixes the bounda ries of the divine at the limits of human knowing rather than beyond human knowing, as a Christian would. For Aristotle, the most divine geometrical figure is the perfect circle; consequently he posits that the stars, perceivably the most div .~nc bodies, 31 �move in perfoct circles. With Kepler's linking of Christian dogma to astronomy, however, astronomers are freed to violate certain Aristotelian precepts, simply because that which is Reasonable is no longer divine, merely reasonable. And although Man is made in God's image and, as a result, has some faculty for reason, Man is just that, an image; for him to decipher the unimaginably complex movements of the spheres, he will have to look to God for assistance. Given that Copernicus is a Christian (as is evidenced by his "Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul III"), how does he view the universe? Kepler, in quoting "Copernican Philosophy," uses Copernicus's understanding of astronomy to symbolize the Holy Trinity. The sun is a symbol for the Father, the planetary region a symbol for the Holy Ghost, and the sphere off ixed stars a symbol for Jes us Christ, the Son. Kepler is careful not to say, however, that these regions are the Trinity; he says merely that the tripartite nature of the universe serves as a vehicle for contemplating the Trinity. Now it is possible to see some correlation between the philosophical and the astronomical. Copernicus's assertion that truth can be seen if we open both eyes may be not merely an injunction to see that system which will necessitate the appearances; it may be instead an exhortation to the Christian faith, the faith which allows Copernicus to see man not as the focal point of the universe, but rather as an integral part of God's world. Having examined both Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomies in comparison with their respective philosophies, we have established some sort of correlation between astronomy and philosophy. Ptolemy, in a very Aristotelian manner, conceives of a geocentric universe, a universe whose first principle is Reason. Copernicus, whose universe necessitates the heavenly appearances rather than merely provides for them, is a Christian, and as a result is slightly less hindered that Ptolemy in his thinking about the heavens. We have established a correlation between astronomy and philosophy; but is there a causal relationship between the two? We have seen that ast r onomy is a species of mathematical inquiry, relating to the ordered movements of the heavens, but "philosophy," insofar as it has been used in this paper (and in the term "Copernican Philosophy"), might better be termed "the result of reflection upon one's belief." Ptolemy probably believed in the supremacy of Reason, if we take his Aristotelianism to its logical end, while Copernicus was a Christian. If this "belief" is the farm of mind as was discussed earlier, then it is fundamental in a person and in some way must have given Copernicus the ability to see things differently that Ptolemy. Again if, as Kepler says, "it should not be surprising to anyone that eyesight should learn from r eason,"(Kp., p.854) surely it should not be surprising to anyone that reason learn from belief? Variant Sonnet: ·Atnazon Mourning Dahra Latham ('90) The river sleeps beneath the sun; Her warm, fecund meanders run Through fen and forest drowsily To the cold wakefulness of sea. To rub her eyes and shake her hair, Thinking of sunstruck jungles where She slipped to sleep, having forgot What strange change this night's rest has wrought. So the pard-huntress surely rose At Tibur, surely shook her hair Half of her mind still in repose Forgetting what had brought her there. And raised her head, in sunstruck Syria crowned To see the first strange frost on Roman ground. N.B.: All quotations from Ptolemy, Copernicus, or Ke ple r were taken fr om Gre at Books of the Weste rn World, no. 16, "Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler," R.M.Hutchins, ed. All quotations from Aristotle were taken from The Basic Works of Aristotle, R. McKeon, ed. In addition, any quotation followed by "M" is taken from the Sophomore "Ptolemy, Copernicus" Manual. 32 33 �Untitled Sahana Dharmapuri ('91) When her eyes are violets, he is a universe of dandelions to her, and she folds easily into his gentleness. He smells her breasts like plums and rests quietly at her stomach, listening to the chatter of her flesh. He hides but does not hide here. He only hopes to touch her once again; "to fall into the sublime" he says. The conversation of their bodies is insanity, violence, delicate trembling. When they wish on distant nebulas and dying stars, midnight is a mistress to these sorrows. 34 The Return of Oedipus Rex · The Metaphysics of Incest Michael McShane ('88) Writing of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Freud asks why it, more than other "tragedies of fatedness," has enjoyed such continued prominence. What is it about Oedipus Rex that has allowed it to hold such powerful sway over minds and imaginations for so many centuries? Freud's answer to the question is well known: Sophocles' tragedy exerts power over us because we all (men presumably) are Oedipal; we all literally but unconsciously desire to kill our fathers and sleep with our mothers. Freud argues that the play touches an unconscious sexual nerve in its audiences and readers; they participate in Oedipus' drama without realizing it. Freud concludes that Oedipus Rex maintains its hold on audiences because Oedipus' sexual complexes and catharses are secretly shared by viewers. I think Freud's question is good but his answer somewhat limited. I am not convinced that everyone shares an unconscious literal desire to kill "his" father and marry "his" mother. Yet it does seem true that Oedipus Rex touches some universal desire, which perhaps Oedipus' murder and incest symbolize. This paper will argue that Oedipus is motivated primarily by a universally shared metaphysical desire. This desire is erotic, certainly, but not merely sexual. To show this the paper will first discuss some Aristotelian meta physics and then--for the sake of contrast--an Homeric corned y before turning to a discussion of the Oedipal tragedy itself. In Greek as well as in much post-Greek thought the form of the circle has held great significance. In the Physics, for example, Aristotle describes the motions of the heavenly bodies as being circular. The planets are divine because they eternally follow circular paths. The major characteristic of the circle, Aristotle argues, is that its end is also its beginning/end. Thus, unlike an object following a rectilinear path, the planet never experiences anything new. To a greater extent than any other movable, the planet's circularity allows it to transcend change and time. For Aristotle, then, the planets are divine; their circular orbits indicate a high degree of self-enclosed, self-sufficient, persistent identity. Following their circular itineraries, the planets recuperate themselves at every moment, suffering minimal intrusion of anything foreign or external to them. Nearly unconditioned, they return to themselves, eternally. The one thing that does condition the planets, Aristotle argues, is the most divine being in the cosmos, the unmoved mover. The prime mover solicits the circular motions of the planets, which are moved by an erotic desire for its perfection. The prime mover also displays a kind of circular quality. It is pure activity: thinking thinking. The prime mover thinks only its own thoughts. It always and immediately returns to itself. The prime mover can be imagined as an extremely tight circle of selfconsciousness. 35 �Even more than the planets, the divine prime mover transcends time. As pure activity, it has present in it no potentiality whatsoever. As such, the prime mover cannot change or move, given that Aristotle's definition of motion is "the actuality of potentiality qua potentiality." Aristotle describes time as the "measure of motion." Thus, the potentiality-less prime mover cannot move and consequently is outside of time. Thinking only its own self, the prime mover can be represented as even more self-subsistent and self-enclosed than the planets, which are moved by it. Closed off, the prime mover's world is populated only by itself.Unaffected by anything external to the circle of its own intellectual activity, the prime mover is radically unconditioned and free. From the above I hope it can be seen that in Aristotle's thought the form of the circle is the form of the divine, the eternal, the self-identical, self-enclosed and self-sufficient. From this thought I will try to show that there is a kind of "circle logic" at work in Greek literature as well as philosophy. Two examples of literary circle logic will be adduced. One is comedic--i.e., has a happy ending--and the other tragic: the tales of Odysseus and Oedipus. Odysseus' travels represent a great circle, starting from Ithaca, turning through the events of the Iliad, re-turning through the events of the Odyssey and ending with a triumphal return to his original starting point, Ithaca. Odysseus' r eturning to Ithaca represents the closing of his circle, where end meets beginning. There he recuperates his own origin: he makes peace with his father. There Odysseus kills off the external suitors, restoring the integrity of his family circle. He regains his ever-faithful wife Penelope, his troubled son, his kingship, his place. The return of Odysseus indi cates the recuperation of his very identity, which h a d been a t sta ke th roughout his a r cing journeys. As with the planets, the meshing of the Ithacan scene at the beginning of Odysseus' travels with the scene there at the end in di ca tes a kind of transcendence of time. The great circular reasoner, Hegel, remarks that true forgiveness means negating history; unweaving, Penelope forgives and trusts Odysseus, thus negating the troublesome period between his departure and return, a period when he was out doing godknowswhat with godknowswhom godknowswhere. Another example of temporal transcendence concerns the suitors. They die off relatively expediently. More than 36 that, however, by means of Athena's action, Ithaca somehow eludes the horrible regression of revenge seen in another return story, The Oresteia. As Helen drugged Menelaos into forgetting his past, so Athena somehow induces the families of the slain suitors to forget that Odysseus has wiped out their men. Only by this collective forgetting of the past can Odysseus ever hope to govern in Ithaca. The comedic nature of the Odyssey depends upon Odysseus' ability to transcend time and history. Thus we see two examples of how the triumphal return of Odysseus somehow involves a denial, forgetting, negation or transcendence of the time between. Turned full circle, Odysseus can live at peace with his wife, family, city and self as if he had never left town. Having fully returned to his origin, Odysseus has re-captured his identity, place and independence, in conformity with the circle logic of the circular path he followed. The fin al comedic nature of the Odyssey is guaranteed by its circular form: the end meshes successfully with the beginning. If, as I have suggested, the circular form guarantees perfection and absolute self-suff iciency in Greek philosophy and comic epics, it also presides over the tragedy of Oedipus Rex. An examination of that play will reveal a sense . in which the divine cir cle becomes a vicious circle for human beings. There are many aspects of circularity and broken ci rcularity in Oedipus Rex. I won' t go into all of them here, but the most obvious aspect of circularity in the play is Oedipus' geographical itinerary. Like Odysseus, Oedipus' wanderings form a great circle. He departs originally from Thebes and turns through Cithaera and Corinth, from there re-turning home to Thebes via the illfated crossroads and the interview with the sphinx. Although this itinerary seems to conform to the circular path taken by Odysseus, there obviously remains a tragic difference. For Oedipus, homecoming, although first apparently excessively successful, becomes increasingly and ultimately horrifying. An important difference between Oedipus' and Odysseus' circular paths concerns the tightness of their circles. Whereas Odysseus returns to his wife after killing her suitors, Oedipus returns to his own mother after killing his father. In terms of circle logic, what does it mean to marry mother after killing father? Why do men commonly dream of this kind of return, as Jocasta suggests? To marry one's own mother indicates the most immediate, most intimate form of circular return, where the circle closes back on itself extremely tightly. Oedipus has literally returned to his own place of origin, his mother's body. Conceiving children with her, it is as if he is conceiving himself. He can, in effect, be his own parent and child simultaneously. Returning so closely to his own origin, Oedipus expresses a desire to undo what has been done, to negate his past and start again, to re-create himself by himself. In this way we see in Oedipus' story, as in Odysseus', the Aristotelian premiss of time-transcendence as described by circle logic. The desire to marry one's own mother, it seems to me, comes out of an Aristotelian desire for self-sufficiency. As described above, self-sufficiency means minimal dependence upon anything exterior to the circle of one's own present identity. Such a desire for self-sufficiency accounts for Oedipus'(perhaps unconscious) desire to be selfbegotten, self-raised. It implies a dread of otherness, newness or foreigness. Having children by his own mother indicates Oedipus' desire to populate the world with himself. He desires to be like the unmoved mover, inhabiting a cosmos in which only he is present. Before Oedipus' self-sufficient dread of anything alien all otherness or negativity must be annihilated. Hence essential to Oedipus' return to his maternal origin is the killing of his own father. If self-sufficiency means being conditioned only by oneself then paternity, as a pregi ven and prohibiting condition, must be eliminated. To use the Aristotelian language, killing the father is for the sake of marrying the mother, which is for the sake of circular self-sufficiency. Thus we can see that Oedipus symbolically achieves the closest possible meshing of beginning and end as prescribed by the logic of circularity. Why is it then that Odysseus' circle is comically charmed while Oedipus' becomes vicious, tragic? This question might seem foolish; after all , one could reason, Oedipus committed incest, which is a horrible crime against nature, hence it is no wonder that he ended tragically in Oedipus Rex. Yet, such reasoning misses the point. Odysseus certainly committed a few crimes in his career. We must ask why incest is regarded as a uniquely horrible crime. This question becomes more compelling in light of the doctrine of circle logic set out before. Circle logic, as presented in my interpretation of Aristotle, seems to imply that the tighter the circle followed the more divine the follower. For this reason planets, although divine, are less di vine than the prime mover. As set out above, the planets do move, require externality, are conditioned, do desire some more original other. On the other hand, the tight inner circle of the prime mover implies its wholly original, independent and divine nature. If circle logic be taken as a standard, it would seem that Oedipus should fare better than his counterpart in circularity, Odysseus. For schematically, Odysseus' life (up to the end of the Odyssey) should look something like this: A birth, origin From this diagram we can see that Odysseus doesn't fully return to his origin. There is a rectilinear portion of his lif e(line AB), for which he must be less divine, according to Aristotelian circle logic. On the other hand, Oedipus' life drawing (up to the end of Rex) looks like this: birth, marriage, child begetting Cithaera Sphinx crossroads Here we can see that if circle logic is valid, Oedipus should end up more divine, more outside of time, more self-sufficient than Odysseus, for he more closely approaches his own origin. If this is true we reach the paradoxical conclusion that circle logic seems to sanction, even demand, incest; for incest 37 �represents the closing of the circle. Given, then, that Oedipus' life most closely approximates the divine pattern of the self-enclosed divine circle, we are compelled to ask our question again: "Why is it then that Odysseus' circle is comically charmed while Oedipus' is tragically vicious?" Why is it that Odysseus is able to transcend time while Oedipus remains haunted and destroyed by his own past? Why is it that Odysseus and those around him can forgive and forget, while Oedipus is doomed to remembrance and condemnation? Why is it that Odysseus is able to re-establish his own self-sufficient identity, his place and his kingship while Oedipus is left dependent, dethroned and exiled? Circle logic would seem to indicate that Oedipus should have been the most divinely content, self-satisfied and self-sufficient man ever. He obviously is not that at the end of the play. That contradiction, I think, lies at the heart of the tragedy of Oedipus Rex as human tragedy. It suggests the true meaning of Oedipus' much bruited "tragic flaw." It was not for something idiosyncratic, like his impatience or wrathfulness, that Oedipus had to suffer. It was because he made a bid for something all human beings intrinsically desire: he aspired to be divine, completely circularly self-sufficient. Like Aristotle's planets, Oedipus erotically desired to completely overcome all alien being, transcend time and his own history, to endlessly renew himself in a closed world populated only by himself. In short, Oedipus desired divinity, self-sufficiency and immortality. I think the message of Oedipus Rex is that such a radical transcendence of the human is impossible and dangerous, contrary to what Aristotle claims in the Ethics. Oedipus discovered that human beings must content themselves with human things. This means, in effect, that human beings cannot ever be sufficient unto themselves; Sophocles has Oedipus learn that there is no escape from otherness, newness, time and external conditions. To try to evade mortality, Oedipus finds, is to commit horrible crimes. He cannot close the circle of his history without annihilating his own father, killing off thereby, a part of himself. · I think the real power of Oedipus Rex lies in its depiction of the human soul. Part of being human is dreaming of immortality and self-sufficiency. As the Odyssey perhaps suggests, human nature holds out a vague promise of divine transcendence. Yet, full divinity can never be fully obtained, at least according to Oedipus Rex. Oedipus sensed the divine in him, sensed it perhaps as intellect or good fortune (his "mother"), and erotically pursued this divinity, although perhaps unconsciously. Oedipus' pursuit of his divine self took place in a dream-like state of amnesia. When Oedipus a woke the circle was broken; he had blood on his hands. The tragedy of Oedipus Rex is a tragedy of the impossibility of radical human transcendence. 38 39 �Thus, by substituting (5) and (2). into (6), we arrive at, (sin 2Lz)(3600)(Ui) 2 + [(cosL 2)(60)(U 1)-M(BC)] 2 = M 2(DB) Therefore, (sin2Lz) (3600) (U 1)2+ (cos2Lz) (3600) (U 1) 2 - 120 (U i) (cosLz) * M(BC) + M2(BC) = M2(DB) A Modern Investigation of the Eccentric Hypothesis Therefore, (3600) (U 1) 2 [sin 2L 2+cos 2LiJ (120) (U 1) (cosL 2 * M(BC) + M 2(BC) = M 2(DB) by Tim McNicholl '90 Therefore, (3600) (U 1) =M2(DB) - The circle in the above diagram is the eccentric with center C. Point Bis the position of the Earth, and D is a given position of the planet. Thus Li is the angle of apparent movement and L 2 is the angle of regular movement. The planet moves counterclockwise from point A, the perigee. The drawing is an inversion of the more commonly used diagram in Book III, Chapter Two, of the Almagest. However, this will not affect the results obtained. In the following equations, M(a) denotes the measure of line a. 1. Given the Angle of Regular Motion, to find the Angle of Apparent Motion. A M(DC)=60*U i (sinL 2)*60*U i=M(DE) ( cosLz)*60*U i=M(EC) Therefore, Li= Sin- 1 { (SinLz) (60) / +[ 3600 - 120 (n) ( CosL 2) + n 2] 1h} (15) (8) Q.E.F. Thus, Substituting (8) into (7), 2. Given the Angle of Apparent Motion, to find the Angle of Regular Motion. (3600)(U 1)-( l 20)(n)(U 1)2( cosLz)+(n)2(U 1)2 =M2(DB) Consider the following equations again, Let U i equal the unit that measures DC sixty times. Therefore, (U i) 2 [3600 - (120) (n) (cosL 2) + n2] = M2(DB) Therefore, +U i[3600 - (120) (n) (cosL 2) + n]11 M(DB) 2= (9) M(EC)=(CosLi)(Uz)+n(U i) M(DE)=(SinLi)*U2 M(DC)=60*U 1 M(DE)=(SinLz)(60)(U 1) By this unit, Let U 2=the unit that measure DB one time. From the drawing it follows that, (1) (2) (3) M(EB)=M(EC)-M(BC) (4) M2(EC)+ M2(D E )=M2(DC) (10) (11) +Ui[3600 - (120) (n) (cosLz) + n 2]112= U 2 (12) Equating (12) and (2), Substituting (3) into (4), we obtain, M(EB)=( cosL 2)( 60 )(U i)-M(BC) By this unit, M(DB)=l *U 2 M(DE)=(sinLl )*U 2 Equating (10) and (9), Now then, (13) (5) At the same time, Substituting (11) into (13), (6) 40 (14) (7) (120) (U 1) 2 (cosLz) * M(BC) + M2(BC) M(BC)=n*U i Therefore, SinL 1=(SinLz)*60/ +[3600 - 120 (n) (CosL 2) + n2]1/z This function does not work, however, when 90 > L < 360. For, within these values, CosL 2 is negative, slightly disturbing the value of the denominator of the right side of (15). This is mended by changing the - sign in the radical to a + operand which is - when O~L~90. Accordingly, Li= Sin-i{ (SinL 2) (60) + [ 3600 + (120) (n) (CosL 2) + (16) n2] 1/2} Let n= the number of times U i measures BC. With the publication of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium in 1543, the heliocentric Hrevolu tion" was heralded along with the decline of the geocentric theory of Ptolemy. The many advances made afterwards in mathematics were used to refine and confirm the heliocentric system while the obsolete system of Ptolemy was given little of their attention. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the eccentric hypothesis of Ptolemy using the mathematics of the heliocentric era. Its goals are to derive formulas that yield the angle of apparent or regular motion when given the other angle, and to verify that mean passage occurs at apparent quadrature. Therefore, (SinLi) ( + [3600 - 120 (n) (CosLz) + n2 ]112) =(SinLz) * 60 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Substituting (1), (2), and (3) into (5) , [ (CosL 1) (U 2) + (n) (U 1)]2 + (Sin 2L 1) (U z) 2 =3600 (U 1) 2 Therefore, (Cos 2L 1) (Ut) 2 +2 [(CosL 1) (U z) (n) (U 1) ] + (n) 2 (U 1) 2 + (Sin L 1) (U z)2 = 3600(U 1)2 Therefore, (Uz) 2 + 2 [(CosL 1)(n) (U 2)(U 1)] + (U 1)2[N 2 - 3600] =0 (SinL 1) (U 1) + [3600 - 120 (n) (CosLz) + n2] 1f2 =(SinLz) (60) (U1) 41 �d/dL = (n2cos 2Li - n2+ 3600) 1/~ .5[d ( n2cos2Li /2 n 2 + 3600) I dLi] * [l / (n2cos2L 1 - n2+ 3600) 1 We now have an equation in the form ax 2+bx+c=0 where, L 2=t*m L 2/m=t x=Uz a=l b=2(CosLi)(U i)(n) c=(U i) 2[n-3600] Therefore, dL 1/d[L 2/t] or m*dL 1/dL 2 is sought. =.5 [d/ dL 1 n 2cos2Lil * [l /(n 2cos2L 1-n2+3600) 1/ 2 In addition to the basic rules of diff erentiation, the fallowing axioms have been used: Using the quadratic formula to solve for U 2, we obtain, And so, at apparent quadrature, the apparent and regular velocities are equal, no matter what the distance between the centers is. =n 2 * dcosL 1/dL 1 * cosL 1 * 1/( ... ) 1/ 2 =n 2(-sinL 1)(cosL 1)/(n 2cos 2L 1-n2+3600) 1/ 2 dL 2/dt = dt*m/dt = m*dt/dt = m (6) Q.E.D. 1 dsinx/dx= 1/(l-x2) h dsinx/ dx= cosx dcosx/dx= -sinx Inserting (5) and (6) into (4), (n)2 (U i)2 cos2Li- 4 Consider equation (8) from section two. Diff erentiating both sides with respect to L 1, d/dLi(-1/60 (sinLi) (cosL 1) (n) .±._ 1/60[ n2cos2L 1n 2 + 3600] 1/z =1/60{-n (cos 2L 1 - sin 2L 1) .±_ [-n 2 (sinL 1) (cosL 1) / n 2 cos 2L 1 - n 2+ 3600) 1lz) (7) Therefore, U 2=-2(CosLi)(U iHn)±_2(U 1)[(n) 2(Cos 2Li)n2+3600]11y2 dL 2/dL 1= d/dL 1 sin-1 [-1 /60 (sinL 1)(CosLi)(n).±_l / 60(n2Cos2L 1-n2+3600) 1I] (1) Substituting (7) into (3), Now then, d/dL 1 sin-i (1/60 (sinL 1)(cosLi) (n) + 1/60 [n2 cos 2Li - n2 +3600] 1/z dsin-i (1/60 (sinL 1) (cosL 1) (n) .:t. 1/60 [n 2 cos 2L 1n2 + 3600] 1fz/ d (-1 /60 (sinL 1) (cosL 1) (n) .±._ 1/60 [n 2 cos 2L 1- n2 + 3600] 1/z =1/60 {-n (cos 2L 1 - sin 2L 1) + [-n 2 (sinL 1) (cosLi) I (n 2 cos 2L 1 - n 2 + 3600) 1/U / {l-[-l/60(sinLi) (cosL 1) (n) .±_l /60[n 2 cos2Li -n2+ 3600] 1lz) 1/2 @ =l I (1 - { 1/60 (sinLi) (cosLi) (n) ±_1/60 [n2cos2L 1 - n2+ 3600] 1h) 2) 1 /z And so, substituting (8) into (1) and inverting the result, Uz= -2 (Cos Li) (U i) (n) .:t. (Ui) 2 [ n 2 - 3600 ] } 1h/ 2 {4 Therefore, U 2=-(CosLi)(U 1)(n).±_U i[(n)2(Cos2Li)-n2+3600]1fz (6) Equating ( 4) with (2) and inserting equation (6), SinLi { -cosLi (U i) (n) ±_ (U i) [ n 2 cos 2Li n 2 + 3600 ] 112) = SinL 2( 60) (U 1) -(SinL 1) (CosLi) (U 1) (n) .±._ (SinLi) (U 1) [ (n)2(Cos2Li) - n2+ 3600] 1l~(SinLz)(60)(Ui) - (SinL 1) (CosLi) (n) .:t. (SinLi) [ n 2 (Cos 2Li) n2+3600] 1f2/ 60 = SinL 2 (7) Sin-1 {-(SinL 1) (CosLi) (n) + (SinLi) [ n2 (Cos 2Li) - n 2 + 3600] lfi; 60 } =L 2 (8) (2) Multiplying both sides of (2) by d/dLi(-1 /60(sinL 1)(cosL 1)... ),d /dL 1sin-1( ... ) =d /dL 1 ( 1/60 (sinL 1 ) (cosL 1 ) (n) .±._ 1/ 60 [n 2 cos2L 1 - n2+ 3600] 1'2/ {1- [-1 /60 (sinL 1) (cosL 1) (n) .±._ 1/60 [n2cos2L 1 n 2 + 3600 ] 1/} 112 (3) Where the variable operand is + when O~L 2~.180 and - when 180>L<360. Now, solving for the numerator of the right side of Q.E.F. d/ dL 1(- 1/60(si nLi)( cosL 1) ... ) =l/60[d/fLi~inL 1 )(cosL 1 ) (n) d/dLi (n cos Li... ) 112] 3. To Verify that Mean Passage Occurs at Apparent Quadrature. It is first required to find the apparent velocity when the planet appears to have moved 90 from apogee or perigee. In the language of differentials: what is dLi/dt when L 1=90? Since L 2 is the angle of regular motion, and thus is directly proportional to time, (3), dL 1/dL 2 =[-1/60 (sinL 1) (cosL 1) (n) + 1/60 [n 2 cos 2L 1 n2+ 3600]1/}i/2 - / 1/60{-n (cos2Lr sin 2L 1 ) + [-n2 (sinLi) (cos2L 1) /(n2 cos2L 1n2 + 3600) 1/ 2} (9) Now, let L 1=90, dLi/dL 2= {l -L±_l /60(-n 2+36000) 1l} 1lz/ l/60[+n] = {1-[ 1/3600*(3600-n 2]} 1/z / n/60 .:t. ={1 -[l-n 2/3600]} 1/z / n/60 (4) The first derivative in the right side of (4) can be resolved as follows: d/dL 1 - (sinL 1) (cosL 1) (n) = -n [sinL 1 . dcosL 1/dL 1+cosL 1dsinLi/dLi]= -n [cos 2Li-sin 2L 1 ] (5) Resolving the second derivative in (4), = n/60 I n/60 =1 Now, in the first part of this section, it was determined that the apparent velocity at a point was equal to m * dL 1/dL 2. Thus, at apparent quadrature the perceived velocity ism. Since L 2=t * m, for any value of Li, 43 42 �An Adaptation, 1987 The Bow- of Heracles John Pronko ('90) Carolyn Barndt ('90) This is no garden. Don't think I mistook this for the banks of Euphrates: You are not the only man on the face of th e ea r th Although you might as well be --even as we have both tasted t he f ru i t of that tree whose branches are many bu t finite -I see whe r e we are. Cut off from the past Sa nctuar y, th e blind green re li ef -I found you culti vat ing your thi stles and th orns cursing th e ea rt h fo r n ot yie ld ing up more. --You know tha t story; this is not the begi nn in g. Not being the fi rst I can't take the blame for The pain in your r ibcage and countless transgressions: I' m not the agent of you r fall from grace, I Resist being pushed through the stencils of h isto ry. Far f r om paradise Why try to forget what might have been easy But may not be impossible? --although we need othe r skins , hi des fo r protectio n although we have skins at all --with th e fruit i n us rooted, to speak our own blame: To stand before each other, n aked and not be ashamed. Sophocles's employment of the deus ex machina as agent of resolution in Philoctetes is disturbing. There is a sense that Heracles' appearance completely undermines the events of the play. Philoctetes is understandably unwilling to serve the Atridae and Odysseus. He has for nine years fought his own miserable war on Lemnos and survived. Glory is no longer of interest to him, nor does he care to take steps to avenge himself. Philoctetes wants to go home. Neoptolemus can at least grant him that. He ultimately agrees to do so. One might consider this the human resolution of the play. This is blatantly inadequate, but it seems at least consistent with the rest of the play. Heracles appears and in one line Philoctetes, the play's paradigm of constancy, yields. Yes, Philoctetes will go to Troy. This is difficult to accept unless there is some way to understand the appearance of Heracles as necessary. In addition to the three main characters in the play there is a fourth, the bow of Heracles. It is the bond between Heracles and Philoct'etes. Perhaps this bow is the key to understanding this enigma tic conclusion. Heracles says to Philoctetes that after Troy is taken: "From the spoils of the campaign you must dedi cate some, on my py re, in memory of my bow" ( 1.1431 ). T.B.L. Webster chooses to translate the words, roewe €µwe ,as, "what my bow has achieved." It seems strange that a man should be asked to pay homage to a weapon. Heracles does not ask that homage be paid to himself or for that matter to Zeus. Odysseus' plan is to disarm Philoctetes. Without the bow Philoctetes is not to be feared, but while it is in his possession, it sends arrows that none may avoid, that carry death (1.105). Early in the play it is unclear whether Philoctetes is needed or not. For awhile it seems that the only matter is to get the bow, and Philoctetes is someone standing in the way. When Neoptolemus first speaks to the chorus he hints that the destinies of the bow and Philoctetes are inseparable. Neoptolemus also presents a connection between the bow and Philoctetes' suffering: As for his present loneliness and suffering, this, too, no doubt is part of the God's plan that he may not bend against Troy the divine invincible bow until the time shall be fulfilled, at which it is decreed, that Troy, as they say, shall fall to that bow. (1.194) The fact that Troy shall fall to the bow is echoed much later when Heracles declares that Ilium must twice fall to his bow ( 1.1439). As the play continues it becomes plain that Philoctetes and the bow are inextricably linked. In the mind of Philoctetes it is obvious that he identifies himself with the bow. When he introduces himself to Neoptolemus he is the master of Heracles' arms ( 1.260). This is before he is Phi- 45 44 �loctetes the son of Poias. It is worth noting that Philoctetes was not bitten by the viper until he posessed the bow, which links with Neoptolemus' understanding of the reason for his suffering. The suffering which is synonymous with the name Philoctetes is caused by the bow. This is echoed by Philoctetes' stern suggestion to Neoptolemus that he should bow in prayer to the Gods' envy that the bow may not be to him a sorrow as it was to himself and its former master ( l. 776). This connection between the weapon and Philoctetes' plight is further reinforced by the parallel Heracles draws between his own sufferings and those of Philoctetes: "All this suffering must be your suffering too, the winning of a life to an end in glory, out of this suffering" (1.1422). The divine bow will conquer Troy. Philoctetes suffers because it is his lot to bear the bow and share the glory it will win. The bow is a holy object. When Neoptolemus first beholds it he asks if he might see it closer, touch and adore it like a god ( 1.656). It has passed from the hand of a dying Heracles to the living Philoctetes. There is something immortal about it. It has a destiny of its own that has outlived the original owner. Mythologically the bow is believed to have been a gift from Apollo.(l) Heracles concludes his speech with the words, Holiness does not die with men that die Whether they live or die it cannot perish" ( 1.1444). Is the bow in some way a symbol of such holiness? Philoctetes is the rightful bearer of Heracles' weapon. He received it as a gift when he agreed to light the dying hero's pyre. Philoctetes himself states that it is as a result of friendly help that he fi rst won it (1.670). In a strange way the will of Heracles was transmitted to Philoctetes when he conceded to execute the man's last wish. Philoctetes is in a way bound to Heracles' will. The gift of the bow mi gh t be. un derstood to re present that bo nd. Until the appointed time arrived when Philoctetes no longer had to suffer because of the bow, it nonetheless was what kept him alive. The bow was what he used to shoot the birds that filled his belly (1.286). Without the bow Philoctetes would have died. Lemnos was the place where the bow and the man who was to use it had to be kept until a predetermined number of years had elapsed. The asocial properties of Philoctetes' disease may have been to further assure that neither bearer nor bow appear before the appointed hour. The bow belongs to Philoctetes, and since i t was acquired through an act of good will, Odysseus' 46 deception cannot successfully work against it. It is interesting to note that Neoptolemus does not falter in his deceit until he acquires the bow. Ultimately he realizes that it must remain with Philoctetes. The two cannot be separated. Any bow may be understood as a symbol of will. When a bow is aimed, before the shaft is released the archer has willed it to strike its target. This bizarre weapon that Philoctetes possesses never misses its mark. Unlike a man's will this bow never fails. Its will is greater than any man's. Philoctetes may believe that it was his own inner strength that allowed him to survive those nine horrendous years, but without the bow he would have perished. He may feel that he is the bow's master, but in the end he is its servant and through it a servant of the gods. He who is conquerable must serve the inconquerable. Heracles must appea r at the end of the play because his is the one voice Philoctetes must listen to. The bow is Philoctetes' provider and master. He will only understand that from the mouth of the person to whom he first subjugated his will, as a result of which he subsequently received the bow. This bow is an executive instrument of the gods, and the man Philoctetes has been chosen to launch its avenging shaft against Troy. The divine destiny of the bow and its se r vant is to kill Paris who is the cause of all this evil and take Troy (1.1426). Philoctetes may want to go home, but he cannot disobey. He h as success fu lly asserted h is will against men, but he cannot against gods. Divine destiny supercedes the aspirations of any man. The employ me nt of th e deus ex machina seemed to deny the h u man r esolution of this play. In fact this was no resolu tion a t all because it failed to consult wha t migh t be · considered the most important cha r acte r, the bow. Philoctetes was blind if he actually belie ved that Heracles' bow was destined me r el y to shoot bi rds and then retire on a dusty shelf i n Oeta. No one other than Heracles could open his exhausted eyes. Just as no man determines when and why he suffers, so also, no man determines when and why he tastes triumph. All men bow before the ins truments of the gods. Three Loyal Haikus Jana Giles ('88) In twilight often finding the geometry of your sonorous world; and from your strong eye I am given a gaze so finite, silent: this I know to be the moment of convergence the second splintered from infinity. 1986 All line mentions and quotations are from David Grene's translation except: ( 1) Larousse, World Mvthologv. p. 141, edited by Pierre Grima!. 47 �11 1 THE LEARNED PRINCESS Erika Wilson ('88) Once upon a time, in a kingdom not so terribly far away, a moderately fair princess was sighing over the lack of a certain something. "Oh," sighed she, "I wish I knew what it all meant." And with a trembling lip and a troubled brow, she returned to the books that lay scattered in a intellectual confusion about her royal chamber. For you see, our princess was a scholar. And though this may seem to be a rather odd occupation for a fairy-tale princess (for indeed she was), it had all come about in a most natural manner. Some years ago, no matter how long, the King had found himself with that rare st of royal commodities: Time on his hands. And so, as it was a most delicious spring day, he decided to take his delightful young daughter for a walk about the castle grounds. At first she ran about in all directions, squealing and chasing butterflies as her father strolled in a stately manner, watching her antics with gentle amusement. Inevitably, she grew tired, so she and her father lay themselves down on a cool green hillside to watch the cloud races in the sky. But now that her body was tired, it seemed that the little princess's mind was free to work without distraction. "Daddy," she piped, "what makes the sky blue?" "Huh?" he grunted, for the warm sunshine had just about put him to sleep. "Sky? Blue? ... uh, 48 Atmosphere ... urm ... Refraction ... ahem,ah ... humph." He paused to pull his eyebrows together, hoping that such a maneuver would aid his memory, but his daughter was too busy to notice, for she had rolled over and had another object in view. "Why is the grass green, Daddy?" "Chlorophyll." He answered triumphantly after a brief pause. "Ah, Photosynthesis ... ahem, ah ... humph." And he was stuck again. Unmindful of the black thunder cloud gathering on his brow, the little princess turned her wide blue eyes on him and asked sweetly; "Papa, what is the nature of _ Man?" His mouth shut with an audible snap, his eyebrows shot up and he answered her in the only way a truly wise king could. "I think I smell chocolate chips. Let's go see if Mama's making cookies." And that was the end of that. But later that night, as he and his queen were getting ready for bed, he mentioned their daughter's precocious curiosity, and the question she had put to him that day. "The nature of Man." He chuckled. "Who would have thought?" And he laughed and ·h ook his head, willing to leave it at that. But the Queen nodded quietly and looked thoughtful, for she had a great deal of that even more rare of royal commodities: Good common sense. And she knew that a mind such as her daughter had shown would be a terrible thing to waste. So as her husband snored, she lay long awake, planning and making notes on the big legal pad she always kept on the bedside table. The next day, she took her daughter bY. the hand and led her into a part of the castle that the little princess had never seen before. They walked down a long cold passageway, thick with dust and cobwebs. Something small and black skittered around a corner and the princess shivered, but ·s aid nothing. They came to an abrupt halt before a huge wooden door with great knobby bars of black metal criss-crossing it in a most uninviting manner. With a loud rattle that startled the Ii ttle princess, her mother pulled a ring of keys out of her pocket and choosing the largest and ugliest one of all, she inserted it into the nasty old padlock tha.t guarded the door. Using both hands, she managed to turn the key around and the unhappy lock snapped .o pen with a mangled sort of sound. The Queen put her shoulder to the door and as it creaked unheathily open, our princess squeezed her eyes shut, knowing that whatever lay begin such a grim facade· must be horrible. Her mother pulled her gently forward and said softly: "Come on dear, it's all right. You can open your eyes now." Unwilling, but trust~ng ·; trre- mater­ nal instinct to keep her from harm, sh'e opened her eyes and gasped at what met her bewilqered gaze. Books! Wall to wall, floor to ceiling; door to door, the entire room was filled with books. "Oh mother!" the princess exclaimed as her glowing eyes caressed the room's occupants with barely restrained eagerness. "Wherever shall I begin?" "Right here," her mother said, and laid three books down on a nearby desk. Her daughter walked over and ran a puzzled finger across the names stamped on the covers. "Yewklid?" she asked. "Didn't he do math or something?" "That's right," her mother replied. "He will show you how to think." "Oh," said her daughter, and nodded vaguely. "And this one, Play-doh?" "He will show you how not to think," said her mother, and smiled at some little inward amusement. "Uh huh," said the daughter, unconvinced. "And the last, Airsdoddle? "Oh yes," said the Queen. "He will show you what you should think and not think about." The princess frowned, and a slight line appeared between her delicate ~yebrows. She wasn't q"4-ite sure what her mother was talking about, out then she felt the srucwth leather beneath her hand~ and smiled a radiant ~mile . . "N~ matter," she thought, "I'll soon understand everything." ·' ' ·· Some weeks later, the line between her delicate brows had become deeper and the residents gf the castle thought it had become a permanent ' feature upon the' little p'rincess's face. "I don't like it," the King told his Queen one d~y. "She spends all her time locked up with t-h ose d us..ty old tome. It's not healthy, I tell you." Quietly the Queen agreed, and soon the peasants that lived about the castle became used to the sight of the 11t'tle 'princess with he·r skirts tucked up about her knees·, dangling her bare feet in a creek while reading a book and munching on an apple. Appealiilg to her daughter's now-found love of logic puzzles, the Queen also began sending her on strange .little errands. . . ·"Go find me something no orie..has ever seen be"ror~,:' she would ask one day. The littl~ princess .w ould smile, then frown, then walk out to saddle ·heT ·fa:vorite little ·horse. Most-of Hre ·da-y.-_wou-1-d be ·sp~rit riding aimlessly . about, trying to see . a solution to the problem. Sometime before dinner, the princess would return, dirty and disheveled to place the acorn in her mother's hand. "Open it," she would say and skip away to wash up and find out whether or not Meno discovered what virtue was. Much time passed smoothly in this fashion and the princess's stack of completed books became_ ·! taller and taller. But the line between her brows grew still deeper and she began to look at all the books lining the walls of the library with something akin to dismay. "Oh mother," she exclaimed finally, "'I feel myself to be floundering amidst all .this knowledge." Her mother raised an eyebrow at this rather ornate language but the distressed princess. never even noticed. "I have no anchor about which to build a secure fortress of understanding." The Queen glanced at the book her daughter clasped. It was Sophocles and her mother smiled. "Choose one thing, child," the Queen an swered. "One topic, one subject that you have seen addressed and wish to truly unders.tand. Then come to me and we shall set up a course of study so that you might come to know this one. thing. For in ·coming to know this one thing, you will pass 0 49 �I through a great many others and once you truly grasp this thing, all else will be made manifest through it." She patted her daughter's cheek. "Now go out and saddle you pony. I'll expect your answer at dinner." And so later, as she was carving the roast swan at the dinner table, the Queen looked expectantly at her daughter's glowing face. "Well?" she asked. "Oh mother," burst out the princes, "I want to understand what Love is." The Queen's face remained impassive, but her eyes twinkled. "Why daughter," she said evenly, "that is a fine thing to study. Most great authors have spent at least some time addressing the subject of Love." "Most of them?" the little princess inquired uncertainly. "How many does that mean?" Her little daughter looked so crestfallen that the Queen could not restrain the little laugh that escaped her. "Oh daughter, don't despair. You have chosen ·a very difficult thing indeed, and the road to true understanding is never an easy one." She looked kindly into her daughter's worried face. "But the rewards will be greater than you can imagine, and I will help you all I can." She placed a tender slice of swan on the princess's plate. "We will begin after dinner." And so it began. The princess studied Plato, Virgil, Ovid and Bacon. She read with wide eyes the Song of Solomon and wept and laughed in quick succession as Shakespeare acted out for her the comedies and tragedies of life. The poets were many and varied and she delved deeply into Donne, Byron, Valery, Browning, Coleridge and Gibran. And though she learned much of Love in all its manifestations, she could not say that she was growing towards an understanding of it. Much of the time she felt that she was actually doing the reverse. And so it was that we found her at the opening of our story: troubled and in doubt. She was just about to pick up the Maxims of La Rochefoucauld when there was knock at her door. With something that just might have been relief, she moved away from La Rochefoucauld to open the door. It was her mother. "Hello dear," she said as she moved easily into the room, ''I'm sorry to disturb you, but we have a visitor." The calm grace of her mother sent a cool wash over troubled spirit and the little princess smiled cheerfully. "Is it someone I know, mother?" she asked. "Oh yes," her mother replied with a smile. "It's your cousin Rolf. He's on vacation from the University and wants to spend some time with us before going back to finish his education." The llttle princess was delighted, for she hadn't seen Rolf for several years. He and his parents had often come to visit, and though he was some years older than she, he had treated her kindly and together they had many pleasant adventures. But he had been sent off to school and had become too busy and intelligent to visit with an old playmate. Until now. "Oh mother," she exclaimed, "Rolf! How is he? Did he learn lots at the University? Has he changed a great deal?" Her mother laughed. "We will all be having tea together on the porch in about an hour. He's in his ro om right now resting after his journey, so why don't you get ready and come to find out for yourself?" The Queen left to prepare the tea and there was a look of amused anticipation lurking in her eyes. The princess was setting a plate of cookies on the table when Rolf stepped out onto the porch. Both of the young people stared at the other in startled recognition, for though it had only been a few years since they had last seen one another, those had been very crucial years. Rolf had changed from a scrawny, self -consci ous teen-ager into a sturdy young man of admirable presence and bearing, while the princess, thanks to he r mother's subtle guidance, had grown from a reedy little scarecrow into a graceful young woman of considerable intelligence. And yet, some things remain constant. The princess still had a light spray of freckles across her nose and Rolf still had the habit, whenever he was unsure of himself, of pulling on the thick lock of hair that was forever tumbling in his eyes. When she saw him doing this, the princess laughed and he smiled as he walked over to give her a cousinly kiss on the cheek. When the Queen arrived with the teapot, she found them already deep in an animated discussion about Rolf's education. They were delighted to find that they had read and enjoyed a great many of the same books. The Queen sat silently and smiled as she watched the tea in their cups grow cold, untouched and forgotten in the rapid flood of conversation between the two young scholars. The princess told Rolf of her studies, and he agreed to help her with her search for understanding. From then on they spent nearly all their time together. He would read to her, or she to him as they sat over the remnants of a picnic lunch in a golden meadow. They would discuss salient points while trotting through the woods on horseback, ceasing only to race across the open spaces where the loser would come galloping up, laughing breathlessly and say: "but if we want to look at the love between a parent and child, what about Cordelia's speech in act one? ... " And in the evenings, sitting silently by the glowing fire, they would each underline relevant passages and hand them to the other, who would read it and nod gravely before returning to his own study. The Queen watched all this without comment, but nodded to herself as she observed the peculiar expression that came over Rolf's face whenever he looked at the princess and thought that he himself was unobserved. The princess was quite blind to such things, for she was totally absorbed in her studies. Learning on her own had been rewarding and satisfying, but studying with another, especially one as perceptive and sympathetic as Rolf, was a joy such as the princess had never before experienced. She was deliriously happy and was quite satisfied with things as they were. Not so Rolf. Finally it was nearly time for Rolf to return to school and he and the princess were up in her room getting in one last study before Rolf had to start preparing for his journey. He was standing stiffly at the window with his back towards the princess who was reading to him: '"It is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better part in him."' But Rolf, what does Plato mean when he says ... Rolf! What are you doing?" For just as she looked up from the text, Rolf had turned around, snapped the book shu t and with one swift motion, flung it out the window. She stood up to protest, but just then Rolf turned to her and the look in his eyes stopped the words in her throat. Gently, but firmly, he grasped her hands and placed them together, palms upwards, like the leaves of an open book. "Here," he said,"here is one book you haven't read." And he traced his finger lightly across her palms as if he were outlining a passage. "Can you tell me what it says?" She opened her mouth, but shook her head mutely. "Then here," and he pressed one of her hands to his chest. She could feel his heart beating strongly and rapidly. Then he pressed her other hand to his cheek. It was warm and flushed with feeling. "Here is a book open only at your touch, only for your eyes," His voice lowered to a whisper,"Can you say the same to me?" and he released her. For a moment she clasped her hands together between the two of them and stared with wonder into his eyes. Then slowly, like a flower unfolding to the first touch of the sun, her arms opened to him and she began to understand just a little of what she had been studying so diligently for so long and she laughed a light, sweet, and joyful la ugh. Below, the King and the Queen were walking together in the royal rose garden, enjoying one of the last days of warmth, when a waterfall of books suddenly fell with great splashing into the moat, narrowly missing a pair of black swans swimming serenely by. The Queen was startled only for a moment and then she squeezed her husband's arm and laughed softly. For she had known all along that knowledge gleaned form books could carry one only so far, and that true understanding came from within. I guess this is the end of my story, though the princess continued to learn a great many important things. And like her mother before her, she managed to impart much of it to her children in such gentle and unobtrusive ways, that they didn't realize it themselves until many years had passed and they were well along in their own journeys towards understanding. But I can hardly be expected to trace the stories of all those many Ii ves. That, gen tie readers, I leave to you. 51 50 ! �52 �Non-Profit Org . BULK RATE U. S. POSTAGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 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. 52 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 1988 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Winter 1988. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cooper, Laurie (Co-Editor) Datcher, Rhonda (Co-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 1988 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 1988 Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/fa4c981a8b17b557656ae870bd308804.pdf a35d551bed9d5e5039da2d2dd2b1f6e2 PDF Text Text WINTER, 1988 c z c Q ~ oi ... "' ::c Ill Ill u z c ~ z u ~ ,,.: Ill: Ill Ci z iii z c ~ ~ u Ill ::c Ill ::c ... �ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself. t1 ... Cover: Acrylic on Paper by Jana Giles Printed by the St. John's College Press St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland vou &vtpy&ta ~coti ... (Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1072b) Staff: Rachel Boyce Carloss Chamberlain Jana Giles Erika Hoffman Daniel Hoh Michael McShane Derick Miller Ange Mlinko Kenneth Paradis Dwayne Rogers Co-Editors: Laurie Cooper Rhonda Datcher Faculty Advisor: Henry Higuera With special thanks to: Tina Davidson Ray Gifford George Turner Ty Yancey 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 Energeia staff welcomes submissions from all members of the community--essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like . • • ,,..., /J....,-'7 �CONTENTS PHOTOGRAPH Greg Ferguson 4 LOIRE-ET-CHER, 1986 Dahra Latham 5 THE THEME OF THE FUGUE INC MINOR Rachel Boyce 6 THE PROPHET Ange Mlinko 8 DRAWING Marcus Eubanks 9 THE WELL OF LIGHT Claudia Probst 10 ANALYSIS FOR THE DETERMINATION OF A PARAMETER FOR THE PARABOLA Mark Ressler 13 Jana Giles 16 17 18 GREEK MYTHS OF RESPONSIBILITY AND OTHER OBSTACLES TO PITY Donna Strow 19 AUTUMN DAY SALON E =MC Scott Vineberg 24 25 PHOTOGRAPH Greg Ferguson 26 SEEING WITH BOTH EYES OPEN Graham Redgrave 27 VARIANT SONNET: AMAZON MOURNING Dahra Latham 33 UNTITLED POEM Sahana Dharmapuri 34 THE RETURN OF OEDIPUS REX: THE METAPHYSICS OF INCEST Michael McShane 35 PHOTOGRAPH Greg Ferguson 39 A MODERN INVESTIGATION OF THE ECCENTRIC HYPOTHESIS Tim McNicholl 40 AN ADAPTION, 1987 Carolyn Barndt 44 THE BOW OF HERACLES John Pronko 45 THREE LOY AL HAIK US Jana Giles 47 THE LEARNED PRINCESS Erika Wilson 48 PHOTOGRAPH Greg Ferguson 52 I. II. III. KE I PO THE FOX T.J. �Loire-et-Cher, 1986 Dahra Latham ('90) I begin poetry in true face coming home, seal away weed-green contact lenses scrub away molten golden color that the world imposes rise through fathoms of falsehood revealing pearl-pale and storm-eyed body stepped out of Renaissance portrait shining like dolphin through ocean through ragged breaker of hair washed sudden} y from red to brown. I take up the pen. And all the hard-birthed beauties I have ever read fall about me an irrelevant rain. 5 4 �throws off expectations and requires that the more instinctive interval be passed. The second playing of the theme, in G minor, which begins " 7 /\. 4 6 1 1 instead of l 7 f 5 6, solves the problem of reaching down to 4 by introducing 4 earlier in the theme. This change takes away part of the theme's beauty and is not at all preferable. I\ I\ After the third repetition of 1 7 1, the center is not reached again. The 4 5 6 movement is heading in the direction of the original 1 but cannot pass the peculiar f?t interval to reach it. The 6 5 4 movement is heading towards tan octave below the original but stops at 3, E flat. Only the very last repetition of the theme allows the octave-lower 1 to be sounded in the chord: The Thetne of the Fugue in C Minor Rachel Boyce ('90) When I hum the theme of Fugue II from Book 1 of J.S.Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, I invariably end up off key unless I am co~cent.rat­ ing. This may not seem particularly .puzzling smce many people have difficulty repeatmg even ~hort, simple tunes accurately. It does bother me. First, I picked up the theme almost ~nadverte~tl.y. It remained in my mind after the piece was f ~nished without any distinct effort on my part to fmd and distinguish it. Second, I have now listened ca ref ull Y to the Fugue ar least a dozen times, and the tendency to slip off key remains. . .. I decided to investigate my mab1hty t.o casually hum the catchy and elusive theme of th~s fugue. Since five of the eight times the th~m~ is heard, it begins on a C, it is written here begmnmg on C: though. The other problematic note, the seventeenth, is only a half step from the sixteenth, and there was no difficulty with any of the half steps between C and B natural. The theme isnot merely a series of intervals, and its dynamic qualities must be conside.red. Perhaps the location of the major sixth and mmor second within the melody produces the dif~iculty. The key signature might suggest E flat maJOr, but the B natural, producing a half. step. b.etween B natural and C,indicates that the piece 1s m .the key of C minor, the relative minor of E flat maJor._The center, t, is then C. The theme can now be written as: 7 5 6 7 2 5 "1 7 2 4 5 6 5 4 3. 1 1 1 1 The final E natural of the fugue is heard previously and more distinctly when the melody of the corresponding prelude ends on the same E natural. That last E natural, supported by the two C's in the bass clef, is pre para ti on for the following fugue. It is a 1i ttle unsettling to realize that the very comfortable sound at the conclusion of the prelude involves a melody ending on E natural in a piece with the key signature of E flat major or C minor. When a second inspection of the theme is done, it does not seem so positively C minor. Although it contains the minor half step between ~'nowhere is there the distinctively minor 23 half step. The B natural creates a ~ half step like that in the major scale, and the final E natural makes the previously minor whole step between 4 and 3 into a major half step. The theme verges on the key of C major. The theme may not be completely in the key of C minor, but neither is it completely in C major. The fourth time the theme is heard, it is played in E flat major with no accidentals, and any mystery or sweetness held by the original theme is lost. What is technically lost by playing the theme in a purely major key is the 56 half step.Similarly, the second I\ /'\ playing of the theme which begins with I 7 I 4 6 sounds less beautiful because it removes a half step. The theme's interest depends on the haunting 56 half step. The only flat in the fugue that has a consistently significant role and is not ever made natural is A flat, the note which produces that half step. The theme of Fugue II is between C minor and C major. Though the key signature points to C minor as the primary key, the theme lacks the half step. Though both prelude and fugue are resolved with a C major triad, the theme cannot be played in a major key without ruining it. This 56 23 "' 1 1.2..3 4S The first problematic note is the fifteenth, the first F played. The interval between the fourtee~th. and fifteenth notes is a major sixth, a more ?1ff1cult interval to duplicate than the other large i~tervals present: the perfect fourth between the thud and fourth notes and the perfect fifth between t~e ninth and tenth notes. There is no rea~on that ~his interval could not be memorized with practice, 6 There are three groups of f 7 f. The first swoop down from that grouping is a perfect fourth from 1 to 5 and the second a perfect fifth from 2 down to 5. The third plunge is, like the second one, from 2, but this time it reaches past the comfo~table 5 down to 4. Combined with the fact that 4 is the only note lower than 5 so far, the si~ilarity. of starting points and difference of endmg pomts In this last twist of the prelude's melody, written in the key in which we expect to hear the fugue, a C is played seven separate times and is held in the bass clef throughout. The next most frequent note is G, played four times. These two notes combine with the final E natural to form the C major triad. Both the C minor and the G minor heard in the fugue are explored in the prelude, evidenced by the many B natural and F sharp accidentals, .but the prelude concludes with the sound of C major. minor /major ambiguity causes my difficulty with casually humming the theme. I cannot lean into a fully minor or major key, so when I do not have the support of strong, easily sung intervals, I falter. Bach has not created an u'n easy sound with this ambuity, nor a problem to be resolved. The theme of Fugue II is compelling and delicately balanced, worth the concentration it takes to hum it properly. 7 �The Prophet ·,,. Ange Mlinko ('91) '/ ,, You want too much. To want Anything in this world is an arabesque Inverted desire to die; run instead While the wind fills your cup After mice visions scurrying Beneath trees across a litter Of skyfall; look up to shadows Brooding yellow in the veins Of every leaf. In the east A purple hand unshirts the sky; Left in the west is a blot of blood Where the sun was shot. If the walls had ears, you'd tell the walls. You have letters to send but no sticks And stones to break words with. Outside you sift the ground but wind, Wind like eternal October makes brick Patterns glide at your feet. A day is dying In this mass movement; on the skyline Collapsed in theatrics a dark soul On the playing field, fast scream like a crow And no one to hear it; the ears of the earth Are filled with wind and river. This the town your walls reflect, where Double doors exclaim men in credit shirts Who pause at the top of steps, become one White column on the portico of eternity And descend to the street. They read The Post and walk away the news rewritten On their hands, and two blocks down Two black-skinned boys face the wind All forecasts and headlines, . -\ \ / ...... ; Unearthing little liquor bottles from Underneath the statehouse shrubs. At night, cars jump like knives To a red light. Long-fingered men Hide their eyes when sirens sear by. f '\ I "·.., . \, / i ( ) ./ You are the confessor of all you see-You cannot dispose of your pu r i ty. Raking through leaves for fragments of sky To lift to your walls and nail there; Raking through words to sound out These secrets that trace with detached caress A lock in your head. And voice is no key. You cannot dispose of this purity. Scream then, back at the wind's scream With all insensate joy; you were chosen Out from under leaves to under sky-The world is burning in the glacial Radiance of your sun: It is a hard light to ask forgiveness from. The cup you hold is teeming, Receiving and receiving. You want Nothing but to hear the truth With the truth you see as the day Dies in pieces around you, asking who Unleashes the siren of the sun Upon all deadly mornings, and who Gives it pause at the portals of all ears? 9 8 �The Well of Light Claudia Probst ('88) Ryan held the zoom lens and wiped it gingerly with a piece of lens tissue before sending a blast of pressurized air across its surface. Having cleaned the last one of his six lenses, he replaced it in the box leather camera bag, zipped it closed around the top, and sat back resigned. This waiting was unbearable, when he knew that the picture of a lifetime might occur without him, that a perfect avalanche might go unframed and unrecorded. He wanted to jump up from the molded plastic orange seat in which he'd spent the better part of two hours, he wanted to grab the ticketing agent by her insolent kelly-green necktie and shake her until her heavily made-up eyes showed anything but indifference. Easy now, he cautioned himself; stay in control. He folded his powerful hands with their square-cut nails and sat up straighter. There was nothing he could do: if the mechanics were working on the plane, the mechanics were working on the plane. Slowly, he sent his eyes sidelong to the woman in the seat next to his. Her blonde hair was cut in layers and teased out in last year's style, so that he could see almost nothing of her profile. What did he have to lose? "Are you on your way to visit Salt Lake City too?" he asked, smiling his most winning smile and leaning back. She turned sharply enough for him to guess that her surprise was feigned, that she had only been resting her eyes on the open book in her lap, while her senses were all attuned to him, the stranger in the next seat. She twisted her florid face IO in an answering smile. "Well, not exactly to visit there. I grew up there, but left it for what I thought would be a more glamorous life ... " "Wait, let me guess. You were raised as a Mormon, and now you're returning to make peace with the church of your childhood." She gaped at Ryan as though he were a prophet. "How did you know that?" she squealed. "Oh, I've spent a little time there and I found the church of the Latter-Day Saints very compelling myself." The lies were coming easier now. The seats in the gate area were arranged back to back in rows of five, and two seats down, with his back to Ryan, Zach Himmelstein sat with his head in his hands, trying very hard to cast himself and his sister Rosa back to a time where the light of memory shone, steady and bright, like the sun of their youth on their family's Rhineland farm. He could call nothing up, though, and instead thought only of the wrenching sadness he'd felt two years ago when Rosa had told him her decision to move west. "Trust me Zachariah, the doctor says it would be better for my lungs, and Salt Lake City is very clean-- not like here" she'd said, gesturing with distaste at the grimy vista outside their Brooklyn apartment. He'd gazed down, not trusting himself to meet her eyes, and unable to speak. What was that piece of paper he pretended to be so taken with at that moment? Oh yes, he'd studied the doctor's scrawl on a piece of paper that showed a stylized mortar and pestle in one corner, healing symbols. The writing had reminded him somehow of how he'd teased Rosa, when they were children, and a favorite trick of dipping the tips of her pencils into hot wax just before they left for school. He now recalled his confusion, too, when she'd paused to let the words sink in, how he'd looked up with an apology that died on his lips for all the childhood pranks he'd played, if only she'd stay. Those weren't the right words, though, and it seemed to him that she'd packed and made arrangements and left before he'd had a fair chance to find the right ones. Yet now, dear Rosa, he thought bitterly, I'm going to bury you in that place of raw mountains and ski resorts and Mormon temples. He shook his head sharply to break that chain of thought, which would doubtless lead him to mull over how senseless her accident had been. It would never have happened, if she had still been living in a community that saw that the sidewalk was cleared and salted before the elderly residents wished to go out. If she'd been living with him in the neighborhood where she belonged. His mind, having reached this familiar dead end, began to drift and take in the voices coming from a few seats down and behind his back. Annoyed at the chatter, he stirred himself and rose, looking around for a destination. Across the waiting area there was a coffee and newspaper vending stand. The woman behind it was leaning on the counter, flirting in low, rich Jamaican tones with a security guard. He was struck suddenly by a feeling of kinship with her; neither one of us wants to be here, he thought. Zachariah made his way to the stand in his stiff walk, left leg dragging slightly. When he reached it he took off his fedora, without irony, to address the lady. "I would like a cup of coffee, please" he asked in his precise English, struggling as always to suppress his Yiddish accent. She gazed at him indolently for a moment, shrugged, and raised herself from leaning on her folded arms to pour the coffee into a styrofoam cup. The blue-uniformed guard followed her movements with narrowed eyes. "That be all?" she asked Zach, putting the cup down in front of him. "Yes, thank you." He pushed two quarters toward her with an almost imperceptible bow and picked up the cup. "Sugar and cream are over there," she added. "Thank you but I have my own sweetener, some saccharin tablets. They help keep me fit, you know, and ready ... " He trailed off. Ready for what? Had he been there to clear Rosa's sidewalk of ice? The woman shrugged again, turned her attention back to her friend. Zach flushed, and hastily picking up a napkin and a small container of cream, he retreated to his seat. Was that the guard laughing? It didn't matter; a young man like that wouldn't understand .. After taking his seat he· pulled himself up very straight and tall, and reached purposefully into his breast pocket. He felt his accustomed satisfaction at the power of these little white tablets, which allowed him to indulge his sweet tooth while staying trim. Rosa always said, it was pride, just pride that made him try to hide his age. She would laugh and sprinkle spoonfuls of sugar over her grapefru!t in the mornings. As he balanced his cup on the armrest, he could again hear his neighbors' con versa ti on. "Tell me about the book you're reading." Ryan commanded. "You haven't heard of this book?" The woman asked incredulously. She paused, considered the apparently daunting task. "It's called The Well of Light, and it's written by John P. Smothers, who left our church fifteen years ago and became the owner of a very successful cruise ship line. He describes how unhappy he was, entertaining rich clients and travelling constantly aboard his ships. He says he fell deeper and deeper into despair, drinking all the time and seeing no way out. But then God" - she paused for effect - "God went to work in his life, buoying him up from the depths of his despair, and making him care again. Care about his family and himself, too. That's what that title's about, you see. It was as though he'd fallen down a well of indifference, but then God put a light at the bottom, a light he didn't expect." "Uh-huh. Is this the book that made you think of returning to the church?" Ryan asked, uninterested in her specific answer, but fascinated that she could speak so feelingly about Smothers' well-calculated effort to make a buck. He marvelled inwardly at how people fool themselves. Zach held his metal box of saccharin tablets between his thumb and forefinger. He slid the lid back and was suddenly overwhelmed by the 11 �memory of a scene captured in a snapshot he hadn't seen in decades. It was of Rosa at a family picnic, squinting merrily up in the black and white photo, her wavy dark hair escaping her hair pins as ever. Her grubby hands held a tinderbox that was a relic even then. Zachariah sat, stunned at the memory of that day more than sixty years ago when grandfather Josef had made a demonstration of the tinderbox's use. How had he done it? Fingers twitching, Zach recalled his clumsy attempts to strike a spark. Hold the flint and steel firmly when you strike, Grandfather had said. Make the sparks dance, he'd said, and Zach had looked up, startled once again by the humor buried just under the somber surface of that beloved face. You had to pay close attention to the tiny flame. Grandfather had showered sparks over dry moss and cupped gnarled hands around it to shield it from the wind. The muffled sound of the saccharin tablets falling to the carpet brought him out of his reverie, but he snatched his drooping hand back too late to retain any of them in the metal box. He bent down on the floor to gather them. His urgency was enough to distract Ryan from the hopeful blonde, who by now was holding up both ends of the conversation admirably. She barely noticed his attention was straying, as she continued to talk animatedly of her native city. "In the spring and summer they open the gates and let the mountain run-off flood the streets, and afterwards everything is so clean and new, not a bit of litter or dirt left ..." Ryan's gaze was now fixed on the figure of an old man on his knees carefully picking up some spilled pills. As he straightened a bit to reach under the chair and find by touch any that his eyes might have missed, Ryan noticed that tears were working their way down the old man's deeply lined face. "Pathetic," Ryan muttered to himself, and turning away, saw with relief that the ticketing agent was about to announce that the plane was ready for boarding. Analysis for the Determination of a Paratneter for the Parabola by Mark Ressler '89 The method of analysis requires the assumption of what is to be proven, so that the truth of the proposition is borne out by the consistency of the consequences of that assumption. A proposition is solved by analysis when an accepted truth forms a necessary consequence of the initial assumption. The proof is established by reversing the sequence of consequences so that the argument begins with the established truth and ends with the statement of what is to be proven. Thus, if I want to establish that virtue is desirable, I would first assume virtue to be desirable. I would then examine the consequences of that assumption, with the hope of fin ding some universally accepted truth as one of the consequences--for instance, the existence of God. Then, if my reasoning is not faulty1, I can reverse my steps and argue that since God exists and since what follows from that would be true, virtue, therefore, is desirable. Consider Appolonius and the parabola: Appolonius can establish a simple geometr ic def inition of the parabola by claiming that if the intersection of a cutting plane and the plane that contains the axis of the cone is parallel to the intersection of the plane that contains the axis and the cone itself, then the intersection of the cutting plane and the cone is a para bola. However, this definition says nothing about the shape of the parabola; it may happen that the shape of a parabola is essentially no different than the shape of a hyperbola. A definition which encompasses this consideration might be more useful than a simple geometric definition like the one above. The establishment of a diameter and ordinates provides the means for an examination of the shape of the parabola, for as the parabola extends out away from the vertex, both the ordinates and the abscissa increase. If there is a direct relationship between the abscissa and the ordinates, that relationship would almost define the shape of the parabola. The abscissa may be to the ordinate or the ordinate to the abscissa in three ways: (I) as a given line to a given line, (2) as the abscissa is to a given line, or (3) as the ordinate is to a gi ve lin e. I proceed now to examine each of the cases using the method of analysis. In his notes on Euclid's Elements, Heath makes the following note concerning faulty reasoning in analysis: "Now Aristotle had already made it clear that false hypotheses might lead to a conclusion which is true. There is therefore a possibility of error unless a certain precaution is taken. While for example, B may be a necessary consequence of.A, it may happen thatA is not a necessary consequence of B. Thus in order that the reverse ingerence from the truth of K that A is logically true may be logically justified, it is necessary that each step in the chain of inferences should be unconditionally convertible." Euclid, The Thirteen Books of the Elements, 2nd ed .. , trans. Thomas Heath (New York, Dover Publications, 1956), p. 141. 12 13 �(I) If the abscissa is to the ordinate as a given line X is to a given line Y, then: A FIG. 1 DE: FE:: X :Y and DH: HJ:: X: Y. Therefore, DE: FE:: DH : HJ. Then D, J, and F will be in a straight line, and triangle DHJ and triangle DEF will be similar triangles. [fig. 2] Therefore, the abscissa cannot be to the ordinate as a line is to a line. (2a) If the abscissa is to the ordinate as the abscissa is to a given line X, then: D FIG. 2 DE: FE:: DE:X and FE= X. But FE will vary while X is given, so the abscissa cannot be to the ordinate as the abscissa is to a given line. (2b) If the abscissa is to the ordinate as a given line X is to the abscissa, then: DE : FE :: X : DE and DE 2 = FE, constant. DH : HJ :: X : DH and DH 2 = HJ, constant and, therefore, DE 2 : DH 2 :: FE,X :: HJ,X and DE 2 : DH 2 :: FE : HJ. But DE 2 : DH 2 :: BE 2 : KH 2, therefore, BE 2 : KH 2 :: FE : HJ. 14 Compounding both sides with the ratio KH : BE, KH,BE2 : BE,KH 2 :: FE,KH_: HJ,BE. Removing the common term BE,HK from the left side, BE : KH :: FE,KH : HJ ,BE. Since, EC = HL, BE,EC : KH,HL :: FE,KH : HJ, BE. But BE,EC = EF2, and KH,KL = HJ 2, therefore, EF2 : HJ2 :: FE,KH : HJ ,BE. Alternately, EF2: FE,KH :: HJ 2 : HJ,BE therefore, EF : KH :: HJ : BE. and alternately, EF : HJ :: KH : BE. But KH : BE :: DH : DE so EF: HJ:: DH: DE. Then D, J, and F will be in a straight line, and triangle DHJ and triangle DEF will be similar triangles [fig. 2]. Therefore, the abscissa cannot be to the ordinate as a given line is to the abscissa, for the statements: HJ2 = KH,HL (FE2 = BE,EC) DH2 = HJ,X (DE2 = FE,X) and DH : DE :: HK : BE are incompatible. (3a) If the abscissa is to the ordinate as a given line is to the ordinate, then: DE : FE :: X : FE and DE= X. But DE will vary while X is given, so the abscissa cannot be to the ordinate as a given line is to the ordinate. (3b) But if the abscissa is to the ordinate as the ordinate is to a given line X, then: DE : FE :: FE : X FE 2 = DE,X and DH : JH :: JH : X. JH2 = DH,X. Therefore, FE2 : JH2 :: DE,X : DH,X OR FE2 : JH2 :: DE : DH. But FE2 = BE,EC and JH 2 = KH,HL so BE,EC: KH,HL :: DE: DH. But EC= HL so BE : KH :: DE : DH, since KH is parallel to BE. segments of the diameter of the circle BFCG, in which EC is fixed in size for the parabola in the cone, whether it appears as DM or HL since DE is parallel to AC and KL is parallel to BC. Now since this relationship has been proven to be possible, the relationship itself may be used as a starting point for the determination of the given line. I then assume that X is already given for a given parabola, so that I may deduce a relationship between X and some known line: DE : FE :: FE : X so FE2 = DE,X. But FE2 = BE,EC so BE,EC = DE,X and BE : DE :: X : EC. But BE : DE :: BC : AC so BC : AC :: X : EC. Compounding both sides with the ratio EC : AD, BC : AC comp. EC : AD = X,EC : AD,EC. But EC = DM and DM :AD :: BC : AB so BC2 : AC,AB :: X,EC : AD,EC and inversely, AB,AC: BC 2 :: AD: X. And AB, AC, BC, and AD are all known lines; therefore, X can be found in accordance with this last ratio. If a line, then, is constructed such that as the line between the vertex of the section and the vertex of the cone is to the constructed line, so is the rectanglee contained by the sides of the axial triangle to the square on the base of the axial triangle, then the abscissa will ha vee to the ordinate the same ratio that the ordinate has to the constructed line. The square on the ordinate will be equal to the rectangle of the abscissa and the created line. Proposition 11, Book I, demonstrates these properties. Therefore, a relationship between the abscissa and the ordinate is possible, and it will be as the ordinate is to some given line. The relationship is similar to the relationship of the ordinate to the 15 �I KEIRO II The Fox (KEIPO) Jana Giles ('88) Jana Giles ('88) I would eat the flesh from your bones, such is my love for you, were it not against the law. It is just as well, thoughyour rotting flesh beneath that still mask would poison me, your stinking, stagnant blood would mix with mineone unnamed, untouchable, unknowable in this grief and sacred passion. In your acidulous smile I saw the wisdom and assurance of cloudless days and changeful moons, bitter Satisfactions's cold enterprise indulged by a dei f ic ac cept an ce. The wind wails, waxing fierce; my cold heart grows old . 1985 16 Sparkle, twinkle, said the fox his black tongue tripped him up his red tail white-streaked tripped him up my car struck him and he burst like a swollen sausage his mouth foaming and spilling blood and sequins and rhinestone jewels. Children squat in the blood their greedy, unsubtle fingers undulating like sea anemones stirred by a watery wind search and grab smeared stones in a noisy herd. Soon the birds of prey shall overcome him, naked as iron-grey clouds engulf the setting sun. 1985 17 �Greek Myths of Responsibility and Other 0 bstacles to Pity III LL Donna Strow ('90) Jana Giles ('88) these words are simple but I have nothing else to off er somehow the tide will pull me along reluctant and ignorant and young I only wish that when I sank beneath the muttering murky moonlit waters the fishes did not have your face 1985 "I would not wish either [to do or to suffer wrong]" says Socrates in Plato's Gorgias (Woodhead 469 c), "but if I had either to do or to suffer wrong, I would choose rather to suffer than to do it." He describes the wrongdoer as miserable and says that he is to be pitied (Woodhead 469 a). Is pity appropriate to the wrongdoer? Is it relevant to ask whether he deserves pity? Socrates h olds that wrongdoing is worse than being wronged (Lamb 473 a). Is it appropriate to pity the wrongdoer who has come to suffer and to regret more than we pity the wronged? That would certainly come as a shock to those who delight in saying, "He (the wrongdoer) got his (just dessert)!" or "(If) you make your bed, you lie in it," denying pity to the wrongdoer because they feel somehow that he does not deserve it. In any event, that is the question under investigation. Plato (Gorgias, Phaedo, Republic) and Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics) will help. Before embarking on this quest, however, it would be good to state just what is meant by "pity." Socrates' word, € >.. € K.oµa i, is very close to our own. In this essay I will recognize two kinds of pity, one meaning a sorrowing over another's misfortune, the other meaning a seeking to end another's distress. because he is wretched), and that he would pref er to be wronged rather than to do wrong, implying that the wrongd oer is more to be pitied than the wronged. Unfortunately, his argument is insubstantial; he simply gets Polus to admit that to do wrong is more shameful and evil than to suffer wrong. Then he asks, "And would you choose the more evil and shameful in preference to the less?" (Woodhead 475 d), to which the latter replies negatively. Would I reply as Pol us does? Yes, I think so, but perhaps this is only because I have been taught to adopt this virtuous attitude. Yet if a wrongdoer were to suffer, either from guilt or from some other consequence of his misdeed, I do believe that his suffering would be the worse because he has himself to blame. Some would say that it is this very notion of "blame" that cancels the wrongdoer's claim to our sympathy. I think that before we subscribe to this notion we should at least determine whether the blame and the pity would both bear the same address if we were to pity the wrongdoer. Does the same man do wrong and then regret it? Is the part of the man that does the wrong the same part that does the suffering? Again, Socrates maintains that to do wrong "is the greatest of evils" (Woodhead 496 a, b), that the wrongdoer is to be pitied (most probably in my mind I have given you a fixed place that you cannot alter from your distance According to Cebes Plato's Phaedo, the body is "continually changing and disintegrating all through life, the soul [replacing] what is worn 19 18 �away" (Tredennick 87 d, e) Now, if we can assume that decisions about how to act are made by a nervous system, which is physical, this readily verifiable observation means that the man who pays for his crime is not quite the man (as he has not quite the faculties of the man) who committed it. In this case, then, we must not blame but rather pity the man who now suffers as a result of the misdeed of his former self. At this point in the dialogue, however, Cebes believes in an entity called the soul which is non-physical and rules the body. Does Cebes then believe that a man (or the soul of a man) is the same throughout life? That would be absurd, for Socrates' willingness to die, which is manifested throughout the dialogue, is founded on his belief that philosophy is carried on in the soul, a belief which all present seem to accept (64 e, 65 a). If a soul can learn, a soul can change. I remain convinced that a man is in fact a different man every instant of his life. How, then, can we blame someone for his past actions, especially one who clearly regrets them? Yet even if the nature of man were such that he remained the same, stagnant throughout life, I would still not be convinced that the faculty that committed the crime is the same faculty that suffers because of it. Both Plato and Aristotle divide the soul into three faculties. Socrates give a good argument to support this assertion in The Republic (Jowett 436): But the question is not quite so easy when we proceed to ask whether these principles are three or one· whether 1 that is to say w~ learn :Vith one pa~t ofour nature, are ;ngrywith another, and with a third part desire the satisfaction of our natural appetites; orwhe ther the whole soul comes into play in each sort of actionto determine that is the difficulty .... The same thing clearly cannot actor be acted upon in the same part or in relation to the same thing at the same time, in contrary ways; and therefore whenever this contradiction occurs in things apparently the same, we know that they are really not the same, but different. To Aristotle, the soul appears to have three parts also, but these are different from Socrates' three parts. Rather, it appears to him that the soul contains a rational principle and irrational, the rational being divided into the calculative or deliberating, part and the scientific part, whi~h is concerned with the truth of unchangeable facts. Given Socrates' argument, it is easy to see that whatever governs the emotions, be it soul or mind of any kind, it must be composed of more than one part, as evidenced by the fact that we some- times experience mixed emotions. We often even act despite misgivings. It seems most likely to me that the part of the soul or mind that suffers is other than the part that prompts us to do wrong. Let me test this idea using Socrates' argument: Are the parts of the mind capable of remorse and the origin of misdeeds respectively affected differently by the same thing at the same time? Yes, insofar as one can regret an action while at the same time perform it. To me this is tantamount to doing something reluctantly. Therefore, it seems that one part misbehaves and another must pay! The objection can be raised, however, that perhaps there is no one part of the soul capable of remorse or misbehavior, that many parts may each be capable of each. In that case it would not matter that one can perform an act reluctantly . It would not prove anything, for it would still be possible f.or the misbehaving element in a certain circumstance to be the very same part that regrets the act later. If this objection is to be sustained, it would seem to me in that case that the one faculty involved had completely changed its nature, as it changed with regard to the same action. I would not, then, blame the new, improved entity for the malefaction of the old. I am willing to assume, however, that one faculty is uniquely capable of remorse, another of action. If, then, the wrongdoer and the one who regrets are two different entities, is it not appropriate at least to pity the latter, both in the sense of commiserating and of seeking to end its pain? But suppose I am wrong and we must regard the same man and the same faculty that did the bad deed as the one that suffers. Many hold notions of justice and r esponsibility that demand this. Let us first examine justice, which some say points to the conclusion that blame somehow renders pity inappropriate, and then concentrate on the difference between th e wro n gdoer an d th e wro n ged , which we will call responsibility. Why do some of us feel it inconsistent to pity the one who is to blame for a misdeed? Can we not blame and pity (in both senses) the same man? Aristotle seems to take it for granted that we cannot (Rackham III. v. 15, 16). Yet, we are all sinners. We all make mistakes. What does the fact that a certain wrongdoer's sin is responsible for his misery have to do with our sorrow over his misery and our willingness to help him to overcome it? Some will answer that the said misery is the fulfillment of justice, and so we should not be willing to help the wrongdoer to escape it. Some will even go so far as to say that we should not even feel sorry fo r someone who suffers according to what they believe to be justice. Socrates and Aristotle present us with many kinds of justice in light of which to examine the above concerns. In the Nicomachean Ethics (Rackham, V. iv. 3) we are introduced to co r rective justice. Corrective justice restores equality between the wrongdoer and his victim by taking from the culprit and redressing, that is, giving to the victim. This serves two purposes. Obviously, it helps the victim, restoring the equality between the wrongdoer and the victim which was lost when the wrong was done. Also, it serves to deter potential malefactors from doing (and actual ones from repeating) crimes. Aristotle says, "la wgivers ...puni sh ... those who do evil... in order to ... repress [it]" (Rackham, III. v. 7). Now, pity of either kind fo r the wrongdoer certainly does no t prevent us from r ed r essing t he wrong for the victim's sake. Does sympathy inter fere with deterrence? I think not. I am sure that many people who have had to mete out justice of this kind have pitied the cr iminals. But what of the kind of pity that seeks relief from the suffering? Recall that the wrongdoer in my i nitial question regrets his action. If this is so, what need have we to dete r him fu r ther? It seems t hat corrective justice is of no use whe re this wrongdoer is concerned, and certainly should not prevent us from pitying him. The Ethics also raises the issue of r etribution. Since either form of pi ty would soften the blow of retributive justice, perhaps neither is appropriate to the wrongdoer if this should prove to be a valid concept of justice. Fortunately, Aristotle does not succeed in proving this. The best he can do is to say, " The very existence of the state depends on proportionate reciprocity; for men demand that they shall be able to requite evil with evil -- if they cannot, they feel they are in the position of slaves" (Rackham, V. v. 6). In other words, man's villainous instinct for revenge is at the root of this so-called justice! The Gorgias, too, contains some possible re ferences to retaliation as justice. Says Socrates, And so again ... supposing it is our duty to injure somebody, whether an enemy or anyone else ... we must make every exertion to trial, or if he does, we must contrive that our enemy shall escape and not be punished. (Lamb, 480 e, 481 a) Socrates, who believes punishment to be good for the malefactor, casually assumes that a man can be bound by duty to injure someone. What else could that be but retaliation? Henry Higuera entertained the idea that the latter part of the Gorgias (523) consists of an attempt on Socrates' part to pay Callicles back for his insulting manners. Callicles has been sarcastic and rude (Lamb 495 d). He calls Socrates "paragon of wisdom." He says also, "You could not speak, I suppose, if there were not somebody to answer you" (Lamb 519 d), and eventually he does stop answering. As Mr. Higuera says, "Tempers [are] high." So why does Socrates start preaching fire and brimstone? It could be that he honors retaliation as a form of justice. Aristotle tries, but in my opinion fails. It will take more than popular demand to convince me that two "wrongs" make a "right." If re taliation is not justice, then the notion thereof should not prevent us from pitying our repentant wrongdoer in any way. The Gorgias also presents Socrates' view of justice as medicinal punishment. "Paying the penalty is a relief from the greatest evil, wickedness" (Lamb 478 d) If this is justice (and indeed it seems to work in child-rearing), we should not seek to ameliorate the wrongdoer's suffering until he evinces his betterment by regretting his evil act, but our repentant wrongdoer is still an appropriate target for both kinds of pity. It seems that no real justice of any kind presented in the Ethics or the Gorgias renders pity for the repentant wrongdoer inappropriate! There are, however, those who insist on the existence of some a priori, cosmic justice involving something like retribution. It may be useful to ask exactly how much suffe r ing and of what kind the wrongdoer must endure as punishment for the satisfaction of this elusive cosmic justice. First let us look at natural consequences. Sometimes a crime will bring these with it. Sometimes, too, the righting of a wrong causes a wrongdoer pain, as in the case of a liar who is made to tell the shameful truth. The pain here is merely a by-product of the aspect of corrective justice that seeks to redress a wrong for the sake of the victim -- not justice itself -- or is it? Does this cosmic retributive justice demand that the wrongdoer of act and word to prevent him from being punished or coming 20 21 �suffer any and all such incidental (not related to the magnitude of the iniquity) consequences? Common sense says that this is ridiculous. Indeed, Socr ates unwittingly poses a broader problem when he suggests that punishment (natural or otherwise) be tailored to fit the crime (Woodhead 480 c,d). Who is to say how much punishment is enough? If the aim of justice is medicinal, the wrongdoer himself is the one to answer. The same goes in the case of justice based on deterrence. If justice means paying back the victim for his loss then the victim should answer. Such it is in the case of constructive forms of justice that the question of how much punishment is enough can be answered. However, if justice is cosmic, who is to answer? The cosmos herself? Does she really have a reputation for being fair and just? It is clear how ridiculous that is. Be that as it may, there are those who insist that blame, or responsibility, renders pity inappropriate to wrongdoers. Yet these same tenacious souls will pity the man who is abused by circumstances (or by a wrongdoer). The best I can do for these is to point out how much alike are those who suffer because of their own misdeeds and those who suffer otherwise, and how shallow and illusory is their concept of responsibility. Aristotelian responsibility is based on the volunta r iness of action, such that a man is responsible for an act that is wrong if he has committed it voluntarily. Again, Aristotle believes that pity cannot go hand in hand with blame. He says, "It is only voluntary actions fo r whiCh praise and blame are given; those that are involuntary are condoned, and sometimes even pitied" (Rackham III. i. 1). I think that this attitude results partly from his restricted use of the word "blame," which he seems to t a ke to mean, "that by virtue of which one is responsible (in the Aristotelian sense)." Aristotle says that voluntary acts are those in which the origin of the movement of the parts of the body instrumental to the act lies in the agent; and when the origin of an action is in oneself it is in one's own power to do it or not. (Rackham, III. i. 6) And again: 'None would be vile, and none would not be blest,' seems to be half false. If it is manifest that a man is the author of his own actions, and if we are unable to trace our conduct back to any 22 other origins than those within ourselves, then actions ... are voluntary (Rackham, III. v. 4-6). If one were hypnotized into committing a base act, I do not think that the act would qualify as voluntary, although we, in so far as we did not know of the hypnotist, would not be able to trace the agent's conduct back to any other origins than those within himself. Therefore I am inclined to believe that Aristotle meant to identify voluntary actions as those which a being equipped with perfect knowledge could not trace back to any origins save the wrongdoer himself. To Aristotle, this would pose no threat to his concept of responsibility, since he imputes spontaneity to our actions (that is, those actions not classified as "involuntary," a concept discussed below); however, the notion of spontaneous action by animals of any kind flies in the face of modern psychology. In a world that is always asking "Why?", searching for causes and patterns and the order of nature which we intuit to be a reality, there is no room for the idea of spontaneity. The truth, I believe, is that our destinies were set before the earth cooled, since nothing transpires without cause and nothing is caused to happen which does not happen, so that strung about the latticework of time and space is an immutable web of cause and effect, the vision of which Aristotle was denied. Thus any actions, theoretically ,should be able to be traced back to origins other than those within the agent. Spontaneity is, as I said before, a chaotic beast which we intuit to be nonexistent. Yet even chaos has intelligent suppo r te rs who point out that the universe may have had a beginning, and, if it did, this beginning would have been spontaneous. Therefore, they claim, spontaneity may be a monster on the loose in our very universe . I n light of the fa ct th at spo ntaneity may be a reality and that human acts may, to spite psychology cruelly, be spontaneous, let us reexamine the notion that, "where we are f ree to act we are also free to ref rain from acting." (Rackham III. v. 2) It seems to me that, while this is in one sense true (in that the action to a large degree depends on the agent), it is possible that the agent may be of suc h a character that he can only choose to act wrongly. If the character of the agent helps to determine his behavior, and the agent is not responsible for his character, it appears to follow that the agent is not responsible for his behavior, in the Aristotelian sense. Is the agent responsible for his character? Aristotle says that he is, since it is our practices that determine our character (Rackham III. iv. 15, 16). And yet, it is our character that determines our practices! It is obvious that, at some point in the past, the agent's character was not his responsibil ity and, therefore, neither are all ensuing actions and modifications of that character. Have I done away with responsibility? Not really. My attack is limited to Aristotelian respon sibility which, some claim, renders the wrongdoer undeserving of pity. I have left ample room for the more pragmatic responsibility that we use in everyday life in conjunction with corrective justice. According to Aristotle, "actions are in voluntary when done (a) under compulsion or (b) through ignorance" (Rackham III. i. 2, 3); ignorance of this kind is ignorance concerning (I) the person affected, (2) the instrument employed, or (3) the result of the action. But Socrates says that all seek the good and act in such a way as they believe will bring it about (Lamb 468 c - 469). In light of this, which seems to me true, are not all wrongdoers shown to act in ignorance of the results of their actions, believing them to be good whereas in reality they are not? Aristotle addresses this notion that the wrongdoer's "aim at his end [which he mistakenly sees as good] is not of his own choosing" (Rackham III. v. 17) by arguing that it destroys the idea of responsibility for good behavior as well as for bad (Rackham III. v. 18, 19). I find the argument insubstantial and Aristotelian responsibility (for both good and bad actions) fictitious. Finally, neither the repentant wrongdoer not the wronged person chooses evil, since "no object of choice belongs to the past" (Ostwald, l l 39b7). It seems that the re pen tan t wrongdoer and the wronged are very much alike, neither of them being responsible for their suffering in the Aristotelian sense, and neither choosing evil. Again, the malefactor is not the same entity as the repentant, nor does justice prescribe that we deny pity of any kind to the wrongdoer. It is clear, then, that the man who is "to blame" for his own suffering and the man who is abused by circumstances and thus suffers are equally to be pitied, both in the sense of commiserating and of seeking to end the sufferer's pain. Bibliography Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics, Translated by Martin Ostwald, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1962; and Nichomachean Ethics, Trans. by H. Rackham, M.A. William Heinemann, Ltd., 1926. Higuera, Henry: Tutor and Advisor Plato: Gorgias, Trans. by W.D. Woodhead, Phaedo,_Trans. by Hugh Tredennick, from Collected Dialogues of Plato, Princeton University Press, 1961; and The Republic, Trans. by B. Jowett, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 23 �Aututnn Day Salon E = MC Scott Vineber g ('88) Scott Vineberg ('88) Combing the follicles of grass, Cleaning-up their natty harvest confetti; Leaves, trees' dandruff. I confess to Boreas My dislike of the season: Petty gossip. But the wind, darling, Is not a good listener. I tease the scalp Of old Miss Nature, Menopausal Spinster Earth, Greying and balding. A last clip. The old bat is just about ready to be embalmed. She's never satisfied with her color: "No," she says, "the tint isn't quite right. I think I want it white for down south this year." I don't think that would be a very good idea, bitch. Well, Then she beckoned to her bully brother Boreas, And he blew the clipping and cleaning Back onto her head. She stormed out. No tip again this yea r. But it was worth it, dear, It was worth it. A gentle, explosive equation. Tight Energy is Mass. Loose mass is energy. The equality flows so easily From dynamic burst power to thick ule. Fire frozen. Stone burning. It works so carefully in the world, Cradling us from inside ourselves And all around us. Papoose wrap Nature Rocks us with minute bursts inside Pinches us with soft solidity. ' We are the naked flame rock babies of the universe. So soft. Gravity is God's kind hand holding me. I feel how we are so cautiously tucked In the dark ch aotic sky; I feel the rigid relenting bed On which I am laid, And I know I am loved. 25 24 �Seeing with Both Eyes Open Graham Redgrave ('90) Both Claudius Ptolemaeus and Nicolaus Copernicus had only their eyes with which to observe the whirling lights in the sky. In addition, each had over a thousand years of pre-Common Era astronomical data at his disposal. Yet Copernicus built an astronomy which is mathematically superi or to Ptolemy's and which has since been shown to be closer to the actual form of the universe. Alth ough some discussion of what makes an astronomy superior is appropriate, this paper will be concerned with the progression of the philosophies of the two astronomers and the links, if any, between each's philosophy and astronomy. Was there, for example, a progression of thought which may have given Copernicus the freed om to see the heavens in a different light than that in which Ptolemy had seen them? A context, in this case astronomical, must be provided in which to judge the philosophies of these two thinkers, for otherwise one would be unable to grasp any possible relevance of the philosophy of the astronome r to his astronomy. Again, in order to make the progression of thought, both astronomical and philosophical, as clear as possible, we will begin with Ptolemy and proceed chronologically to Copernicus. Upon contemplating the Preface to Ptolemy's Almagest, it becomes clear that Ptolemy's conception of astronomy is thoroughly Aristotelian: Aristotle's name appears before the name of any religious entity. Consequently, Ptolemy finds that astronomy is a species of mathematics which, in the realm of theoretical enquiry, surpasses in accessibility both the physical and the the ological; for not only is mathematics the only discipline which "would give its practitioners certain and trustw orthy knowledge ... f rom indisputable procedures"(Pt.,pp.5-6), but also astronomy is "that special mathematical theory [which] would most readily prepare the way to the theological" and make "its followers lovers of that divine beauty"(Pt.,p.6). Irrespective of the virtue in studying astronomy, the fact is that Ptolemy considers astronomy to be kind of mathematics, and therefore subject to the principles of such a discipline, beyond any principles particular to astronomy. With this delineation in mind, let us examine several of Ptolemy's expositions to evaluate their mathematical and / or astronomical excellence. Before we sift through some of his specific ideas, let us first examine his conceptions. Ptolemy, in laudable Aristotelian manner, starts "from the things which are more knowable and obvious to us and [proceeds] towards those which are clearer and more knowable by na ture"(Phys., l 84a 16-1 7), ie., he observes the appearances of heavenly motion, both firsthand and from his charts, and proceeds to find the order in their movements. In accordance with his method, Ptolemy first asserts that the movement of the heavens is spherical (Pt.,1.3). What Ptolemy actually proves is that the heavens appear to move around 27 26 �the earth with spherical motion. Now without a powerful telescope to observe parallax, there is no way to prove which is moving, the heavens or the earth, but Ptolemy says not a word about any other possibility. Ptolemy's proof for the spherical nature of the earth (Pt.,1.4) is reasonable, as is his assertion in Chapter Six that the earth has the ratio of a point to the heavens. But in Chapter Five we encounter another difficulty. The fixed stars are so far away, as he himself says(Pt.,I.6), that there is justification for calling them fixed and saying that we appear to be in the middle of them; but the variable appearances of the sun and the wandering stars, i.e., the planets, seem to suggest that, even if the relationships between the earth and these stars are regular, the earth is not necessarily the center of that regularity. Furthermore, Chapter Six reinforces the contrast between the planets and the sun on one hand, and the planets and the fixed stars on the other (something prevents Ptolemy form postulating that the whole geocentric system might be as a point to the heavens--but what is that hindrance and where else in the Almagest does it manifest itself?). I do realize that hindsight affords a better vista of the problems in a given situation, but at the same time, Ptolemy was not proving what he claimed. As a result of finding the earth at the center of the of the center of the celestial sphere, he reasonably assigns no movement to the earth(Pt.,1.7), which is perfectly in accordance with Aristotle's ideas regarding the relative weight of the earth and the innate tendencies of the simple bodies. Thus far, though his premises are clouded enough to make his proofs almost reasonable assertions, Ptolemy's arguments are self-consistent and logically sound. After he deals with the earth's relationship with the sun and moon, Ptolemy orders the planets and the sun with respect to their closeness to the earth (Pt.,IX. l ), a process which seems substantially less sound than his proofs so far. Indeed, Ptolemy gives no reason for his order except concurrence with all the other top mathematicians of his day. The order is, of course, not without value; the appearances of the planets have begun to be explained. Mercury and Venus, the two planets placed below the sun, are tied to it in that they move with the same speed as the mean sun and, as a result, can never be more than certain elongations (longi tudinal distances) from the sun. This restriction on their movements accounts perfectly for their heliacal anomaly, the first of two anomalies of the 28 planets. Ptolemy's method appears valid: he isolates one appearance of the planet at a time, explicates it, and, if further explication are needed, he takes each in turn and gradually compounds the appearances (anomalies) together. Ptolemy puts both Venus and Mercury on epicycles of specific sizes which move on eccentric deferents at specific rates, in order that the planets appear to retrograde (they appear to stop, move backward, stop again, and then continue forward) at the appropriate time and that their elongations vary correctly (their zodiacal anomaly). He constructs similar hypotheses for the outer planets, at which point strange things begin to happen. To understand the problems which now emerge, let us review the appearances of an outer planet. First, outer planets can be at any elongation from the sun, and retrogradation may happen anywhere in the zodiac, as long as the planet artd the sun are in opposition (i.e., they are 180 degrees from one another). The fact that retrogradation occurs only at opposition ties the planet to the sun in much the same way that the inner planets have limited elongations. The outer planets' zodiacal anomaly arises from the fact that the severity of retrogradati on is contingent upon what part of the zodiac the planet is in when retrogradation takes place. Finally, a coincidence arises which haunts the Ptolemaic universe. For each of the three outer planets (Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars), "the sum of the cycles of longitude [the movement of the epicycle on the deferent] and the cycles of anomaly [the movement of the planet on the epicycle] always equals the number of solar years in which these cycles take place"(S=L+A)(p.24M). The resultin g table looks like this: Saturn Jupiter Mars Solar Years 59+ 7179+ Cycles of L 2+ 6- 42+ the amount by which the d'e f erent's center is displaced from the earth. But in proving that whenever the planet is in opposition it is at its true perigee, he assumes the existence of the equant. What is the equant? When Ptolemy calculates the eccentricity of the inner planets, the data he has gives him an amount of arc which corresponds to twice the amount of eccentricity he had previously calculated. Ptolemy is forced to posit the equant, the center of regular angular motion for the planet, at a point equidistant from the center of the eccentric deferent as the earth. The equanfs existence is problematic at best, since the planet whose regular motion the equant is describing is not on a circle about the equant. The planet, then, relative to the circle it is moving on, is moving with irregular motion! After assuming the equant's existence for the outer planets, Ptolemy makes accurate predictions concerning those planets; but how valid is the equant, an assumed equant at that, even if the predictions made with it are accurate? In summarizing Ptolemy's astronomy, I will say that the nobility of his philosophy far outshines the applications of his mathematics to such a philosophy. His clear, Aristotelian thoughts soon become tangled in an ill-supported muddle, at the heart of which lie three problems. The first is the fact that under the Ptolemaic system, according to the appearances, an outer planet must be at perigee when it is in opposition to the sun. Placing an outer planet on an epicycle, however, does not necessitate this phenomenon, as is shown below (Cp., p.525): Cycles of A 57 65 37 . . I -- - conJ nct10n apogee This coincidence gives rise to the discovery of another, namely that retrogradation occurs only at perigee. Ptolemy's constructions to make the epicycles fit the appearances of the outer planets are fairly complex and hard to capture visually. More imporantly, they are more difficult for him to do simply because the outer planets have unlimited elongations. Ptolemy must determine the correlation between the planet's perigee and its being in L Sun / ' opposition/perigee L - - '\ b ......... " \ \ Earth There is nothing in Ptolemy's mathematics that necessitates that Mars be in opposition at perigee; for it is clear that Mars could be anywhere on the epicycle. It is the appearances that dictate the necessity of having perigee at opposition, but Ptolemy does not construct a system in which this must happen. The second problem is that no explanation can be made for why the number of solar years equals the sum of the planet's cycles of longitude and anomaly. For Ptolemy this is a coincidence which, when explicated according to the appearances, produces the configuration of perigee at opposition, another coincidence! These two configurations would seem to make a strong argument for heliocentricity, simply because it is clear that the orbits of all the planets have far more to do with the sun than they have to do with the earth. The last problem, that of the equant, is more subtle, more elusive. It seems clear that if one wishes to maintain the purity, both from a philosophical and a mathematical viewpoint, of the orbits of the planets, one must use only perfect circles in the explication of phenomena. For without such purity of form, not only is the mathematics far more complicated, but also the philosophy (at least the Ptolemaic/ Aristotelian philosophy) becomes besmirched with something less than divine. Perhaps some discussion of the philosophical principles guiding Ptolemy's thought is here appropriate. In Book Thirteen, Chapter Two, Ptolemy states: But it is proper to try and fit as far as possible the simpler hypothesis to the movements in the heavens; and if this does not succeed, then any hypotheses possible. Once all the appear ances are saved by the consequences of the hypotheses, why should it seem strange that such complications can come about in the movements of heavenly things? (Pt., p.429) The first clause harmonizes with Ptolemy's determined reliance on the most simple and perfect mathematical figure, the circle. Simplicity is desirable beca.u se the simple is pure and therefore divine. And in the heavens, as Aristotle (De Cael~, i,2; Metaphys., xii,8) and Ptolemy (Pt., p.429) say, the simple bodies (stars, planets, etc.) are di vine. It does seem strange, however, that Ptolemy should think that we, as definitely non-divine creatures, should have such direct access to understanding this divine simplicity. For Aristotle says, at least of scientific enquiry, "the natural way [of discovering first principles] is to start from the things which are more knowable and obvious to us and proceed towards those which are clearer and more knowable by na ture"(Phys., l 84a 16-17). Indeed, it seems inconsistent to build a system with the simple elements, viz~, circles, for simplicity's sake, only to 29 �condone the use of those simple uni ts in the building of an edifice of such complexity that simplicity is nowhere to be found in the end product. Saying that the edifice is simple because it is composed of simple elements becomes a bad joke. It is not clear, in all fairness to Ptolemy, whether he is attributing the complications found in the explications of the movements of the planets to the planets themselves, or to man's inadequate astronomy. I cannot help but feel, though, that here Ptolemy is trying to apologize for or rationalize the equant, a step which I may feel necessary but which he may not. Later in the chapter, Ptolemy says that we should "judge [the heavenly occurrences'] simplicity from the unchangeableness of the natures in the heavens and their movement"(p. 429). I find a more subtle revelation of doctrine in this passage, which again is Aristotelian. Man's most exalted faculty, that of reason, is for Aristotle the driving force of the cosmos (Metaphys ., xii,8-9). Aristotle and Ptolemy both posit the unchanging nature of the heavens in order, it seems, to have the universe reflect the supremacy of reason, viz .., in the divine motion of the stars, which, when deified, has recognizable power in the heavens and endows men with the privilege of being able to gaze upon it in its manifestations. This belief in Reason makes Man in a very real sense the measure of all things, at ieast insofar as inquiry is concerned. A man, even recognizing the power of Reason, would still be confined in an inquiry not only by the limitations of his own intellect, but also by the particula r beliefs as to what Reasonable things are. He would only discover as much about the manifestatiosn of Reason (in this case, the heavenly bodies) as his belief in the particular capabilities of Reason (e.g., the setting of the stars in motion) would allow him. His belief would hinder his intellectual pursui t wherever a particular concept (e.g., the planets moving in quasi-circles) seemed un-Reasonable. It seems, then, that Ptolemy was hampered by his philosophy. But surely no man's mind is free to wander about the cosmos unfettered, without any form to shape and direct it? If a man must necessarily have some form of mind, what will be that form, that predisposition, which will work best to enable that man to see truth? And this paper is concernd with astronomical truth; therefore, if one were able to find a verifiably superio r astron ·· omy, one might be able t o compare the philosophy or predisposition of the astronomer in question 30 with that of Ptolemy. But what will be the requirements, at least mathematical if not empirical, by which to judge a work superior? Ptolemy's system is dubious in those places, as has been said, where he cannot produce a mathematical construction that necessarily provides the appearances. If an astronomer could structure his universe to allow for the one correct set of appearances, would not his universe be mathematically superior and probably closer to the truth? Copernicus, of course, is the magician of necessity who solves at least two of the three problems of Ptolemy's system. To reiterate, those problems are: 1) that the outer planets are only at perigee at opposition and vice versa, 2) that there is 'no explanation for the coincidence S=L+A, a coincidence which, in Ptolemy's universe, is intimately linked with the first problem, and 3) that the equant comes dangerously near, in the eyes of some, to astronomical heresy. Problem three is still a problem after Copernicus finishes with it, but in a different respect than it is with Ptolemy. In order to understand how Copernicus solves these problems, we shall summarize the Copernican exposition of the uni verse. To begin with, most of the Ptolemaic ratios dealing with the earth's relationship to the hea venly bodies are kept, for a very good reason . The calculations deriving these ratios are based on fairly accurate observations. The calculations now merely ref er to different relationships; for example, the size of Mars's epicycle now becomes the earth's orbit, while the size of the deferent refers to the size of Mars's orbit. The sun is at the center of the universe, and the planets, proceeding out ward, are ordered thus: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. All the planets are moving in the same direction around centers located very close to the sun, while the earth has three movements which p r eserve the appearance of the zodiac and the daily rotation of the celest ia l sphere. But now to address those three problems-first that of the oppositions and perigees of the outer planets. All we need do is diagram the situation according to Copernicus's system (Cp., p.525): It is clear that Mars (or any out er planet) can ony be at opposition at perigee. The second problem is solved when L is understood to be the speed of the slower planet and A the difference in speeds between the two planets (i.e., the number of times the faster overtakes the slowe r ). Now the planets are ordered from observati on by their angular speeds from the slowest to the fastest, outermost orbit to innermost. Thus, when Saturn has completed two orbits (L), the earth, the faster of the two planets, will have overtaken Saturn fifty-seven times (A) and will have taken fifty-nine years to do so (S). It is also evident that whenever a planet overtakes or is overtaken by the earth, a retrogradation will occur. Whereas Ptolemy had to calculate the rates for each planet and its epicycle and engingeer retrogradations, so to speak, Copernicus shows that with their observed rates of revolution around the sun, each planet must retrograde where and when it does. Copernicus's solution t o the problem of the equant is the most astounding of the three solutions. For Ptolemy, the necessity for the equant arose when he had to compound the heliacal anomaly with the zodiacal. In addressing the same problem, Copernicus, rather than resorting to the equant, changes the shape of the planet's orbit to a quasi -circle, a curve "diff erring imperceptibly" from a circle. Here Copernicus makes a radi cal leap away from Ptolemy. Where Ptolemy understood there to be a necessity for perfect circles in affirmation of the divine simplicity of the heavens, Copernicus sees the necessity for a very different kind of simplicity, namely that there be no loopings or spirals in a planet's movement (which Ptolemy and Brahe posit, respectively). This simplicity requires a denial of the fundamental divinity of the heavens--or does it? Copernicus's opening remarks are more fervent that Ptolemy's, full of praise for the virtue of astronomy and the "godlike" motions of the heavens. Copernicus is anything but an atheistic mechanist out to rend all the spirit from his art. Copernicus has shown himself to be master astronomer over Ptolemy, but what of his philosophy? At the end of Book One, Chapter Nine, in Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Copernicus says, "And the ratio of order. .. teaches us [the astronomical] truth, if only--as they say--we would look at the thing with both eyes." It is doubtful that Copernicus thinks that Ptolemy made his observations with one eye, one physical eye, shut. This being the case, Copernicus might well be making a statement about the mind of the astronomer, a mind not fully utilizing its ability to apprehend truth. But what would the hindrance to that mind be? Earlier in this discussion, Ptolemy was seen to be restricting himself by deifying reason. Copernicus appears to be claiming that his mind is unrestricted in comparison to Ptolemy's, but to investigate the meaning and validity of Copernicus' assertion, we must look at the commentary on Copernicus in Johannes Kepler's Epitome of Copernican Astronomy,JV. In the remarks To the Reader (Kp., p.848), Kepler indirectly quotes Christ in Matthew 24:35: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." Kepler, in proclaiming his Christianity, is making a distinction about the term "heavens," which he goes on to explicate: "But his Most Supreme Highness will not pick a fight concerning the heavens; for he knows that the philosophers speak of the visible heavens; and Christ of the invisible heavens." It seems, then, that Christian dogma dictates that the universe, while "stamped with the adornment of harmonic proportions"(Kp., p.850), is as ephemeral as the ground upon which we stand. Christians are free to think not only of the earth as being related to the stars in a fundamental way, but also of the stars as not eternally moving in their perfect circles. As far as Christians are to be concerned, Aristotle's arguments resulting in the divinity of the (visible) heavens must be false, because he fixes the bounda ries of the divine at the limits of human knowing rather than beyond human knowing, as a Christian would. For Aristotle, the most divine geometrical figure is the perfect circle; consequently he posits that the stars, perceivably the most div .~nc bodies, 31 �move in perfoct circles. With Kepler's linking of Christian dogma to astronomy, however, astronomers are freed to violate certain Aristotelian precepts, simply because that which is Reasonable is no longer divine, merely reasonable. And although Man is made in God's image and, as a result, has some faculty for reason, Man is just that, an image; for him to decipher the unimaginably complex movements of the spheres, he will have to look to God for assistance. Given that Copernicus is a Christian (as is evidenced by his "Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul III"), how does he view the universe? Kepler, in quoting "Copernican Philosophy," uses Copernicus's understanding of astronomy to symbolize the Holy Trinity. The sun is a symbol for the Father, the planetary region a symbol for the Holy Ghost, and the sphere off ixed stars a symbol for Jes us Christ, the Son. Kepler is careful not to say, however, that these regions are the Trinity; he says merely that the tripartite nature of the universe serves as a vehicle for contemplating the Trinity. Now it is possible to see some correlation between the philosophical and the astronomical. Copernicus's assertion that truth can be seen if we open both eyes may be not merely an injunction to see that system which will necessitate the appearances; it may be instead an exhortation to the Christian faith, the faith which allows Copernicus to see man not as the focal point of the universe, but rather as an integral part of God's world. Having examined both Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomies in comparison with their respective philosophies, we have established some sort of correlation between astronomy and philosophy. Ptolemy, in a very Aristotelian manner, conceives of a geocentric universe, a universe whose first principle is Reason. Copernicus, whose universe necessitates the heavenly appearances rather than merely provides for them, is a Christian, and as a result is slightly less hindered that Ptolemy in his thinking about the heavens. We have established a correlation between astronomy and philosophy; but is there a causal relationship between the two? We have seen that ast r onomy is a species of mathematical inquiry, relating to the ordered movements of the heavens, but "philosophy," insofar as it has been used in this paper (and in the term "Copernican Philosophy"), might better be termed "the result of reflection upon one's belief." Ptolemy probably believed in the supremacy of Reason, if we take his Aristotelianism to its logical end, while Copernicus was a Christian. If this "belief" is the farm of mind as was discussed earlier, then it is fundamental in a person and in some way must have given Copernicus the ability to see things differently that Ptolemy. Again if, as Kepler says, "it should not be surprising to anyone that eyesight should learn from r eason,"(Kp., p.854) surely it should not be surprising to anyone that reason learn from belief? Variant Sonnet: ·Atnazon Mourning Dahra Latham ('90) The river sleeps beneath the sun; Her warm, fecund meanders run Through fen and forest drowsily To the cold wakefulness of sea. To rub her eyes and shake her hair, Thinking of sunstruck jungles where She slipped to sleep, having forgot What strange change this night's rest has wrought. So the pard-huntress surely rose At Tibur, surely shook her hair Half of her mind still in repose Forgetting what had brought her there. And raised her head, in sunstruck Syria crowned To see the first strange frost on Roman ground. N.B.: All quotations from Ptolemy, Copernicus, or Ke ple r were taken fr om Gre at Books of the Weste rn World, no. 16, "Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler," R.M.Hutchins, ed. All quotations from Aristotle were taken from The Basic Works of Aristotle, R. McKeon, ed. In addition, any quotation followed by "M" is taken from the Sophomore "Ptolemy, Copernicus" Manual. 32 33 �Untitled Sahana Dharmapuri ('91) When her eyes are violets, he is a universe of dandelions to her, and she folds easily into his gentleness. He smells her breasts like plums and rests quietly at her stomach, listening to the chatter of her flesh. He hides but does not hide here. He only hopes to touch her once again; "to fall into the sublime" he says. The conversation of their bodies is insanity, violence, delicate trembling. When they wish on distant nebulas and dying stars, midnight is a mistress to these sorrows. 34 The Return of Oedipus Rex · The Metaphysics of Incest Michael McShane ('88) Writing of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Freud asks why it, more than other "tragedies of fatedness," has enjoyed such continued prominence. What is it about Oedipus Rex that has allowed it to hold such powerful sway over minds and imaginations for so many centuries? Freud's answer to the question is well known: Sophocles' tragedy exerts power over us because we all (men presumably) are Oedipal; we all literally but unconsciously desire to kill our fathers and sleep with our mothers. Freud argues that the play touches an unconscious sexual nerve in its audiences and readers; they participate in Oedipus' drama without realizing it. Freud concludes that Oedipus Rex maintains its hold on audiences because Oedipus' sexual complexes and catharses are secretly shared by viewers. I think Freud's question is good but his answer somewhat limited. I am not convinced that everyone shares an unconscious literal desire to kill "his" father and marry "his" mother. Yet it does seem true that Oedipus Rex touches some universal desire, which perhaps Oedipus' murder and incest symbolize. This paper will argue that Oedipus is motivated primarily by a universally shared metaphysical desire. This desire is erotic, certainly, but not merely sexual. To show this the paper will first discuss some Aristotelian meta physics and then--for the sake of contrast--an Homeric corned y before turning to a discussion of the Oedipal tragedy itself. In Greek as well as in much post-Greek thought the form of the circle has held great significance. In the Physics, for example, Aristotle describes the motions of the heavenly bodies as being circular. The planets are divine because they eternally follow circular paths. The major characteristic of the circle, Aristotle argues, is that its end is also its beginning/end. Thus, unlike an object following a rectilinear path, the planet never experiences anything new. To a greater extent than any other movable, the planet's circularity allows it to transcend change and time. For Aristotle, then, the planets are divine; their circular orbits indicate a high degree of self-enclosed, self-sufficient, persistent identity. Following their circular itineraries, the planets recuperate themselves at every moment, suffering minimal intrusion of anything foreign or external to them. Nearly unconditioned, they return to themselves, eternally. The one thing that does condition the planets, Aristotle argues, is the most divine being in the cosmos, the unmoved mover. The prime mover solicits the circular motions of the planets, which are moved by an erotic desire for its perfection. The prime mover also displays a kind of circular quality. It is pure activity: thinking thinking. The prime mover thinks only its own thoughts. It always and immediately returns to itself. The prime mover can be imagined as an extremely tight circle of selfconsciousness. 35 �Even more than the planets, the divine prime mover transcends time. As pure activity, it has present in it no potentiality whatsoever. As such, the prime mover cannot change or move, given that Aristotle's definition of motion is "the actuality of potentiality qua potentiality." Aristotle describes time as the "measure of motion." Thus, the potentiality-less prime mover cannot move and consequently is outside of time. Thinking only its own self, the prime mover can be represented as even more self-subsistent and self-enclosed than the planets, which are moved by it. Closed off, the prime mover's world is populated only by itself.Unaffected by anything external to the circle of its own intellectual activity, the prime mover is radically unconditioned and free. From the above I hope it can be seen that in Aristotle's thought the form of the circle is the form of the divine, the eternal, the self-identical, self-enclosed and self-sufficient. From this thought I will try to show that there is a kind of "circle logic" at work in Greek literature as well as philosophy. Two examples of literary circle logic will be adduced. One is comedic--i.e., has a happy ending--and the other tragic: the tales of Odysseus and Oedipus. Odysseus' travels represent a great circle, starting from Ithaca, turning through the events of the Iliad, re-turning through the events of the Odyssey and ending with a triumphal return to his original starting point, Ithaca. Odysseus' r eturning to Ithaca represents the closing of his circle, where end meets beginning. There he recuperates his own origin: he makes peace with his father. There Odysseus kills off the external suitors, restoring the integrity of his family circle. He regains his ever-faithful wife Penelope, his troubled son, his kingship, his place. The return of Odysseus indi cates the recuperation of his very identity, which h a d been a t sta ke th roughout his a r cing journeys. As with the planets, the meshing of the Ithacan scene at the beginning of Odysseus' travels with the scene there at the end in di ca tes a kind of transcendence of time. The great circular reasoner, Hegel, remarks that true forgiveness means negating history; unweaving, Penelope forgives and trusts Odysseus, thus negating the troublesome period between his departure and return, a period when he was out doing godknowswhat with godknowswhom godknowswhere. Another example of temporal transcendence concerns the suitors. They die off relatively expediently. More than 36 that, however, by means of Athena's action, Ithaca somehow eludes the horrible regression of revenge seen in another return story, The Oresteia. As Helen drugged Menelaos into forgetting his past, so Athena somehow induces the families of the slain suitors to forget that Odysseus has wiped out their men. Only by this collective forgetting of the past can Odysseus ever hope to govern in Ithaca. The comedic nature of the Odyssey depends upon Odysseus' ability to transcend time and history. Thus we see two examples of how the triumphal return of Odysseus somehow involves a denial, forgetting, negation or transcendence of the time between. Turned full circle, Odysseus can live at peace with his wife, family, city and self as if he had never left town. Having fully returned to his origin, Odysseus has re-captured his identity, place and independence, in conformity with the circle logic of the circular path he followed. The fin al comedic nature of the Odyssey is guaranteed by its circular form: the end meshes successfully with the beginning. If, as I have suggested, the circular form guarantees perfection and absolute self-suff iciency in Greek philosophy and comic epics, it also presides over the tragedy of Oedipus Rex. An examination of that play will reveal a sense . in which the divine cir cle becomes a vicious circle for human beings. There are many aspects of circularity and broken ci rcularity in Oedipus Rex. I won' t go into all of them here, but the most obvious aspect of circularity in the play is Oedipus' geographical itinerary. Like Odysseus, Oedipus' wanderings form a great circle. He departs originally from Thebes and turns through Cithaera and Corinth, from there re-turning home to Thebes via the illfated crossroads and the interview with the sphinx. Although this itinerary seems to conform to the circular path taken by Odysseus, there obviously remains a tragic difference. For Oedipus, homecoming, although first apparently excessively successful, becomes increasingly and ultimately horrifying. An important difference between Oedipus' and Odysseus' circular paths concerns the tightness of their circles. Whereas Odysseus returns to his wife after killing her suitors, Oedipus returns to his own mother after killing his father. In terms of circle logic, what does it mean to marry mother after killing father? Why do men commonly dream of this kind of return, as Jocasta suggests? To marry one's own mother indicates the most immediate, most intimate form of circular return, where the circle closes back on itself extremely tightly. Oedipus has literally returned to his own place of origin, his mother's body. Conceiving children with her, it is as if he is conceiving himself. He can, in effect, be his own parent and child simultaneously. Returning so closely to his own origin, Oedipus expresses a desire to undo what has been done, to negate his past and start again, to re-create himself by himself. In this way we see in Oedipus' story, as in Odysseus', the Aristotelian premiss of time-transcendence as described by circle logic. The desire to marry one's own mother, it seems to me, comes out of an Aristotelian desire for self-sufficiency. As described above, self-sufficiency means minimal dependence upon anything exterior to the circle of one's own present identity. Such a desire for self-sufficiency accounts for Oedipus'(perhaps unconscious) desire to be selfbegotten, self-raised. It implies a dread of otherness, newness or foreigness. Having children by his own mother indicates Oedipus' desire to populate the world with himself. He desires to be like the unmoved mover, inhabiting a cosmos in which only he is present. Before Oedipus' self-sufficient dread of anything alien all otherness or negativity must be annihilated. Hence essential to Oedipus' return to his maternal origin is the killing of his own father. If self-sufficiency means being conditioned only by oneself then paternity, as a pregi ven and prohibiting condition, must be eliminated. To use the Aristotelian language, killing the father is for the sake of marrying the mother, which is for the sake of circular self-sufficiency. Thus we can see that Oedipus symbolically achieves the closest possible meshing of beginning and end as prescribed by the logic of circularity. Why is it then that Odysseus' circle is comically charmed while Oedipus' becomes vicious, tragic? This question might seem foolish; after all , one could reason, Oedipus committed incest, which is a horrible crime against nature, hence it is no wonder that he ended tragically in Oedipus Rex. Yet, such reasoning misses the point. Odysseus certainly committed a few crimes in his career. We must ask why incest is regarded as a uniquely horrible crime. This question becomes more compelling in light of the doctrine of circle logic set out before. Circle logic, as presented in my interpretation of Aristotle, seems to imply that the tighter the circle followed the more divine the follower. For this reason planets, although divine, are less di vine than the prime mover. As set out above, the planets do move, require externality, are conditioned, do desire some more original other. On the other hand, the tight inner circle of the prime mover implies its wholly original, independent and divine nature. If circle logic be taken as a standard, it would seem that Oedipus should fare better than his counterpart in circularity, Odysseus. For schematically, Odysseus' life (up to the end of the Odyssey) should look something like this: A birth, origin From this diagram we can see that Odysseus doesn't fully return to his origin. There is a rectilinear portion of his lif e(line AB), for which he must be less divine, according to Aristotelian circle logic. On the other hand, Oedipus' life drawing (up to the end of Rex) looks like this: birth, marriage, child begetting Cithaera Sphinx crossroads Here we can see that if circle logic is valid, Oedipus should end up more divine, more outside of time, more self-sufficient than Odysseus, for he more closely approaches his own origin. If this is true we reach the paradoxical conclusion that circle logic seems to sanction, even demand, incest; for incest 37 �represents the closing of the circle. Given, then, that Oedipus' life most closely approximates the divine pattern of the self-enclosed divine circle, we are compelled to ask our question again: "Why is it then that Odysseus' circle is comically charmed while Oedipus' is tragically vicious?" Why is it that Odysseus is able to transcend time while Oedipus remains haunted and destroyed by his own past? Why is it that Odysseus and those around him can forgive and forget, while Oedipus is doomed to remembrance and condemnation? Why is it that Odysseus is able to re-establish his own self-sufficient identity, his place and his kingship while Oedipus is left dependent, dethroned and exiled? Circle logic would seem to indicate that Oedipus should have been the most divinely content, self-satisfied and self-sufficient man ever. He obviously is not that at the end of the play. That contradiction, I think, lies at the heart of the tragedy of Oedipus Rex as human tragedy. It suggests the true meaning of Oedipus' much bruited "tragic flaw." It was not for something idiosyncratic, like his impatience or wrathfulness, that Oedipus had to suffer. It was because he made a bid for something all human beings intrinsically desire: he aspired to be divine, completely circularly self-sufficient. Like Aristotle's planets, Oedipus erotically desired to completely overcome all alien being, transcend time and his own history, to endlessly renew himself in a closed world populated only by himself. In short, Oedipus desired divinity, self-sufficiency and immortality. I think the message of Oedipus Rex is that such a radical transcendence of the human is impossible and dangerous, contrary to what Aristotle claims in the Ethics. Oedipus discovered that human beings must content themselves with human things. This means, in effect, that human beings cannot ever be sufficient unto themselves; Sophocles has Oedipus learn that there is no escape from otherness, newness, time and external conditions. To try to evade mortality, Oedipus finds, is to commit horrible crimes. He cannot close the circle of his history without annihilating his own father, killing off thereby, a part of himself. · I think the real power of Oedipus Rex lies in its depiction of the human soul. Part of being human is dreaming of immortality and self-sufficiency. As the Odyssey perhaps suggests, human nature holds out a vague promise of divine transcendence. Yet, full divinity can never be fully obtained, at least according to Oedipus Rex. Oedipus sensed the divine in him, sensed it perhaps as intellect or good fortune (his "mother"), and erotically pursued this divinity, although perhaps unconsciously. Oedipus' pursuit of his divine self took place in a dream-like state of amnesia. When Oedipus a woke the circle was broken; he had blood on his hands. The tragedy of Oedipus Rex is a tragedy of the impossibility of radical human transcendence. 38 39 �Thus, by substituting (5) and (2). into (6), we arrive at, (sin 2Lz)(3600)(Ui) 2 + [(cosL 2)(60)(U 1)-M(BC)] 2 = M 2(DB) Therefore, (sin2Lz) (3600) (U 1)2+ (cos2Lz) (3600) (U 1) 2 - 120 (U i) (cosLz) * M(BC) + M2(BC) = M2(DB) A Modern Investigation of the Eccentric Hypothesis Therefore, (3600) (U 1) 2 [sin 2L 2+cos 2LiJ (120) (U 1) (cosL 2 * M(BC) + M 2(BC) = M 2(DB) by Tim McNicholl '90 Therefore, (3600) (U 1) =M2(DB) - The circle in the above diagram is the eccentric with center C. Point Bis the position of the Earth, and D is a given position of the planet. Thus Li is the angle of apparent movement and L 2 is the angle of regular movement. The planet moves counterclockwise from point A, the perigee. The drawing is an inversion of the more commonly used diagram in Book III, Chapter Two, of the Almagest. However, this will not affect the results obtained. In the following equations, M(a) denotes the measure of line a. 1. Given the Angle of Regular Motion, to find the Angle of Apparent Motion. A M(DC)=60*U i (sinL 2)*60*U i=M(DE) ( cosLz)*60*U i=M(EC) Therefore, Li= Sin- 1 { (SinLz) (60) / +[ 3600 - 120 (n) ( CosL 2) + n 2] 1h} (15) (8) Q.E.F. Thus, Substituting (8) into (7), 2. Given the Angle of Apparent Motion, to find the Angle of Regular Motion. (3600)(U 1)-( l 20)(n)(U 1)2( cosLz)+(n)2(U 1)2 =M2(DB) Consider the following equations again, Let U i equal the unit that measures DC sixty times. Therefore, (U i) 2 [3600 - (120) (n) (cosL 2) + n2] = M2(DB) Therefore, +U i[3600 - (120) (n) (cosL 2) + n]11 M(DB) 2= (9) M(EC)=(CosLi)(Uz)+n(U i) M(DE)=(SinLi)*U2 M(DC)=60*U 1 M(DE)=(SinLz)(60)(U 1) By this unit, Let U 2=the unit that measure DB one time. From the drawing it follows that, (1) (2) (3) M(EB)=M(EC)-M(BC) (4) M2(EC)+ M2(D E )=M2(DC) (10) (11) +Ui[3600 - (120) (n) (cosLz) + n 2]112= U 2 (12) Equating (12) and (2), Substituting (3) into (4), we obtain, M(EB)=( cosL 2)( 60 )(U i)-M(BC) By this unit, M(DB)=l *U 2 M(DE)=(sinLl )*U 2 Equating (10) and (9), Now then, (13) (5) At the same time, Substituting (11) into (13), (6) 40 (14) (7) (120) (U 1) 2 (cosLz) * M(BC) + M2(BC) M(BC)=n*U i Therefore, SinL 1=(SinLz)*60/ +[3600 - 120 (n) (CosL 2) + n2]1/z This function does not work, however, when 90 > L < 360. For, within these values, CosL 2 is negative, slightly disturbing the value of the denominator of the right side of (15). This is mended by changing the - sign in the radical to a + operand which is - when O~L~90. Accordingly, Li= Sin-i{ (SinL 2) (60) + [ 3600 + (120) (n) (CosL 2) + (16) n2] 1/2} Let n= the number of times U i measures BC. With the publication of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium in 1543, the heliocentric Hrevolu tion" was heralded along with the decline of the geocentric theory of Ptolemy. The many advances made afterwards in mathematics were used to refine and confirm the heliocentric system while the obsolete system of Ptolemy was given little of their attention. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the eccentric hypothesis of Ptolemy using the mathematics of the heliocentric era. Its goals are to derive formulas that yield the angle of apparent or regular motion when given the other angle, and to verify that mean passage occurs at apparent quadrature. Therefore, (SinLi) ( + [3600 - 120 (n) (CosLz) + n2 ]112) =(SinLz) * 60 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Substituting (1), (2), and (3) into (5) , [ (CosL 1) (U 2) + (n) (U 1)]2 + (Sin 2L 1) (U z) 2 =3600 (U 1) 2 Therefore, (Cos 2L 1) (Ut) 2 +2 [(CosL 1) (U z) (n) (U 1) ] + (n) 2 (U 1) 2 + (Sin L 1) (U z)2 = 3600(U 1)2 Therefore, (Uz) 2 + 2 [(CosL 1)(n) (U 2)(U 1)] + (U 1)2[N 2 - 3600] =0 (SinL 1) (U 1) + [3600 - 120 (n) (CosLz) + n2] 1f2 =(SinLz) (60) (U1) 41 �d/dL = (n2cos 2Li - n2+ 3600) 1/~ .5[d ( n2cos2Li /2 n 2 + 3600) I dLi] * [l / (n2cos2L 1 - n2+ 3600) 1 We now have an equation in the form ax 2+bx+c=0 where, L 2=t*m L 2/m=t x=Uz a=l b=2(CosLi)(U i)(n) c=(U i) 2[n-3600] Therefore, dL 1/d[L 2/t] or m*dL 1/dL 2 is sought. =.5 [d/ dL 1 n 2cos2Lil * [l /(n 2cos2L 1-n2+3600) 1/ 2 In addition to the basic rules of diff erentiation, the fallowing axioms have been used: Using the quadratic formula to solve for U 2, we obtain, And so, at apparent quadrature, the apparent and regular velocities are equal, no matter what the distance between the centers is. =n 2 * dcosL 1/dL 1 * cosL 1 * 1/( ... ) 1/ 2 =n 2(-sinL 1)(cosL 1)/(n 2cos 2L 1-n2+3600) 1/ 2 dL 2/dt = dt*m/dt = m*dt/dt = m (6) Q.E.D. 1 dsinx/dx= 1/(l-x2) h dsinx/ dx= cosx dcosx/dx= -sinx Inserting (5) and (6) into (4), (n)2 (U i)2 cos2Li- 4 Consider equation (8) from section two. Diff erentiating both sides with respect to L 1, d/dLi(-1/60 (sinLi) (cosL 1) (n) .±._ 1/60[ n2cos2L 1n 2 + 3600] 1/z =1/60{-n (cos 2L 1 - sin 2L 1) .±_ [-n 2 (sinL 1) (cosL 1) / n 2 cos 2L 1 - n 2+ 3600) 1lz) (7) Therefore, U 2=-2(CosLi)(U iHn)±_2(U 1)[(n) 2(Cos 2Li)n2+3600]11y2 dL 2/dL 1= d/dL 1 sin-1 [-1 /60 (sinL 1)(CosLi)(n).±_l / 60(n2Cos2L 1-n2+3600) 1I] (1) Substituting (7) into (3), Now then, d/dL 1 sin-i (1/60 (sinL 1)(cosLi) (n) + 1/60 [n2 cos 2Li - n2 +3600] 1/z dsin-i (1/60 (sinL 1) (cosL 1) (n) .:t. 1/60 [n 2 cos 2L 1n2 + 3600] 1fz/ d (-1 /60 (sinL 1) (cosL 1) (n) .±._ 1/60 [n 2 cos 2L 1- n2 + 3600] 1/z =1/60 {-n (cos 2L 1 - sin 2L 1) + [-n 2 (sinL 1) (cosLi) I (n 2 cos 2L 1 - n 2 + 3600) 1/U / {l-[-l/60(sinLi) (cosL 1) (n) .±_l /60[n 2 cos2Li -n2+ 3600] 1lz) 1/2 @ =l I (1 - { 1/60 (sinLi) (cosLi) (n) ±_1/60 [n2cos2L 1 - n2+ 3600] 1h) 2) 1 /z And so, substituting (8) into (1) and inverting the result, Uz= -2 (Cos Li) (U i) (n) .:t. (Ui) 2 [ n 2 - 3600 ] } 1h/ 2 {4 Therefore, U 2=-(CosLi)(U 1)(n).±_U i[(n)2(Cos2Li)-n2+3600]1fz (6) Equating ( 4) with (2) and inserting equation (6), SinLi { -cosLi (U i) (n) ±_ (U i) [ n 2 cos 2Li n 2 + 3600 ] 112) = SinL 2( 60) (U 1) -(SinL 1) (CosLi) (U 1) (n) .±._ (SinLi) (U 1) [ (n)2(Cos2Li) - n2+ 3600] 1l~(SinLz)(60)(Ui) - (SinL 1) (CosLi) (n) .:t. (SinLi) [ n 2 (Cos 2Li) n2+3600] 1f2/ 60 = SinL 2 (7) Sin-1 {-(SinL 1) (CosLi) (n) + (SinLi) [ n2 (Cos 2Li) - n 2 + 3600] lfi; 60 } =L 2 (8) (2) Multiplying both sides of (2) by d/dLi(-1 /60(sinL 1)(cosL 1)... ),d /dL 1sin-1( ... ) =d /dL 1 ( 1/60 (sinL 1 ) (cosL 1 ) (n) .±._ 1/ 60 [n 2 cos2L 1 - n2+ 3600] 1'2/ {1- [-1 /60 (sinL 1) (cosL 1) (n) .±._ 1/60 [n2cos2L 1 n 2 + 3600 ] 1/} 112 (3) Where the variable operand is + when O~L 2~.180 and - when 180>L<360. Now, solving for the numerator of the right side of Q.E.F. d/ dL 1(- 1/60(si nLi)( cosL 1) ... ) =l/60[d/fLi~inL 1 )(cosL 1 ) (n) d/dLi (n cos Li... ) 112] 3. To Verify that Mean Passage Occurs at Apparent Quadrature. It is first required to find the apparent velocity when the planet appears to have moved 90 from apogee or perigee. In the language of differentials: what is dLi/dt when L 1=90? Since L 2 is the angle of regular motion, and thus is directly proportional to time, (3), dL 1/dL 2 =[-1/60 (sinL 1) (cosL 1) (n) + 1/60 [n 2 cos 2L 1 n2+ 3600]1/}i/2 - / 1/60{-n (cos2Lr sin 2L 1 ) + [-n2 (sinLi) (cos2L 1) /(n2 cos2L 1n2 + 3600) 1/ 2} (9) Now, let L 1=90, dLi/dL 2= {l -L±_l /60(-n 2+36000) 1l} 1lz/ l/60[+n] = {1-[ 1/3600*(3600-n 2]} 1/z / n/60 .:t. ={1 -[l-n 2/3600]} 1/z / n/60 (4) The first derivative in the right side of (4) can be resolved as follows: d/dL 1 - (sinL 1) (cosL 1) (n) = -n [sinL 1 . dcosL 1/dL 1+cosL 1dsinLi/dLi]= -n [cos 2Li-sin 2L 1 ] (5) Resolving the second derivative in (4), = n/60 I n/60 =1 Now, in the first part of this section, it was determined that the apparent velocity at a point was equal to m * dL 1/dL 2. Thus, at apparent quadrature the perceived velocity ism. Since L 2=t * m, for any value of Li, 43 42 �An Adaptation, 1987 The Bow- of Heracles John Pronko ('90) Carolyn Barndt ('90) This is no garden. Don't think I mistook this for the banks of Euphrates: You are not the only man on the face of th e ea r th Although you might as well be --even as we have both tasted t he f ru i t of that tree whose branches are many bu t finite -I see whe r e we are. Cut off from the past Sa nctuar y, th e blind green re li ef -I found you culti vat ing your thi stles and th orns cursing th e ea rt h fo r n ot yie ld ing up more. --You know tha t story; this is not the begi nn in g. Not being the fi rst I can't take the blame for The pain in your r ibcage and countless transgressions: I' m not the agent of you r fall from grace, I Resist being pushed through the stencils of h isto ry. Far f r om paradise Why try to forget what might have been easy But may not be impossible? --although we need othe r skins , hi des fo r protectio n although we have skins at all --with th e fruit i n us rooted, to speak our own blame: To stand before each other, n aked and not be ashamed. Sophocles's employment of the deus ex machina as agent of resolution in Philoctetes is disturbing. There is a sense that Heracles' appearance completely undermines the events of the play. Philoctetes is understandably unwilling to serve the Atridae and Odysseus. He has for nine years fought his own miserable war on Lemnos and survived. Glory is no longer of interest to him, nor does he care to take steps to avenge himself. Philoctetes wants to go home. Neoptolemus can at least grant him that. He ultimately agrees to do so. One might consider this the human resolution of the play. This is blatantly inadequate, but it seems at least consistent with the rest of the play. Heracles appears and in one line Philoctetes, the play's paradigm of constancy, yields. Yes, Philoctetes will go to Troy. This is difficult to accept unless there is some way to understand the appearance of Heracles as necessary. In addition to the three main characters in the play there is a fourth, the bow of Heracles. It is the bond between Heracles and Philoct'etes. Perhaps this bow is the key to understanding this enigma tic conclusion. Heracles says to Philoctetes that after Troy is taken: "From the spoils of the campaign you must dedi cate some, on my py re, in memory of my bow" ( 1.1431 ). T.B.L. Webster chooses to translate the words, roewe €µwe ,as, "what my bow has achieved." It seems strange that a man should be asked to pay homage to a weapon. Heracles does not ask that homage be paid to himself or for that matter to Zeus. Odysseus' plan is to disarm Philoctetes. Without the bow Philoctetes is not to be feared, but while it is in his possession, it sends arrows that none may avoid, that carry death (1.105). Early in the play it is unclear whether Philoctetes is needed or not. For awhile it seems that the only matter is to get the bow, and Philoctetes is someone standing in the way. When Neoptolemus first speaks to the chorus he hints that the destinies of the bow and Philoctetes are inseparable. Neoptolemus also presents a connection between the bow and Philoctetes' suffering: As for his present loneliness and suffering, this, too, no doubt is part of the God's plan that he may not bend against Troy the divine invincible bow until the time shall be fulfilled, at which it is decreed, that Troy, as they say, shall fall to that bow. (1.194) The fact that Troy shall fall to the bow is echoed much later when Heracles declares that Ilium must twice fall to his bow ( 1.1439). As the play continues it becomes plain that Philoctetes and the bow are inextricably linked. In the mind of Philoctetes it is obvious that he identifies himself with the bow. When he introduces himself to Neoptolemus he is the master of Heracles' arms ( 1.260). This is before he is Phi- 45 44 �loctetes the son of Poias. It is worth noting that Philoctetes was not bitten by the viper until he posessed the bow, which links with Neoptolemus' understanding of the reason for his suffering. The suffering which is synonymous with the name Philoctetes is caused by the bow. This is echoed by Philoctetes' stern suggestion to Neoptolemus that he should bow in prayer to the Gods' envy that the bow may not be to him a sorrow as it was to himself and its former master ( l. 776). This connection between the weapon and Philoctetes' plight is further reinforced by the parallel Heracles draws between his own sufferings and those of Philoctetes: "All this suffering must be your suffering too, the winning of a life to an end in glory, out of this suffering" (1.1422). The divine bow will conquer Troy. Philoctetes suffers because it is his lot to bear the bow and share the glory it will win. The bow is a holy object. When Neoptolemus first beholds it he asks if he might see it closer, touch and adore it like a god ( 1.656). It has passed from the hand of a dying Heracles to the living Philoctetes. There is something immortal about it. It has a destiny of its own that has outlived the original owner. Mythologically the bow is believed to have been a gift from Apollo.(l) Heracles concludes his speech with the words, Holiness does not die with men that die Whether they live or die it cannot perish" ( 1.1444). Is the bow in some way a symbol of such holiness? Philoctetes is the rightful bearer of Heracles' weapon. He received it as a gift when he agreed to light the dying hero's pyre. Philoctetes himself states that it is as a result of friendly help that he fi rst won it (1.670). In a strange way the will of Heracles was transmitted to Philoctetes when he conceded to execute the man's last wish. Philoctetes is in a way bound to Heracles' will. The gift of the bow mi gh t be. un derstood to re present that bo nd. Until the appointed time arrived when Philoctetes no longer had to suffer because of the bow, it nonetheless was what kept him alive. The bow was what he used to shoot the birds that filled his belly (1.286). Without the bow Philoctetes would have died. Lemnos was the place where the bow and the man who was to use it had to be kept until a predetermined number of years had elapsed. The asocial properties of Philoctetes' disease may have been to further assure that neither bearer nor bow appear before the appointed hour. The bow belongs to Philoctetes, and since i t was acquired through an act of good will, Odysseus' 46 deception cannot successfully work against it. It is interesting to note that Neoptolemus does not falter in his deceit until he acquires the bow. Ultimately he realizes that it must remain with Philoctetes. The two cannot be separated. Any bow may be understood as a symbol of will. When a bow is aimed, before the shaft is released the archer has willed it to strike its target. This bizarre weapon that Philoctetes possesses never misses its mark. Unlike a man's will this bow never fails. Its will is greater than any man's. Philoctetes may believe that it was his own inner strength that allowed him to survive those nine horrendous years, but without the bow he would have perished. He may feel that he is the bow's master, but in the end he is its servant and through it a servant of the gods. He who is conquerable must serve the inconquerable. Heracles must appea r at the end of the play because his is the one voice Philoctetes must listen to. The bow is Philoctetes' provider and master. He will only understand that from the mouth of the person to whom he first subjugated his will, as a result of which he subsequently received the bow. This bow is an executive instrument of the gods, and the man Philoctetes has been chosen to launch its avenging shaft against Troy. The divine destiny of the bow and its se r vant is to kill Paris who is the cause of all this evil and take Troy (1.1426). Philoctetes may want to go home, but he cannot disobey. He h as success fu lly asserted h is will against men, but he cannot against gods. Divine destiny supercedes the aspirations of any man. The employ me nt of th e deus ex machina seemed to deny the h u man r esolution of this play. In fact this was no resolu tion a t all because it failed to consult wha t migh t be · considered the most important cha r acte r, the bow. Philoctetes was blind if he actually belie ved that Heracles' bow was destined me r el y to shoot bi rds and then retire on a dusty shelf i n Oeta. No one other than Heracles could open his exhausted eyes. Just as no man determines when and why he suffers, so also, no man determines when and why he tastes triumph. All men bow before the ins truments of the gods. Three Loyal Haikus Jana Giles ('88) In twilight often finding the geometry of your sonorous world; and from your strong eye I am given a gaze so finite, silent: this I know to be the moment of convergence the second splintered from infinity. 1986 All line mentions and quotations are from David Grene's translation except: ( 1) Larousse, World Mvthologv. p. 141, edited by Pierre Grima!. 47 �11 1 THE LEARNED PRINCESS Erika Wilson ('88) Once upon a time, in a kingdom not so terribly far away, a moderately fair princess was sighing over the lack of a certain something. "Oh," sighed she, "I wish I knew what it all meant." And with a trembling lip and a troubled brow, she returned to the books that lay scattered in a intellectual confusion about her royal chamber. For you see, our princess was a scholar. And though this may seem to be a rather odd occupation for a fairy-tale princess (for indeed she was), it had all come about in a most natural manner. Some years ago, no matter how long, the King had found himself with that rare st of royal commodities: Time on his hands. And so, as it was a most delicious spring day, he decided to take his delightful young daughter for a walk about the castle grounds. At first she ran about in all directions, squealing and chasing butterflies as her father strolled in a stately manner, watching her antics with gentle amusement. Inevitably, she grew tired, so she and her father lay themselves down on a cool green hillside to watch the cloud races in the sky. But now that her body was tired, it seemed that the little princess's mind was free to work without distraction. "Daddy," she piped, "what makes the sky blue?" "Huh?" he grunted, for the warm sunshine had just about put him to sleep. "Sky? Blue? ... uh, 48 Atmosphere ... urm ... Refraction ... ahem,ah ... humph." He paused to pull his eyebrows together, hoping that such a maneuver would aid his memory, but his daughter was too busy to notice, for she had rolled over and had another object in view. "Why is the grass green, Daddy?" "Chlorophyll." He answered triumphantly after a brief pause. "Ah, Photosynthesis ... ahem, ah ... humph." And he was stuck again. Unmindful of the black thunder cloud gathering on his brow, the little princess turned her wide blue eyes on him and asked sweetly; "Papa, what is the nature of _ Man?" His mouth shut with an audible snap, his eyebrows shot up and he answered her in the only way a truly wise king could. "I think I smell chocolate chips. Let's go see if Mama's making cookies." And that was the end of that. But later that night, as he and his queen were getting ready for bed, he mentioned their daughter's precocious curiosity, and the question she had put to him that day. "The nature of Man." He chuckled. "Who would have thought?" And he laughed and ·h ook his head, willing to leave it at that. But the Queen nodded quietly and looked thoughtful, for she had a great deal of that even more rare of royal commodities: Good common sense. And she knew that a mind such as her daughter had shown would be a terrible thing to waste. So as her husband snored, she lay long awake, planning and making notes on the big legal pad she always kept on the bedside table. The next day, she took her daughter bY. the hand and led her into a part of the castle that the little princess had never seen before. They walked down a long cold passageway, thick with dust and cobwebs. Something small and black skittered around a corner and the princess shivered, but ·s aid nothing. They came to an abrupt halt before a huge wooden door with great knobby bars of black metal criss-crossing it in a most uninviting manner. With a loud rattle that startled the Ii ttle princess, her mother pulled a ring of keys out of her pocket and choosing the largest and ugliest one of all, she inserted it into the nasty old padlock tha.t guarded the door. Using both hands, she managed to turn the key around and the unhappy lock snapped .o pen with a mangled sort of sound. The Queen put her shoulder to the door and as it creaked unheathily open, our princess squeezed her eyes shut, knowing that whatever lay begin such a grim facade· must be horrible. Her mother pulled her gently forward and said softly: "Come on dear, it's all right. You can open your eyes now." Unwilling, but trust~ng ·; trre- mater­ nal instinct to keep her from harm, sh'e opened her eyes and gasped at what met her bewilqered gaze. Books! Wall to wall, floor to ceiling; door to door, the entire room was filled with books. "Oh mother!" the princess exclaimed as her glowing eyes caressed the room's occupants with barely restrained eagerness. "Wherever shall I begin?" "Right here," her mother said, and laid three books down on a nearby desk. Her daughter walked over and ran a puzzled finger across the names stamped on the covers. "Yewklid?" she asked. "Didn't he do math or something?" "That's right," her mother replied. "He will show you how to think." "Oh," said her daughter, and nodded vaguely. "And this one, Play-doh?" "He will show you how not to think," said her mother, and smiled at some little inward amusement. "Uh huh," said the daughter, unconvinced. "And the last, Airsdoddle? "Oh yes," said the Queen. "He will show you what you should think and not think about." The princess frowned, and a slight line appeared between her delicate ~yebrows. She wasn't q"4-ite sure what her mother was talking about, out then she felt the srucwth leather beneath her hand~ and smiled a radiant ~mile . . "N~ matter," she thought, "I'll soon understand everything." ·' ' ·· Some weeks later, the line between her delicate brows had become deeper and the residents gf the castle thought it had become a permanent ' feature upon the' little p'rincess's face. "I don't like it," the King told his Queen one d~y. "She spends all her time locked up with t-h ose d us..ty old tome. It's not healthy, I tell you." Quietly the Queen agreed, and soon the peasants that lived about the castle became used to the sight of the 11t'tle 'princess with he·r skirts tucked up about her knees·, dangling her bare feet in a creek while reading a book and munching on an apple. Appealiilg to her daughter's now-found love of logic puzzles, the Queen also began sending her on strange .little errands. . . ·"Go find me something no orie..has ever seen be"ror~,:' she would ask one day. The littl~ princess .w ould smile, then frown, then walk out to saddle ·heT ·fa:vorite little ·horse. Most-of Hre ·da-y.-_wou-1-d be ·sp~rit riding aimlessly . about, trying to see . a solution to the problem. Sometime before dinner, the princess would return, dirty and disheveled to place the acorn in her mother's hand. "Open it," she would say and skip away to wash up and find out whether or not Meno discovered what virtue was. Much time passed smoothly in this fashion and the princess's stack of completed books became_ ·! taller and taller. But the line between her brows grew still deeper and she began to look at all the books lining the walls of the library with something akin to dismay. "Oh mother," she exclaimed finally, "'I feel myself to be floundering amidst all .this knowledge." Her mother raised an eyebrow at this rather ornate language but the distressed princess. never even noticed. "I have no anchor about which to build a secure fortress of understanding." The Queen glanced at the book her daughter clasped. It was Sophocles and her mother smiled. "Choose one thing, child," the Queen an swered. "One topic, one subject that you have seen addressed and wish to truly unders.tand. Then come to me and we shall set up a course of study so that you might come to know this one. thing. For in ·coming to know this one thing, you will pass 0 49 �I through a great many others and once you truly grasp this thing, all else will be made manifest through it." She patted her daughter's cheek. "Now go out and saddle you pony. I'll expect your answer at dinner." And so later, as she was carving the roast swan at the dinner table, the Queen looked expectantly at her daughter's glowing face. "Well?" she asked. "Oh mother," burst out the princes, "I want to understand what Love is." The Queen's face remained impassive, but her eyes twinkled. "Why daughter," she said evenly, "that is a fine thing to study. Most great authors have spent at least some time addressing the subject of Love." "Most of them?" the little princess inquired uncertainly. "How many does that mean?" Her little daughter looked so crestfallen that the Queen could not restrain the little laugh that escaped her. "Oh daughter, don't despair. You have chosen ·a very difficult thing indeed, and the road to true understanding is never an easy one." She looked kindly into her daughter's worried face. "But the rewards will be greater than you can imagine, and I will help you all I can." She placed a tender slice of swan on the princess's plate. "We will begin after dinner." And so it began. The princess studied Plato, Virgil, Ovid and Bacon. She read with wide eyes the Song of Solomon and wept and laughed in quick succession as Shakespeare acted out for her the comedies and tragedies of life. The poets were many and varied and she delved deeply into Donne, Byron, Valery, Browning, Coleridge and Gibran. And though she learned much of Love in all its manifestations, she could not say that she was growing towards an understanding of it. Much of the time she felt that she was actually doing the reverse. And so it was that we found her at the opening of our story: troubled and in doubt. She was just about to pick up the Maxims of La Rochefoucauld when there was knock at her door. With something that just might have been relief, she moved away from La Rochefoucauld to open the door. It was her mother. "Hello dear," she said as she moved easily into the room, ''I'm sorry to disturb you, but we have a visitor." The calm grace of her mother sent a cool wash over troubled spirit and the little princess smiled cheerfully. "Is it someone I know, mother?" she asked. "Oh yes," her mother replied with a smile. "It's your cousin Rolf. He's on vacation from the University and wants to spend some time with us before going back to finish his education." The llttle princess was delighted, for she hadn't seen Rolf for several years. He and his parents had often come to visit, and though he was some years older than she, he had treated her kindly and together they had many pleasant adventures. But he had been sent off to school and had become too busy and intelligent to visit with an old playmate. Until now. "Oh mother," she exclaimed, "Rolf! How is he? Did he learn lots at the University? Has he changed a great deal?" Her mother laughed. "We will all be having tea together on the porch in about an hour. He's in his ro om right now resting after his journey, so why don't you get ready and come to find out for yourself?" The Queen left to prepare the tea and there was a look of amused anticipation lurking in her eyes. The princess was setting a plate of cookies on the table when Rolf stepped out onto the porch. Both of the young people stared at the other in startled recognition, for though it had only been a few years since they had last seen one another, those had been very crucial years. Rolf had changed from a scrawny, self -consci ous teen-ager into a sturdy young man of admirable presence and bearing, while the princess, thanks to he r mother's subtle guidance, had grown from a reedy little scarecrow into a graceful young woman of considerable intelligence. And yet, some things remain constant. The princess still had a light spray of freckles across her nose and Rolf still had the habit, whenever he was unsure of himself, of pulling on the thick lock of hair that was forever tumbling in his eyes. When she saw him doing this, the princess laughed and he smiled as he walked over to give her a cousinly kiss on the cheek. When the Queen arrived with the teapot, she found them already deep in an animated discussion about Rolf's education. They were delighted to find that they had read and enjoyed a great many of the same books. The Queen sat silently and smiled as she watched the tea in their cups grow cold, untouched and forgotten in the rapid flood of conversation between the two young scholars. The princess told Rolf of her studies, and he agreed to help her with her search for understanding. From then on they spent nearly all their time together. He would read to her, or she to him as they sat over the remnants of a picnic lunch in a golden meadow. They would discuss salient points while trotting through the woods on horseback, ceasing only to race across the open spaces where the loser would come galloping up, laughing breathlessly and say: "but if we want to look at the love between a parent and child, what about Cordelia's speech in act one? ... " And in the evenings, sitting silently by the glowing fire, they would each underline relevant passages and hand them to the other, who would read it and nod gravely before returning to his own study. The Queen watched all this without comment, but nodded to herself as she observed the peculiar expression that came over Rolf's face whenever he looked at the princess and thought that he himself was unobserved. The princess was quite blind to such things, for she was totally absorbed in her studies. Learning on her own had been rewarding and satisfying, but studying with another, especially one as perceptive and sympathetic as Rolf, was a joy such as the princess had never before experienced. She was deliriously happy and was quite satisfied with things as they were. Not so Rolf. Finally it was nearly time for Rolf to return to school and he and the princess were up in her room getting in one last study before Rolf had to start preparing for his journey. He was standing stiffly at the window with his back towards the princess who was reading to him: '"It is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better part in him."' But Rolf, what does Plato mean when he says ... Rolf! What are you doing?" For just as she looked up from the text, Rolf had turned around, snapped the book shu t and with one swift motion, flung it out the window. She stood up to protest, but just then Rolf turned to her and the look in his eyes stopped the words in her throat. Gently, but firmly, he grasped her hands and placed them together, palms upwards, like the leaves of an open book. "Here," he said,"here is one book you haven't read." And he traced his finger lightly across her palms as if he were outlining a passage. "Can you tell me what it says?" She opened her mouth, but shook her head mutely. "Then here," and he pressed one of her hands to his chest. She could feel his heart beating strongly and rapidly. Then he pressed her other hand to his cheek. It was warm and flushed with feeling. "Here is a book open only at your touch, only for your eyes," His voice lowered to a whisper,"Can you say the same to me?" and he released her. For a moment she clasped her hands together between the two of them and stared with wonder into his eyes. Then slowly, like a flower unfolding to the first touch of the sun, her arms opened to him and she began to understand just a little of what she had been studying so diligently for so long and she laughed a light, sweet, and joyful la ugh. Below, the King and the Queen were walking together in the royal rose garden, enjoying one of the last days of warmth, when a waterfall of books suddenly fell with great splashing into the moat, narrowly missing a pair of black swans swimming serenely by. The Queen was startled only for a moment and then she squeezed her husband's arm and laughed softly. For she had known all along that knowledge gleaned form books could carry one only so far, and that true understanding came from within. I guess this is the end of my story, though the princess continued to learn a great many important things. And like her mother before her, she managed to impart much of it to her children in such gentle and unobtrusive ways, that they didn't realize it themselves until many years had passed and they were well along in their own journeys towards understanding. But I can hardly be expected to trace the stories of all those many Ii ves. That, gen tie readers, I leave to you. 51 50 ! �52 �Non-Profit Org . BULK RATE U. S. POSTAGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 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. 74 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 1988 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Winter 1988. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Barndt, Carolyn (Editor-in-Chief) Rivera, Ray (Editor-in-Chief) 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 1988 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 1988 Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ef22da382d3d7a8ad05751b558a24454.pdf c78473eefd3d319daef55c117df90116 PDF Text Text WINTER, 1990 L �ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself. Ei 8' Ecr'tlU Ti EU8mµouia Kat' apE'tTJU fotpyEta, EUAOyou Km:a tilu KpaticrtT]U" UU'tT] 8' liu ElT] WU apicrtou. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics X vii Conrad Baugh, Rachel Boyce, Molly Hinshaw, Sharman Levinson, Greg Little, Thomas Madden, Tim Maher, Ange Mlinko, Vanessa Stratton, Shannon Wardell Staff Rachel Boyce Special Thanks, Editing Anne Carpenter, Ray Rivera Assistant Editors Carolyn Barndt, Akiba Covitz Editors-in-Chief Cover: Bajii Vala Rakesh Brennig ('93) Printed by the St. John's College Press St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland Joe Boucher Alumnus Contributing Editor Henry Higuera Faculty Consultant Best Impressions Typesetting & Layout Chris Colby Special Thanks, Production David Murchake, Don Murchake Special Thanks, Production and Composition Energeia is a non-profit, student magazine which is published two times a year and distributed among the students, faculty, alumni, and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis and Santa Fe. Energeia welcomes submissions from all members of the community - essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, laboratory projects, drawings, and the like . �Contents 5 What the ... ? Postulates of Pure Reason? Walter Plourde ('89) 24 Untitled (Photograph) Rakesh Brennig ('93) Senior Prize Winning Essay 1989 2S The Contradictions of Empiricism Craig Thomas ('90) 13 Untitled (Photograph) Scouse ('93) 14 Wedding Ange Mlinko ('91) 15 On the Theaetetus Rachel Boyce ('90) Freshman Prize-Winning Essay 1987 18 Untitled (Photograph) Rakesh Brennig ('93) 19 Pre-Cadent Membrance Anonymous 20 Werner (Photograph) Tara Beall ('92) 21 Some Thoughts on Warmth, Heat, and Temperature Bryan Dorland ('92) Junior Prize-Winning Essay 1989 30 Camel Ride Ange Mlinko ('91) 31 The Poet (woodcut) S.J. Ahn ('90) 32 What is Philosophy? Eva Brann 36 The Philosopher (woodcut) S.]. Ahn ('90) 37 Gubbio' s Festa dei Ceri William Ney (GI '82) 48 Now Is Less Absolute Than You Think Carolyn Barndt ('90) Prize-winning Poem 1989 �What the ... ? Postulates of Pure Reason? Walter L. Plourde ('89) In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light,' and there was light. -Genesis: 1, 1-3 You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Men do not light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket. They set it on a stand where it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, your light must shine before men so that they may see goodness in your acts and give praise to your heavenly Father. -Matthew: 5, 14-16 Jesus spoke to them once again: I am the light of the world. No follow er of mine shall ever walk in darkness; no, he shall possess the light of life. - John: 8, 12 I. INTRODUCTION Einstein in his paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies gives the following two postulates: 1. The laws by which states of physical systems undergo change are not affected, whether their changes of state be referred to the one or the other of two systems of coordinates in uniform translatory motion. 2. Any ray of light moves in the 'stationary' system of coordinates with the determined velocity c, whether the ray be emitted by a stationary or by a moving body . (p. 41 *) I shall examine these postulates with respect to the transcendental philosophy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, or the question arises as to whether these postulates have a priori validity. I will show that, grounded in Kant's Critique, both postulates are valid; and further that both postulates- individually and together-have a definite and vital epistemological significance . *Pagination for the Einstein paper is from the collection of papers entitled The Principle of Relativity. Specifically, I will show that the first postulatethe now famous Principle of Relativity-is only a scientific restatement of Kant's principle of the synthetic unity of the manifold of intuititon in apperception- the "highest principle of understanding." By a simple translation the similarity of these two principles is strikingly obvious, but I shall go into some detail in order that the epistemological aspects of Einstein's principle may be better shown. Secondly, I shall examine the epistemological aspects of Einstein's second postulate. fo particular I will show that the second postulate fills a great need in Kant's Critique-that of fleshing out the faculty of receptivity, which Kant apparently thought inappropriate or unnecessary to do-and further, that the concept of a limiting value, c, may be understood as a postulate of Pure Reason. That is, the concept is a condition independent of any particular object for knowledge of objects. Such a condition, though, may seem to be a movement away from the fundamental principles of Kant' s theory of knowledge . So it is . Thus, the reader must keep in mind that many of the positions and assumptions in the early parts of this paper-positions and assumptions taken simply as Kant gives them-are taken only provisionally. II. THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY. Kant begins his description of knowledge in general with the distinction between sensibility and understanding: The manifold of representations can be give n in an intuition which is purely sensible, that is, nothing but receptivity ... But the combination (conjunction) of a manifold in general can never come to us through the senses, and cannot, therefore, be already contained in the pure form of sensible intuition . For it is an act of spontaneity of the faculty of representations; and since this faculty, to distinguish it from sensibility, must be entitled understanding, all combination-be we 5 �conscious of it or not, be it a combination of the manifold of intuition, empirical or non-empirical, or of various conceptsis an act of the understanding . (B129-B130*) This distinction between sensibility and understanding is founded on one of Kant's assumptions about our experience: that things in themselves are in no way given to us, but what is given are things as appearances only. From this radical distinction between sensibility and understanding, it follows that any perception of even the simplest object-this page, for example~is ~oss.ibl: only upon the assumption of an act of co.mb~nat~?n m 1m~g!~ nation. Kant entitles this act of combmabon synthesis, as ''indicating that we cannot represent to ourselves anything as combined in the object which we have not ourselves previously combined. " . . . That is all to say, direct perception of objects m consciousness is not possible, a claim which we shall examine in more detail later (Section III). It suffices now to say that what Kant means by all this is that the data of intuition-whatever they might be-must be gathered together, synthesized, to form the perception of an ject. It is as if each moment of existence wer~ a frame m a film, with sensibility as the camera, and with the synthetic faculty, that is, the understanding, the director capturing each scene. . . But this director is no random or capnc1ous creature; rather, as Kant demonstrates, the understanding must be a faculty of rules, for the play of appearances before me keeps to an orderly progression. Order is only possible on the condition of rules of synthe~is, because appearances are "products" of t~e connec.tmg process. These rules are, of course, Kant s categories. This way of understanding the categories, si.n ce it is founded on a feeling of orderliness in actual experience, is merely empirical. While indicating the. basis of !<a~t' s argument in the common sense of experience, this kmd of exposition is not sufficient for Kant's purpose. The p~r­ pose of Kant's transcendental deduction of the ~atego~1e~ is to derive the necessity of the rules of synthesis a prwri, independently of any particular experien~e. . Kant's transcendental deduction has its foundation in the unity of the ''I think'', that is, the unit~ of thou~ht in one self-consciousness, or, as Kant calls 1t, the umty of apperception. As Kant describes it : o?- It must be possible for the 'I think ' to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be r:pres~nt­ ed in me which could not be thought at all, and that is eqmvalent to saying that the representation would be impossible, or at least would be n othing to m e. (B131-Bl32) In its simplicity, this statement seems to sum up selfconsciousness, inasmuch as a thing not thought by me *Wherever possible p agination for the Critique is taken from the. second edition-"B" pages. Where the passage is found only m the first edition, it will be so indicated with the A" p ages . /1 6 is certainly a thing I do not think. However, this self-consciousness, if it is to be the foundation of all thought in general, cannot be the vague feeling of "I" that accompanies any particular representation. As Kant puts it: Consciousness of self according to the determinations of our state in inner perception is merely empirical,. and ~lwa~s changing. No fixed and abiding self can present itself m this flux of inner appearance. (Al07) Thus what Kant means by the "I think" is a transcendent~! unity of apperception: a self-conscious~ess wit~ respect to no particular representation, .and a u~ity to this consciousness that is transcendental m that 1t grounds the very possibility of a thought being mine. And Kant moves to knowledge from selfconsciousness: But as self-consciousness is a transcendental representation,. numerical identity is inseparable from it, and is a priori certair:. .. Now, since this identity must necessarily enter the sy~t~esis of all the manifold of appearances, so far as the synthesis is. t~ yield empirical knowledge, the ap~arance~ are subject ~o a pnon conditions, with which the synthesis of therr apprehens101_1 must be in complete accordance. The rep.resent~tion of a urnve:sal condition according to which a certam manifold c~n be posited in a uniform fashion is called a rule, and, when it must be so posited, a law. (Al13) That is all to say, in Kant's way of looking at things, that nature (taken here as the whole of appearances) is lawful because we make it so, that the synthetic faculty lays rules upon the manifold. And further, when w~ "discover" a law of nature, we in fact discover a umversal condition of our own synthesis in an empirical employment. Or rather, we discover the manner in which our own categories and principles are employed in ordering the manifold of intuition into a whole, a unity in selfconsciousness. And when this ordering is given as necessary, admitting of no deviation, the principle is called a law; a~~ wh en this principle applies to experience, to the empmcal, a law of nature (e.g. the law of universal gravitation). This last limitation placed on any principle is really quite superfluous in Kant's system. Kant makes a sharp distinction between phenomena and noumena. We cannot stress strongly enough that the sharpness of Kant's distinction is here simply accepted, but that as our discussion progresses this distinction will be severely strained. We must constantly keep in mind and be aware of this: Kant's transcendental arguments are all based on the assumption that things in themselves are in no way known by us. This assumption is the unstated premise of the transcendental deduction, and Kant simply assumes that there is no ontological "grey area" between things in themselves and things as appearance~ . His whole theory of knowledge is founded on this assumption. Now, one may disagree with, nay, may harshly criticize Kant's phenomena/noumena distinction; but we need give no heed to such criticism here. So far as we are concerned-indeed, so far as we are willing to go along with Kant's method-Kant's categories have employment at least with respect to the empirical. That is to say, the laws of nature must, one and all, relate to possible experience. We are now in a position to make the transition from Kant's transcendental philosophy to Einstein's Principle of Relativity. We may now translate Kant into Einstein, or vice versa . Since, as we have just seen, the synthetic unity of the manifold in apperception is represented by the laws of nature, all laws of nature must refer to the unity of self-consciousness. That is, the laws of nature must present nature as a unity, corresponding to the unity of consciousness . But nature is here taken as the whole of appearances, and thus, the manifold synthesized in accordance with a law of nature is not the manifold of particular intuitions, but the manifold of disparate experiences. In other words, the law of a determinate phenomenon is the synthetic principle presenting all the experiences of the phenomenon as a unity to consciousness. And further, if the synthesis is to have the necessity of a law, the law must present all the possible experiences of the phenomenon as a unity . That is all to say, a law of nature is such only insofar as it is true for every possible experience of the given phenomenon. And in particular, any "asymmetries" such as those in Maxwell's electrodynamics that interested Einstein-are incompatible with a law of nature, if it is to be a law. Furthermore, in keeping with the mathematical basis of science, the expression "possible experience" may also be translated. Since every appearance may be given in relation to a mathematical coordinate-axis system, and since different views of the appearance may be expressed by changing the axes, a possible experience is any such coordinate-axis system. Thus, understanding that a law of nature is a principle of the synthetic unity of the manifold and that a possible experience is a coordinate system, we see that the relationship between Kant's and Einstein's principles is rather evident .* Roughly paraphrased: "The laws of nature are true for every coordinate system'' means ''The principles of the synthetic unity of the manifold must relate to the the possible experience of the manifold ." Thus far, then, we see that Einstein's Principle of Relativity is a p rinciple by which all other laws of nature may be judged. That is, a law for a given phenomenon is such only if it is valid for every possible experience of *That Eins tein s peaks of "systems of coordinates in uniform translatory motion" poses no further difficulty, for a coordinate system in motion is still a " possible experience ." Thus, a law of nature must be valid for such a system . the phenomenon, and this principle derives its validity from the necessary unity of nature in self-consciousness. But now we turn our attention to Einstein's second postulate. Notice that Einstein uses this postulate in such a way that the undesireable asymmetries of Maxwell's equations are nullified. That is, by means of the spacetime transformations based on the constancy of the speed of light. Maxwell's equations are made to yield a unity to the manifold. It is as if the constancy of the speed of light is a condition for the unity of the manifold. On the other hand, though, we notice no such constant arises in Kant's exposition of the synthetic unity of the manifold.* For Kant the unity of the manifold comes about by means of, or rather, as a result of the synthetic faculty through principles, or concepts. And concepts alone. This difference between Kant's and Einstein's methods is of great importance for our discussion, inasmuch as both Einstein and Kant have the same goalsynthetic unity of the manifold. Thus, our understanding of relativity with respect to knowledge in general will turn on our understanding this difference between Einstein and Kant. Therefore, before we turn our full attention to Einstein, we need to examine the extent to which concepts can provide the unity that we call nature. *This statement is, unfortunately, not complete, and for that reason lacks complete accuracy . What this statement lacks may only be a red herring (like any red herring, though, it adds intrigue to the plot), so we will only touch on it briefly . When Kant turns his attention to determinate objects, to science itself, in his Metaphysical Foundation s of Natural Science, it turns out that ' 'Absolute space" is necessary as a concept . Its presence is most notable when Kant deals with the addition of velocities, wherein he proves the following proposition: "The composition of two motions of one and the same point can only be thought of by one of them being represented in absolute space, but instead of the second motion being so represented, a motion of the relative space in the opposite direction and with the same velocity is re presented as being identical with the first motion. " (AK 490 : Kant here is only dealing with the composition of equal velocities .) One may take this concept of absolute space to be a " constant " or condition of the synthetic unity of the manifold-at least in thought-but as this concept possesses a character totally different from Einstein' s second postulate, we need not treat of it here . However, this intriguing question arises : Why does Kant find such a concept necessary, since absolute space is a conce pt that admits of no possible experience? Kant is quite adamant about that in the Critique. But since the scope of this paper doesn ' t allow a full treatment of this question, I will say only that the arguments following on the faculty of receptivity, if taken further than in this paper, may allow an answer to this question . Further of note : the concept of absolute space and that of the ether, which Kant adopts as an h ypothesis later in the Metaph ysical Foundations, both prove to be unnecessary in Eins tein 's theory of re lativity. 7 �III. THE FACULTY OF RECEPTIVITY. We have seen so far that Kant's system for the unity of nature in concepts is founded on a clear distinction between the faculty of receptivity-wherein the data of intuition are received-and the faculty of spontaneitywherein these data are gathered together into appearances, and, indeed, gathered together in the unity of nature-but is this distinction valid? If not, then the synthetic unity of the manifold by means of concepts alone becomes a questionable proposition. The limitations and difficulties of this distinction-at least in Kant's system-are best seen in his refutation of Idealism, wherein the question of receptivity becomes this: Is there anything in any of my representations that necessarily indicates that objects exist outside of me? Idealism holds that any answer to this question is only problematic; Kant's thesis against this position begins like this: The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me. (B275) Kant's proof of this thesis is based on the concept of the permanent; it is only by means of the permanent in perception that time determinations may be made, including the time determination of empirical selfconsciousness. (Empirical self-consciousness is here to be distinguished from the "transcendental unity of selfconsciousness" which is the logical function that subsumes all empirical determinations of self.) Kant goes on: This permanent cannot, however, be something in me, since it is only through this permanent that my existence in time can itself be determined. (B275) And Kant modifies this statement in the preface to B: But this permanent cannot be an intuition in me, for all grounds of determination of my existence which are to be met with in me are representations; and as representations themselves require a permanent distinct from them, in relation to which their change, and so my existence wherein they change, may be determined . (B xl, note) Kant's argument-and yet it still seems to lack, for this argument rests squarely on the distinction between the faculty of spontaneity and that of receptivity. The permanent as a synthetic principle of time-determination (the first analogy of experience, B224f) requires that one have data of intuition to work on; and requires that, if this permanent is to yield representations of objects as existent outside one's own consciousness, the data must be received. That is, it must come from outside, and not be generated in one's consciousness. 8 In other words, Kant is trying to prove that one's sense of "outsideness" to the world is not an illusion, and yet, he tries to do this by means of representations which are one and all subjective. Beyond the feeling of "outsideness" to our representations, the only certainty is that they are at least subjective. But are they really more? Kant feels confident that he has proved they are. In the footnote to B277 he says: The immediate consciousness of the existence of outer things is, in the preceeding thesis [the refutation of Idealism], not presupposed, but proved, be the possibility of this consciousness understood by us or not ." Consider this sentence in relation to the whole of the Critique; Kant's method is to take the world just as we experience it and, by means of the transcendental argument, to demonstrate the possibility and conditions under which the world is just as we say it is. And one of the basic experiences is this consciousness of an outside world. Thus, understanding the possibility of cons~ ciousness of the outside world must play an important part in the theory of knowledge, if that theory is to demonstrate the validity of our knowledge. Now, Kant concludes this footnote about the possibility of immediate consciousness of the existence of outer things: The question as to its possibility would be this: whether we have an inner sense only, and no outer sense, but merely an outer imagination. It is clear, however, that in order even only to imagine something as outer, that is to present it to sense in intuition, we must already have an outer sense, and must thereby immediately distinguish the mere receptivity of an outer intuition from the spontaneity which characterises every act of imagination. For should we merely be imagining an outer sense, the faculty of intuition, which is to be determined by the faculty of imagination, would be itself annulled. " Kant is quite correct, as far as he goes; if our imagination produces not only the form of intuitions, but also the content of them as outer, then surely those intuitions would be presented to consciousness as outer. And thus we would have an outer sense-but in thought only, merely as another subjective representation. One could hold this position that both the form and the content of all experience are only so many states of consciousness, but what follows from this position, as Kant says, is that the faculty of intuition is annulled. If the intuition is annulled, then the outside world and the objective validity of any knowledge of it become, at best, problematic. That is, the assertion that such-and-such concept is true-even with the condition that it applies to appearances only, which, in a purely subjective world, includes the "appearance" of an outer sense-loses most of its meaning. Thus, Kant's argument ends where it began; if there is to be intuition, there must be objects, but, of course, there may be neither. The beginning from the subjective representation of the permanent in appearance fails to go beyond itself to any kind of objectivity. In the refutation of Idealism, however, Kant leaves a clue to a possible resolution of the problem: time. Time is the link between my existence as 'consciousness and the outside world. Time is the form of both inner and outer intuition, but it is not so much the mere form of time that is our clue; it is the "content" of time, timedetermination. If we can define a way of identifying the validity of time-determination distinct from appearances-which are one and all subjective representations-then it would be possible to assert that time-determination is not wholly subjective. If there is a way of establishing that timedetermination in the appearances is not merely a creation of my own consciousness in its representations, that would indicate that indeed something is received, that my sense of "outsideness" is no chimera. But how could this work? Let us consider: the modes of time-determination, as Kant gives them in the general principle of the analogies of experience (B219), are duration, succession and co-existence. As an analogy, the concept that an object endures through all change, or that one object follows another, or that one is simultaneous with another is only a synthetic principle; and no fault is found in these principles, for these are just what we say about actual time determinations . But let us consider these principles in actual experience, for, as Kant says, "There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience." (Bl) The law of the permanent in appearance is given from experience as the law of the conservation of matter (or energy); but this law is derived from the successive changes in appearance, since that which endures is known only if it endures through change . Laws of change-cause and effect-however are known only through time determinations of succession; but time determinations are possible only in the permanent. In practice this little circle poses no difficulty, but in the theory of knowledge it poses grave difficulties. On the one hand, taking the permanent as fundamental, one must assert that the permanent in appearance is directly perceived, so that time-determination is made valid. But direct perception is the foundation of the arguments of Idealism, for with a direct perception it is not possible to know whether the object is perceived exactly as it is, only as self-consciousness wants it to be, or what. If one accepts direct perception, then one cannot forestall the arguments of the Idealists . On the other hand, taking changes in appearance as fundamental, one must give a condition of appearance- different from a perceived permanent in the appearances-that validates time determinations of succession, or for that matter, simultaneity-the other "object" in a science of time-for succession may be given in a formal science of time as merely the negation of simultaneity. Such a condition of time-determination, if it is given as truly distinct from the appearances, would clearly indicate that the ''time'' of the appearances is dis- tinct from any of our representations. This is not to say that time is a thing in the objects; we do not want to admit things in themselves. But this condition is meant to indicate that the placing of objects in time-the content of the synthetic process-is not wholly a product of one's own consciousness. Or again, this condition indicates only that, while the form of appearance is wholly subjective, the relations of the form are not wholly subjective; the Other, the outside, is required. As we shall see next, Einstein's second postulate fulfills the requirements for such a condition. IV. c. The time of an event is that which is given simultaneously with the event by a stationary clock located at the place of the event, this clock being synchronous, and indeed synchronous for all time determinations, with a specified stationary clock. (p.40) So Einstein says in his paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. Einstein is interested in empirical events, so he speaks of clocks. The clocks themselves are unimportant to us. In Kant's terms, a clock is merely an empirical representation of the pure form of intuition, namely, time. As he puts it: [Time] cannot be a determination of outer appearances; it has to do neither with shape nor with position, but with the relation of representations in our inner state, and just because this inner intuition yields no shape, we endeavor to make up for this want by analogies . We represent the time-sequence by a line progressing to infinity, in which the manifold constitutes a series of one dimension only. (B49-B50) Or we make up for this want by representing the timesequence in the hands of an analog clock (thus the name), or the numbers on a digital clock-both of which are much more practical than a line drawn to infinity. Thus, clocks present no conceptual difficulty; however, the synchronism of the clocks does. First of all, Einstein makes this statement: We have to take into account that all our judgements in which time plays a part are always judgements of simultaneous events. If, for instance, I say, 'That train arrives here at 7 o'clock,' I mean something like this : 'The pointing of the small hand of my watch to 7 and the arrival of the train are simultaneous events.' (p .39) We will make two comments on this. First, we must recognize that what Einstein means by "judgements of simultaneous events" is just what Kant is trying to define in his schematism (for that matter, in all of the Critique) . The schemata are the formal principles of experience; judgements are simply statements about this experience. And all judgements are true only so far as they represent this experience; that is, only so far as the knowledge that the judgement is meant to 9 �express conforms to the object, or phenomenon. This relationship between judgements and formal principles of experience is what justifies Kant's taking the table of judgements as the "clue" to the table of categories, and thus, for Kant the judgement is valid only when it is in conformance with the schemata, the "forms" of experience. Since the schemata are all principles of determinations of experience in respect of the time-sequence, whatever can be known about an object-and, of course, any valid judgement about an object-will come by means of the connections of the time determinations of the object in experience. Simultaneity being the "object" of time-determination, Einstein's statement is seen to be valid; in fact, the way Kant looks at things, this is the only valid thing to be said. Second, we must again be clear about Einstein 's discussion of actual time-pieces . The time-pieces, themselves, are only tools, objective representations of the time-sequence; and further, they are here employed as mere representations of the determination of time. That is, the clock gives evidence of simultaneity, but in itself does not give the time of the simultaneous events. Another way of expressing this would be to say that one could represent the arrival of Einstein's train as simultaneous with any phenomenon, for example, the explosion of a firecracker; and no one would say that "explosion o'clock" gives the time of the train' s arrival. Next, Einstein goes further into the difficulty inherent in clock time. Einstein says: It might appear possible to overcome all the difficulties attending the definition of 'time' by substituting 'the position of the small hand of my watch' for 'time.' And in fact such a definition is satisfactory when we are concerned with defining a time exclusively for the place where the watch is located; but it is no longer satisfactory when we have to connect in time series of events occurring at different places1 or-what comes to the same thing- to evaluate the times of events occurring at places remote from the watch. (p.39) This is key to our discussion of Einstein and our way of looking at relativity. Specially important is Einstein's comment about connecting events in time. The word ''connect'' is very suggestive after we have examined Kant's Critique. To connect events in time means nothing other than to synthesize events in time, to synthesize the manifold . In Kant's system, the synthesis of the manifold is the job of the understanding through the principles represented by the categories. As we discussed earlier, however, there is a difficulty in establishing that the relation of objects in time represents anything more than the subjectivity of synthesis in consciousness. Einstein is addressing this difficulty by discussing what it means to define a time, what it means to actually place an object in time. Specifically, he is talking about what it means to prove that an object has been placed in time in a valid relation to other objects. He is talking about evidence of "time" in appearances. 10 Thus, when Einstein speaks of a time for an event at place A and that for an event at B (p .39), he recognizes that there is no necessary connection between the times . If the times were immediately connected, then it must be that the "time" of the two events is somehow immediately perceived in the events. This much we have already disallowed, as it tends toward Idealism. Therefore, with no necessary connection between the times, no synthetic principle may be adduced about the events at A and B. That is, since synthetic principles of events-e .g. that A causes B-are one and all principles of time-determination, and since no timedetermination may be made until the relationship between the two times has been established, any law of A and B remains problematic . Einstein's solution of this problem is founded on his second postulate : We have so far defined an 'A time ' and a 'B time .' We have not defined a common 'time' for A and B, for the latter cannot be defined at all unless we establish by definition that the 'time' required by light to travel from A to B equals the 'time' it re~ quires to travel from B to A. (p.40) A nice prosaic way to understand this definition of time, indeed, to demonstrate the difficulty of defining time is this: place one clock in the attic and another in the basement. The question is," Are they reading the same time, are they determining the same time?" Of course, the way to find out is to go upstairs, note the time, turn around, retreat to the basement, and note the time there . We are at first surprised that the two clocks don' t read the same time, because we cheated and had set them to the same time in the kitchen before we started. Now, if we were machines or were feeling rather obtuse on the day of the experiment, we could run back and forth between the basement and the attic until the clocks matched, or until we dropped from exhaustion. The latter would be, of course, the most likely result of this experiment, because it obviously takes "time" to run up the stairs and "time" to run down the stairs. Furthermore, if it takes more time to run up the stairs than down-as seems very likely-then we could never tell if the two clocks were giving the same time. That is, we could run from attic to basement, keeping note of the time interval of the run as given by the two clocks, but if the velocity of ascent were different from that of descent, upon returning to the attic, we would find the time interval different . We might conclude from this that the clocks were not synchronous. But that would be absurd! For this conclusion assumes that the clocks were synchronous when we ran dow nstairs- an d thus that the taking of a time interval could provide useful informationbut then they weren't synchronous when we went back upstairs. In fact-forgetting for the moment that we cheated and set them in the kitchen-whether we determine that the clocks are synchronous or not, we can never be sure what the real cause of that determination is- maybe the clocks are really synchronous, or not; maybe the ve- locity upstairs and downstairs is the same, or not; maybe a combination of both. Or not. By now we're pretty tired of running up and down all those stairs, but if we assume that our velocity up the stairs is the same as that down-if we assume that we are propagated always with the same velocity- then this little experiment yields positive results in about thirty seconds. This experiment works in the same way if we let light be our messenger, and thus, only upon the assumption of the constancy of the speed of light is a time established for a "stationary system", wherein the time for all events may be established. Furthermore, as is quite clear in Einstein's paper, the constancy of the speed of light is also the factor that allows one to relate the times of events experienced in systems in motion to the time of the stationary system. That is, Einstein's second postulate provides the factor that establishes the validity of all time-determination . Of course, many propositions follow from Einstein's method of establishing time-determination, but what concerns us here is simply the phrase ''by definition" in Einstein's definition of time . The status of the constant speed of light as a postulate means a great deal to the theory of knowledge. As we discussed in the previous section, Kant's system lacked a way of establishing the validity of synthetic principles. The proposed solution to this problem was that a condition of time-determination be given; Einstein's second postulate seems to provide such a condition. However, one requirement in order for this postulate to be the condition of time-determination is that it be given as distinct from the appearances wherein the time determination is made, for only in this way would the validity of time-determination be established as distinct from the consciousness of the subject. Thus, we must determine whether Einstein's postulate fulfills this requirement. Consider this statement by Einstein: The th eory to be de veloped is based-like all electrodynamics-on the kinematics of the rigid body, since the assertions of any such theory have to do with the relationships betw een rigid bodies (systems of coordinates), clocks, and electromagnetic processes. (p.38) In this statement Einstein is quite explicit about what the phenomena in question are. And as far as we are 'concerned, we need not worry about the electromagnetic phenomena, since with respect to the condition of timedetermination the only phenomena are rigid bodies and clocks . Notice, th ou gh, that w hen we consider the appearances of rigid bodies and clocks, neither of these present themselves as indicating that special property of light, i.e. that the velocity of the light remains the same no matter what the condition of the body from which it is propagated . Indeed, such a concept goes against common experience, which tells us that the velocity of an object emanating from a moving system is conditioned by the motion of the system. Or again, the speed of light is postulated as unconditioned, but the unconditioned is never given in appearances . To be blunt: Einstein's second postulate doesn't make any "sense", and that's the beauty of it. The usual assumption is that what makes "sense" is correct. Usually that is true, but if Einstein's postulate made sense it would be of no use to us. Why? because in a system that employs subjective principles of synthesis to represent appearances and to connect those representations, what makes sense in appearances is that which we have placed in them ourselves. What doesn't make sense indicates that which we have not, ourselves, placed in appearances . Thus, Einstein's second postulate is a condition of time-determination that is distinct from the appearances wherein time-determination is made. This is what we wanted. Finally, let us consider what all this means about knowledge . What does a condition of time-determination indicate about knowledge in general? As we saw earlier, Einstein's Principle of Relativity and Kant's highest principle of understanding-the synthetic unity of the manifold in apperception-amount to the same thing, indicating, surely, that the goal of both is the same. This goal is the unity of nature in consciousness, which is only possible if the synthetic principles of consciousness have that property of unity . Einstein provides for the synthetic unity of nature- that is, he nullifies the asymmetries of Maxwell's equations, shows the validity of the composition of velocities, and demonstrates the law of the permanent, the law of the conversation of mass-energy-by means a condition of time-determination. But inasmuch as a condition of time-determination grounds the unity of nature, it grounds the possibility of preesenting nature to consciousness in such a way that it makes sense. In other words, by connecting nature together by means of his two postulates, by connecting these two postulates together, Einstein is saying : "I cannot present nature as making sense in a rational way, unless I present a postulate differing from the rest of nature, all of which is understood relatively .' ' And this indicates one thing : Einstein's second postulate is a correlate in pure reason of Kant's postulates of practical reason, namely, God, freedom and immortality. Strange as this may be, we cannot avoid this conclusion . The postulates of practical reason are provided so that morality, the moral laws, may be presented as making sense, as being rational; and, clearly, Einstein provides his postulate of pure reason so that the obj ect of pure reason, nature, may be presented as rational, as conforming to the highest principle of understanding. But if Einstein's second postulate is a postulate of pure reason, what becomes of the highest principle of understanding, the Principle of Relativity? The indications are that this principle, too, has a parallel in practical reason . The Principle of Relativity appears to be a physical 11 �imperative, so called to correspond to a moral imperative. An imperative, though, is given in such a way that the phenomenon (in a moral world, the action) follows on the concept as on a cause. To a certain extent, Kant's highest principle of understanding is an imperative, inasmuch as the categories produce the unity of nature in consciousness. But in Kant's system the unity of nature is founded on the unity of the ''I think'', and is in no way related to the content of intuitions, or sensibility, for that would indicate that there were things in themselves which, at least in a limited way, could be known by us. Einstein's second postulate, his condition of timedetermination, does indeed return the status of things in themselves to the appearances, but only in a limited way. A condition of time-determination is given as separate from the appearances, as a datum not in the appearances. But, since the laws of nature must conform to this condition, Einstein's method indicated that knowledge does consist of concepts conforming to objects. On the other hand, the relativity of space and time-although founded on the condition of timedetermination-demonstrates that objects are appearances only. If things in themselves were given to us, then the space and time wherein they exist would have objective reality. Einstein clearly demonstrates that this is not the case, since the space and time of all objects is conditioned by the frame of reference of the subject. And, since all objects must conform to the relativity of space and time, Einstein's method also indicated that knowledge consists of objects conforming to concepts. Thus, Einstein's method, since it indicated both of the opposed positions-things in themselves and things as appearances-lays out a dialectical middle ground wherein the question of knowledge is neither "How do concepts conform to objects?" nor, "How do objects conform to concepts?'' The theory of knowledge must address this question: How much do objects conform to concepts and how much do concepts conform to objects? late of pure reason, then shouldn't there be two others conforming to two other moments of thought? To give these other postulates is not possible here, but to determine the moments of thought that these postulates must belong to, it is only necessary to consider the frame of reference of special relativity. Special relativity deals with frames of reference in uniform translatory motion. The "opposite" motion to this is uniformly accelerated motion. And the combination of these two is surely wave motion, since a wave is an accelerated system in translatory motion. General relativity, clearly enough, is the science of systems of uniformly accelerated motion; and quantum mechanics, at least as given in Schrodinger' s wave equations, appears to be the science of systems of wave motion. One might say the postulates of these two systems are, respectively, that gravitational potential conditions curvature of space-time and that energy comes in discrete quanta; but these are not very clear in the way that the postulate of special relativity is, nor do they exhibit any · clear connection among the three systems . One thing becomes clear, though, upon consideration of the science of quantum mechanics. As Heisenberg lays it out in his paper on the uncertainty principle, there is a difficulty in the imperative of science that Einstein gives. Since Heisenberg shows a dichotomy between giving the space-time of objects and connecting the objects in causal relations, perhaps the principle that the laws of nature should yield a unity to nature in consciousness is not really valid, or even possible. Thus, the direction of the theory of knowledge seems to be a forked road: one path to establish a valid imperative-whether it be the Principle of Relativity of something else-and the other to give the number and nature of the postulates necessary to present nature to consciousness in accordance with that imperative. V. POSTSCRIPT: POSTULATES OF PURE REASON. I think it appropriate to end this paper with a question. Knowledge is always a question, and answers are boring. But I want to give a direction, at least, to the question of knowledge, and the preceeding speculations are quite suggestive of that direction, especially with respect to natural science. When I consider postulates of pure reason, I cannot help but consider the moments of thought as given in Kant's categories. I am always presented in each category with two extremes and a third moment which is a synthesis of these two-for example, in the category of quantity, the moments are unity, plurality, and then totality. Kant presents the postulates of practical reason as if they conformed to the moments of thought in the categories. Thus, if Einstein's second postulate is a postu- 12 I �Wedding On The Theaetetus Ange Mlinko ('91) Rachel Boyce ('90) The bridled gelding is hooked to its trap, Grazing the widow's weeds that line the lot Between the church and cemetery. In the restaurant window I stock and set The salt and pepper shakers, apiece Each bride and groom by the sugar packets. What for, what for, what for? I beg the horse, full of dolor. First young, then courted, then feted; Dosed with your sugar pill, honeymoonA hard pillow, the moon, once you have itWhat then, what then, what then? Ground and scattered, both of you cured Pat, in a vat of tears, all that's incurred Between the church and cemetery. At the top of the flight, they emerge: She stands, mouth frilled, stiff as baker's icing. One finger is stiffer than all the rest With the prize of a black coal mine. She walks as though salt had been tossed On her plait, a kind of confetti, And though legends are leery of cutlery, Fork by knife, husband and wife, Her face is stainless, shallow as teaspoons, Her table set for a miracle. 14 Socrates' interest in Athenian youths ''thought likely to distinguish themselves"(143d) is not casual. In the Republic, he describes the nature of the true philosopher and the many dangers of corruption that youths of philosophical nature must face. He also describes the proper course of studies for such youths. In the Theaetetus, we see Socrates put his concern for potential philosophers into practice. Socrates searches out a promising student, Theaetetus, and, drawing him into a dialogue, attempts to discover whether his nature is that of the philosopher and to help him along in his training. Theaetetus receives a remarkable commendation of his abilities from his teacher, Theodorus. Theodorus says that he has a ''combination of a rare quickness of intelligence with exceptional gentleness" plus "an incomparably virile spirit" (144a). Additionally, "his approach to learning and inquiry, with the perfect quietness of its smooth and sure progress, is like the noiseless flow of a stream of oil"(144b). Theaetetus shows himself to possess "a certain keeness for study" and "a good memory and doggedness and industry in every sense of the word'' (Republic, 535b-c) which he will need to pursue the philospher's studies. He must also possess the trueborn nature of the philosopher, who loves the labors of both body and mind, is angered at voluntary lies and distressed by ignorance, and discriminates ''with reference to sobriety ... and bravery, and loftiness of soul and all the parts of virtue" (536a). A subtle indication that Theatetus has this nature is that the first definite thing Theodorus mentions about Theaetetus is his resemblance to Socrates. The likeness between Socrates as an old man and Theaetetus as a young man must be striking for a geometer to recognize it. It seems that the likeness might go deeper than mere physical appearance. Theaetetus confirms the reported quality of his abilities with his descrip tion of his approach and solution to the problem of finding common terms for all roots. He does not progress nearly so smoothly in the dialogue, though one would expect a trueborn philosopher to take to it almost immediately. Theaetetus has difficulty understanding many of Socrates' speeches and does not recognize most of Socrates' bogus arguments. Socrates, however, does not give up on Theaetetus, but tells him that "those who frequent my company at first appear, some of them, quite unintelligent"(150d). Theaetetus' difficulties are not due to any inadequacies of intelligence but to his ignorance of the dialectic. When Socrates inquires about Theaetetus' education under Theodorus, we hear that Theaetetus has been pursuing the very course of studies prescribed for the young philosopher in the Republic: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmonics. The only thing which Theodorus has neglected is the dialectic. Since Socrates and Theodorus appear to be old acquaintances, Socrates is no doubt familiar with Theodorus' dislike of participation in dialogues. Theodorus criticizes Socrates' love of argument which never seems to definitely establish anything other than refutations. He also complains of the Ephesians' refusal to state their views specifically and concludes ''We must take over the question ourselves and try to solve it like a problem"(180c) . Theodorus is an educated man and a respected teacher, but he ~uch prefers problemsolving to the pursuit of the elusive nature of things. Theaetetus is so inexperienced with the dialectic as Socrates practices it that, when asked what knowledge is, he lists all the things he considers to be knowledge . Even after Socrates has explained that he wants to discover the nature of knowledge, Theaetetus still puzzles, ''But I cannot persuade myself that I can give any satisfactory solution or that anyone has ever stated in my hearing the sort of answer you require'' (l 48e) . Socrates waits until the very end of the dialogue before he states specifically what is gained by the experience of a dialogue. Then supposing you should ever henceforth try to conceive afresh, Theaetetus, if you succeed, your embryo thoughts will be the better as a consequence of today's scrutiny, and if you remain barren, you will be gentler and more agreeable to your companions, having the good sense not to fancy you know w h at you do not know (210b-c). For Socrates, the dialectic is set "above all other studies to be as it were the coping stone" (Republic, 534e). However, Theaetetus has never practiced the dialectic and believes knowledge to be no more than the things Theodorus teaches him and the crafts of workmen. It is 15 �impossible that the inexperienced Theaetetus comprehend Socrates' last speech until he has participated in a dialogue . Socrates must utilize the dialectic itself so that Theaetetus may understand the dialectic to be the highest and most important part, the culmination, of his education. Socrates prepares Theaetetus for the dialogue itself by describing his practice of the dialectic, which he likens to midwifery. He describes it later and more concisely as ''the skill to get some account of the matter from another's wisdom and entertain it with fair treatment" (161b). Socrates does not teach as Theodorus does, for he claims to have no wisdom in him and to have made no discoveries, and thus has nothing to teach to students. The people who frequent his company make progress without learning from him but are, at the same time, dep en dent on his assistance. The dialectic is not a mystical process which produces truths. It requires an interplay of presentation and testing of ideas for progress to occur . Theaetetus presents his second idea for Socrates to test: ''knowledge is perception.'' Socrates associates the doctrine of Protagoras with Theaetetus' s definition and pursues a series of arguments about the doctrine which take up nearly half the bulk of the dialogue. There are a number of good reasons for Socrates to bring in Protagoras's doctrine. Theodorus is kept interested in the dialogue since it concerns the philosophy of his friend. The dialogue is less threatening for Theaetetus, because Socrates attacks his idea indirectly. But the most important result of this is that Socrates is able to take on the persona of the necessarily absent Protagoras and, as an outsider, critique the progression of the dialogue. This is the doctrine of Protagoras as outlined by Socrates and Theaetetus. When a thing which can perceive and a thing which can be perceived meet, two things come into being: the perception received by the thing which can percieve and the qualities attributed to the thing which can be perceived. These things, the perception and the qualities perceived, are unique . Subsequent perceptions and qualities perceived will be necessarily different since the thing which can perceive and the thing which can be perceived are both in the process of constant change . In short, as Socrates says at the beginning, "nothing is one thing just by itself, nor can you rightly call it by some definite name, nor even say it is of any definite sort" (152d). Each individual's perception is absolutely true for that individual. Socrates does not give a fair treatment of the idea just established, but latches onto the first inconsistency he can find and uses it to demolish not only the doctrine but Protagoras' personal integrity too. If each person's beliefs resulting from perception are equally true, Socrates argues, then no one is wiser than anyone else, not even Protagoras . Either Protagoras is a shyster who cannot justify his well-paid position as teacher, or he is lying to flatter the public. Theaetetus is understandably taken aback at this attack and can find no way to defend his idea. Socrates gives a number of examples of prediction i-n which an expert's opinion is superior to an untrained person's opinion. Protagoras himself, according to both Socrates and Theodorus, claimed to judge better than any other ~'what was going to be and appear in the future'' (179a). Therefore, Socrates concludes, "one man is wiser than another''(179b). The wisdom which Socrates has shown to exist is not the ability to substitute a sound opinion for an unsound one, as was stated in Protagoras' defense, but the wisdom which "lies in thinking truly"(170b), as Socrates proposed. Socrates' third argument attacks the Heraclitan principle of continual change which was stated at the beginning as a necessary part of the Protagorean doctrine . The previous two arguments dealt with the truth of the individual's opinion. This argument deals with the truth of th e individual' s perception . Socrates describes "two kinds of change-alteration and local movement''(181d). All things, in order to be completely in change, must change continually in both ways . According to this idea, even the faculties of hearing and seeing change, and nothing may be rightly called perception. Thus, the principle of continual change makes the statement ''knowledge is perception" nonsensic al inste ad of supporting it. Three possibilities arise . Some things may change continually only in location and so possess definite qualities. Some things may change continually only by alteration and so be at rest . Some things may not change at all, eternally stable in location and quality. It seems that Socrates makes an elaborate effort to expose Theaetetus to ideas through the dialectic when he might simply tell Theaetetus directly. There are several reasons why Socrates does not tell Theaetetus his ideas. The first is that Theaetetus has the nature of the true philosopher. Although he makes faulty statements and becomes confused, Theaetetus always struggles patiently onward. He never becomes completely discouraged in his pursuit of the answer to the question he could not get out of his mind from the start. Several times Socrates praises the spirit he shows. Theaetetus acknowledges his errors and takes Socrates' criticism constructively . He remains honest, straightforward, and respectful. Even when Socrates teases him, asking, " Will you accept it as palatable to your tas te?", h e responds mildly, "Really, I am not sure, Socrates. I cannot even make out about you, w hether you are stating this as somethin g you believe or merely putting me to the test" (157e). By th e final part of the dialogue, which deals with true opinion combined w ith rational explanation, Theaetetus is able to keep up with Socrates quite well. The second reason is that Theaetetus' teacher is Theodorus . Theodorus is not a bad teacher, but his teaching stops short of the education Theaetetus needs as a young p h ilosopher. Socrates, in the Republic, warns of the many dangers of corruption a young philosoph er faces: he risks being swept away by the lure of public approval an d fame. ' 'His kinsmen and fellow citizens, then, will desire . . . to make use of him when he is older fo r does not intend to fool Theaetetus into believing his argument. He wants to expose Theaetetus to such attacks so that he will neither succomb to them nor use them as valid arguments. "We profess," he says, "to be seeking wisdom, not competing for victory"(164e) . Socrates interrupts the dialogue, in the persona of Protagoras, to scold both Theaetetus for taking claptrap seriously and himself, Socrates, for arguing from probability. Socrates is not yet ready to settle down and argue seriously with Theaetetus. He plays the part of a "mercenary skirmisher in a war of words'' (165d) and introduces three paradoxical examples: Do we know the words of an unlearned foreign language when we perceive them? Does a man who stops perceiving by closing his eyes also stop knowing? When a person covers one eye, seeing and not seeing, is he then knowing and not knowing simultaneously? Theaetetus manages to d efuse the foreign language example by saying that one knows the shapes and sounds one perceives, even if not their meaning. He is not able to untangle the other two examples . Speaking as Protagoras, Socrates interrupts for the second time and makes a long speech to defend Protagoras' doctrine . At this point, an interruption is necessary, for Theaetetus is unable and Theodorus unwilling to defend Protagoras against Socrates. "No one can elude the toils of argument you spin for him," says Theodorus, as Socrates draws him into the argument. In fact, none of Socrates' three dialogue partners escape. Protagoras is conjured up from the realm of the dead. Theodorus is forced to participate. Theaetetus, too intimidated and hesitant to continue productively, is rather harshly criticized and sent to the bench . Socrates, accompanied by Theodorus, attacks Protagoras ' doctrine from three different angles . None of these arguments satisfactorily refutes the doctrine as a whole. Instead, Socrates whittles away at it until it suits him. Each argument points out a paradox which can only be resolved if a certain aspect of Protagoras' doctrine is rejected as false . Each time, an alternative idea, never stated directly, must replace the Protagorean idea in order to resolve the paradox. This is the closest Socrates can get to stating his own views to Theaetetus without presenting them as another doctrine . For the first argument, Socrates brings opinions, true to the individuals who hold them, into the realm of public dispute . Neither Theodorus nor any Protagorean is ''prepared to maintain that no one regards anyone else as ignorant or as making false judgements"(170c). In order to defend himself against his opponents, Protagoras must admit that false judgments do exist. Otherwise, Protagoras is forced to "acknowledge his own belief to be false, if he admits that the belief of those who think him wrong is true"(171b). This argument implies that, even if the individual who holds an opinion believes it to be true, it is possible that the opinion, under proper scrutiny, may be conclusively proved false. In the second argument, Socrates casts the individual's true opinion into the realm of prediction. He their own affairs'' and ''they will fawn upon him with petitions and honors, anticipating and flattering the power that will be his"(494b-c). It is up to Socrates not merely to expose Theaetetus to the practice of the dialectic, but to convince him that it is the appropriate pursuit for him. There are a number of places, early in the dialogue, where Socrates associates invalid arguments with "professional controversialists"(164c) and the like. Socrates also makes an abrupt change in topic, during his dialogue with Theodorus, to compare the orator and the philosopher. He presents the education of the orator as a harsh and fearful process that produces a trained orator when it "has dwarfed and twisted his growth and robbed him of his free spirit, driving him into devious ways"(173a) . In contrast, "the free man always has time at his disposal to converse in peace at his leisure" (172d) . Socrates also vividly describes the public mockery that a philosopher risks. However, orators, Socrates claims, ''if they are men enough to face a long examination without running away .. . end by finding their own arguments unsatisfying"(l77b). At least the philosopher follows the pattern "of divine happiness", seeking not apparent but true righteousness. We know, from the description of Theaetetus as a grown man in the prelude to the dialogue, that Theaetetus did evade the corrupting influences that Socrates warned him to avoid and did become a "remarkable man"(142d) as Socrates predicted . The image a reader might create of the two men conversing, old and young, but like to like, has similarities to Socrates ' description of his meeting with Parmenides. Parmenides himself is in my eyes, as H omer says, a 'reverend and awful' figure . I met him when I was quite young and he quite elderly and I thought there was a sort of depth in him that was altogether noble(183e-184a) . It is impossible to determine how much Socrates actually influenced Theaetetus, but perhaps Socrates hoped to leave as lasting an impression on Theaetetus as Parmenides had on him. The translations quoted in this paper are F.M. Cornford's translation of the Theaetetus and Paul Shorey's translation of the Republic, both of which are fo und in Th e Collected Dialogu es of Plato, edited by Edith Hamilton and Hu ntington cairns, Princeton University Press, 1961. 17 16 - �Pre-Cadent Metnbrance Anonymous ! ,/ I I Bring or be brung anyhow try to come and perhaps you'll agree this hall I believe wants to see your evocative smile as fervent as mine. With radiant glory like of a Mount descent enheartened souls will meet the floors to make life in Dance slurred with effervescence enhanced. Swing or be swung in some blurred form of flung over eyes near unmoved there's this streaked world in blue, amber white, red and brown racing right only round and to see is to be lie that wide-open eye; Impassioned celebration of embodied revelationCulmination spirited brings the Post-cad.e nt Trance: of Ambient resonance. 19 �Sotne Thoughts On Warinth, Heat, and Tetnperature Bryan Dorland ('92) When one talks of the warmth, heat, and temperature of an object, it seems that one specific aspect of that object is being discussed, for the three appear at first closely related to each other. Upon closer scrutiny, however, the three terms are radically different in their meanings and the phenomena they describe. So what is this certain aspect which is capable of being described in three related yet quite unlike terms? Before this question can be answered the three terms must be differentiated. Thus, what is meant by warmth, heat, and temperature when talking of an object? Warmth is the most elemental. When someone touches an object, he decides whether it is cold, warm, or hot. A man grasping an ice cube in his left hand and a cup of tea in his right can say the ice cube is cold and the cup warm. He can also say that the cup is warmer than the ice cube. Thus it a pears that the man has given places to these two objects on an innate, internal, ordinal scale of warmth, for an ordinal scale as defined in the Freshman laboratory manual Measurement and Equilibrium is one which " ... enable(s) us to ascertain the existence of sameness or difference between two instances of a variable characteristic ... '' The man can say the cup is warmer than the ice cube because he can compare them directly with each other. But if the man just picks up the ice cube, what is it in the obj ect that allows him to make a judgement on its warmth without direct comparison? Is it that he compares it with himself, an idea that is readily contested by anyone who has ever swum in 90 degree water. · The water is very warm to the swimmer, yet it is below his body's temperature. What if the man makes the comparison between his environment and the object? That is, if an object is below "room temperature" is it thus judged to be "cold"? What about the person who, while sitting in a room with no heat and the window open, remarks that the room is cold? He cannot be comparing the temperature of the room to itself and corning to the conclusion that the room is cold for it would have to be colder that itself, which is absurd. It would seem that each human body has a certain range of warmth within which it is comfortable. A man being placed in the Arctic Circle during winter will say "it is cold", and a man being placed in the Amazon basin during summer will say "it is hot". Thus there appears to be an internal notion-a meter-against which things are compared to in order to judge their warmth. If this is so, is this meter universal-is it an "absolute"? The man who travels into the tropics will feel the oppresive heat, yet will eventually "acclimatize" to the environment to the point that what was once hot now seems normal. I would further assert that the meter is not universal, in the sense that to a Phillipino, Maryland might seem cool, yet to a Norwegian, Maryland would seem very warm. Thus, this internal meter seems to fluctuate and tends toward the warmth that surrounds the observer, although this adjusting seems to take some time. What of the case of the observer who first places his left hand in ice water and his right in hot water, then both in lukewarm water? He judges the water to be both hot (using his left hand) and cold (using his right) simultaneously. I would say that the man, by first introducing his senses to different extremes, has in essence, substituted the meter of the warmths of the two containers of water for his own. This is not a concious decision on his part, but it certainly is a result of exposing his senses to the two extremes before attempting to judge the mean. Furthermore, if the man were to withdraw his hands from the water for five or ten minutes and then test the third glass, would the results be similar? I would say that the senses would rapidly return to the internal meter of the body, and thus the third glass would be judged equally warm or cold by both hands. So the concept of warmth is one of comparison, both between any number of objects and also with an internal "warmth meter" . The relative warmth of a thing can then be used to give it a place on one's own internal ordinal scale of warmth. But it has been shown that while warmth is logically consistent, it is also completely subjective to the observer both as a person and as a product of his environment. Is it possible to construct a measure of warmth which is objective? Further, is it possible to con- 21 �struct a ration scale of warmth? Farenheit, by observing the expansive effects of warmth on mercury, devised the objective form of measurement. The name of the instrument which is su pposed to be this obj ective measure-thermometer is derived from th e Gr ee k '' E>E pµo c; ' ' meaning warmt h a n d " TO µ£ Tpou" meaning measure, h ence the me asurer of warmth . By translating volume of m ercury into an absolute measure of warmth. By translating volume of mercury into an absolute measure of w armth itself, the idea of "temperature" comes into being. A sealed tube containing a constant amount of mercury, and large enough to allow for a fluctuation of the volume, will, by its nature, be subject to only one variable: temperature. Thus by measuring the length, and so volume, one measures temperature . Because all other variables have been removed, it would follow that whenever a given volume of mercury is duplicated, the temperature it is measuring will be duplicated. Is this so? Without knowing much about boiling and melting, common sense says that when either of these two occur, it represents a change in state (i.e. solid, liquid, and gaseous states). The change in state seems to be dictated by the fact that for any given material, the thing can only be in one such state at any one temperature, and further, that which governs the state the thing is in does not fluctuate. This means that when it is very cold out, water is in the form of a solid because it can only exist as such. When it is gradually warmed, a point is reached at which it will simply be unable to exist as a solid because of its very nature. Thus it becomes liquid at that specific temperature. No matter how hard one tries to heat the solid, one cannot heat it above this point because it cannot be so. It is similar with liquid and gas. No matter how many logs you throw on the fire, you cannot heat liquid water past a certain point, because it loses its essence of liquidness and becomes a gas. If this hypothesis can be agreed to, then it will be shown that if our thermometer reads the same volumes of mercury when repeatedly exposed to these '' transformation" or "becoming" temperatures, then it will truly be a measure of absolute warmth, and the concept of temperature will be proved true . And indeed this is the case, as experiments demonstrate. Water melts at a certain length of mercury no matter how many times the measurement is attempted, as it also boils at a certain temperature. So temperature is absolute warmth, and a thermometer is the measure of the temperature. But is a thermometer a ratio scale? It would seem both yes and no. The temperature of two liquids mixed together is shown in experiments to be inversely proportional to their volumes. This means that a volume twice the second will, when mixed with the second, suffer only half the temperature fluctuation of the second volume no matter what temperatures they are measured at. In other words, the temperature gradients, or the units assigned to measure the temperature (a function of the length of mercury) are the same near the bottom of the scale as the 22 gradients near the top of the scale. So they are additive, which is a step in the right direction, for to be additive means that temperature is at least an interval scale. Yet to be a ratio the gradients must also be sh own to be multiplicative (for what is multiplication but repeated addition starting from the unity). So is one hundred degrees farenheit twice as warm as fifty? If one were to argue th at the melti ng point of the brine mixture is as cold as it can be (i .e. totally lacking warmth itself), then Farenh eit's scale w ould p ass the test. But this is absurd, as frozen brine is manifestly colder then the zero reading. If we consider our measure of the temperaturethe volume of our mercury-then we might find the answer. If it truly measures temperature, then the volume will continue to decrease until it either freezes or stops becoming smaller. If it freezes, it becomes useless to us, as we have no indication that solid mercury fluctuates with the temperature. But if it were the case that the second were true, then we would have truly reached a zero point for our absolute ratio scale. But our problem, and Farenheit's, is that with our equipment in the lab it is· plainly impossible to reach this absolute point, and thus it appears to us that temperature is not in a ratio scale. Is it the case that an absence of absolute zero prohibits our instruments from detecting it, or simply that we can not measure it with the instruments at hand? The problem is similar to a man standing on the roof of an eighty story building looking towards a ninety story building standing side by side with a hundred story one. Is the third building twice the height of the second? To our rooftop observer it appears to be, but it is not. The only vantage point that would show their true ratios would be from the ground. So we now have warmth as the subjective measure of warmness and temperatures as the absolute measure of warmness. But what is this warmness? What is it that your hand really measures when you touch ice, and a thermometer measure when in boiling water? It is heat. Heat is that which gives something its temperature . Heat is that which makes something warmer than another. Heat is that which blends proportionally when two substances are mixed . But is heat a quantity or a quality? Aristotle, in Categories, discusses what it means to be one or the other. I find his stringent distinction between a quantity (e.g. three feet) and a quality (e.g. white) is that " ... a quantity has no contrary" while "contrariety with respect to quality is possible.'' So, no matter how hard you look, an opposite of three feet will not be found, yet whiteness and blackness are plainly opposed. Is there, then, an opposite to heat? If there is, let u s call it "cold". Not cold in the sense that on our ordinal scale one might say that "ice is cold", but rather as opposed to heat, and equal to it in the sense that they are both qualities. Does the quality of cold exist in an object alongside the quality of heat? Plato investigates the nature of hot and cold in the dialogue Sophist (line 243): say, "Ye, who affirm that hot and cold or any other two principles are the universe, what is this term which you apply to both of them, and what do you mean when you say that both and each of them are? How are we to understand the word 'are'? Upon your view are we to suppose that there is a third principle over and above the other two-three in all, and not two? For clearly you can not say that one of the two principles is being, and yet attribute being equally to both of them; for, if you did, whichever of the two is identified with being, will comprehend the other; and so will be one and not two. So if we are to say that the nature of anything that is is to have a certain amount of heat we cannot say at the same instant a thing has a certain amount of cold. They cannot both define being as principles, for they are contrary. Thus if the contrary to heat is "not", it must be a quantity. So it has been shown that a thing partakes of the quantity of heat. The degree of this partaking is enumerated by the temperature of the thing. Finally, our interpretation of the temperature of a thing, dependent on both the observer and his environment, and completely subjective, is what we term warmth . So three are both different and at the same time similar. But we must now deal with two new phenomena which present themselves to the laboratory experimentor. How do the ideas of heat capacity and latent heat affect the arguments? Equal heat in two different objects does not necessarily mean equal temperature or warmth. Joseph Black demonstrated this with his experiments on water and mercury. Differing materials have a different "capacity" for heat, which is to say that the lower the capacity for heat, the greater the effect on the temperature or warmth. In the case of equal amounts of mercury and water being exposed to an equal amount of heat, the temperature of the mercury will be higher than the temperature of the water in direct proportion to the ratio of the heat capacities. So different materials act differently when exposed to equal amounts of heat, the only variable is the nature of the materials. Stranger still is the idea of "latent" heat. While heat and temperature still seem to behave "normally" (i.e. in direct correspondence) in most instances (given that you do not change materials), the object behaves "abnormally" when near its "becoming" temperature. Solid water, at 31 degrees farenheit will absorb much more heat for the sake of melting than would normally be required to raise it one or two degrees either as a solid or as a liquid. the same phenomena occurs when liquid water is nearing 212 degrees. The act of becoming seems to require heat, thus heat cannot also affect the temperature or warmth of an object. It appears that some work is being done inside the material itself, preparing for the change in state. What this means to the observer is that additional heat does not necessarily mean additional temperature. So it seems that heat itself is a quantity contained within a thing and that is principle of all things that are. It manifests itself through the object, and this manifestation is what we experience as both warmth and temperature. But while heat manifests itself through a thing, the thing somehow effects this manifestation. The object, with its heat capacity, dictates in what ratio the heat will translate into temperature. Further, as an object's temperature approaches a becoming point, the object requires heat to transform itself into the next state, heat which does not affect the temperature. So a thing is acted upon by heat, and through the nature of that thing, heat is manifest as warmth and temperature. The right method .. . w ill be to call into our presence the dualistic philosophers and to interrogate them . " Come," we will 23 �The Contradictions of Einpiricisin: Hunte's Relations as Necessary Non-Etnpirical Ideas Craig Thomas ('90) Hume's pervasive skepticism, as it evolves in the first book of his Treatise of Human Nature, depends largely on his principle that all ideas are derived from impressions. From the optimistic subtitle which opens the treatise, "An Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects," to the gloomy metaphor of the ship-wrecked sailor in the conclusion of Book I, Hume proceeds down a path of increasing doubt and disillusion. In the process of developing this thought, however, he ends by contradicting himself. Since he later asserts the irrational origin of our belief in causality, he cannot contend that ideas are derived from (i.e., caused by) impressions. We must restate his principle thus: all ideas in our experience have immediately followed impressions similar to them. His later explanation of causality as a mental habit can be similarly criticized by his own standards, but we shall postpone this discussion for now. First we must ask if we are willing to accept even the restatement of his principle. Have all of our ideas followed similar and antecedent impressions? If we answer no, we are left with two alternatives. We can contend that one or more ideas are innate to the mind-that is, prior to all experience and so not consequent to any impression. We can also hypothesize that, in the midst of our experience, ideas spring into begin which are in no way traceable to impressions . Although experience may be the spur to their first appearance, these ideas are not mere copies of the objects of sensation. We need not worry about the old scholastic objection .that such ideas would have no explicable cause; Hume himself has shown us that reason does not recognize the necessity of a cause. Whichever alternative we prefer, we face the same task-namely, to provide at least one example of an idea which does not appear to be derived from an impression. If we can find such an idea, we have taken our first step toward refuting several of Hume's most troubling claims: that we have no real idea of causality, no real idea of the self, no real idea of external body. Perhaps these are innate ideas, or are in some part derived from them. Hume's own rejection of the possibility of innate ideas is brief and unsatisfying. In Part I Section I he presents several examples of ideas which obviously reflect sense impressions: an apple, his chamber, the city of Paris, the color red. Apparently Hume believes these to be an adequate sampling of our myriad ideas, for he then concludes that every idea must similarly reflect an impression. The only possible exception he can find is the ability to imagine a never-before-experienced shade of color between two given shades. The very singularity of this case, however, leaves him confident that he can generalize his principle to a universal truth . At the end of Section I he scoffs at those philosophers who have defended the existence of innate ideas. Again he considers only a couple of uncontroversial cases: We may observe, that in order to prove the ideas of extension and colour not to be innate, philosophers do nothing but shew, that they are conveyed by our senses. To prove the ideas of passion and desire not to be innate, they observe th at we have a preceding experience of these emotions in ourselves. Now if we carefully examine these arguments, we shall find that they prove nothing but that ideas are preceded by other more lively perceptions, from which they are derived, and wh ich they represent. (Treatise, p. 7) In light of Kant, we might see extension as a controversial contender for status as an innate idea. But although extension is a priori for Kant (since it is known simply by analysis of the concept of body), it is not pure a priori like all innate ideas. (Critique of Pure Reason, Intro., IV) Hume has really ignored all the ideas which philosophers, before and after his day, have most often suggested as nonempirical. These we can divide into two groups for convenience. The first are these ideas which Plato frequently discussed as eternal "forms'~such as goodness, justice, truth, and beauty. Hume ignores these difficult, abstract ideas entirely in the first book of his Treatise, so we cannot know how he would attempt to trace them back to impressions. The second group, however, he deals with at great length, so we can certainly use it as a line of criticism. This group comprises certain ideas which we employ to order and understand our sense experiences. Kant's pure concepts of the understanding, the categories, are examples of this type of non-empirical 25 �knowledge which renders experience possible . We shall investigate whether Hume's "relations" are not also of this type, and as such may be termed "innate ideas." In Part III Section II of the first book, Hume writes: ''All kinds of reasoning consist in nothing but a comparison, and a discovery of those relations, either constant or inconstant, which two or more objects bear to each other ." (Treatise, p. 73) Reason, then, is really only the observation of relations between objects. Consequently, these relations are of great importance to Hume, and he enumerates and analyzes them in detail . All philosophical relations fall under seven general heads, which are: resemblance, contrariety, degrees of a quality, proportions in quantity or number, identity, relations of space and time, and cause and effect . Of particular importance is resemblance, since all the other relations incorporate it to some extent . In H u m e' s own words, " No relation of any kind can subsist without some degree of resemblance." (Treatise, p. 15) Hume splits the seven relations into two types: those which cannot vary without changing the ideas of the objects which are related, and those which can vary. The first four relations listed above, according to Hume, are of the kind that cannot vary; the remaining three can. One of these latter, causation, receives extensive treatment in the Treatise. Hume's conclusion about it, of course, is that it cannot be inferred from experience. We never have an impression of causation but only of constant conjunction. This immediately casts suspicion on his other relations . If causation is a mere fiction of the imagination, so might be the other six types. If on the other hand, we uphold the belief that we have real ideas of resemblance, contrariety, and the others, then perhaps we can salvage the idea of causation. Hume' s own argument against the existence of innate ideas, as we have already remarked, is that for every idea he could think of, he could remember a similar and antecedent impression. Let us submit one of his relations to the same test. Since he considers resemblance fundamental to all the other relations, we shall use it as our example. First we must agree that we do indeed have an idea corresponding to the word "resemblance." And even more p rimary, we need to settle upon an acceptable definition of an idea. Hume's definition is of course unacceptable, as it assumes the point in dispute-that is, that ideas are less vivid copies of impressions. Rather than discuss the origin of ideas, we should inquire exclusively into what they are once they do exist. Taking common usage as our guide, an idea is virtually synonymous with a thought. We cannot limit its meaning to mental "pictures," for we also have ideas of incorporeal abstractions (e.g., justice, truth) and even entire statements . In its standard, though admittedly broad, definition, an idea is any element of our understanding or our reason considered as a single entity. By defining it as an element of the understanding or the reason, I mean to exclude impressions as they initially appear to the senses (from whatever source). These must be reproduced by some means as ideas before they become objects of the under- standing. In this way I maintain H ume's distinction between impressions and ideas. By defining an idea as a single entity, I mean that whether it be simple or complex (in Hume's sense), represented by a single word or a sentence, it is referred to as an individual unit of our thought. Thus "the virtuous man is happy" has a single corresponding idea just as do the individual words "virtuous'' and ''man.'' By our definition, certainly we have an idea of resemblance. We use the term regularly to denote some distinct element of our thought, whatever its origin might be. We may have difficulty defining it without resorting to virtual synonyms like comparison and similarity, but we are all able to call such an idea to mind. We should address one possible objection, however. We seem also to have an idea corresponding to the word "cause," but Hume has suggested that this is really a pseudo-idea. What we call the idea of cause if really only a movement of our thought, the habitual expectation of one idea triggered by the appearance of another. We shall criticize this . explanation later in connection with cause; for now we need only ask if our idea of resemblance might not be a similar pseudo-idea. We can definitely say that, if it is a pseudo-idea, it is not of the same sort as "cause." In Hume's analysis, we arrive at this latter by a mental habituation which results from the recognition of resemblances among our experiences. Therefore the idea of resemblance is assumed to explain such a supposed pseudo-idea as causation. If resemblance is some other sort of pseudoidea, I leave it to anyone else to explain what sort. We can accept with reasonable certainty, then, that we have a genuine idea of resemblance according to our new definition of idea. Should one react skeptically to any conclusions based on this new definition, however, we need only turn to Hume's own words . In Part I Section V he writes, "It may perhaps be esteemed an endless task to enumerate all those qualities, which make objects admit of comparison, and by which the ideas of philosophical relation are produced." (Treatise, p. 14) He continues by showing that these endless qualities can be resolved into the seven types of relation already mentioned. The quotation points out two important facts: 1) Hume accepts that we hav e ideas of these relations, including resemblance and (at this point) even cause; 2) He believes that these ideas are produced by qualities of the objects which are related, i.e., the relations are derived from impressions. Admitting that we h ave an idea corresponding to the word "resemblance/' let us now inquire whether this idea originally followed an impression similar to it. Obviously we h ave never witnessed " resemblance'' itself, stripped from any of its particular manifestations. The only logical place for us to look, of course, is at the impressions of particular objects which resemble each other. Let us take, for example, two copies of the 1939 Oxford Edition of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. If we choose two that are sufficiently similar, we may even fool someone into asserting their identity. We need only show him one, substitute the other in the same position when he is not looking, and then show him the second. It is quite possible that he would mistakenly assume that the two were just one book. Sometimes this proves true even with people, as in the case of "identical" twins. These examples should suffice to show that we do not have a special faculty to detect identity-that is, sameness rather than similarity. Identity, then, is really not a separate relation from resemblance, but is only a specific case of it (resemblance in a very great degree). Hume's distinction between the two, however, is valid psychologically if not philosophically . Although we recognize no philosophical distinction between resemblance and identity (except one of degree), there is an enormous difference in our manner of thinking about the two . When we close our eyes and reopen them, we believe that the objects before us are not merely similar to, but identical and continuous with those we saw previously. Upon the distinction between resemblance and identity rests all belief in the permanence of objects. But our chief question, again, is, whence came the idea of resemblance between the two books? We expect that even a child who had never seen any book before would acknowledge this resemblance. Is the resemblance contained in the impression of either one of the books? Obviously not. Neither book, considered individually, elicits the idea of resemblance. But the two impressions together are nothing more than the sum of each considered separately. Otherwise, some quality not present in either book individually would mysteriously have appeared when the two are viewed together. To demonstrate that this is clearly not the case, we need only view the tw o books separately with a span of time between them. If one day we see the first book, then we form one impression for it. If a day later we see the second book alone, we simply receive another solitary impression for that book. Yet we still form the idea of their resemblance. This resemblance cannot be a mysterious quality of the objects themselves, for it has appeared only between the ideas of the books. It was not present in either of the individual impressions. It must have had an origin within the mind itself. The only way to contest this conclusion is to find an impression which actually contains resemblance within it. But it is obvious that we never have an impression of resemblance itself, and equally obvious that resemblance is not contained in the impressions of any particular objects which resemble each other . What other sort of impression could possibly communicate the idea of resemblance to us? In the absence of an answer, we can only hypothesize that resemblance is a very real idea which nevertheless has no impression as its counterpart. One additional observation will help to emphasize this point. Hume' s fundamental principle, as we have seen, is that all our ideas have followed antecedent and similar impressions. Yet this very principle necessitates the prior idea of resemblance . Without possessing the idea of resemblance, we could never con clude that our ideas reflect our impressions. We would have no reason to suspect that our ideas were derived from any external source, and were not merely phantoms of our imagination. We could not assert that we arrive at the idea of resemblance empirically, for without its prior existence in the mind we would recognize no connection between the idea of it and any impression which might have produced it. Now that we have achieved this foothold against Hume's principle with the idea of resemblance, let us examine its consequences. First we will ask: Is our idea of resemblance innate, or did it simply appear in our minds at some time? This is very difficult for us to determine, for in either case the idea is present very early in childhood. An infant is clearly able to recognize the same object or person over an interval of time, and since identity is simply a special case of resemblance, we must admit an idea of resemblance in the earliest stages of youth. This would incline us toward the theory of its innateness, though we have by no means an incontrovertible proof of this. Similarly, we have shown that a prior idea of resemblance is necessary for us to observe any connection between our ideas and impressions. Without this idea we would be unable to assert that any of our ideas were "reflections" of our impressions. This would render all empiricism impossible, for we would have no means of tracing ideas beyond our own imagination. Since we very rarely (if ever) encounter this drastic solipsism in children, we are again inclined to the view that resemblance is an innate idea. As yet another alternative, we may hypothesize that the idea of resemblance begins simultaneously with experience. This is of course the position which Kant holds in regard to his pure a priori concepts. They are mere forms until they gain some empirical matter, at which point they become objects of knowledge. Perhaps, in parallel fashion, resemblance becomes an idea (that is, an object of knowledge) only after experience has provided a particular example which takes the form of resemblance. One may debate whether such an idea can properly be called innate, but the argument is really irrelevant. In any of the above hypotheses, the idea of resemblance is not a "reflection" derived from some imp ression; its origin is within the mind. I have used the term "innate" because Hume poses it as the opposite of his strict empiricism. We can never truly decide whether the idea of resemblance exists before all experience, though it was surely not derived from it. How does our conclusion about resemblance reflect .on Hume's other relations? Since, in his own words, "no relation of any kind can subsist without some degree of resemblance' ', we must admit that the ideas of all his relations depend at least partly on an idea with no corresponding impression. None can be completely derived from experience. Since Hume casts the greatest doubt on the idea of causality, we shall examine it in particular. The element of resemblance in causality, I imagine, is the similarity in place and time between the two objects which we call cause and effect. This is the contiguity and succession which Hume points out. He rightly argues that 27 �we never have an impression of causality (this would be analogous to having an impression of resemblance, which we have found impossible). He then concludes, however, that we cannot have any idea of causality, because such an idea would defy his principle. But are we not all conviced that we do indeed have such an idea? In such a case, we should perhaps abandon the principle rather than ignor the evidence of our thought. In light of our overwhelming belief in causality, we must turn to Hume's explanation of it as neither innate nor empirically derived. According to Hume, we never have a true experience of cause and effect. In situations where we appear to witness causality, careful analysis reveals that we really experience only the contiguity and succession of objects. He is, I believe, justified in reaching this conclusion. The exact same sequence of events could be explained in a non-causal way, as the coincidental but unrelated actions of the two objects. The appearances of the causal hypothesis (where one object determines the change in the other) and of the coincidental hypothesis (where no interaction occurs) would be indistinguishable . Consequently, in simply looking upon the sequence of events, we could never determine whether the relation of the objects was causal or coincidental. We could not derive the idea of causality from these appearances, for contiguity and succession are not a sufficient assurance of cause and effect . Hume writes: Shall we then rest contented with these two relations of contiguity and succession, as affording a complete idea of c~usa­ tion? By no means . An object may be co ntiguous and pnor to another, without being consider'd as its cause. There is a necessary connection to be taken into consideration; and that relation is of much greater importance, than any of the other two above-mention' d. (Treatise, p.77) Contiguity and succession fail not only as an adequate source of the idea of causality; they are insufficient even to bring about the pseudo-idea of causality formed by the imagination. This is because we often experience contiguous and successive objects without attributing any causal connection to them. There must exist a necessary connection between the objects. If such a necessary connection can truly be discovered, then we may uphold an authentic idea of causality . If this connection does not truly exist, yet the mind is misled into believing it does exist, then we will form the pseudo-idea of causality. Hume searches for this necessary connection and finds the most likely candidate in ''constant conjunction''. By this he means that contiguity and succession have occured repeatedly when two objects were placed in like circumstances . In section VI he writes, "Contiguity and succession are not sufficient to make us pronounce any two objects to be cause and effect, unless we perceive, that these two relations are preserv' d in several instances." (Treatise, p.87) In Hume's assessment, then, contiguity and succession present in constant conjunction are sufficient to bring about the belief in causality. Are they sufficient, however, to establish a true idea of 28 cause? Hume answers no . Constant conjunction is not the necessary connection we required . The recurring pattern of past events acquires the force of necessity only if we accept the principle, "that instances, of which we have had no experience, must resemble those, of which we have had experience, and that the course of nature continues always uniformly the same.'' (Treatise, p.89) In considerable detail, Hume demonstrates the impossibility of deriving such a principle from experience. Nor can it be deduced from logic, for no contradiction would arise in denying it. Constant conjunction is not a sufficient impression to produce the idea of causality, and Hume despairs of ever finding such an impression. We can have no genuine idea of cause, and he is forced to explain it as a false inference drawn from a mental habit. When we have experienced a sequence of events repeatedly under the same circumstances, our mind becomes accustomed to the pattern of impressions which follow one after the other. When next we find ourselves in those circumstances and the sequence begins, our mind will anticipate the rest of the sequence out of habit. When · we have experienced the sequence a great many times (and with no deviations from the pattern), the mind will become so fixed in its anticipation that the rest of the sequence will be assumed automatically. This, according to Hume, is the only legitimate meaning of necessity . "Necessity, then, is the effect of this observation, and is nothing but an internal impression of the mind, or a determination to carry our thoughts from one object to another.'' (Treatise, p .165) If the repeated experience has been of the contiguity and succession of objects, then our minds will have that particular impression of necessity known as causality: "A cause is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it, that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other .'' (Treatise, p .170) Although he has defined both necessity and cause, they are clearly not what we originally thought them to be. We can advance two important criticisms of Hume's new definition of cause. The first concerns constant conjunction and the h abituation of the mind. As we have seen, the contiguity and succession of objects are not alone sufficient to make us assert an instance of causality- some necessary connection must also exist. According to Hume, constant conjunction serves as this necessary connection, and when it is p resent we w ill unhesitatingly interpret the objects as cause and effect. He is correct that mere contiguity and succession are insufficient to make us interpret events causally. But constant conjunction is not the necessary connection which the mind seeks . If objects can be contiguous and successive once without being interpreted causally, then they can be so any number of times. They can even be necessarily determined as contiguous and successive, thereby being in constant conjunction without a single deviation, and yet inspire no causal interpretation. Such a th eory has appeared several times in the history of philosophy, nota- bly in the Cartesians and Leibniz. Several followers of Descartes, having concluded that interaction between mind and body was impossible, invented the theory of "two clocks" to save the appearance of the mind's effect on matter. Both mind and body are determined in perfect synchronization, like two clocks keeping identical time. When one clock points to the hour, the other will strike, giving the impression that the former caused the latter. Mental and physical phenomena likewise follow a determined, synchronised sequence, but with no actual interaction and no cusal interpretation. Leibniz proposed the "pre-established harmony" of monads, which actual interaction and no causal interpretation. Leibniz proposed the "pre-established harmony'' of monads, which may be far-fetched speculation, but they demonstrate tht constant conjunction does not imply a causal interpretation. The crucial element of our idea of causality is not constant conjunction, but the determination of one object by another. When we assert an instance of causality, we do not mean only that some change in an object occurs always next to (in space and time) some other object. We mean that one object actively influenced the other. Hume is correct in arguing that we cannot derive any active influence from experience; cause and coincidence have the same appearances. So where does this notion of active influence originate? It cannot be explained as a mental habituation of constant conjunction. By such a theory, we are habituated only to expect events in sequence; we could just as easily interpret them as being determined coincidentally. There is nothing in the observation of constant conjunction which implies influence, yet this latter is the real sense in which we use "cause". If active influence cannot be derived from our impressions, nor explained as a mental habituation, it may well represent another "innate" idea. Once the universality of Hume's principle has been challenged by our idea of resemblance, we need not fear to put forth cause as another exception. This would of course put us in agreement with Kant, who upholds causation as one of the pure a priori concepts . We can make one other significant criticism of Hume's explanation of cause. Simply put, our criticism is that he employs the idea of cause to demonstrate that we have no real idea of cause. since we have had no true impression of cause as an active influence, he is forced to define it as no more than the observation of constant conjunction. But, according to his explanation, constant conjunction is the cause of our mental habituation . His very definition of cause states that the idea of one object ''determines the mind to form the idea of the other.'' If we have no real idea of causality, what does it mean for an idea to "determine" the mind. He recognizes no l necessity at all in the events we call "causal", but he is forced to claim that one idea necessarily determines the mind to form another. If we take the word "determines" to mean ''cause'' in the sense of his new definition, then we are left with some such statement as this: 'A cause is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it, that the idea of the one is precedent and contiguous to the formation by the mind of the idea of the other, and the impression of the one is precedent and contiguous to the formation of a more lively idea of the other.' We could likewise complain that "the formation by the mind'' is a causal concept which should also be rewritten with the ludicrous precision above. When we clear Hume of his contradictions (brought on by his need to use causal language), he is reduced to an endless regression of constant conjunctions and to near meaninglessness. Even Hume must retain the idea of "cause" as an active influence. Considering the doubt and despair into which Hume is thrown by adhering to his strict empiricism, we should be glad to have challenged its universality. We have seen that the relations, in which he places such importance, cannot be derived entirely from impressions. Resemblance, without which no relation of any kind can subsist, gives every indication of being an innate idea. Other hypotheses do not fully account for its origin. And we have seen that the idea of resemblance is necessary to render any empiricism possible- without it we could see no connection between our impressions and ideas. Resemblance plays a role in our idea of cause as well, insofar as the latter involves contiguity and succession. But we have observed that these two relations, even in constant conjunction, do not fully elicit our idea of causality. Also necessary is an idea of active influence, by which one object determines the change in the other. This active influence cannot be derived from our impressions, nor explained as the mental habituation of constant conjunction. It appears, like resemblance, to have had a nonempirical origin. Finally, we observed that Hume is often forced to contradict himself by using causal language. The fundamental principle of his Treatise is that all ideas are derived from impressions . Yet th is very principle makes him doubt the idea of cause, which in turn renders his principle untenable ("derived" being a causal word). When he offers a new definition of cause to avoid implications of necessity and influence, he is forced to say that one idea "determines" the mind to form another. Again he has used a causal word in its ordinary sense, implying both necessity and influence. We must temper his strict empiricism, allowing for non-empirical "innate" ideas, if we are to accurately account for our experiences. 29 �Cainel Ride Ange Mlinko ( '91) See-do Chimpanzees, through Helpless resemblances To us, with this captivity Make do; Lions Curb their torments Into figure eights traced Infinitely sideways, and the Reptiles Ingest Their restrictions And sleep on them; otters Go under, unto other lawsWater And airBaubles, swan, hawk, Pheasant's element: tooled Plumes and hidden hardware, flutes For bones. Ruckus Free wings cause near Us do not stir the caged , Nor do visitors stir to see One of Them, me Leading their kids On camels, circumspect, With light, flat step; with suspicion You learn. �be a spontaneous check on our snug involvement with life - a sudden sense of estrangement . Or it may be a teacher who tears us out of our usual context by the right sort of question - that is, when all is said and done, the most dramatically and unforgettably useful thing a teacher can do. The resultant state is what two great ancient philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, call "wonder". Wonder is not the same as "questioning things." when you question something you really have a mental reservation about it; in fact, such questioning is usually a cagey way of attacking other people's opinions. Wonder, as these philosophers understood it, is puzzlement and delight all wrapped up together. It is the attentive suspicion that things are not only what they seem to be, that there must be more to them than meets the eye. This suspicion makes parts of the world extremely attractive. But instead of being centered on one human being, as in the case of falling in love, the attraction now extends to things and conditions. Let me give you an example of a case of wonder which has been a recent preoccupation of mine: Take a picture, say a snapshot of a person you care about: How many .words are needed before that picture is so completely described that someone who doesn't know your friend can see him in the mind's eye? Wondering about such a question turns out to draw one into a more and more fascinating affair with words and pictures. There is positive love and there is negative love. Negative love is the kind of involvement that has to begin by denigrating and denying its object so that it can build it up again in its own image. There is certainly personal love of this sort, in which the supposed lover feels compelled to remake the other person so as to feel perfectly safe and certain in the relationship. This negative love, or negative wonder, is called doubt. Doubt, systematic doubt, is the approach to philosophy associated with the name of Descartes. One might say that Descartes is the first modern philosopher - he wrote in the early seventeenth century - and that we moderns have this manipulative, negative love bred in our bones. The purpose of Descartes' philosophical doubt is to achieve certainty. Considering that few things in our ordinary beliefs are clear or distinct and none are certain, he begins by deliberately doubting everything, just to see if there might be one thing left which is indubitable . He does find such a thing: It is the doubter himself, the thµ11.<ing being that does the doubting. For it is clear that he cannot doubt that he is doubting and thinking. So he concludes that one sentence is certainly true: "I think, therefore I am,'' and from this thinking self he then proceeds to develop a world of certainty. I won't follow him in this reconstruction except to say that the world he gets back is not quite the ordinary world, but the world of science. Now the fourth kind of love. If doubt is a kind of negative wonder, it is possible to go one step further along this road. It is possible not only to put a negative sign on wonder but to negate it entirely . It is possible for the sake of the love of truth to try to squash that wonder altogether. This sort of philosophical love, too, exists and What is Philosophy?* Eva Brann "Philosophy" as a word and as an activity has been around almost twenty-four hundred years, so it is no wonder that a lot of technical talk has accumulated around it. But today I want to talk to you about it in the simplest terms and describe it with the boldest strokesmuch as I present something to myself when I want to get the basics clear. The word philosophy has perfectly common uses, of course. People talk of their "philosophy of life," meaning the way things look to them and the rules by which they live. Beauty parlors have a "philosophy of hairstyling'', meaning you pay ten dollars more. But the word has a higher origin, which is Greek, since the Greeks discovered the activity. Notice by the way that I keep saying "activity," not subject. I shall explain why before long. So philosophy is a Greek word which is actually familiar even to those people who would say here that it is all Greek to them . The first part, the "philo-" part, had to do with love, as in Philadelphia, the city of Brotherly Love. The second part, '' sophia, '' is known to us as a women's name and means wisdom. It follows that philosophy originally means ''the love of widom. '' Therefore, if I want to give you an answer to the question which forms my title, What is Philosophy? I have to explain just two small items: love and wisdom. Let me begin, boldly, with the "love" part. To say that some sort of love is involved in philosophy is first of all to say that it involves some sort of passion which is its very own. Somewhere, in some ultimate part, it must be carried on for love and not for money . Since we must all eat, it does not seem wrong to accept money for doing it, though its early practitioners refused to take pay, and most people who feel the passion even a little still make a distinction between the work they get paid for and the cause they serve. It is humanly unavoidable that ambition, the honor that comes from being thought clever or wise, should play a role. And it is positive1y honorable that the love that goes with philosophy should gain *For delivery as a public lecture at Southeastern Louisiana University at Hammond, Louisiana in October, 1989. its devotees special and lasting friendships. But somewhere, somehow, the thing is pursued for its own sake . Now this passion I am talking about has taken various forms in the history of philosophy. Let me set out some six that I can distinguish, and tell you who among the philosophers was particularly alive to each. The first case is quite literal: The passion of philosophy is said to begin with the ordinary-or if you like, extraordinary-condition of falling and being in love. This bold connection is made by Plato, or rather by his character Socrates, in the dialogue called the Phaedrus. It takes account of a psychological factor. In beginning love, there is, for all the desire to get together, a certain inhibiting factor, a sense that the physical appearance of the other person is only a front, a kind of facade that both exposes and hides the real object of love. Someone in love in this way feels the attraction as a kind of labor of love, a search for the being behind the appearance, or, as Socrates puts it, for the god within . Now that search has great similarity with the love of wisdom, as I shall set it out later. In philosophy too the lover looks with deep fascination at the looks of things, but not with the immediate intention of possessing or using them, but rather with the feeling that there is something behind them that is really worth getting at. So first love is a good analogy to philosophy, and in fact, in my own school it is often the freshmen who get themselves most ardently mixed up in difficult love affairs and abstruse metaphysics. The second kind of love is really not so different from the first, but it is less personal. Our ordinary state is to live enmeshed in the goings-on of the world. We may feel embattled or we may feel snug, but it all seems v ery natural and normal to us. I know that in modern times few people accept social inequities and human vice as natural and normal. On the contrary, most of us, certainly in th e universities, live in a constant state of indign ation with these, or, as we say, we " question" them. But there are vast and more fundamental parts of the world which w e don ' t question much at all, such as the solidity of the ground we tread on and the fact that one w ord can name a whole class of things. Now sometimes something happens that breaks through our attitude of taking things for granted. It may has in fact been the most influential passion in recent academic philosophy. Its greatest protagonist is Wittgenstein, who died in 1951. It seemed to him that many of the questions which caused wonder in traditional philosophy are either false questions or unanswerable ones. For example, to go back to the mind's eye I mentioned before: Our language makes us talk about seeing things in our imagination . We are carried away by this manner of speech to talk about images we have in our head and then to wonder what sort of pictures these might be. But this, Wittgenstein thinks, is love's labor lost. We have no good reason to think that we actually have a mind's eye and that it sees mysterious internal pictures. And if we do have such pictures we have no way of showing them to anybody. So better than wonder about invented entities, attend to your use of language. Wittgenstein thinks that our wonder is a sort of pathology for which his careful analysis of language is the therapy. Our puzzlement is like a fly buzzing about in a bottle and philosophy's most honest task is to let the fly out. Here a new love of truth is in mortal combat with the old responses to philosophical wonder. There are other than negative modern ways of being attracted to wisdom. One of these is most worth remembering because it is responsible for the grandest structures philosophy has produced. There is a kind of deeply serious appetite for workmanlike thoroughness, which is expressed in the great philosophical system of Kant. Kant, whose great founding work, The Critique of Pure Reason, was published just about the time of the French Revolution, has a name for this impulse. He calls it the "architectonic" principle. It is the sense that nothing can be done unless it is a part of a well-organized, comprehensive system. Above all, such a system must have a good foundation, and the only trustworthy foundation, for Kant, as for Descartes, is the exposition of the self that knows, or as Kant says, the subject. Kant wrote, in fact, three fundamental works and each has the word "Critique" in the title. That is because critique in those days has nothing particular to do with criticism: It meant an investigation into the powers of knowing of a human being, and the laying of a foundation for scientific knowledge. As Kant himself intimated somewhere: For systematic critical philosophers, love of truth is expressed as a passion for work, the work of a builder, especially a layer of foundations. I must mention one last, the sixth kind of philosophical love, which runs from antiquity through modernity. Probably its greatest representative is the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. Some people might argue that philosophy and theology are radically incompatible: a theologian begins with faith and a philosopher with questions. In faith those deepest questions that attract the fascination of the philosopher are already settled. The theologian may do a lot of thinking and reasoning, but not about ultimate matters . This battle has been fought for millennia. Thomas himself has a great deal to say about it. But for present purposes I won't enter 32 J 33 �into the argument but simply assert that the love of a God already accepted by faith can indeed induce a love of wisdom: It seems to be quite possible to have a desire to know in a position of ultimate assurance. To make an analogy: One might explore a great mansion with fascinated interest because one feels like a guest and a stranger and wants to discover its architecture and its plan and its owner. Or one might investigate it with devout interest precisely because one is a child of the house and knows the father who has built it and owns it. So faith too can lead to philosophical love. Well, I have said a lot about the "philo-," the lovepart of philosophy. But of course, that love is a love of something-as the word tells us, of wisdom. So now I come to this wisdom. That, too, is a word of many meanings . Let me give you an example. I have a student back at my college who comes from Ghana, from a little village 140 miles distant from the capital, Accra. The jungle comes close up to the house of my student's father and a river runs by the village. Sebastian-that is his name-had often mentioned the old men of the village in class. Once, when we were at dinner together I asked him if these old men were wise. He said, "O yes, they were wise.'' I asked him what they were wise about. He said that they knew when to plant the sweet potatoes (or something to the same effect). Now the analogue to knowing when to put the potatoes in the ground in a village is something like planting the commas in a student essay in college: I know rum to do that, but no one w calls me wise for it-one would-say I was literate or competent. But of course, that farming know-how is not really what makes Sebastian call thes'e elders wise. He venerates them because they know how to keep the village going in the old ways. If know-how is not wisdom, is it then knowledge of the tradition? No, the wisdom I mean is not knowledge of the old ways and what I might call "the truths of the tribe" either. Those who know the traditions, the myths, the rituals, the conventions ~ and know them not as myths, rituals and conventions but as living truths, sacred rites and life-preserving rituals, certainly know something that is more than worthwhile. They know something invaluable. So I want to take time out here to say a word about the relation of philosophy to tradition. Since the origin of this peculiar enterprise about 500 years before the birth of Christ, there has been a great tension between the philosophers and the bearers of the tradition, as between those who have insight and those who simply carry on in the unthinking ways of their forebearers. Derogatory remarks about ordinary thinking occur in all the founders of philosophy, but it was Socrates who found the aggressively intelligent formulation. He distinguishes three states: knowledge (the wisdom that I am on the way to delineating), a middle thing he calls opinion, and simple ignorance. What he admires most, as a generally achievable condition, is ignorance, or better the knowledge and admission of one's own ignorance: 34 Accordingly, when the divine oracle called him the wisest of the Greeks, he interpreted the god to be expressing his approval of his own favorite saying: ''I know that I know nothing.'' You are probably familiar with the fact that he made it his life's business to be a gadfly to his Athenian fellow citizens, goading and stinging them into-usually unwilling-the admission that they didn't know what they were talking about when it came to the matters they supposedly cared most about, like the difference between good and bad and how to bring up their children. As you know, he was accused of corrupting these same children and of denying the city's gods, and he was executed. That was in 399 B.C. Now if Socrates thought that having opinions was the worst of conditions to be in, worse certainly than having the knowledge, but worse also than beingconsciously-ignorant, this opinion-having must be a very interesting state. What did he mean by it? I think he did indeed mean a state which we spend most of our time in, and which is, when you come to think of it, a fascinating possibility. He means thoughtless thought. Being human seems to mean, among other things, being able to say with a certain conviction what we don't in the least understand. Whenever almost everyone says the same thing-which is called public opinion-that is usually what is taking place: Everyone says it, but hardly anyone is thinking anything much. Let me give you what seems to be the best concrete example of current "opinion": All of us, myself of course included, talk, at the drop of a hat, about our "rights." I have a right to be heard, you have a right to a decently prepared talk, we have a right to safe this or adequate that. We certainly fervently believe it, but who among us can say what we mean except that we feel strongly about it? A person who has thought out this question of rights, who can tell you what are the conditions for having rights and the limits on them is, you will admit, very rare. That is the sort of state that stung Socrates and made him sting his fellow citizens in turn. It seems to me, however, that there are two sorts of states of opinion when we say words without really having thought out what is behind them. You might call them plain and fancy . The fancy sort stems from the intellectuals in the universities or the scientists and technicians. Our current language is full of such borrowed wisdom. For example, who among us hesitates to say that ''society is responsible for this or that'' or ''we are programmed to do this or that?" But this is not natural human talk-it is what we have picked up from our experts of the day . The plan sort comes from an older source, the folk wisdom and common traditions we have learned, such as: "That's just plain the decent thing to do," or "I don't know what drove me to do that," or above all, "No matter who says what, I know right from wrong because my parents brought me up that way.'' Now here is my point: From the beginning philosophers have not made as careful a distinction be- tween the plain and the fancy kind of mere opinion, between the community's traditions and sectarian sophistry, as they might have . When those traditions held strong and were almost unassailable, this aggressive desire to cast a cold eye on the truths of the tribe was understandable and, in fact, admirable because it was valiant - it could cost something. But in our day, it seems to me, things have changed. The critique philosphy practices on society, the enlightenment it has brought to personal opinion, has been so overwhelming a success that it is high time for philosophy to become more inclusive and to begin to preserve and protect what it has hitherto attacked and denigrated . I am saying that traditional wisdom and the wisdom loved in philosphy are still two different things, but philosophy should find ways to encompass and give foundation to the truths of the tribe rather than to withhold its sympathies. I need hardly tell you that very few among those who ply philosophy as a profession would agree with me. Having now told you two things that are not the wisdom I'm after, namely technique or tradition, you might be expecting me to get to the point with a positive answer. But I have two more w isdoms that are not the wisdom of philosophy and that it is particularly important to say something about since we are on the grounds of a university: The wisdom of philosophy is certainly not scholarship . To study carefully and intelligently the books of one or many philosphers is not to do philosophy. Especially studying the history of ideas is not philosphy, even though such course titles are listed under philosophy. It turns out to be very helpful to thinking-though it is not absolutely essential-to have studied such subjects but one should not confuse the study of philosophy with philosophy itself, for two reasons. First, just as the study of the history of painting is not the same as to look at a painting, or to study comparative literature is not the same as to experience a novel, so to run through a string of different philosophers is not the best way to do justice to the thinking of any one of them. But my second reason is much more fundamental. I am really saying that the work of study and the activity of thought are - believe it or not - mutually exclusive. You can't do one without the other, but you shouldn't confuse them either. It is possible to study very hard and think very little . For example, there are great Plato scholars who have no interest in wisdom at all. The other wisdom that is distinguishable from philosophy is science. The tendency nowadays, and as far as I can tell it is a healthy one, is not to make such a deep division betw een science and other human activities. But there are still some pretty strong marks separating science from philosophy. Let me say in the fewest possible words what seems to me to be the most charac- teristic activity of a scientist: A scientist tries to find and to perfect rational models, usually expressible in mathematics, which will predict certain types of phenomena. The model itself, whether it is a set of laws or a geometric construct, is not usually thought of as being real-it is an intellectual construct . And that, it seems to me, is exactly where philosophic wisdom differs: What the philosophers are after is more than a brilliant explanatory device: They want the inner truth of things. No sooner have I said that then I have to modify my statement: It is what philosphers used to want. I have to tell you what you probably already know : Nowadays there is no agreement about what philosophers ought to want, and, as I have already pointed out, there is a vigorous and event brilliant movement by professional philosophers-a phrase that is, incidently, a contradiction in terms-to put an end to philosophy. I do not think this movement will succeed because one of the various kinds of positive philosphical love always springs up again. So what then are these lovers of wisdom after? As you might have guessed, the answer it as simple as it is vague . They are after some steadfast knowledge of whatever is beneath, behind, beyond the ordinary world, something that will give it coherence and significance. A first reaction to this way of putting it might be to think philosophy is after "abstractions," generalities. But that does not do the longing justice, since it is for something more potent and more steady than the things we see before us, something richer, not poorer than the world that appears. Of course, I could become more specific and give the names and descriptions of all the objects of wisdom that philosophers have pursued, such as Forms, Ideas, Things-in-themselves, but then I would be myself plying the sort of philosophical survey in which I was expressing my lack of faith above. But there is an even better reason why it is not altogether wrong to mention such philosophical aims even without quite specifying and understanding their actual objects. Recall the meaning of the word ph ilosoph y with which I started. Philosophy means the love of wisdom. Ever since the invention of the word in the sixth century B.C., people have periodically pointed out that philosophy is the love, not the possession, of wisdom. A philosopher is therefore one who longs for wisdom, not one who is wise, one who searches for knowledge and thereby admits not having it. Accordingly when talking philosophically, it is quite appropriate to talk about things one has a glimpse of a hope for, but maybe not any firm grasp on. And that is certainly what I have been doing tonight. 35 �Gubbio' s Festa dei Ceri William Ney (GI '82) The Italian peninsula's only landlocked region produces a world-class wine in Orvieto, voices and chocolates of reknown in Perugia, attracts Beautiful People everywhere with its arts festival in Spoleto, and cherishes one of the great churches in Christendom- and one of the most important and stunning collections of early Renaissance art- in Assisi. Despite these glories, however, foreign visitors often recall Umbria, 'Italy's Green Heart ' by the guidebooks, as the place they were most glad to both see and leave behind. No town in Umbria suffers more this reaction than ancient Gubbio . Founded by the Umbrian people, who came to Italy centuries before the Etruscans, Gubbio was thriving when Rome was a hamlet, and in 1151 defeated an alliance of eleven cities to re-affirm itself as a power in the north. The quarters that comprise the city proper have weathered the subsequent 800 years with little change . Today the great number of its people, the eugubini, live in medieval museum pieces built of a distinctive pale granite. Perhaps no other city in Italy, including Siena, has preserved so much of its medieval self, and this beauty is what attracts Gubbio' s modest share of the tourist trade. Yet Gubbio is small enough to see in a day, and the tensile, resonant pottery for which it is also wellknown is no reason to stay overnight. Moreover, when the skies and hills turn grey, as they often do throughout 'Mysterious Umbria, ' the limpid granite can suddenly remind one of a pauper's tombstone, and the city seem an enormous mausoleum. Memories of the brighter hills of Tuscany and the vitality of the Renaissance are apt to send the typical tourist packing, suddenly less than charmed with the Middle Ages. There is, however, a better reason to vist Gubbio than to climb among its medieval structures. Each May, the eugubini honor their patron saints, Ubald, George, and Anthony, by observing perhaps the most vital and astonishing series of rituals in Italy- and again, Siena has not been forgotten . The Feast of the Candles attracts Italians from all over the north, and fills several pages the next day of Milan's Corriere Della Sere, Italy's international newspaper. In recent years the television cameras have observed. Only in Jessup, Pennsylvania, U. S.A., does anything like Gubbio' s Festa dei Ceri take place, and, as l one eugubino put it, "In Jessup it is sport. Here it is heart." In Gubbio there is also a mountain . It first seem s odd that the town sits low on the shoulder of Monte Ingino, rather than on top . But two other mountains closely flank each side, Calvo to the north, Gerolamo to the south, and one appreciates that the town's defensive posture in wartime was more than adequate. And perhaps Providence played a part in the Umbrian designs, for in the Christian era Ingino's summit was capped with a basilica dedicated to Ubaldo, a beloved Bishop and civic leader. Today the saint himself rests inside the fortress chapel, in a glass coffin, and nearby, leaning against the wall, are the three ceri that become so important in May. Cera means wax, and cero candle. The ceri (pronounced 'cherry', rolling the 'r') of Gubbio, however, are ornate, octagonal wooden pillars, very heavy and fifteen feet tall when topped with a statue of one of the three saints. Such a candle is not burnt, but rather borne, by gaily bedight men dashing madly through the streets and up Mt. Ingino to Ubaldo's fortress . A casual hiker takes perhaps twenty-five minutes to climb from the high city gate to the summit. It takes the bearers of the ceri, the ceraioli, eight minutes to make the same trip, burden upon their shoulders. This frenetic run, La Corsa dei Ceri, on the fifteenth of May, is the climax of the festa, and the event that captures the imagination of Italians throughout the penninsula. Every m an, woman, an d child of Gubbio is a member of one of the three saintly families . Ubaldo was of old the patron of the stonemasons, Giorgio of the merchants of town, and Antonio of the countrymen, the contadini, and students . All participants in the madness of the fifteenth- ceraioli, musicians, flower children, and enthusiastic spectators- will wear white pants and red kerchiefs, and distinguish themselves with their shirts; the Santubaldari don yellow, the Sangiorgiari blue, and Santantoniari black. The first movement of the festa begins late in the morning on the first Sunday of May, la Prima Domenica di Maggio, and in contrast to the corsa is a gracious affair. To the cheers of gathered townsfolk, the ceri emerge from Ubaldo' s basilica and are carried down the mountain in a leisurely procession. Marching bands lead each family in civil and sacred songs, while upstarts among the crowd 37 �initiate the profane . There is laughter, and perhaps some wine. On this day the ceri are carried horizontally, and the youngest children, in their uniforms, ride twenty at a time astraddle the pillars with bright black eyes, holding long, droopy lilies in their hands-surely ?ne of t~e warmest sights in Italy, and a lovely way to begin explaining the complex meaning of the common adjective "simpatico." La Prima Domenica e simpatica. . During the next week or two, preparation~ £.or th~ holiday pre-occupy and agitate the placid eugubim. ui:1forms are bought, refitted, and repaired. The three family taverns, large complexes of rooms and courtyards open only on feast days, are stocked with f~od and :-"i:1e. The great bell in the tower of the Consuls Palace is mspected and exercised. Meanwhile, high above even the ever placid Ubaldo, the bald crown of Monte Calvo goes from grey to green, telling one that grass grows where trees cannot. At dawn on the Fifteenth, three bands of drummers pass through the streets beating an ominous ta~o?, and the eugubini awake. When the armies of cerai?ll have mustered two-hundred and fifty or so per family, they are prese~ted by the sleepy young girls of town with small bouquets of local wildflowers, white hawthorn and violet, reenacting, it seems, the old send-off to war. Origene Rogari, a native, has written a small book.on the ceri, and records the lyric of a song traditional to this early morning exchange. First the men sing: "When Signorina marries, I'll give to her in turn a basket of lilies and roses ." "Surely," the girls sing in reply. "But with the permission of the husband." "Tomorrow I'll press this little bouquet between the pages of a book, which I'll leaf through until the day I die, and think o~ her." . ,, "If it hasn' t first been burnt by the iealous wife. "If it withers too badly I'll give it to the mother-in-law." By mid-morning a procession of the saints is winding its way through town, led on horsebac~ by t~e gra~d old Capitano of the Company of Horse, all m white, with a red sash, and brandishing with gusto an antique sword. The statues of the saints, wh ich will soon be affixed atop the ceri, are carried by a select band of ceraioli, chief among whom are the three Captains of the Ten, the men chosen that year to lead their families in the corsa. Each Capo Die~i carries a large amphora, broccha, specially made for th~s day, and decorated with the signs and colors of his patron. It should be noted that in this, as in all the processions of the festa, the retinue of Ubaldo is always first, then that of Giorgio, then Antonio. Even in the fury of the corsa this order is never violated, for unlike the competions of Siena's Palio, Gubbio's 'run' is n~t a race. A member of the Sangiorgiari would be scandalized by the suggestion that his patron's cero should overtak~ Ubaldo's: Ubaldo must be first, Antonio always last. Vi- sitors often discover this during the course of the day, and Americans especially may consider it conclusive evidence of madness among the eugubini: are the fury and pain entirely without point? But the native reply, remember, is that the corsa is a matter of heart, not sport. In 1977, the fathers of the three families declared If on a sad day this name [Family) co.mes to signify a fu~­ row of pride and fraternal division, the Cen will have lost what s truest and most precious about them . Unlike American-schoolboy football, the corsa is not thought of as training for life in the business world. It is not a dramatic, dynamic image of ''Work Hard and Get Ahead." The business of Gubbio, one realizes, may not be business. One stumbles upon cities here and there throughout Europe that seem essentially static and in balance without seeming poor, and one appreciates the communal experience and discipline that lie behind such appearances. In post-war times, new industry has come to Umbria, and Perugia is as hectic at rush hour as prosperous Padua and Milan. But in Gubbio, which is neither backward, poor, nor rich, the idea of progress seems to have never quite caught on. The eugubini know well the resources of their city and of the large, out-lying commune, and they live, accordingly, an Italian life in which food and conversation are as important as anything, a life the meaning of which seems apparent and the basis . of no good question. Yet ''The Madmen of Gubbio'' is an appellation familiar throughout Umbria, and one of the first things a visitor will be told by these garrulous people is that they, the eugubini, are indeed mad. Rogari writes : Joyous and vital spirit, natural intelligene without hubris, we are also lovers, thanks to our cheerful, cordial character. The Madmen of Gubbio? This doesn't offend us at all, for as a people of spirit and such innocent insanity, we bid go.o d luck one and all to humanity's sages . This madness has its own 'diploma,' far more desirable and in demand than the usual decorations and laurels Ad Honorem. A visitor can earn the eugubino Certificate of Madness by accompanying a native to The Madmen's Fountain, in Bargello Square, and partaking there in a time-honored ritual. The eugubini are generally simpatici, friendly, gracious, honorable, and loveable, both among themselves and with visitors. There are no homeless on the perfectly clean streets, few doors are ever locked, and- ano:~er anomaly among Italian towns in general- e:en pohh~s fail to disturb the peace . A young commum st puts his arm around an older man, and with a wry smile informs a visitor that the latter is a fascist. "It's not what you think,'' the older man assures one with an embarassed laugh. A social democrat jumps in to plant a kiss on the fascisti cheek, and the three return to the business at hand, to wit, teaching the visitor both the proper and vulgar phrases with which to approach the young women- the latter of which, of course, are never to be used. Animosity smoulders, when it exists, and is deeply personal. Late in the war, Italian partisans killed two soldiers in the occupying German army, and forty eugubini men were shot in reprisal. The partisans became in peacetime the Communist Party, and today, the aging widow of one of the Forty Martyrs bitterly insists she is a fascist, having never forgiven her countrymen their senseless provocation, and deeming meaningless her public alignment with the exexecutioners of her husband. There is little in Gubbio to disturb such dispositions or habits of thought, and little occasion for fresh controversy. It is proud and aware of, and promotes, its insularity, and is thereby able to maintain the balance and beauty of its life. It is then quite understandable that a profound anxiety often infects those eugubini who go away, perhaps to school, and see life in Milan, or Rome, or Paris, or America. They see wild growth, and seeming potential without limit. Tension develops between the nurtured deep love and need of the eugubini equilibrium, and the newly stimulated, perhaps innately human, urge to get ahead. Perhaps then the gloominess that tourists often experience in Gubbio is due not only to the somber granite and skies, but also to having apprehended this sublime anxiety in the eugubini, and to having experienced it themselves, having experienced the contrast of a beautiful and balanced life with their own. A suggestion of an answer, then, to the question of the baffled tourist: the point of la corsa dei ceri, this race no race, may be to embrace the given hierarchy and one's place therein, be you Sant' Ubaldo, San Giorgio, or Sant' Antonio, to celebrate with conscious pride the given way of life, and to express as a community common values and the will that they endure, that the beautiful life recur over and over again . The corsa is symbolically pointless, and symbolic of something eternal. The notion of progress- of getting beyond, to something or somewhere new- has no place. The mid-morning procession concludes by eleven, when the statues dei santi are taken up a sweeping stairway into one of Umbria' s m ost remarkable monuments, the Consuls' Palace, Il Palazzo dei Consuli, built in the 1300s by Matteo Gattapone, eugubino and architect. Inside, the ceri have been waiting since the First Sunday. Never yet since their reappearance on that day have the ceri been upright . The moment of their raising, the Alzata, perhaps the most exultant and mad of the entire feast, and is preceded in the great Piazza della Signoria, next to the palace, by an interminable series of introductions, handshakes, and declarations-Mayor to Capitano, Capitano to Bishop, Bishop to Father of the Sanubaldari, etc.-all such dignitaries dressed in their idiosyncratic, High Feast garb. Directly overhead, in the palace tower, young men dare to stand upon the great bell and in that way set it in motion. The tolling is a dull shudder. Lighter bells are ringing everywhere in churches around town, while on the piazza each movement of the pageant is ac- companied by screaming, drums, and clear blasts from the walls of the palace portico where men in red smocks and white leotards press to their lips long and elegant silver trumpets . With relish, the crowd approaches its frenzy, overflowing from the plaza down tributary streets. On other days a fine view into the plain of Gubbio' s private vale can be had, looking out over the long western wall of the plaza, but not today. Every window, every roof, the palazzo battlements-all seats are taken. The vantage points are well known, not having changed in over five hundred years. Near the piazza wall, in comparative order, stand perhaps half of each ceraioli army. Each holds in readiness a barella, the base and handles to which the cero will be fixed. Barella means stretcher, but instead of a cot between the twelve-foot rails, those of Gubbio have a wooden crosspiece, with a hole in its center to receive the cero stem. The parade of dignitaries is complete when the Capi Dieci have emerged from the palace, one at a time and in the proper order, and join the crowd, still carrying the large amphorae. The three statues follow, and now the eugubini are one, in an incessant scream, i santi, i santi, Sant' Ubaldo, San Giorgio, Sant'Antonio. The fey Capitano is again on horseback, hewing antique Romans right and left, the joy of battle upon him. Built upon four immense arches, revolutionary in their time, the elevated piazza shudders not a whit beneath all this, but the roar and crush of the crowd will throw the unprepared visitor off his feet as the great doors of the palace are thrown fully open and the cero of Ubaldo comes flowing down the stairway on a tide of yellow shirts. Those who bear it are grim-faced and blind to anyone in their way. The Master of Ceremonies screams for dear life into his microphone, il Cera di San Giorgio, il Cera di San Giorgio, and a river of blue gushes forth from the palace. The Ubaldo Capo is hoisted seven feet in the air, to stand on the crosspiece of the barella, which is held upright, perpendicular to the plaza floor. The cero is brought in from behind for coupling . It fits imperfectly into the barella's steel collar, and so the Capo throws himself back and forth at the hips, wriggling the stretcher to aid the union. When the thing is done, he is handed up the broccha and pours a libation upon the new joint, both to bless it and to tighten it, for the water causes the wooden stem to swell. When the Antonio crew completes the same rite, the Alzata has come. The Capi Dieci remain on their perches, holding the empty pitchers in one hand and steadying themselves with the other. A signal is given and several things happen at once. Everyone screams. Each Capo tosses his amphora high into the air, into the crowd near the center of the plaza. Sometimes the pitchers are half caught, sometimes someone gets one on the head and is taken to the hospital when things quiet down, but always in the end they smash to the brick and 39 38 �shatter into a million pieces. Despite the imminent danger, people dive to their knees for the souvenir shrapnel. The top half of each cero is given a great heave skyward-"L'Alzata!"-and the saints are suddenly twenty feet in the air. As the barelle snap to the horizontal, the three Captains are thrown forward into the crowd, and th~se with faith and elan are able to give themselves up, to plummet earthward in graceful swan dives. Loyal ceraioli catch them, as others assume the characteristic position along the stretcher rails, and perhaps three seconds after the signal to begin i ceri di Gubbio are off and running. At full, shocking speed they circle the flagpole, like Hollywood Indians around a ring of hapless pioneers. The spectators caught in the middle are indeed at risk, for the tight knot moves in deference to the will of the whirling ceri, and underfoot are those scrambling for pottery chips of the proper color. Trip and fall and the crowd may slip away, like a wave from a beach, leaving one face to face with the raging ceraioli. After three turns, the disturbance pours out of the piazza, and the ceri separate for relaxed and unprescribed parades through town, during which any man, woman, or child may take hold of a rail and bear a cero. By two o'clock, the three have been reunited near the Stonemason's Church on Via Savelli della Porta, and are abandoned there, left standing upright on ornate wooden pedestals. It's time for lunch . The second meal of the day in Italy is the big meal. Businesses and banks are generally closed by one, to reopen at four, and those in small towns sometimes fail to reopen-something to keep in mind when planning menus and shopping. Most eugubini repair to their homes for lunch on the Fifteenth, but the ceraioli and city officials are feasted in the Consuls' Palace. The former, at least, with their strenuous trial only hours away, would seem to have good reason to eat lightly, and Rogari writes that the meal is by tradition one of fish, in solemn observance of the vigil of Ubaldo' s death. Having taken such notice, however, one peruses the menu of the 1987 Banchetto dei Ceri, and finds roasted crayfish, broiled mussels au gratin, and a sweet and sour "Seafood Caprice" for starters, a house rice dish (Risotto del Palazzo) and scampi, salmon steaks with artichokes and butter, broiled sole, french fries, a salad with anchovies, and Fantasia al Marachino and a liquored-up marscapone for dessert. To wash all this down, the soldiers proceed with Peroni Beer, eugubino white wine, Cinzano Asti Spumante, and a liquer made in Gubbio named "Monte Ingino," of which the people are very proud. Of such a feast, Rogari writes One might say that it is a symbol of generous eugubina hospitality . But not only a symbol. It is also a reality, all the more happy and appetizing that it is not down there, in the cellar of the great hall, where gloomy sarcophagi bring to mind that eternal maxim "Momenta mori." Crowds outside stand and stare at the ceri. Rogari quotes a head-scratching visitor ignorant of what he has stumbled upon this day in Gubbio: "The things of mad40 men, obviously, but what do they do with them?" The eugubine women seem authentically taken with the ceri, and actually served as ceraioli during the leanest years of the Second World War, walking instead of running. Today they play in the marching bands, and drink, eat and dance at night. A visitor ask,s them "Do you wish you could be a bearer?" and is answered "Are you mad?" Rogari suggests that their feelings towards the corsa range from pride and awe to disdain, dismay, and fear, and that a prayer that begins "Sant' Ubaldo, let the ceri run well ... " is their prayer for the safety of their husbands. Indulging in domestic comedy, perhaps, he also offers this as characteristic of the advice of a wife to her ceraiolo spouse: Behave honorably but be prudent! Don' t be a fanatic and above all don ' t drink too much . Put off your drunk until tomorrow and I'll give you a 'push' of our own, without a cero. Young children are allowed to climb upon the pedestals and barelle, while men no longer able to serve mill about, complaining of old age, rheumatism, and numb shoulders. By four-thirty, the banquet has ended and the ceraioli are parading to Via Savelii. Another procession issues from the town's odd cathedral, featuring another statue of Ubaldo, the vestments of which people reach up to touch, murmurring prayer. The living Bishop carries the true relics of the patron, with which he'll bless the ceri i ceraioli. The first leg of the corsa is all downhill, and runs along Gubbio' s Main Street, the Corso Garibaldi, newly renamed for the hero of the 1860 unification. A huge statue of Ubaldo enthroned crowns the top of the Corso, reminding one of Abe Lincoln in his Washington monument. The colorful children scramble upon its shoulders and lap for the best seats in town. Other wily ragazzi may try to sell a likely-looking visitor a window or foot and handholds in the walls along the way. The houses throughout town stand shoulder to shoulder, without alleys, and many butt without curbs right upon the street, leaving narrow channels of stone which are filled now with the happy impatience that Americans awaiting fireworks on the Fourth of July exude. Cheers from the higher part of town provoke more of the same here, but the older eugubini merely wag their heads; false rumor is the rule. Then a scream rises and refuses to die, and all eyes are glued upon the festooned Ubaldo. And there they are! Rounding Via Dante onto Garibaldi! They take the corner on two wheels, so to speak, listing like a freighter in a storm, and the fear of a fall-"Un caduto!"-grips the crowd. Some can' t bear to watch, others only scream louder, and one sees that the street is so packed here below that the ceri will tumble; but a lane clears just in time, a small envelope just long and wide enough to allow passage. Close up, the strain upon the bearers is memora- bly clear. The shock falls upon the collarbones and neck, despite an attempt to absorb it with the hands . Some grimace so fiercely as to completely disfigure their red faces, while others have gone completely slack and white, so stricken it seems that they're about to faint-and indeed, some do collapse when relieved of duty. One cannot get enough of the sight, it passes too quickly. Try perhaps to follow along behind, but the crowd intervenes, and then the ceri are already distant. The saints snap sharply back and forth as if too impatient for words; a comical sight, especially for Ubaldo with his flowing golden dress and staff-"I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date ... " Giorgio rides a horse, a blue and silver cape flapping in the breeze, while Antonio shakes and rattles along in the black habit of a monk. While ten is the official number of men per ceri, there are usually more involved at any given moment, due both to ad hoc participation-perhaps by those who had decided this year to give up the struggle but who find themselves unable to do so, for passion or shame, as the cero passes-and to the fact that the crews of ceraioli change, in stride, every hundred yards or so, depending on the terrain; it simply isn't possible to go further at such speed. This fluid shiftwork the bearers must engage in is a wonder to behold, and explains why the armies are so large, as well as how it might be possible to run a thousand pounds of awkward wood up a mountain in eight minutes. Within the city there are three legs to the corsa, each followed by a brief rest that allows the crews-and spectators-to re-position themselves along the route. Including the ascent up Ingino, then, each ceraiolo partakes in four nasty, brutish, and short dashes. If there were more eugubini, perhaps there would be fewer rest stops, but then, too, the three falls of Christ, on his passage through Jerusalem to the Mountain of Skulls, are nicely figured the way things are. II Caduto-should it come-is the event that will receive the most attention in talk that evening and in the weeks to follow. The possibility of such a collapse introduces into the corsa its only taste of competitive sport. In 1987, forty yards down the Corso Garibaldi-beneath the very eyes of the great stone Ubaldo-un caduto ripe for controversy occurred. Having negotiated the difficult corner, the Giorgio crew seemed in control when its right side stumbled and gave way, quickly dragging the left to its knees and chests as well. Yet they managed to hold onto the barella, and the cero did not fall. The blameless Santantoniari were not so lucky . Unable to come to a controlled stop before the obstacle suddenly in their path, they fell off to the left and down came the cero, slashing like an oak, crashing into a house and decapitating St. Anthony. Men and women cried as if witnessing the execution of their sons. The Sanubaldari, however, leapt in triumph like boxers, pounding the air with their fists. In sober moments commiseration will replace such shameless pride, but in the heat of the corsa one sees eugubino blood flowing. By grace, Antonio's head was preserved, dangling from its collar, and during the first stop, at the base of Via Cairoli, was returned to its place. The disturbance has now reached the level of the plain. The second leg runs along even ground, into the Plaza of the Forty Martyrs (where all buses to Gubbio drop their passengers), through the public gardens, and into San Martino, by repute the maddest of the quarters. Here, in truth, begins the ascent up Ingino, within the city, up Via dei Consoli. The second rest is taken just below the great piazza that at noon had witnessed the alzata, and when the run resumes, the whirling about the flagpole, le birate, is repeated. The ceraioli are exhausted, and the road will only steepen, up Via Arpennino and along the city wall to the high gate. Up above, the mountain swarms with eugubini. Climbing the road, one sees a smooth granite plaque laid into the rough stone of the mountainside. A terza from Dante is here inscribed, from the Paradiso, in which Thomas Aquinas begins to tell of the blessed marriage of St. Francis and Poverty. Intra Tupino e l'acqua che discende Del colle eletto dal beato Ubaldo Fertile costs d'alto monte pende Between Tupino and the water that falls From the chosen hill of blessed Ubaldo There hangs from a high peak a fertile slope The expression is left unfinished, for the next lines name Perugia, often a bitter enemy in milennia past. The 'high peak' referred to is Assisi's Subasio, and a visitor naturally takes the 'chosen hill' to be Monte Ingino, and 'l' acqua' to be the Camignano, a torrent that runs along its north face into Gubbio. But for Dante scholars, even the facts of geography become doubtful. Some say that in truth Aquinas speaks of the river Chiascio, which flows from a peak northeast of Gubbio that Ubaldo has chosen for the construction of a retreat; and, indeed, Mt. Subasio sits six kilometers from the confluence of the Tupino and Chiasco. Most eugubini scholars, however, insist that Dante meant the Camignano, and hence the plaque upon their mountain. It was customary during several medieval centuries for Italian cities to select an outsider as their executive, hoping such a man would rule fairly having no personal interest in local affairs . Gubbio provided Florence with over a dozen such Podeste, one of whom, Gabrielli, ordered Dante into permanent exile. The poet's life thereafter is murky water, but there is some basis for the claim that he passed thorugh Gubbio while looking for a place to live. Townspeople today still point to a window, on Via Dante, to identify the place where he slept, and Francesco Picotti, in a fragmented and undated history of the city, writes that Dante stayed "in the Guelfoni house and at the Colmollaro palazzo, and Bosone Raffaelli, in his palazzo, twice welcomed his friend Alighieri. From there he retired to A vellana ... "-where much of the Comedy was written. In the poem, Dante finds the eugu.bino painter 41 �Oderisi doing laps around Monte Purgatorio, bent double by a large stone upon his back-this the appropriate penance for having been too Proud of his art during life. He shouts out to Dante, who crouches to look him in the face. "Hey," I said to him, "aren't you Oderisi, The glory of Gubbio, the glory of that art Called 'illuminating' in Parisi?" The painter calls Dante 'brother' and talks his ear off, and at one point the poet feels censured-thankfully so-for his own pride . But contemporary critics find no support in their apparent acquaintance with it for the claim that Dante came to Gubbio, since Oderisi spent most of his active life at the university in Bologna and at Rome. And Mario Apollonio, a contemporary scholar at the university in Perugia- the old enemy- has this to say: It's more than curious that a name and a place like Gubbio should be connected in such a particular way with the fortunes of Dante. Was there nurtured perhaps in this portrait of the garrulous Oderisi a commentary on the commune [of Gubbio] itself, on a particular attitude of its people? Was there presaged perhaps a not-so-distant future? Did Dante here stir and deepen his personal resentment for one of the leaders of the Blacks in Florence, an architect of their coup, and his unfair judge, Cante Gabrielli? a resentment, even, for that insufferable style of language that he knew from the songs of Castra? As it happened, the eugubini repaid this complex attitude with an arbitrary documentation of the poet's sojourn in Gubbio, with puerile falsehoods, with a bona fide legend that is clearly a transparent legend ...pious and contradictory tampering ... The ancient feuds go on, history no less serious a pursuit today than soccer. There were two disastrous archive fires in Gubbio, during the Guelf/Ghibeline strife that by 1384 led to its surrendering its freedom to the Montefeltri of Urbino . For this reason, among others, the history of the ceri is no better documented than that of Dante, and no less flamboyantly and passionately pursued. In the year 800, a visitor from France, the first and newly-crowned Emperor of the West, Charlemagne, was so pleased with the eugubina hospitality that he presented the people with a great gift and true relic: the finger of John the Baptist. From then until the passing of Ubaldo, it seems, John was the city's protector. Rogari says that candle-lit processions in John's honor took place in Gubbio, featuring flowers, gonfalone, and offerings of wax, an expensive, cherished, and sometimes sacred commodity. He allows the assumption that soon after 1160 such festas were celebrated in Ubaldo' s name, but what he vehemently refuses is the suggestion that their candelabras, waxen gifts, and tall, wooden poles metamorphosed into the ceri of today. Professor Piero Luigi Menichetti, eugubino, has recently published a very thorough history of the festa. The oldest document he finds referring to sacred candle processionsin Gubbio is dated June 28, 1199. On that day the Consul of Cagli, Acursus Bonus, signed a paper subjecting his city to Gubbio that also required h,i m to come and carry a ceremonial candle, "unum Cereum bonum et oratum," each year during the festival of St. Ubaldo. Menichetti concludes his five-hundred page, silk-bound investigation with six concise statements, one of which reads "the 1982 edition of the Corsa dei Ceri will be the 823rd." Assuming yearly runs, this places the first in 1160. For ten days in 1160, the beloved and famous Bishop Ubaldo lay stricken on his deathbed, during which time the eugubini gathered and came bearing candles to his home, offering their love and prayers, and asking forgiveness for past offenses- opportunities for which had been plenty . Ubaldo died on May 16th, and for a year thereafter candle-lit processions went daily to his tomb. Canonization came quickly, in 1192. Gubbio was then leaning Guel£, to the Pope-betraying, in a manner of speaking, the current Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI. Fearing the sacrilege of Henry' s soldiers, who regularly came pouring through the Apennines via the nearby Flaminian Way, the eugubini rebuilt as a fortress the ruined Oratory of St. Gervasio, atop Ingino, and secured there the remains of their saint. By 1194, then, things were in place for the running of a corsa as it runs today. But wax is not wood. Writers have long been suggesting that the first ceri were trophies of the famous 1151 war, in which eleven cities, led by Perugia, laid long seige to the town. (Ubaldo it was who inspired the eugubini to endure, and who came up with the nifty strategem that finally routed the enemy .) Abandoned in the plain outside the walls, the theory goes, were the sanctified, ox-drawn wooden tanks, carroccio, that were so often the focus and arbiters of medieval battles, and from which rose tall masts bearing standards and icons. Perhaps the first ceri came to Gubbio as the legendary horse to Troy. Rogari reports, however, that carroccii were not common until the 13th century . And Menichetti concludes: The Heroic Hypothesis is not sustainable, because it is deprived of documentation, because there is not much similarity between carroccii and ceri, and above all because the three ceri were for more than four centuries huge votive candles of wax' Rogari seems so mew hat at odds with his colleague townsman, although they stand shoulder-to-shoulder when it comes to .speculation without documentation: In this case-even though the argument leads back in the end to an origin both Christian and patronal, offerings of ceri in honor of S. Ubaldo-there is not a single document that details the transformation from wax to wood. History is based on documents. If not, it is Pre-history. Until the blessed day of judgement I will remain in the most legitimate and obstinate sense of the word a Positivist. One wonders, perhaps, what all the shooting is about. The arguments most eugubini would like to forestall are those that lead back in the end to origins B. C.. Gubbio became an avowedly Christian city some- time between 250 and 400 A .D., after perhaps more than fifteen centuries of Umbrian and then Roman pagan life. Several ancient authors, including Pliny, report that the Umbrians were the oldest inhabitants of the peninsula, while modern day scientists for the most part agree that they were invaders from the north, relatives of the Latins, the Sabines, and the Samnites, and were established in today's Umbria and Tuscany by the beginning of the Iron Age. Ikuvio was the name of Umbrian Gubbio. A legend claims that the city was one of the first five built in Italy after the great flood, and that Noah's grandson Gamero Gallo was the founder. The picotti who detailed Dante's bedspots in Gubbio writes that King Bobbio, 432 years after the fall of Troy, and 750 before the birth of Jesus, built magnificent catacombs beneath the city for his wife, whom by oracle had been doomed to death by lightning. About this time, the Etruscans were settling in, invading the homeland of the Ombrikoi if Herodotus is right, and then came the bloody Celts. By 300 B.C., the Latins, become Romans, were enforcing a sort of peace in central Italy. Then came the elephants ... Among the many legends and histories and scientific facts, there sit today in the civic museum, in the Palazzo dei Consuli, seven very reliable tablets of purified bronze, undeniable souvenirs of Gubbio's pagan life. Discovered in 1444, in an underground chamber beyond the city walls, the oldest are inscribed with the Latin-like Umbrian language, and date perhaps to 400 B. C.. They record the rites of the priestly Brotherhood of the Ateidi, the religious and perhaps political authority of Ikuvio. Ikuvio seems to have been the sacerdotal center of the Umbrian culture, of a very loosely bound confederation of cities that was entering its old age . By the time the youngest tablets were cut, around 70 B.C., most Umbrians were solid citizens of the tottering Roman Republic, and the assimilation of the (assimilated) Roman religion and their own was well-developed. Some of the ceremonies described on the Iguvine Tablets are strikingly similar to those known to have taken place under the auspices of the A vrales Brotherhood, in Rome . To detail the procedures for purifying the city and its people was the chief concern of the Tablets' authors, perhaps because the old ways were being lost. Jupiter Grabovi is the deity to whom prayers ''for the Fisian Hill, for the Iguvine State, for the name of this hilt for the name of this state," are to be addressed, in a solemn, repetitive litany similar to that of the Roman jurists whom Cicero wryly observed, and of today's more traditional Christian celebrants. Before the Lustratio Populi can begin, the head priest, the Flamen, must be sure no barbarians or hostile Umbrians stand within the walls . Three times he expels the aliens: Whoever is of the Tadinate state, of the Tadinate tribe, of the Etruscan, Naharcan, Japudiscan name, must go out from this people. If this people goes not forth, if anyone be caught, take him to that place which it is the law, and do to him that which is the law. A command is issued to those whom, in the face of such threats, remain: "Be drawn up in order, be arranged in companies, Iguvines!" The Flamen then leads a procession of subordinates and sacrificial victims three times around the ordered muster. Each time the deity Cerre Mars is called upon to plague the enemy : Alarm, make to tremble, destroy, abolish, wound, cripple, bind hand and foot, the Tadinate State, the Tadinate tribe, the Etruscan, the Naharcan, the Japudiscan name, the nobles girt, not girt, the young men armed with spears, those without spears, of the Tadinate State, of the Tadinate tribe, of the Etruscans ... Boars and sows, "red or black," are sacrificed at specified places around town, while at other times oxen, dogs, sheep, and the young of each serve as victims . Every movement is prescribed, as fastidiously as those of a Japanese Tea ceremony. Libations pour from ceremonial vessels, which are then smashed, and the pieces collected and offered up in prayer: "Cerre Martie, direct by every way harm to the Tadinate State, to the Tadinate tribe, to the Etruscan, Naharcan, Japudiscan name ... '' Tadinate State, incidentally, is today a thriving Umbrian town, Gualdo Tadino, for which one finds mong the eugubini an unreasonable disdain. The lustration of the people climaxes with the running of three heifer-calves through the streets and down to the Forum, which an American, Ireme Rosenzweig, Ph.D ., guesses is today the Plaza of Forty Martyrs . The townsfolk are called upon to catch the animals, which are then sacrificed by the Flamen to end the rite. There is, of course, much food here for an imagination probing the origins of the ceri. Are the mutated spiritual offspring of the family of Gods entitled Cerre running through the streets of Gubbio each Spring on the proud and pious shoulders of the eugubini? Rosenzweig concludes her presentation of the Tablet lustrations with a brief account of the Festa dei Ceri. At the bottom of it all we may be sure there is hidden avestige of the ancient Ikuvium and its life in the days before Christianity had made its appearance. It is to the lustratio arcis and populi, the most important ceremonies of this district in antiquity, that one would naturally look for the ultimate origin of the Festa of the Ceri, whatever may have been the steps through which it passed in the course of its development. Such conclusions, undocumented yet invested with the rhetorical power of the quasi-sciences of the 19th and 20th century, are what infuriate so many of the eugubini scholars and poeple on the street. And no one has infuriated more than Herbert Bower, an English visitor to Guggio in the 1890s . He participated as a ceriaolo in two corsas, and was a student of folk-lore, an anthropologist . Naturally, he wrote a book. Frazer's The Golden Bough was then new to the world, and served Bower and many 43 �others as a basis of speculation far more reaching than that which the Iguvine Tablets alone support. The private ceremonies of the Ateidi Brotherhood, after all, took place outside of town, in a secret Arvum, a sacred wood. Tree worship seems to have occurred in primitive societies everywhere on earth . Springtime processions, featuring a freshly cut tree and people dressed in leaves and flowers, brought to the town and the fields the spirit of vegetation, and its blessing. If a May-Pole endured through several seasons, replacing fresh trees, it was often topped with a fresh birch or the like-as the saints now top the ceri of Gubbio. In 204 B. C., the Roman Republic, weary of Hannibal, sent out to Asia minor for the goddess Cybele, Phrygian Mother of the Gods. Her 'body,' a black stone, was brought from Pessinus and placed in a temple on the Palantine Hill. The harvest that fall was better than any in recent memory, and Hannibal was gone within a year . Frazer records the spring festival of her son Attis, god of vegetation, celebrated that year in Rome: A pine-tree was cut in the woods and brought into the sanctuary of Cybele, where it was treated as a great divinity. The duty of carrying the sacred tree was entrusted to a guild of TreeBearers. The trunk was swathed like a corpse with woolen bands and decked with wreaths of violets, for violets were said to have sprung from the blood of Attis ... ; and the effigy of a young man, doubtless Attis himself, was tied to the middle of the stem. On the second day, ...the chief ceremony seems to have been a blowing of trumpets. The third day ... was known as the Day of Blood: the high priest drew blood from his arms and presented it as an offering. Nor was he alone ... Such Tree Spirits tend to anthropomorphize, first in name and then in transformation of body, but no one has dared to formulate the laws governing the process, and as Bower points out, willful men can twist and arrest it. The destruction of tree festivals was still a great concern of Christian rulers in 700 A.D., and Sacred Groves were known in Saxony in the year 1000. But destruction, pure and simple, was not the method of choice for overcoming the pagan customs. Pope Gregory, the Great, in a letter well-known to all practitioners of this sort of speculative science, recommends that whenever possible the existing rites be peacefully adapted to the service of the Gospels. Tell (our brother Bishop Augustinus) how long I have been anxious and thoughtful concerning the Angli, considering indeed that very little destruction of idols' temples should be made among that people. But let the idols themselves that are in them be destroyed, water blessed and sprinkled in these temples, altars constructed, and relics deposited . For, if the same temples be well built, it is needful that they be changed from the worship of demons to the allegiance of the true God; so that, when the people do not see their temples destroyed , they may cast out error from their heart, and knowing and adoring the true God, they may gather together the more readily at the accustomed places. And since it is the habit to kill many oxen in sacrifice to demons, therefore as to these also some attention of observance ought to be made; so that the people may for themselves make booths from branches of trees about these churches which are changed from the temples, and may observe a solemnity with the religious feasts on the day of dedication or birth of the holy martyrs whose relics are there deposited, and may not now offer the animals as sacrifice to the Devil, but may slay the animals to the praise of God in their own eating, and from their own fullness render thanks to the Giver of all things; so that, whilst in external matters some joys are preserved to them, they may more easily come into accord with the joys that are within. For it is no doubt impossible to separate at once all things from rude minds, because he who strives to reach the highest point is raised by steps or paces, not by leaps. No wonder so many scientists feel free to speculate without documentation, and are able to present likely stories of the pagan origins of a Christian festa. Bower, for his part, freely admits that it would be "presumptuous and foolish" to claim that the swirl of anthropology, philology, history, and archaeology can support a positive conclusion: "the foregoing conclusions are submitted to the reader certainly in no spirit of assertion ." But the eugubini, generally, don ' t read him that way. Having reviewed the Latin and Italian sources, Menichetti turns to the barbarians: And who of all people, and more so than any other, has sustained the thesis of a pagan origin of the corsa but an Englishman, Herbert Bower ... Another modern-day Italian, P. Benveduti, referring first to the Darwinian revolution and applauding Frazer in particular, is similarly displeased: In the wake of this great, time-proven work [The Golden Bough] we have Bower, a modest scholar, outlining his thoroughly offensive work on the Ceri on Gubbio, h av ing undertaken the preparation of a dilletante . Bower definds himself with Prof. Allessandro Reggiani, eugubino, who thought that the ceri were originally pedestals that supported holy bodies in the pagan temples. He also claimed that standard-bearing antennae, like the masts of the carroccio, were carried by the three most war-like companies of eugubini in the time before Ubaldo, and were surmounted by figures of Giorgio, Antonio, and Francesco. But Benveduti's reply is a grumble about .. .arbitrary and gratuitous hypotheses in circulation en masse, enough to fill two columns in the dailies or an hour's lecture, and Menichetti' s final-and shaky-word is this: Such [pagan] hypotheses cannot be sustained, for diverse reasons . Because to re-connect this popular manifestation to others most ancient presupposes historical continuity. But I am able to confirm that the Ceri were in existence, in the second half of the 1500s, as great candles of votive wax, and that the manifestation was exclusively and exqusitely religious. But doesn't the possibility of a pagan tree spirit turned medieveal antenna turned great votive candle revive the discussion? Let me add that to date no one has proposed a parallel between the twelve Capomanicheans and the twelve Apostles! It becomes clear that the debate about the history of the ceri will have no end so long as the ceraioli remain ready, willing, and able to run their burden up the mountain . For it not a debate about history, if "history" refers to that which is long past and no longer part of life. Rogari points again to the great gap in the historical record, and then explains himself: I cannot accept that a silence which not a single document interrupts can be very eloquent regarding a pagan derivation of the Ceri. And it is a silence that embraces-in the least-ten centuries! If one fine day an archive somewhere furnishes a small faded document or two that allude to a silvan festival celebrated in eugubino territory, just once through these many mute centuries, then-as an eugubino and as a priest- I will not protest in commotion and pride, because I see in the Ceri of my city the continuity of history from its beginning, while at the same time I'm immersed in the mysterious fascination of an antiquity most remote; I am able to see in the Ceri a symbol of the supercession of ancient paganism in the new light of the Gospel. Gubbio was reduced to rubble three times in its recorded history-by the Ostrogoth Totilla, by the Lombards, and by berserk Hungarians in 917; the curses of the Iguvine Tablets attest to the state of worldly affairs in Pre-Roman times. One need look no further than to Rome and Pope Boniface, to Florence and Savronola, to ridicule the principles of Christianity, and no further than Machiavelli to declare them dead in practical affairs, yet there were men and women who by the examples of their lives gave life to those principles in medieval Italy, thereby offering their people something to work for-the hope of a life less nasty, less brutish, and less short. Today, an intelligent Neapolitan desk clerk asks an American about Reagan, and declares himself a fan, "Forza !' The guest demurs, and they each laugh. "But what leader can be perfect," the clerk shrugs. Then he brightens-" Ah, St. Francis." The festa today is a celebration of the given, beautiful, and balanced life, and of the man whom the eugubini continue to thank for his service after 800 years. Ubaldo calmed civil strife, turned back the great siege, and went out upon the plain to talk a seething Frederick Barbarossa into giving up his rage, saving the city from a fourth destruction. All the while he was famous throughout Italy as a Christian holy man. He quietly refused the Bishopric of Perugia. There was apparently nothing wrong, by the principles of the Iguvinate State, the Tadinate State, the Tadinate tribe, etc., about spilling thy neighbor's blood. Today's eugubini feel that such blood stains the memory of Ubaldo, and what he stands for. Their anger for the Pagan Hypothesis, and their imperfect debate of its merits, have little to do with the various kinds of facts that compose the discussion. The road up Ingino is covered with gravel and wide enough for two cars, although none are ever permitted, and all along its length on the Fifteenth the uphill side serves as grandstand seating for the eugubini. Olive trees have given way to dark, scrubby pines, in which sit or stand the three varieties of ragazzi with the aplomb of leopards. Pausing to catch some breath, one turns and looks out over the city and its private valley. The Consuls' Palace has assumed a place among the other structures, no longer a towering bulk. Some information about the lay of Ikuvio is afforded by the Iguvine Tablets, for the path and stations of the lustration parades were as carefully prescribed as those of the corsa are today. Three ancient gates and plazas are known, and Rosenzwieg guesses that the temple of the Ateidi Brotherhood, the Arx Fusia, was well up the mountain, near today's cathedral and ducal palace. Another source, however, states that the city itself never reached so far up the mountain until after the rampage of Totilla, in the sixth century A.D., when it was rebuilt with money from the Byzantine Emperor. Out beyond today's walls one can see support for this idea in the Umbra-Roman theater, for it dates to 100 B. C. and was said to have been in the center of Ikuvio. This theater is the one great ruin of the ancient city, but was nearly buried and completely ignored for over a thousand years until excavations in 1789 and 1836, and thereafter was the victim, like Rome's Colliseum, of scavengers looking for quality building material. Today it has been restored and receives more respect, although it sits in the open in an unkempt field, which the crowds go kicking through on their way to the soccer games. Occasionally a ball bounces off the pagan wall. Beyond the theater, the modern suburbs quickly thin and only the homes and barns of the contadini spot the plain. Four miles distant the mountains rise again, bearing the road to Perugia. Resuming the climb, one comes through the last hairpin curve and onto a three-hundred yard straightaway, the corsa home stretch. At the top of this slope sits Ubaldo' s basilica. The crowd there presses respectfully but stubbornly into the chests of the elite, elegantlyattired Carabinieri, the national guard, who try to hold a line across the base of the fortress stairway. Unable to beat or shoot the populace, however, they fight a losing battle, losing ground with each intake of breath. To get so close to the finish line, one must forsake the birate and start climbing at the end of the second leg in town. The hope is to enter the basilica with Ubaldo' s cero, no easy task since the gates are slammed shut again as soon as it crosses the threshold. Only the family dignitaries, the final crew of ceraioli, and a few fleet specta. tors witness the commotion and celebrations of the first finish. The ceri of Giorgio and Antonio must wait outside until the Sanubaldari are willing to admit them. Bells rise from town to signal the beginning of the ascent, setting off a wail. Spines bend to the will of the mob, and sometimes one stands without touching the steps at all. A final surge throws the Carabinieri back against the gate. The Capitano of the Company of Horse comes swimming through the crowd, sword sheathed and on 44 45 �foot, but the fever is such that he receives neither recognition nor respect. Finally someone grabs him by both shoulders and cries "Il Capitano!" Exhausted from the climb, the old man smiles gratefully, and shakes his head to acknowledge the dignity of his person. The crowd applauds, and somehow a path has been cleared into the fortress. A first-time visitor will be surprised to see that Ubaldo' s basilica does not in fact sit upon the summit of Ingino, although it certainly appears to from the streets of the town . Another fortress, long in ruin, claims the highest spot, and dates to the Byzantine reconstruction. If one climbs upon its tower, the reward is a view into the east, a tableau overfilled by the forbidding march and majesty of the Apennines. One supposes a notch somewhat south to be the portal of the Falminian Way, but it seems no great improvement on going over the top. The same sense of heartbreak grips the visitor as he stares north down the slope of the home stretch. New and disorganized memories of the corsa as it ran through town, and the experience of having merely walked up the mountain, carrying only a camera, convince him that Ingino must win the final match. How many caduti are suffered in the loose gravel? The sun has set below the western ridge, leaving the base of the slope vague and grey. One feels foolish for having thought that the ceraioli actually run up the mountain. It's clearly impossible. Just above the slope from this perspective looms tree-bare Monte Calvo, still illuminated by the sun. The penultimate surprise is that a crucifix stands there, of monumental size, no doubt, but at this range a sliver, so barely discernible as to leave one imperfectly sure of its existence. If the path and stations of the corsa are in this age properly taken to figure Christ's walk to Golgotha, then here on Calvo is the image of the terminus, of the utter and wretched loneliness of Black Friday. The bare crown is itself immense, broad and gently bowed like the horizon at sea; the cross seems the mast of a ship about to fall off the edge of the world. I ceri! They're humping and bumping in the characteristic way, and looking straight on as they approach one cannot gauge their speed. But in sixty seconds they're nearly home, and one's blood chills with wonder. The crowd screams in pain when it seems that Ubaldo has stumbled, but ceraioli are at hand to catch the column as it falls forward, for only in this position can it pass through the gate. They break upon the basilica steps without snapping their knees, and opportunity presents itself to the spectator-an open spot amidships. With a great cry of "Sant' Ubaldo!" one has joined the yellow soldiers and passes inside. A Carabinieri snarls but has his hands full. The cero is immediately upright again and begins a birate that seems ungoverned by laws, around and around the small courtyard. Men embrace and bellow in disbelief. At their leisure, the ceraioli perform an alzata in reverse, removing both barella and santo from the cero, 46 during which the game Capo Dieci reclaims his perch and waves his fist, laughing and crying. The statue and cero are taken into the small chapel, where an exquisitely ecstatic priest screams into a microphone, reading from his prayerbook. When a spontaneous soccer cheer rises in opposition, he happily joins in, and dashes down from his lectern to hand out flyers upon which are printed Ubaldo's prayer. The crusty saint lies visible not five yards distant. The cero moves off to the right and is leaned against the wall. The statue is placed on a lit frame that has a homemade look, and after this the gates open for the Sangiorgiari. In 1905 a train line ran through Gubbio, but not anymore; a backward lurch not so curious, perhaps, to one who now knows a bit more about Mysterious Umbria . Along the Rome-Florence train line, get off at Perugia for a bus to Gubbio, or if riding from Rome out to the Adriatic-Ancona-and then up to Venice, get off at Fossato da Vico for a shorter bus ride. Even if one fails to plan on being in Gubbio for the Fifteenth of May, there are still reasons to visit while touring the north. On the first Sunday in May after the Fifteenth, the teenagers get their chance to be ceraioli, and with less extraneous fanfare but equal gusto run half-sized ceri, i mezzani, up the mountain. The next Sunday the small children give it a go, staying within the city, and the extra charm of each event is added by the proud parents with their cameras. The parties afterwards tend to be more lively, too, for the big boys are rested. At the end of May the Crossbow Palio is held, a revival of medieval warfare. The costumes are splendid, and the competition with the city of Biturgio entirely serious. The Pope-at Ubaldo' s suggestion- once outlawed the crossbow as too cruel and devastating a weapon. Gubbio' s soccer team now plays in the professional leagues, having won that honor in a playoff game last year on Sunday the seventeenth of May, only two days after the Festa. Such a weekend shall not soon be seen again, but the games are always exciting, and good seats always available. If one approaches Gubbio at night from Perugia during the Christmas season, one sees suspended in the sky the world's largest Christmas tree. Green lights have been strung from the south side of town, up the mountain to the basilica, and then back to the plain, north of town, outlining the familiar shape: a Christmas tree slightly smaller than Monte Ingino. Finally, at Easter, a haunting, beautiful procession takes place Saturday night culminating with a large bonfire. The eugubini sing medieval songs, and dress in white hooded cloaks that, unfortunately, were adopted in America by the Klu Klux Klan. The Festa, too, ends on a solemn, simpatico note. Night has fallen. The three statues, on the homemade frame, are carried at the head of a slow parade back down into the city. Ubaldo's prayer has a melody, and if the visitor has a flyer he or she can sing along. The chorus begins brightly, carrying on from the climax of the corsa, but slowly sobers while coming down the mountain, losing tempo, not strength, and finishes as what to the untutored ear seems a dirge. Until very recently there were torches to light the way, and bonfires set throughout the valley by the contadini. Bower counted fifty or so in 1896. The statues are brought to the Stonemason's church on Via Savelli, and in a brief ceremony set in place until next year. The sad singing ends, and everyone goes home to take a rest. Later the taverns will open, with food, wine, and music for those that have the energy to enjoy them. A boatload of eugubini once got up the nerve to emigrate to America, and settled in Pennsylvania coal country, in the town of Jessup. There is communication between the two cities, and each year the Americans celebrate Ubaldo' s vigil with a corsa of sorts, with ceri similar to the mezzani of Gubbio. Nothing strikes one accustomed to the Italian version so much as the wide open streets the Jessup people course through. If one looks back to Gubbio while driving off to Perugia, a remarkable image of the medieval hierarchy is plain to see. The highest thing, beneath the sun, is the lonely crucifix of Monte Calvo. The tree line well below marks the limit of Nature, nestled within which rest~ Ubaldo, surrounded by spirits of vegetation but high above the crumbling city walls. The city skyline is dominated by the Consuls' Palace, but from this distance barely rises above the plain. "Tutt'a pasta," one mutters. All's in order. 1 Bibliography Apollonio, Mario, "Dante e l'Umbria," Umbria Nella Storia, Perugia (city), 1950 Benveduti, P. Quoted in Menichetti, pp. 123, 124 Bower, Herbert M., The Elevation and Procession of the Ceri of Gubbio, David Nutt, London, 1897 Frazer, George, The Golden Bough, Macmillan, New York, 1922 McCracken, Laura, Gubbio Past and Present, David Nutt, London Menichetti, Piero Luigi, Storia dei Ceri del Gubbio, Gubbio, 1982 Rogari, Origene, I Ceri, Vispi & Angeletti, Gubbio, 1977 Rosenzweig, Irene Rituals and Cults of Pre-Roman Iguvium, Christophers, London, 1937 47 �Now- is Less Absolute Than You Think Carolyn Barndt ('90) Enough! Today I said: Enough. Today my drawn and darkened brow washed clean in the bath of a yellow afternoonblew clear in astonishing blasts of warm wind, scattering a stale hoard of thoughts. The wet earth stank, ripe with that mineral potency which nourishes indiscriminately every hungry thing not yet too distant from it. I could no longer stand apart, confining myself to my mind' s stifling closet, haunted by the ponderous overcoats of others' secondhand conclusions, never quite fitting, always unseasonable. Startled by freshness , my senses lent freedom. A young woman walked byhair the healthy color of hay, green sweater slouched on her casual body, cheeks ruddy, rounded in smiling . I breathed her intoday, she is a blossom, not my obstinate weed. Today she has a fragrance, a lingering pleasure that opens closed passages. Enough, then of the scribbled epitaphs, my morbid, solemn dirges, while the lazy breeze ripples through the leaves like laughter. Laughterthese colorsmy brain's mere arrangements? Pray, let me exclaim "But how-lovely she is!" and kindness pours, golden into this bitter cavitygladness diffuses the rankness of envy. Therefore let me believe, you for whom I have doubted, austere and inflexible rival for right, antagonist who vanquished my language. In your dark and tedious freezing night, I forgot any thought of the thaw to come. Today I am not that winter self, not wound and muffled in heavier layers than my own thin skin, huddling in what hollows of warmth I could find, at odds with the instable elements. Today a breeze tousles my hair, and my arms, bare to the elbows, are not idle but free to enfold these frail, frantic, these babbling things that gambol or squat on the lawn. Reproach me not! I have survived until thisa sudden, tumultuous moment's bliss. 49 �See here-the ground, torn by behemoth machines, at one time heaped in raw, crumbling mountains, is settled-today its heals into green. It will stay bare no more than the leaves of November will not rot to provide for their tender descendants. From such motions, imperceptible to the eye alone, not even the writings in stone are immune . Set your stony facade thenyour scowling brow as strange and forbidding as some rain-forest icon! say the movement unceasing, unseen, tomorrow will show it to be not so sharp. And the environs, a climate above tiny forces may shifta new season may dumbfound all grievanceas today leaves me speechless and renders me gentle toward all who had fostered the frost, even you. 50 �Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Permit No. 66 Lutherville, ·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. 50 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 1990 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Winter 1990. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Barndt, Carolyn (Editor-in-Chief) Covitz, Akiba (Editor-in-Chief) 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 1990 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 1990 Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/df9347175e0d5ab88f39b68288dc6a93.pdf b174c44e3c7914bcfeba2c29b402a2bf PDF Text Text �( ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself. 11 ... vou eVEp"y'Eta ~coll ... (Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1072b) Staff Hillary Fields Jennifer Swaim Nick Colton Senior Editor Yvonne Belanger Junior Editor Amy Thurston Faculty Advisor Abe Schoener Special Thanks To the St. John's College Print Shop: Marcia Baldwin Chris Colby Vernon Magee Don Smith Energeia 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. The Energeia staff welcomes submissions from all members of the community - essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. �r Table of Contents Judy Seeger Pastoral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Julie Meadows Maxwell's Field: An Examination of the Role of Method in Science . 12 Dominic Crapuchettes Untitled [Photo] 18 Dominic Crapuchettes The Anger of Achillies [Poem] 19 Matthew Braithwaite Desire and Learning in the Symposium 20 Erin Martell Untitled [Photo] . . . . . . . . . 32 Heidi Francie Roberts In Our Fear We Make an Image . 33 Nathan James Humphrey "Cross" No. 3 [Photo] . . . . . 48 Carrie L. Sager The Beauty of Francesca da Rimini-Dante' s Divine Comedy 49 David F. Simpson Untitled [Photo] . . 53 Stacie Slotnick Insomniac [Poem] 54 Nathan James Humphrey Clytemnestra, A Sonnet [Poem] . 56 Cover Art Front: Craig Sirkin Back: David F. Simpson �Pastoral Judy Seeger Domingo HeITero was 80 years old, twice my age, when I met him in northern Spain in February 1985. He was a retired shepherd. I had left my husband to care for our two daughters and had come to Spain on a post-doctoral grant to collect oral traditional ballads. Although a less likely pair could scarcely have been imagined, Domingo and I later agreed that we both knew the day we met that we were going to get along just fine. The miracle was that we had met at all. I recall our first encounter very clearly. That morning when I opened the shutters of my hotel room in the small town of Almanza brilliant sunlight greeted me for the first time since my arrival in the province of Le6n. Colleagues in Madrid had suggested I search for traditional ballads in Almanza, but now, an endless week after I had arrived, my world seemed to have shrunk to that tiny, sparsely-furnished room. Chill, relentless, late winter rain had been falling since the first day. From my window I could see huddled shapes across the rain-slick highway, shepherds in dark slickers, keeping lonely company with their grazing sheep. I would turn from the window, turn on the light, and climb into bed with a Spanish novel. Knowing I would never find oral traditional ballads in a hotel, I forced myself to go out once a day, to knock on doors, to hear that the old times were gone. Then, having done what I regarded as my duty, I would retreat to my room. Not many people seemed to live in Almanza, and of those who did, few opened their doors to me. Why should they? What was I to them except an importunate stranger? With little else to guide me, I had begun seeking auguries in the weather, in faces, in the intricate linkage of words. It was by feeling my way along what I envisioned as a tenuous chain of signs that I had reached Almanza. But the burnished afternoon that had welcomed me there had proven false. I knew I would have to move on, and at last, that sunny Saturday morning, I had another lead. The local priest had assured me that he knew of no one in his depopulated parishes who could help me find what I was seeking. But if I went north into the mountains, he suggested, to a town called Prioro, I might find someone. The people of the mountains were srud to be more open than those of the plains, and to retain traditions longer. The priest in Prioro, he added, was a young man interested in old ways. He might be able to assist me. Here was another link for my fragile chain. So I put my tape recorder into the trunk of the small white car I had rented in Madrid and turned toward the glittering snowy peaks I could see for only the second time since my arrival. The crystalline sunshine faded as I entered the valley of the Cea River. The moist earth seemed to breathe, its misty exhalations 1ising from the river first in wisps then in billows, brimming over the banks of the road. Through gaps in the swirling white curtains I could see leafless poplars reaching for the sky, yellow fields, and, on the hillsides, oaks whose dry brown leaves clung thickly to their branches. As I drove, the valley narrowed. I passed towns that looked nearly deserted. Smoke rising from chimneys denounced occupants in a few whitewashed stone houses. Tightly closed shutters sealed the windows of most. Some, long since abandoned when their dwellers had died or moved to the cities to seek work, had tumbled into heaps of brownish stones. The mountains loomed rockier and steeper. I began to wonder if the priest had directed me to the end of the world. Then, after winding my way between nearly vertical green rock walls crowding so close that they hardly left room for both the river and the road, I suddenly was no longer in the narrow valley. It seemed to have widened into a bowl, though I had no more than an impression of light and openness, for the fog was so thick I could barely see the roadway. One of the small black-lettered signs that announce every Spanish town informed me, as I inched past it, that I had arrived in Prioro. Narrow muddy roads departed the highway on both sides, but I was afraid to follow them. They looked better suited to the cow-drawn carts so common in the region than to cars. As the highway climbed out of the valley, I saw on my right, half hidden in a cloud of mist, the bell tower of ' a stone church. I pulled into the square in front of the church, stopped, and pondered what to do next. The church doors were tightly closed. There was no one in sight. I left the car, sought out someone to ask directions, and was directed to the only inn in town - it looked like nothing more than an unusually large house- where I was told the priest, Don Francisco, was a boarder. "No, no," Don Francisco protested when I tried to show him the documents I had brought from the granting agency in Madrid, official indication that I was who I said I was. "That's all right. It's not necessary. Listen, I can'tdo anything for you myself. I have four parishes and I just don't have time. But if you would like to come with me I will take you to someone who can help you." He inserted his slippered feet into a pair of the three-pronged wooden shoes I had seen people wearing in the fields surrounding Almanza. The shoes were not worn near the capital of the province where he had been born, Don Francisco explained, but he had learned to appreciate them in the muddy roads of Prioro. Worn outdoors over felt slippers, they kept one's feet warm and dry, and, left at the door, they kept the mud outside where it belonged. Later, I, too, would learn to walk in that clumsy-looking but eminently sensible footgear. That day, though, tiptoeing into Prioro in my leather 1 �city boots, I hugged the flaking walls of old houses and tried to keep pace with Don Francisco, who strode with a speed and grace I would not have believed possible down the rutted and hoof-marked middle of the muddy street. Twisting and turning, following the narrow street and narrower alleys, cutting between houses attached to their stone barns, scattering hens and roosters, shooing curious goats and suspicious dogs, we made our tortuous way down the steep western side of the hill the church surveyed. In traveling I had cultivated the custom of looking closely at new surroundings so as not to get hopelessly lost. Yet I knew I never could have found my way into the town of Prioro without a guide, and I was not looking forward to having to retrace my steps alone. "I'm taking you to the house of the oldest woman born in Prioro," Don Francisco explained over his shoulder. "She's 93 years old, and she's blind, but she remembers a lot about life as it used to be here. She and her husband don't keep animals anymore, so they aren't busy with chores. They'll be able to help you find what you're looking for." He veered off the street into a muddy yard whose narrow boundaries were defined in the back and on the left by a stone wall and on our right by a small house which looked even older than those we had passed on our way. A few bedraggled flowers grew in a tiny flower bed beneath a blue-framed window, imprisoned behind a wire mesh fence whose purpose, I later learned, was to preserve the plants from the depredations of passing chickens, goats, and sheep. Across the yard from the house, beside another small fenced garden, stood a tile-roofed shelter which protected a stack of firewood and an aged two-wheeled cait from the worst of the elements. Leaving his wooden shoes on the flagstone at the entrance, the pliest pushed open the weathered wooden door of the house and entered the dark hallway calling, "Aunt Sabina! Aunt Sabina! Where are you?" He turned to me: "You may come in. She's a little deaf, but I'm sure she's here. She almost never goes out, not even to mass anymore, and she hasn't been well recently." There was a wide wooden staircase at the end of the hall, and an entryway on the left into a narrower and dai·ker hallway. Don Francisco without hesitating turned right, put his shoulder to a light blue door, and led me into the room called the kitchen, which, in the old dwellings of northern Leon, serves as living room and dining room as well. Uncomfortably awai·e of my muddy boots on the worn wooden floor, I saw to our left a closed door and an aged light blue breakfront which held plates and cups. Straight ahead under a window looking onto the street was a small sink with a single dripping faucet. The hearth, to the right of the sink, dominated the room. Something was boiling in two tall reddish pots pushed nearly into the flames of a brightly burning fire. On the white tile counter over the hearth stood a large, ornate, glass-encased figure of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and a television set. Wooden benches upholstered with tattered cushions ran along both the wall that met the hearth and the wall to the right of the doorway. Dark links of smoke-dried sausage and curls of dried orange peel hung from nails hammered into a beam. The priest approached a stooping figure dressed in black from her head.kerchief to her slippers. She was watering potted plants which stood on a tile shelf where the thick wall became a window overlooking the flower garden outside. Concentrating on feeling for the plants, she was oblivious to our arrival. "Aunt Sabina!" Don Francisco touched her shoulder and she turned. Her hair was white and her eyes a clear and striking blue. "I see two shapes," she said. "Who are you?" "It's Don Francisco, Aunt Sabina. I've brought you an American." "A what?" He repeated more slowly, and louder, "an American. A lady from the United States. She wants you to tell her some stories." "A lady from America in my house? Mother, Mother." "Yes. She's collecting songs and stories. I told her you were the oldest person born in Prioro and that you know a lot. She's looking for the old stories and verses, like the ones you told Fidel when he was recording last fall." "Does she have a tape recorder?" The priest looked at me and I nodded. "Yes." "Mother, Mother ... I never knew many songs, though I once knew a lot of stories. Everyone used to say 'nobody can keep up with Sabina.' Now I have no memory anymore. The years are many, and, as you know, I haven't been well. I didn't leave this house all January." "She' ll record you here, Aunt Sabina. You don'thave to go out. You'll remember the stories. All you need to do is think a little." Creaking noisily, the kitchen door opened. Don Francisco turned. "Uncle Domingo," he said, ''I've brought you an American." Domingo was a slight man, about half a head shorter thai1 I, with thick white hair and eyes of faded blue. He was wearing old clothes: a maroon turtleneck sweater, dark gray pants that bagged at the knees, a black beret of the sort worn by most Spanish men of his generation. Domingo's smile was broad, and as warm as the fire that burned in the hearth, yet he smiled with his mouth closed. I later discovered that he had no more teeth than Don Quixote after his unfortunate encounter with the shepherds. "Well, I leave you in their care." The priest shook my hand and left. Sabina and Domingo told me that morning that they had no children. Thell: only child, a boy who would have been fifty-two years old in 1985, had been stillborn after a long and 2 difficult labor. Another had "begun," as they said, but had miscarried, and then there had been no more. Resigned to God's will and yet longing for a child, Sabina and Domingo had taken in other people's offspring. They had reared a nephew whose mother had died two days after he was born. They had kept for four years (until his unmarried mother decided she wanted him back) a little boy who had come to their house one day wearing only underclothes and begging for food. They took the priest's injunction to care for me most seriously. He had brought me, like an orphan, to their door. They were determined to treat me well. Sabina offered that, given a little time to think, she could probably recall and recite a long story in verse. Domingo and I left to fetch the tape recorder from the trunk of the car. "Do you like things of the church?" he asked as we climbed the hill. And me a lapsed Lutheran who had first set foot in a Catholic church the week before ... My "yes," sounded faint and forced to me, but it was the best I could do. "Come in, then. I'll show you our church." He removed his beret at the doorway, and pushed open the heavy door. I vaguely remembered heruing that women should cover their heads in a Catholic church, so I pulled my scarf over my hair. Domingo crossed himself; I didn't. The old church was large and and airy in the lifting mist, the altar spare, the empty pews vanishing into the darkness at the rear of the nave. I looked around, and Domingo looked at me. "Shall we go?" he asked. "Yes." We emerged into the mist, through which patches of blue sky now shone with the hard brilliance of lacquer. "Is this your car?" "Yes. Well, it's not mine. I rented it in Madrid." I moved toward the trunk to get the recorder. Domingo contemplated the little car. "Wouldn't you like to go up to the pass? There is a beautiful view." The last thing I wanted to do was more driving. "Is it far?" "No. It's very close." "All right, then. Let's go." We rode as if alone in the world that misty morning, following the naffow road in ever tighter curves up the steep slope of the mountain. The sky cleared as we broke through the mist, and the view from the pass was indeed beautiful. Looking south toward Prioro we could see pasture land whose pale grass was still winter dry, then fenced greener fields (hayfields, Domingo told me) inigated by trickles diverted from streams. Below the fields clustered the red tile roofs of Prioro, still half hidden in mist. North of us lay another, deeper, valley, beyond which rose the Cai1tabriai1 Mountains, the distant glistening peaks I had seen from Almanza. On the forested northern side of the pass, dwindling patches of snow lingered in the shadows of trees and rocks. Domingo said, "If you continue on this road you get to a town called Riafio. We could go there to have coffee, but I didn't bring any money." Where is this old fellow talcing me, I wondered, and said, "I have enough money to pay for coffee. But your wife, won ' t she be worried? She's waiting for us to return with the tape recorder." "She won't worry." That seemed unlikely, but he was older than I and should know his own wife. So we followed the even more precipitous curves of the twisting road down the shaded side of the mountain and into Riafio. Once a regional capital, Riafio was destined to be submerged in a reservoir which would provide water for irrigating the fields of dry Castile. The dam across the Esla River, Domingo told me, had been in place for nearly twenty years, but the gates that would block the river's course and flood the valley could not be closed until the town of New Riafio, being constructed above the future water level, was complete. Work was proceeding slowly. "I won't see this reservoir," Domingo said. "But another day, if you would like, we could go to see the dam." Old Riafio, under sentence of death by drowning, had not succumbed quite yet. Though the narrow streets were lined with crumbling buildings abandoned to their fate, Riafio still supported a town hall, a school, a post office, a gas station, several stores, and plenty of the small bars typical of Spanish towns. We had coffee in one of them, and in high spirits and happy companionship returned to Prioro, where the sun was shining brightly and Sabina was as concerned as I had expected and as forgiving as Domingo had known she would be. That was the first of many trips Domingo and I took together. He had a vocation for traveling. Domingo had been a shepherd, a transhumant, who traveled with the Merino sheep. The delicate merinas, cherished for their fine wool, had for centuries spent the summers grazing in the high, cool mountain passes north of Prioro and had wintered in the warm western province of Extremadura, where their owners, most of them titled, owned vast expanses of pasture. Hired shepherds, almost all of them from northern Spain, accompanied the sheep throughout the year. Domingo told me that before the Spanish Civil War a friend and he had counted over one hundred shepherds from the town of Prioro alone. In 1985 there were only two. "No one wants to be a shepherd anymore. A shepherd today earns a very good wage, but these days no one wants to work as hard as we did then," he said. When Domingo was a boy, the men of the mountain towns - with the exception of a few tavern keepers, makers of wooden shoes, tailors, millers, and masters of other trades - chose from two professions. Boys inclined toward studies began attending boarding school in preparation for entering the priesthood. The others, future shepherds, fulfilled their apprenticeships by assisting the adult shepherds in the summer pastures. Domingo had begun spending his summers in the mountains when he was seven. In 1919, the year he turned fifteen, he left school and his family for the first time to make 3 �the trek to Extremadura. Beginning in September the shepherds would prepare their baggage. Into linen sacks, woven at home from homespun thread, they put their clothing, the hooks and needles they needed to dam the bags and socks they made themeslves, leather punches and beeswax to wax the heavy thread with which they sewed loose soles back onto their shoes. They filled other sacks with homemade sausages, hams, and cheese to eat on their journey, as well as knives, and spoons they had carved from ram's horn with which they cooked and ate. Onto pack horses, in addition to the rest of their belongings, they loaded the large iron pots in which one of the six or seven who · traveled together would prepare their communal meals over an open fire. By October the shepherds would be ready to begin the long walk from Leon, through the province of Castile, over the Guadarrama Mountains to grazing lands near Caceres, Badajoz, or smaller Extremaduran towns along the Guadiana River. "From here to Extremadura is about 700 kilometers," Domingo told me. "It would take us nearly a month to walk each way. And don't think we walked in a straight line. We had to walk back and forth taking care of the sheep, so really we walked much farther than that. I remember very well the first time I went to Extremadura. My father bought me a new pair of shoes. When I took them off that first night, pieces of skin came with them. There were little huts in the mountain passes and in Extremadura where we could eat and sleep when we weren 't in charge of watching thy sheep during the night, but on the way we ate and slept outside. I remember waking up more than once and realizing it was raining and I was sleeping in a puddle. How cold those nights were! I don't know how we did it. We were as hard as hailstones." Domingo had worked as a shepherd, except dUiing the Civil War, until he was forty years old: leaving home in October, retUining in June, taking only one year off, when he turned 21, for obligatory military service. His father managed through a friend in the army to have Domingo, who knew how to read and write, assigned as an orderly. His job was to clean offices. With a friend who was also a shepherd he would type letters on the officers' typewriters. "We wanted to show them we knew how to type," Domingo told me. "Of course, we didn't know anything about it. We would hunt all over the keyboard for the letter we wanted, then 'PLAS!' hit it and start looking for the next one." That day Domingo and I were on our way to a town north of Riafio, snacking on unconsecrated communion wafers I had swiped from the warm kitchen counter where Don Francisco had spread them to dry out before taking them to the church. I asked him to tell me about his Extremaduran girlfriend. "Who told you I had a girlfriend in Extremadura?" "No one told me. I just thought you might have had one." "Well, I did. She was very beautiful. I think I still have a picture of her. Her name was Jeroma. Her mother was very funny. When she saw me she would call, 'Jeroma, doggone it! Get out here! Here comes Domingo!' On the weekends some of the shepherds would come into town from the pastures to dance. We had good times together." "Why didn't you marry Jeroma?" "I thought about marrying her, but there was no way to make a living in Extremadura. A few people owned all the land, and the rest didn't have even the smallest plot. In Prioro we may not be rich, but everyone has a garden or two for planting potatoes and cabbage and garlic. Here we have orchards of fruit trees - apples, cherries, plums - and we have fields to plant hay and grain for the animals during the winter. The town owns all the land you can see looking south from the pass, and more, enough spring and summer grazing land for everyone's cattle and sheep and goats, and the burros we used to keep. In Extremadura there was nothing. "When the young women saw us coming in the fall they would shout, 'Here come the mountain men!' To make money they would sell us water when we were passing through long dry stretches, and wash our clothes in the river when we stopped. The shepherds ate little meat, only the sausage and ham we took with us, and lamb on Christmas and Easter, and sometimes when a lamb died and our employers would let us have it. In Extremadura I ate garlic soup with bread until I never wanted to see it again. But many of those from Extremadura never ate meat at all, just gazpacho. I didn't spend many years in school, but most of them had never studied anything. Only a few could read or write. When they saw us writing letters home they accused us of showing off the little learning we had. There was so much poverty. "My father visited me in Extremadura once. He told Jeroma' smother that if her daughter married me he would buy us a pasture there. That wasn't true. He wasn't going to buy us any pasture. He just said that to see what they would say. My father was a bit of a pfcaro, a rascal, like all of us from the north." "You, too?" Domingo shrugged. "When I went into the service, Jeroma sent me a letter. She asked me if I didn't love her anymore, and why I didn't write to he . But I didn't answer, and after my military service I worked for someone else, so I didn't go back there. Later they told me that she married well, to a man who owned a store, I think. Probably she did better by marrying him than she would have if she had married me. Shepherds' wives in those days led terrible lives, plowing the fields by themselves. Some of the fields, as you have seen, are very steep, so steep the carts would overturn. No wonder they prayed so much. They worked the animals, without a husband, eight months a year. Even when we were home, we spent only every other week with our families. It would be one week in the passes with the sheep and one week at home to help b1ing in the hay, then back to the sheep again, all summer. As Sabina says, that life was slavery." 4 Sabina dedicated her few moments of leisure to fine embroidery and crochet work, fashioning flowers and religious ornaments of cloth and paper, and constructing an elaborate and lovingly detailed Nativity scene which permanently occupied a small room of their home. To judge from her conversation, Sabina was uncommonly blessed with both intellect and wit. Yet, despite her viltues and talents, she had remained single long past the age at which women usually wed. Sabina was known for speaking her mind; perhaps her plain-spoken intelligence had deterred potential suitors. Her poverty certainly had. Sabina and her younger sister, Petra, had been orphaned while in their teens. Their father, like Domingo's, had kept a tavern in his house. Drafted during the Spanish-American war, he returned from Cuba stricken with a mysterious malady from which he never recovered. When he died, the girls were left with the house in which Sabina and Domingo were living when I met them, a few fields, and little else. They had been struggling for years to make a meager living when Domingo's older brother, Miguel, came courting. Sabina and Miguel had loved each other very much, she told me, but his parents refused to allow him to marry her. Sabina would bring nothing to tne family, they said. Miguel, like Domingo, was a shepherd anc( until he married, his income would go to his parents. "They didn't want to lose Miguel's money," Domingo said, "but they ended up losing him." Miguel, disgusted at being forbidden to marry at the age of 31, had moved to Barcelona, where he set up a photography business and married a woman Sabina and Domingo called Fat Mary. "I used to visit Sabina with Miguel," Domingo told me, "and when he left for Barcelona, we decided to get married. My parents didn't want me to marry her either, but they were afraid I would leave, as Miguel had, so there was nothing they could do." Domingo proposed in July. They were matTied the next month, and spent their week-long honeymoon in a mountain pass where Domingo was watching sheep. "We had to walk, of course. When I showed Sabina where we were going, way up there," Domingo told me, gesturing toward the rocky peaks that towered over Riafio, "she didn't believe me. Every day we left the sheep in the care of the boy who was helping me, and walked down to the towns to look around and to buy things." After their honeymoon, Domingo moved into the house Sabina shared with her sister. Petra, who never married, lived with them until her death in 1980, and helped Sabina work the fields while Domingo was away. The two women had little luck with their cows. "The animals never thrived until I came back to take care of them," Domingo said. "Sabina and Petra were so used to having nothing that they didn't feed them enough. Every grain in their house was counted, so of course the cows died." Domingo was working as a shepherd when the Civil War broke out. One year too old for military service, he was not drafted into General Franco's army. Nor did he join the Since most of the marriageable bachelors in Prioro were shepherds, the young women of the town had little say about the profession of their future husbands. Surely, though, they must have been at least ambivalent about marrying men who spent so much time away from home, and not only because their own lives were so hard. Shepherds lived most of their lives in the company of each other and of animals, at the margin of society. In songs, poems, plays, and stories they are occasionally portrayed as romantic figures, but more often (unless they are young noblemen in pastoral disguise), their role is that of ignorant rustic or bestial boor. Even in Prioro, some people who had more schooling looked down on the shepherds. Yet the women of Prioro defended their men, even as they lamented their own lot. One of the best-loved traditional songs in town included the verse, sung with much feeling: They say that shepherds smell of tallow; This little shepherd of mine smells of rosemary. Yet, tradition and necessity aside, I asked Domingo why any woman, knowing the difficult and lonely life in store for her, would really want to man-y a shepherd. "Why? Because in those days marrying a shepherd was like man-ying a king. We were the only ones who had any money." In the mountain towns, cows gave enough milk for the family that owned them, chickens provided eggs until they went into the stew pot, and pigs were raised to be slaughtered and eaten at home. A farmer might sell a calf to make enough money to buy a piglet or two, or a couple of pigs to buy a calf. Women, who worked in the fields most of the year ("so many hours we didn't have time to wash our clothes until after the harvest, and we would fall asleep in church ," Sabina told me), would spend the long winter evenings spinning flax and yarn or weaving their thread into cloth while men carved wooden shoes to be sold in the "land of fields," as they call the treeless plateau to the south. With the money earned from selling cloth and wooden shoes they would buy wheat and wine made from the grapes that cannot thrive in Prioro's chilly climate. Only the cash brought home by the shepherds was not destined for the plll·chase of basic needs. Domingo and Sabina were married in August of 1930. He had just turned 26; she would be 39 years old in October. When people wondered, as they had ever since the wedding, why a young man would choose to marry a woman so much . older, Domingo replied simply that he had grown to know and like Sabina when his older brother was courting her, and that when his brother did not m'my her, Domingo had decided he would. Sabina, when she married Domingo, was a poor and pious woman. She was also a capable weaver, an exceptionally gifted needleworker, and an artist. Until she lost her sight, 5 �Republicans. The fratticidal passions that fueled the war flared as high in Prioro as anywhere else in Spain; but Domingo, who claimed to understand nothing but the care and feeding of animals, remained aloof. He did not, however, remain unaffected. Domingo was captured one summer by the ..Reds," as the Republicans were called in Prioro. His captors were miners from the neighboring province of Asturias who invaded the mountain passes where the shepherds were guarding their employers' sheep. They killed the thousands of sheep that belonged to the titled owners, but spared those the shepherds were allowed to keep as part of their pay. "The Reds weren't so bad," Domingo told me one snowy afternoon as I sat in a chair drawn up to the kitchen hearth while he and Sabina sat on the bench, "but what a waste! They ate some of the sheep, but most of them they just killed. If they had sent them to people who could have eaten them, it would have been better. There was a lot of hunger in those days. They let all the shepherds leave except me. I was a good cook, and they wanted me to cook for them. There was one, a woman, who liked my hair. It was black then, of course. She would run her fingers through my hair and say, 'what a cute little Castilian.' I never knew whether she was serious or just teasing me. "I wasn't afraid of the Reds. What I was afraid of was the Nationalists. The Reds drank a lot, then they fell asleep right where they were, out in the open. We all slept outside on the ground without even a guard. I was afraid the Nationalists would come and kill us all. It would have been so easy. One day the Reds' leader took me into town in his car to buy supplies. As we were driving down the mountain, my knees began to shake. He said, 'Shepherd,' - they always called me 'Shepherd,' - 'what's happening to you? Why are you shaking like that?' I told him I couldn't help it, that I was frightened. They had let everyone go home but me. My family didn 'tknow where I was and would be worried. He was a good man. He said I could leave the next day, and he kept his word. The next morning he told the others, 'The shepherd wants to go home, so we're letting him go.' They wanted to know who was going to cook their meat for them. Since they had hardly ever eaten meat, they didn't know how to cook it. The leader told them they would have to learn to cook it for themselves. I had a bmm then. He let me take it, and I came home. I don't know what happened to them after that. I didn't return to the passes until the war was over." Domingo spent the remaining years of the Civil War at home, caring for his animals and fields. He and Sabina and Petra lived relatively well on the money he had saved. While men with large families struggled to feed their children, Domingo had plenty of milk for his calves, which grew sleek and fat. When the war ended, he returned to the sheep, working for a countess who had managed to rebuild her flocks. The modernization that swept Spain after the war had changed the shepherds' lives. They now traveled with the sheep in trains between the summer and winter pastures, instead of walking the old route. In Extremadura in 1944 Domingo suffered an attack of colic so severe that he was sent home. When a doctor warned him the pain might return at any time, he decided to retire. Since he and Sabina had no children to inherit, there was no reason to work hard to make money. Domingo said that without children there was no ilusion, a word which to him meant both hope and joy. He asked a friend to care for the mares and Merino sheep he had acquired over the years, and went home to stay. Two weeks after I met Sabina and Domingo I moved to the inn in Prioro, run by Basilia, whose husband, a tailor by trade, worked in a tire factory in the Netherlands. The inn filled with vacationers every August, but business during the winter months was slow, so Basilia had taken as long-term boarders all the single professionals in Prioro. The priest, who was about my age, had lived in the inn for two years. A paramedic, a woman in her twenties, had lived there for six, and a forest ranger, probably in his late thirties, for nine. We ate together at the long table in the kitchen, which, with its hearth, was the only room suitable for habitation in the unheated building. At night we would often play cards or watch television before retiring to our icy beds. My day now began with breakfast of bread and a bowl of coffee with milk, followed by mass at 9:30. After mass I would return to the inn to handwash and hang out a few clothes. Then, sitting at the kitchen table, since my room was unbearably cold, I would work at transc1ibing tapes and writing the letters home that also served as my journal. On week days after our 2 o'clock lunch I would leave the inn to record people who lived in Prioro or simply to visit those in the households where I was welcome. People told me I should have come in August, when the town was filled with young people, when tourists from the south fled to the mountains to escape the summer heat, and those born in Prioro who had left to find work returned with their children for a few weeks in their home town. Prioro's winter population was little more than three hundred, but during August, they claimed, it swelled to ten times that. All the shuttered houses were open. The town was alive. You could hardly walk in the streets for all the cars. Every night the young people would hold dances and parties, and in the daytime they would sunbathe and picnic in the mountains, feasting on what I was assured was the best food in the world: roast lamb eaten in the shade beside a cold spring. Many were openly astonished that someone had come from so far away to huddle by the fire while water dripped from the eaves or great moist snowflakes drifted like ragged bits of lace onto the mud. For me, though, the forbidding weather was a boon. People were bored, imprisoned in their kitchens. Those who on warmer, drier days would have been 6 leveled with a single stroke both social and generational barriers. Domingo actually related more than once, and nearly straight-faced, the scarcely credible story of the meeting of two cousins from different worlds who for so many years had not known of each other's existence. Listening impassively, or perhaps nodding in complicity, I began to wonder if I was discovering a hitherto untapped picaresque vein of my own. If his listeners didn't believe his tale (and many, of course, knew or at least strongly suspected that there was not a word of truth in it), we didn't really care. The fun, at first, was in the telling. Then we enjoyed telling how the story had arisen. And as we told it over and over, the magic of the tale almost transformed us into what we claimed to be. Even alone, we often called each other cousin. Domingo said, "Cousin, let them say what they want. If they complain that we spend too much time together it's because they're jealous." Spring came late to northern Spain that year. The "little shoes," yellow flowers of the ubiquitous broom plants, which should have gilded the hills in April, were slow in opening. As if availing themselves of this chance to display their splendor, thousands of other wildflowers bloomed, splashing the fields with demure white, pink, lavender, pale and gaudy yellow, showy purple. It was a good year for wild mushrooms. I learned to recognize the dark green crescents where they grew, and, parting the soft grass with my fingers, delighted in discovering a few of the light brown caps to be carried back to the inn and fried in butter. Domingo and I returned from our recording trips laden with armloads of delicately fragrant daffodils we gathered in the fields and forests, or drooping branches of sweet-scented lilacs we robbed from untended bushes, or bouquets of bright red poppies picked from the roadsides: flowers with which we decked Sabina's Sacred Heart, the Virgin Mary who stood prominent in the church throughout the month of May, the kitchen of the inn, and the bar newly opened by one of Basilia's sons. My husband and daughters were coming to Spain in early June. I was to meet them in Madrid and drive them to Prioro. My friends and acquaintances were delighted. They were eager to meet the girls and frankly curious about the man who was willing to assume responsibility for two small children so his wife could go so far away for so long. Domingo, when I told him my family was coming, appeared as pleased as anyone. "You must be glad your family is almost here," he said many times as we drnve through the mountains. "Of course," I would answer, wondering why he kept saying that. His insistence was revealing to me the uncomfortable truth that my delight in the prospect of seeing my family again was dimmed by the knowledge that our strange shared happiness was coming to an end. "When they come you won't have room for me in your car. You should take them to all the places we have been, so out working in the fields were delighted to have someone new with whom to sit at the hearth singing and discussing matters so well known that they aroused no one's interest but mine. Whatever else I did, I never let a day pass without visiting Sabina and Domingo. I knew that Sabina, whose health had improved enough for her to visit her niece up the street, did not leave the house during the hours she expected me to come, but I did not go out of a sense of obligation. I went because I felt at home there. Everything about the old house, from its well-worn furnishings to its odors of woodsmoke and age, was becoming dear to me. I brought Sabina news of the inn, the latest stories of the priest's doings, conversations and gossip from the other houses I visited. On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, Domingo and I would head for one of the nearby towns where he had friends whom he would convince - after an hour or so of reminiscences and a snack of homemade sausage, cheese, home-cured ham, bread, and wine or coffee - to sing and talk about old songs. Sabina, who suffered from carsickness, never went with us, but Domingo on his return would tell her of all we had seen and done. Occasionally the two of us would go to a weekly market in another town, and he would bring back the long soft loaves of bread Sabina preferred to the round rougher loaves available in Prioro, as well as oranges for his breakfast, fish and lamb for their midday meals, and the apples he baked every night in the ashes to accompany their supper of garlic soup with bread. It soon became clear to everyone in Prioro that Domingo and I prefetTed each other's company to that of anyone else, and as the town was small, people talked. They teased us about invented exploits, they asked Domingo if I wasn't paying him for his help, and they asked me if he wasn't buying the gasoline consumed on our trips. "Pilar asked me who was that foreign woman I have been spending so much time with," Domingo laughed one afternoon as we shared small sweet cakes around the hearth. "I told her you were a long-lost relative from California." I objected, but more from surprise than dismay, for the notion did have a certain appeal. Creating a kinship would enable us to avoid having to justify our improbable affection for each other. If we were to be relatives, though, I wondered how I should address him. As uncle? Great-uncle? "No," he said after a moment. "Let's be cousins. You already told me that you have no first cousins, right? Well, if I am your cousin, then you '11 have one: a Spanish cousin! And now, since we're cousins, you can call me tu." Sabina had been calling me by that familiar term since shortly after meeting me, pointing out that she was a lot older than I was. Domingo also had been calling me tu since I had asked him to do so, feeling, as I explained to him, that we had shared too many adventures for him to continue being so formal. As they were so much older, however, that I could not address them as anything but the formal Usted until Domingo's fiction that my mother was his mother's youngest sister gone to America 7 �they can see them." Domingo knew the girls were small and that all five of us would fit in the car. He was being polite, I assumed,formal, as he called it, offering to remove himself from my life to spare me the awkwardness of removing him. Instead of appreciating his gesture I found myself resenting it. I answered shortly that we wouldjusthave to see how much traveling they wanted to do. As the time approached for me to leave P1ioro to meet my family, Domingo, always proper and dignified, became stiff and distant. I suppose I reacted in kind. Conversation came easily, as it always had between us, but instead of making plans for future trips, which were, of course, not to be, we talked about the past. The day before I was to depart for Madrid we joined a pilgrimage Don Francisco's paiishes were making: four busloads to visit the ancient basilica of San Isidro in the city of Leon. Domingo and I sat together on the bus. On the way we all joked and sang (even Domingo, who, everyone assured me, had never sung a note in his life), but on the way back the two of us sat nearly silent, smiling only when we shared a pack of chocolate cigarettes I had brought because I knew he loved chocolate and hated cigarettes. We sat isolated in the pervasive gloom of that rainy evening. "It's as if everyone on the bus were sad," Domingo remarked. The next morning I went to bid Sabina and Domingo good-bye. I embraced Sabina, who promised to pray to the Sacred Heait for me and my family on our journey. Then I turned to Domingo, who was squatting, shepherd-fashion, to prepare their meal as he had done ever since Sabina had lost her sight, in a heavy iron pot over the fire. He was paying no attention to me. "Domingo," I said, "I'm leaving," and when he stood up, his eyes suddenly brimmed over with tears. "Leave me. This is nothing," he said, blowing his nose in one of the handkerchiefs he always carried. "I cry whenever anyone goes away. I'm ashamed, but I can't help it. All those years I was a shepherd I c1ied every time I left home." Sra Dfta Yudi Dear Cousin, This very day I received your post card, which filled us with happiness to know that you arrived well with your husband and your dear daughters. Well, we are fine, always remembering Yudi. Sabina asked the Heait of Jesus to help you arrive safely and to find your parents well. Everyone asks if you haven't written to me. Nothing more. A firm greeting from your cousins, Sabina and Domingo Herrero I had some pictures developed and sent copies to Domingo, some for him to keep, others to give to those in the pictures. He wrote: Prioro 5-8-85 Sra Dfta Judith Seegr; Esteemed cousin, You can't imagine the joy I felt when I received the photos, and the happiness with which everyone has received them. All tell me to thailk you; and, I don 't know, a million thanks ... I haven't forgotten the days and afternoons we spent in Valde6n, in Cain, Lario, Argovejo, Villacorta, Caminayo, Tejerina. I will never forget Leon. Everyone asks me about the American woman. It makes me sad to remember those times we spent. Well, Sabina is very content because everyone says she is the one who came out best in the pictures. I don't know what else to tell you. A million kisses for your daughters, and for your parents and parents-in-law a very firm greeting.You receive what you most want from your cousins, Domingo did accompany us on the few trips my family and I took around Prioro. Whether traveling with us or welcoming us into his house, he radiated joy. He loved listening to the girls talk, though he understood not a word they said. The gentlest of men, Domingo was one of the few in town who respected my nine-year-old's reluctai1ce to be grabbed and kissed by strangers. The more approachable six-year-old he courted most carefully, and was finally rewarded with a kiss on the cheek the day we left. When that day came, Domingo asked me not to forget to write and tell him and Sabina we had ai·rived safely. I sent him a post card from New York, and shortly afterwards received the following letter: Sabina and Domingo Send me pictures of your parents and parents-in-law, and tell them if they have a lot of money to come to Spain. I discovered that thanks to my frugal living and a strong dollar I could afford to return to Spain. My husband and I agreed that Christmas would be a good time. I would see Prioro during the season when the women and the few men who were not away used to gather nightly. There in the kitchen, while the women spun and the men carved wooden shoes, they would pass the long dark evenings singing, dancing, playing cai·ds and practical jokes, and telling tales. Those gatherings are gone, but the winter months are still the time Prioro 27-6-85 8 for slaughte1ing the pigs, another occasion for people to get together and celebrate with lavish meals as they have for centuries. I left New Yark on December 22nd, and arrived in Leon, by train, in the rainy dai·kness of the 23rd. The train had been packed with people going home to visit their families for the holidays. Cursing the weather and my heavy luggage, I made my slow and painful way ai·ound clusters of people hugging, kissing, effusively greeting one another. The streets of Le6n, strung with huge snowflakes crafted of small white lights, were thronged with Chlistmas shoppers. When the taxi driver I finally found to take me to the car rental agency wondered aloud why a lone woman from across the "pond" was aiTiving in n011hern Spain two days before Christmas, I replied with an ease that would have surprised me had I not already discovered that fiction and even certain truths flowed more fluently in a language that was not my own. The foreign language hung between me and my words like a fine veil, and, safely shielded behind it, without a second thought I told the taxi dtiver I was going to spend the holidays with some cousins who lived in the mountains. "They are quite elderly," I told him," and I am very much afraid that if I don't see them now I won't see them again." That last part was true, and the rest was close enough. The bone-chilling cold of that time stays with me now. Heavy snow fell almost every day of my three-week stay in Prioro, nearly isolating us from the rest of the world. The streets were deeply rutted and pitted with dirty and treacherous ice. The temperature of my bedroom hovered around freezing, and every morning I would awaken enveloped in the moist cloud of my own breath. I attended pig-killings and the feasts that accompany them, helped stuff blood sausages, went to masses in the unheated church so cold that my legs were numb to the knees when they were over, celebrated Christmas, the New Year and Epiphany in a town I remember as dark and chill, so different from the long, glowing, flowerfragrant days of May. I spent at least part of every afternoon with Domingo and Sabina in their kitchen by the fire, ai1d on the few fine days of my stay Domingo and I went as we had before to visit his friends in the small mountain towns. It was neai·ly the last day of my stay before we were able to drive over the snow-choked mountain pass to Riafto as we had the day we met. Our plan was to anive in a town called Laiio at lunchtime, where Domingo hoped that some of his old friends would offer us lunch. We had always been fortunate with impromptu invitations to meals, but we had never schemed to be invited, and that day our luck ran out. Leaving his friends' house we agreed that the sherry and homemade sugared cakes they had offered us had been very good. "But when she brought out the tray, I didn't like it at all," Domingo said, "because I knew they weren't going to ask us to lunch." Knowing he felt insulted, I defended his friends. There had, after all, been only one small pot on the stove for the three of them. "Maybe," he shrugged it off. Domingo believed that if unexpected guests showed up for lunch, all you had to do, if you could do no more, was add water to the soup. "But they were wrong. The food isn't important. The important thing is the company. Anything tastes good in good company." We began to look for a restaurant. "Listen, don't tell Sabina about this," Domingo warned. "Even though we have plenty of money, she will scold us if we tell her we ate in a restaurant instead of eating at home." Lario had no restaurant, so we drove north to the next town, Azevedo. There we found an inn, but it was serving nothing but fried eggs and sausage, which Domingo couldn't digest. It was nearly 4 o'clock, late for lunch even in Spain. Hungry and downcast, we were wandering the narrow snowpacked streets, when Domingo was suddenly inspired to look up the daughter of a woman he had known many years ago when he was summer apprentice to the shepherds in the mountains that rose in a solid wall west of Azevedo. "I haven't seen the daughter since she was a little girl," he said, "but her mother was very beautiful, and very cheerful. Since there weren't many young men in this town the young women used to come up into the mountains to visit the shepherds when we were here in the summer. They would come up to the passes and hide and watch us. What good times we had!" That particular young woman had given birth to three sons by unknown fathers (not the shepherds, Domingo assured me, and, seeing my skepticism, added that in any case he had been no more than a boy at the time) before marrying a shepherd from Prioro and having as the fruit of their long and happy union her fourth child and only girl. She and her husband had died, and her sons had gone to Mexico, but the daughter, Domingo felt sure, was still in her home town. We found Petra's house just as she was putting lunch on the table for her husband. Clearly, she had inherited her mother's good humor, for she invited us to join them in the warm kitchen, though she did not remember Domingo and of course had no idea who I was. The only problem, she told us, was that lunch that day was turnip stew. I couldn't help recalling the single time Basilia had tried to serve us turnips at the inn. Normally used for fodder, they had been stringy and tasteless, and all of us, like naughty children, had followed the priest's shocking example, balancing little pieces of turnip around the edges of our plates so we could enjoy the cabbage and bacon in which Basilia had tried to disguise them. "Well?" asked Domingo. He wasn't used to eating turnips either, but the day was waning and we were not likely to receive another invitation to lunch. The sky was still bright when we reluctantly turned south on the highway, but Azevedo already lay deep in the blue velvet shadow of the mountains. "You know, Domingo ... " I began. "What?" 9 �them, a potholder woven by the younger one, and a chocolate bar wrapped in a piece of paper she decorated with a picture of violets and the poem "Roses are red, violets are blue," which I translated. Domingo wrote and thanked us. But he did not reply to my next letter. Instead, I received a letter from a friend who wrote that he had suffered a stroke and was hospitalized in Le6n. Domingo and Sabina had no telephone, .so twice I called some friends only to be told he was still in the hospital. The third time I called he was waiting in their house, and told me he was feeling better but very bored, since he was too weak to go out. I began sending letters and small packages so he and Sabina would have something to look forward to each day, and in May I received a short letter from Domingo: "Those turnips were good. Really. I never ate such tasty tw·nips." "I liked them, too," he agreed. "You see, I was right. In good company even turnips taste good." By the time we reached the valley of Riafio the only trace of daylight was the glowing pink snow on the same lone faraway peak that had glistened like diamonds on my first day in Prioro. My little red Citroen was chilly, for if its heater was capable of doing any more than taking the edge off the cold, I had not figured out how to convince it to do so. We rode warmed by the shared euphoria of having eaten such wonderful turnips, and arrived in Plioro late that star-strewn night. As soon as I retumed home I wrote to Domingo, but more than a month passed and I heard nothing from him. He had told me that writing, which he used to enjoy, had become more difficult for him as he grew older; and since I knew by now that he expressed himself obliquely, I supposed he had been warning me not to expect many letters. Still, I couldn't help becoming concerned. My daughters had written thanking him and Sabina for gifts they had sent: scarves and an umbrella. Even if he did not feel like writing to me, surely he would have written to them. Finally a letter anived: Prioro 5-5-86 Sra Judith cousin: You will have to pardon me because every day the postman comes with your packages. Today I received two and already I have I don't know how many without answering. It is not that I don't remember, but I am very weary and don 't feel like eating, and Sabina is not very well. In the end it will be as God wills, but I have little hope. In another letter we will see if I can tell you anything. Have a good time with your parents-in-law. Kisses for the girls and for you a greeting from Plioro 14-2 year 86 Dear cousins: I have received the post card and the letter from the girls, which made me very happy, and also yours, Judith. Since it is time for me to write to you I will tell you that we had a very heavy snow storm and it has been very cold. I hardly see anyone. I go to mass, but few others do. Juana and her father don't leave the hearth. I will tell you that I had news from Azevedo and Lario, and they told me they had so much snow that the doors were blocked, so that in the morning they had to climb out by the balconies to open them. It has snowed a lot. For the girls I have already thought what I want to say. Elisa and yow- little sister: tell your daddy something, but he will tell you we didn't send him anything. Sabina said to me "and you didn't send anything to Antonio." Another time ... Elisa, your father who makes a lot of dollars, tell him to give you some so you can send me a little present which I would like to have from some American girls in Indiana, a small present from that dear land. Nothing more, girls. I await your answer. A firm greeting for all and thank you, have to come before mass," Domingo told me the night before. "I want to be sure to go to church tomorrow, so I can pray for your safe journey." The day dawned gray and dismal. I knew before opening my shutter that the temperature was below freezing, for I could not hear the icicles dripping outside my window. Quickly finishing my breakfast, I loaded the car with my suitcase and duffle, as heavy with gifts for the return as they had been coming, and drove slowly down the rutted road to Domingo and Sabina's house. The heavy door was barred against the night, but I knew how to unlatch its little window, then reach in and slide the bar back so I could open it. Domingo had seen me coming; I heard the "pasa" with which he always invited me into the kitchen. There was no time to chat. The air smelled of snow, and I feared being caught in a stonn. "So you're leaving." "Yes, I have to go." "One who has to depart must not be restrained. We will pray for you. Give our greetings to your family and wdte to us when you are safely at home." "I will." "Go, then." And, as he would have written it, "A Dias." Sabina and Domingo Herrero For Antonio a firm greeting Domingo I received only one more letter from Domingo, toward the end of June, in which he seemed to have recovered his health and spirits, asking me to come visit again. But my next letter from Spain came in August, from a friend who wrote that Domingo had returned to the hospital. An operation had revealed advanced cancer, and on the day she wrote they were sending him back to Prioro to die. I wrote to Domingo once more; but a second letter from a friend, which I received in September, told me he had died at home on August 13th, nine days after his eighty-second birthday. Sabina and Domingo Herrero My last day in Prioro, the previous January, I was faced with a long and daunting journey: by car to Leon then by train to Madrid, where I would catch a plane for New York the following morning. "If you want to say good-bye, you will The girls and I put together a package with a picture of 10 11 �Maxwell's Field: An Examination of the Role of Method in Science Julie Meadows James Clerk Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism was a milestone in the history of physics. His contri- the objects from which they proceed, nevertheless I see no reasoning that assures us that this is the case. (M, 13) butions were both mathematical and conceptual. He derived twelve equations which later made possible the connection of electromagnetic phenomena to the wave equations of light. He successfully placed a theory of the whole, the field theory, in opposition to the reigning conception of nature as composed of discrete parts. What kind of "whole" is this? Is the field a material whole, a body of matter with discrete boundaries? Does it necessitate the postulation of an ether? Is it an Aristotelian whole, a united product of matter and form? Is it, to the contrary, merely a whole for the purpose of investigation, its boundaries drawn arbitrarily to separate what will be examined from what will be disregarded? Is the wholeness of the field the end of Maxwell's inquiry, or is the field a whole in order to be a means to his true ends? I believe the nature of the field is a consequence of Maxwell's method. The method by which an investigator examines a problem shapes the meaning of the results. Before he can even begin a methodical study, he ~ust already possess an idea of Nature, and of the consequences of this relation for inquiry. The method determines the criteria for evidence, the role of expe1iment, and the direction toward which the research is aimed. I must admit to the hope that Maxwell's interest in electricity and magnetism extends beyond the mastery of them. I desire to know where electricity and magnetism fit into the larger scheme of things, where there place is in nature. To investigate this question I will compare Maxwell's method to one aimed directly at the mastery of nature. I will take the method of Descartes as a paradigm of inquiry for the sake of application, as set forth in the Rules for the Direction of the He extends the difficulty to touch and hearing, making it clear that no sensation is reliable evidence of the nature of any object. There is no reason to suppose that the qualities we perceive in objects have any actual connection to the objects. Descartes creates an "imaginary" world, but matter and nature as he describes them there are as much as he believes we can know of matter and nature here, in the world of our own expe1ience. Matter, then, is homogeneous and fills all space. Its primary characteristic is extension - "I conceive of its extension, or the property it has of occupying space, not as an accident, but as its true form and essence."(M,21) Bodies are not the result of matter assuming any distinguishing qualities or distinct boundaries. All matter is alike, arbitrarily distinguished into parts by being given diverse motions. Descartes seems to think that any true sep&ration of bodies would require space and void between them. But space or extension is the essential characteristic of matter, and does not exist separate from it. Weight is an effect of motion, not a quality of matter. In the difficult eleventh chapter of "Le Monde", Descartes says that the force that keeps the earth together consists in something like centrifugal force. The earth has weight because it and its atmosphere are in motion in a plenum. Nature is defined as the orderly alteration of matter. Alteration is local motion. Descartes specifically excludes "the Philosophers' motions" that they think can be accomplished without a body 's changing place, such as those they call motus ad formam, motus ad calorem, motus ad quantitatem... and myriad others." Nature, as Descartes understands it, is entirely knowable, meaning that it is subject to mathematical laws. The laws of nature that will enable us to use nature for our own ends are laws of motion. Though for Descartes nature is entirely knowable, our senses deceive us. They lead us to attribute qualities to matter of which they might be the creators. We must find a way to circumvent the deceptions of the senses and focus all of the mind's powers upon the problem at hand. These are the two purposes of method . It is difficult to see the application of Descartes' Rules to physical inquiries, for they are stated in general terms in order Mind. The need for a method is felt before the method is developed. While Descartes claims that his method is the starting point for investigation, he founds it upon his view of science and nature. Descartes believes that we are not capable of direct knowledge of objects which sunound us. In "Le Monde", he says that sight is interposed between the object and the mind, and .. even though everyone is commonly persuaded that the ideas that are the objects of our thought are wholly like 12 ... even if all that our senses have ever experienced in the true world seemed manifestly contrary to what is contained in these two laws [of motion], the reasoning that has taught them to me seems to me so strong that I would not cease to believe myself obliged to suppose them in the new world I am describing to you. (M, 25) to be applicable to any sort of problem. Descartes' understanding of nature must be taken into account. I will attempt to present the method in the form most immediately useful as a succession of steps. Recall that for Descartes a body is discrete only insofar as it has a different motion from those around it. Physical problems, consequently, do not have self-evident boundaries to which their qualities can attest. They must be circumscribed before they can be examined, a process Descartes describes in Rule XII: "But in order that the problem be perfectly understood, we with it to be completely determinate."(PE, 203) Again, in Rule XIII: The "new world" is the world of physics. It is the world as we can know it as distinguished from the exterior world made up of objects. It is a world where cause and effect can be known with certainty, unlike the world we walk in, where we cannot say what it is about a body that triggers our perception of certain qualities in it. To a remarkable extent, Maxwell's ideas regarding science, nature, and method correspond to Descartes. Maxwell ' s ideas are not as explicitly stated; we will hold pieces of his system up to Descartes ' for comparison. We will then have built up a context within which to examine the field. Like Descartes, Maxwell believes that we are separated from the physical world. Influenced by Kant, Maxwell believes this chasm to be far greater than Descartes did. If bodies possess unity, we cannot perceive it. To examine any particular thing, we must abstract it from its surroundings and give it unity by an act of the intellect. The mind separates out objects from the world of experience. Actually, although something must be unknown in every problem... nevertheless this unknown ought to be designated by conditions so certain that we are directed to the investigation of this one thing rather than any other. (PE,208) Here method begins to focus the powers of the mind. Descartes cautions that we must be careful to draw the bounds correctly, neither encompassing too little nor too much. He can guide us no further than to make careful use of our own judgment. Once the problem is clear, we must become familiar with its components. The person who wishes to understand magnetism" ... will first diligently collect all the information he can obtain about this stone ... "(PE,201) The problem is divided into the smallest possible parts, and the parts scrutinized. This analysis forms the basis for establishing some order in which the investigation which follows will be carried out. Before we can count any number of things we must pick them out of the universe, and give each of them a fictitious unity by definition. (SF, 241) What we call unity will depend on our vantage point; from different distances we will make different designations of things. In order to have any idea of the state of things, we must examine them from as many levels as possible. ... the order in which things are to be investigated frequently adm.its of variation, and depends upon the decision of each person. (PE, 172) The dimmed outlines of phenomenal things all merge into one another unless we put on the focusing glass of theory, and screw it up sometimes to one pitch of definition, and sometimes to another, so as to see down into different depths through the great millstone of the world (SF, 242) Once dissected, the problem is reformulated. To fully use our power of investigation, we must represent the problem to all of the mind's faculties. In addition to intellect, which will actually solve the problem, these are imagination, sensation, and memory. The third and final step is deduction. It is here that we build chains of simple reasonings which connect the unknown to the fully known, the tirings we perceive clearly and distinctly. The student of the magnet, at this stage, will "deduce the combination of simple truth that could produce these effects."(PE,201) The simple truths will be laws of nature, and the researcher's solution will relate the phenomena to laws of motion. These laws can be expressed mathematically. Once he understands the hidden order of things, the scientist will be able to use nature. The laws of nature discovered in this way will be true even when they contradict our senses. In "Le Monde", Descartes asserts that We cannot uncover know ledge of individual things. We must seek to know the relations between them, which will be relations of number. We will understand these relations by analogy to the order of thought. In "Are there Real Analogies in Nature?" Maxwell asks whether this analogy is actually drawn to nature, or whether we see nature as we do because the intellect orders our perceptions in the same manner as our thoughts. Maxwell gives one example of a "real analogy" in the essay. Space is a condition of thought; the question is whether there is a correspondence between the three dimensions it has in thought and the three dimensions we perceive in the physical universe. 13 �F enables us to see it morally as an act, and not merely physically as an event.( SF, 245) Now it appears to me that when we say that space has three dimensions, we not only express the impossibility of conceiving of a fourth dimension, co-ordinate with the tlu·ee known ones, but assert the objective truth t11at points may differ in position by tlu·ee independent variation of tlu·ee vaiiables. Here, therefore, we have a real analogy between the constitution of the intellect and that of the external world. (SF, 242) We have a moral idea of justice, of necessary retribution as the legitimate consequence of all moral action. Maxwell suggests a possible analogy between this idea in the realm of morality and one in the physical realm of cause and effect. I take this to be a reference to Newton's third law. As in morality every action has its approp1iate consequences, so in physics for every event (action) there is an equal and opposite event (reaction). The domain of physics is the relation between things. The whole enterprise "supposes that although pairs of things may differ widely from each other, the relation in the one pair may be the same as in the other."(SF,245) This is a supposition that Maxwell is willing to make; relation not only stays the same but can be perceived in mathematical terms. Thus there are real analogies in nature; we discover regularities there by analogy to our own thought. This is only possible, and only analogy, because the relations of thoughts to each other may be the same as the relations of objects or events to each other. The quantity of matter is its ability to preserve its state of motion or rest. Maxwell's Kantian views of space and time lead him to criticize specifically Descartes' definition of matter. It is absurd, he says, to think that if you remove the matter from a place the space it occupied will collapse, as if matter and space were inseparable. "The fundamental dynamical idea of matter" is of something that is "capable by its motion of becoming the recipient of momentum. "(TR2, 196) Maxwell rewrites Descartes' principle of order, and seems to admit differences in matter into physical science. The idea of cause in nature is an analogy. It comes from a relation between the workings of the mind and the order of nature, not solely from the observation of invariable sequences of events. Each of our thoughts is based upon reasons. By analogy, we consider physical events to depend upon reasons, and we name these reasons causes. In consequence, a cause can be no more in nature than a reason is in pure logic. Since "there can be no conflict of reasons"(SF, 243), it is only by misdefinition that we see any conflict of causes in nature. "Cause is a metaphysical word implying something unchangeable and always producing its effect."(SF, 243) Force is cause in the realm of physics. A force has a certain strength, in proportion to which it produces a certain effect. Unlike cause, a force is never seen in isolation. There are always opposing forces. Force, on the other hand, is a scientific word, something which always meets with opposition, and often with successful opposition, but yet never fails to do what it can in its own favor."(SF, 243) Maxwell asks whether there are real analogies in nature in order to test opposing theories. The first is that all the problems of nature, including human thought, are complex problems of motion. In this case, "the resemblances between the laws of phenomena should hardly be called analogies, as they are only transformed identities."(SF, 244) That is, both the laws of thought and the laws of nature would be laws of motion. The other option is that we impose the order of thought upon nature, without any necessary basis in the phenomena. This is not an analogy either, for there is no relationship in nature to correspond to the relationship in thought. Maxwell finds both alternatives unsatisfactory. He believes the laws of thought "which are found among the relations of necessary truths"(SF, 244) to be different in kind from the laws of motion. The rule of physical forces is that might makes right. Thought is supreme not by virtue of its strength "but in being right and true. "(SF, 244) Maxwell suggests that the interactions of physical bodies are only part of the picture. He seems to say that physical events do have some kind of meaning. The difference between one event and another does no l depend on the mere difference of the tin1es or the places at which they occur, but only ·on differences in the nature, configuration, or motion of t11e bodies concerned(MM, 13) While I have found no place where nature and configuration as qualities of matter are explained, Maxwell distinguishes two kinds. Gravitation depends upon the masses of bodies exclusively, "whatever be the nature of the material of which the masses consist."(MM,120) He distinguished matter that behaves this way, gross matter, from ether. The undulations of ether, rather than gross, transmit light and heat, even through spaces empty of gross matter (vacuums). Ether does not appear to have the property of gravitation, but there is no doubt that it is a second true form of matter. It is "capable of being set in motion; and of transmitting motion from one part to another ... ".(DT,35) It has density and mass and it is "certainly material."(MM,120) We will return to the ether later on, to examine how Maxwell employs these conceptions of it. · Motion is a change of the configuration of a system. The positions of bodies that comprise the system depend on our All that bystanders see, is the physical act, and some of i~s immediate consequences, but as a partial pencil of light, even when not adapted for distinct vision, may enable us to see an object, and not merely light, so the partial view we have of any act, though far from perfect, M~~well ' s vantage point, on the way that we focus the "dim outlines of phenomenal things". Once we have designated a system, motion is a change of the relative positions of the bodies within the system. In some cases, as when water freezes, we will know that motion has taken place, without having been able to discern it. The changes in configuration of a system are considered changes in quantity. When we assume that the changes are caused by matter in motion, rather than action at a distance, our theory will be a dynamical one. mathematical mind was sparked by Faraday's wnt:mgs. Faraday provided him with the concept upon which to found a new mathematical theory . Maxwell saw in Faraday's "lines of force" the means to understand the phenomena in a dynamical way. ...Faraday, in his mind's eye, saw lines of force traversing all space where the mathematicians saw centres of force attracting at a distance: Faraday saw a medium where they saw nothing but distance: Faraday sought the seat of the phenomena in real actions going on in the medium, they were satisfied that they had found it in a power of action at a distance impressed on the electric fluids.(TRl,ix) When the mutual action between bodies is taken into account, the science of motion is called Kinetics and when special attention is paid to force as the cau~e of motion, it is called Dynainics.(MM,26) Maxwell believes this conception to be essentially mathematical. Once Maxwell has adopted Faraday's conceptions of the phenomena, his task is to translate these conceptions into a new mathematics. · Maxwell sees mathematics as a language, one in which the terms which are manipulated are as important as the choice of words in a sentence. The mathematics that had already been developed expressed a view of the phenomena. Its variables were distance and charge or pole strength. At the very basis of this mathematical view of things is the abstraction of "material particles" from nature. Integral calculus sums up these parts to describe the properties of the whole. The field is abstracted from nature in the same way that material particles are. Maxwell usually refers to it as the finite field. He defines it as "that part of space which contains and surrounds bodies in electric or magnetic conditions."(DT,34) The great difference is that once we carve out the area to be called a field, we treat that area as a whole. We consider the phenomena as produced by imperceptible alterations of the configuration of the Configuration of the system . We do not abstract material particles within the field and observe their relative alterations. The mathematics attached to this system is the differential calculus. The equations are written in terms of potential and charge density, quantities measured in the field as a whole. We wish to understand the field in terms of quantities such as stress, to understand the condition of the spaces. Maxwell uses a methodical approach which is very like Descartes ' . As could be expected, some of the operations are more extreme, but in some ways there is more freedom. There is a place left to scientific vision that no method can guarantee. ~n ~axwe~l's theory of electricity and magnetism , this place 1s filled by Faraday. I will trace Maxwell' s method as applied to the problem of electricity and magnetism, as followed in the Treatise. The first step in exploring the phenomena is to amass as much data as possible and to translate this data into mathematical language. Maxwell revises rather than discard the work of earlier researchers that was based upon the theory of action at a distance: their work was necessary to his undertaking. He presents this first phase of research to the reader in careful descriptions of experiments and mathematical theory. Experiments are carefully selected to bring certain aspects of magnetic and electrical phenomena to mind; Maxwell refers to them as "illustrations". Their purpose is to make the key phenomena clearly present to the mind.(TRl ,vi) Surveying the mass of accumulated data, Maxwell sees that the mathematics is based upon a theory of action at a distance. While the theory was useful, it does not seem to lead to further discovery. ...the idea of lines of force throws great light on the results, and seems to afford the means of rising by a ~ontinuous process from the somewhat rigid conceptions of the old theory to notions which may be capable of greater expansion, so as to provide room for the increase of our knowledge by furth~r researches.(TR,182) It appears, therefore, that what we want is a knowledge of the forms of equipotential surfaces and lines of induction* in as many different cases as we can remember.(TRl, 178) Furthermore, action at a distance involves a process of abstraction by which the poles or charges are located within the system. This abstraction is contrary to nature, which is a whole first, and has parts only when the intellect imposes them. That is, nature is a whole for us "since all our perceptions are related to extended bodies, so that the idea of the all is in our consciousness at a given instant is perhaps as primitive an idea as that of any individual thing".(TR2,176) Searching for a more natural way to redefine the problem, The applications of this theory are less apparent than those of its predecessor. There we could locate charges and make measurements. Here we have to consider the condition of an invisible medium. One exciting product of the differential equations is Maxwell's ability to diagram fields, using a precisely calculated version of Faraday's lines. We have a visual representation of the configuration of the field. From fields whose 15 14 �diagrams we can calculate, we can learn to sketch approximate fields. Such sketches lead to mathematical solutions. The key equation is Laplace's equation: 82 v The results of this are astounding. Maxwell's hypothesis of the field led away from what was visible and quantifiable. It has now led to a visual representation of the stresses of the field. This representation adds enormously to the scientists' ability to control and utilize electric fields; it allows them to visualize and determine the distribution of electric force any· where on the surface of many shapes of conductors. 82 v 8 2 v -+-+-=0 8x2 8y 2 8z2 To generate equipotential lines, we begin with an arbitrary charge e. We substitute in values for the potential, V, and find the radii of the equipotential circles r, since r = eN. Potentials are additive, so we may also generate equipotential lines for groups of charges. Using a similar process, Faraday's lines of force may be precisely drawn for a particular field. We begin with a variable which describes the whole: field intensity. By assigning a series of values to this intensity as we did with potential, we can find the angles necessary to draw in lines of force at appropriate intervals. In both operations, we begin with a characteristic of the field as a whole. If the surface of a conductor is of the foim of the outer lobe, a roundish body having, like an apple, a conical dimple at one end of its axis, then, if this conductor be elecb.ified, we shall be able to determine the surfacedensity at any point. That at the bottom of the dimple will be zero.(TRl,180) I I :.-..i --- -------- -- - -- - - --- --- '~ r' I, A :\ ,, ' i ' ' I What I propose now to do is to examine the consequences of the assumption that the phenomena of the electric cmrnnt m·e those of a moving system, the motion being communicated from one part to another by forces, the nature and laws of which we do not yet even attempt to define, because we can eliminate these forces from the equations of motion by the methods given by Lagrange for any connected system.(TR2,198) \ I : T r . i I • ' ' . r '- \ I '\ iI \\ ' __.r-- The surface-density is represented in the diagram by the distances between the equipotential lines and corresponds to the distribution of the charge. How are we to understand this diagram of a field? I · believe that Maxwell would call this an analogy. The lines are not a representation of matter we are unable to see. They are not a picture of physical (material) reality, either. The relations of the lines in the diagram correspond to the relations of some unknown matter which comprises the field. Despite his earlier talk about ether, in the Treatise Maxwell is more interested in the stress between the particles than the nature or form of the particles themselves. It is possible to found a mathematical theory on the assumption that the phenomena can be explained through dynamics. It is not necessary to actually attempt a dynamical explanation. In Book Two, Maxwell comments on the role of supposing the field in developing a mathematics for the phenomena of current. --.,...__ by matter.(TR2,493) I believe that the medium is important only because it is necessary in supposing that a dynamical explanation is possible. It is the action of the matter, described by such terms as stress, which concern the investigator. The unimportance of matter is irrefutable evidence that the field is not an Aristotelian whole. Maxwell has not discovered a new body in nature. The identity of a whole for Aristotle is bound up with its form, which we observe and do not impose, and the nature of its matter. We could not be said to understand a body while ignoring one of these components. In the tradition of Descartes, however, we can learn to use nature without any understanding of her in the Aristotelian sense. For Descartes and Maxwell, such understanding is impossible, as their views of nature reveal. The field is a whole insofar as we abstract it from nature, and treat it as one body. That is, we do not further abstract parts of it, in order to explain it. To explain the phenomena, we say that there must be changes in the configuration of the system, but we do not seek to know what is in motion. We describe the state of the medium as one of tension or stress. Maxwell's emphasis on mathematics and the correspondence of his method to Descartes' give further evidence that his aim is utilitarian. The concept of the fields is not the end of an investigation, but a means to begin it anew. Its importance lies in its use rather than its identity. Maxwell's thoughts on morality suggest that his restriction of what nature and cause are may be a conscious one. He admits the possibility of another kind of reason for the phenomena, but moral reasons will not lead to mathematical equations and practical applications. His progress in physics depends on his being completely restricted to that realm. Though I have reservations about the exclusion of all causes except mechanistic ones, this method does indeed produce useful results. Maxwell's aim is to make nature useful to man, and his achievement is a great one. We cannot define the forces partly because we know so little about matter. In a later discussion of magnetic action on light, Maxwell says that our knowledge of matter is so slight even in the visible realm that hypotheses about the fields would be premature. The electromagnetic theory is all the more scientifically rigorous because it does not speculate on the nature of matter. Maxwell contrasts this with his own hypothesis of molecular vortices to explain certain phenomena of light. He cautions that this is a "merely provisional" (TR2,461) explanation. In the conclusion of the Treatise, however, Maxwell once more stresses the importance of the medium. Energy, as far as Maxwell understands it, must be contained and transmitted 16 17 �AngerSing now the anger, smoldering within the proud spirit of Peleus' son, Achilles, burning deep and bursting unexpected like wild fire . Sing the violence which shakes thousands of sturdy souls and hurls them to the hazy underworld, but leaves their lifeless bodies lying, a feast for half-starved scavengers. Sing that we may feel the burning ember trapped within our own spirit, that we may feel the conflict swelling within our hearts until it bursts forth into the bitter clash of bronze on fighting fields . How like raging fire it sweeps through the enemy, pouring forth its contagious black smoke until even the wielder is blinded, until everything is consumed, and all that remains, is ash. Untitled - Dominic Crapuchettes 18 19 �nDesire and Leaming in the Symposium lJ Matthew Braithwaite sition of virtue and happiness by human beings ...," (180b6) and though this statement is agreed upon by the speakers who follow him, each understands the reasons for its truth differently from the others. How, then, does Phaedrus mean that eras leads to happiness? When he discusses eros as a cause of good, we assume that happiness comes to men through good, as Socrates later says, (204e6) and good through virtue. But whatever sort of virtue comes of the shame and right ambition caused by eros is surely a transitory and inferior one, so the sort of happiness which comes from it must have a similar nature. This sort of happiness that results from affection, and from things done rightly through affection, is the happiness of the political friendship, the happiness brought about by honor; a somewhat immature conception and thus quite in keeping with Phaedrus' ideas of virtue. A substantially more sophisticated idea of how eros is a cause of happiness in men is not found until the speeches of Aristophanes and Socrates. ence he seems not to recognize: ... there is not one so bad that, once the god Eros had entered him, he would not be directed toward virtue-to the point where he is like one who is best by nature. (179a7) Preface I . Phaedrus This essay is in two parts, is about a number of related subjects, and has two major themes. It has no thesis as such; what points of view it presents come about as the result of the author's search for meaning in Plato's Symposium. The first part of the paper is investigatory, consisting of an attempt to determine what Plato might be saying through the work's various speakers, and terminating in an examination of Socrates' linkage of eros and wisdom. The second part is more speculative. It examines the Symposium's implications for learning and teaching, with reference to its dramatic context, and with reference to the nature of Socrates' speech and Plato's wiiting. One of the first points made by Phaedrus, the first eulogist and "Founder of the Feast," is that Eros is among the oldest of the gods, suggesting the later discussion by Socrates of the parentage of .Eros. Phaedrus' citation of Hesiod describes Chaos, Earth, and Eros as having been created in that order. Eros is the first of these which is proper to a living being, though not to a reasoning one (but Socrates later shows that there is an eras proper to man as well). And thus the first thing said about Eros is that he is prior to all life. In this case, as in Socrates' genealogy, we are meant to take Eros' position among gods as his place in the scheme of things, and so Eros' · priority to all life suggests that he represents one of the things which characterizes it. Socrates later agrees with this in saying that "the mortal nature seeks as far as possible to be forever and immortal," (207 dl) for to him that seeking after immortality is mortal eras. Phaedrus' next point also prefigures an aspect of Socrates' speech, though again in a limited and narrow sense. But the observation, that eras can impel men to do good (and also evil, which Phaedrus does not mention), is undeniable: Part One: Desiring Learning If it is true that nobody is ever entirely wrong about anything, it would be right to assume that each of the speakers at Agathon ' s drinking party has something to say about eros; that they are not there merely to make Socrates look good. Socrates' explanation, of course the most satisfactory and comprehensive, is also remarkable in that it is synthetic of those given before it. The speakers preceding Socrates lack complete understanding; they mistake their experience of eras for its entirety. Eros, like virtue in the Meno, is not given to us "whole and unbroken," (79c) but as its many facets, and it falls to Socrates to reveal the single gem to which they all belong. But Socrates does more than synthesize: his definition of eras both defines and ennobles the philosopher, and man as well, insofar as he is philosophical. Like Eros, men are between two worlds, and like him, we are creatures of desire. Socrates' genius is to link eros to our peculiarly human status as seekers after wisdom. As Plato speaks not only through Socrates, but through each character in the dialogue, it seems wise to view the speeches preceding Socrates' as also expressing parts of the dialogue's meaning. Plato had a unique dramatic opportunity in this dialogue, for its format permits all its characters to develop Plato's point of view while still allowing each to develop at length complete ideas of his own. One defining aspect of Socrates' speech is that he is always willing to begin with the thoughts of his companions; his is great speech because it is conversational, not lecturing. And so, as readers of the Symposium, we will profit from first examining Socrates' speech through an examination of those which precede it, and only then examining his speech on its own merits. ... we have [Eros] as the cause of the greatest goods, for I can hardly point to a greater good for someone to have from youth onward than a lover, and for a lover, a beloved For that which should guide human beings who are going to live fairly throughout their lives can be implanted by neither blood ties, nor honors, nor wealth, nor anything else as beautifully as by love. (178c2) Although Socrates would probably agree that as a motivation love surpasses wealth, he would do so for a reason other than the one Phaedrus gives. To Phaedrus, Eros is a cause of doing good because he induces "shame in the face of shameful things and honorable ambition in the face of beautiful things." (l 78dl) This is, of course, an excellent description of Alcibiades, for it is exactly (and unfortunately exclusively) his love for Socrates that causes him to feel shame, as he later says. (216b2) But Alcibiades' example makes the poverty of this conception of morality immediately obvious, for the implication of his feeling shame before Socrates alone is that he feels none before himself. Phaedrus' notion seems to be that right shame and right ambition are noble even when they come from without. Although he is right to say that to act rightly for love is nobler than to do so for money or honor, this is damning with faint praise, for right action by reason of any external motivation is manifestly inferior to right action through internal motivation, the magnitude of which differ- 20 Though the depth of Phaedrus' mistake is striking, his conttibution is a useful one because of how well it describes Alcibiades. What Phaedrus has done is to remind the reader that many things short of solid character (itself short of a reasoned morality) can impel men to right action, and that among these love incurs perhaps the least opprobrium in doing so because it seems to be inherently noble, whereas such impulsions to right action as love of honor or of wealth do not. This is the quality of love that makes it not only a guide to better action, as Phaedrus says, but also to bette1ment, an idea first brought up by Pausanias. Of all the wrong reasons for right action, it is only the shame and ambition brought about by love that can ever give rise to the right reason. The possibility of this is the great contribution of Phaedrus' speech, and the dashing of the reader's hopes that this might happen to Alcibiades is particularly painful because it so clearly exposes the limits of Socrates' power. Phaedrus next says that "lovers are the only ones who are willing to die for the sake of another," (179b4) which makes clear the important difference between acting rightly because of the shame or ambition caused by love, and acting nobly through the self-sacrifice which love inspires. Phaedrus seems to think that all right actions motivated by eros are generically equivalent, but in fact the noble action which love can inspire is generically different from the sort of right action that, say, Alcibiades may perform for his love of Socrates. Love is a powerful force for betterment, but where the latter sort of action is not noble because it is not nobly done (a distinction made by Pausanias), the former sort is not only noble, but divine, as Phaedrus says. The difference is between temporary "virtue" brought about by love, in the latter case, and virtue augmented and made divine by love, in the former. When Antigone bmies her brother in defiance of Creon' s order, or when Achilles girds himself to avenge Pat:roclus, these are actions of virtuous men impelled by love to greatness of spirit, and the magnificence and divinity of such actions has inspired wonder and admiration throughout the ages. Though Achilles and Alcibiades both perform admirable actions out of love, this is a di vine thing in the former and pitiable (even contemptible) in the latter, for in his case it is not nobly done. But why is such an action as Achilles ' divine? Socrates will later furnish the answer to this question suggested by Phaedrus's speech: such actions secure "an immortal remembering of [the actor's] virtue," (208d5) and insofar as an action makes someone immortal, it makes him divine. Phaedrus ends his speech with the statement that "Eros is the ... most competent of the gods with regard to the acqui- II. P ausanias As said above, Pausanias' speech corrects a flaw in Phaedrus' thought. He introduces the idea that the character of an action is in the manner in which it is done: Every action is of the following sort: When being done in terms of itself, it is neither noble nor base. For example, what we are now doing, either drinking, singing, or conversing, none of these things is in itself a noble thing, only in terms of how it is done in the doing of it does it tum out to be the sort of thing that it is. For if it is done nobly and correctly, it proves to be noble, and if incorrectly, base. (180e4) This distinction suggests the one above noted between the two ways thatlove can promote right action. So Pausanias' first great contribution is that eros can promote action both noble and base. Although Pausanias and Socrates both introduce a differentiation of the objects of eros, Pausanias' differentiation is far more confined than Socrates' , which expands the range of eros' objects beyond the human. Interestingly, it is Agathon's speech, vapid though it is, that makes the first small step in this direction by introducing an Eros of the beautiful, which is the jumping-off point from which Socrates proceeds to the intellectual eros. Having made this distinction, Pausanias makes the first try at identifying the noble and base eros. In saying that some "are in love with [others'] bodies rather than their souls," (181b3) Pausanias starts the consideration of eros' objects, which Socrates will resume and complete. But Pausanias' thought that proper love is of souls is not elaborated upon, and so one hearing Pausanias' speech has no idea what love of a soul would constitute; it is Socrates who will make this clear. Pausanias refers continually to the lover being "gratified" by the beloved, and to the beloved "granting favors", which makes his talk about loving souls, not bodies, amount to very 21 �one, asking nothing in return. As Alcibiades suggests, there is little one can offer Socrates, whose apparent attraction to beautiful young men is a ruse. In light of Socrates' love, Pausanias' conclusion that "for the sake of virtue alone it is noble to grant one's favors" (185b4) sounds like a self-deceiving attempt to ennoble an ignoble custom. Even so, his idea that one may become virtuous by devotion to a virtuous man is the diamond in this setting of brass. little; if anything, his message seems to be that a lover should seek sexual gratification only from good beloveds, which is a funny sort of "love of souls", and a far cry from the more mutual and intellectual relationship that Socrates describes. Pausanias' speech, which sounds like a defense of established custom, desc1ibes a relationship where an older man confers the benefits of his age upon a younger in exchange for sexual favors. This is the sort of relationship into which Alcibiades tried to ensnare Socrates: Really, my dear Alcibiades, you're no sucker if what you say about me is really true and there is some power in me through which you could become better. You must see, you know, an impossible beauty in me, a beauty very different from the fairness of form in yomself. So if, in observing my beauty, you are trying to get a share in it and to exchange beauty for beauty, you are intending to get far the better deal. For you are trying to acquire the truth of beautiful things in exchange for the seeming and opinion of beautiful things; and you really have in mind to exchange "gold for bronze." (218d7) III. Eryximachus Although Eryximachus' speech is somewhat silly in characterizing the world in te1ms of erotic duels, his description provides a powerful metaphor for the education of the soul, or the generation of virtue. He describes a possibility Pausanias missed: that good and bad eros can both exist in the same person. Eryximachus, the doctor, paints his profession as that having expertise in the "erotes" of the body: Now, there is one love that presides over the healthy state, and another over the sickly. Just as Pausanias was saying, it is a fine thing to gratify those who are good among human beings and disgraceful to gratify the intemperate, so too, in the case of men's bodies taken by themselves is it a fine and needful thing to gratify the good and healthy things of each body (this is what has the name 'the medical') ... (186b7) Socrates here describes what is wrong with Pausanias' love: it is absurdly unequal, and even somewhat crude. One wonders what sort of virtue a beloved would wish to acquire, or would in fact acquire, from such a lover as Pausanias describes. Socrates isn't saying that love is a business exchange, of course, but simply that there is something base about the exchange of real wisdom for gratification. The two parties in such a relationship would be making a sordid exchange on the basis of reciprocal need, not love, a fact reflected in the political character of Pausanias' speech. Nevertheless, Pausanias, in nrurnwing our discussion to noble ems of noble objects (that is, souls), develops a notion of eras as a means for betterment (as distinguished from merely better action) by introducing the idea of enslavement to virtue: If we were to transplant one metaphor into another, replacing the body with the soul in the above description, sickness and health would turn into virtue and the lack of it. The love presiding over the sickly state is the love of honor, money, and power, and that presiding over the healthy state is the love of knowledge, wisdom, and learning. The gratification of the right desires of the soul is the turning toward the philosophical, as Socrates will suggest, and so one skilled in the erotes of the soul, such as he, is a sort of doctor, or guide. By this extension,Eryximachus' speech also suggests another way of seeing Alcibiades: a man unhealthy in his soul, which is a description few would disagree with. So extended, the speech also names the reason for that illness: warring desires within his soul. "I have succumbed to the honor I get from the many," (216b5) says Alcibiades, and that sickly desire fights his healthy desire of what Socrates offers. History relates the unfortunate outcome of this conflict. Socrates' abilities as a doctor of the soul include prescription, but not surgery. He can give Alcibiades a healthy desire to oppose the unhealthy, but it is up to Alcibiades whether or "not his desire for change is equal to his need of it. Eryximachus' concept of the healthy state is revealed by his frequent use of the idea of harmony. Extending this idea of health to the soul furnishes us with a description of another aspect of Socrates' nature. What would it mean to achieve harmony among all the soul's desires--be they for learning, for wisdom, for honor, for money? Following Eryximachus, ...for it is customarily held by us that if anyone is willing to devote his care to someone in the belief that he will be better because of him, either in regard to some kind of wisdom or any other part of virtue whatsoever, this willing enslavement is not disgraceful nor is it flattery ... the [lover], in serving a beloved who has granted his favors, would justly serve in anything, and the [beloved], in assisting him who is making him wise and good, wouldjustly assist. (184c3) And here we have another description of Alcibiades' actions, or rather nearly so, for Socrates refused to allow him to "enslave himself." The reason for the difference in action bet ween Socrates and the lover Pausanias describes is that Pausanias has no concept of loving for really noble and selfless reasons , but only out of need. His lover betters the beloved in exchange for favors, but a really virtuous man would require nothing at all. Socrates, more virtuous than Pausanias' lover, confers his lover's gift of wisdom on every- 22 such harmony would be the right proportion of all these desires, such that they all agree in the pursuit of a happy and healthy life, under the direction of reason. Alcibiades' report of Socrates' conduct in the Potidaean campaign could hardly furnish a better description of how such a harmony would appear. In addition to ascribing to Socrates all the martial virtues, Alcibiades makes it clear that Socrates is supremely temperate (but not an ascetic!), never gets drunk, is calm under pressure, humble, uncomplaining in hardship, and so forth, all of which suggests a man who is at peace with himself, enjoys the benefits of every kind of virtue, and whose desires are well-trained and focused on the happy life. The Symposium is certainly shot through with a "Socrates-as-exemplar" motif, and it here becomes clear that one reason for his being such is that he is a virtuous man who understands his "erotes" and has completely mastered them. awesome in their strength and robustness, and they had great and proud thoughts ... " (190b5) Aristophanes, in looking backwards through time, looks not at men's surroundings as being then better, as one might expect, but at man himself. Man, that is to say, has fallen from a state of greatness, of which the seeking to regain is eros. This idea, not that of being separated from one's half, is Aristophanes' contribution to the evolving definition of eras, and it is an idea that Socrates does not directly touch on: to interpret Socrates in Aristophanes' terms, our search for beauty, by means of contemplation, is perceived by us as a search to regain. We recognize our need for wisdom (or we would not seek it, as Socrates says (204a3)), but in addition, the idea that its attainment is possible persists in us, driving our quest, despite the haunting thought that we may never succeed. This drive toward the attainment of what we constantly fall short of is, I think, an indication that on some level we have a potentiality for it. ls Aristophanes really saying that we seek perfect happiness in union with our other half? Of course not; Aristophanes' story is a myth, certainly a format to which Plato was no stranger, and a counterpoint to the more directly philosophical speech of the rest of the dialogue-but he is saying that belief in that potentiality is what moves us. In the same vein, Socrates will suggest that it is our potentiality to attain immortality, god-hood, and true know ledge (or at least our belief in that potentiality) that spurs us to strive for these impossible ends--and in this similarity we find that Aristophanes and Socrates both have hit directly on one of eras' most important aspects: the human potentiality to achieve a divine state. Because of the manner of his speech, it would be fruitless to try to pin Socrates down on whether he really believes that this potentiality may be actual in life; at worst, this belief is a "functional myth" or "noble lie". Plato has paid Aristophanes the very high compliment of allowing his character to introduce one of the major themes of the dialogue, for Aristophanes has presented the first argument for eras as a seeking after happiness that resists disproof and does not ring hollow. But Aristophanes' straightf01wardness and sincerity, even passion, should not encourage us to miss the inadequacy, according to Socrates' ideal, of what he says. Aristophanes and Socrates say similar things about the utility of eras (a guide to happiness), the means by which this happiness is sought (impetus to strive toward a state of greatness) , the human potential for that greatness, and ems having genuinely noble ends (as opposed to those discussed by Phaedrus and Pausanias). But Socrates has in mind an ems of intellectual things, not of human things, and describes a desire to be united with the former rather than the latter, and in this there is all the difference between these two speakers. Aristophanes comes across as a defender both staunch and eloquent of a humanistic idea of eros and of human purpose. By the time of the symposium, Aristophanes has written The Clouds, so the reader is expected to know where Aristophanes and Socrates IV. Aristophanes Aristophanes' is the first of the speeches which has any brilliance. It is genuinely funny, it is well-crafted, and it does not immediately strike the reader with its inadequacy. Although like the others, his speech does not attain the same level of depth and comprehensiveness as Socrates', unlike them it is a complete description of eros in and of itself, as . opposed to a right-thinking but frustratingly short-sighted account, as was, for example, Phaedrus'. Aristophanes proposes a reasonable idea of eros' object, and Socrates' criticism of his account seems to attack it rather superficially, apparently taking what Aristophanes says for what he means: ' 'And there is a certain account,'' she said, ''according to which those who seek their own halves are lovers. But my speech denies that eros is of a half or of a whole-unless, comrade, that half or whole can be presumed to be really good; for human beings are willing to have their own feet and hands cut off, if their opinion is that their own are no good." (205d10) Aristophanes_is also the first to develop a plausible idea of eros as a means to happiness, an idea which Socrates will later take up and advance: For Eros is the most philanthropic of gods, a helper of human beings as well as a physician dealing with an illness the healing of which would result in the greatest happiness for the human race. (189c8) The illness to which he refers is the ancient separation of men from their other halves, but the search for the one who can undo this damage resembles the seeking after the good which Socrates will describe. This is most obvious in that both accounts desctibe a seeking, but in addition, each also suggests happiness as the reward for attainment of the goal, and each intimates that this attainment may not be possible. The men of the past, according to Aristophanes, "were 23 �skmd in respect to each other: the argument implicit in their very similar but importantly different accounts of human desire is the great important debate of the dialogue, and it is over how one should seek happiness. Socrates defends the pursuit of happiness through pursuit of know ledge, a position of which the reader of The Clouds knows Aristophanes to be mistrustful at best, just as Socrates mistrusts the passions. With all the depth of feeling in his poetic soul, Aristophanes, it seems, warns Socrates not to renounce too much of the human in his taxonomy of desire. The close correspondence of many elements of their speeches suggests deeply held feelings over the essential point of difference: whether the pursuit of knowledge is a key to happiness. Aristophanes surely believes that there is meaning in such things as drama: human, earthy, passionate creations; and that a happiness founded only on pure intellectual contemplation would be hollow and cold. But Socrates' speech, if seen with care, does not advocate this; uncharacteristically, it is quite sympathetic to the poets, granting them their place in the sun; and Plato weaves themes of drama into this conversation set in the house of a playwright. Despite his sympathy to what Aristophanes is saying, however, Socrates does mistrust it-and Agathon's speech shows the reader why he does so. The significance of Agathon's speech is a counter-argument made by Plato, a warning against the dangers of an eros that stops at the human. Plato wishes to point out that Aristophanes, though right as far as he goes, does not go far enough. Agathon's speech, beautiful but devoid of content, reminds us why Socrates seeks humanity's purpose in the reahn of the intellect: there is less chance that reason will go awry than will passion. But Aristophanes is convincing despite the obvious danger posed by such as Agathon or Gorgias-and the debate between these two points of view is one which, we may see here, Plato was never able to resolve comfortably. Poetry is Plato's vice, the addiction he tiies to break: in this and other dialogues he alternately disparages it and flirts with it, never finding it within himself to advocate unreservedly pure, transcendent contemplation. In the Republic, Poetry is dismissed as mere imitation, but the Socrates who quotes Homer so freely must feel uneasy about denying it all claim to wisdom: Like much of Plato's work (which is itself dramatic), poetry can teach through metaphor and indirection; perhaps this is what Socrates meant. In view of this sympathy, it is hardly surprising that in the Symposium we find a treatment of the role of the poet which is, so far as I am aware, uncharacteristic in its lack of overt criticism, sympathetic, and perhaps even praising. Aristophanes says that he "shall try to initiate you into [Eros'] power; and you will be the teachers of everyone else," (189d3) mirroring the words with which Socrates closes, and highlighting the debate between these two conflicting teachings. The Symposium's presentation raises the question of whether, in theRepublic,Socrates exiled poetry more because it is dangerous than because it is intrinsically bad. V. Agathon Socrates' remark that he is afraid of Agathon's speech thus emerges in a double light, because Socrates knows that this minor contest for the better speech is paradigmatic of the greater battle for the hearts of men he sees between philosophy and rhetoric. So we must see Agathon' s speech as a parable about the dangerous power of the merely beautiful. The brief conversation with Socrates which precedes Agathon's speech serves to illustrate Plato's view of this danger: "What's this, Socrates?" Agathon said "You really do not believe that I am so wrapped up in the theater as not to know that to a man of sense a few who are sensible are more terrifying than many fools? (194b6) So Agathon knows his transgression: although he calls his audience ignorant, he does not walk the harsher path of trying to guide them to the truth, but displays instead the facile beauty that will bring him honor from fools--a defect of character similar to Alcibiades'. Socrates' charge against Agathon, subtly put but nonetheless an accusation of wronging the ignorant, is this: ... for I know very well that were you to meet any you believed wise, you would think more of them than of the many. But I suspect that we shall not prove to be of the wise, for we too were present there and were part of the many; but if you were to meet others who were indeed wise, then you might be ashamed before them-if you were perhaps to believe that you were doing something that is disgraceful. (194c2) "It must be told," I said. "And yet, a certain friendship for Homer, and shame before him, which has possessed me since childhood prevents me from speaking. For he seems to have been the first teacher and leader of all these fine tragic things. Still and all, a man must not be honored before the truth, but, as I say, it must be told." (595b) Though Agathon fears Socrates' scrutiny, and thinks his present audience more fearful than the previous day's, he nevertheless employs his beautiful rhetoric at the cost of thought. With the sole exception of Socrates, this new audience does not justify his trepidation, and his easy seduction of them with the beautiful but untrue wholly justifies the fear Socrates feels. He fears the outcome of what Aristophanes 24 described in The Clouds: the conflict between LiL Kmos A6yos and .A8LKos Aoyos for the souls of men.Just before show Agathon's speech for what it is: an arid desert of adjectives. But Socrates is not just using sophistical nicks to discredit Agathon; as in all his sophistical tricks there is a point, and here it is that truth and beauty are things sought (and, he here implies, not achieved). Agathon has suggested thatEros makes those he is with like himself. Though Socrates would agree with this, he looks on Eros more as a metaphor for man than as man's muse, and for this reason it is crucial for him that Eros be like what man already is, rather than like what man strives toward (as Diotima says to Socrates, "You believed ... that the beloved is Eros, and is not that which loves." (204cl)) As Agathon reveals when he says that "[Eros] is a poet of such wisdom that he can make poets of others too," (196el) he sees the relation between beauty and truth far differently than Socrates, for to Socrates a wise poet is a contradiction in terms. A wise poet would have true knowledge; and this recalls Socrates' critique of poetry in the Republic: Agathon begins his speech, Socrates asks him, "But you would not be ashamed before the many if you believed you were doing something disgraceful?" (194c9) But Phaedrus intervenes before Agathon can answer, leaving the reader to ponder the terrible implications of a negative answer. One need look no further than Alcibiades to see the effects of such a case . Agathon is not, however, unscrupulous, but simply young and foolish. He venerates the beautiful, but as he does not truly know what he venerates, he cannot do so properly. - In this he is like Phaedrus, for as Phaedrus does not recognize that the love he speaks of can impel men to the bad as well as the good, so too does Agathon fail to recognize that (in Socrates' terms) eras with an eye fixed on such an idea of beauty as his own can lead men astray from the truth as well as to it. Phaedrus' human eras and Agathon's eros of the beautiful take their power from the passions, and Socrates must leaven these powers with reason, that such erotes may lead to eras of truth. But all this is yet to come. In its content, Agathon's speech furthers the ongoing distancing of eras from the concrete and human in saying that "all good things have resulted for gods as well as for human beings from loving the beautiful things." (197b8) Agathon, as Socrates will do later, connects the good and the beautiful, and though this takes eros somewhat in Socrates' direction, Agathon proceeds without understanding. As Socrates admonishes him, "you leave no argument unturned and dedicate each and every argument to Eros." (198e4) Socrates, like Agathon, will give eras a role in wisdom, in the arts, in beauty, and so on down the list, but he does so in a reasoned way; his sophistical refutation of Agathon's sophistical argument is intended mostly to show that Agathon was speaking fluff, and not contemplating the object of his speech. Ag ath on' s speech suggests the similarities between the various descriptions of eros, the one describing, and the manner of description, and nowhere is funnier than in the contrast between the speeches of Agathon and Socrates: Agathon, young, and beautiful, beautifully describes a tender and beautiful Eros; while Socrates--older, crusty, shoeless, and unbeautiful, in a comic point-by-point opposition to Agathon describes an eros who is like himself in a manner that, also like himself, is beautiful in its content apart from its fmm. The fact that Alcibiades, who has every conceivable charm of youth, makes fun of Socrates' looks but despite them calls Socrates "the only deserving lover of [his]," (218c7) is a strong indication that content can render form unimportant. For it is necessary that the good poet, if he is going to make fair poems about the things his poetry concerns, be in possession of knowledge when he makes his poems or not be able to make them ... and do the good poets really know about the things that, in the opinion of the many, they say well? (598e3) This speech, in turn, points to a similar passage in the Symposium itself: 'Or don't you realize,' she said, 'that only here, in seeing in the way the beautiful is seeable, will he get to engender not phantom images of virtue-because he does not lay hold of a phantom-but true, because he lays hold of the tiue ... ? (212a2) These passages, in combination with what has already happened, make clearest of anything Socrates' belief about truth: only the true is both really beautiful and really virtuous (or excellent), but what appears to be virtuous or beautiful often seems to be true. Socrates' skill at dialectic is the skill of knowing the difference between these, and its guiding principle is a kind of suspicion, a systematic doubt of and searching for substance in attractive and seductive MyOL. The refutation of Agathon concludes with a clear idea of the object of eros, in the course of the argument changed by Socrates from "beautiful things" to "beauty". With the idea of the non-beautiful desiring the beautiful the stage is set for Socrates' speech. It is my hope that as a result of the preceding discussion , we aiTive with an understanding of how what he says is both a logical and literary continuation of what has come before. Although the dialogue seems to be a debate between points of view, it is also the evolution of a single one, the logical and dramatic culmination of which we are now prepared to examine. VI. Agathon and Socrates Once Agathon has been praised for his beautiful but empty speech, Socrates undoes the damage done to our evolving understanding. First, as mentioned above, he wishes to 25 �that makes the lack of understanding so difficult-that if a man is not beautiful and good, nor intelligent, he has the opinion that that is sufficient for him. Consequently, he who does not believe thathe is in need does not desire that which he does not believe he needs. (204a3) VII. Socrates When Socrates resumes his argument with Agathon by taking up Agathon's role and placing Diotima in his own, the example he chooses to illustrate the middle ground between ugliness and beauty sets the tone for the rest of his speech: " Don' t you know," she said, "that to opine correctly without being able to give an account is neither to know expertly (for how could expert know ledge be an unaccounted for matter?) nor lack ofunderstanding (for how could lack of understanding be that which has hit upon what is)? But surely con-ect opinion is like that, somewhere between intelligence and lack of understanding.'' So the metaphor of Eros for humanity is in actuality limited, but in potentiality, one would hope, limitless. That is to say, not everyone recognizes his need for wisdom, so not all are seekers after it, but, it seems, all may be made to see their need, so that all are seekers potentially. To philosophize is to actualize the inheritance of these two parents, to fully recognize our need for wisdom and to hone the resources needed for hunting it--to train the mind in thinking (and particularly in dialectic, though this is implied only by the nature of the conversation itself). To philosophize, in one way of looking at it, is to become fully human by recognizing what the nature of humanity is. Men are in the situation of Oedipus: inadequate self-knowledge condemns us to unhappiness. We cannot achieve our "erotic potential" (which is the same as our human potential, unless our resources should ever prove adequate to our needs) as seekers after wisdom unless we know ourselves for what we are: the sons of Resource and Need, born under Aphrodite's star. With that realization, we must become philosophers; lovers of wisdom, which "is one of the most beautiful things." (204b2) Socrates ' discussion of generation illustrates another aspect of our betweenness. "The mortal nature seeks as far as possible to be forever and immortal," (207dl) as he says, and it is thus another defining characteristic of man that we seek perpetuation through our "children," our creations. Everything made by man, intellectual or physical, is a means of his perpetuity. Although Socrates perhaps does not literally mean that all human creation has immortality as its aim, there can be no doubt that bringing forth out of ourselves is among the most necessary and definitive of human actions. As born ourselves, and as changing beings, ours is the realm of the born and the becoming. But our bringing forth takes place only in the presence of what partakes of the beautiful, and thus giving birth is best, and best achieves immortality, when it is performed under the beautiful itself. Behold the importance of seeking wisdom to the creator: knowledge of beauty is his muse, required for his "child" to be truly divine and immortal. And as Plato seems to say, (599a4) the one who has true know ledge of anything would not choose poetry as his child. His children are true virtue, brought about through " beautiful and magnificent speeches and thoughts." (210d4) Once eras is established as "engendering and bringing to birth in the beautiful," (206e5) Socrates shows how we, as humans, ascend the ladder of eros (which is the ladder of comprehension of our need) in order to attain the beautiful, that we may bring to birth in its presence that which will make us divine and immortal. But is Plato saying that we seek (202a5) It is part of what we know about knowledge that truth about human things is elusive. In the case of such things as justice or the beautiful, not just right opinion, but pretty much all human thought ranks somewhere below expert knowledge of what is. The first metaphor of Socrates' speech, then, is a ladder of belief, whose steps c01Tespond roughly with the ladder of eros discussed later. Perhaps the rungs of this ladder might tentatively be identified as ignorance, thought, right opinion, and expert know ledge; that is, true know ledge of the thing itself. It is om human quest to ascend this ladder, as Socrates later makes clear. It is only during a part of Socrates' speech that Eros is personified, and Socrates does this that he might better show what traits characterize the seeker: Eros is between the world of gods and the world of men, and the things he strives for are the things that belong to gods. The objects of our own lives are of course the same; and since Eros and man alike seek the things that belong to god-hood, Socrates presents the genealogy of Eros to show our composition through his. Our metaphorical father is T6pos, or "Resource", which also connotes "a means of doing" , or "a device"; and man has well deserved the name of the the Great Artificer. Supremely inventive in thought and action, the human race is, as Socrates describes Eros, always seeking knowledge and trying to trap lruth with every device available to its creative intellect. Resource himself is the son of M~ns, a word similar in meaning, but with more connotation of planning, advising, and even scheming, which lends additional shades to our existence as hunters. Our "mother", l1Evl,a (or "Poverty), could be seen as tarnishing and limiting the skill and cunning given us by Resource; but IT Ev la also means "Need" , and this brings her coupling with Resource out in a different light: IT6pos gave us the means of seeking, and 11Evla the desire to do so. Without her heritage, our nature would be different indeed, for we would have the machinery to seek wisdom, but it would lie idle in our ignorance of our want thereof. Socrates furnishes an accurate description of what this would be like: Nor, in tum, do those who lack understanding philosophize and desire to become wise; for it is precisely this 26 "speeches as will make the young better; in order that [the lover], on his part, may be compelled to behold the beautiful in pursuits and laws." (210cl) knowledge for the sake of creation? This hardly seems like him; rather, once one' s eros is in the presence of true know ledge, or pretty nearly, the means of pursuit and the thing engendered are one and the same. That is to say, when seeking wisdom, the MyoL engendered are the means of the seeking. This clarifies the nature of Socrates ' endless conversation. The idea of the ladder of love contributes the notion that there is a certain kind of virtue brought forth corresponding to each gradation of eros. Ho w close one is able to come to bringing forth tiue excellence depends on how far one has advanced one's idea of the beautiful. According to Socrates, the greatest thing to which one can give birth is moderation and justice, and by this he can only mean some Myos thereof. But here we have to be careful with equating creation to giving birth, for Socrates uses the language of "being pregnant" with virtue, which leaves open the question of who does the impregnating. Let it for now suffice to point out that Plato 's language does indeed leave open the possibility that the things given birth to, for which I have used the word "created," have an ambiguous point of genesis. This suggests the idea of learning as recollection in the Meno: that the things given birth to are within the creator potentially, and brought forth by him, rather than given their genesis within and by him. The ladder of eras is a curiously mixed metaphor. It is described in two separate passages; the first explains the natw·e of pregnancy in so ul, and the second describes the path one must walk to "be initiated into [the perfect revelations]." (209e5) In the firs t, someone pregnant with viltue is described as going to a beautiful person, and Or, to put it another way, one must investigate the causes and the nature of virtue in men through investigating the political (perhaps Pausanias' emphasis on laws places him at this point in Socrates' scheme), and this draws one further away from the superficial understanding of beauty which Agathon has. From there, the lover and beloved journey on to "the sciences" and give birth to speeches and thoughts, for (if one sees the political rightly) this naturally evolves from trying to understand virtue through the political. This investigation eventually leads one to seek the form of beauty, in which the engendering of true virtue is possible. And so we have Socrates' sketch of the human purpose. As humans, we are aware of our intermediate status, between gods and animals. We are aware of a better state, one of immortality and wisdom and perfection, but may be unable to achieve it. Caught between, we strive to give birth to something out of ourselves which seems to partake of the world above ourselves, so that we may partake of the di vine through procreation. When this striving for and not achieving immortality seems frustrating, we should remember that Plato's vision is really an affirmative one. This seeking is what is proper to us as mortal beings: since we are creatures of change, our joys come in part from mortal things, and in part from the divine. If we can make something which partakes of our nature and of the divine nature, such as the children Socrates describes, we have truly done the best thing possible for a man, and will move closer to happiness. This bringing to birth is the action which reveals our limits, certainly, but it also defines our potential for greatness . This is, I think, the significance of the process Socrates describes. But there is still much to be said about the process itself, for the ascent of this ladder cannot be made without help. ... to this human being he is at once fluent in speeches about virtue-of what sor t the good man must be and what he must practice. (209b7) And, as he goes on to say, one who sees the beautiful in a beautiful person gives biJ.·th to such children as did Homer or Lycurgus. This is appropriate, for one whose beauty is found in other men will create such children as are approp1iate to men: poetry or laws. But Socrates wishes to go further: he wishes to create children approp1iate to men not as they are, but to men he aspires to be. He wants children created under the beauty of true knowledge, and here describes how they too might be got. The first rung on the ladder to procreation in the true beautiful is to "love one beautiful body and there generate beautiful speeches." (210a7) This, in one interpretation, can be seen as desc1 ibing Agathon, for he is young and blinded . by beauty, and with his limited and superficial conception of beauty he creates what is appropriate to his character: merely beautiful speeches: one who loves with the passions creates what is appropriate to them. But as one climbs, and the attraction to bodies fades, ems turns toward the beauty of souls and the creation of the things appropriate to that beauty; that is , Part Two: L earning D esire The existence of Plato's dialogues , their content, and their structure all attest to his belief in the learnability of matters important to the virtuous life. Diotima ' s description of the ladder of eros makes it clear that the path to this knowledge is not trod alone. And so, much more immediate and real than the Symposium' s implications about our nature are its implications about the interactions between men by which knowledge is sought. As we know from the Meno, virtue cannot be taught, for nobody knows what it is, and this problem renders unteachable all other similarly noble objects of investigation. The distinctions between these objects are somewhat blurred, in fact, as Socrates suggests that virtue, knowledge of the beautiful, and knowledge of the good all progress in tandem . Where the Meno might leave the reader 27 �Training someone in desiring clearly means a number of related things. As is plain from the vaiious speakers, eros can be of many things. Clearly, the pedagogical role has as its first intent to help the one led (the lover) to climb the ladder. From what Diotima has said, it is clear that all men are lovers of some sort, but vary in the their ideas of what beauty is. From this it follows that the pedagogical role is not particular as to its subjects, and that it also accomplishes its aim by helping the lover see a higher form of beauty with reference to eros' objects. Few men know what the truly beautiful is; the role of the guide is to move the lover's eyes toward the successively greater sorts of beauty; that is, the guide must help the lover to see his need of a beauty beyond his limited conception of it. The guide must of necessity be a philosopher, and his role is to make philosophers out of others, as a sophist makes sophists of others. What, then, are the characteristics of a "guiding philosopher"? From the many things that Alcibiades says of S aerates, one inference is particularly relevant: it helps for the guide to be a virtuous man. Because Socrates is a virtuous _ man, Alcibiades is shamed by him (for he is a lover after Phaedrus' description), and whatever power for good Socrates has over Alcibiades comes from this. But it is clear that Socrates is unable to do much with Alcibiades, for he knows not how to teach virtue, but only the desire of it. In the Meno , Socrates says of virtuous men that despairing of ever coming to know virtue, the beautiful, or the good, the Symposium is not only more optimistic, but even prescribes a formula! However, Diotima's speech contains only the vaguest outline of the progression toward these things; it is full of ambiguous terms and incomplete descriptions. Fortunately, it is possible to fill in many of these gaps by interpolating from what Socrates does and how Plato writes. The ladder that Diotima describes is general in its scope. Although "the ladder of love" is a tempting name for it, it is a ladder of at least six things. When she switches from "the beautiful things" to "the good things'', (204el) Socrates can say that men seek the good things in order to become happy. The eros which has the name of the whole, which is a specific kind of aiming at happiness (that is, "engendering and bringing to birth in the beautiful" (206e5)), must aim also at understanding the beautiful. So since Socrates has said that the good things are beautiful, the reader is strongly inclined to suspect that the converse is true also, or at least that the distinction matters little. The understanding of the beautiful is for the sake of the begetting of virtue, and it would seem this requires being virtuous. And so the ladder of eros seems to be also a ladder of wisdom, of knowledge of the beautiful, of virtue, of knowledge of the good, of happiness, and possibly of age, though this is only hinted at. The ladder is thus nothing less than Plato's formula for living the good life, and a complete desc1iption of the philosopher's journey. Diotirna's desc1iption of the ladder of eros seems to describe both how one becomes a philosopher, and how one makes a philosopher of others. We are fortunate enough to have the examples of Socrates and Plato to refer to for explication of this passage, for though suggestive, Diotima's language is obscure. In the sense that she speaks of a lover and a beloved, her story vaguely resembles ordinary Greek pederasty, as described by Pausanias. But she also adds a third character, 6 ilyouµEvos-, "the one guiding," (210a7) whose role she does not elaborate on. So we are left to question what role the one guiding has in the ascension of the ladder. The beginning of Diotima's speech suggests one answer: This was the reason why they were unable to make others like themselves-because their virtue was not grounded on knowledge. (99b) Which echoes Agathon's words in the Symposium: ... for what one does not have and does not know, one could neither give to another nor teach to another. (196e5) Inarticulate virtue, that is, cannot perpetuate itself. From this, it seems that the one who reaches the top of the ladder of eros is the ultimate teacher, for ... [he will] get to engender not phantom images of virtue-because he does not lay hold of a phantom-but true, because he lays hold of the true ... (212a3) "Now perhaps, Socrates, you too might be initiated into these erotics; but as for the perfect revelations-for which the others are means, if one were to proceed correctly on the way- I do not know if you would be able to be initiated into them. Now I shall speak," she said. "I shall not falter in my zeal; do try to follow, if you are able." (209e5) That is-he is capable of teaching true virtue to others, not just the desire of it, and this is what every true philosopher strives for: to be a sophist worthy of the name. The philosopher, however, must be satisfied with helping others see their need of wisdom. His role is one of exposing ignorance, which raises a further question: how does he do this? One who has know ledge of his ignorance, in accordance with Agathon' s words, can certainly teach it to others, but by what means? Socrates' conversation with Meno will not tell one who hears it what virtue is, but one can hardly hear it without knowing more about virtue. The ignorance of the subject That is to say, she is "the one guiding" Socrates, and Socrates is the lover. From the occasional reference she makes to Socrates' sluggishness of thought and improper desires, we can infer the nature of her contribution. As Socrates said at the very beginning of the speech, Diotima taught him erotics, and it is clear now what this means: she trained him in desiring, along the path that she describes. 28 which Socrates proclaims is not feigned, but neither is it the sort of ignorance which Meno has at the start of the dialogue. Meno has a number of false ideas about virtue which lead him astray, and which Socrates removes . He has given Meno the "torpedo's touch", (84c) and when he does the same for Meno' s slave, Meno thinks the slave the better for it. Perplexity, that is, is better than false opinion (though both are called "ignorance"), most particularly because it sets one to desire knowledge where one did not before. Perplexity is prerequisite to the desire and pursuit of wisdom, and so the guiding philosopher must have the "torpedo's touch." Socrates' method of producing this perplexity is dialectic, and one would be hard-pressed to suggest a better or even another method of doing so. However, Socrates' arguments are seldom logically air-tight, nor are their aims frequently obvious. Socrates, thinker that he was, cannot have been unawai·e of the spuriosity of his arguments, and if he knew his conclusions not to follow logically, he must at least have thought them good. He must have thought that the conclusions drawn by his often spurious arguments would be useful if believed. It is not without reason that he describes Eros as a sophist. The failings in the logic ai·e an invitation to look deeper, to ask what may be underneath the argument and why Socrates thinks the conclusion useful. A reader of the Meno may ask why it is important that virtue be one, not many; or a reader of the Republic why Socrates argues that justice is a certain kind of "minding one's own business." This is a surprising (though inevitable) conclusion, for it implies that Socrates' professed ignorance is not as blank as that which he succeeds in producing in Meno; that he has some ideas under it. Socrates' many myths furnish a more obvious example of the same phenomenon: something he says is not strictly "true," but is somehow useful. It is wrong to call these things "p1inciples" or "beliefs," since Socrates seems in earnest about his ignorance. Rather, they are heuristics, and only as such, if at all, that Socrates can be said to "believe." The trouble about these heuristics is that they are never exposed to question; they are insulated by poor interlocutors who ai·e snowed by Socrates ' illogic. Neither are they ever stated explicitly, so inevitably one who would argue with Socrates must, in producing a "definitive" interpretation of him, impose his own ideas on what Socrates means. From these things it is clear that a Socratic conversation is only secondarily a subject of proof or disproof, and primarily something about which one should seek understanding. The hidden and indefinite "meaning" of a Socratic argument, coupled with its complexity and spurious logic have this as their intent: that Socrates is trying to avoid a presentation which encourages argument without understanding, and opts rather for one which encourages the hearer to question and investigate the subject himself, using his conversation as a guide. Socratic conversation is hence mai-velously capable of teaching from afar, as Alcibiades says: But whenever any one of us hears you [Socrates] or another speaking your speeches, even if the speaker is very poor, regardless of whether a woman, man, or lad hears them, we are thunderstruck and possessed ... When I heard Pericles and other good speakers, I thought they spoke well, but they could not affect me in any way like that, nor did my soul grow troubled and become distressed at my slavish condition. (215d3) Because it is open to interpretation and invites the reader to seek meaning by means of it, Socrates' conversation has the power to make men question. This is the hallmark of an ignorance which desires: it asks questions, and Socrates gives us a framework from which to begin to do so well, for his conversations suggest questions of the first importance. Even at two thousand years distance Socrates can make philosophers of others. Plato's contribution to this should not be underestimated. The manner in which Alcibiades describes Socrates' speeches applies equally well to Plato's presentation of them: For were one willing to hear Socrates' speeches, they would at first look altogether laughable. The words and phrases that they wrap around themselves on the outside are like that, the very hide of a hybristic satyr. For he talks of pack-asses, blacksmiths, shoemakers, and tanners, and it looks as if he is always saying the same things about the same things; and hence every inexperienced and foolish human being would laugh at his speeches. But if one sees them opened up and gets oneself inside them, one will find, first, that they alone of speeches have sense inside; and second, that they are the most divine and have ilie largest number of images of virtue in them; and that they apply to the largest area, indeed to the whole area that it is proper to examine for one who is going to become beautiful and good. (221el) Plato's literary genius allows him to present philosophical ideas in an uncommonly rich manner, augmenting the powers of Socrates' speech with those particular to his own unique format. The Symposium's very structure reinforces the idea that certain speeches have power. Socrates' words come to us as Plato's account of Apollodorus' rendition of Aristodemus' retelling of Socrates ' recollection of Diotima 's speech, and it should be noted that Apollodorus has an audience of more than one. (l 73e5) And though the speech has passed from Diotima through many retellings (the unreliability of which Plato seems to have made a point) it has always had an effect. When Apollodorus says As for me, whenever I make any speeches on my own about philosophy or listen to others--apart from my belief that I am benefitted--how I enjoy it! (173c2) it is strong testimony for the power such speeches can have if 29 �one simply hears them. In addition, where most of Plato's dialogues make one feel close to the action, the many veils over Diotima's speech emphasize the fact that the Symposium is a dialogue of listeners, not speakers. The role of the lover is spoken of by Diotima; that of the guide mostly implied. The Meno, too, ends in Socrates' exhortation to Meno to teach Anytus the same ignorance he himself has come to. It is hard indeed to see how a philosopher could fail to be a guide also. One who knows his ignorance wants to share it with the world. Gorgias' speeches (to which Socrates compares Agathon's), in being persuasive, may seem akin to Socrates', but Alcibiades' speech reveals the crucial difference between the two: the speeches of an orator depend on his oratorical proficiency for their power, but those of Socrates do not; the former derive power from their words, the latter from what their words represent. This suggests the differing mechanisms though which persuasion by Myo:; and persuasion by conviction operate: where conviction succeeds through a kind of flattery (as Socrates suggests in the Gorgias) and by inflaming the passions, persuasion in the manner of Socrates succeeds through different methods. Gorgias' persuasion and Socrates' aim at a different sort of object: Gorgias' at (incidentally false) opinion, or conviction, and Socrates' at producing ignorance. Where the argument of a sophist can be pulled apart by an acute observer, a Socratic "argument'' cannot be pulled apart so easily, for there is nothing definite to lay hold of and refute. As objects of investigation rather than logic, it is hard to meaningfully predicate "true" or "false" of anything Socrates says, unless, mistaking Socrates' logic for his meaning, one engages in the somewhat trivial exercise of trying to poke holes in it. Though this slippery speech here sounds ethereal, it proves solid enough in its effects, as in the case of provoking shame in Alcibiades, and in provoking thought and perplexity in its hearers. This is the genius of Socrates' dialogue: it is designed to withstand and promote sustained examination of its content, but is presented in such a way that it is difficult to argue the content away unless one knows precisely what is being said-and the confidence that one does is unwarranted. Socrates never goes so far as to present something that passes for true knowledge; rather his discourse has the aim of setting one on the path to thinking rightly about an object by clearing away false presuppositions about it.We must assume, though, that Socrates, knowing the false logic in many of his arguments, had in mind a hypothetical character for his heuristics. Socrates did not merely clear away false presupposition; his act of setting an interlocutor on the path also consists of a starting-point. This starting-point may have something of the character of the "noble lie" discussed in the Republic. In his arguments, Socrates's ideas come across with a logical certainty that he knows does not to belong to them, though perhaps they have another kind of certainty. Is he presenting what he does not know to be true in the guise of truth? This is an ugly light to put matters in; it would perhaps be better to say that his interlocutors have opinions which are manifestly wrong (or even harmful), and whatever Socrates replaces these notions with has not the same character. Socrates does not replace one incorrect certainty with another, but with uncertainty; the worse sort of ignorance with the better. The one is ignorance which pretends to know; the other is ignorance which knows it does not know and what it does not know. The first is the ignorance of the satisfied, the second of the seeking. And so if Socrates .does tell a "noble lie," if he does instill some hypothesis as a starting-point, it is for the sake of creating that ignorance which knows itself. Socrates does not put into anyone's head something pretending to be the truth of a thing, but only some hypotheses as to the thing's nature. The nature of putting someone on the path requires this; one cannot search for something without some such ideas to start with (Need must have some Resource), and it is best that these ideas have a hypothetical, not a dogmatic character: Socrates is no sophist, though he uses some of the tricks of that trade. This action is also validated by Socrates' virtue, for a man who is manifestly virtuous and knows he doesn't know what that means is likely to suggest the best possible hypotheses for beginning an investigation of virtue. If Socrates' state is as above described (self-aware ignorance with some hypotheses), one has to ask how this ignorance resembles knowledge so closely. It may be that what is possible in this sort of ignorance, namely, having some idea of the nature of a thing, is as close as earthly knowledge can come to truth. Socrates' hypotheses (for example, his definition of justice in the Republic) are like metaphors. True knowledge is not imaginable, but only thinkable. We don't know what kind of eyes one would have to have to avoid being blinded by the light. Socrates can speculate about what it would be like to have such knowledge, but the effects of having it would be so huge that one who knows only right opinion and perplexity cannot conceive what communion with the truth would be like, so much so that it may only be attainable when one is freed from earthly trappings. The truth illuminates this world, and perhaps we may know an approximation of truth from the physical approximations that surround us. Socrates' heuristics describe what the truth of a matter is like; they are similes for truth. Is simile like right opinion? Perhaps it is, for it seems that to try to describe the truth in similes is to acknowledge that one does not know it, but can only make a likeness of it. It may also be the case that, if true knowledge is inaccessible to the earth-bound, similes are a kind of "earthly truth", the closest one can come to truth before death-we cannot look at the light of the truth, but by observing the shadows it casts we can discern something of its nature. Socrates is therefore something between the virtuous man who cannot make others like himself, and the mythical 30 teacher of virtue (the virtuous man who can do so). The first sort of man has the ignorance of Meno or Glaucon, the ignorance which is satisfied with itself; and the second sort of man has the knowledge which is satisfied with itself. As Diotima says, neither those ignorant nor those wise desire to become wise. (204al) As a complacently ignorant man may impart his complacent ignorance to others, and as a wise man can impart his wisdom to others, so does Socrates impart what is appropriate to his non-complacent ignorance: perplexity and a starting-point from which to seek. Complacent ignorance is approp1iate to the sophist, and is perpetuated by dogmatism; desiring and questioning and dissatisfied ignorance to the philosopher, whose method is dialectic. At the base of all this, of course, is the fact that the philosopher is a lover not just of wisdom, but also of others, for climbing toward the top of the ladder does not preclude having one foot a rung down. The roles of lover and guide unavoidably mingle; the process of making someone better (which is the role of the lover) cannot help but turn into making that person into a philosopher (which is the role of the guide). The relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, for example, is an erotic one, but each perceives it differently. Alcibiades wants to ensnare Socrates into a relationship such as Pausanias describes, but Socrates is willing to confer all the benefits of his wisdom for none of the benefits of Alcibiades' youth and beauty. Socrates is the greatest kind of lover of man there can be, precisely because he also loves something higher. Translations Benjamin Jowett, Meno (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1949). Seth Bernardete, "Symposium" in The Dialogues of Plato, (New York: Bantam, 1986). (This edition does not contain line numbers; those that appear herein have been interpolated and so some may be incorrect.) Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato, (New York: Basic Books Inc., 1968). 31 �created the film. I have put much effort into selecting, from the myriad of images in Bergman's film, those which are most crucial to the few themes that I have chosen to dwell upon in the essay. I have tried to order and describe these images to best facilitate a discussion of these topics and to encourage further thought and questioning by the reader. Without allowing the reader to sever any emotional ties to the film, I wish to help him see some of the subtleties, both visual and thematic, that he may have missed upon first, second, or even third viewing. It is a great desire of mine that the reader will finish this essay wishing to watch "The Seventh Seal" again and again. I hope to be able to bring out the richness of the movie's content, how impossible it would be to ever absorb all the meanings, and how rewarding it can be simply to attempt to do so. Preface Untitled - 32 Erin Martell After having spent four weeks watching and concentrating on Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," I have become continually haunted by the film's images. I close my eyes and see the quiet, pain-ridden face of the knight as he leans against a rock pondering his chess game with Death, or I awakep in the morning with the image of self-flagellating people unshakably clear in my mind. Bergman's moving images of mankind have become part of me, in such a way that I cannot escape them. I have become obsessed by a creation that is both enlightening and tormenting. In my essay I want to capture the humanity and intensity of emotion in this film. My ardor and belief in the film's importance are such that I have often felt unworthy to do so, but the need to convey the movie's beauty and meaning has also been rendered so great by my love and admiration for the film that it overwhelms these other feelings. My goal in this essay is to show that the artist and his image fulfill a unique and essential role in the quest for self-knowledge, which I believe to be the responsibility of all mankind. In order to achieve such a goal I must both explain and justify the emotion, intuition, and understanding of humanity that are present in all aspects of the film. For this reason I have gone out of my way to do much more scene description than I would normally allow myself. The reader will doubtless note that I quote large portions of dialogue. There is a script of "The Seventh Seal" published in book form, but this book is taken from the original script that often differs greatly from the dialogue and action in the film's final cut. Therefore I have tried to ignore the script as much as possible and have attempted to recreate a sense of only the final, completely edited film; and this often involves quoting large portions of dialogue. There is a wealth of emotional experience within me that is tied to this film. I want the reader to see what I see in order to love what I love, in order to understand what I have come to understand about this most magnificent of films. In order for this understanding to happen, there needs to be a bit of translation done. The visual images and the music must be put into words so that their significance can be understood without their more immediate emotional impact being lost. These sounds and images must also be explained in terms of the dialogue. Then, and only then, the camera of the mind must pull itself back for a long shot, in order to analyze the significance of all these images in terms of larger themes, some of which even Bergman may not have been aware of when he The Unique Beauty and Usefulness of the Image "In our fear we make an image," says the knight. "And that image we call God." Indeed, mankind has always been drawn toward the making of images, often in fear and often he knows not why. In Achilles, Homer created an image of man's stubborn pride, and Plato used the charioteer image to describe the human soul. I claim that the images we mak;e are not themselves gods, but that they reveal something of the nature of the one true God, of our innate knowledge of Him , and of ourselves. Furthermore, I claim that the making and interpreting of images is one of the greatest pursuits of all mankind. Bergman gives his viewer images of a very troubled and philosophic knight, an atheistic squire, and an acrobat who sees visions of the Virgin Mary, all living in the midst of plague-ridden Europe during an age of great faith and great despair, when the existence of Satan and the mercilessness of God are taken for granted by the masses, but where people believe that the devil can be warded off by "a mixture of blood and the bile of a big black dog." Each of these characters reflects a piece of every person so that taken together, all the characters form a sort of personification of the soul of man. From the minds and souls of his characters, from their interplay with one another, and from their reactions to the surroundings and circumstances with which they are presented, Bergman's images offer a profound commentary on the nature of mankind and what its true salvation might be. As something inside the knight forces him to ask and seek answers to the 33 �- most difficult questions, so does Bergman force his viewer to do the same, offeling insight into these questions through the words and actions of all his characters. An interviewer once commented to Ingmar Bergman that it seemed as if Max Von Sydow , who plays the knight in "The Seventh Seal," often seemed to play the character who speaks Bergman's own ideas and opinions in Bergman's movies. "Not really," replied Bergman; "all the characters are me." Bergman is one person creating a story with many characters, and because the story is born from his own imagination each character contains a piece of himself. Each is made of some fragment of Bergman' s personality and all are taken from his own mind. Therefore, an examination of all the characters together offers insight into the whole man, the whole mind and soul of Bergman. Furthermore, just as each character can be seen as a fragment of Bergman , so can each character be taken as a fragment of humanity in general, Bergman himself being one small example of the general state of mankind. Considered in this fashion, each character is a sort of snapshot of the human condition and all the charac ters taken together form a flipbook, a moving image, albeit a primitive one, of the human soul. They therefore prompt one to search one' s own soul. Within the film, Bergman offers a short commentary on the act of image-making which includes a partial explanation of why he chose to create this film, why he chose to use this particular medium as an o utlet for his soul-searching. In this scene the squire Jons enters a small stone room where an artist is painting a mural depicting tales of the plague. The painter stands on a scaffold as he paints, his brushes and other matelials strewn about on the scaffold. For a moment, Jons quietly surveys the artist's work. "Why do you paint such nonsense?", Jons asks the painter, suddenly and bluntly. "I thought it would serve to remind people that they must die," says he. The painter encourages thought. "Well, it's not going to make them feel any happier," replies Jons. "Why should one always make people happy? It might not be a bad idea to scare them a little once in a while," answers the painter, meaning that from painful thought real benefit often arises. Beyond this blief insight, it is unlikely that even Bergman, if he were asked, could explain why he feels compelled to create this film. There is present in man a deep-seated need to create images of himself, of God, of death, and of every other thing that is at all in the realm of experience or imagination. Man's own ineptitude to explain or even define the soul is overshadowed by a deep-seated longing to obtain some sort of self-understanding. If man is indeed the rational animal, as Aristotle defines him, then it is a torment greater than any other that the one special trait, this rationality, allows him to gain nothing, not even an understanding of himself. No real know ledge can be grasped through rational thought. Instead, one reaches only the dead end encountered by Hume, who found himself doubting the existence of absolutely everything. Even Hume acknowledged that he could notlive in such a way; he might sit all day philosophizing and doubting the existence of everything, but at night he sat and played backgammon with his friends, assuming the existence of his friends, the backgammon board, and the so-called tangible world in general. Bergman would have each viewer revel in his humanity, not deny his own existence. Emotion, passion, and intuition must not be overwhelmed by the purely rational. If one is ever to discover anything about oneself, no facet of human existence can afford to have its significance denied. With logic alone one becomes as unfortunate as Hume, the rational self admitting to a complete lack of knowledge, but the very soul crying out just the opposite and yearning for something completely different. Bergman offers an image of the way that he believes things are and leaves the interpretation up to the viewer. He does not deny contradictions but blings them to the forefront so that each audience member is forced to face them individually, just like the painter who, by painting the mural of the plague, forces his viewers to think about death. The painter is not a philosopher; but based on what he perceives of the world, he creates an image that forces his viewers to ponder difficult questions, questioning being the first necessary step toward to acquisition of self-knowledge. The painter paints an image of what he perceives both in the world that surrounds him and within his own mind. The viewer is then led to ponder the image. Questioning the perceptions of the painter may eventually lead the viewer to question his own perceptions, which, in turn, may lead him to seek after truth. " I only paint things as they are. Others can do as they like," the painter says. Others may come and read into his work, but he merely records what he fi nds within his own soul. Similarly, Bergman ' s fil m making is both a record of the state of his own soul, and a quest to understand this soul and the universe which surrounds him via the act of working out the image. The knight's confessional scene affords an excellent example of Bergman' s soul-searching through the film; it is furthermore an excellent illustration of how successful this method of soul-searching can be. Interestingly enough, the confessional scene is framed by the two scenes with Jons and the painter, blinging the issue of imaging to the forefront in this scene of beautiful images. The confessional scene is one of only four scenes where the knight reveals himself to another character and the one scene in which he most articulates his inner tmment. It is also the one scene where all the main theological and philosophical questions of the film are raised. The images of this scene are not themselves answers, but they are a road that leads to further questioning and possibly, eventually, to some answers. 34 pleasure that most people seek. For the knight his own pleasure is definitely secondary to truth. He kneels down in front of the confessional. The shadows from the bai·s make an odd blackness on either side of him; the corner that he faces as he kneels is completely blackened by shadow so that his blonde hair stands out by contrast, not altogether unlike a halo. The dark emptiness seems about to swallow him . Again the cainera focuses upon the face of Christ. His face is a straight diagonal across the screen; his mouth is agape, but he is only an image and can give no direct answers. "What is going to happen to those of us who want to believe but aren't able? And what is to become of those who neither want to nor ai·e capable of believing? Why can' t I kill God within me?", exclaims the knight, his voice louder, more vehement, tormented, almost angry. As he speaks, he stares straight ahead, his eyes expressionless, in the manner of one who has so much deep-seated pain that he cannot even bear to feel his own emotions. Why does the knight want to kill God? The Christ-filled cross is ever present in torment, and even so the knight desires to commit again the greatest sin of all mankind. To deny the existence of God is to take up the whip with those who denied the possibility of truth in the claims that Chlist made about his oligins. If it is true that God' s presence is made manifest within this world, as is claimed by Paul in the first chapter of Romans , then to deny God's existence, which he himself has made manifest, is to call God himself a blasphemer and to attempt to murder his existence by a sheer arrogant act of human will. Paul says this in Romans 1: 18-20, "The wrath of God is everywhere upon man, for since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." Yet if what Paul writes is true, then how can the knight's questions have validity? Bergman certainly portrays the knight's questions and torments as if they ai·e meant to be taken seliously. Why then, if God has made himself manifest since the beginning of time, does the knight speak of those "who want to believe but aren 't able?" and those " who neither want to nor are capable of believing?" What are the barriers that so prohibit faith? To acknowledge the existence of God is to acknowledge the existence of a power higher than oneself, a power higher than hwnan intellect, human passions, and human will. It is to accept one's own inability to achieve perfection, because it is to assert a power more perfect than ai1y human power. The knight is a man who wants to attain knowledge. Paradoxically, to assert the existence of God is to assert that there exists a power capable of granting or denying knowledge to man; in other words, asserting that man himself cannot attain knowledge, which only God can give knowledge to man. For the knight acquiring faith would mean completely altering his method of searching for truth and the value he places on that The knight enters a small, square, dai·k room .·The walls and floors ai·e empty and grey, but beyond the feeling of emptiness there is something haunting about the room . It looks like a face. We see the knight's back as he walks toward the altar. Two small windows on either side of the far wall, the only light sources in the darkness , stare out of the screen, like two eyes. The nose is a giant crucifix hanging between the two windows; the arch of the doorway both forms the hairline and frames the face . The altar is the mouth. One cannot be sure whose face it is that is mirrored upon the screen. It might very well be Death's. The knight walks straight up to the mouth. The only noise is of the bells tinging somewhere outside. Outside seems that much farther away; the room seems all the more silent. The crucifix is an image of God, but it is also an image of Death. The camera closes in on the form of Christ, his arm stretched out unnaturally and his face tilted diagonally across the screen. (The diagonal is the most disturbing compositional line in painting, often used in paintings that depict some great torment.) The crown of thorns is pushed down upon the figure ' s head, a dark line of blood stains the forehead , the eyes and eyebrows are slanted down with a look of sorrow and pain. In the crucifix, we see the mairiage of God and death. There is no greater sin or torment in all the history of man than the killing of God Himself. The knight walks up to the confessional, and the bars that separate him from his confessor are like a black prison that separates him from God. They cast a dark shadow and forbid easy sight. The knight does not realize that he confesses to no priest a t all but to Death himself. Only the viewer sees Death' s face: its pale, distinctive shape, cleft chin, and round, dark eyes. The knight stands before the confessional, the palm of his hand curved against the edge of the wall as if he were trying to use his sense of touch to keep some contact with the tangible world. The dai·k.ness mirrors his despair; the emptiness in the room mirrors his sense of emptiness and unfulfillment. The agonized face of Chlist stares down at him but says nothing as he wrenches open the doubts of his soul not to God, not to any member of humanity, but to Death. He says, "I want to confess as openly as I can, but my heait is empty. The emptiness is a minor turned toward my own face. I see myself in it and am filled with fear and disgust." Death asks the knight what he is seeking, why he is not ready to die, and the knight replies that he wants knowledge. "You want guarantees," replies Death, as the camera again dwells upon the sad effigy of Christ. This Chlist seems to be · in such severe pain of his own that he could certainly not guarantee anything. "Call it whatever you like," replies the knight, a stern look of recognition upon his face. He will not be brought down by what is, in some ways, a base interpretation of his motivations. He wai.1ts truth, not pleasure, at least not the sort of immediate 35 �me do W( it: Se Bt "l' Bi ar d fr O' tc al b t~ b c 0 f, t c them. Instead he has only felt more thoroughly his lack_ of fulfillment. All these external things amount to only Pascalian diversion. He has also seen Death face to face and is therefore less able to deny the existence of death than those w~o hav~ not encountered him on such an intimate level. Obvm~sly it would be difficult to play chess with Death and not think of one's own mortality and relationship to the su~ernatural. "In our fear we make an image and that image we call God" laments the knight. Again we are confronted with the word "image." The emptiness is a mirror~ which one sees one's own face and is filled with fear and disgust. In fear he makes an image and calls that image God. Through Bergman's genius the fear, the disgust, and the images are all miITored back to us via the images made by the camera. In other words, Bergman, who suffers the same fear and disgust as the knight, creates an image and throws it onto the screen to be watched by an audience of people who also fear and also create images. But Bergman's image of God is not complete. His image does not assert the existence of_God, but me~ely raises fundamental questions just as the kmght never clauns the existence of God but merely questions. The assertion of God's existence or nonexistence is left up to the interpreter of the film. . If Bergman were creating an image in his fear and calling that image God, then why would he bother questioning Go~' s existence? Perhaps Bergman and the knight are both unlike the general population in that they val~e ~ogic .and kno~ledge over happiness and are therefore unsat1sfI.ed w~th ~ere imagemaking. Instead, they question their own unagmat10ns and ~e filled not with an ignorant and false contentment bu~ with torment and agonized shame at the awareness o~ th~ madequate nature of their own minds. Berg~an does. give m to the intuitive by allowing himself to create images 111 the f01m of this film, but he goes on to question the image he has c~·eated. Because Bergman questions the validity of the imagemaking process, as opposed to merely making ~ image and calling it God, his imagination does not make him h~ppy. If anything he is in even greater torment, because h_e realizes that due to his restless and questioning nature, no image that he creates can ever fulfill him. Like the knight, he wants knowledge, not false happiness, not guarantees. And yet ~e does create an image. One might do well to ask why. Like the painter he perceives some sort of truth in the images that he creates; he paints things as he believes that they ar~. In one sense these are false images, idols of the human mmd, only fanciful creations born from an inadequate mind; in another they are embodiments of the most verifiable sort of truth that mankind has. They are an expression of one man's perceptions of the world played out in a way that, when viewed. from a distance, helps both the creator of the image and the viewer to consider life in a slightly different light. In other words, from meditating upon the image itself some sort of ~wareness can be derived. Furtheimore, if any truth can be obtamed from can never have real knowledge of God's existence, in the sense of having logical certainty, and he is too proud to give in. In some ways it seems that God reaching out his hand would be breaking the rules of the game, but the chess player always moves pieces with his own hand. "I call out to Him in the dark but no one seems to be there," says the knight. "Perhaps no one is there." Not even Death has proof of the existence of God. "Then life is an outrageous horror. No one can live in the face of Death knowing that all is nothingness." Here is the cry of a man who gazes into the abyss of which Pascal speaks but who doubts even the existence of the abyss. He feels so deeply a God whom he can neither touch nor comprehend and is filled with the sense of his own inadequacy and life's bitter futility; hut he does not know whether the God whom he feels even exists, much less whether he can obtain any sort of salvation or discover any sort of meaning during his brief time upon the Earth. And so he sees his emptiness as a mirror and is filled with "fear and disgust." What is it that the knight sees when he gazes into the darkness? Is it his own face, is it "emptiness under the moon" as his squire will later claim? Is it God, or death, or nothingness? .Even he does not know, and yet the -image of the face remains. The mirror reflects emptiness, the room looks like a face, Christ's face hangs on the wall, and Death's whitened face is half-hidden but present. These are four faces staring out at the knight. Is any of these God, or are they all only images of Death and/or nothingness? Do we see through a glass darkly, or do we only gaze through an empty world into a mirror that reflects nothing but our own emptiness? When his rationality can only lead him to a dead end, what is the great use of all the greatness of man without some other meaning beyond what little he finds in himself? Man's greatness is drowned in his own inadequacy and his life is mere futility amounting to nothing but dust and ashes, an outrageous horror. "Most people never reflect about either death or the futility of life," notes Death, a truth that is reflected in the behavior of most of Bergman's characters. Pascal, in Pensees 166 and 168 observed the following: "Death is easier to bear without thinking of it than is the thought of death without peril," and "As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of it all." And yet the knight is an exception to this rule. Something forces him to think about both God and his own mortality. There are several possible reasons as to why this is so. One is that he has seen much death and has not been satisfied. Another is that he is an educated man, a chess player, who has just returned from the Crusades. He is a nobleman, not poverty-stricken but rather well-off. He has seen many things that most people think of as bringing glory, honor, happiness, and fame, and has not felt at all fulfilled by method, as well as completely rearranging all his perceptions as to what the very nature of truth might be. It is not a task of which he is technically incapable, but it is one of which he currently believes himself to be incapable, so weak is his will, so strong is his pride. Thus, he longs to "kill God within" himself, being tormented on the one hand by a great desire to know God coupled with the awareness of his manifest presence and on the other hand by his stubborn unwillingness to forsake his own power, logic, and will in the pursuit of the know ledge of God. The camera shifts so that we see Death standing behind the bars to the left of the knight. Death gazes wordlessly at the knight. He too is unable to give any answers. Even he does not know how to reply to such questions. "Why does he live on in this painful and humiliating way even though I curse him and want to tear him out of my heart? Why in spite of all is he a baffling reality that I cannot shake off?" Again there is the reminder of God's presence in his creation. Later in the film this will become crucial, as the knight comes to experience this presence of God in the lives of other people, being moved to action by their childlike faith and manifest love. The camera focuses in on Death, who gazes down at the knight. There is a light source behind him, and the crisscross of the bars, like a mask, shields his whitened face from full view. The expression in Death's eyes makes it seem as if he were vaguely troubled, but his mouth is expressionless and resolute. Behind him on the left there hangs a crucifix. Is this an insinuation that God is. also watching Death, or is it a reinforcement that they are actually the sa~e thing? As the knight pulls himself up to the bars, Death turns himself so that we see only his profile. The camera is now inside the bars, and it is Death whose face we see without bars. He seems to be quietly calculating, as if he were checking all his pieces to plan his next move in a game of chess. Are men only chess pieces from his point of view? Is life no more serious than a game? Chess is the most serious and rational of games, but it is a game nonetheless. The pieces are images of people trapped by their places on the board that is their world, unable to move any differently than they were made to move. Their movements are limited to a certain type, and they are constantly in danger of being taken. Only the chess player could save them, and even he is not omnipotent, unless he breaks the rules of the game. The knight's blonde-crowned face is shielded by bars. Christ does not answer. Death does not answer. The knight has closed himself off to all types of belief except pure rationality, logical certainty. Therefore, he has reached the same dead end that Hume reached. He doubts absolutely everything, including his own most basic intuitions. And yet he cannot shake off these intuitions. He feels the presence of God everywhere, tugging away at his heart in a way that he cannot deny, and yet he will not give in to belief, because he watching Bergman's film, then it has been proven that th~re is some important use of the intuition and the image-creatmg faculty. . . As for the knight, either in fear his mmd has created an image so deep-seated that he cannot dispel it, or there really is a God that he is simply too afraid to reach out and accept, being neither willing nor capable of d.eserting his p~oud, willful and deep-seated belief that certam knowledge is t~e one true God. In this latter case, the image that he creates m his fear and calls God is the god of logic, and the other ~od is the God who really exists. There is, indeed, somethmg comforting about relying on logic for those who hav.e been long used to doing so. It is hard to give up ~hat the mm.d has long exalted in favor of an untried uncertamty, but logic too can become an idol. And yet, even in the midst of this crisis of lo~ic, the knight's real goal does not cent~r ~n t?e rational. In this se?se he is like Hume, forced to live his life ma way thatcontradic~s his greatest understanding of what that life 1!1e.ans, wh~t IS important in it. He says,"My life has been a fu_ile pursmt, a t wandering, a great deal of talk without meanmg. I feel no bitterness or self-reproach, because the lives of most people are very much like this. But I will use t~s resp~te ~or one meaningful deed." Despite the depths of his questiomng ~d his need to find God, he portrays his goal as more practical than one might think. He does not merely want answers f~r the sake of answers, or guarantees for the sake of comfort. His goal is far more noble. He wants to do good. . Yet what are the knight's motivations for domg_ the~e good deeds? He wants to do one meaningful deed with his own human knowledge and power. In some sense th~ search for logical certainty is a ruse. What he really wants is to be worthy of respect, self-respect. Perhaps he believ~s that by accomplishing one good deed he will earn for hi~sel~ the ability to look into the mirror of his soul without ~mg filled with fear and disgust. Perhaps, in some part of himself, he believes that in this manner he can save himself from the torment that he feels, without the aid of God. Again the knight is guilty of the sin of pride. . No real answers have been given, and yet all the agomzed questions of the knight's tormented soul have been _voiced to a treacherous Death; all of Bergman's gut-wrenching questions have been voiced to the blank stare of the camera as well as to the audience that is to come later. Death di~appears_ from sight, leaving this scene uncomfortably cradled m the mmd of the viewer. The Image Played Out Bergman has made the viewer feel the knight's emptiness from the very opening of the film, and he play_s o~t t_hese questions and images to the end of the film, offenng msights 37 36 D:n �getting up and getting ready to leave. In this action lies an illustration of two things. The first is the squire' s comic disrespect of his master, which is later shown to be the attitude he maintains toward humanity in general; the second is the lack of conversation between the knight and his squire. That is to say, the knight neither asks the squire to get up nor speaks to him when he does; he just kicks the squire with his foot and then turns his back on him. The two understand one another's actions well enough: the knight does not seem to doubt that the squire will get up and prepare the horses when he is kicked, and indeed the squire does do what the knight wanted. Essentially their relationship seems almost to be a business relationship. They travel together but are really not much more than two individuals traveling alone. Their conversation is generally limited to a practical discussion of what needs to be done; yet there does seem to be a real affection between them. They are like an old married couple who do not need to talk much. The relationship between the two is largely a result of the knight's personality, but it is as much a result of the squire's. The knight is a tormented man in search of higher know ledge, the Pascalian aspect of the human soul. The squire, on the other hand, represents the denying, unbelieving element. He does not believe in God or truth. The image that he creates in fear is an image of himself as a man who does not fear, a blunt and coarse singer of bawdy songs of revels in the tangible world and expects nothing after death, who laughs at everything including himself, because he expects no good from anyone, including himself, and therefore assumes that amusement is his best hope. Perhaps the best example of the squire's denial is found in the first of the two scenes with the painter. In this scene, Jons refuses to admit thathe is scared by a description of what the plague does to its victims. When asked if this description scares him, he replies, "Scare? Me? You don't know me," and avoids the subject by pointing at a section of the mural and asking,"What are those horrors you've painted over there?" , as if to say , "I'm not frightened at all; I can take even more of this." The painter describes that section of the mural as the camera focuses on the simply drawn yet horrifying figures that are painted upon the wall, a processional of hunched bleeding people, some wearing crowns of thorns, some whipping others, others simply being whipped. He tells Jons, "Mobs of people, who call themselves Slaves of Sin, are swarming over the country, flagellating themselves and others, all for the glory of God." The camera gives a full frontal view of the squire from the chest up. He looks absolutely horrified, and he swallows hard and uncomfortably, but he still refuses to admit his fear. He refuses to admit that he really does care about humanity and that he is both terrified and horrified by man's inhumanity to man, to himself. Instead he asks for some brandy. Later, when the camera comes back to Jons and the and possible answers through images. He purposefully sets a tone of uneasy desperation to pull us into the torments of the knight, making us feel as he feels and question as he questions. The film ' s opening shot is of an uncomfortably black sky. A burst of light smacks into the upper left comer of the screen accompanied by a short and almost violent outburst of choral music. Suddenly, a bird soars up against the darkness. All this has the effect of being quite disturbing and dismal. Neither the light nor the music nor the flying of the bird are in themselves unpleasant; it is the immediacy and violence with which they are all thrown onto the screen that achieves the effect of making one start, almost jump or shudder, when one watches the film for the first time. After the vaguely too still, too dark screen, the feeling achieved by the sudden and unexpected light-burst combined with the music is somewhat equivalent to standing alone in a completely dark room when, without any prior warning, someone simultaneously turns the lights on and slaps you across the cheek. The effect is followed again by a profound stillness. A soothing, rather captivating voice reads from the book of Revelation. The surroundings remind one of the stillness in Heaven of which the voice reads. The camera changes to a shot of a rocky beach under a desolate sky underscored by the solemn and repetitive, almost calming and mesmerizing sound of the waves. There are neither trees nor life-forms anywhere in sight, nothing moves but the ocean. A short distance from the shore the ruins of a castle are repeatedly washed over by the waves. The camera then closes in on the sleeping form of the knight. His jaw square, his face and hair a sharp contrast against the dark and craggy rocks upon which he lies, he appears to be dead and not merely sleeping. One has to concentrate just to be sure that he is breathing. One is reminded that the stillness in Heaven mentioned in Revelation is a stillness that directly precedes Armageddon. With these eerily gloomy images the film begins, as Bergman creates an impression of quiet desperation to introduce his audience to the unfolding of his tale. Bergman brings his viewer straight to the edge of the abyss and forces him to stare down into it, his eyes glued to the screen. The knight' s character is most developed through his relationship to other characters, and it is in these relationships that answers to many of the most difficult questions of the film are found. The relationship between the squire and the knight is particularly interesting, because it is the squire with whom the knight spends the most time. They have been together since before they left for the Crusades some ten years earlier, and they have endured everything together since that time. Considering this fact, their relationship seems incredibly distant and silent. They are never openly hostile to one another, but they are not particularly friendly either. The first human interaction in the film takes place when the knight puts his foot on the squire's back to wake him up. The squire rolls over and hisses at the knight's back before 38 muralist, they are quite tipsy, and Jons is telling the painter that he and his master have just returned from the Crusades. He paints a figure on a small, rectangular stone slab. This image is meant to represent himself. He holds up the slab so that both the painter and the camera have a good view of the comically painted figure, its head jutting forward, shoulders hunched. He says, "This is squire Jons. He grins at Death, mocks the Lord, laughs at himself, and leers at the girls. His world is a Jons-world, believable only to himself, ridiculous to all including himself, meaningless in Heaven, indifferent in Hell." Here is the essential illustration of the fact that Jons has no real faith in anything; he does not feel certain of anything, not even himself. Therefore, he mocks everything, shielding all his passions within the guise of a joke. The knight walks in as Jons is speaking. For a moment he stands and listens, then he walks up, grabs the slab from Jons' hands, looks at it, throws it down, and pushes Jons' shoulder with this hand, signifying for him to get up so they can leave. He walks out of the room. The squire puts down his paintbrush and once more hisses at his master's back before rising, grabs his bag, gestures goodbye to the painter, and follows the knight out the door. It is no wonder that these two so very different personalities do not talk more openly. That part of the soul that seeks knowledge and yearns incessantly for God is diametrically opposed to that part that believes nothing and mocks everytlting. In action the knight and squire get along fine; in fact, they al ways seem to agree about what ought to be done in any given situation, without any discussion. A good example of this is found in the scene with the girl who is about to be burned in the forest. They do not stop to discuss her situation, but both desire to free her, although doing so goes completely against what their society deems acceptable. Yet their perspectives are so opposed that they have difficulty relating on a truly intimate, personal level. The one person to whom the knight does reveal himself is Mia, the juggler' s wife. She and her family are the only characters who help the knight forget his torments even for a moment, the only ones who help him find any solace. Just as the lack of interaction between knight and squire is due to their individual personalities and ways of perceiving the world, so is the ease with which the knight opens up to Mia due to both his personality and to hers and her husband's, as well as to the presence of their son, Mikael. We are introduced to Jof and Mia relatively early in the film; in fact, they are the third and fourth living human beings introduced. Like the introduction of the knight and squire, the first shot of Mia and Jof is of them sleeping. Unlike the knight and squire, they certainly do not seem to be dead. They lie sa.-etched out inside a wagon with a third person, Skat, the leader of their little acting troupe. All three lie straight out with their heads touching at the center of the wagon, Skat's snoring making it completely unmistakable that they are sleeping and .. not dead. Jof awakens and smacks a fly that lands on his forehead. It leaves a mark there. He bears a happy, even goofy, grin upon his face. He crawls out of the wagon carefully so as not to wake the others. With the rest of his body outside the wagon, he stretches out a leg and shakes it. Once outside the wagon he does a forward somersault, jumps to his feet, and executes a few more gymnastic moves. All the while the silly, joyous smile remains on his face. It is hard to watch this scene without smiling yourself. The sun shines full in the sky, and the leaves of the trees make shadows on the ground; in the air light sparkles between the leaves, creating an alm ost magical effect. It is as if nature were mirroring the beautiful simplicity of this man. Jof walks over to where a flask of water hangs from a low tree branch. He talks a large swig of water, gargles, spits, then scratches himself on the head. He steps over to his horse and pats its neck and flank. In a cheery conversational tone, with the same smile still on his face, he says, "Good morning. Have you had your breakfast yet? It's a pity you can't teach me to eat grass. Can't you show me how? We're a little hard up. People aren't very interested in juggling in this part of the country." He says this not with anger at his condition, or sorrow, or self-pity. He speaks matter-of-factly, even contentedly. He sits on a fallen tree branch and begins to j uggle, the camera watching his profile. It is as if this man were in a completely differently world from the one that contains both the dismal sky and the rocky seashore of the first scene and the soul tormented by death. He is like a child playing with his toys, who reminds us not of death but of the joy and newness of life. The sky is full of light, dancing between the trees. Jof seems startled by something, but not frightened so much as pleasantly surprised. He stops juggling and turns very slowly toward the camera, his whole body bathed in light. Upon his face there is a look of bliss that is warming and just short of being comical. He gazes out at something. There is beautiful music, like woodwinds an d chimes, reminiscent of birds singing. The light, the music, and Jof's facial expression convey a feeling of spiritual bliss, especially when compared to the scenes of death that both precede and follow this moment. The camera shifts its view to show us exactly what Jof is watching. Off in the distance, between two patches of trees, is a woman dressed as a noblewoman of late medieval times. In her hands she holds the hands of a small, naked male child, helping him to walk along his toes . The can1era reverts to a shot of Jof sitting upon the fallen tree branch, the light playing gently against his face. He raises his palms and slowly rnbs his eyes. Suddenly, the music stops. After looking up once more, Jof turns and runs over to the wagon, jumps inside, and attempts to shake his sleeping wife awake. Jof tells Mia of his vision, and her entire face erupts into a smile. She sits up next to her already seated husband. 39 �Jof has obviously been waiting for her to ask to hear the stmy. As he talks animately, Mia leans forward, smiling and listening lo his words. He says, "She was so close to me that I could have touched her. She had a gold crown and a blue robe with flowers." As Jof speaks, Mia gazes at him with a look of obvious love and devotion. Meanwhile, Jof is completely absorbed in the rapture of both his story and the act of telling it. He continues, caught up in a feeling of awe that transforms his face. "She was teaching the child to walk by holding him with a small brown hand. She saw me watching her. .. and she smiled at me. My eyes filled with tears ... and when I wiped them away, she was gone. And everything was so still in the sky and on the earth. Do you understand?" Jof speaks of a stillness just as Revelation 5 does, but unlike the earlier stillness on the beach, this stillness is joyful. "You don't believe me," says Jof, turning his head and beginning to put on his shoes. "But it was real, I tell you, not the kind of reality you see everyday but a different kind." Jof is like a small child who has just been told that Santa Claus is not real, but who believes no matter what he is told since he once sat on Santa's lap at the mall. Unlike a small child, however, Jof knows that what he believes goes directly against what others call "reality." As a character, Jof, with his visions, goes against everything logical and every form of normal human experience. He has neither the.knowledge that the knight searches for nor the sarcastic and witty sense of humor of the squire. Somehow, he seems better off than either of these two, despite having what modem psychologists might call psychotic hallucinations. Why is this? Jof, with his daydreaming and childlike nature, is willing to accept ideas that other people would not be open to. This openness is the nature that Christ refers to in Mark 10:14-15 when he tells his disciples, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." Here is a complete contrast to the torment of the knight; here is the sort of belief that the knight claims he cannot have. Jof is not a man who feels that God is "hiding himself in a mist of half-spoken promises and unseen miracles"; he is a man who sees miracles with his own two eyes. What the knight cannot grasp with his intellect, the juggler achieves through a simple, childlike faith. The knight worries, but the juggler spends his days bathing in the light of the sun. The first always strives to be rational but laments that he is "imprisoned in [his] dreams and fantasies." The second has visions of the Virgin Mary but calls them "reality" and is content. Mia smooths over her long, blonde hair with the palm of her hand. "Perhaps it was the kind of reality you told us about when you saw the Devil paint the wagon wheels red, using his tail as a brush." Jof turns his head and mumbles, "Why must you always bring that up?" whom he sees is the Child; the song that he sings 1s joy. At this point the camera show us Skat crawling out of the wagon wearing a Death mask, which looks remarkably like a cross between Death's face and the face of the dead peasant whom Jons and the knight encountered along the road. There are two eye socket holes and a pale, expressionless face. As Skat jumps out of the wagon he complains, "Is this supposed to be a mask for an actor? If the priests didn't pay us so well, I'd say, 'No thanks.'" Skat is that part of man's soul that, even in the face of the most gruesome death, thinks only of material and sensual gratification. He is definitely not the contemplative man. While the knight is tormented by a conflicting sense of logic and yearning for God, the squire chooses to deny that truth exists in anything and yet places value on life, and Mia and Jof share in a simple domestic faith, Skat seeks only sensual gratification and considers neither philosophy, logic, nor faith. His face is scruffy, and he wears an earring. Skat puts on the Death mask and dramatically recites a monologue in an overly dramatic voice that is meant to be the voice of death. After he has finished reciting, he raises the mask onto his forehead using both hands, turns toward Mia and Jof, and says in his usual voice, "Will the women love me in this get-up? Will I make a hit?" Jof shrugs. Again the image of Death is tied to the most basic sensual aspect of life. Through Skat's offhand comment, the image of Death is rendered comic by the actor. The image that Skat makes is one of Death, but Death as a comic, sensual, even ridiculous figure. Skat slumps back over to the wagon. On his way inside he hangs the mask upon a tree branch, so that a stick pokes straight through one of the eye sockets, and the comic is again transcended by the gruesome. Mia and J oflook at each other and laugh good-naturedly. They turn around smiling and Jof begins to juggle again. Mia stands behindJof, leaning against the fallen branch and watching her husband juggle. "Jof! " she says suddenly, a look of profound contentment resting upon her face. "What is it?" "Sit still ... don't move." "What do you mean?" asks Jof, still juggling. Mia leans forward and says softly, "I love you." In the background is playing the same music as when Jof saw the vision of Mary, making this moment out to be just as spiritual, blissful, and important as the first. God's love for humanity is mirrored in the love that Mia and J of have for each other. A profound smile crosses J of' s face; he stops juggling and turns to gaze at his wife. The scene fades away, and the music is gone. In this moment we are given the first major insight into the nature of man's salvation. Happiness and spiritual bliss are embodied in the simplicity of love. Mia and Jof's love is not a complicated love tormented by jealousy or guilt, or a love wrenched apart by a bizarre need to articulate and define its nature. It is an emotion that fills and then overflows into a smile of admiration, of devotion, of joy. Mia and Jof have a "And then you discovered that you had red paint under your nails." "Well, perhaps that time I did make it up, but that was just so you would believe my other visions. The real ones, the ones I didn't make up." The irony here is that Jof, with his simple faith, is not exempt from human folly. He is no prim and proper saint, but is given to lying about the most saintly thing about himself, his visions. Furthermore, he not only lies, but he also does it poorly enough that he is discovered. He is more like a child than what most would consider a saint to be. Mia and Jof go outside the wagon. Mia sets Mikael down on the grass, and the camera focuses on him until he crawls out of its view. They talk of Mikael's future. One of the greatest differences between Mia and Jof and the other characters in the film is that they have a child. To have a son is to have both a legacy and hope for the future. Furthermore, to raise a child one has to be other-centered to a large degree. The members of a family must consider, in everything they do, what is best for the entire family; therefore, they have less time to worry about themselves, to be self-indulgent or self-pitying. In addition, a husband and a wife can discuss their problems with each other. One of the knight's greatest torments is that he is withdrawn into himself and has no one to bring him out of his miserable and agonized state. One of the squire's greatest problems is that he thinks about himself too much and has no one to chastise him or point out the inconsistencies in his behavior. The man who spends his life within his own mind winds up with a warped view of reality; the man who lives life for his family may not be wise in a philosophical sense, but he is certainly more in touch with the world than the first man. Mia lays her head against his chest, places her hand against his left shoulder, and closes her eyes. There is something splendid in a way that seems even enchanted about Mia's personality, which allows her to accept and even admire (despite her chastising) Jof's faithful nature. Although she claims not to believe Jof's visions, she listens to them quite eagerly, even with a certain amount of obvious joy and admiration. She too is in some ways like a child who lets another person's joy become her own; she lets his ardor overwhelm her. Jof gently begins to sing a song that is similar in mood and tone, but not identical to, the music that played when he saw his vision of the Virgin. The melody conveys the same spiritual joy, although to a lesser degree. The similarity of the music ties the beauty of the vision to the beauty of Jof's created image: his song to God is tied to the vision which is God's song to him. The words to Jof's song are, "On a lily branch a dove is perched/ Against the Summer Sky/ She sings a wondrous song of Christ/ And there's great joy on high." Jof's Christ is very different from the tormented crucifix of the confessional scene; Jof' s is a joyous God. The Christ love that is unconditional in nature, in the sense that one loves the other despite their actions. The unconditional love that they share is reminiscent of agape, God's love for man. They have a childlike faith in each other. They are a living metaphor, a God-created image of His love for man. Whereas God's love is mirrored in the unconditional marital love of Mia and Jof, the most selfish, unloving character presented in the film is the one most closely associated with the Church. This is perhaps an illustration that the search for faith must happen on an individual level; no help can be expected from society or the Church as an organization. Although there is no hope given that the knight, or the viewer, may be capable of obtaining the faithful simplicity that Mia and Jof personify, there is an indication - in the play of light, the choice of music, the camera angles - that Mia and Jof ought to be admired and thought of as blessed. Quite different is the introduction tq Raval. Jons steps into a barn in a seemingly dese1ted little village to refill his water flask. A peasant woman lies dead, face down upon the floor, her arms outstretched. There is a noise from up in the loft and Jons hides behind the door as a man holding a large satchel backs down the stepladder. The man walks into the front room, bends down before the corpse, slides an armlet off her right wrist, and places it in his bag. He is startled by a noise and looks to see a young woman who has , at just that moment, stepped into the doorway. The girl says nothing and makes no noise. He walks over to her and, standing so close to her that their noses nearly touch, tells her not to scream. He pushes her away from the doorway as Jons steps out from behind the door and stands facing Raval. "I recognize you," says Jons. "Your name is Raval, from the theological college at Roskilde. You are Dr. Mirabilis, Coelestis et Diabilis. Am I not right? You were the one who, ten years ago , convinced my master of the necessity to join a better-class crusade to the Holy Land." Jons slams the barn door shot as Raval looks away. "You look uncomfortable," says the squire to Raval. "Do you have a stomachache?" Here is a man who steals from the dead, who would kill an innocent young woman to ensure not getting caught, and is also a doctor at a seminary. It is especially significant that this is the man who convinced the knight to go on the Crusades. People like Mia and Jof, who feel real love and experience love daily, would not likely advise anyone to go to war. A man who steals from the dead could easily condone killing. He is the complete hypocrite, who says that he is the messenger of God, but who really is only the messenger of hypocrisy, deceit, and Death. Raval represents the most evil and corrupt aspects of the human soul, the inclination to lie, steal, and cheat for the sake of one's own greedy ulterior motives present in all men, although more evidently in some than others. Jons pulls Raval around by his clothes and throws him up against a chopping block for wood. He pulls out a knife and 41 40 • �face of Death, which allows humanity to survive without going insane; that is the ability to have fun, to be entertained. The ability to play, to daydream, and to make up stories is beautiful: it makes us artists; it makes us human beings. It is certainly not surprising that the two people who are happiest and together partake in a sort of salvation are jugglers and actors. Their whole life centers around entertainment and play. Even their portrayals of Death are playful. puts it to Raval's throat. The girl in the doorway raises her hands to her face and screams. Jons looks up at her and then back down at Raval. "By all means. I'm not bloodthirsty," he says glancing at the girl, and lets Raval go. The young woman is quite the opposite of Raval. This man, who was stealing jewelry from a dead woman who she had most likely known, was about to kill her, and yet she screamed when he was about to die a few moments later. This scream is particularly significant because it is one of only two occasions in the entire movie when she makes any sound at all. Later in the film, she attempts to give water to Raval as he is about to die, although she knows that by doing so she risks catching the plague from him. The girl represents the inarticulate instinct that man has to help his fellow creatures. Unfortunately, this trait, like Raval's hypocdsy, is more regularly seen in some people than in others. In some, like Raval, it seems totally crushed, forgotten, or ignored. Raval is part of the Church as an institution, and he is a personification of a part of the soul, but he is also an individual. For Bergman, the individual is more important than the situation or the institution. The primary illustration of this is that he makes plot secondary to character; the plot is dependant on character and not vice versa. Even the camera is obsessed with close-ups of faces, the face being the signature of individuality. Bergman is not against individual faith so much as he is against the institutional aspects of the church, especially its tendency toward encouraging self-persecution. Into Mia's mouth he puts the statement, "I don't see why people have to torture themselves as often as they can." And he makes the most obviously gruesome scene in the film one that involves both the church and self-persecution, causing it to appear even more macabre by following what is probably the funniest scene in the whole film. In a village, Mia, Jof, and Skat have set up their wagon, folding the back area out into a small, makeshift stage. Mia and Jof begin to sing a song, with Mia accompanying on drum and J of on the lyre. The melody is an upbeat one, but the words are all about death and are reminiscent of the book of Revelation. The first verse is "The horse is up the tree crowing. The road is wide but the gate is narrow. The Black One lands on the shore." Each time an animal noise is mentioned, Mia and Jof make that noise. At the end of the verse Mia bangs the drum twice. The bawdy and comical behavior of people is natural; juxtaposed with the macabre and unnatural act of self-flagellation, it is seen as a positive and important part of man's existence. Bergman focuses heavily on laughter and portrays it as a good. Self-persecution, on the other hand, is unnatural, even evil. A similar juxtaposition of the bawdy and comical with the horrific and macabre was seen earlier in the songs of the squire and the scene with Skat and the Death mask. Again it is seen in the songs of Mia and Jof. There is something in man that perseveres even in the Perhaps the difference between Mia and Jof and others (Skat or Jons, for example) is that although Mia and Jof are given to frivolity, they do not deny the existence of God or Death, but accept them. Part of what is so beautiful about Jof is that he has the ability to daydream well and is not ashamed of it. The reason we are so compelled by his vision is that he is so drawn into it and his recounting of it. His description of his vision is very beautiful and poetic. In contrast, much of the knight's agony is derived from his inability to accept his own imaginations and intuitions . Mia and Jof, smiling, finish their song with the words, "The sow lays eggs and the cat grunts. The night is soot and the dark remains. The Black One stays and stays upon the shore." The last few words fade into the deep Latin chants of an approaching processional. It is the people who call themselves the Slaves of Sin, the horrific figures of which the painter spoke, the image come to life. They are even more horrid, more macabre, than the painter hinted. Mia and Jof stand close together upon the stage with looks of great shock upon their faces. This self-persecution is beyond their comprehension. The processional of people includes men and women in rags, children, a man missing one leg, a monk carrying a cross upon his back, the sound of wailing, crowns of thorns upon bleeding heads, and a man who whips his own forearm. Some of the people are whipped by others. Some can hardly walk any longer. All the people who had just been watching the performance now stand or kneel before this spectacle. Some have expressions of disbelief upon their faces, others of shock, sadness, fear, and some register no emotion at all. There are nothing but faces, so many close-ups of faces. Soldiers kneel, the crosses of their swords pressed closely before them; a woman falls on the ground weeping, her hands clutched desperately in prayer. The sound of moaning, weeping, and wailing rises into the air like the smells of smoke and rotting refuse rising into the air above a burning trash heap. The very same crucifix seen during the confessional scene rests diagonally against the stage. A flat-nosed monk begins to speak. It is none other than Raval, the seminarist. He shouts at the crowd, pointing accusing fingers at various people, proclaiming that they are all doomed and that their deaths may come at any moment. The presence of the crucifix 42 from the knight's confessional scene links together the knight's mental torture and the people's unholy self-mutilation. The diagonal composition once more echoes the pain. And in the mouth of the only truly evil character in the film Bergman puts the words, "Do you know, you ins(m'Sible fools, that you shall die today or tommrnw, or the next, because you have all been doomed? Do you hear what I say? Do you hear the word? You have been doomed, doomed, doomed!" In the background, behind the crucifix and still standing upon the stage are Mia and Jof, still standing very close together with looks of shock upon their faces . The fact that Bergman places these words in Rava.l's mouth illustrates that he thinks it an evil of mankind that a man is prone to torture himself over the prospect of his own impending damnation, worse yet to torture other members of his species with the threat of it. The crucifix behind Raval is symbolic of two things: a wordless God and the spiritual torment and seeking of the knight, being symbolic of the knight because it is associated with the scene where his character is most directly revealed. Both the silence of God in his wounded state and the desperate searching of a man such as the knight are steeped in pain and are linked to the horrible evils of self-flagellation in which these wretched people engage themselves. And yet the crucifixion forms a path, albeit a pain-filled one, to the two people who are closest to any sort of real salvation. As Mia and Jof stand upon the stage, the cross forms a path at their feet. It is a visual image that takes the search for self-knowledge and the eyes of a wordless God and makes itself a link between pointless self-flagellation and unconditional love. After praying loudly with much crying while lying or kneeling upon the ground, the "Slaves of Sin" rise slowly, turn, and begin to walk away. The camera watches them as they exit the screen from the lower left to the upper right-hand comer. Soon only a few are left, then none. The camera lingers uncomfortably for a moment, focusing on nothing but the dry, sunbaked grass upon which these people so recently stumbled. Bergman wants us to be uncomfortable; he does not want us to forget this scene easily. He therefore gives us a moment to reflect before he continues on with the story, a moment to rest. There are so many scenes of torment within the film that one is likely to consider the whole world a bleak arid desolate place if he forgets the few scenes of hope. Indeed, upon a first viewing, the scenes of the processional and of the deaths of the characters are the most memorable. Upon the third or fourth viewing these scenes are equally memorable, but other scenes begin to take on even greater significance. Although it is a quiet, peaceful, subtle, and even easily forgotten scene, the scene in which Mia, Jof, the knight, the squire, and the young woman share a humble meal of wild strawberries and fresh milk is quite possibly one of the most important scenes in the film. Mia, Jof, and Skat's wagon sit on a flat spot of a long, sharply-sloping hill. Mia sits alone playing with Mikael. A short distance away the knight sits leaning against a rock, apparently lost in thought until he looks up and sees Mia and the baby. As he watches these two a smile crosses his face for the first time in the entire film. The knight is moved to speak, and asks Mia her son's age. They chat pleasantly, Mia smiling and displaying a modest but obvious pride in her son. It is the presence of the child which begins to draw the knight out of his revery. The presence of a child reminds him of simplicity, innocence, and familial love. In this boy there is a reminder of the future, the fact that mankind survives, in spite of the plague. If all of Bergman's characters represent fragments of the soul, then Mikael represents the youth, innocence, and hope for the future that are important to the lives of all men. The knight is especially drawn to this, because he has lost touch with his hope, his innocence, his faith in the future. His struggles with God stem largely from his inability to assume a childlike state, and yet it is the power of the presence of children that makes one's own sorrows seem trivial. Jof returns, and upon his suggestion, Mia goes into the wagon and comes back with two shallow wooden bowls, one filled with wild strawberries, the other with fresh milk. These she places before her husband and the knight who are already seated on the ground; she spreads a light colored sheet in lieu of a table. Jons and the young woman approach on a horse and Mia invites them to join them . The sun is bright but somewhat low in the evening sky. Mia lays down upon the ground and smiles her warm, enchanted smile. Her hair is pulled back except for one small strand which curls a bit at the end. The camera, close-up, sighs and smiles down upon her. She articulates her beautiful and simple view of life, saying, "One day is like another. There is nothing strange about that. The Summer, of course, is better than the Winter, because in Summer you don't have to be cold. But Sp1ing is best of all." As she says these last words she moves her head from side to side with pleasure. A short while later J of retrieves his lyre. He plays the song of Spring and of Christ that he sang earlier to Mia, musically transferring the spiritual beauty of that scene to this scene. Once again music is used to reveal the interconnectedness between the two scenes. Behind J of, the Death mask hangs from a pole stuck in the ground. And yet, next to Jof' s face, the mask does not look so gruesome. There is such a comic look of bliss upon his face as he plays that the death mask looks quite harmless. As he plays, Mia chats with the knight. She asks him if he has a "beloved." A pensive look and far-off sort of smile come over the knight's face. He begins to tell Mia of his wife, whom he has not seen since he left for the Crusades. In his eyes there is a look of love but also of loneliness, sorrow that this period of his life has past. For once his words are not logical or tormented by lyrical. Although his speech is usually limited and 43 �"Of course," replies Death, and then bows his head down to look at the board, his chin resting against his hand. A few moments later he looks up and then back down at the board again as he makes his move. "I take your knight," he tells his opponent. "As you were meant to," comes the reply. "Have you tricked me?" "Of course." The knight, with his new sense of purpose, has perhaps begun to win the chess game. He has tricked Death, proving that even Death is far from omniscient. This knowledge will be important very soon. "Are you going to escort the juggler and his wife through the forest? " asks Death. "Those whose names are Jof and Mia and who have a small son." The knight's smile disappears. "Why do you ask?" he says suspiciously, accusingly. "Oh no reason at all," replies Death, once more looking down at the chess board. There is a burst of foreboding music and the scene fades away into the next. The little band of characters forms a processional through the forest. The knight rides first, then the squire with the young woman sitting behind him on his horse. Mia and Jof follow behind in the wagon with their baby. Plog, the husband of the woman who ran off with Jonas Skat, also comes along, having told Jons that he is lonely and doesn't want to go home because everyone will make fun of him . He is quite drunk and carries a sledgehammer. A smith by trade, he is neither particularly handsome nor intelligent, but he is as well-meaning as possible. He represents the well-intentioned but foolish part of the soul, easily deceived and easily appeased. In the eerie night there is a sense of foreboding . Jof and Mia lean up against a tree somewhat away from the others, Mia with Mikael in her arms. Nearby the knight sits, staring down at his chessboard. Death approaches him to finish their game. Jof looks up and sees them playing. He awakens his wife and tells her what he has seen. Despite the fact that her own eyes show her only the knight, Mia believes that Jof sees something more, and that what he sees is real. She believes in her husband even though she sees nothing at all. She has faith in this faith even after the incident with the painted wagon wheels. Her good trusting nature and love for her husband allow her to have faith in him. Furthermore, her long association with Jof has taught her that despite his eccentricities, he is well-meaning and always acts for what he believes to be her own good. Faith must come through love and through the trust which develops over time as the object of faith proves to be constant and worthy of trust. In this sense, faith in God is no different from faith in one's spouse. This is another way in which Mia and Jof, as a couple, are an image of God's love for man. Jof tells Mia that they must attempt an escape, and she agrees to try. He rises and tiptoes toward the wagon. Mia reveals little about himself, to Mia he tells a story complete with poetic details. Her loving nature brings him back to the love which he had himself forgotten. "We were newly married," he muses. "And we played together. We laughed a great deal. I wrote songs to her eyes, to her nose, to her beautiful little ears. We went hunting together and at night we danced." With love comes joy, laughter, play. This one little paragraph reveals nearly as much about the knight as does the confessional scene. He too is capable of happiness, of laughter, and of image-making in writing poetry. Perhaps it is the pain which he felt after leaving his love which caused him to shut out this aspect of his personality. To love is to risk pain. The act of sun-ende1ing to emotion, intuition, or childlike faith requires the ability and willingness to risk pain. "Faith is a torment," he tells Mia. "It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call." Mia does not understand but looks honestly concerned. The knight looks down at her, the first person in the film who really seems to be listening to him, and he shakes his head as if shaking away a mirage, then smiles. "Everything I've said seems meaningless and unreal while I sit here with you and your husband. How unimportant it all becomes suddenly," he says. He takes the strawberries from Mia's extended hand and eats them, as if he were finally accepting the gift of love which she is offering. It is not unlike the Christian symbol of Communion. Perhaps this moment is the closest we see the knight come to achieving salvation. He does not believe that he could ever achieve the childlike faith and unconditional love which Mia and Jof display, but he is willing to try and content himself with the knowledge that this kind of faith does exist. Mia and Jof are a sign that there is divinity among men, an image of the love of God. The knight cannot make himself become like Mia and Jof, but he can enjoy and protect what they are. As a knight in the Crusades, as a nobleman and as an intellectual, he found no real nobility or fulfillment. Finally, in the presence of a family, he discovers a purpose for his chivalry, a reason for being a knight. He picks up the bowl of milk carefully in both hands so as not to spill a drop. His voice is soft and calm as he speaks. The camera focuses on him quietly, as the sun sets behind him with a soft burst of color against the horizon. His words are soothing. " I shall remember this moment. The silence, the twilight, the bowl of strawberries and milk, your faces in the evening light. Mikael sleeping, Jof with his lyre. I'll try to remember what we have talked about. I'll carry this memory between my hands as carefully as if it were a bowl of fresh milk. And it will be an adequate sign - it will be enough for me." He rises, turns, and goes to keep his chess appointment with Death. "Why do you look so satisfied?" asks Death, as they sit over the chess board. "That's my secret," replies the knight. 44 stands staring at the knight for a moment, then turns and humes over to Jof, cradling the sleeping child in her arms. At just that moment the knight looks up from the chessboard and sees Mia and Jof sneaking away. He turns and knocks over several pieces with his cloak, pretending that he wants Death to think it was an accident. He looks down at the board and then up at Death again. "I've forgotten how the pieces stood," he tells Death. "But I have not," replies Death with a little laugh. "You can't get off that easily." As Death sets the pieces back up on the board, the knight continues to watch Mia and Jof over Death's shoulder. Their wagon begins to pull away, slowly and quietly. Death, absorbed in fixing the pieces, takes no notice whatsoever. He sets the last figure upright, glances at the board for a moment, and then looks up at the knight. "Now I see something interesting," he says. "What do you see?" stammers the knight quickly, obviously worried that Death has seen Mia andJofattempting their escape. "You are mated on the next move," replies Death. ''That's true," says the knight softly, his voice filled with relief that the juggler and his wife and son have not been caught and hindered in their escape. He may die, but Mia and Jof will get away. Yet the significance of the knight's noble deed does not lie in the deed itself. Rather it lies in the motivation behind it. The knight's association with the unconditional love and simple domestic faith of Mia, J of, and their son, has filled him with love and remembrance that beauty does exist in people, in God' s creatures on Earth. The light of Mia and her family has seeped into his life and has given him the proper motivation for completing his "one meaningful deed." However, helping Mia and Jof escape is a truly great act not because it was done and done successfully , but because it was done from selfless love. Soon it is morning. The knight, the squire, the young woman, the smith, and the smith's wife all walk slowly up a rocky incline toward the knight's castle in single file. The sun shines in the sky, and the waves of the sea ebb and flow far below at their backs. The film has come full circle. Despite all the changes and developments which have occurred, the viewer finds himself once more upon a rocky, somewhat desolate seashore. Of course, there are several differences. The film began with ruins of a castle in the sea and the knight and Jons riding through the ruins of a castle. The castle here is nearly as empty, nearly as dreary, but it is not nearly so inhospitable; the walls still stand firmly and it looks well-kept. This is meant to be the opposite shore, but one cannot really tell that from the looks of the ten-ain. The sea is constant and looks the same no matter where one goes. In time the water will wash away this castle as well. It is a symbol of the constancy of nature and how fleeting the life of man is in comparison. All the characters go inside and are greeted by the knight's wife. Only she has stayed behind to welcome the knight home; everyone else has fled from the plague. She prepares a small meal and reads from th'e book of Revelation as they eat. "And when the Lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in Heaven for about the space of half an hour. And I saw seven angels which stood before God, and to them were given seven trumpets." All are completely silent as she reads, eating or gazing down at the table; all reflect this silence. Only the silent young woman looks up and out the window, where a ray shines into the darkness. She alone sees the light that is symbolic of God's presence, Jesus often being referred to as the "light of the world" in the New Testament. Again there is a sense of coming full circle, because the words that the knight's wife reads are the same words read by the voice at the beginning. It is reminiscent of, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." What began with a quote from Revelation and the mesmerizing waves of the sea goes back to the sea, quoting exactly the same passage. Three booming knocks sound downstairs at the door. Jons lights a torch and goes out into the corridor and downstairs to see who it is. Meanwhile the knight's wife continues to read. Jons returns alone and throws his torch into the fire before sitting down again, a very severe look upon his face. The earlier chess scene when the knight sacrificed his knight in order to put Death's king in check has proven to be prophetic. The knight has sacrificed himself in order to trick Death and aid Mia and Jof in their escape; he has finally accomplished a deed which is worthy of the title "knight." In those who are of faith he has found a purpose, which allows him to defeat Death, although in a different way than he may have originally intended. The decision to help Mia, Jof, and Mikael escape is not a logical one but an emotional and intuitive one; however, the escape is aided by logic. In knocking over the pieces, the knight has broken the logical rules of the game, but in so doing he has made the best use of his intellect and has really won the game. His life will soon end, but his goal has been accomplished; he has found some fulfillment in a decision made through love and executed through the intellect. He has finally utilized the capacity of his whole soul. "Did you enjoy your reprieve?" asks Death. "Yes, I did" replies theknight in a resolute tone. Although he is still tormented by the question of God's existence and the awareness of his own wretchedness, he is satisfied in having achieved his one important goal. With the escape of Mia and Jof, and especially Mikael, comes the guarantee of the survival of the best sort of humanity. Despite spiritual turbulence and plague, the personification of love, fidelity, childlike fmth, youth, and hope for the future will always survive, for they are beautiful, enchanted, and will always be protected by those who truly seek to do good. 45 �A melancholy music is added to the silence. The young woman turns in her chair to face a figure who approaches from out of the corridor. It is Death. All the characters rise to face him. The knight stands behind the others, praying feverishly, his hands covering his face in sorrow. Even now, despite the sense of purpose and achievement he found with Mia and Jof and his noble deed, he is tormented, lacks a sense of completeness, and feels his own wretchedness. Yet, in his final prayer, he uses the words "us" and "we", showing that Mia and Jof have taught him something of love. Perhaps the expe1ience of unconditional love combined with the sense of his own confused wretchedness has placed him , at the moment of his death, closer to God than at any other moment in his life. As a young married man he experienced love; as a world-weary knight he felt his own wretchedness, but only at the end of life does he experience both simultaneously. This places him at last in a position to begin to comprehend the unique marriage of unconditional love and intense suffering that is found in Christ on the cross. It is this which allows him, finally, to pray in utter humility. Does he achieve salvation? Whether he does or not, he is certainly closer to God at the moment of his death than he was the day before. The squire stares straight ahead and tells the knight not to worry about eternity, in denial even to the end. Plog and his wife stand together; she curtsies. The knight's wife looks determined and keeps a brave face. The young woman kneels, a look of thankful bliss upon her face. The camera lingers on her face. "It is the end," she says, quoting the crucifixion scene from Matthew. Of all the characters left after Mia and Jofs escape, she is the one who is most in tune with the instinct to help others, and she is the one who most welcomes Death. In the morning, the sun is shining brightly, glistening off the sea. On the beach there is a wagon from which Jof and Mia, with Mikael in her anns, have emerged. Jof gazes into the distance and sees the knight, Skat, Plog, Jons, and the others dancing off in the distance, led away by Death as they shed bitter tears. The viewer sees them as well, upon a hilltop, following Death in a line. Are they really dancing or only being led away like a prison gang? We cannot see their faces in order to look for tears. It is a beautiful but uncertain image. Mia chides Jof gently and they both gaze at their son briefly, before turning and leading the wagon away, walking toward the sunlight - Mia and Jof, like Mary and Joseph escaping to Egypt with the Light of the World. With this image the film ends. Our humanity, and its most important aspects, are revealed in the images we create. Furthermore, there is something of God's nature that comes across in the images we make. Just as people can be seen as images of God, so can the images people create mirror God's image. Reflecting upon the images, we gain much insight into our own natures and a tiny glimpse into God's. We add ow· perceptions to those of others and are encourages to ponder the topics that most concern us, to consider the nature of God and our relationship to him, to wonder how we might best come to achieve salvation. The consideration of Bergman's film involves all aspects of our nature. The emotional and intuitive react to the images of the film and are then analyzed by the rational. The tormented seeker, the mocking doubter, the loving, childlike faith, hope for the future, instinct to help others and do good, the materialist and the sensualist, the evil hypocrite, and dumb well-meaningness - all parts of the soul are confronted and engaged by the film. "In our fear we make an image," says the knight, and this is what Bergman himself has done. Bergman, involved in the search for his own sense of purpose, has created an image which makes its viewer ask the same questions and seek answers to them. In bringing my own perceptions and experiences to the understanding and interpretation of Bergman' s, I have found answers to many questions and more questions to the answers which I already had. The question of Goo's existence is never answered by the film; the knight dies filled with spiritual uncertainty. Even his one meaningful deed does not absolve him from his sense of wretchedness, or allow him to subdue God within himself. The glimpses of God which are seen in the film are veiled with doubt Mia and Jof are a pale image of God's love, but they are an image nonetheless and one in which the knight finds some fulfillment. Perhaps he never achieves real salvation; yet he finds purpose in the love and protection of them, of their faith, and their future. Bergman offers no insight into how one achieves such faith; in fact he seems to believe that it may be impossible, but his portrayal of Mia and Jof reveals and exalts their spirituality and the spiritual aspect of their love. In the church as an organization there is no salvation. In self-persecution and man's inhumanity to man are found the greatest, basest and most macabre evils. In the bawdy and comic there is joy but not a lasting salvation. To help another human being in a selfless act of love is the greatest act of which man is capable. In this there lies a pale image of God's selfless sacrifice for the sake of mankind. Ingmar Bergman, in making "The Seventh Seal" has created a series of images which encourage questioning, which leads to the self-examination, and possibly to a new understanding of God and man.By encouraging this questioning, Bergman is benefitting mankind in a very different way from the knight, but in an equally important and powerful one. With each viewing of the film, the questioning is renewed, more answers are found, and more questions are discovered. With "The Seventh Seal" Bergman has created a legacy of timeless questions embedded in a legacy of timeless imagery. He has created a film to be adored and meditated upon by the entire soul, and to be watched again and again. 46 Bibliography The Holy Bible, New International Version. Colorado Springs, CO: International Bible Society, 1984. Bergman, Ingmar. Four Screenplays oflngma.r Bergman. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1960. Bergman, Ingmar. The Magic Lantern. New York: Penguin Books, 1988. Bergman, Ingmar. "The Seventh Seal". Svenskfilmindustri/Janus Films, Inc. , 1956. Pascal, Blaise. Pensees. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1943. 47 �nThe Beauty of Francesca da Rimini-Dante' s Divine Comedy LJ Carrie L. Sager Dante's l nferno is the home of eternal sin.Inside its walls the "people who have lost the good of the intellect," and all hope, endure forever.Their unrepentant lives on earth have earned them eternal damnation.Dante takes great care in making their punishment fitting for their sin - the punishment is the sin.Sometimes the appearance of these sinners is enough to portray the essence of their sin.At other times, the cmrnption of these souls lies deeper than the mere distortion of their flesh.For Dante to experience the true nature of their sin, he must speak with these damned souls. Dante gives special recognition to every sin:each sinner has a specific place in the Inferno.He divides sin into three categories: Incontinence, Violence, and Fraud.Furthermore, there is a hierarchy of sin.While all sin dooms the soul, in the Divine Comedy there is a gradation.The Inferno is structured by this ranking of sin.Fraud - the deliberate misuse of the intellect - is the worst sin for Dante.Consequently, the Fraudulent are sunk into the nethermost depths of Hell.Violence finds its place in a region above Fraud, and Incontinence, the least damnable of these three sins, is punished in the uppermost regions of Hell. In Inferno V, Dante begins his descent into Hell proper.He is immediately thrown into a confrontation with Minos, the maitre d' of Hell.As if through the eyes of an unrepentant sinner, Dante sees Minos as the malicious, bestial, relentless judgment of Hell itself.But Dante is a repentant sinner, and by the grace of God he passes unscathed beyond Minos to the second circle.Once inside, he receives his first impression of Hell: the circle of the Lustful. Before Dante beholds this spectacle, however, he is at first overwhelmed by "the notes of pain."This music gives rise to a scene in his mind's eye: "Cross" No.3 - Nathan James Humphrey peaceful, but Dante's meeting with Francesca is particularly perplexing.Before Dante sees Francesca, he sees a band of illustrious shades.He describes them as the "knights and ladies of old times," and is disturbed to find them here in Hell.Upon seeing them, he stands bewildered and overcome with pity .Instead of choosing to speak to one of those great shades, of whom there are more than a thousand, Dante is instead drawn to Francesca.None of the most renowned lovers of antiquity can wrest Dante's attention for more than a brief momentnot Dido, Semiramis, Achilles, Helen, Paris, Tristan, nor Cleopatra.Yet Francesca, whose name is buried in anonymity by the collage of illustrious sinners, captures Dante's attention and freezes the pilgrim in his tracks.While Dante compares all of the famous shades to a flock of cranes, Francesca alone is described as a dove.In the midst of the darkness that consumes the other sinners, Francesca strangely emerges as the sole ray of light. Dante has not stopped merely to admire the dove-like image of Francesca.He "would gladly speak to the two that go together and seem so light upon the wind." And when he wants to speak to Francesca, he must call her "by the love that leads" her.Although Francesca is a carnal sinner in the circle of the Lustful, she has an air of nobility about her.She will not answer to a beastly mating call; she will only respond to the "loving" call of Dante.Finally, when she is called, the wind does not restrain her: she comes "with wings poised and motionless" to the nest of Dante. This description of Francesca as seeming "so light upon the wind" adds to her unexpected magnetism.While the malignant air "scourges" the illustrious shads, Francesca is neither beaten nor driven by the wind, but floats peacefully.Yet this hardly appears to be the "eternal pain" promised at the gate of Hell.Whey is it that Francesca appears to avoid the punishment meted to her fellow sinners?This discrepancy becomes increasingly visible when the punishment afforded to the Lustful is considered.This requires an examination of the metaphor that Dante employs to describe the condition of the Lustful: birds and the wind. At first, the comparison between the birds and the Lustful seems oddly inappropriate.After all, what other animal seems as innocent and carefree in its natural habitat as does the bird that gracefully floats upon the winds and expresses its freedom with each beat of its wings? How is it possible that these lofty creatures are the analogues of the Lustful who languish in eternal punishment? Dante provides an answer. The wind, nominally the bird's ally in lifting it above all earthy constraints, is the source of The hellish stom1, never resting, seizes and drives the spirits before it; smiting and whirling them about, it torments them.When they come before its fw-y there are shrieks, weeping and lamentation ... (31-35) Dante compares these carnal sinners "who subject reason to desire" to birds receiving eternal punishment from the wind.In a violent whirlwind of fury, the storm feeds upon the spirits in the circle of the Lustful.But there are two birds who are presented as floating above this furious whirlwind: Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, two lovers who are bound together for all eternity.While the other sinners are driven by the whirlwind of restlessness, this pair appears to float peacefully on the wind. When Dante meets the lovers, he focuses almost exclu- eternal punishment for the Lustful.Consider how Dante de- sively on Francesca.Not only is her punishment unexpectedly scribes these birds as thrown into eternal submission: 49 48 �presents love as a grand, undeniable passion that conquers both her and Paolo.Francesca's interpretation is this:great lovers become great through being conquered by love, the most magnificent of passions.For Francesca, Lancelot and Guinevere embodied this greatness.She believes that themark of their greatness was captured in their kiss.Here then is the root of Francesca's submission: she emulated that" great" kiss in order to be immortalized as a great lover. As an unrepentant sinner, what Francesca desired in her earthy life-immortal greatness-she continues to lust after, though she is in Hell.Francesca assumes that Dante, the pilgrim, has "pity for her evil plight (93)."She therefore designs her speeches to glorify herself in the pilgrim's pitying eyes.She models her story from the story of Lancelot and Guinevere: she enshrouds her submission in the poetic depiction of a love story.At the same time, Francesca's carefully contrived rhetoric unmasks her sinful character: Francesca's selfish pride is betrayed by her own words. For instance, when Francesca shamelessly claims "love. .. absolves no one beloved from loving (104)," she is clearly wrapped in vanity .Not only does she honestly envision herself as a glorious victim of love, she even names her own lover, Paolo, as love's accomplice.When Paolo was "seized" by love, she was forced into the role of the beloved, in which she was committed to reciprocating his love.Thus she pridefully, albeit naively, denies all responsibility for her actions.In fact, Francesca's conclusion that "Caina waits for him who quenched our life (107)" is her final exclamation of pride.She assumes that their death for the most noble cause, namely love, will receive its due vengeance. While her pride pervades her words, it is also at the heart of her actions.In her lust for greatness, Francesca claims she submitted herself wholly to love: not as an erotic, carnal desire, but the most magnificent of passions.Dante, moreover, must call her by this love "that leads her," for Francesca only hears the call of love.Yet Dante is not the only person who must bow to Francesca's pride: her own lover Paolo must bow also.While both Francesca and Dante allude to his presence, not once in the entire canto is Paolo actually named.Without formal acknowledgment, Paolo is simply the eternal lover of Francesca.More to the point, as Francesca attempts to glorify herself, Paolo can only stand by her side pitifully and weep. While Francesca assumes that she has earned both greatness of soul and justification for her actions, all that she has trnly earned is a place in Dante's Inferno.For her selfish pride and naive submission, Francesca is eternally punished in the circle of the Lustful.As the Lustful submitted themselves to sexual wantonness, they are eternally punished by lust's fmious whirlwind.Similarly, Francesca's punishment fits her submission and is equally as severe. Francesca is enslaved, like the other shades, by the wind.For instance, Dante could only call Francesca and Paolo after "the wind bent their course" toward him.Although Fran- Enshrouded in this mesmerizing speech is Francesca's testimony to her submission.Yet her speech remarkably does not betray even the slightest hint of resentment.Although the wind in the circle of the Lustful personifies lust as a formidable, malicious force that seemingly drives the spirits into eternal submission, there is a great discrepancy in Francesca' s account: she is most unlike the defenseless bird whose only words are the agonizing "notes of pain. ''Rather than ignore her submission, Francesca recalls it fondly .Francesca presents love as a great, unconquerable passion that nestled itself in her "fair form" with "his charm" gripped both the lovers in a forceful embrace.While she claims that both she and her lover were indeed "seized" by love, they were not stricken with fear.In this embrace, theirs was one life and "one death." Although they languish in Hell, this unconquerable love continues to bind the two lovers together for all eternity. The root of this union is made clear in Francesca's second speech: Hither, thither, downward, upward, it drives them; no hope ever comforts them, not to say of rest, but of less pain (40-45). Thus, in Dante's analogy, these birds are forever beaten by the unending, merciless winds.The "notes of pain" that Dante first heard are sung by these birds as they are continually brutalized by the fury of the wind.And while the wind is their punishment, its fury never rests.In the circle of the Lustful, Dante presents the carnal sinners as these birds who are eternal slaves to the wind.Now the analogy is less cryptic: for Dante, the birds represent the Lustful, and lust is the wind that torments them.In Dante's Hell, Lust is a violent, bestial desire that provides an eternity of relentless agony.The submission to lust imprisons the carnal sinner as does the relentless wind that tortures the birds. Dante describes this submission with a single word: Incontinence.The Incontinents thatDante finds in the second circle of Hell, moreover, have committed the particular sin of lasciviousness.However, the Lustful are not "seized" by the fury of their desires like defenseless birds.On the contrary, theirs is a willing submission as they "subject reason to desire."The eternal punishment of the Lustful is self-imposed damnation.They willingly abandon their humanity and surrender themselves as eternal slaves to their desires. Hence in the Inferno these sinners are punished with their sin- an eternity of submission.The names of Dante's lustful - sinners speak for themselves: incestuous Semiramis, unfaithful Dido, and wanton Cleopatra.For their unjust actions, spurred by their lustfulness, they receive their just punishment.Francesca, however, presents an unexpected irony:a beautiful sinner.How can an eternity of floating peacefully with her lover be an eternal nightmare for Francesca?Why does Dante depict this wanton soul with such tender language, and more to the point, what role does Francesca's beauty play in Dante's pilgrimage? Despite the confusion engendered by her seeming beauty, Francesca is undeniably a sinner.She fits Dante's description perfectly, for Francesca submitted herself wholly to her desires.But while Francesca is guilty of a willful submission, as are her illustrious companions, her sinfulness is not readily discernible.For instance, Semiramis was "so corrupted by licentious vice that she made lust lawful" to restore her virtue.In contrast, Francesca's actions do not appear to have been driven by such sexual wantonness.This is evident in her two speeches.Francesca's first speech is an exposition of her views on the nature of love: We read one day for pastime of Lancelot, how love constrained him.We were alone and had no misgiving.Many times that reading drew our eyes together and changed the color in our faces, but one point alone it was that mastered us; when we read that the longed-for smile was kissed by so great a lover, he who shall never be parted from me, all trembling, kissed my mouth.A Galeotto was the book and he that wrote it; that day we read in it no farther. (127-138) This speech is not the story of two lovers driven by sexual wantonness into mad, furious love.In declaring that "we read one day for pastime," Francesca brings a casual air to her ill-fated meeting with her lover.While theirs was an adulterous affair, the meeting was not the result of elaborate schemes designed to satisfy their sexual desires.Francesca is more concerned with their reading - for pastime - the story of Lancelot and Guinevere and their fated kiss than her own story.In fact, the love story of Paolo and Francesca bears a striking resemblance to the story they read that afternoon. Their union was supposedly inspired by the union of Lancelot and Guinevere.What Francesca saw in these two lovers was their greatness.As great lovers, they received poetic immortality; through their story, they would not only live forever, but also be revered for their greatness. Francesca envied them for their greatness.As she read their story, she was impassioned by it: "that reading drew our eyes together and changed the color in our faces."In other words, Francesca was spurred by this magnificence, as Lancelot was "constrained" by love.This constraint reached its culmination " when the longed-for smile was kissed by so great a lover. "This moment captured, for Francesca, the greatness of Lancelot and Guinevere.She was inspired to emulate this "great" kiss: she wanted to capture this greatness for herself. In her first speech, Francesca defines this greatness.She Love, which is quickly kindled in the gentle heart, seized this man for the fair form that was taken from me, and the manner that afflicts me still.Love, which absolves no one beloved from loving, seized me so strongly with his chann that, as thou seest, it does not leave me yet.Love brought us to one death (100-106). cesca was willing to speak, she was not free to linger.She tells Dante that as "the wind is quiet, as here it is" may she speak with him.As a bird, she is a prisoner to the wind. Her floating itself is eternal punishment for Francesca.Since the wind never rests, Francesca, a prisoner to this unending wind, has no respite from floating.U nlike the river Po, which "descends to rest" at the shores of her city Ravenna, Francesca can never rest. Moreover, as Dante's sinners determine their own punishment, consider one last time Francesca's submission. While some of the Lustful are characterized by their fwious sexual desires, like Semiramis, Francesca's motivation did not arise from an uncontrollable desire for sex.Francesca believed that love was the vessel that would carry her to greatness.For this reason, and not for carnal indulgence, she submitted herself to love. Francesca also believed that she could a cc omplish this by emulating the kiss of Lancelot and Guinevere.As the culmination of their greatness, she envisioned the kiss as the ultimate joining of their two souls: two great lovers made into one great soul by love.As Francesca believed this to be love's final victory, she imagined love lifting them from mere mortality to greatness, as the wind lifts a bird from all earthly restraints. Yet what Francesca saw as a great consummation - the kiss-is, for Dante, a grotesque injustice against God.Again, recall Dante's analogy of the birds in the circle of the Lustful: When they come before its fury there are sln·ieks, weeping, and lamentation, and there they blaspheme the power of God (34-36). As a carnal sinner, Francesca willingly submitted herself to love's power rather than humbling herself before God.When she abandoned the power of God's grace, she abandoned any hope she might have had of greatness.As Dante knows, without God's grace, Francesca will never achieve the ultimate greatness of Divine Love. Hence, as Francesca condemned herself to eternal damnation, she also determined her own punishment.Though she assumed that falling in love meant being conquered by love, she is now an eternal prisoner to love.As love is personified by the wind, she is imprisoned like a bird.In face, as she imagined love lifting her as a bird, she has received just that: as the wind carries her, she will float, helplessly, forever.As she envisioned the kiss as joining their two souls, Francesca is physically bound to Paolo- for eternity.This is clearly an eternal nightmare for Francesca:she will never be at rest from her "affliction," whether it be her desire for greatness, Paolo, or love. While Francesca's lust for greatness explains her sinfulness, much is still left unanswered.For instance, why is Francesca, a sinner, compared to a dove?Why is her sinful submission enshrouded in the poetic depiction of a love 51 50 • �story?Why is her eternal punishment described with such gentle language?ln sum, why does Dante take such care to preserve the beauty of Francesca, and what role does her beauty play in his pilgrimage? The pilgrimage is, above all else, Dante's quest for salvation.As Dante "came to himself in a dark wood," he began his journey .Although he stood at the food of "the delectable mountain which is the beginning and cause of all happiness," Dante could not make the ascent.Three fearful beasts blocked his path.Unable to conquer his fear, Dante was forced to take "another road" - the descent into Hell. Dante's inspiration for his pilgrimage is Beatrice, "the Sun of his eyes (Paradiso, XXX)."She is also the cause of Dante's salvation:she descended into Hell to summon Virgil to be his guide and deliver him from his fears ~The thought of her love restored, in Dante, his courage and freed him from all his doubts and fears (Inferno II, 131-137).Without Beatrice, there would be no pilgrimage. Beatrice is the embodiment of God's grace.As the light of Divine Love shines through her, she is beauty in its purest form.Through her eyes, "which shine brighter than the stars," and her smile, "the second beauty," Beatrice reflects the grace of God.Moreover, her beautiful features serve to captivate Dante as he is raised through all of the heavenly spheres to the Empyrean.In this way, Beatrice uplifts Dante from "servitude to liberty," and makes his soul whole (Paradiso, XXXI).At the same time, she prepares Dante for his final vision, the vision of God, through which his desire and will are united in perfect harmony.In short, Beatrice is Dante's way to salvation. The beauty of Francesca da Rimini mirrors the beauty of Beatrice.As Francesca is compared to a dove, she is both an image of pwity and a messenger of peace.Her courteous words to Dante, Purgatory, she chides Dante for his weakness: So soon as I was on the threshold of my second age, and had changed life, he took himself from me, and gave himself to others. When I had risen from flesh to spirit, and beauty and virtue were increased in me, I was less dear and less pleasing to him, and he turned his steps along a way not true, following false images of good which pay no promise in full (Purgatory XXX, 124-132) This rebuke makes clear the difference between Francesca and Beatrice.Francesca is a false image of Beatrice, just as she offers a false image of paradise.Whereas Beatrice is Dante's way to salvation, Francesca is his way to eternal damnation.Francesca will lead Dante from liberty to servitude: as the carnal sinner "subjects reason to desire," he abandons his will and his freedom.Hence Dante will only be free when his will is preserved and united with his desire. Dante overcomes the temptation of Francesca; he is not deceived by the beauty that enshrouds her sinfulness.In so doing, Dante is able to complete his journey and thus reunite himself with Beatrice.With her, he finds the greatness of Divine Love and the ultimate fulfilment of his desire. Meanwhile, although Francesca's desire only earns her a place in Hell, ironically, she receives the greatness for which she longed.Before Dante journeyed into Hell, Francesca's name was buried in anonymity.However, her meeting with Dante is her initiation into poetic immortality.By telling her story to Dante, she is no longer an anonymous shade: she is Francesca da Rimini, one of the most unforgettable sinners in Dante's Inferno. 0 living creature gracious and friendly ... if the King of the universe were our friend we would pray to him for thy peace ... (880-92) are spoken with the sweetness of Beatrice's angelic voice.And the dove image of Francesca, lightly "floating upon the wind," intrigues Dante and draws him away from all of the illustrious souls. The source of Francesca's beauty, however, is not the Divine Light.As a sinner, she is the product of her sinful desires.In other words, she is the incarnation of ·Sin.More to the point, Francesca is the temptress of Hell.Her beauty does not at all reflect the fearful spirit of the leopard.On the contrary, as a temptress she appeals to Dante's greatest desire, love.She presents an everlasting love that uplifts the soul and allows it to fly like a bird.By submitting himself wholly to her desire, Dante can achieve what Francesca considers to be the highest good - immortal greatness. Hence Francesca makes submission look beautiful.And Beatrice is witness to this deception.At the top of mount Untitled - 52 David F. Simpson 53 �nInsomniac lJ I don't have the time for this time for myself. I'm not interested in the quiet, In the damned solitude of silence, In this perfect atmosphere for rumination. I'm not looking for enlightenmentAll that I want Is the map that will lead me out of these interstices between night and day. Stacie Slotnick '94 Not being awake is different from being asleep. Mind glowing emptily, Numb but wide awake, Wide awake. There is a twelve-tone symphony of night that no one hears. It has a recuni.ng theme of car doors, creaking floorboards, and his breath whistling shrilly. The bass note of night: a continuo of engines and airplanes. The intermittent ripieno choir of drunk, cackling women. The flapping awnings applaud: Congratulations, congratulations. In London they're waking, In California they' re going to sleep right now but not you, not you. You've done it again, gotten yourself stuck in the place with no time, with no place, where there's no one, nothing, but the disemboclied numbers ofthe bloodshot red clockfaceBloody streetsign leading nowhere. Congratulations, congratulations. Earlier, I'd had five minutes of being tired but didn't catch them. Untitled - Dominic Crapuchettes They flashed by like an idea I couldn't grasp: What is sleep? 55 54 �Clytemnestra, A Sonnet Nathan James Humphrey "KAYTAl MHITP A: OL yw TEK01JO"U TOV8 o¢w E8pfljJaµT}V. OPE:z:;THZ:: T} KUpTa µavns ouc OVELpUTUlV cpo~OS' . 11 -928-9, Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers Suckle the serpent, give him restLet him exchange venom for milk. 0 what a fire lies near thy breast What pang of tooth on fleshly silk. Suffer the serpent to slowly slither Over thy sacred, supple feature; His bite dothy cause thy breast to whither For evil is ever in that creature. Like Clytemnestra live and do-Who drempt a death wrought by her son, And not allowing the dream to woo, The serpent with her letting slyly won. The fangs by moonlight now are glistening; When then dost thou despise, not listening? 56 �Non-Profit Org . BULK RATE U.S. POSTAGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 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. 56 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 1994 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Winter 1994. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Belanger, Yvonne (Senior 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 1994 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 1994 Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e3a52d4b29151522e8bb86bd443de62c.pdf e8b22b0954034c8caa7c70c82d69230f PDF Text Text SPRING 1982 :' �CONTENTS ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself. Editorial Staff: Barbara Cooper Matthew Davis Christian Holland Susan Maguire Richard Miller Fritz Monsma Marion Sharp Joe Sachs CHRONOLOGY AND BEING FOR ACHILLES HERACLITUS AND AJAX ON FEEDING THE FLOCK (INCLUSIVE) WITH A GRAIN OF WHEAT JUNIOR/SENIOR MATH PRIZE PAPER 1979 TWO POEMS FROM LE MISANTHROPE Abe Schoener l Liz Waldner 6 R.A. Schainbaum 9 translated by Janet Durholz IO NEWTON'S AND ADAM'S APPLE Howard Zeiderman 12 VIEWPOINT Patti Nogales 23 Stephanie Nelson 24 David Stephenson 29 Ruth A. Johnston 31 LIKE FLIES TO WANTON BOYS. Another Paper about God, Man, and the Universe SOME THOUGHTS ON "MAXWELL'S EQUATIONS" SONNET A CHORUS FROM THE BACCHAE translated by Merle Sokolik 32 THE B DEDUCTION AND ITS RELATION TO FREEDOM (Or Kant, Can Do) Matthew Davis 34 THERE IS VERY LITTLE POETRY IN ONIONS Dan Farrell 43 P.H. Gagnier 44 Lisa Eckstrom 45 THE WRECK OF ELPENOR RECONCILIATION IN THE BACCHAE: Remembering Who We A~e Who Are Not Gods But Men PHAINETAI MO! translated by Terri-Ann Hahn 51 I ON CHAPTERS 11-17 OF PART II OF DON QUIXOTE 11 Paula Rustan 52 I[ !:1 TA-POCKETA, POCKETA, POCKET~ ••• Moliere, Thurber and the Comic Idea 111 1! Fritz Monsma 55 JI: I! -- --- - ~--·----- ---~- - --- -·--- i1[~ �Chronology and Being for Achilles, Heraclitus and Ajax Abe Schoener Diel' s. fragment 30 of Heraclitus names all things in their thinghood.. I f we can read this fragment successfully, we will understand something of the Greek thought about things, the being of things, and--most tempting--the being of being. Here is the fragment: , I f t ' Panta hen is the union of the many and the one, but a , union--since it is panta hen and not just to hen--which preserves the manyness. As the tendencies toward unity and plurality strive with one another, the cosmos lives. If the strife stops, the cosmos dies, the tension is lost. When we see kosmos as this tension we can understand the singleness of the two kinds of "same" we saw before. Kosmos is thinghood insofar as each thing is because of the strife in it; and kosmos is· wholeness insofar as each thing strives with every other one. It is thus the quality which separate things have in common, and also the very coming together of the separate things. It both orders and destroys their mutual distinction. This conflation of contraries is not nonsense: it is the most beautiful harmony. Now we can understand kosmos as "cosmos. " Once we -see kosmos as the tension-filled order that both creates and destroys individuals, we can see the world (or universe) as kosmos. Not as the obvious example of kosmos, but as the most difficult. The world both demands and rejects being called one, and does so with more insistence than any o,ther thing, so it takes the greatest wisdom to see it as kosmos. We learn that we must never explain the Greek kosmos through our notion of world, but can only hope to understand the full meaning of "world" through the challenging contradiction of kosmos. H xooµov TOV aUTOV anaVTWV OUTE TL~ 8Erav o~TE TL' &vep~nwv tnoLnoEv, ' ' ' ' ,, aAA '.:r aEL xaL EOTL XaL EOTaL' riv ' ' nDp &ELsWOV, anTOµEVOV µETpa xal &nooSEVVUµEVOV µETpa. ("Kosmos," the same for all things, was neither made by one of the gods, nor by one of men--but it was always, and is, and ever will be everli¥ing fire, constantly kindling and qqenching itself and the measures of the world.) When Heraclitus says "kosmos," he does not mean "cosmos" or any other word which names something like our "universe." He means the order which is ton auton hapanton--the same for all things. This sameness is twofold: it is the sameness of all things with each other (that is, their common thinghood); and it is the order which brings all the different things together (their being part of the same whole). If we read further in Heraclitus, we find these two aspects of kosmos are one and the same. They are the harmonie of things in strife: the togetherness in conflict df things which oppose and resist each other. Kosmos is thus the same as the tension of panta hen, the greatest strife and thus the greatest harmonie. We have al ready caught some of Heraclitus' understanding of the being of things. Their only being is in a twofold tension: an inner tension (like the 1 �I . !@, .I lyre's), and an outer tension (the tension between world and thing, panta hen). There is no being of a thing without the being of the opposites striving "inside" of it, and no being without the being of tjle kosmos with which the thing strives for its own individualty. This cosmos was never created. It is thus self-caused1 that is, its being lies entirely within itself. Nothing else is responsible (aitios) for it. What is responsible for its being is its manner of being--that is, as fire. This is clear from what is -contrasted with "not created": (~o ~ne made it, but it always was ... ) If I # .. , , ou TLS ErroLnaEv, aAA t :l analogy. He means the being of all things is the being of fire. They. are the same--and so, all things, insofar as they are, are fire. Philosophy is at this point way beyond what are called "material causes." Heraclitus does not name pur as material cause, but as primal cause-==that is, as ousia. If we examined the Pre-Socratics carefully, we might find that they never had "material cause." Did Thales perform experiments to determine whether all things were made up of water? No--this was not the way of the Ancients. When Thales said, "All is water," he was the first to say that the being of all things is one--and that that one being ·is the cool uniformity of water. Thales was talking ousia, not materia. We said before that the essence of things was change, that stasis was death. When Heraclitus calls fire aeizoon, doesn't that contradict our claim? Aeizoon sounds like the unchanging eternity of the Immortal, the life that does not change into death. But it is not, and a clue is DK 62 ("Mortals are immortals, immortals are mortals: the first live the death of the latter, and the latter die the other's life"). F-rom it we learn that the gods have no life, only death. Zoe always includes death, so aeizoon must mean "always dying" as well as "always living." We have al ready seen these two opposites together in fire: part of its life is to burn itself out, it cannot flame except by cons'uming its source. But every burning-out leads to a conflagration, for every quenching prepares new material to be burned again. Fire's being is to live and die at every moment, and for the living and the dying to be one and the same activity. For Heraclitus, this is the being of being: If riv aEL •.• Its being is its aitios. Its being can be "cause" because of the strange nature of its being. The fragment says that: "the being · of kosmos is fi r.e." .As we read it we expect the fragment to run: "it was never created, but was, is and always will ·-be." Instead it supplies a predicate to einai, and says, "it is fire." The predicate is a surprise. In Heraclitus, we learn to take surprises seriously: they must become part of our reading. This surprise achieves a definite effect: it makes us take what we were expecting to read and what we actually read, as the same thing._ Thus: to be is to be fire einai is pur einai. To understand the sense of pur einai, we have to understand pur, fire. It is more than familiar to uS:-- Fire is bright and hot. It rages, roars, fumes, changes color, licks, spurts, and spreads. It hisses, smokes, smoulders, consumes, and inevitably burns itself out. It changes constantly--a strange characterization of being. But for Heraclitus, it is the only one. In the absence of change, strife, and tension, there is no life--there is nothing. This nothingness is not only death but non-being. The raging of fire is the opposite of that "non-being". But when Heraclitus says that the being is "being fire," he is not just speaking by rrDp ElvaL· arrTOUEVOV UFTpa Ma~ &rrocr8EUVµEVOV µETpa. When birth and death not only coincide but coexist eternally as the being of being, then history and even time itself become impossible. The fragment catches this in the words we misleadingly sununed up as "einai" : en aei, kai es ti, - ·~-.-.-.. 2 ---:-- - kai estai. "The cosmos always was anc!·is and· will be "fire"--wa~, is and will be all at ~· We could read the ve.rbs separately--not insisting on their coincidence--.but this would be ignoring the subtle craft of Heraclitus. When he says "was," "is," and "will be" together, where "is always" would have done, we must be careful not to lose his jarring message in the easiest--and less attentive --reading. He says: in the being of fire, was, is and will be are all the same. This conflation of present, past, and future does not actually deny time, but only a "chronological" conception of it. When future falls into past, time cannot be seen along a time-line. But is this nonsense--time not fitting on a time-line? It is not nonsense-- in fact, it is something we will soon learn to call "Greek". By Aristotle's time,· chronos may well have become chronological, but for Homer, _and even Sophocles, time (chronos) was no series of times, but a place. We will see two examples of this: one in the Iliad, one in the Ajax. In the last book of the Iliad, the conciliation of Achilles and Priam culminates in the giving of time. Achilles and Priam meet and their tears mix. They find wonder1ful sympathy for each other in this moment, and Achilles agrees to return Hector's body to Priam. This return seems to be Achilles' great deed, the one that reveals a new and beautiful Achilles to us.. We remember the return of the body as the book's climax. But Priam himself will correct us, as he did Achilles. The return will not be fulfilled without one more gift,, one greater even than the body of his son: keep him in our palace and mourn him, and bury him on the tenth day, and the people feast by him, and on the eleventh we would make the grave barrow for him, and on the twelfth day fight again, if so we must do." Then in turn swift-footed Achilles answered him: "Then all this, aged Priam, shall be done as you ask it. I will hold off our attack for as much time as you ask me." (Trans. Lattimore) T~v o' nµEL8ET' ErrELTa yEpwv ITp~a)..IOs -\JEoELoris • "d. µ~v on µ' E-\JEAELS TEAEOaL Tacpov EMTOPL OL<p, <!ioE ME µoL rn:r;.wv' 'AXLAEU' MEXaPLOl.JEVa -\Jdns. 7 " I I JI '.I OLOva yap ws MaTa aOTU E~AµE-\Ja, Tn).o-\JL o • u).n a~EµEV E~ opEoS, µa).a ot TpwES OEOLaOLV. E:vvnµap µ£v M' auT~v E:vl µEyapoLs yoaoL µEv T~ OEMcXT~ 0£ ME -\JarrrroLµEV OaLVUTO TE ).aos, E:voEMaTn 0£ ME TvµBov E:rr' auT~ rrOL naaL µEV, T~ ol ouwoEMaT~ rro).EµL~oµEv, E~ rrEp &vayxn." I "J'. .I Tov 0 ' aUTE rrpoa~ELrrE rrooapMns oCqs; 'AXLAAEVS • II,, f 1 , EOTaL TOL MaL TaDTa, y~pov ITpLaµ ' I ws I au MEAEVELS" axnaw yap rroAEµov TOOOOV XPOVOV Oaaov civwya.s. 11 t I t (lines 659--6 70) Before the act can become good, Achilles must grant Priam time: tosson chronon hosson anogas. This--t°ime is a space, a space opened up in the turmoil of the war, in which the funeral can take place. Achilles' ability to open up this~ space for Priam is the heart of his brilliance and divinity. Homer points ' this out: when Achilles answers, he · is call dies. This is one of the few uses of chronos in the Iliad. It is also the very last, and because of its place in this In answer to him again spoke Priam the godlike: "I£ you are willing that we accomplish a complete funeral for great Hector, this Achilleus, is what you could do and give me pleasure. For you know surely how we are penned in our city, and wood is far to bring in from the hills, and the Trojans are frightened badly. Nine days we would 3 1: Ii !, �I 1 change it works, but for the changes it undergoes. What was not cause when it once occurred in the past is now cause; · what was once an act of friendship when it occurred is now an act of enmity (ee.661-665). The past--as a series of definite events--has undergone change in this moment. It has thus become indefinite: even the past is now full of new possibilities, just like the present and future. That is why Ajax calls chronos "unnumberable and great": not because of its infinite length, but because of its great depth. At every moment, past, present, or future, it holds open an infinite depth oi possibilities. In time, nothing is impossible: 1. 648, ouk est' aelpton ouden. But this does not mean "given enough time, anything is possible"; it means "in any time--in any moment --unthought-of possibilities lie waiting." After all, when Ajax says this, it has only been a few years since he won the sword which changed his life, and only a few hours since that change has become manifest. "In time" does not mean in the length of time, but in the bottomless depth of every moment. In its every moment, time--the ground of every happening--offers innumerable possibili ties. This is the wisdom Ajax has learned in his god-sent distress; this is the wisdom he gives to us before he goes to his death. His wisdom is not the trivial cliche "things change drastically over the years," but the surprising and even crippling message: "count on the sureness of no event; not only the future, but present and past as well hold unbelievable possibilities." At this very moment in the play (see line 647), time reveals the invisible and hides the bright and shining: it seems even to hold the denial of a thing's phusis. For the hiding of the phanenta (647)--the by nature revealed--~s nothing other than the denial of their phusis as phanenta. So time even holds the possibility for the impossible: the denial of a ~hing' s eternal being, its phusis. If time is to exclude no possibility, it must be bottomless at ~very instant. great scene, this use is the "definitive'' one. Here the depth of its meaning is called on, and this is what it gives up in response: chronos is the opening up of a place in the world for things to occur in. It is the place in which things happen--in which happening happens. It is the ground for being. This· ground is a place, but not a definite location. A location has an address: chronos does not give an address to events (e.g.: 1079 A.D.), it gives them an opening. Consequently, chronos has nothing to do with a time-line: the events in this place do not participate in succession by virtue of the place. This means that the place itself is not ordered: it is not laid out in successive compartments, nor is it any grid. It is very different from Isaac Newton's "tempus"--the conception of time which most colors our own. The opposition of chronos to succession is caught vividly in a few lines from the Ajax: Great and unnumberable time produces all things hidden, and hides all things revealed--and there is nothing that can't be expected. ' " ' ' , , anew-& , o inxpo~ xavap1.,.(}1.mTo~ )(PO\JO~ ~VEL. T, a6nAa xal ~Cl\JE\JTCl xpVTITETCll.." ){Q0){ EoT' aEATITO\J OU6EV ••• ( AIA'[, 646-8) Ajax himself is speaking here: it is his last speech before he leaves his camp to commit suicide. In the speech he discusses what has brought him to this point of suicide, and what might lie before him still. We might say that he is concerned with his present, past, and future. We will see how different that concern is for him than it can be for us. As Ajax recalls what has brought him to this pass, he must be naming the passing of time in chronos. Chronos then seems to be chronological, for it refers to all that has passed in succession up till now. But as we read on, we find that the passing time is not remarkable for the 4 Because of its infinite depth, every moment must be the same as every other. We cannot even consider the past as "determined" because its possibility has become actual. The Ajax teaches us that the past changes constantly: this is the thought at the heart of this speech. Time never gives up its depth. Even when it becomes definite (we must say the Trojan war was a special time, for instance), the definition neve·c completely determines what goes on in it. Thus time opened up a place for Ajax to accept Hector's sword in friendship, though that time should have had no place in the 'War. Events can still happen in succession, but that succession is not in the essence of time. Because time is the eternal confusion of every possibility, in past, present, and future alike, there can be no line of succession in it. Succession is only possible when there is definition, but not mixing and remixing. Because time excludes succession from its essence, it is not only makros, but anarithmetos--for Ajax and all the Greeks. looks like a pleonasm should thus be scrutinized · carefully--and probably read literally. If we read en aei etc. literally, we get something much more worthy of Heraclitus than the verbose "it is, always has been, and always will be ... " We get: Its being is, always was, is, and will be--at once. This means that was is the same thing for fire as is, or will be. There is no difference between past and present, no possibility for a time line. More Heraclitean nonsense? No--now that we have considered chronos for Sophocles and Homer, we know that this talk is no nonsense, it is good Greek. It is a deep and difficult understanding of being, one that sees the being of being in chronos, but outside of "time." Time as time-line, and thus history, excludes being because being happens in a vast undifferentiated ar.d bottomless chasm. That chasm is chronos: what we called earlier, the "ground of being." For a being that changes constantly, whose essence is fire, this is the perfect ground. Since fixity is death for being, a ground that offered only strict and permanent determination could only be barren. Now, the fixed events of history belong no longer in time (chronos) but in chronologies--the study of non-being. Heraclitus affirms this whole view in the kosmos fragment. When he gives the being of cosmos, he does not say "It is fire." He says: I ' t t ' ' " •1\J Q£l., MaL EOTL KQL EOTClL n0p ' , ClEL~wov. It always was, always is, and always will be fire--at the same time. For the being of the cosmos past-being, present-being, and future-being are all conjoined. This is hard to accept: we would not think that en aei kai esti kai estai in anyway impliea- the conjuct,ion of past, present, and future. There are two reasons for supposing that in Heraclitus the expression not only implies it but explicitly demands it. The first reason is usage: estj aei would have meant the same thing in Greek as "it is, has always been, and always will be"--our natural translation for en aei etc. The six word phrase is thus pleonastic in such an interpretation. The second reason comes from Heraclitus: he is never pleonastic, but always sharply terse. Anything that 5 �On Feeding the Flock (Inclusive) With a Grain of Wheat Liz Waldner I Give us this day our daily bread. Matthew 6:11 Take no thought what ye shall eat. Luke 12:22 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: the bread which I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the wo~ld .. Jon~ 6:51 · Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone, but if it die, it brings forth much fruit. John 12:24 Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of heaven? It is like leaven which a woman hid in three measures of meal until the whole was leavened. Luke 13:20 simon, do you love me? Yes, Lord. Feed my sheep. John 21:16 j l t 1 I Taking the above ingredients so freely given--in good measure, packed down -- I hope to make a little cake like Alice's (with a tag reading Eat me attached), which once tasted will move the reader to essay a little baking of his own-in short one suitable food for the likes of us sheep. consider necessi ties--will be added unto us. Everyone knows we must eat to live,· and probably everyone agrees with Jesus that the life is more than food. From age to age and from place to place, however, people have differed in judgement of what food and what life are. Jesus startled everyone with his ideas; he called himself living bread and said that unless we eat of him we have no life in us. He told the multitude he'd miraculously fed the day before not to run after food that perishes, but to labor for that "which endures unto life everlasting." He said, "He that loves his life in this world will lose it; he who hates his life shall keep it unto life . eternal." Perhaps every nation of the world (excepting those few so cold that starches don't grow) recognizes bread as food if not the . v~ry staff of life; it seems that recognizing the bread as such--true bread sent from heaven, meat (food) indeed--is what's problematic. That is, I·'m guessing that not a few of those claims made by Jesus Everyone knows we must eat to live. Eat often and much, and we store what we cannot eat now to provide for tomorrow, as did Aesop's industrious ant, as did the rich man whose ground yielded such abundance that he needed larger barns to keep his harvest. We reckon many provisions secure much life and so are anxious to preserve what we have and to acquire more. Jesus knew that we must eat to live. Satan used his hunger after his forty days of fasting to tempt him to turn a stone to bread. Jesus answered him, "Men do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." Jesus said that our Father in heaven knows, too, that we have need of food, and taught his disciples to pray asking each day for their daily bread. He called the rich man's prudence folly, and asked us to take no thought for our lives, to lay up no treasure for ourselves here on earth, but rather to seek the kingdom of God, to be rich toward God; then "all these things"--those which we're used to 6 I 1 I t I 1 :1 concerning himself as living bread which the Jews found hard to swallow--how can this man give us his flesh to eat?--once transformed from hard grains of astonishment by a patient pulverizing pondering will yield a meal itself suitable for the leaven of understanding: the puzzle is not how to eat living bread, but how to get it into our hands. An understanding--or chewing, if you will--of the latter is the making of the former. If we eat living bread, then we have life in us, do not hunger, and do not die. If we love our lives--fill bigger barns or banks with 1the means to eat ordinary bread--we die. To eat living bread is in some way, then, to hate our lives in this world, and hating our lives brings this bread into our hands. How can this be? First, living bread is bread that nourishes us when we give it to another. Any bread is the free gift of earth's fertility; the single grain given into the ground yields many. Many may eat of that which abiding alone could not have fed one. In the same way living bread is a free gift and miraculously feeds a multitude, but it feeds the seed, the grain which gave itself, as well. Living bread is made of the human sacrifice of abiding alone, of prudently providing for one's own well-being. Living bread, which is true bread sent to us by our Father to nourish the life of the world, life everlasting, is ours for the asking; it cannot be bought, nor earned, but is simply to be sought after. Jesus, God's word made flesh, sent into the world offering that flesh as bread for us to live by as he lives by God, sai~ that eating him we would live in him and he in us. To eat living bread is to accept life given as a gift as food, blood spilled as drink, to take into oneself for one's own fulfillment the fruit of some other's sacrifice of his potential fulness of being, a fruit which can bring forth abundantly after its kind, and live our abundance to another that he, too, might eat living bread: living bread is undoubtedly leavened. The giving and receiving of living bread and the working of leaven in a bushel of meal are like one another in that they both depend on reciprocity. The power to raise, to make bi·g, to feed many, is made manifest by the lifeless meal. The few grains of yeast hidden work all through the meal imparting its ability until the whole is leavened. But left alone the yeast will starve and die; the meal bereft of nutrients fed by the yeast will collapse, less than before. The least become most, the most become least--unless the greatest ever give to the least. A pinch of leavened dough leavens another bushel, and lives in it. As told in the parable of the pounds, the living bread we're given is not to keep, but to invest, to multiply, to make great--and that's done by giving it away. Even Moses' manna spoiled when anxiously stored. Our being given this powerful bread depends on our asking for it, and our asking for it on our giving it freely; our having it, and therefore our eating it, on giving it, too. Or no? Let's think ourselves grains of wheat. If we choose to love our Father, to love one another even as Jesus loved us, in whatever way or to whatever degree we can by laying down our lives for another, then we make of ourselves meal for leavening, nourishment for the life of the world. Until we do, we are ordinary bread, scarcely able (if at all, really) to feed ourselves. We hunger. Sooner or later something in us akin to the appetite for ordinary bread sniffs out the bread of life--perhaps in a loaf given us by another's unrecognized sacrifice--and asks to be fed. Earthly parents don't give their hungry children stones when they cry for bread, said Jesus; how much more will your Father in heaven give to you the Holy Spirit. I wonder if this is not the power to leaven, to make the single grain abundantly fruitful, to nourish those who give of their substance unto life everlasting, to feed unfailingly one's hunger forever. It seems to me that having been hungry for living bread is enough; our asking is our eating. In us its leaven working already prepares us as 7 �food. Recognizing it as food indeed moves us to feed others. The woman whom much has forgiven loved much. I think it's not far fetched to supply: the woman whose great hunger has fed, fed much. In this sense then, we never have in our hands this living bread except)to give it. We are, grains, and giving ourselves. we are broken into meal: the Spirit in us makes us great to be food for many. Having living bread living in us, we hunger to be hungry, to give more of ourselves that · we might be altogether leavened: that we might see, all of us, the kingdom of God. -When we pray as Jesus taught we ask for the coming of that kingdom, for the doing of God's will on earth, for our bread, and for the forgiveness of trespasses, ours and others'. That the leavening of the Spirit which reveals God's very mind to us had to be brought into the world, given as gift nurtured in Jesus' death and resurrection is made plain in the reciprocity expressed here, the participation in which sets free our yearning for the coming of God's kingdom, for the doing of his work on earth, for living with forgiveness toward others. Love begets love when recognized; recognizing God's great love given withou.t regard to our worthiness, 'we are moved· .to dismiss the hurt, the lessening suffered.· at the hands of others, doing the bidding of 'the Spirit within us, which forgiving enables us to know living bread as the true bread, and those who trespass against us as so hungry that they know not what they do. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, that they might eat; his Father loves him: he is well fed. Junior/Senior Math Prize Paper 1979 .f RA. Schainbaum I r j ' 1 f j J j J I This problem has to do with taking a door around a corner in a hallway. If a corridor w wide has in it an ideal door, a rigid line of length L, how narrow can X, the corridor at a right angle to w, be if it is still wide •enough to let in L? towards the lower side of W decreases ' or its horizontal distance from c increases. (2) Let f(0)=y (see figure) be the function that gives the least ¥.. for any angular position of L. The greatest f (9) obtained in bringing L from corridor W into corridor X is also the least posSib'l'e'X for the 91.veD w andI::9 For i f !_ were atallSmaller, -0could only increase to goo if L were- not a rigidly straight line. But L is a rigidly straight line, and L can-only be brought into corridor x- under the condition that 9 be allowed to vary from 80 (the initial position of 9) to goo. Clearly, the greatest y_ obtained from f (9) is also the least maximum for any possible displacement function of e. (3) Let g(z)=y (see figure) be the function in which y_ depends on the distance z from corner C along L to the lower side of corridor-W. As - the -before ' the least ! was equal to greatest f (9) over the range from 90 to goo so -.~--~' it also equals the greatest g (z) over the range from W to L. Sin~it is geometrically apparent that g (z) is continuous between W and .!!' that g(W)=g(L)=O, and that-g(z) is greater than ~· between ! and · .!!; so g (z •) is greater than all g(z), if~ is the only z for which g' (z)=O. i (1) For any given angular position of the line L, its (L's) displacement •(measured from corner .!!' perpendicular to the corridor length) y towards the opposite side of corridor- X is always least when its displacement (measured from corner L, perpendicular to the corridor length) towards the lower side of corridor W is greatest (i.e., it equals !) , and the horizontal distance of.!! from corner Eis least (i.e., c is employed as a fulcrum) . For whatever· the angular position of .!!' y_ must increase as either L's displacement 1. * * * By similar triangles: I y = g(z) = L-z z Ii 'I I, 111 II 8 9 __J '____ 111 11 I; 1 I lit �l Lw2-z3 z2(z2-w2)i, . (2/3) (1/3) Therefore, g(w L ) ~ g(z) for all z such that w ~ z ~ L. 2. g' (z) 3. Setting g' (z) = O, then: 5. z'=w(2/3)L(l/3), which value of z is uniquely obtained. 4. l .J Substituting w( 2/ 3 )L(l/ 3 ) for Zin 1, then: y (2/3) ' i j' I = L (2/3)-w(2/3). ' Thus, the least x=w(( L >213 -1> 312 But since L > w, then: w3 < w2 L < L3 w < z' < L. Hope, 'tis true, doth comfort us And soothes awhile our pain; But, Phyllis, if naught follows hope, It comforts us in vain. Kindness ever didst thou show, But less shouldst thou have shown, And not so far have spent yourself To grant me hope alone. If my zeal is forced to burn Eternally 'til you relent, Then to a cruel death I shall turn, Which all your cares cannot prevent, For, lovely Phyllis, hope is my death, When for hope alone I draw my breath. i w Q.E.I ALCESTE. Si le roi m'avait donn~ Paris, sa grand' ville, Et qu'il me fall~t quitter L'amour de ma mie, Je dirais au roi Henri: Reprenez votre Paris, ,, J'aime mieux ma mie, au gue, J'aime mieux ma mie. (1. 393-400) Two Poems from Le Misanthrope translated by Janet Durholz ORONTE. L'espoir, il est vrai, nous soulage Et nous berce un temps notre ennui, Mais, Philis, le triste avantage, Lorsque rien ne marche apres lui! Vous e~tes de la complaisance; Mais vous en deviez moins avoir I Et ne vous pas mettre en depense Pour ne me donner que l'espoir. S'il faut qu'une attente ~ternelle ' '1 Pousse a bout l'ardeur de mon ze e Le tr~pas sera mon recours. Vos soins ne m'en peuvent distraire; Belle Philis, en d~sespere ... . Alers, qu'on espere touJours. (1. 315-318; 321-324; 327-332) 10 If the King should give me All Paris for my own, To leave my darling true love, And sit upon his throne, I would say to Henry: "Take your Paris back; The throne is nothing to me, sir, If my own true love I lc,ack!" ! I __J l______ 11 �Newton's and Adam's Apple Howard Zeiderman matical--scientif ic aspects are a work of consununate genius - a model for us all since then; the theological allusions are a source of constant embarassment which we charitably overlook. What I propose in the following pages is an exercise .in imagination. I propose to read the Principia as if it were written by one man: and not two. To do so involves investigating a possible Newtonian response to -Leibniz; the world is not a -clock but rather a calendar. If the style sometimes appears an argument instead of an intellectual fantasy, it is only to facilitate the exposition, much as Descartes did in Le Monde. The following is therefore merely a story, a springtime diversion. Had Newton wished to justify the ways of God to man, or at least to Leibniz, he could have answered that they had radically different conceptions of God and, therefore, of his relation to the visible material world. Newton's reply could have been that for God the visible world was a sign to man. The spiralling apart of the planets revealed the eventuality of the Last Judgement. Man's past and future was in a sense writt~n in the stars. Unfortunately, as George Herbert lamented, God's writing could be read only if man knew how to spell. Newton could have charged Leibni·z of having attempted to read God's purposes in the number-names of the Ars Combinatorialis. Newton's cryptography, however, was different; he deciphered God's words in straight lines and curves. The Principia, not logic or arithmetic, is the proper orthographical guide. A decade before Newton composed the Principia, Milton published Paradise Lost. Mil ton's justification of . God's ways to In a letter to Clarke, Liebniz criticizes both Newton and Newton's God. The criticism is simple but pointed. This so-called 'God' acted as a poor watchmaker might because the watch he created--the world--must be continually rewound~ Leibniz's attack stems from the two focal points of the Principia: the revelation of the inverse square law animating the visible world of planets, tides, and stones; and the fact that there are more than two bodies (masses) in the world. In a world where the force law is the inverse square, two isolated bodies would continue in a particular orbit forever, a self-identity through time attractive to Leibnitz. Introduce a third body, however, and this harmony changes. Th~ee bodies moving under the aegis of the inverse square, each to each, results in a change in the apparent total force law. The effects shift toward these which would be caused by an inverse cube law. The bodies spiral out from one another endlessly; the world, as Yeats remarked in the "Second Coming," is such that the center cannot hold. Competent readers of Newton would generally dismiss Liebniz's conunent as somewhat irrelevant. Newton was a scientist. As such, he should be attacked only on scientific grounds. Whether he believed in God was a personal matter. These considerations, though . perhaps tokenly present in the scholia of the Principia, are not present in the propositions themselves. Newton, in other words, is not dissimilar to many modern scientists. Because he is split between two conflicting inclinations, proper reading of the work occurs only by respect:~iBJ such a division. The mathe- man takes the form of an epic which is the culmination of all other epics. The three short chapters in Genesis chronicling man's creation and fall are expanded into twelve books depicting the fall of Lucifer, and through his intercession, the fall of Eve and Adam, as well as the promise of their redemption. I hope in this short piece to show that Newton's Principia is involved in a similar task. This means that the visible world, which is depicted and made possible in Prop. 66 as the three body problem, if read through Newton's orthography, is the detailed and constant reminder of man's fall and possible redemption. In the 18th century, the Bishop ·Berkeley suggested that Newton's Principia was a Bible for materialists and atheists. What my suggestion means is that in composition the Principia was intended as an amplification of the good Bishop's Bible. It was the long awaited reading of God's purposes in his fallen creation. To see this does not mean finding an occasional image of some crucial Biblical or theological moment in a scholium. Instead it involves recognizing that the details of the Propositions and their interconnections display the accepted truths of the Christian religion. our task is to read through the propositions so that we can recognize why the inverse square law is the visible account of the Creation, Fall, and Last Judgement. II In this exercise we, therefore, will attempt a non-mathematical reading of a seemingly mathematical work. ~uch an attempt is obviously precarious. It requires the translation of axioms, propositions and force laws into theological terms which are now antithetical to them. Without an explicit license from Newton, this effort can appear quite gratuitous. And no such license has been issued, i.e. published. The bulk of Newton's work consists of unpublished theological manuscripts, conunentaries on Revelations, and the prophets. Perhaps in a document held in 13 12 -!_ _ _ _ _ __ _ some Borgesian library we could find the warrant for this endeavor. However, we might not. If we combed such remnants and found nothing. it would then be necessary to explain why Newton never supplied a "key" to his work, why it was written only for those with eyes to see. In the General Scholium Newton does indeed connect the visible world, God's works, with his own account in the Principia. However, this may imply no more than that the system, as a whole, reveals some aspect of God's purpose. It certainly need not lead us to expect a connection between the details of propositions -and the details of the Creation and the Fall. We know that Newton believed he lived in the "end of the times", that the day·of judgment would come when the dispersed Jews accepted the Gospel, and that he himself was born on Christmas day. Though Newton did not accept Christ as "of the substance of God," we cannot, therefore, infer that Newton believed himself to be the last Christ, who was writing a Bible acceptable to the Jews. We only know that such a belief would not have been impious. We know that Newton held that the number of the Antichrist was 666 and.we can open the Principia to find the full detail of the three-body problem in Prop 66. These numbers, however, cannot be connected even though as I will suggest, the relation between Satan and falling,spiraling orbits involves the relation of the inverseJcube to the inverse square. We have often heard the story of Newton under the tree hit on the head by the falling apple. If what I propose is a proper reading of the Principia, that story is obviously 'true' and, in addition, significant. However, its truth places before us as a question 'the nature of a fact'. In short, this is what I offer: If I believed what Newton believed and if I had written the Principia, this would have been how I composed it. Whether Newton did is a different matter and may be unknowable. However we must then go on to ask ourselves whether such 'knowledge' is important and therefore we reapproach from another direction the question of the �- l 1 The two beings ·have, however, no reciprocal connection. In other words, the third law is not present. We are in a realm, whatever it is, which is prior to the third law. Many suggesti.ons and images have been given for this model of analysis. However, if one asks oneself in the context we are articulating what is a massless center of force which acts but is not acted upon by what orbits it, the obvious answer is that the center represents God; the mass then depicts a created being. God acts but is not acted upon and the result is the literal drawing of the immemorial metaphor of created things orbiting around the Creator. What Newton's mathematics is enabling man to do is to find the literal sense of Christian 'metaphors'. The first two propositions hold irrespective of the nature of God's action, of the force law with which he acts. In the first two propositions, there is neither geography nor history, differences of place nor differences of time. The two parts of God's sensorium, -absolute space and absolute time, are made visible in the description of equal spaces in equal times. Beginning with Proposition 3, we receive the method of reading the world in more detail up to the culmination in Proposition 6. Proposition 3 allows one to recognize that there is a center of force, to recognize that there is a God, even if now an additional force comes into play. Prop. 4 allows one to calculate the force law connecting one with that center. Prop. 5 enables one to find the location of the center from the mass's orbit. Prop. 6 enables a specific force calculation. There is a surprising repetitiveness to these propositions. Three and four together are enough to calculate the force if one is on a circle and if one can recognize one's velocity and distance at a moment, any , moment, since every moment is the same. In other words, in accordance with our suggestion, one can use three and four if one knows oneself and one's distance from the center. Propositions 3 and 4 characterize a possibility of the nature ot a fact. In this issue I treat section 2, which ends in the creation of Adam, Prop X. Section 3, the creation of Eve and the Fall must remain something for the future. Before we treat the creation and the Fall, a few preliminaries must be set out. Newton, in his Preface, reverses the relation we have come to expect between geometry and mechanics. Surprisingly, in Newton, mechanics is prior: rational mechanics, the mechanics of the Perfect Artisan, draws the lines which geometry treats. The Newtonian laws and propositions connecting equal times and areas (prop. 1,2, and 3) draw these lines and make them into figures. They are true of ali .. 'possible' worlds irrespective of the force law, to use Leibniz's terminology. The first_ law draws the straight line, the second makes the curve possible. The third law, action and reaction, inscribes in all conceivable worlds, those under various force laws, the possibility of writing equations. To begin· our fantasy now involves finding theological equivalents. The three laws will then permit the visible world to serve as continual reminders of our invisible life. The first law allows one to keep to the straight and narrow. Every Newtonian object has both a mass and a velocity. The mass represents what one is, the velocity represents what one does. How one received one's velocity is an open question which relates to one's past. The first law is the representation of the self-sameness of the being. The second permits the possibility of deviation, rise and fall, it is to have a will of one's own. The third law permits punishment or redemption as it is the inscription both of 'an eye for an eye' and 'do unto others'. In propositions 1 and 2, we meet the first crucial aspect of Newton's exposition. We consider a center of force which has no mass and a mass in orbit which cannot effect the center. In other words, Law 1 rules the mass, which is altered in direction by the presence of Law 2 operating from a center of force. 14 pre-lapsarian world, where reason, knowledge of what one is, and piety, recognition of one's distance from God, are sufficient to keep one in orbit. Proposition 5 and 6 are quite different. The characteristics of the moment are not quite sufficient. The actual orbit, which need not be a circle, is necessary. History must, in a fallen world, replace self-knowledge. We will leave open for' now the relation between history and self-knowledge in Newton. History, the orbit, replaces self-knowledge. The question which is crucial is, what it is in a fallen world that replaces piety and which in conjun.ction with history brings one to wl;l.ere one should be. The traditional answer is faith. I will show that Prop. 6 of Section II corresponds in the Principia to Christian faith. These remarks fill out in somewhat greater detail the stage setting for all 'possible' worlds and how to reach a pre-fallen and fallen world. The particular· force laws which may be involved in our world first emerge in prop. 4 in a preliminary way. Four forie 15ws ~e mentioned there. They are R , and the actual one we see in the R , R planets and falling stones, R- 2 , and which in their fall are the story of the Fall. ~at '1Je wi_l} show is that the force laws R , R , R tell a story through their interrelationships which necessitates and is rendered visible in the appearances of masses acting and reacting according to the inverse square law. The first force law mentioned is most unusual. It is one in which the 1 force increases as the distance, F a R . The further away one is from the center of force, the greater the force exerted. It is as if the light from a source became more intense the further one was from it. In a mechanical explanation we would expect the force to diminish in some form as one moved away from its source. This force, however, increases. There is such a force in our world, Hooke's Law, but that deals with a spring, which · is not this sort of case. The force that we are considering involves creation out of nothing. We will take this force to represent the force with which God acts on the creited world. In our account of the fall, R corresponds to God, who must an~ can know how far each being is from him. However, any force which is direct as the distance could capture this sense of creation out of nothing. So we a_._re faced with the q~estion 3 why God is R rather than, say R or R . We will so?f return . to thi5 _is_sue after we consider R . "1. R is a force a little less than R , God, and though equally unmechanical is nonetheless quite rational. It is a uniform force. One which is self-same in a crucial respect. In ·this case, force does not depend on the distance but only on what is acted upon. The same mass is acted upon by the same force at any distance. Space is irrelevant, all that is crucial is what a thing is, i.e. 1 its mass, it's essence..: 1 In the_fase of R as in the case of R and R distance is relevant and has the consequence that the effect is either more or less than the apparent cause. In this case, the effect is entirely equal to the cause. Such a force responds to the what but not the where. If we ask ,what entity has the traits which characterize this force, the answer is clear. It is Reason and from Milton we can glean what Reason is; it is the first created beings ,0 the Angels. We will therefore take R to represent Reason. The question of the .. relation 1 between R and R is now the question of the relations between God and Reason. i.e. the first Fall, a situation described by Newton in Props. 7,8, and 9. The second creation, the creation of Adam, occurs in Prop. 10 which is the last proposition of Section 2. It is now time to return to thl question of associating God with the R force law since any law Rn where n > O can represent creation out of nothing. The first point is that if God's relation to his angels is ordered so that if God is Rn n-1 the angels are R , then if n > 1, the angels could also create out of nothing. The other point deals with the relation of his creatures to Him. God's creatures 15 �1 need to be able to recognize their difference from Him, i.e . . we must be finite. What we see and think must only be ultimately what He thinks, but yet it must ultimately be that. If th~ world were operating according to an R force law there, would be no difference between the non-ultimate and the ultimate, no difference between what appears and what is. The .visible world would be mathematics. . If the wo3ld operated according to the law F a R , the actual orbits could not be reduced to circles of curvature. The world would be completely imcomp~ehensible. One world would be purely intelligible, the other would be opaqu2 and miraculous. We therefore take the R. to r3present God's intellect and we associate R with .God's grace. The third force law presented in prop. 4 is the 'inverse as the distance' law, R-l It is a mirror image of the first law ai:id rather than increasing as the distance, it decreases. This is the most mechanically explicable of the three forces we have .considered, since one expects that the further away from the source of force, the. less force will be exerted. It is a force law which requires neither knowing how far nor to whom the force is directed prior to its action. What we have here is the representation of the force law between men, each man acting in the literal image 1 of God, Hfs reciprocal. As God is R , ma~ is 2 l/R 1 . In terans of our discussion of R , R , R , and R as God's grace, ~<rd' s intellect, God's power .and Reason, R becomes man's Will. In the fourth proposition what we have are three thinkable force laws and a fourth which, Newton points out, is our visible force law: the inverse square. Since this concerns what is visible, it s~2ms feasible to extend the list and add R as the mathematical correlate of perception. This then would give us the conclusion that man's perception is the image of God's intellect and would supply an internal justification of reading . the visible world as the story of God's intellect. -- There is one -more force law for which one must give account: the inverse cube. Since it is the factor which causes the dissolution of the world, we might, for the moment, let it correspond to the inverse of grace i.e. · despair. '(,Ur ques1:_\on is how the three laws R1 , R , and R bring into being through the fall, the visible world which displays the story of that fall in its force law, visibility, and interconnections. In other words, the visible world of the inverse square is the appearance to us of the creation of the world, its fall, and its eventual redemption, a moment which we are told in Revelations will be signaled by the dissolution of the heavens. Newton wrote a commentary on the book of Revelations. Our claim is that the force laws Rn do not concern 'possible' worlds, one of which i~ 'actual'. Rather the laws from -R 3 to Rfit together to tell the story of our world, visible and invisible. III The Fall of Lucifer occurs in Prop. 7. There we are shown a body orbiting in a circle around a center of force which, in corollary 1, is on the circumference of that circle. The figure of the orbit is two circles with a common tangent point occupied by the center of force. p This is the orbit which Lucifer and the Angels described prior to the Fall. It is an orbit whose center is neither within the orbit nor outside it. It stands as the mathematical diagram of the theological fact that God is in Heaven with his angels. He both is and is not with them; there is distance and yet no distance, as there would be were he inside or outside that orbit. He is precisely at the tangent point of all such double circular orbits. This allows for the possibility that the Angels can be different--ordered hierarchically--and yet none be farther from God than any other. . Since these orbits are circles, each point is similar to every other and the difference between, the orbit and a point on the orbit is' ·imperceptible. The Newtonian account of Heaven is therefore, viewed in the plane, the following figure. One might reflect on the oddity that each body generating its own orbit would fall into such a peculiar configuration. Such reflection would not account for the presence and the action of that force at the tangent point. However, it would indicate that the reasoning we described as Satan's is false. Reason would recognize itself limited. Satan does not look to the others and falls. The force law which proposition 6 would give us -Sor this orbit is the inverse fifth, R . Since we are flaiming that God acts according to .R , this appears a discrepancy. But it is not. Prop. 7 asks the general questi.on of the force law connecting a body in a circular orbit with a center of force. It considers an equation for any point in the circle and in the first corollary draws the specific vers!gn for the center on the circumference, R • It does not here present the question of the specific value of Rn where the force is at the center of the circle, i.e. when there is a definite and constant distance between the body and the center, which was not the case in the. creation of the Angels. Newton at this point does not feel such a need. Had he felt that ·need, the general 1 equation of prop. 7 for that case gives R • Satan's rebellion of prop. 7 erects an immeasurable distance between himself and 'his creator. The center of force, God, is pushed out of Satan's world, placed infinitely far away. This infinitely distant center of force is treated in the next proposition which articulates the Fall. In the following discussion I assume that Proposition six which I claim represents faith is unavailable to Lucifer. From the perspective of prop. 4 and not prop. 6, which is needed to calculate the force law, there is no center. We can now present what would be Lucifer's i.e. Reason's--response to such situation. From prop. 2, he, on the orbit, can discern that there is no center either inside or outside. It is from the point of tangency that equal areas are described in equal times. But can that point be the center of force? Any attractive force, so Reason reasons, tends to become infinite the closer one gets. If the center were on the orbit itself, then when the body reached that point the force would be infinite and the orbit would not continue. Since there clearly is an orbit, such a center of force.cannot be there. The orbit, Reason concludes, must therefore be self-generated. Through Prop. 6, we see ~his analysis is wrong and that the orbit continues. What prop. 6 permits which this reasoning does not, is the conclusion that an infinite force results in a finite effect i.e. the mystery of creation. What we have here is the mathematical equivalent of Milton's Lucifer in Bk. I who claims his own self-generation. Without proposition 6, the only way to discern a center of force on the orbit would be to consider the other orbits. a A? Proposition 8 shows an orbit with the center of force infinitely far and the body on a circle. This orbit is unstable. Once the point is reached where the 17 �.., tangent to the orbit is on a line parallel to the force lines, the body begins to move in a straight line at continually increasing acceleration. It moves along the tangent. This is the fall itself. · The force law operating here is the unverse cube which for the first time makes its appearance. The inverse cube is what was mention~d before as involved in the dissolution of the world. The situation of this proposition is that when Lucifer reaches the tangent poi~t of the previous proposition--the place where God was--he begins to move in a straight line continually accelerating according to the inverse cube. The body of Prop. 8 approaching the tangent point of the double circles is acted upon by the infinitely distant force according to the inverse cube of line AB, or A' B' , a ·line dropped from the position of the body ordinatewise to the diameter TW. When the body reaches the point T, the lines A'B' have vanished and are replaced by the increasing lengths along the tangent TP.The body is therefore act3d upon by a force which is inversely as TP . This is the distance between Satan and God as.He was in Prop.7. II ~ limits. He, therefore, must reason, since acceleration is detectable, that ~e exerts force on himself. As such he is not only self-generated but self-generating. Without Prop. 6, however, he can not argue to the inverse cube. He must continue. to believe that he acts on himsetf according to what he is, i.e. the R law. The movement of Satan in the fall is along a line of tangency to his original orbit. In discussing Newton's first law, we pointed out that motion along a straight line was the equivalent to what one has become. It is uniform velocity and constant direction. What we see in Satan's case is constant direction, away from the tangent. point where God was, but also continually increasing velocity. It is the fusion of Law 1 and 2 .a:nd is .. the eq_uivalent to th~~ sin of Satan--pride. Pride we are told, leads to despair and in the next proposition we find just that. Because of Satan's fall a new line has been generated in the world. The previous figure was: A' A The new line is the tangent line to the point of tangency between the double circles. It runs at right angles to the line of the centers of the double circles. Satan could recognize this, his own fall from T, if proposition 6 were available to him, but ~e are assuming, for now without explanation, that is is not. We can say that because it represents faith, it is not available to him but is available to us readers. The crux of proposition 6 is to relate the finite and the infinite through the nascent ratios and calculate a force law in regard to a specific center. Having fallen from the orbit, Lucifer no longer has the possibility of viewing the other angelic configurations and reasoning to reason's Satan's fall draws the figure of the cross, a figure his fall made necessary. Had Satan any movement except along the line away from God, he would describe circles around the original point in his fall. At the infinite distance, he would describe an infinite circle. However, since he has no such movement, he does 18 -·------------------- not. He remains fixed in the infinite point, infinitely far from God. What we see in prop. 9 is the center of force by which Satan was accelerated in prop. 8, the inverse cube, now acting at a finite distance. proposition. In prop. 7, God was considered with the angels in a place which was no place, i.e, the tangent point between all their orbi:ting double circles. God in prop. 7 was with these created beings in heaven. In prop. 10, we find the .second creation, the creation of man in God's image. It is in respect to man and the second creation, to beings at a finite distance from him, that God acts directly as the distance and that is the force.law displayed at the end of section two. God' s relation is such that he is no longer in the same place as his creature. _ He is initially at the center of a ellipse/circle where manor Adam is on the orbit. The force law is direct as the distance. In the previous creation, prop. 7, we were faced by circles. The variety of the general force law in question there, the inverse fifth, left no room for any degree of variation. One either remained on the double circle or one fell. In the second creation, that changes. By God's having moved his creature to a finite distance, there comes into being a certain latitude. Adam can move in a circle or an ellipse and still remain in orbit around God in the center. The difference between the circle and the ellipse depends on the relation between the distance from the center and the body's tangential velocity. The ~atitude mentioned· means that if where one is and what one is are not in harmony, one still need not fall. One can desire, fall back, and still remain in orbit. Newton does not end Section 2 with Proposition 10, but with a Scholium. The Scholium acts as a transition to the next Section which begins with the creation of Eve. In this scholium, the ellipse of Prop. X first becomes a parabola and then a hyperbola. For the parabola to arise out of the ellipse requires that the center of force be moved infinitely far away. The parabola is an ellipse which is missing one point. It is a representation of a being's desire, a being which views himself as essentially incomplete. The force law which causes this figure is what we observe in the fall of apples at the The result is a peculiar image of a force' law '1e previously considered for God--i.e. F R . That law was not the law of the world because it described pure grace. The inverse cube is its opposite. Acting on finitely placed bodies, it causes them to begin a spir~l which, regardless of their original velocity, eventually brings them to the center of force, Satan, if there is any motion at all in that direction. It is the distorted image of grace~ it is despair. However, we have just seen that Satan is infinitely far from any body whose distance from God is finite. He, therefore, can have no effect from his location at the very base of the tan~ent line. However, if we ask ourselves what that base is, we see it is the. foot of the cross which came into being in the transition from prop. 7 to prop. 8. It is only if mediated by God's grace that Satan can ·act and God is grace is alone what is sufficient. Satan imagines lJimsel!f to act according to what he was, R • However, he actually attempts t~ 3 act, unknown to himself, accot;ding to R • His imagined actia_p is made possible through God's grace, R • The result of the magnification of the inverse cube by· the direct cube is RO, which because it · acts without reference to distance can aqt even at an infinite distance. In other words, we have Newton's initial rendering of the claim that God's grace brings good out of evil, which would be . the justification of God's ways to man. We are now ready for the second creation, and Newton presents us with that in the next· 19 �, surface of the earth. As Newton says, "This is Galileo's theorem". The ellipse, which is caused by a force acting directly as the distance, has been transformed into a parabola acted -upon a force infinitely distant. As he stated, "the force will become constant." However, we have just seen what this force might be. Satan is a force infinitely remote from Adam which opera es just as this force should, i.e. F a R • If one now re-introduces God at the center of the ~ld ellipse acting according to the R force law, the parabola becomes a hyperbola where we have a centrifugal instead of a centripetal force. We have here the representation of Adam's flight from God in the desire for something else which would complete him. Adam is requesting a mate. The end of Newton's section 2 corresponds to the end of the second chapter of Genesis. Throughout this discussion, we have not considered the sixth Proposition. Satan, we claimed, traversed the 7th, 8th, and 9th propositions because Prop. 6 was unavailable to him. He had to rely on unaided reason whereas we could calculate the precise force laws. Previously we said that that proposition corresponded to faith and we must now consider that claim. Proposition 6 enables us to mediate between the appearances and the force law which governs them. It is in other words what makes the Principia possible. Had Satan possessed it, he would have recognized he was not self-generated. Prop. 6 deals with nascent ratios in Newton's Latin; in Greek that would be with the logos of Genesis--the word which was "In the beginning." It enables us to view an orbit, an historical fallen appearance, and discern the reality behind the product of lines in the figure is equal to the law of force. In its non-ultimate form, the figure is this: & 0 s and the force is inverse as the product. SP2 QT;;z QR In its ultimate form, the figure changes somewhat. As Newton says in Cor. 1 of prop. 6: "the centripetal force will be inversely as the solid SP;;z . QT;;z QR if the solid be taken of that magnitude which it ultimately acquires when points P and Q coincide." The figure indicated is the one in which "QR_ is equal to the versed sign of double of the arc QP whose middle is P." The figure with the double arc 9p is: it. In order to apply proposition 6, one must reduce the finite orbit at a point to a circle of curvature. A circle of curvature is a circle which has the same curvature at that_ point as the apparent orbit. The circle of curvature is a reduction of the orbit at a point to the pre-fallen world of prop.4. Once this is done a figure is drawn in the circle and It is the cross on which Christ was crucified which mediates between our fa],len world of the inverse square spiralling to the Last Judgement -and our pre-fallen state. It is therefore b_ecause proposition 6 for Newton is the Christ that that proposition is unavailable to Satan. - 20 directed to the center of force are parallel. Obviously someone convinced that Newton's Principia is a work of mathematical physics would insist that these are not real issues. He would admit the same contingency in this work that he would anticipate in the world which that work describes. It is not clear whether this dispute can be resolved at this level. It would require investigating the genesis of the concept 'descriptive'. Scholium Virtues and vices of this reading A brief statement of the virtues and vices of this attempt may be helpful. The principal advantage of the approach is that it insists that every part in the composition be respected and questioned about its role. Mathematically Prop. 8 and 9 appear to be unnecessary where they are. A corollary of prop. 7 is used later in section 3, but prop. 8 and 9 a re not. I do not know if they are used anywhere else. Are they? The situation is even worse in section 3. The scholium which ends that section first appears in Prop. 7, Cor. III. It is used in the 'same otherwise' proofs of Propositions 11 and 12. However, for no reason at all, it suddenly reappears a fourth time after Prop. 17 to complete the section. One must ask oneself why, and no mathematical response is to the point at that stage. This approach also allows one to begin to reconsider the relation between the proofs proper and the versions entitled 'the same otherwise'. These are generally viewed mere~y as alternate proofs. The two in section three, however, prop. 11 and prop. 12, share a similar strategy. They both derive the force law th rough Prop. X of Section 2. The proofs proper do not use that proposition but argue directly from Prop. 6. The different versions appear to bring up a distinction between an apparent force law and an actual one. The ' same otherwise' proofs in Section 2 occur after Prop. 7, 9, and 10. They all emplpy Cor. 3 of prop. 6 instead of Cor. 1 _which is used for the proposition. Cor. 1 of Prop. 6 uses the cross; Cor. 3 does not, but rather a line perpendicular to the tangent. One wonders what to make of this difference. In section 3, Prop. 13 does not have a I same otherwise I . In section 2, Prop. 8 lacks one. Here too one wonders why. This is particularly the case since Prop. 13 is the parabola,_ a figure whose diameters are all parallel and prop. 8 is a circle where all_ lines The vices of such an effort are legion and obvious to anyone. To stop ourselves from speaking of force laws as holding of possible worlds, a Leibnizian characterization, I made an effort to show the Newtonian force laws in a different light. This required presenting an account of R3 and R2 as God's Grace and God's Intellect. I doubt that the suggestions presented are sufficient to convince anyone. An argument is necessary which would involve a treatment of Lemma I I of Section I and the Scholium which follows it. Such an effort is beyond the scope of the sketch which is being presented. This brings up another issue. In such an attempt, a premature guess which is incorrect appears much worse than it really is. It takes on this aspect because everything is, at best, merely implicit. One, therefore, fears that anything is possible. I did not use the now infamous SPQRT which in a giddy mood I once imagined represented the assertion of the Roman rather than the Greek cross in the sixth Proposition. I have no idea whether the shape of the true cross really concerned Newton or whether he had a sense of humor. It is tempting to_ connect Prop. 6 both with Prop. 66 and with the number of the Antichrist, 666. However to show that 6, as the first perfect number, was associated with Christ and to apply it to this" ·text would appear, right now, indulgent, and make the entire effort su~pect. The whole procedure, therefore, hin'ges on the exercise of restraint and that itself is a problem. The most one can hope for at this stage is to have made 21 �the claim that the Principia is a work of mathematical physics ambiguous. To do more would require displaying that our notion of mathematical physics has its true origin, not in the Principia, but in Kant's Critique, and is hardly possible in a last sentence. a function of the mass of the affected body and since there are an indefinite number of these, any force emanating from a center must be infinite. This, however, is a different problem from the one being addressed though it may indicate that for Newton the action of God is necessary in any situation where force is present. God would be necessary because no mechanical explanation could account for an infinite force originating from a mass. 1 In this discussion of the force laws I am not considering the effect of mass but only of distance. Because any force, direct or inverse as the distance, is also Viewpoint Patti Nogales We have not left it as we found it but it seems to me that way; though twelve yea,rs of living have softened the harsh lines the naked floor throws back coldly an echo of my despair. I would like to say "fare thee well" to my room but I look to find four unresponsive walls, an only1- once - before - seen floor, a silent door. Where is my room? Did it leave with the desk hauled out the door, or with my reading chair, my pictures or the bookshelves eased into the back of an old green truck? At what moment, with the loss of which part did the whole disappear in the bustle of the last days? It is lost like a sigh of warmth in a cold winter, In a sigh it was born and died my sigh~ So when we softly close the door. for the last time and look back, we will see, not as we found it, a strangely familiar house at the top of a hill. July, 1978. 22 23 �Ah! cruel, tu m'a trop entendue. Je t'en ai dit assez pour te tirer d' erreur. · H~ bien ! connais done Ph~dre et toute sa fureur. (671-673) Like Flies to Wanton Boys another paper about God, man, and the universe Stephanie Nelson Oh that is cruel, you understand too much. My words already leave no room for doubt. Well then, know Ph~dre, know all her fury's forcer love, but loving still, my eyes refuse Myself all sanction and all innocence. You think this madness that controls my mind Is born of weakness. The poison is not mine. A plaything for the Gods, your proud contempt Is nothing to my loathing for myself. · The Gods can speak for me - these Gods who lit The fire in me which has consumed my house. Cruel Gods, who pride themselves in such a feat To have seduced a helpless woman's heart. Think back, you know that fleeing from you then Was not enough - I drove you from my sight. I strove to be inhuman in your eyes, And to resist my love I sought your hate. What have I gained from all my useless care? You hate me more, I love you none the less. Your misery at last just lent new grace And fed the fire I fed with my own tears. All this in just a glance your eyes could see, If they could bring themselves to look on me. (671-692) In a play full of people attempting to justify their actions, to themselves and each other, Ph~dre stands alone· in accepting her crime for what it is. Certainly it is the question of her innocence, and not of Th~s~e's in condemning Hippolyte, of Hippolyte's in fleeing or loving Aricie, or of Oenone' s in attempting to save Ph~dre, which is the focus of the play. Any guilt of their's is overwhelmed by the horror of Ph~dre' s love for Hippolyte. But the sheer immensity of Ph~dre' s shame should have led her, had she been anyone else, to excuse herself and lay the blame for her actions on the gods (these gods do not deserve capitalization). This, exactly, she will not do. Phedre sees the gods for what they are (or at least for what Racine sees them as being). They have, without reason, placed her in a position where her only choices are to act, and act culpably, or to die. She acts, and blames herself, not the gods, for her action. If at any point Phedre might be said to be justifying herself it is in the speech which I have translated. I will try to show that is is not absolution that Ph~dre is seeking. 24 .. J'aime. Ne pense pas qu'au moment que je t'aime, Innocente ~ mes yeux, je m'approuve moi-~me, Ni que du fol amour qui trouble ma raison Ma lache complaisance ait nourri le poison. Objet infortun~ des vengeances Phedre begins looking at Hippolyte and calling him "cruel." Until this speech Phedre has used the word "cruel" only in reference to the gods. After this she will use it to describe both the gods and Hippolyte, but no one else. In the course of her speech Ph~dre speaks to Hippolyte, to the gods, and then again to Hippolyte. She addresses each in turn as "cruel." She accuses them not of malevolence, but of· indifference. The horror of the god's behavior towards Phedre is not that they bear her some sort of grudge, but that she is too insignificant for them to bother. Their persecution of her is entirely disinterested. They are not concerned with either Ph~dre or her sufferings. The gods do not judge men any more than men 'judge' flies in killing them. As Theramene says to Hippolyte "Le ciel de nos raisons ne sait point s'inforrner." (1.115) The gods are 'not even able to listen. To Ph~dre Hippolyte is a god; he is both as noble "Tel qu' on d~peint nos Dieux, ou tel que je vous voi." (1.640) - and as unfeeling. Phedre knows that Hippolyte could not have failed to understand her declaration of love. He too readily claims he has. Whether Hippolyte cannot, or will not, hear Phedre, she sees that his only desire is to remain ignorant of her suffering: " ... Par combien de detou rs/L' insensible a longtemps ~lud~ mes di scours!" , (1. 743) It is clear to her that Hippolyte does not care any more about her reasons than the heavens do. But Hippolyte is a man, not a god. Phedre demands from him the recognition due a human being, who does have reasons, and has the ability to judge and be judged. This recognition is what the gods have refused her. Ph~dre tries to force Hippolyte to understand her, and her love, not in order to escape judgement but to claim it as her right. Indifference is the cruelest blow of all. c~lestes, Je m'abhorre encor plus que tu ne me d'testes. (673-678) Ph~dre's confession of her crime requires only one syllable. Her need to make Hippolyte understand has overcome any desire in her to win him through passionate declarations of love. She challenges Hippolyte by not excusing herself. She claims that it is possible for a man to act, and at the same moment to understand that his action is wrong. Hippolyte's understanding of guilt cannot admit this. He has referred to Th~s~e' s seductions as "erreurs" (1.23) and to Thesee's actions as "failings." ["faillir" (l.100)] Guilt, for Hippolyte is th.e denial, or, as he is partial to his father, the falling short of moral laws. Th~s~e' s crimes, and trespass ·in general, are the result of a deficiency, a deficiency which can be made up, for example, by killing enough monsters. A man such as Thes~e, in Hippolyte' s eyes, could never condemn himself as guilty while deceiving his lovers; he can deceive them only because he has deceived himself too well to understand his guilt. The inconstancy of Th~s~e' s vows can be 'fixed' by Ph~dre because his inconstancy is not a force to be tamed, :but an error to be corrected. Uncorrected, a man who can deny one limit, finally can deny all. Hippolyte tells Th~s~e, "Quiconque a pu franchir les bornes l~gitimes/Peut violer enfin les droits les plus sacres" (1.1094) . What Hippolyte says is quite true, but not always for the reason he understands. When Phedre abandons her reason to Oenone she does it because "De . I l 'austere pudeur les bornes sont passees" 25 �(1. 766) • It is not because she has been able to convince herself that her acts are not crimes, that she has passed into greater crimes. She is so aware of her guilt that she is unable to act unless she abandons her judgement completely. This she cannot do. She can only tell Onenone "Je t' avouerai de tout; j e n' esp'ere qu' en toi." (1. 811) Ph~dre' s crimes finally do not result from her blinding judgement, but from her need to abandon it. Hippolyte defends · himself before Thesee by reminding him of what Hippolyte believes is the cause of his innocence, his " ... haine des forfai ts qu 'on ose m'imputer" (1.1108). As long as he hates this crime he cannot commit it. His hate however is no stronger than Phedre's. This is the Hippolyte Phedre speaks to when she says "Je m'abhorre encor plus que tune me d~testes." Ph~dre abhors herself because she understands, despises, and yet has committed her crime. Hippolyte detests her because he believes she recognizes no limits. His immediate reaction to Phedre' s declaration of love is to demand " ... oubliez-vous/Que Th6see est mon pere, et qu' il est votre ~poux?" (1. 663) Hippolyte cannot understand the horror or tragedy of Ph~dre' s crime because he does not understand that it is not always men's judgement that motivates their actions. Les Dieux m'en sent temoins, ces Dieux qui dans mon flanc Ont allume le feu fatal ~ tout mon sang; Ces Dieux qui se sent fait une gloire cruelle De seduire le coeur d'une faible mortelle. (679-682) If ·it is not Ph~dre's compliance ["complaisance"] which has made her act against her reason, what has? What but \. the gods? Phedre calls on the gods as her witnesses. But what kind of witnesses are they, who have caused the misery of the woman they are called upon to defend? The supposed greatness of the gods, the gods Hippolyte believes in, and to whom Ph~dre for a moment has tried to appeal, stands in terrible contrast to their real nature. Their "gloire cruelle" Ph~dre sees, is no greater than the pointless torments children impose on one another. Ph~dre's contempt for herself is for her weakness; she despises the gods because they are petty. When Ph~dre speaks of the gods she accuses not only Venus, but all the uncaring and uncontrolable forces which act on men. What does it matter to Ph~dre if the gods have lit the same fire in her that they lit in her mother and sister, or if it was her inheritence to fall in lqve? She cannot control it; she in no way deserved it. Nature or fate is no less "cruel" than the gods, although we are less inclined to accuse them of cruelty. Phedre cannot condemn the gods any more than we can condemn our genes. They act on us, they are all powerful!, and since they are simply not of the world of right and wrong, they cannot be accused of being unfair. Men, however, understand what it is to 'deserve' and somehow that understanding is the best part of men. Pascal wrote, "Mais quand l 'uni vers l'~craserait l'homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, puisqu' il sai t qu' il muert •.. " (Pensee 200) Perhaps we could add - because he knows whether he deserves to die. The gods, like the (empoisonn~) air Ph~dre is forced to breathes,are beyond her control and her condemnation. She can nonetheless recognize that she is in some way superior to them. It is Phedre who understands only too well. She despises herself because she acts against her judgement. She despises the gods because they have no judgement. Toi-~me en ton esprit rapelle le I passe. C'est peu de t'avoir fui, cruel, je t'ai chasse. J'ai voulu te parattre odieuse, inhumaine; Pour mieux te resister, j'ai recherch~ ta haine. (683-686) 26 '' ' Perhaps the saddest words in Phedre's speech are "qu' au moment que je t' aime." "Je t'aime" is not past, it is now, at the very moment in which Phedre talks to Hippolyte. Phedre can despise the gods for their cruelty; despite herself she cannot despise Hippolyte. ... There is no one else in the play whom Phedre feels she must make understand and judge her. It is ,, enough that Thesee or Oenone know her crime; only to Hippolyte does she plead "connais done Ph~dre." But Ph~dre is a play not only about passion and judgement, it is also about the inevitable solitude in which they occur. Perhaps if Oenone had understood why Phedre had to die, if Hippolyte had heard Phedre' s cry to be judged, if Th~s6e had not had " ... de son [Hippolyte's] coeur si peu de connaissance," ( 1. 1429) Hippolyte would not have died. Men are isolated because there is no one to witness the truth of what they say. Men cannot testify for themselves "Toujours les sc~lerats ont recours au parjure." (1.1134) Hippolyte learns the result of trusting in the concern of the gods - " [Les Dieux] ont trop d' in&r~t ~ me justifier" (1.1352) becomes "Le ciel m'arrache une innoc~nte vie." (1.1561). And finally men have so little knowledge of each other that they are unable to know, let alone speak, the truth for other men. Phedre calls herself, the gods, and Hippolyte to witness. All fail. She learns what Hippolyte does not when, in defending himself to Th~s6e, he finds that " ... la terre, le ciel, que toute la nature ... " (1.1133) are not enough to testify for him. Perhaps ~lying he realizes that this is because "la terre, le ciel, et toute la nature," like Hippolyte, do not want to listen. Phedre again calls Hippolyte "cruel" but the irony of even trying to call to witness is so bitter that she cannot help but recognize it. The proofs which would serve to convince an objective judge are precisely the acts that make it impossible for Hippolyte to be objective. "Mes inutiles ... soins" are perhaps not only Phedre' s attempts, now long ago, to resist Hippolyte, but the attempt she has just made to make him understand her. In a sea of past actions "tu me haissais;" and "je t'aimais" alone are in the present. Now, at this moment, you hate me more, not despite, but because of my attempts to make you understand. There are no judges for Phedre except herself. Forcing Hippolyte to see the truth can only make it more impossible for him to judge. The gods have given Ph~dre, as they do Th's'e, exactly what she wanted. Ph~dre' s plea for understanding only makes her, in Hippolyte' s eyes, more "odieuse;" and "inhumaine." .. Tes malheurs te pr~taient encor de nouveux charmes. J'ai langui, j'ai s~ch~, dans les feux, dans les larmes. Il suffit de tes yeux pour t'en persuader, Si tes yeux un moment pouvaient me regarder. (689-691) But "je ne t'aimais pas mains". Even while Phedre realizes that Hippolyte hates her, she loves him. Phedre knows that Hippolyte is.unable to understand her. If kn6wledge governed men's actions her speech would end with "tu me haissais plus." But all of Ph~dre's understanding cannot stifle her longing to have Hippolyte recogni~e her. That longing will not allow Phedre to abandon a hope that she knows it is impossible to satisfy. All she has left to abandon is her reason. Hippolyte will never look at Phedre. Phedre knows this and still cannot stop herself from begging him to see her, just as she can condemn her love for him but cannot stop herself from loving. Her speech is a microcosm of her love. Once she has' given her hope substance by speaking of it, her judgement can no longer overwhelm the force of a De quoi m'ont profit~ mes inutiles soins? Tu me haissais plus, je ne t'aimais pas mains. (687-688) 27 �f -, passion she has done her best to kill. Overall, once Ph~dre has allowed herself to hope that she could love Hippolyte, and in this speech, once she has hoped that he might understand her, she cannot prevent her hope from working out its own fatal conclusion. Nor can she prevent herself from condemning the actions she performs motivated by this hope. \ Phedre' s speech from this point on will build until, horribly, it combines her understanding of her guilt and her need for Hippolyte's recognition. The only resolution to her fatal passion is that it be Hippolyte who, in judging her, punishes her guilt. Only then can her judgement and her passion be reconciled. The fatality of her love is that it is both deadly and seeking death. Hippolyte alone can end the war within Ph~dre. But Hippolyte cannot. He is too young and too naive. He is horrified by Ph~dre's confession, and naturally so. Because he is a man, and a particular man, he cannot do what Phedre is asking of him.· Men are not capable of forgetting themselves in order to understand another. Ph~dre is asking Hippolyte to be what Th~s6e, the gods, and finally Hippolyte cannot be - both noble and understanding. Perhaps it would be sufficient if just one man could be both. Hippolyte cannot. Only Ph~dre can understand both herself and her passion, but alone the only resolution she can reach is the one that will lead to Hippolyte's death. Some Thoughts on "Maxwell's Equations" '" David Stephenson We usually meet with Maxwell's equations in something like the following form if we meet with them at all: curl E =- div D p db dt curl H div B = L -+ it will give rise to another field in directions perpendicular to but curving a round it: hence the use of the word "curl" in the first two equations. The elegance and power of these equations is manifest. They display an even greater symmetry in space free of charge and current, so that L and p a re zero, and without material bodies so that B = H and D = E. Such a concise and pregnant expression of natural law can. only be admired. But these equations were not written by Maxwell. He did list some dozen equations in quaternion form at the conclusion of a chapter entitled "General Equations· of the Electrodynamic Field" in his Treatise. Among them are some more or less equivalent to the four posterity attributes to Maxwell. But they are quite different in form. How then did our four usurp their paternity? Who did write them? and why did Maxwell lack his successor's economical or aesthetic predilections? Though not afflicted with the Pythagorean tesseraphilia nor a confessed admirer of Aristotle's cardinal virtues or elements, Maxwell did apparently succumb to the charm. of the number four in another short treatise: "Note on the Electromagnetic Theory of Light," in which he derived a plane electromagnetic wave equation, which we may write: dD dt 0 These are the field. equations out of which immediately springs the assurance that electromagnetic waves can exist and travel in space. For with E and D signifying electric inten5;1ity and flux, respectively, H and B magnetic force and flux, and p and L electric charge and current densities, the first two equations imply a reciprocal stimulation of magnetic and electric fields that will spread outwards once provoked, like the waves in a pond. The third and fourth equations, on the other hand, cover the quiescent case, locating the source of an electrostatic field in electric charge but denying any local source to magnetism. The terms curl and divergence were invented by Maxwell (although he preferred the term "convergence" for the latter, the negative of the divergence). ~n his "Mathematical Classification of ,Physical Properties" in the The Scientific papers of James Clerk Maxwell, he shows himself to be particularly concerned that these new names express something of their mathematical meaning to the imagination. Thus in selecting "curl," he says, "I have sought for a word which shall neither, like Rotation, Whirl, or Twirl, connote motion, nor, like Twist, indicate a helical or screw structure which is not of the nature of a vector at all." If a field pointing in one direction is altered 28 from four "theorems" or "principles". Two of these "theorems" resemble · verbal paraphrases of the first two of our · equations; this is as close as Maxwell ·comes to our quartet. The demonstration 29 �---------- is simple and lucid; yet Maxwell seems to have preferred the richer, if more prolix, exposition in the Treatise. One of the reasons why Maxwell included more equations than absolutely necessary in his Treatise may have been simply his desire to be explicit. The economy of mathematical notation in general depends on its tacit reliance on our understanding of the meaning of its symbols. Part of that meaning may derive from implicit relationships among them, so that each symbol can conceal a whole train of equations. The brevity of our original set of equations proves to be somewhat illusory. Only someone already initiated into the mysteries of electromagnetism knows, for example, that B and H are proportional to one another. Maxwell, however, writes out the simple equation B = µH for all to see. For similar reasons Ohm's Law joins the parade. But Maxwell's pedagogical frankness is not the only reason for the multitude and appearance of his equations. They do differ in form as well as number from ours. Consider the fourth of the equations given above: extended plot. So the symbol A must be connected with the symbol E in yet another equation. The connection between E and B provided by this new vector then eliminates the need for our curl E equation. Maxwell is very interested in what this new A symbol might represent. A rather extended analogy with mechanical phenomena leads him to the conclusion that it should be called the "electrokinetic" or "electromagnetic momentum," and that its time derivative equals the electromotive force that produces electric currents· in circuits that are in motion relative to the magnetic field. In earlier papers he had associated it with Faraday's "electrotonic state": a state of tension assumed to account for the peculiar action of electromagnetic induction. It thus contributed to Maxwell's understanding of one of the most puzzling phenomena of electricity and magnetism. Anyone nurtured in Newton's school would have trouble explaining the direction of the action of electromagnetic induction. For centripetal forces alone can never account for the fact that when a wire crosses a magnetic field a current springs up in a direction perpendicular to that field, and none whatsoever in the field's direction. Without, as far as I know, confessing this outright, Maxwell implies that the magnetic flux B expresses a rotational property of some kind, and the "momentum" associated with A may be a kind of angular momentum in space. Rotation does, after all, seem to be characteristic of magnetism; even light can be twisted by it. In the place of symmetry we now have a kind of ladder from vector to vector, beginning with current and rising to the electromagnetic momentum A: div B = 0 This can easily be translated into everyday language: magnets have no true poles, no distinct centers or localized sources of magnetism. Maxwell presents this idea in a totally different way. It is a well known mathematical property of the divergence and curl that div curl A = o always for any vector A; that therefore if the divergence of one vector is always zero, the vector could equal the curl of another vector. Therefore Maxwell states our fourth equation in what amounts to the following form: curl A = B This is the first of the electromagnetic equations presented in the Treatise. Wit~ it Maxwell introduces one more vectorial quantity A into the company of forces and fluxes with which alone we have so far had to deal. A new character requires a more curl 1 B = curl H µ curl A 30 I., + dD dt ~.·' electromagnetic vibration. It was left for Einstein to "murder" that one--or did he? Thus began the distillation of Maxwell's electromagnetic equations, refined ultimately into the present concise, balanced, elegant quartet. These four say what.it is necessary to say, and no more than is necessary. Perhaps, therefore it is only nostalgia that longs for the richer and more fanciful panoply of Maxwell. However, there is an ironic footnote to this history; the vector A turns out to be significant in two very modern sciences: quantum mechanics and relativity (cf. Feynman's Lectures, vol. II, ch. 15 & 25). In some respect therefore Maxwell turns out to have been an unconscious prophet. · Now it must be admitted that A (sometimes called the ·"vector potential" of the current 1., to name the relationship implied by the above equations) is a rather mysterious quantity because it is not measurable directly, and can be eliminated by suitable combination of these equations. Maxwell's disciple, oliver Heaviside, with little hesitation confessed that he "murdered" this function along with the electric potential function v, ( E = - 'VV), "with a great gain in definiteness and conciseness." Thus may an Englishman teach a Scotsman ruthless mathematical parsimony. And Heaviside does come up with a symmetrical set very much -like our own. Nevertheless the destruction of this mystery did not eliminate another one: the "ether" itself, the matPrial substratum of Sonnet Ruth A. Johnston Seen moment by each moment am I known, Yet unknown in a moment's blinking eye Unruled by time the hidden changes lie, And eyes must fail to see how I have grown. My eyes indeed grow weak, with nothing gained From oft-repeated tries, oft-failed, to see The outline of what someday will be me; From challenging their limit, over-strained. Viewers stroll by, their careless gaze upon The nascent painting's rough and mottled face. The canvas prays the work may go apace; The painter smiles and strokes his colors on. Judge lightly, then, as knowing half the tale; The end cannot be seen beyond the veil. B 31 �translated by Merle Sokolik Shall I, by Bacchus overcome, yet once again into those night-long rings of dance set my white foot while thrusting up my neck unto the heavens, like a fawn that revels in the green delights the meadow holds for her when she has fled from fearful hunt, from under watch, above the well-strung nets, and yet the huntsman hastens on his dogs? She leaps across the river-bordered plain in whirls of strain and haste, delighting in the spac~s empty of all men and in the leaves of the shade-giving wood. ~p' tv naVVUXLOLS xopoCs , I I ~now ROTE AEUMOV n16' a~a~aMXEUOUaa 1 6~~av ELS aL~Epa 6pOOEpov PLRTOUO ' ws vESpos XAEopaLs EµnaLso~oa AELµaxos n6ovaCs, nvLx' a'v cpoSEp&v cpUYQ ~npav £~w cpuAaxas , , ' ' ' -" EURAEMTWV UnEp apxuwv, ~wl1oowv cl xuvay£TaS . ouvTELv~ opaµnµa xuvwv· µox~oLs T. WM~6poµOLS T. a£AAaLs ~p~OMEL nE6Cov napanoTaµLOV, n6oµ£va SpOTWV €pnµLaLs OMLapoMoµOLO T, EpvEoLv oAas. t ' - ' , What is shrewdness? What is a finer god-paid gift among the mortals, than above the heads of foes the hand should lift its greater strength? The fine finds love-forever. Though it is slowly brought on, power of the gods should still be trusted. For it straightens out those men with maddended views that honor ignorance and do not magnify the works of gods. But they with intricate.cover disguise the too long march of time and hunt down the profane. So never do we need to know and care for what is stronger than that held as custom. The expense is yet so slight to hold that this has force: whatever is divine, the thing held long in time as custom and the thing always come forth in nature. TL Tb oocp6v; TC Tb x&AALOV nap& ~Ewv ytpas £v SpoTots Tf Xdp' Un~p MOplJq>Ci.S TTuY. ~X~P~V MpE~OOW MaT~XELV; ~ TL MaAdv cp~AOV ~EL. How-fortunate the one who from out of the sea has fled the tempest, should he reach the harbor. Fortunate the one who finds himself above such strains. The one goes past the other, prosperous and able, in another way. Yet many are the hopes for many men. Some hopes attain prosperity for men while others go away. The· one whose life is fortunate for all his days, I call him blessed. d6aLµwv µtv o's EM ~aAcfocras EcpUyE XECµa, ALµEva 6' EXLXEV' EUOaLµwv 6. o's {lnEp~E µox.Swv . £y£vE.&'· ETEpa 6' ETEpos ETEpov oAS~ xal 6uvaµEL napnA~Ev. µUpLaL 6' ETL µVpLOLS E~o~v EAnL6ES aC µ~v 0 TEAE~TWOLV (862-911) opµaTaL µOALS, aAA' oµws nLOTOV ( TL) Tb ~ELOV o~£vos· anEU~UVEL 6~ SpoTWV TOIJ S T' ayvwµooUVaV TL ]JWVTO.!; xat µ~ Tb. ~ELOV au~ov­ TaS abv µa~voµ~vq 60~~· MpU~TEUOUOL 6~ noLMCAWS 6apbv xpovou n66a xat ~npwoLv Tbv ~oEnTov. ou y&p MpEL006V ROTE TWV VOµWV yLyvwoxELV XPh xat µEAETcrv. xou~a y~p 6an&va voµLsELV Lox1!,v Too' ExELv, v ,, ' , 0 TL ROT ' apa TO 6aLUOVLOV, TO T EV XPOV~ µaxp~ voµLµov aEL cp'1JEL TE nE•nUKOS, 32 n I • I EV OAS~ SpoToCs, aC 6' &n£Sncrav· TO ct MaT' ~µap OTW SLOTOS EU6aLµwv, µaxapLsw. TL Tb oocpov; TL Tb x&AALO\) nap& ~Ewv y£pas €v SpoTots ff xEtp' &nlp xopucpas TWV EX~pfuv xpELoow xaTtXELV; " 1 , ' , 0 TL MaAOV cpLAO\) aEL. I n What is shrewdness? What is a finer god-paid gift among the mortals, than above the heads of foes the hand should lift its greater strength? The fine finds love-forever. A Chorus from the Bacchae I 33 �The B Deduction and Its Relation to Freedom I. (Or: Kant, Can Do} The question one should always ask oneself when approaching the B Deduction is "Why is a deduction necessary?" To answer this question, we must recall quickly the Transcendental Aesthetic and the opening of the Transcendental Logic. In the Aesthetic Kant proves that time and space are not, as we had always assumed, things outside of us, but rather that they are the pure forms of our sensible intuition. In other words, they are internal, something with which we condition our experience. We receive a sensation from something outside of us (the "thing in itself") and our intuition, made up of the so-called "receiving rooms" of space and time, orders that sensation spatio-temporally. This does not mean that these pure forms of intuition do anything. They are merely receptive, and· do not make images. As Kant points out, that which they receive could be nothing more than a mass of dots which is then ordered spatio-temporally. But in order to think, we need of some kind of object to think about; we cannot think about a mass of dots, a metaphor for what Kant calls· usually a manifold. This problem leads us to the opening of the Transcendental Logic. ·If I am to judge any object in my experience, if I am to say anything about that· object, I must have a concept of that object. For example, if I say "That book is large," I show that I have a concept of some object before me ("book"), to which I am attaching the concept "large." Or, put in another way, I have seen many books and have formed the concept "book" under which a particular book falls, and I have seen books (or perhaps just things) of different sizes and among them this particular book seems "large." Therefore, I have brought together two concepts, book and large, and have made a judgement about some particular incident in my experience. As Kant says: Matthew Davis I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers; How ill white hairs become a fool and a jester! I have long dream'd of such a kind of man, So surfeit swell'd, so old, and so profane; But, being awak'd, I do despise my dream. Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace; Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape For thee trice wider than for other men. Reply not to me with a fool-worn jest: Presume not that I am the thing that was; For God doth know, so shall the world preceive, That I have turn'd away my former self; So will I those that kept me company. -King (Prince) Hal to Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part.!.!_ I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith. -Immanuel Kant, Preface to the Second Edition of The Critique of Pure Reason Transcendental Logic, the Transcendental Dialectic. In the Dialectic Kant addresses the principal problems which have plagued the philosophy he so radically alters in The Critique, and primary among these problems is whether freedom exists or not. I do not think I am overstepping any sensible bounds if I say Kant wrote much, if not all, of The Critique to solve this problem. Therefore, I should say: in this paper I intend to give a brief account of Kant's B Deduction with a forward glance at the Dialectic's primary problem, th'at of freedom. In this paper I intend to give a brief account of Immanuel Kant's B Deduction. This deduction is the cornerstone of the first half of the Critique of Pu re Reason, or, more specifically, of the section entitled the Transcendental Analytic, the first division of a larger section, the Transcendental Logic.. Kant explains his philosophy of "limitation" in the Analytic; this is, simply stated, what we can and cannot know. The B Deduction makes this explanation possible. But, caught up in this difficult section, we often forget the other division of the 34 35 In every judgement there is a concept which holds of many representations, and among them of a given representation that is immediately related to an object. (p.105) It is plain that these judgments are not in the things outside of me but that they are in me. In order that I may judge the objects outside me, I must use my concepts of those objects. But it is important also that I have objects to judge. More will be said about this in a moment. We can abstract all empirical content from the judgment "the book is large" so as to discover whether th~re are any a priori, non-empirical types of judgment which underlie this judgment. The· statement, therefore, is about a particular (book) and is affirmative; it is making an assertion about the book. What is the particular (book)? In this case it is something (large). But an affirmative statement about a particular cannot be derived from experience, since we have abstracted from all experience to better see the nature of a judgment. Therefore, there. must be certain ~ priori concepts ("functions of judgment") which I bring to experience so I can make judgments about it. Kant states at the outset of "The Clue to All Pure Concepts of the Understanding," section two: If we abstract from all content judgment, and consider only the form of the understanding, we that the function of thought judgment can be brought under of a mere find in a four heads, each of which contain three moments. (p. 106). This list Kant calls the "Table of Judgments. " But we have assumed up to this point that there are objects about which we can make judgments. For a judgment to have validity, there must be objects to judge. Where did these objects come from? Certainly not from the · intuition, since it is merely a receptive faculty, doing nothing more than spatio �-temporally ordering sensation(s) which come into it. It is clear that there must be a "putting together" (synthesis) of the manifold of the pure intuitions, and that this synthesis must take place in some way that my judgments might be valid, so that my experienc~ might make sense. The synthesis, Kant tells us, will have to take place according to a set of concepts, which he calls the "Table of Categories:" 1 The same function which gives unity to the various representations in ~ judgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of various representations in an intuition; and this unity, in its most general expression, ~e entitle the pure concept of the understanding. The same understanding, through the same operations by which in concepts, by means of analytical unity, it produced the logical form of a judgement, also introduces a transcendental content into its representations, by means of the synthetic unity of the manifold in intuition in general. (pp.112-113) This table of categories, analogous to the table of judgments, we bring with us to experience. But how? We have two faculties, intuition and understanding (the home of concepts), one utterly passive and the other active, one a mass of spatio-temporally ordered dots waiting to be put together and the other a set of concepts which can only begin activity when they have something to think (act) upon, i.e. an object. They must be brought together so that thinking is possible. Hence the need for a deduction. II. The B Deduction is in two parts. The first part deals with the synthesis of the manifold 1 given in ~·priori intuiti.on . in general , and thus for any thinking being; the second part deals specifically with those thinking beings who have a priori sensible forms of intuition called space and time, us. We will begin with the first part. In the setting out of the need for a deduction it was clear that a way must be found for the understanding to unify the manifold of intuition. This synthesis of the manifold of intuition in general, what Kant calls the "combination," cannot arise fro~ any combination itself, for that would be contradictory. Something must have been put that combination together, and from the very concept "combination" we a re aware of some unity acting upon some manifold, so we must search for that higher unity. Kant says at the outset of section 16: It must be possible for the 'I think' to ~ccompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be imp~ssible, or at least nothing to me. This is plain. If I am to become aware of the "world" around me I must be able to think about it. The higher unity we are seeking must therefore be that which generates the 'I think,' that which allows me to combine the manifold in general. Were I not able to do this I would have no coherent thought; some things would be "nothing to me." Kant calls this unity "The Original Synthetic Unity of Apper- _ ception," or "Pure Apperception." He calls also the generating of the 'I think' an act of spontaneity, and therefore an a~t o~ the ':1nde4standing, for the intuition is passive. But pure apperception is also "the transecendental unity of self-consciousness." Kant calls it this for two reasons. First, it is necessary that I.be coherent enough to attach the 'I think' to all representations, and I would not be able to do so if I did not have one self-consciousness; some representations would just go flying by my many diverse selves. Second, it is a fundamental principle in Kant that I synthesize before I analyze. For example, if I say the colors of a bowl are red? green and blue, then I must have al ready synthesized the representations of those colors with the bowl (a "given" manifold) in one consciousness. Any analytic act presupposes a synthesis, and that synthesis presupposes the unity of self-consciousness, the combining of the manifold of representations in general. Pure apperception, therefore, underlies all thought; it makes all connected thought possible. This is why Kant calls it "the highest principle in the whole sphere of human knowledge" (p. 154). But how does this pure apperception make us capable of knowledge? In section 17, Kant says this: object (determinate space, or in this case, line) , or object in general. As Kant says: "The synthetic unity of consciousness is, therefore, an objective condition of all knowledge" (p. 156). But how is this determinate object related back to the synthetic unity of apperception? The perplexing problem at the outset of this essay was that we had a table of judgments but no objects to judge. Now, because of the synthetic unity of apperception, I am able through judgment to say something about a manifold of given representations, representations which by judgment are united into an object. The synthetic unity of apperception guarantees that my judgment will have objective validity (i.e. be about an object), for it guarantees the continuity of my self-consciousness, it guarantees my ability to draw a line. Therefore, a judgment (a statement that something 'is') can unite a manifold of representations, be they a manifold in general or in particular, and that judgment brings judged manifold of representations into self-consciousness to join other judged representations. For this reason Kant calls judgment "the manner in which given modes of knowledge are brought to the objective unity of apperception" (p.159). But there is something more here. We know that we only have twelve ways we can judge, the table of judgments. Therefore the given manifold which is judged must be constituted in such a way that it can be judged. Judgments, therefore, can only be made of intuitions (or intuition in general) that have been determined according to something which will allow of judgment. These determinations are necessarily the categories. Since I have only twelve ways by which I can judge, it is necessary that the given manifold (or one intuition) be constructed by the pure apperception so that I can judge and think. And I can only judge and think via the categories. This, then, is why Kant went to so much trogble to introduce the table of categories. This is the conclusion of the first "Knowledge consists in the determinate relation of given representations to an object; and an object -is that in the concept of which the manifold of a given representation is united." This means simply that knowledge consists in the determination of an object, an object being merely a gathering together of representations. But we said above that . all syntheses of representations required the unity of self-consciousness, and therefore it is, as Kant says, "a condition under which every intuition must stand in order to become an object for me" (p. 156). This will become clearer if we look at his example. If I draw a line in space, in, order to keep drawing it (as a line) I must be conscious of the complete action and each step involved in it. If I did not have the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, I would not be able to bring the line, or any object, synthetically fnto being, for I would forget the first moment of the action even before I arrived at the second moment. The transcendental unity of self-consciousness, therefore, guarantees the continuity of my· synthetic thought, my ability to first know an 37 �In other words, that synthesis deals with intuition in general, with space and time al ready combined as wholes; it does not deal with the separate manifolds of space and time but only with them after they have become unified. So, something is needed to synthesize the manifolds of space and time in the sensibility itself. This activity Kant calls the figurative synthesis. The imagination, which is a part of the understanding, carries out the figurative synthesis. Kant calls the imagination "the faculty of representing in an intuition an object that is not itself present." This means that the imagina'tion acts spontaneously to determine intuition and make it an object, so to speak; to unite the manifolds of space and time into one general intuition, making them palatable for consciousness. Since this spontaneity is given through the understanding (the source of activity), it is necessary that the respective manifolds be combined in accordance with the synthetic unity of apperception. The spontaneity of the synthetic unity of apperception is therefore the same spontaneity which sets imagination to work on the intuitions. This, then, is an application of the categories to objects in sensible intuition, and the categories are thus given objective reality, becoming more than just mere "forms of thought." They are, for us, real. We have, however, known since the start of the essay that the understanding cannot combine the manifold of intuition, that a concept (having no object) cannot reach down into the forms of intuition and combine them. How does the imagination do i t7 A footnote to the deduction (B 160, a) is particularly helpful here. In the footnote Kant tells us that he was lying in the Aesthetic. There he made little of the distinction between form of intuition and formal intuition so he could talk of geometry and such matters. Here, however, the distinction in important. Form of intuition means the uncombined manifold of representations which comes into my "receiving rooms" of space and time. half of the deduct~on. And although it is by no means obvious, it is a refutation of Hume, who said that our representations were connected merely through habit. But to even have that connection I must be self-conscious. And thus Kant has established that our manifold of representations can be connected through judgment in objects; objects which, due to the synthetic unity of apperception, I can judge fearing no chidings of "subjectivity." As Kant remarks at the end of section 19: Thus to say 'the body is heavy' is not merely to state that the two representations have always been conjoined in my perception, however often that perception has been repeated; what we are asserting is that they are combined in the object, no matter what the state of the subject may be (p.159). This leads6 us to the second half of the deduction. Why is the second half of the deduction necessary? For Kant, thinking and knowing are two completely separate things. Knowledge as such is only possible for us human beings if an object is given in our sensible intuition. It is all right if we think a concept that has no object in intuition; we can think anything we like. But knowledge is something else again. Since it is clear from the first half of the deduction that we are the authors of our experience, it is impossible that we should know anything beyond that experience, that we should know, for example, a "thing in itself," something unconditioned by space or time. Therefore, objects for knowledge must be given to us in our pure forms of sensible ·intuition, and the second half of the deduction will concern itself with how this comes about. In section 23, Kant speaks of a thinking being who has a sensible intuition other than ours (not spatiotemporal). He introduces this being to show that the synthesis performed by the pure apperception is purely intellectual. 38 Formal intuition means the unity of these representations, a unity given by the unity which figurative synthesis, a according to the footnote "precedes any concept." But how? Space and time as forms of intuition a re homogeneous. Since all their parts are similar, no concept is needed to give them shape (a shape to space?). They only need a synthesis, a uniting, and this is the synthesis performed by the imagination, prior to any concepts. Therefore the formal intuition is the groundwork for determinate intuitions (intuitions through concepts) within it, such as, to use Kant's example, the setting of three lines at right angles to one another from the same point to represent space. The formal intuition must underlie even our own representation of it through concepts. The activity of the imagination, spurred by the pure apperception, is thus the basis of ou~ connected experience. Since the imagination is the faculty of representing any object (but in greatest generality space) that is not itself present, and since it determines time (inner sense), its continued synthesis of time being the very act through which we are aware of time itself, it shou1d be evident that the imagination can go on indefinitely producing "pictures" for me to think about. But I do not necessarily have to think about them. It is true that the imagination works in accordance with the synthetic unity of apperception, but it is certainly not true that I have to attach the 'I think' to every object in my experience. The action of the understanding on the sensibility through the imagination allows for my eventual empirical consciousness. I will say more on this subject in the discussion of the synthesis of apprehension. But this does not mean that I must attach the 'I think' to every object in that empirical consciousness, only to those which I choose. This, then, is the full meaning of "capable" in the first analytic statement of the deduction. The reason I do not have to say 'I think' about every object in the room around me is because the imagination synthesizes without a concept, but I am capable of thinking an object through a concept if I please. This is, I think, the fundamental distinc, tion between the "putting together" (without conceptg;) and the "grasping" (with concepts), the two phrases Kant uses in his general definition of synthesis. From all this it should be clear that we can only have knowledge of appearances. We have no contact with what gives us our original sensation, the "thing in itself." To become aware we must think, and the B Deduction shows us that thinking is an enormous process. At the center of the process, of course, is the task of constituting our own objects (which are nothing but appearances, per se), and this action, enabling our thinking, shuts us off from whatever the world might be "in itself." Although thinking in this sense seems somewhat bleak, it is precisely because we have appearances that experience is cogent. They will also be the basis of Kant's later discussion of the possibility of freedom. I will address this subject in the third section of this paper. Now, however, we must look at the final step in the B Deduction. The final step Kant calls the "synthesis of apprehension." This synthesis brings us empirical consciousness, i.e. perception. It is the final stage of consciousness made possible by the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, pure apperception. For this synthesis to come about it is necessary that space and time be united by the imagination. I can only perceive in space and time, and therefore space and time must be united through the figurative synthesis so that I may become conscious of them as a united manifold, or formal intuition. In order for this to take place, though, the imagination must be aroused by the original synthetic unity of apperception. This original synthesis, though, unites intuition in general according to the categories. Therefore, all our experience will conform to the categories, and therefore the categories have been united with 39 I' �More specifically, from the B Deduction we know that all experience is subject to categories and is in time. To posit freedom, the ability to initiate a chain of events in this experience, is to posit something that is not subject either to the categories or to time; it is to posit a series of events with an antecedent cause not in experience. The B Deduction, however, shows us that we can never know if this freedom exists, that we can only know the appearances that we have constitu~ed. Why should we posit freedom at all? Every event presupposes a sufficient cause ~ priori, but if we do not posit this sufficient cause (freedom) somewhere in the chain of events, there are only relative causes; in other words, each cause presupposes another cause for it which exists al ready. The assumption of mere relative cause, of course, is the same thing as saying that every cause "just is," and has always existed, that there is no completeness to any series. To take the other side of the argument is to admit that all causes "just are," and that we are fooling ourselves when we say that freedom must necessarily be. This assumption is merely an attempt to get some rest. We cannot go beyond experience and know anything, so we simply must be satisfied in saying that the change in the status of substance has always been. To posit freedom means to destroy cause and effect as the absolute law of nature, and so the other categories. As the B Deduction tells us, this would throw coherent experience right out the window. But if we say that there is no freedom, then we must accept that there is no sufficient cause for any event. This denies our first principle. So we are right back where we started. There is, however, a solution to this antinomy, and the essence of that solution is in the B Deduction. For a moment, therefo~e, we will retrace our steps. Kant tells us in the B Deduction that although the synthetic unity of apperception, or transcendental I, is at work in us, how it works i!:; unknown to us. How can we know? We have knowledge only of intuition and our experience made possible. To use Kant's example, if I have an empirical intuition of a house of which I become conscious, then it is a perception. At the basis of this empirical intuition must be the necessary unity, i.e. formal intuition of space and time. The house must be in space and time for me to perceive it. But space and time have been united through the figurative synthesis, providing the space and time for the house. But the spontaneity of the imagination igniting the figurative synthesis is the same spontaneity of the pure apperception, which unites intuition in general according to the categories, and therefore my experience will conform to the categories. It is important to note here that I have thought the concept 'house' so that the freedom of the imagination to unite space and time into a formal intuition without a concept is pr.eserved. This is the connection that we sought at the outset of this paper, and the outcome of Kant's B Deduction. Kant concludes the B Deduction with a discussion of nature. It is evident that we are the authors of nature, that it will conform to our categories, such as cause and effect. How, then,. is freedom possible, if all experience must conform to certain laws, such as cause and effect? Freedom cannot be freedom if it is in conformity with laws. The third pa rt of this paper will attempt to answer that question. III. What is freedom? I t is .the ability to start a series of events, the ability to be the first cause in that series. But the B Deduction tells us that the categories condition our experience, and one of . those categori~s is cause and effect. Every event without exception will have an antecedent cause. If this is true, freedom is ruled out, for there can be no end to the series, no first cause. This the the problem of the third antinomy. 40 experience, of things which are objects in our intuition. We have, therefore, only knowledge of our empirical self, the self that i"be see in mirrors, the phenomenal self. Nevertheless, we are undoubtedly aware of the transcendental I and our intelligible selves: we are, for example, the only animals aware of our inevitable physical end, tbe only animal who constructs philosophical systems. This awareness is a direct product of the transcendental I, that "thing in itself" which fosters our self-consciousness. It is, therefore, because of the transcendental I that I have awareness of both a noumenal self as well as a phenomenal self. And it is through this noumenal self that my faculty called reason is able to conceive o~ 1 what Kant calls "transcendental ideas." · Briefly, "transcendental ideas" are those things which we use to assert the completeness of a series, to say "all." From.what has been said it is evident that this completeness cannot be given in experience; for example, there is no sum total of causes and effects there. But it is our own faculty of reason, based on the transcendental self, which strives to limit the series, even this limit must necessarily be unconditioned. These transcendental ideas, of course, are necessary to me as an active being; were I not able to say "all" at times my activity in daily life would be almost none at all. It is only because I am able to posit these ideas, based on the existence of my noumenal self and reason, that I am able to act. One of these ideas is freedom. For without the assumption of freedom, I could never assert myself as the cause d: any series of events, nor could I take responsibility for my acts. Necessarily freedom must be what Kant calls a "regulative" principle rather than a "constitutive" principle. The idea of freedom cannot contribute in any way to my knowledge, as do "constitutive" principles, it can only serve as a guide for my existence as an active being, it can only be "regulative." So it must be with all the transcendental ideas. How does Kant make the coexistence of the transcendental idea of freedom and law-governed experience possible? He has, in a sens~, already done it once. In the B Deduction, the unconditioned transcendental I spontaneously acts upon intuition in general to produce the effects that we know as experience, to create the appearances. Kant likewise calls freedom "the power of beginning a state spontaneously." It is the activity of something unconditioned which produces· effects in what we know as experience. But the B Deduction shows, as has been said before, that objects in our experience are appearances. They are not · "things in themselves." This is Kant's solution to the antinomy. If the objects of experience were "things in themselves," then we would be left with the insoluble antinomy. Since the "things in themselves" would still be subject to cause and effect, freedom would not be possible. But since our experience is merely appearance, we can posit the unconditional without contradiction. And we can likewise posit our noumenal side as freely acting with effects only to be known in the appearances. We are, after all, the first cause of those appearances. It is necessary to point out that Kant has allowed only for the possibility of freedom. It may be, and we will never know one way or the other, that freedom does not exist. Kant is careful to remark that we can always reduce every action that seems free to a (certainly endless) series of efficient causes. But for our practical life the "regulative" principle of freedom is indispensable. It is freedom, our connection with the unconditioned in ourselves, which allows for our appreciation .of beauty as well. Freedom, in the end, allows for our totality as men. The long argument of the B Deduction makes freedom possible. On the one hand, Kant has radically changed philosophy; its new limitations are clear. He has indeed ordered it to "leave gormandizing." But on the other hand he has preserved its importance to our practical life as well. 41 �see, still catches our eye. This, I believe, justifies the enormous labor of the B Deduction. He has also saved just a little of its mystery: the things most important to us, among them freedom, remain ideas. ·And their peauty, though perhaps harder to There is Very Little Poetry in Onions Dan Farrell Footnotes 1. 2. 3 .- 4. 'i i! '! ,, :1 I' 5. 6. I take this to mean "overall" manifold, rather than particular manifolds of space and time or judgements of particular groups of representations. A cheap word in Kant meaning just about anything. I suppose a general definition to be "things (in a weak sense) gathered together by any kind of synthesis." This is an analytic statement saying "I must be able say 'I think' about what I think." Special emphasis should be placed on the pure apperception "generating" the 'I think.' It does not do the attaching. All of section 20, read carefully, is helpful here. Thus the power of a simple analytic statement (footnote 3) is revealed. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Page 170, Kemp Smith. Page 111, Kemp Smith. There are probably many answers to this question. The answer- that follows is the least satisfying. In Kant, "phenomenal" means things as appearance, "noumenal" things in the realm of the unconditioned. I have glossed over an important distinction here. Objects in experience when given as a whole can be said to be reducible "ad infinitum." If we are just given a member in an infinite series; however, and seek in that series more members, then ltle must at some point posit an unconditioned end to that series. My thanks to Mr. Carey, Mr. Kutler and Mr. Lenkowski. 42 I have always looked at a poem in a way that will help me learn what it means. The poet is trying to say something and the task of the reader is to reconstruct the message. There is a phrase that teachers introduce early in high school: "levels of meaning". I don't know if we are to think of layers of the onion: of meaning (each layer or 'level' of the onion is a whole and it can be eaten separately) or what. Please allow me to pursue this idea excessively. There is a great danger in looking too closely at a poem's meaning. The poet gives -us a garden filled with wonderful fruits and vegetables, flowers and bees, mud and bugs, and onions. Now I can go to this garden and eat all the onions I like and digest every layer of the tiniest scallion, but I'll end up with bad.breath and a very unsatisfied hunger. I'll probably step on a few bugs and get annoyed about the mud oozing between my toes on my way to the onions (which are in the center of the garden, of course; think of where the tree of knowledge of good and evil was). But not even mud between the toes is enough to sidetrack me: I have onions to eat. What is most remarkable about my careful method of eating o,nions is that it takes a long time to realize that almost any layer of any onion tastes the same as any other. The cause of my slow wit in this matter is the· absolute certainty I have that the onions are the center of the garden, and if I understand the onions I understand the garden. There is no reason for me to think this, but I still go on eating onions and if they all taste the same I only assume that my sense of taste is too weak to discern their differences. Happily, by some miracle (magic?), I now realize my folly arid am willing to change my attitude toward poetry. It is more rewarding to experience poetry as it is, instead of reducing it to one manageable aspect. There is an impulse toward knowledge that led me to the onions in the first place. The basis of that impulse was the desire to become a better person. Perhaps it is best if we forget Aristotle's "All men naturally desire to know," and replace it with "All men naturally desire to improve themselves." This may not be true, but at least it will help me experience poetry. Now I'm ready to discuss poetry as something that is magical. Shakespeare, Sonnet #64 When I have seen by Times' fell hand defaced The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-rased, And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store; When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state itself confounded to decay; Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, That Time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death, which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose. I -don't know much about what this means. This, of course, is good because I'm trying to get away from that sort of thinking. The most obvious and most interesting thing about this poem is that it is very difficult to read. Phrases like "Time's fell hand," "Rich proud 43 �gaining advantage on the kingdom of the shore. Once the word 'shore' is mentioned my attention shifts to it and I see an ocean clawing toward the shore. I don't know what this image is supposed to mean, but when I read it I'm at the shore where the poet wants me to be. It seems that magic in poetry exists because the poet does not strive to tell us anything. He hopes he can show us something. He doesn't want. to tell us that time is relentless; he shows it both in the rhythm and in the images he causes us to make. At the beginning of this essay I wrote how thinking about meanings hinders the experiencing of poe·try. Meaning is too concerned with words in themselves to be of any use in poetry. Poetry is not concerned with the words at all! What a poet wants to do most of all is to resurrect a "Gosh, look at that!" attitude. He does this by pointing, suggesting, but not by spelling out. When it succeeds (and if it is real poetry it will) it has performed its magic. cost," and many others are obstructions to the flow of the poetry. This is probably due to the lack of short vowels and the abundance of double . consonants in these phrases. They are made of words that take much time to pronounce. These phrases may seem to prevent any sense of music from becoming apparent, but this is only true if the music of a poem is something to be found solely in sing-song nursery rhymes. Instead of a flowing rhythm this poem has a relentless rhythm, slow but invincible. The images in this poem are not only mentioned, but shown. Images are closely connected to meaning, but there is an important enough difference between them so that I don't feel guilty talking about them. There are enough examples of unimaginative writings that have plenty of meaninq within them. These writings do not offer ·a.n -invitation to the reader to experience~· within the imagination, the truth of what is being said. In this poem we are given a hungry ocean. We are not told, "the ocean yearns for " This is unimportant. The hungry ocean is The Wreck of Elpenor P.H. Gagnier This land was framed without mountains or hills, But wide, bare, came broken open to the slow sky, And rolls in moist, humous rows like sea swells Stilled under wind and sliding clouds, to lie At length along this road ditch. Sweet with water And swishing reeds, it breathes its lucent green On the first steaming mud. Puddles scatter The sun among exhumed stones newly clean, Strewn in cryptic disarray. And here, stretched out on this pregnant bank, threading the stares Of crows, redolent unspooling, unstitched, Grey, I strew a perplexity of prayers. Thus defective I await my return, While all around the drinking earth breathes, "Churn." 44 Reconciliation in The Bacchae: Remembering What We Are Who Are Not Gods But Men Lisa Eckstrom of Dionysus, gentleness and horror intermingled, and we have seen the limits by which we differentiate the two disappear. Opposites by which we define certain t~rnis become ambiguous. Thus Identity (a thing is x and is not y), Sexuality (it is male or female), Mortality (there is life and there is death) , and perhaps of greatest consequence, Power (there is strength and there is helplessness) have become te.rms whose definitions are uncertain. For death the gods exact, curbing by that bit the mouths of men. They humble us with death that we remember what we a re who a re not gods but men. We run to death. As a prelude to the messenger's tale of the death of Pentheus, the chorus sings lines about mortality. Apprehension builds as we start to see the divine sever itself from the mortal. Perhaps we realize that we too are earth-born, and that we are not gods, but men. We shudder when we hear the chorus sing: "O Justice, destroy the evil earth-born· sprawn of Echion ! " because we remember that we are earth-born as well and share his curse. We marvel that the chorus has forgotten that they are earth-born; they sing as if they are not mortal, even while reminding us of death. To run to death as votaries of the god is still to disregard it, and thereby to disregard the ultimate limit of mortal beings. When the chorus no longer identifies itself as human with human limits, our sympathy is drawn to those who have human limits: Pentheus, Agave, and Cadmus. Whether one wants to label this quality in the chorus as insanity, or religious mysticism, one must agree, that they see themselves outside many of the limits by which we define human life: death, relationships with other human beings, and a certain revulsion toward murder. We, the audience, begin to feel our association with the earth-born, with those who are human still. We grieve. As the play has progressed, a fusion of opposites has taken place, and we as audience have experienced this fluidity in which one thing is simultaneously its opposite. We have seen in the character '1 :11. ·' 1 ' i1 This uncertainty climaxes in the death scene. The audience can no longer define a character's identity as "he is x and is not y." We see the identities of Pentheus and Dionysus fuse to the. extent that there is only one on the stage, who is neither Pentheus nor Dionysus, but some amalgamation of the two. The Bacchants see a 1 ion a top the tree , whom we, the audience, know to be Pentheus. The stranger has disappeared. What has happened? The chorus has identified a lion as one of the manifestations of Dionysus; thus the Bacchants see a form of Dionysus atop the tree. If the god Dionysus is in any way atop the tree, he is residing in the earth-born frame of Pentheus. The messenger speaks: I ,, 1 :I' i1! l I .11 11!1 1 ·' Ii 1 11: ,,I' I' And the tree rose towering to heaven with my master huddling at the top ... when the Stranger vanished, there came a great· voice out of heaven---Dionysus it must have been--Both the voice of Dionysus, and Pentheus, are in the aether. Perhaps it is Pentheus who calls to the women to destroy him. 45 ! I I , �11r i: ,,, I They do not recognize the voice as Dionysus' initially, and they do not recognize the being atop the tree as Pentheus. What they see and hear _is the confusing tormented fusion of the two. Pentheus has not been seized by the god suddenly, but instead, the two have been woven progressively tighter until there seems to be only one in the eyes of the Bacchants, and to some degree (in that we see only one being on the stage) in the eyes of the audience as ~ell. This weaving of mind upon mind, limb upon limb, is analogous to wrestling. In wrestling, two separate entities come together into some sort of unity. As limbs and bodies intertwine it is often difficult to see the two entities apart from one another. Perhaps they never become one, but in the confusion of their contortions, the vision of the on-lookers and perhaps of the participants themselves is often unable to distinguish which arm or which leg belongs to which wrestler. It is in line 400 that Pentheus first accuses the Stranger of wrestling well with words. Pentheus then grapples with the bull, and then he hears the messenger's words describing the activities on Cithaeron. There is a progression through which he is both active and passive, wrestler and listener; but for Pentheus, listening itself is a form of wrestling: the Stranger wrestles with words. As knowledge increases, Pentheus must deal with it---the knowledge is inescapable in its elusiveness. Yet, must he wrestle with it? Why could he not listen to the messenger's speech as a mere observer, not a wrestler? Why does he view his conversation with the Stranger as a wrestling match? If he wrestles because he wishes to be in control---is to observe, not to be in control? Or is to observe always to wrestle, to somehow come to grips with one's vision? ~entheus proclaims: "it is hopeless to wrestle with this man. Nothing on earth will make him hold his tongue." With each question and reply in the conversation between Pentheus and Dionysus, the two have become increasingly like wrestlers intertwined. As Pentheus discovers more about the Dionysiac rites on the mountain from the messenger and from the Stranger, he becomes more entangled. We are not sure if he wrestles with an outside force, or with a dread fascination emanating from himself. P~: D.: P.: D.: Tell me the benefits that those who know your mysteries enjoy·, I am forbidden to say but they are worth knowing. Your answers are designed to make me curious. No: our mysteries abhor an unbelieving man. If Pentheus is the unbelieving man, perhaps he wrestles with the believing man within himself. But what is this dread fascination, from where does this believing man come? Perhaps he is that part of the soul which whispers to us the unintelligible rhymes of the eternal world. Pentheus proclaims that it is hopeless because the two are intertwined in such a way that they can never be separated without violence and damage: and yet, with all their writhings and positionings, the two can never become one in such a way that they can rest at peace and not be two separate entities struggling against one another. There seems to be a peace, transient though it be, in the dressing scene. Pentheus and Dionysus begin to be indistinguishable from one another; they form a knot which is drawn ever tighter. The distinction between he-who-leads and he-who-is-led is lost in the confusion. Pentheus is being prepared as a victim for sacrifice, as he is to replace the customary bull (Dionysus). In being prepared, he is made to look as Dionysus looks. He puts on the long flowing robe, the fawn skin of a Bacchant, and a wig of long flowing curls (significantly after he has cut the curls off of the Stranger). He dances and holds a thyrsus. This change in Pentheus is brought about when he succumbs to the "fascination" which finds that to watch something bitter is sweet. 46 If opposites can be said to be one in the world around us, they can only be said .to be so in their eternal context: only divine beings can sustain opposites in unison. When two opposites fuse within an earth-born being (which may happen when we are full of d~vine frenzy, what many might call madness ) the earth-born cannot sustain them as an immortal can. In the confusion he is necessarily ripped apart. Man's earth-born-ness acts as a curse: it drags him down to earth where the opposites must separate. Earlier in the play, when the stranger was trapped by Pentheus, he was replaced with an animal that was one of the manifestations of Dionysus. Now Pentheus is trapped, and he too is replaced with an animal, but only while atop the tree, only while off the earth, and significantly, only in the Bacchants' eyes. The audience's vision separates from that of the Bacchants at this point. Atop the tree, this strange combination of Dionysus and Pentheus exists. Once the tree is cut out from under him, he touches the earth again and is separated from the divine. He makes the proclamation: I am Pentheus! He is again identified as earth-born: he is mortal and he is destroyed. Thus, if motion up to the top of the tree (and motion up the mountain) seemingly brings the individual up to what is divine, it concurrently thrusts one back upon the earth. Movement which would assimilate one to divinity can only result in crashing against the ~arth. (814) As he has conversed with Dionysus, and listened to the messenger, he has begun· to wrestle and merge. To see the bitter as not only bitter, but sweet as well, is to see opposites merge. When Pentheus says that it is bitter to see the Bacchants, but pursues it because what is bitter is also sweet, can he ,be far from seeking to understand the god Dionysus, who is most gentle and most horrible? Pentheus' fascination pulls him further and further. Not only is he willing to go secretly as an observer, but he is willing to go openly as a participant. In his willingness to be a participant, he is not only willing to see the bitter· as sweet, but somehow to be one with these opposites, to be as a Bacchant, that is to be gentle and horrible. The unbidden offer to go openly marks a change in the conversation. The conversation is not such that Pentheus is asking the questions and Dionysus is making ·vague replies as before, but instead, Dionysus is leading the conversation and Pentheus is making vague replies. They have switched roles, or perhaps are at that intersection where the two roles meet as one. When Dionysus clothes Pentheus, Pentheus begins to lose his masculinity. His identity is so ambiguous that his sexuality no longer plays a part in the definition of who he is. As the beardless young man puts on the dress of a woman, and a wig of curls, he is both male and female (as Dionysus is); he has become opposites instead of viewing them. It is an incredible thing to see that perhaps male and female are the same; it is more incredible to. become both. Going to the death scene, it is imperative that Pentheus have fused these two opposites within himself, for if he is to be sacrificed as an immortal he must partake of the eternal world in which opposites are one. As earth-born, he must .be either male or female: he cannot be both. Only to the degree that he is freed from his limits as a mortal can he assimilate opposites. 'I ' i I ,, ' In the play, only Dionysus can sustain the opposites of life and death, which make up the ultimate limits of earth-born life. In being sacrificed and eaten, the god lives. To be earth-born means that when one is sacrificed, one dies. Pentheus though earth-born is viewed as if he were the immortal Dionysus---ready to be hunted down and destroyed that Dio~ysus may live. But Pentheus is not immortal; he shares the curse 'of the audience: if he is destroyed, he does not live. Life and death may be two entwined parts of one whole, but that 47 ". �"whole" is not a possibility for the earth-born. Though we may view it, and begin to realize that life and death are one . in the eternal world, we are constantly dragged down to earth. Our curse as earth-born is to exist and act in a world in which what is destroyed, dies. However, the divine world intersects with ours. It is this fusion that is precisely confusion. If we are to understand what occurs around us, we must have some vision of this whole, as well as the opposites which compose it. If there were no "whole,'' if there were only opposites, we could make choices that Euripides seems to say we a re unable to make. If power and helplessness were only opposite, choosing to be powerful would not also involve choosing to make oneself vulnerable to one's enemies. The divine world intersects with ours, making the earth sometimes act as if it were the realm of immortals, as well as mortals. If the "whole" did not make any difference, choosing to live would not mean willingly risking death; there could be no power in deciding to be solely powerless. 'Agave prefers . leading the hunt to weaving on her loom because she perceives herself as powerful in the leading of the hunt. She is powerful: she and her followers fell a tree with their bare hands, they kill a lion. Yet her power stems from her submission to the will of Dionysus. Her will does not enter into decisions concerning her own actions. As Agave is powerful, she is helpless. We, the audience see the fearless hunt-leader Agave having no control over her own actions: we see her kill her son. Dionysus seems so attractive to women because he heightens their passivity until it becomes a power of frightening force: He lifts them out of helplessness by making them adore it. The women are disturbingly passive in their hesuchia. They have abandoned any desire to control their own actions. Yet this lack of self-direction yields lack of worry about self. It frees one from human fears and restraints; it grants one a peculiar freedom. This freedom is similar to the freedom of the insane, a freedom that one receives when one stops being a person. It is almost immortal. Power and powerlessness are interwoven in the women who are themselves weavers. By giving up any illusion of human power, they gain a divine strength, which in the end renders them powerless and pathetic. Power presides in Pentheus and Dionysus. -The power of Pentheus is earth-born (he is a king); the power of Dionysus is divine (he is an immortal, free from human constraint.) Yet, there is an aspect of Dionysus which seems the epitome of powerlessness: ·what sort of power is there in a god who allows himself to not only be priest {power) but sacrifice (powerlessness) as well? Is there a correspondin~ sacrificial aspect to monarchy as well? In assuming power over people, one may become subject to them. When Pentheus and Dionysus meet, each tries to assume power; they meet as distinctive representatives of the earth-born and the divine. Initially, when Pentheus has Dionysus imprisoned, The fusion of power and passivity is especially striking in the women, the thiasos. As women, before the arrival of Dionysus, they were helpless. At their looms, they had little say in how their lives were played out. Yet, upon gaining power in the contact of the thiasos, they become mighty warriors, who rip apart wild beasts with their delicate hands, who loot a city, and rout an army of men. Yet, their power emanates from total passivity: they obey the St ranger as unquestioning slaves. They no longer inject their wishes as human beings into their actions. They have no nous. The category of right actions, unless one is entirely submissive to a voice or god one designates as right action, involves use of nous. The Bacchants abandon their nous and their will. They do nothing to preserve their individual lives: their unarmed attack on an army of men who are equipped with swords and shields shows a bravery that is a disdain of death. Pentheus assumes the role of the ·priest and Dionysus assumes the role of victim: Pentheus has Dionysus bound and modifies Dionysus' appearance by clipping his curls to make him acceptable. He not only views the Stranger as sacrifice, but would sacrifice the women's blood as well. As Pentheus speaks, the replies of Dionysus are unclear: it is the priest's words that matter, not those of the victim. The stranger then escapes; it is no longer certain who is in the position of power and who is not. A sacrifice is no longer a sacrifice if it eludes the grasp of the priest: It has become free. When Pentheus wrestles with the bull, he no longer has control over what is Dionysus---he instead becomes entangled, becomes one with the immortal beast. In the scene that follows, we see Dionysus and Pentheus share the two principal roles which in the "whole" a re one: Priest and Sacrifice. Pentheus becomes the Sacrifice (Dionysus) which is to be sacrificed by the Priest (Dionysus). In both Pentheus and Dionysus, priest and sacrifice are one: as Dionysus prepares Pentheus for sacrifice by dressing him as a votary of the god, we see Sacrifice and Priest merge into a horrible vision in which that which destroys is the same as what is destroyed. have beheld opposites that are the same. We have been lifted higher and higher away from earth in order that we might have vision. We have entered the aether realm of myth. Yet, we are earth-born, our place is not above the earth, but on it. Before Pentheus cries "I am Pe~theus" we have begun our descent. As our vision begins to separate from the Bacchants we hear the words with which this paper began: They humble us with death that we remember what we are who are not gods but men. We remember what we are, as Pentheus does. Before he was told that he did not know who he was or what he did: now with much grief, he knows: he is mortal. Hesuchia ends and the knife of the sacrificial rite runs deep for both Pentheus and ourselves. We feel pain and it is bitter. We know our curse as ge-gones. If there is some sweetness in our grief it is riot because misery and joy are the same, but instead there is some joy in being able to grieve deeply. Our grief offers a path of reconciliation with ourselves as ephemeral earth-born beings: there can be no true grief if the cause of grief is simultaneously a cause of joy. There is a dignity in our grief which is peculiar to those who cannot live as if opposites were one, and yet a re required to· do so. We remember what we are who are not gods but men; we are humbled but not humiliated, for we have our grief, a gentle luxury. Keats' famous lines come to mind: If Euripides intends for the audience to view opposites as one, why do the opposites sever from each other at the climactic scene? Why is our vision as audience different from that of the Bacchants? They see Pentheus as a lion: we know that they are mistaken. Why do we hear Pentheus cry out that he is Pentheus when he touches the earth if the Bacchants do not? As audience we have participated in this sacrifice to Dionysus as a thiasos. We receive our directions from the priests on the stage. To watch is holy sport. We have become passive listeners: if our listening has brought forth a dance it is a dance of the emotions, being called forth by the wondrous actions on the stage. Ours has been a hesuchia in which to watch something bitter is sweet. We 11'1 1'1 lll'i II: "I My spirit is too weak; mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky. Yet 'tis a gently luxury to weep. I I I 48 49 ! II �Phainetai moi Notes translated.by Terri-Ann Hahn 1 Is the poet such a believing man? Do we wrestle with his words and with his myths? It seems that he must wrestle with those very myths which seem to emanate from himself? conception of the Artist and his Work? What is Euripides' motive in choosing the strange myth of Dionysus? Why not write about Zeus or Athena? Why present Dionysus in all his savagery? Why is the theatre the realm of Dionysus? How does the poet participate in it? As maker/god? as audience/man? 2 How is the divine madness of the poet different from that of a Bacchant? Does the vision of the poet offer a kind of freedom similar to the Bacchant? Does that freedom reside in the poet or in us, the receivers of his vision? What is this freedom and how does it come about? If myths are some faint image of the "primordial consciousness of man" what can it mean for a poet to use them as the basis of his work? In myth, he records this consciousness. But he often alters it, or selects some elements and discards others. What can this be construed as? What effect does it have on his own soul to examine what must be construed as something like "primordial consciousness"? Why does Virgil write that Daedalus though he keeps trying cannot record the image of his own son? Why must Daedalus keep trying? What does ~is son represent? What is Virgil telling us about his own ~aLV£TaL µOL xnvo~ Cao~ ~~OLGLV ~ wvnp, OTTL~ EVaVTL 6 ~ TOL LGaaV£L xal XAaGLOV ~av ~WV£L0a~ unaxoDEL £µµ£V ,, t " ,, ' 3 from The Golden Bough, p. 392 "The legends of the deaths . of Pentheus and Lycurguas, two kings who are said to have been torn to pieces, the one by Bacchanals, the other by horses, for their opposition to the rites of Dionysus, may as I have already suggested, be distorted reminiscences of a custom of sacrificing divine kings in the character of Dionysus and of dispersing fragments of their bodies over the fields for the purpose of fertilizing them. It is probably no mere coincidence that Dionysus is said to have been torn in pieces at Thebes, the very place where according to legend, the same fate befell king Pentheus at the hands of the frenzied votaries of the vine-god." aAA& x&µ µtv yAw004 ( µ') Eay£, A~XTOV a' a~TLXa XP~ nDp unaaEapoµnx£v, 6~naTE00L a' ova' EV opnµµ'' EXLppoµ8EL0L a' clXOVaL, by Sappho He must be divine, sitting there opposite you, your face turned toward his face, as he listens, to your speech, sounding so sweet, so near, and to your lovely laughter. These are the very things which have excited the heart in my breast to passion. For when I take even the briefest glance, this voice of mine yields nothing further, my tongue has broken down. With only a look delicate fire burns, running 'round beneath my flesh, so that my eyes no longer see, my ears resound with noises. Yea, sweat pours down over me and a trembling catches me all over (greener than grass am I!) so that I appear little short of death, Agallis-my joy! But, all this must be borne, since I sit alone. 50 51 �On Chapters 11-17 of Part II of Don Quixote Paula Rustan ' I This time even Sancho -- Sancho who dared to endure the fulling-mills; who inspired by Don Quixote's cry that as a Knight he is equal to a hundred, attacked the Yanguesans; Sancho who charged furiously at Cardenio the mad man in order to defend his master from harm -- this time, the most loyal squire in all the world, flees, leaving Don Quixote to face his most perilous adventure, alone. It is so much easier to understand why the gentleman in green and the carter were forced to run; after all they did not and could not be expected to believe in Don Quixote as Sancho did -- Sancho, who not even twenty-four hours before had declared to the Squire of the Wood that he loved his master "as dearly as his own heartstrings" (as dearly as yourself, Sancho) and for thi's reason alone could not think to leave him. It is true that Sancho cried like a baby as he rode away, believing that this time his Knight would surely perish, but just the same, as his Master prepared to fight lions, Sancho urged his Dapple on -- faster and faster. From the moment Don Quixote sees the cart coming down the road, he begins to prepare himself for an adventure. The gentleman in green tries to calm Don Quixote down by telling him it is only just a cart, and judging from the little flags which decorate it, this particular cart must be carrying the property of the King. Don Quixote in turn patiently explains that he knows by experience that he has "enemies visible and invisible" and he goes on to say, "I do not know when or where, nor at what time or in what shape they will attack me." Although we may (along with the gentleman in green) see Don Quixote recklessly challenging a couple of indifferent lions, we know that he himself believes that he is about to challenge_ the power· of those relentless enchanters, who not only have just deprived Don Quixote of the full glory which was due him in ·his victory over the Knight of the Mirrors; but also, and far worse, have deprived him forever or so it seems from looking upon Dulcinea. Thus, it seems to us natural at this point in the history that Don Quixote is at last driven to prove to these enchanters, whoever they may be, that his spirit has not been broken by their ceaseless and cruel tricks. Don Quixote is powerless to lift the spell of the enchantment from Dulcinea; he is helpless to turn Sanson Carrasco back into the Knight of th~ Mirrors; but he can and does challenge the lions (who are sent by the same enchanters) in defiance and to show that his "courage" and his "resolution" still prevail. At least, this is what we first assume especially in light of these cemarKs which Don Quixote makes to Sancho upun the completion of the adventure: What do you think of that, Sancho? Do any enchantments prevail against true valour? The enchanters may indeed be able to rob me of good fortune; but of resolution and courage, that is impossible! But isn't there much more at stake here than just a battle between Don Quixote and his enemy, enchantment? This is unquestionably the most dangerous of all his adventures and it is the first and only adventure since the fulling-mills wherein Don Quixote recognizes that he may be utterly destroyed in the attempt. "If I die he re ... " he says to SancHo, "You will repair to Dulcinea -- I say no more." 52 always longed to become and might have become if only circumstance had been kinder to him. They are both 50 years old, both natives of La Mancha, and they both love hunting. They ride their horses dressed up in their respective finery -the crucial difference between them being that Don Quixote rides as a knight errant and Don Diego de Miranda has never allowed a book of chivalry to so much as "cross the threshold of his door." As Don Quixote faces this gentleman in green, he is forced_to face up to what he himself is and what he is not. He realizes that life for Don Quixote will never be, cannot be what it is for the gentleman in green. Don Quixote de la Mancha, Knight Errant, will never be content with "quiet pointers and good ferrets." The gentleman in green tries to persuade Don Quixote to leave the lions be, reasoning that the lions mean him no harm. Don Quixote answers him in this way: "leave every man to do his duty. This is mine, and I know whether they are coming against me or not, these noble lions." And, clearly, for Don Quixote the lions do come against him. He must challenge them, because he must prove to himself and to the world that he is not afraid to die to die as a Knight Errant, that is. Don Quixote, up until this moment, has held on to the hope that his madness would some day lead him into the arms of Dulcinea where his life would truly begin. But, he is changed largely as a result of his meeting with the man he might have been, the gentleman in green. No longer will Don Quixote gaze sadly at corpses, thinking that death.will soon come to him and that it will be infinitely more tragic because he has never really lived. To fight lions is to proclaim to all that Don Quixote de la Mancha is living life, is fulfilled, not in the same way as Don Diego de Ia Miranda, but finally as a knight errant. Don Quixote has undergone a vital transformation. We have lost forever "The Knight of the Sad Countenance" and we have The adventure is perhaps most remarkable because Don Quixote is transformed by it and he knows it. He " has been so altered that he declares for himself a new ame a ·more fitting name -- not because n I ' h it is a gesture appropriate to a knig t errant in general, but because he is in some way renewed. "The Knight of the Lions" ·is not the knight we saw so long ago by torchlight gazing sorrowfully upon a corpse -- a figure so striking then that Sancho was moved to call him "The Knight of the Sad Countenance." This old title, according to Don Quixote, "shall hence-· forward be so transformed, altered, varied and changed, " and so it seems shall the Knight himself. Three other adventures occur in these chapters: the encounter with the Wagon of Death; the battle between Don Quixote and the Knight of the Mirrors; and, lastly, the meeting with the gentleman in green, whom Don Quixote calls "The Knight of the Green coat." Each one of these encounters helps lead Don Quixote to the Adventure of the Lions. I'll try to say in what way, starting with the last, first: we are told that the gentleman in green is a "sensible gentleman of La Mancha," that he is fifty years old, that he is wealthy, and that he enjoys hunting and fishing. We also hear that he is fortunate enough to have reached the age of fifty and still be surrounded by his wife, children and devoted friends. He gives liberally to the poor and is apparently devoted to his religion. In short, he gives such an account of himself and of his many virtues, that Sancho jumps down from Dapple and kneels at ,this gentleman's feet, convinced that he must truly be a Saint. In the first moments of their meeting, Don Quixote stares at the gentleman in green and the gentleman in green stares at Don Quixote. The gentleman is amazed at the appearance of _the knight and concludes several times that he must be mad. Don Quixote, after gazing upon this stranger and after listening to his story, recognizes that the gentleman in green epitomizes the man whom Don Quixote has .53 !11' !! �I ,j ,i gained "The Knight of the Lions." I hope that we will attempt to understand better why this has happened to our Knight and what it means. It is my belief that the Enchantment of Dulcinea, the encounter with the Wagon of Death, and the Adventure of The Knight of the Mirrors all have something to do with this change in Don Quixote, for each of these adventures compels Don Quixote to turn his sight inward. For example, after their encounter with the Wagon of Death, Don Quixote informs Sancho how he thinks actors and authors benefit mankind. He maintains that they are at best mirrors which reflect back to us our actions, our thoughts, ourselves "Indeed" says Don Quixote "there is no comparison which presents to us more truly what we are and what we ought to be than plays and players." It is shortly after this, indeed, it is in the very next adventure that Don Quixote and Sancho encounter two actors, namely, Sanson Carrasco and Sancho's neighbor, Tome Cecial -- two players cast in the roles, respectively, of a forlorn-in-love knight errant and his squire. Sancho and Don Quixote , as they gaze upon and converse with the The Knight of the Mirrors and his squire, get a good look at themselves and perhaps it is for the first time. Don Quixote not only finds himself in battle with a faceless knight who refuses to reveal himself; but, worse yet, the tunic of this faceless knight is covered with a thousand tiny mirrors. It must be supposed and imagined that as Don Quixote gazes upon his adversary, he sees his own image reflected back to him a thousand times or more. This paper began by accusing poor Sancho of unfaithfulness. But what of us, the faithful readers of this history? Would we remain beside Don Quixote as the cage door is opened? If Sancho could not, Sancho who in a sense personifies all the tenderness and faith which grows in us as we read and reread the adventures of this knight, then we, lesser friends than he to Don Quixote, certainly we could not. We say we believe (some of us do at least!) just as Sancho professes to believe -- but would our faith stand up to lions? I doubt it. Don Quixote cries out to the carter who is desperate to get his mules away before the lions are released, "Oh man of little faith." I am afraid that Don Quixote would be forced to say . the same to us. But, in turn, I would like to ask him, what must we have faith in so that we too may fight lions? 54 Ta-pocketa, Pocketa, Pocketa ... Moliere, Thurber and the Comic Idea Fritz Monsma · love is not really compatible with a message. I see that in Tartuffe there are characters on all sides of the villain, that they have all relationships to him. None of them can stand against his villainy. What message can there be here, unless it is that chaos rules? I feel the play mock me when I scrutinize it and try to find its answer to the problems it puts forth. George Meredith wrote "An Essay on Comedy", and in it put forward Moli~re as the finest comic poet. His theory was that comedy is a kind of medicine for society, a psychiatrist's couch on which an entire culture can lie at once. His essay is not correct, but .it is a good first step to understanding Moli~re. I want to borrow his idea, distend it a bit, and give my account. " .•. To hell with the handkerchief," said Walter Mi tty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Wa~ ter Mi tty the undefeated, inscrutable to the last. James Thurber, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" Moli~re's comedies are enigmas to me. They are well turned and temperate. Their strongest effect is perhaps to make me wish for more urbanity. I have seen a hundred plays and movies which made me · laugh more than Tartuffe did. But I do not want to say that Moli~re's plays were no~ written for comedy. They are not a belly-laugh, but rather a slow grin. I can not say either that they have a great dramatic power. Yet at their best they are engaging theater. Set against funnier and more gripping plays these works fail. But on their own terms they succeed. I should ask whether these plays have a meaning. I will tell you that I cannot find one. They seem, first, to be timely plays. They were written for Louis' court, and I have a sense that pa rt of them stayed there. Perhaps these courtly plays do not speak to humanity. Tartuffe does not question whether . the life of Tartuffe is a fine or base one. This problem should interest us, but this play is rather a warning against false Christians. That warning is not so pertinent now as it has been. My intuition, secondly, tells me that Moliere has a comic poet's love for chaos. Such a Ii ;,I I i ii!' I: 'I iii !I' ]!' :!! I 1111 1111 There is a flatness to the characters in Tartuffe and The Misanthrope. They are, in particular, given to speaking in universals. Dorine says, "They whose own conduct is most ridiculous are always the first to slander others." A real human being, with ordinary feelings of ambiguity, might say the same thing, but not with so many superlatives. The people in Moliere' s plays make a strange, positive race. Sweeping statements are in their mouths constantly, like an accent. This brings them down a bit in our eyes. They are less than we are, not having thought so carefully about things as to have our reservations. It pushes them up, too, this confidence, but as plastic figures. Having abstracted the.l,.r speech from the ordinary human mix-up, the speakers become abstracted too. The 55 !111 1.11, ,,, !ii II I, �~- ' I .,, I I ' I I I i Ii 1: f /: I I I ·• universals iIJ their talk begin to make them suggest opinions dressed in costume' and strutting across stage. At times they are like animated placards with the titles of the plays written on them: the miser, the impostor, the misanthrope. We are not very often in the dark about the kind of person we are seeing on stage, what sort of title to give him or, usually, what is wrong with him. We t·cust our assessment, and Moliere never betrays that trust. We are not forced to fill in the man behind the mask. The interaction· of these characters is balanced and inconclusive. They circle .one another like porcelain ballerinas on . top of a music box. It has been said that if the curtain were to rise again after the fifth act of The Misanthrope, the play could quite naturally continue for five more, and end in the same place. Philinte' s last line, ·and the play' s last is; "Come madam, let us leave nothing untried to deter him from the design on which his heart is set." He was making the same attempt when he spoke his first line. Alceste has fumed through five acts, and his one action is that he has broken with Celimene. He may stay away from her, al though he has not been constant in his resolve. If he does stay away, I suspect he will find another to replace her. He will not go off to the wilderness. As ce"lim~ne points out, he always wants to be contrary, to stand out and above by moral wrath. He will stay to argue with Philinte about leaving. Philinte and Alceste bracket the central issue of the play. They are the two extremes of stoicism in the face of hypocrisy and vice. The Misanthrope and Tartuffe are full of this pattern. Elmire is an upper class woman. She is sane and resourceful concerning Tartuffe, but she brings herself down with blackmail, and she is, in the end, ineffectual. Dorine is a servant. She too is resourceful, and deceit and conniving seem to sit easily with her. But het: low estate keeps her out of the family. She, of all the characters except Tartuffe, is most like a 56 r.- mover, and yet she can not draw the respect among the members of Organ's household that she needs to bring about the coup. She alone is detached enough, during the darkest hour near the end of act five, to be sardonic. Her sarcasm is a sign which shows us that, even if she had been successful, she would not have made a satisfying end to the play. Moli~re's bourgeois audience ought to have seen that such people could not be counted on to solve their problems. Damis is a righteous, guileless youngster. Organ is an old man, once sensible, and with an old man's honest concern with religion. Tartuffe plays these two against each other skillfully. Middle-aged Cl~ante is a mean between them, self-possesed and sane. He has no actions, only staid words. These characters change only superficially in their play. They are unable to resolve the problems in themselves or between themselves. In The Misanthrope the actors turn around on another in circles that are always the same size. In Tartuffe the circles get smaller as Tartuffe leads the players down into the gutter. Having said this much about Moliere's style and the for:m of his plays, let me give a short summary of George Meredith's "An Essay on Comedy". Much of the essay is about particular societies and their comedians. A culture must have two things to support true comedy. First, it must have a regard for common sense, and second, a . near equality between its men and women. Such a society will foster the comic, and he will repay them by giving them more of the heal th of common sense, and by pushing further the equality of their sexes. When the comic has these two things, the more sophistication among his people, the better. It is this that provides fodder for his wit. The folly that comes with high culture is his meat. His spirit loves to expose all presumption: aged coquettes, poor relations full on the dignity of a noble name. He is not simply interested in jokes. He must avoid the bacchanal of hearty laughter as much as the stern face a moment that oqr airs can survive in the face of the harsh world, and, turninq about, shows us the reality of this harshness. In its lowest form, comedy is cute; it is tiny puppies with huge eyes. It· is an oxymoron where we simply posit that the lesser is the stronger. The cute thing is something that does i:iot threaten us, to which we attribute a certain superiority, that is, a superiority to what does threaten us. Norman Rockwell once painted a pinafored black schoolchild, off to her first day of unsegregated kindergarten, surrounded by a guard of the state militia. Our hearts are drawn to the little girl; we see goodness of heart juxtaposed to strength of arms. We cling to goodness of heart; the world would be easier on us (so we imagine, since we all feel some confidence in our heart's feelings) if this were truly the stronger. This is a simple positing of what is contrary to fact, a static act of will. Hence what is cute does not cause the. mental flipflop which would make us laugh. True comedy gives us a reason to embrace the small. Whatever the housing it comes in, comic wit always contains a seed of grace or cleverness that truly touches our soul. We laugh happily at the cleverness of a man outwitting his bullies. We laugh sadly at a man when his quirks, full of familiarity, stand up while surrounded by the grand, the powerful, and the sensible. Chaplin's film Modern Times has many examples. Chaplin is harried by the assembly line he works on; he must turn bolts before they go past him on the belt. We laugh for cleverness when he, being chased around the line by a hulking co-worker, angry at some misdemeanor that Chaplin has committed, points to an unturned bolt on the conveyor, so that the man must scurry back to twist it before it passes altogether. Chaplin has beaten the man on his own ground, and turned the man's machine against him. For a moment we see justice. In the next moment though, things have turned, and Chapl.in is chastised for his running amok. We laugh of puritanism. He wants to deflate pomposity, and through his characters to puncture his audience. But he never wants to take his victims down below common, dignified humanity. It is. not poverty that is ridiculous, but poverty trying to be what it is not. It is satire that makes its targets contemptible, and this office will be left to the satirist. The comic is more like a man who opens his oven door too soon on a ·scuffle, only to discover later the nobility of soggy eggs. If true comedy can find its deeper mark, it will purge our lunacy and bolster in us a hearty, fraternal love for our fellow. · I do not think that this explication of comedy is right. But the idea that comedy is medicinal may help us understand . Moli~re. . . Comedy has never had much respect for common sense. Meredith cites Don QUixote as an example of the comic. I, too, agree that it is a fine instance. Meredith's formula would say that we laugh at Don QUixote because of his idiocy, but we respect his humanity. I do not want to discuss the novel here, but I would say that we delight in his aspirations rather than his vulgarity, and have scorn for the Duke and the Duchess for their cruel, wrongheaded love of common sense. Meredith has comedy take down its victim and then embrace him in. his naked embarrassment, like a man who laughs a ruddy, joshing laugh with his son because, even though the son is ridiculous, the man's love for him does not diminish. Meredith asks a lot from the comic audience. I think we revel in folly, and take delight in the proper sort of lunatic because we wish his idiocy would triumph in life. There is a theory that says that humor comes from the shock to the mind when it is presented with what seems like a weighty idea, but which we almost immediately see is an empty.notion. This explanation, which is as true as any I have heard, tells us why comedy is so closely connected to joking. Comedy fosters the airs we put on, and our self-indulgences. It lets us believe for - J7 - · - - -. ,-- I . Ill !I 11 �'""' I .i (heartily) when his employer brings in his feeding machine (designed to eliminate the inefficient lunch break) . The mac.hine pours soup down Chaplin's front, feeds him bolts, spins an ear of corn in his mouth at tremendous speed, and, after each of these, wipes his mouth rather bluntly with a sponge. Chaplin's face lets us see for a moment that familiar inefficiency is better than efficiency. We might hope that there would be such strong evidence whenever the productive spirit tries to rub out one of our homey pleasures. We laugh again, mournfully, when we see Chaplin in the bathroom at the plant, sneaking a cigarette, and next we see a huge video screen, lighting up with the face of ~is employer, which orders hiif! back. to work.. Such a plea!?ure, obviously enjoyed, would have been triumph for us if it had been allowed. Finally, we laugh when, running out of the plant away from his angry superiors, he stops at the time-clock to punch out, and, running back in having found the police outside, he stops to punch in. He maintains his flustered life even while he is so painfully under the thumb of his methodical employers. In each case we see for a moment an o·cder that we think is superior in action, and, almost immediately, the power of what makes that order no more than a wish. Meredith mentions exposing ancient coquettes as stuff for comedy. But we all would like to see age defied, and an innocent love of frippery last. This desire, followed soon by the truth, makes better comedy than the truth alone. In the movie version of Gone With the Wind the dashing Rhett Butler hears a noise when Mamie, his old, overweight black maid walks by. "Mamie", he says, "what's that rustling sound?" Mamie lifts up her black cotton skirts to show that she is wearing what was a present from him; a red taffeta petticoat. We can not supress a smile. We do not laugh at this woman's folly. We laugh at her wonderful impudence in the face of fat and old age. James Thurber is perhaps the great master of this, the funniest of the forms of -comedy. There is a story about himself, breaking his glasses and not going to get them fixed for three days because he .is so pleased to be able to see hazy and strange objects while walking down ordinary streets. There are several stories about words that get twisted in the mouths of foreigners or colored maids. Thurber is usually sad at the end of the. story, to have found out that what sounded weird and macabre is actually quite mundane, and sadder still if the wayward tongue has gone and can not slip again. Above all there is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I can find no simpler example of what I mean by comedy. Mitty's valor in the face of all reality is truly touc;;hing, and his wild thoughts and attention to the least detail of the · cliche's of heroism are endlessly funny. There is a third, more sophisticated kind of comedy, and this is where Moliere lives. The mental turn-about is made with bulkier things than it was in the last form, and the transition can not be made so deftly. The essential discrepancy here is between our life inside the theater and our life outside it. Outside the theater we have a somber piety towards religion. Inside we see how religious men can betray us. Outside the theater we sometimes feel a righteous spleen at hypocrisy. Inside, we see spleen with its pants down, we see how self-serving it can be. This form of comedy does not aim at truth: the poet is not a muckraker. It wants to shake our sensibilities, to see if it can knock off the crust of respectability that grows over the merely old, or the mask of misanthropy or humble piety that is sometimes worn over vanity or greed. When this sort of comedy is impish, it is like the following scene from the Marx Brothers' movie, A Night at the Opera: Harpo, the mute, honking brother, is approached by a bum, who asks for help tow a rd a cup of coffee. Ha rpo reaches down into his clown pants and pulls out a steaming cup of coffee and a saucer, and, handing it to the bum, walks away. I think that this is comic not because Har~o has a full cup in his pants pocket a 58 ·typewriter was delivered to her by mistake (sample dialogue; "Oh no George, my virginity is a priceless thing to me.") The family manufactures candy and fireworks, and prints up leaf lets which, by happenstance, are filled mostly with quotations from Trotsky (God is the state. The state is God.) Of course, much of the play's humor comes from a juxtaposition of the two families. At times the philosophy of the play seems to be the title's; that you can't take it with you. But characters in the comedy say things like; "Five years ago I just wanted to have fun. I used to think that was enough, but now I just don't know". The work never decided the question. What it does do is present· the audience with the possibility of living to h~ve_fun. (Trouble is taken to show that it would be poss lb le for this family to live outside of the theater.) The absurdity of this play comes from its showing the achievers on the bottom, stripped of the respectability that America had given them. The sting of it comes from the possible superiority, and even stranger the possible existence, of this situation. Tartuffe is similar. Its ending, where the king takes the role of God, must be taken as ironic. The play's true ending is that Orgon is sent to prison and his family to the gutter. Moli~re shows us a man who uses piety to disinherit an upperclass family. It shows us how piety can be everything that its reputation is not. It is true, or at least very likely, that Tartuffe shows us not what Moli~re thought was possible, but what he thought was a common occurance. Tartuffe is a black comedy, and its wit suffers for this. The Misanthrope is a working model of court society. The characters may seem hollow, and a few struts may show, but it helps us understand ho~ this rather spurious confederacy works. Hypocricy is essential to Alceste. It is what he craves most, and he is willing to squander a duke's ransom losing a lawsuit so that he can rail_ ag.ainst it. He admits to (although this is perhaps what makes us laugh). Everybody knows that that bum doesn't want coffee. He knows, though, that if he asks us to help him to a pint of Thunderbird, he won't get his dime. We understand him, and he us. But we will nonetheless play the game. The comedy in this scene bullies a thoughtless convention. Meredith mentions many times that the equality of women is important to the comic spirit, but he never says why. The reason is, I think, that women desenfe equality in many ways, but do not get it because of the empty traditions of society. This is perhaps why Moliere makes the most sensible characters of both Tartuffe and The Misanthrope female. This idea does· not seem comic today. This is because women have all but achieved lequality. Meredith did not see that it is essential_ that women be nearly but not quite equal, so that comedy could be made out of the discrepancy between good sense and habit. Twenty years ago a successful comedy might have been made merely by having black actors play white roles, and white black. The laughs might have come from the seeming absurdity of the situation, but the sting would have come from its plausibility. Now that the lie that blacks are an inferior race has been exposed this comedy would have no punch. Nor would it have had an effect when blacks were fully slaves. Only if the question of black equality were loose and stirring up trouble in society could the idea be the basis for a comedy. George Kaufman and Moss Hart's comedy You Can't Take It With You is about the engagement bf the son of the president of a respectable New York City business to a secretary at that firm. The young women is the sanest member of a somewhat lunatic family. The patriarch of the family spends most of his time playing darts and going to university commencements. The mother has, at the start of the play, been writing her own plays for eight years, since it has been that long since a 59 �,J Orgon that he has no gre.at taie.nt for poetry. Yet he can not bear tci .be anything less than absolute judge of anything, and when he is absolute judge, he condemns. Orgon' s sonnet is not so very bad, nor Alceste's rustic ditty very good. But, having been asked his opinion, he can not restrain himself. Philante says he expects no good qualities from men. If this were true he could have no friends, or perhaps no more among men than among wolves. But he is peculiarly affected by his contrapositive, Alceste. He is bent on disuading him from his retreat into the desert. He would not feel this compulsion unless he thought Alceste a man of worth. He is attached to Alceste's forthrightness. This virtue engages him; it is a standard py which he hopes he can square himself and (or perhaps, even in his own mind, in spite of) his leaky views. These two friends need one another reciprocally and serve one another admirably. Celim~ne is a delight to the audience. Her gossip scene with the two marquis is perhaps the high point of the play. Comedy was made to endorse such frippery. The audience can indulge itself there. . It is no wonder that Celim~ne is the hub of the circle ·of the people of this play, that she p.ot only pulls in Alceste, but most of the other men and their hangers-on. She is what high society offers; beauty, spritly talk and clever slander. She indulges herself knowing that she, too, is a target for gossip; her libel comes from a true sportsman's spirit. We bear ludicrous society for her refinements. The Misanthrope is a white comedy. It showed Louis's court how shaky compliment and insult are as pillars of society. It took their code of conduct and broadcast that it was farcical.· The joke is that the loudest opponent of hypocrisy lives a life of utter falsehood. And Celimene, the great magnet of the court, does her entertaining mostly by putting others down. By this account, one could almost think that Louis's court could throw away its pompous idea that an insult is a grave thing. I should think that a member of high society would come away from the theater, having seen The Misanthrope, ready for a little airy and innocent gossip. He would, however, have to fear a law suit. Like the bum and his cup of coffee, society will never say what it really wants, nor tell the truth about what hold~ it together. The sad ending to the play has to do with Celimene. She deserves something for being the spectacle that draws the crowd. What she deserves is what she has at the opening of the play; a troop of adoring men. The men who want to live the life of the court ought to be willing to share the main attraction. But no man in this play is willing to have a part of Celimene' s ,affections. They stay only as long as t.hey have some. hope of getting them all. In the end, they all try to damn her to a solitary life. At any party, the band gets to drink free. They are, after all, providing the entertainment. The same principle should hold for Celim~ne. 60 ... ·- · - .·---··-·---~------------------- �A Note on the Cover In "Kepler and the Mode of ·vision," in theJuly, 1980, issue of The St. John's Review, Curtis Wilson wrote: Melancholy is pictured in curer's famous engraving of 1513 or 1514, the Melencolia .!· Here we see a winged, presumably celestial being, staring fixedly, evidently in despair. The scene is lit with an eerie light from the moon, a comet, and a lunar rainbow. Strewn about in bewildering disorder are the tools of geometrical and architectural construction. She, the celestial being, is afflicted, we surmise, with a sense of spiritual confinement, of insurmountable barriers separating her from a higher realm of thought. Durer's conception of that highest realm is presented in another engraving which he made at the same time as the Melencolia, and distributed with it as its appropriate counterpart: St. Jerome in his Cell. Here Jerome, comfortably :: ' ~---------·-~-~- --. -- - ·- - seated in his warm, sunlit cell, which he shares with his contented animals, is absorbed in his theological work. Even the skull looks friendly. Jerome's incorporation into the strictly mathematical projection of our perspectival system, though it reveals his contentment, in no way reveals the secret of it, which may remain for some of us inaccessible ••• For all we know, the perspecti vi ty revealed by the fact that we opine, and that opinion is not knowledge, may be the correct perspective. In any case, our perspectival viewing reveals a world into which we, along with others, are launched as essentially equal citizens. We recognize others, equally with ourselves, as potential measures of the truth. The claims of others call us out of our particularity into discourse, into the search for Right Opinion. This is a category unknown to skeptics, a human category revealing both our poverty and our power. �i I St. John's College Annapolis, "'.\1ary1and 21404 ~ ! I I Pnnted at· the St. John·a College Print Shop in Annapolu � 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. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. i, 60 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper 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/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cooper, Barbara Davis, Matthew Holland, Christian Maguire, Susan Miller, Richard Monsma, Fritz Sharp, Marion Sachs, Joe, 1946- Title A name given to the resource Energeia, Spring 1982 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Spring 1982. 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CONTENTS THE METHOD OF APOLWNIUS John Ritner 1 SONG Pierre Gagnier 4 A HERO'S TALE RETOLD Eve Gartner 5 PROBLEMS WITH KANT, PROBLEMS WITH FAITH Richard Miller 23 EGG, BEAT HER John Keith 26 HO ENI AUTOS EN HEAUTO Joe DeGrazia THE MIRROR HELD UP TO NATURE George Iannacone SPRINGTIME Gretchen Berg PLAYING WITH IMAGES Susan Maguire 44 FOR FRANCES SCHOLARSHIP H. Stephen Morse 46 NEGATION, WILLING AND THE PLACES OF THE SOUL William O'Grady 47 MAKING MUCH ADO ABOUT "NOTHING" Jim Bailey 56 •i -----. ~.~.~~.~~ _________...__ . 81 �1 ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself. The Method of Apollonius John Ritner STAFF Kathleen Bergren Ann Burlein Barbara Cooper Christian Holland Susan Maguire Martin Marklin Richard Miller Alexandra Mullen Joe Sachs Merle Sokolik ~ ~ ON THE COVER: Many thanks to Gisela and Laurence Berns for their kind permission to reproduce this print. In an examination of the first book of Apollonius' Conics, two relationships are of particular importance: that between the cone and planes, and that between description and definition or naming.· The particulars of the structure of the work are further clarified by considering the relationship between the three conic sections. Only when the work is considered in the light of all three of these relationships together is it possible to obtain a clear understanding of the structure and intention of Apollonius' work. Apollonius starts by defining in his first three definitions a conic surface, a cone, and a right cone; he then proceeds to define in the last five definitions diameters and axes taken in a single plane. The cone and planes seem set in opposition from the ver:y beginning, but by proposition three he brings cone and plane together by cutting the cone with planes; and he continues this process through proposition fourteen. Ih propositions eight and nine, he constructs the three conic sections without defining or naming them, and this points to the second relationship: that between describing and naming. Before Apollonius names each section, ' it is important that we be able to find one diameter (proposition eight) for each, know that an ellipse is not a circle . (proposition nine), and know that a hyperbola and a parabola can be increased . indefinitely (proposition ten). Thus we have a certain description without naming or defining. Then in the defining propositions eleven through thirteen, Apollonius describes how each section is constructed from the cone, and then he defines each section in terms of a parameter. Only then does he give each section a name, for the names are not descriptive of the curves themselves (they are not called "elongated circles" or "curved angles" or any such thing), but rather the names are determined by whether square figures on the ordinates are equal to, greater than, or less than the rectangles made up of parts of the diameter and this mysterious parameter. In short, the parameter ~y be said to be the true definer of the sections, for "it never changes for a given section and a given diameter, while the parts of the diameter and the· ordinates do indeed change in size. By using a parameter to define sections which have been cut from the cone in different ways, each section is so defined that we may remove it from the cone. We start wit}). several lines which are in the cone but outside of the planes of the sections, and with these lines we determine one single line, the parameter, which may be included in the plane of the sections. Thus, given the parameter these ~onic sections may be thought of and analyzed as plane sections, something far easier to do than considering them in the cone. Accordingly, after proposition fourteen defines opposite sections of a hyperbola and guarantees their similarity, Apollonius dispenses with the cone and deals exclusively with the derived sections, until he reconstructs the cone in proposition fifty-two. In proposition fifteen, he constructs another diameter, in fact a conjugate diameter, and this is even proven in the proposition. But he does not name his new diameter. It seems 1 �1 I diameter as "the straight line drawn from the center parallel to an ordinate, being a mean proportional to the sides of the figure and bisected by the center." In regard to the opposite sections which are examined in proposition sixteen, this definition makes even less sense, and the contrivance about mean proportionals seems pulled out of the air; but a little thought about proposition fifteen, which employs the same contrivance to construct the second parameter, reveals the aptness of this contrivance. Quite independently of this contrivance, we can prove that· this new diameter ED is a mean proportional to the sides of the figure AB, AN i made up of the old diameter and old parameter. To prove this we need only prove that rectangle AN, AB equals the square on ED, and this follows from the facts that rectangle AN, AB equals 4 times the area AP; area AP equals the square on CD; and 4 times the square on CD equals the square on ED. Thus the position of these two propositions is no mistake, and neither is their frustrating seeming incompletness. Fifteen is left without a second named diameter until Apollonius can prove that all the lines going through the center are diameters; and the picture in sixteen remains incomplete until he can conclude Book I by constructing the conjugate sections in propostion sixty. These two propositions also point out the close relationship between the hyperbola and ellipse, for the same mean proportional contrivance is used for both, and both have conjugate diameters, even though this at first makes sense only for the ellipse. The propositions from seventeen to forty-five deal with the sections out of the cone and at first glance seem to have little relevance or importance. We soon find out that their function is to explore the characteristics of the sections and especially of their tangents and unnamed new diameters. We also constantly see the hyperbola and ellipse being taken together in the same proof, while the parabola is usually taken alone. Often Apollonius: will prove something for the parabola and f that the half of the proof was dealing most importantly with certain properties or descriptions, namely, of the relationship between the old figure (eidos), made up of the old diameter and parameter, and the new figure, made up of the new diameter and parameter. Yet the second part of this proof, the bisection of GW, begs that ED be called a diameter, just as FG was called a diameter in the porism to proposition seven. We shrug and pass on to sixteen, in which he constructs a conjugate diameter for opposite sections of a hyperbola and even names it: what is important here is a definition and not an exploration of certain properties. But what does it mean for this line XD, which does not even touch either of the opposite sections, to be called a new diameter? The definition exists, but a full account is lacking, begging for a proposition sixty to complete the picture. It is significant that at this point Apollonius introduces three new definitions. The first two rather routinely deal with the naming of the center of the hyperbola, ellipse, and opposite sections, but the third one is interesting. It defines the second G . . Pn0Pos1T10x l n N 2 ,I .; ·I . then the equivalent for hyperbola and ellipse. This he does in propositions forty-six and forty-seven, when the propositions assume new interest with the general proof for construction of diameters. Using what he has proved about tangents and other properties of the sections, he proves that any line drawn through a parabola parallel to the first diameter is itself a diameter, and any line drawn through the center of an ellipse or hyperbola is a diameter. But he still refuses to call them diameters. Only in forty-nine after he contrives a parameter, does he call this new diameter a diameter, for only then does he have the complete picture of a removed section. From the beginning, he constructed a parameter before he removed the section from the cone, and even defined the sections in terms of the parameter. So it is only logical to require a parameter for this new diameter before naming it a diameter, despite the fact that a parameter is nowhere required in the original definition of a diameter. Further, the parameter is the link back to the cone. Proposition fifty-two constructs a parabola with a given diameter, vertex, and parameter, and no proposition after eleven is used, but the ordinates must be at right angles to the dia~eter. Proposition fifty-three is the general construction proof, given any angle between the ordinates and the diameter, and it depends upon that proposition forty-nine which determined the parameter. The parameter also assumes importance as the finite line whi~h helps determine the axial triangle around which the cone is constructed, from which cone the parabola is constructed . Propositions fifty-four to fifty-eight construct hyperbolas and ellipses, following the same order of parabola-hyperbola-ellipse which was established in the beginning; fifty-nine constructs opposite sections; and finally, sixty constructs the never-before-seen conjugate sections; and most of the'se propositions depend on the paramete~ . proofs. Indeed, only the constructions of the sections with ordinates perpendicular to the diameter are-not dependent upon the; parameter proofs, in fact depend upon no proof after the defining proofs eleven through thirteen, for only the original diameter determined by the axial triangle is used. It is characteristic of Apollonius' method to wait to do any constructions until he is not limited to a special case, and to save these interesting constructions, including the conjugate sections, until the end of Book I. In general, the necessity of starting with a cone to construct plane figures produces a mathematics more complex than Euclidean geometry. To deal with these conic sections outside of a cone and in one plane, it is necessary to have a parameter which is determined by the cone, but which can also be put in the same plane as the conic sections. Thus the parameter is the key for the first important relationship in conic sections: that between the cone and the plane. And the parameter is so important that Apollonius defines the sections in terms of it, and he derives their names from figures drawn on the parameter, rather than assigning names more descriptive of the shape of the curves, such as elongated circle. Once the parameter has enabled him to remove the eections from the cone, Apollonius deals with many of the properties of the sections, but he does not name new diameters until he has found their parameter~. In. this way he maintains safe ground, either dealing with a figure still in a cone, ·or talking about diameters only when he has their defining parameters. In this way, the parameter is the link in the second important relationship: that between description and definition or naming. Apollonius may describe properties of the conic sections in the earliest proofs and describe properties of new diameters in the middle proofs, but he can define and name the sections and new diameters only once he has their parameters. And just as in the 3 �beginning the parameter was the link from· the cone to the plane, so its importance is emphasized once more at the end of Book I, when it proves to be the link from the plane back to the cone. In this way the cycle from cone to plane to cone is completed; and given the role and importance of the parameter, the method of Apollonius in Book I seems logical and 'even inevitable. A Hero's Tale Retold Eve Gartner Song Pierre Gagnier By bell, by bell, by change, By roll and rise of form, From form to flow -- the rock, The threshing cliff (this bone Of mountain interposed) -Threshes the stars. The souls Are threshed from their husks, By water, rock and wind. 1982 4 r I ' body brutally torn and scattered throughout the labyrinth, she offered hiin a gift of love, a clew of thread. But it was more than thread: it was his life and he took the gift in the spirit of love. He must not forsake it for it would lead him out of the labyrinth and he would. be freer when he left than when he entered. So Theseus, whose only hope of freedom was the thread, entered into the labyrinth as into a prison. As he passed through the walls he recalled his past conquests, and relived them each one by one. He walked through the corridors, unwinding Ariadne's gift, knowing that many lives, including his own, depended on his ability to re-trace his steps through those halls.' As he entered the center of the labyrinth he was imprisoned with the minotaur. His blood did not run coid. He was not afraid. He knew that either it must die or he would. Theseus grabbed the minotaur by the hair and this monster--half-man, half-beast--clawed at his face and chest. They wrestled. The minotaur quickly obtained the advantage, but Theseus struggled to get himself on top and finally stabbed the minotaur between the eyes. The hero got up and fled the labyrinth, tracing the thread he trusted would take him to freedom. But as Theseus bravely followed the gift of love, he realized he did not know if the monster. had truly been slain or was merely wounded. Had he been freed of it forever or only given a reprieve? Androgeus, man of the earth, came away victorious from all his contests at the festival. He was the son of the King and he was the best, until the envious Aegeus s~nt. the Marathonian bull to challenge th.is youth of Crete. His muscles were taut, his mind alert as he prepared to wrestle the beast. But the bull did not know the rules, did not care and charged young Androgeus while he stood thinking his brave thoughts. He had no warning; he merely died. Deeds like Aegeus' do not go unpunished and to avenge his son, Minos ordered that seven young men and seven young women be sent each year from Athens to Crete to be fed to the minotaur. Every year as the boat set off for Crete, the chosen youths of Athens knew they would not return and as they set sail they looked back in horror at the city that had ordained their deaths. The third year of this atrocity came, and Theseus, worthy son of Aegeus and hero like no other, volunteered to join the condemned fourteen and try his hand at slaughtering the minotaur. Theseus had no choice. His life was the slaying of monsters, the freeingof men. The boat left Athens with black sails under the condition that if Theseus ,lived and was victorious it would return with white ones. Minos anxiously desired to see the young Athenians who would nourish his monstrosity. So the fourteen youths and maidens and Theseus their hero lined up before him. His daughter Ariadne stood by his side and as she watched Theseus--his shoulder, his thighs--she blushed with love. Unable to stand the thought of this beautiful soul· perishing, of this young * * * * * This story has no author. 5 I pass it on �to you as it was passed to me. I do not know the truth of all I say for I was not there, but though the details may have changed through time, the spirit of the hero Theseus remains. The life of his spirit depends on this tale, on its telling. When we stop recounting his story, Theseus will die. in small ways over time in order to express better the daring, the heroism, the grief. The story-teller, unlike the witness, is not present at the occurrence and thus is not responsible for·accuracy-for the small details, for the literal sequence of things. His absence is a gift of license: he must only be faithful to the spirit of the deeds. Phaedo is Socrates' witness; Plato, the maker of his myth. As Phaedo recounts tqe list of those present at Socrates' death, we learn that Plato was ill. He, like a maker of myths, is not a witness to what becomes his story. In this dialogue it is Socrates and not Plato who has authority. We look to Socrates to inspire in us our opinions and beliefs. This is his dialogue. As Plato himself says in his second letter: "For this reason I myself have never yet written anything on these subjects, and no treatise by Plato exists or will exist, but those which now bear his name belong to ' a Socrates become beautiful and new." (314 c 2) Plato's absence gives Socrates dominion over his own story. Cebes asks Socrates why he, who has never written poetry before, began composing verses in prison. Socrates tells him of a dream he has had frequently in which he is told to "engage in the Muses' art (mousiken) and practice it." (60 e 7) Philosophy, it had always seemed, was the greatest of the Muses' arts and so he had nothing to fear. As his death neared, however, he considered that his dream had meant making "what is ordinarily called music." (61 a 9) So not wanting to displease the gods, he began writing verse. Thus he wrote a hymn to Apollo, whose festival had postponed his death, and then considering that a poet, if he is really to be a poet, must compose myths and not speeches, since I was not a maker of myths, I took the myths of Aesop, which I had at hand and knew, and turned into verse the first I came upon. (61 b 4) I Socrates, the new Theseus, spent his last day with fourteen friends. The followers gathered at daybreak at the court where the trial took place and then walked together to the prison where Socrates was held. They were not in the habit of meeting so early, but the impending death of their beloved teacher and friend demanded special attention, and the earliness of their arrival ensured that they could spend an entire day with Socrates. The fullness of their final day calls to mind Aristotle's observation in the Poetics that "Tragedy endeavours to keep as far as possible within a single circuit of the sun, or something near that." (1449 b 13) Is Plato suggesting that Socrates' death is a tragedy? Let us see. The story begins with Echecrates questioning Phaedo. His first words ring out "Autos, £ Phaidon," and Phaedo echoes back "Autos, 2_, Echekrates." Phaedo speaks in the manner in which one who had seen the death of Androgeus would describe that slaying. He is a witness to an event and not a teller of stories. He saw the death of Socrates, he was there: The "Autos" resounds letting us know that Phaedo himself will present the account "as accurately as he can." (58 d 12) Androgeus died and the minotaur was fed on Athenian youths until Theseus slayed it. These are the facts of Theseus' heroism, but how do they become the myth of Theseus? An event occurs, a lifetime passes, but it is not a story. A man relates an incident to a friend and still there is no story. A story condenses the event to bring out its power, changes it 6 The. taking of a story and making it into another story is at once a creating and a not-creating. How do Socrates' versions of Aesop's myths differ from Aesop's versions? And Plato's telling of Socrates' story: what does he add that Phaedo's account leaves out? In some ways Socrates' description of his verse-writing is reminiscent of Plato's myth-making. Each takes what already is and re-shapes it to meet his need. If Socrates' re-telling of Aesop's stories was the composition of music, is Plato composing music when he tells us the tale of Socrates? The dialogue contains neither chords nor octaves--it is not in verse--but there is a true music in its form. Plato makes Socrates start off slowly, for Socrates must not shock his followers with new ideas, but instead plays for them the same arguments they've heard before. He has an ear for timing and feels the urgency to say certain things before he dies but must wait for the proper moment so that they have the right effect. Socrates has individual modes of addressing each man and expects different things from each of them in return. From his fourteen friends he will not tolerate tears, but from the servant of the Eleven he accepts tears graciously and even remarks on the nobility of his weeping. And from the fourteen individually also, there will be different objections and different responses, and Socrates will treat each uniquely. As the dialogue builds up to its final resolution, we are carried by its music. assert that philosophers practice dying all their lives and thus welcome death when their time comes. Cebes cannot understand how a man as wise as Socrates could "leave us and the gods, who are, as you yourself agree, good rulers." ( 63 a 11) Socrates quickly admits that he must defend himself "as if we were in a law court. " ( 63 b 3) This reminder of his recent trial pains but also comforts Simmias and Cebes · who expect to hear a speech similar to what they've already heard in court. They want · to be re-assured that their teacher is the same in dying as he was in life. They want to be certain that the man whose life they've tried to model theirs after does not regret the things he's said and done. Socrates says he will try to b'e more convincing this time than last time; but when he changes his view from that of the Apology, that death is either "a virtual nothingness" or "a change and mi.gration of the soul from this to another place," (40 c 7) to his statement in the Phaedo that' "I would assert as positively as anything about such matters that I am going to gods who are good masters," ( 63 c 1) Simmias and Cebes do not appear to have heard the . "as anything" which rings so clearly in: our ears. Before Socrates has a chance to defend his view, the first dissonance sounds as Cri to warns Socrates not to talk so much because talk warms the body which retards the effects of the poison and thus prolongs life. It is an absurd warning, but Socrates cannot ignore the image it presents of the cold body quickly succumbing to the spreading poison, nor can we forget that this is more than an apologia. The dialogue is not a defense, but a teaching. Socrates' arguments are not meant to justify what he has done, but to show young men how to think and ask questions about the things that matter to them. As Socrates begins his reasoning, he refers to his followers as "tois dikastais," (63 d 8) as justices, the.name he rightly gives to his just supporters in the Apology. (40 a 3) By using it again here, he lets Simmias and Cebes know that As Theseus entered the labyrinth, He began to unravel the thread. He walked slowly, remembering all the deeds of his days, for though he knew what awaited him, he did not know how he would conquer it. * * * * * Socrates' first dialectical step is to 7 �4 what he is about to tell them, he says because they are his true friends and champions. As they are friends, he will talk to them about what is on his mind; but since they are not aged men, how much will they understand of what he now faces? Old men do not talk to young men about death, they talk to them about life. They do not confide in them their fears or hopes for th'emselves in another world, but rather talk about what they have done rightly or wrongly in this world. They counsel and give advice and reflect on what they've learned. _ Let me propose that Socrates uses the assumption that philosophers desire death as an occasion to say something about life, and not as an argument to defend his choice to die. Let us see what way the arguments in this dialogue address the questions of young men who are on the eve of living in the world without a teacher for the first time. The core of Socrates' lengthy argument defending the notion that philosophers desire death comes from the idea that'the body and the senses--hearing, seeing, feeling, desiring, fearing--obscure thought, and therefore realities, by deceiving the soul. Thus the soul of the philosopher, loving truth, hates the body and does all it can to avoid it and its illusions. Since Socrates defined death as the separation of the soul from the body (64 c 4) , it is this state of death that the philosopher strives toward. Socrates begins to test Simmias on ·the truth of what he's said. He asks Simmias if "we say" (phamen) there is such a thing as absolute justice, and Simmias responds "we say" (phamen) there is. ( 65 d 4) Clearly Socrates is calling into play Simmias' familiarity with one of his favorite ideas--the forms. This is the time to talk about ideas they've shared, not the time to raise new hypotheses. Socrates must help Simmias recall what they have spoken of together, to remember the best things they have done together. He wants Simmias and Cebes to remember these arguments because they are the currency of their friendship.__ These conversations have brought them -together, but once Socrates is gone, Simmias and Cebes will need to begin new arguments on their own. They will try to follow the intellectual path of Socrates, starting off with safe but simple accounts which evolve into more ingenious arguments. Simmias and Cebes will need - a starting place for their philosophic inquiries. Perhaps the arguments of which Socrates seems intent on reminding them can serve this purpose. Once Simmias agrees that they say there are such things as true justice, beauty and goodness, Socrates asks him if he has ever reached any of them with his bodily senses. His answer, of course, is no.· Socrates goes on to elaborate the attributes of the man who could know such things. Several times in his - account he retreats from certainty, saying such things as: "the man who approaches each thing, so far as possible, with the reason alone," (65 e 8) and "who removes himself, so far as possible, from eyes and ears" (66 a 5) and concludes with "Is not this the man, Simmias, if anyone, to attain to the knowledge of reality?" (66 a 8) Simmias, apparently not hearing the uncertain "if anyone," chimes in "That is as true as true can be, Socrates" (Huperphuos hos alethe legeis). (66 a 10) Though Socrates' manner is calm, his hesitancy to assert anything definitely carries over to his own future. He admits that when he gets to where he is going he will, "if anywhere," (67 b 9) find that for which he has been striving. Though Simmias and Cebes are not yet ready to hear these doubts from their teacher, he cannot deceive them with false confidence. Socrates knows about their doubts and thus the argument he tells them is similar to what they're accustomed to hearing from him. In Book Five of the Republic, for instance, he says: Well, now. This is separate them out. side I put those of were just speaking, 8 how I On one whom you the lovers esting that in a dialogue in which Socrates maintains that the body gets in the way of learning, he makes our bodily experience the instrument of learning. If he were truly trying to exalt the unencumbered intellect, why wouldn't he have made an argument l,ike the one - he makes to Glaucon? of sights, the lovers of-arts, and the practical men; on the other, those whom the argument concerns, whom alone one could rightly call philosophe~s ..• The lovers of hearing and the lovers of sights, on the one hand, surely delight in fair sounds and colors and shapes and all that craft makes from such things, but their thought is unable to see and delight in the nature of the fair itself. (476 a 9 - b 6) * * * * * As Theseus rounded a turn in the corridor, he caught sight in the distance of the minotaur'& tail. He shuddered slightly at what lay before him. This account of the body's interference in the pursuit of true knowledge resembles the one given in the Phaed,Q •. and this resemblance must comfort Simmiai:i" ·and Cebes · who do not want to believe that death might change what they've always thought to be true. The argument in the Republic, though, has a different appeal from that of the Phaedo. In the Republic Socrates tells Glaucon that the root of the dichotomy between body and soul lies in the twoness of opposites and therefore the ' oneness of each member of the pair. The deception comes because each is one but shows itself as many through its conjunction with actions and bodies. The true philosopher, he says, is the one who sees the thing in itself apart from its union with the physical world. (475 e 476 c) The argument invites Glaucon to consider what makes something unified and what makes a unified thing appear diverse. Socrates' argument is an appeal to Glaucon' s reason, to his ability to understand and see through the apparent deception that bodies cause. In the Phaedo, on the other hand, Socrates appeals to the bodies of Simmias and Cebes for confirmation of what he has told them. His argument depends on their having bodies so that they may recognize the power their bodies have over them. When Socrates says, "For the body keeps us constantly busy by reason of its need of sustenance," (66 b 9) it is not our reason, but the immediate experience of our appetites whi:ch assents. I_t is inter:~ Cebes agrees with most of what Socrates said, but matters concerning the soul, le observes, are subject to much disbeli~. Men fear that the soul is not immortal, that when a man dies his soul also _perishes. In Cebes' apprehension. Socrates catches his first glimpse of the minotaur which awaits him, of the true monster to be conquered which is the fear of death. Cebes calls for two distinct responses--arqument and proof--to allay his fears of the soul's dispersal. He does not merely want assurance that the soul exists apart from the body, but also that it will continue to have both power and intelligence_ (~ esti ,.!! he psych@ apothanontos ~ anthr~u kai tina dunamin echei kai phron~sin). (70 b 4) This is a strange request, for in what world do dunamis and phron~sis flourish? These are the attributes of the soul functioning on this earth. They are the striving toward and the practical knowledge of a soul acting in an imperfect world rather than a· world of entelecheia and nous. Cebes sets ""\iP the two distinct questions which will concern them for the rest of the dialogue--whether the soul is immortal and whether death is something to be feared. As we will see the two are wholly connected. Before Socrates begins to argue for the immortality of the soul, 9 �he reminds Simmias and Cebes (do they need reminding?) that these ideas and questions are of the utmost concern to him. He warns us not to get too caught up in the arguments and forget the circumstances under which they take place. He lets us know that these arguments are not a game, but the questions they ask raise the most serious problems any of them could face. If we are still supposing, though, that Socrates is trying to teach these young men something pertinent to their own lives, why does he begin to discuss the immortality of the soul? What effects will the soul's immortality have· on the way Simmias and Cebes act in this world? Socrates attempts to show the immortality of the soul by convincing Cebes that opposites come from opposites, and therefore what is living comes from what is dead. This conclusion must show, Socrates claims, that our souls existed in another world. The argument has Pythagorean origins, and so Simmias and Cebes, two Pythagoreans, are probably familiar with its premise, while Plato familiarizes us with this argument at the beginning of the dialogue when Socrates is released from his fetters. Rubbing his newly-freed leg, Socrates observes that pleasure and pain do not come at the same time, but one inevitably follows after the other. Socrates' speculation contrasts sharply with Phaedo' s observation to Echecrates immediately before, that "a very strange feeling came over me, an unaccustomed mixture of pleasure and of pain together, when I thought that Socrates was presently to die." (59 a 6) Socrates likens his notion to a two-headed beast which sets the stage for Cebes to ask about his verse-writing, as well as introducing us to the idea of many-headedness which appears again later in the dialogue. As Socrates begins his proof that opposites come from opposites, Phaedo does not mention that at that moment he is experiencing the contrary feeling of opposites mixing within him. He does not tell his friend that the thought of his death fills him with both pleasure and pain simultaneously. Phaedo is persuaded by Socrates to agree with something that a moment's reflection would tell him isn't true. The discussion, which begins with the example of nobility and disgrace and other absolute opposite entities, quickly changes to a discussion of relative opposite qualities. The emphasis turns to processes Qf generation and becoming rather than being, although Socrates makes no attempt to examine the middle increments of generation which occur before the opposites emerge. When at the conclusion of this argument Cebes quickly adds that the theory ·of recollection is further proof for the pre-existence of the soul, it is clear that the opposites from opposites argument was not convincing. Further proof is needed. But Socrates is in a battle and the individual blows do not matter. All that counts is that the campaign as a whole be victorious. As with the previous argument, we are introduced to some of the reasoning of the recollection account earlier in the dialogue when Simmias and Socrates discuss the existence of the forms. In this context, though, Simmias does not recall the recollection hypothesis and thus himself needs to recollect. Cebes helps him. The hypothesis first appears in the Meno where it is used to show that the soul has already learned everything before it enters the body. The theory is thus an answer to Meno's query, "How will you look for something when you don't in the least know what it is?... [Even] if you come right up against it, how will you know that what you have found is the thing you didn't know?" (80 d 4) Socrates answers that you will recognize it because the soul once possessed all knowledge, and so when you see the truth, you will recognize it because the memory of it exists within your soul. In the Phaedo, in response to a wholly different question, Cebes presents the theory of recollection as Socrates did in the Meno, but now Socrates is not 10 I • satisfied with the explanation and must elaborate upon it. His first elaboration takes the theory out of the realm of the forms and brings it into our world with the example: "Well, you know that a lover when he sees a lyre or a cloak or anything else which his beloved is wont to use, perceives the lyre and in his mind receives an image of the boy to whom the lyre belongs, do you not?" (73 d 5) Socrates does eventually bring the idea of abstract qualities into the discussioni but whereas in the ~ our understanding of the abstract entity enabled us to recognize the physical thing, in the Phaedo, we obtain our knowledge of the abstract form from our knowledge of the physical. "Did we not, by seeing equal pieces of wood or stones or other things, derive from them a knowledge of abstract equality?" (74 b 7) We know that the forms must exist in our souls when we come to the realization that things in this world fall short of what they might be. Socrates asks, "Do not equal stones and pieces of wood, though they remain the same, sometimes appear to us equal in one respect and unequal in another?" And when Simmias agrees and then also agrees that absolute equals do not ever seem unequal, Socrates concludes, "Then those equals are not the same as equality in the abstract." (74 c 3) The world is imperfect and our recognition of that tells us that we are aware of perfection. It is through our senses that we perceive that "all sensible objects strive after absolute equality and fall short of it," (75 b 1) and thusit is our senses which tell us that the forms live within us. The argument concludes by saying that we are born with a , certain knowledge which we acquired before our birth, thus showing that our souls must have existed in another ·world, the world · of the forms. The recollection account in the Phaedo differs greatly from the account in the Meno. It appeals to the experience of Simmias and Cebes with tangible things like cloaks and lyres and not with their recognition of mathematical truths. The· argument is at once a reminiscence of past times and past discussions, a reassurance that Socrates still believes the things he once held to be true and .an occasion for us to wonder why this recollection, in contrast to the recollection of the Meno, is inspired by sensible objects. ~ Socrates asks Sinmias. if all men can give an account of these' things and Simmias sorrowfully admits that though he wishes it were true, "I fear that tomorrow, at this time, there wi11 be no longer any man living who is able to do so properly." (76 b 10) This fear, thouqb perhaps selfish, is based on the realization we all have when faced with the death of a dear friend, the realization that they have something no one else has. At this moment, Sinmias is only thinking of himself, only thinking that he is losing the man who taught him to see the truest things. As Socrates continues to conclude the recollection argument, he is a dying man recalling with his close•t fiends the things that· were best in his life. * * * * * As Theseus entered the center of the labyrinth, the minotaur's eyes beckoned in challenge. Simmias and Cebes each become convinced that our souls existed before we were born, but they still have the fear of dispersal, the fear that the soul is a breath which will fade with a man's last words. Socrates teases them about their childish fears, and Cebes the child dares him to persuade them "not to fear death as if it were a hobgoblin." (77 e 5) Still lightly Socrates tells them to sing charms every day to charm away their fears. We are immediately reminded that this dialogue is Socrate•' song, and Cebes, too, recognizes Socrates as his charmer of fears. "Where shall we find a good singer of such charms, since you are leaving us?" Cebes asks. (78 a 1) Socrates replies in earnest this time, telling them to search 0 11 �, everywhere for such a charmer. He knows that the fear of death is not a childish fear. He knows it is the fear of death which gives power to tyrants, the threat of death which keeps men from acting justly. Socrates must do all he can before he dies to allay their fear of death. He must show them that the danger of death need never determine their actions. In order to assuage their fears, Socrates asks them what things naturally suffer dispersion, and then, he adds, we must see if the soul is that sort of thing. They decide on two types of being: the first--non-composite, unchangeable, invisible1 the second--composite, changeable and visible. The forms fall under the first heading, but things like cloaks are always changing and thus fall into the second category. After some discussion they draw the tentative conclusion that "[the] soul is more like the invisible than the body is, and the body more like the visible." (79 c 1) Cebes, under Socrates' tutelage, determines that the soul has a kinship with the forms and the di vine and thus will be "entirely indissoluble, or nearly so." (80 b 11) This emerges from its context, but in many ways it is utterly different from Socratic thinking. In the Sophist the Eleatic stranger tells Thaetetus that: uncertain in a dialogue where most of the questions raised are about immortality of the soul, yet the forms are assumed from the beginning to be everlasting and timeless. We fear for our souls but have faith in the eternality of the forms. If there were a true kinship between souls and forms, would Simmias and Cebes have anything to fear? Perhaps another way to understand this argument can be found in a pun. Socrates makes Cebes agree that the soul is invisible (aeides) and pure and divine and thus enters the · realm of the pure and everlasting, which is Hades (Haides). Puns can be deceptive because frequently the maker of the pun has a true and meaningful idea when he begins to speak it. The pun seductively enters his mind, and though it is not exactly what he meant to say, before he knows it, it has rolled off his tongue. The speaker gets caught up in the sound of his own words, (in the coincidental (aeides/Haides) and loses the original intention. I do not mean to suggest that Plato sacrificed his meaning for the seductive effects of language, but perhaps the thought process of the maker of puns can be a model by which to understand what Socrates does. Maybe Socrates does not really believe that souls are like forms, but rather that they approach being like forms. (In the opposites from opposites argument the emphasis was on processes of becoming, but there he talks of purity rather than purification. Ought it be different?) This would make sense in the context of its being an essentially Pythagorean argument, for the Pythagoreans believed that man progressively purifies himself in a process that is never completed in life. Perhaps Plato blurred the distinction between purification and purity, between souls and forms, leaving out the middle ground of approach. In a certain way, the process by which souls come closer to being like forms is a non-active activity. Souls approach forms by contemplation which is an activity of stilling, a momentary unchangeability during which we come closest to being If knowing is to be acting on something, it follows that what is known must be acted upon by it, and so, on this showing, reality when it is being known by the act of knowledge must, in so far as it is known, be changed owing to being so acted upon--~11d that, we say, cannot happen to the changeless. (248 d 11-e 4) Here it seems that what is changeless cannot be known, for knowing is a change. Can it be that the forms are changeless and thus not knowable? Even the premise that there is a kinship between souls and forms seems 12 divine. In this way, the motion that Socrates may have chosen not to mention is a non-motion, the approach, a stopping to think. It is interesting, though, that Socrates omits contemplation. Why does he do this? Socrates presents a predominantly Pythagorean argument to two Pythagoreans, but leaves out the process of becoming which is characteristic of that school. Must not he be inviting them to scrutinize, inviting them to search for what he has left out? That type of scrutiny is for later, though, for the time when Socrates will no longer be there. In his absence, he leaves them this argument which does not quite work, as something on which they should spend more time. For now, though, the true battle with fear of death must continue. Let me pause for a moment to look back. The first three arguments in defense of the soul's immortality do not convince me. I assume, though, that Plato did not intend for his readers to be convinced. Socrates' arguments are, like Ariadne's thread, gifts of love. They are gifts to men who will be struggling with something alone and who need confidence that they are heading in the right direction. Simmias and Cebes will soon be facing the trial of living a good life without the guidance of their teacher. These arguments are Socrates' gifts to them so that they may follow this type of reasoning and it will lead them rightly. They are gifts which Simmias and Cebes can keep with them always as reminders of Socrates, for the arguments themselves are reminiscences into the past. When Socrates finished talking there was a long silence and Phaedo tells Echecrates that his teacher was "apparently absorbed in what had been said." (84 c 1) We know nothing of his thoughts but that they were of the utmost seriousness, for he tells Simmias and Cebes, who were conversing between themselves, that they may raise any questions they have about these matters, but "if you are considering anything else, I have nothing to say." (84 c 7) Simmias acknowledges that both he and Cebes have questions to ask, but they were afraid to trouble Socrates with them for fear of displeasing him in his present misfortune. When he says that, Socrates laughs (egelasen) -as both Simmias (64 a 12) and Cebes (62 a 11) had each done once before, when neither of them was in.the mood to do so. Socrates' laughter is the opening measure of his song of death, his gentle music in imitation of the calling of the swans. "I, too, am a swan, " his laughter says, "and my laughter heralds my death as the swans sing in their prophetic joy." Socrates' laughter evolves into words,, and the words are in meter so that he does not lose the song-like nature of his story. He sings to Simmias and Cebes about Apollo's birds, the swans, who like their master are endowed with gifts of prophecy which enable them to see fnto the blessings of the other world. They sing for joy and not for sorrow, and their song welcomes death. Socrates' song is his joy too, not only for what it portends, but for what it is. He revels not only in the story his song tells, but in the telling itself. Does Theseus only look forward to having slain the minotaur, or is there also joy in the actual slaying of the beast? Socrates' song is sung not only· in anticipation of what awaits him, but in the knowledge that the ·song itself is a creation of a better future. Unlike argument which is meant to persuade, Socrates' swan song is meant to seduce Simmias and Cebes into believing that their teacher has seen into the future and knows that death is not to be feared. His song guarantees them of his happiness, for it is the music of laughter. It is not reasoned, but emotional. Socrates charms their fears by lulling them away with tales of animals who are wise and sing in their wisdom. This charming away of the fear of death promises to make Simmias and Cebes lead better lives, for it is the fear of death which threatens to destroy the Socratic tradition of acting rightly for its own sake rather than having one's actions determined by the rewards and 13 �, -punishments which will come from them. In this way the song which proclaims a joyful future plays an important role in the implementing of that future. In Cebes' request that the immortality of the soul be proven, he seems 'to be talking about the soul' s immortality on earth, an immortality of ideas and traditions, an immortality of a way of life. The conquering of the fear of death is part of the struggle to ensure the immortality of the Socratic soul on this earth. Thus this song of laughter is the instrument of Socrates' warfare. Simmias is eager to begin, eager to share his question. But first he confides that he thinks it either very difficult or impossible to decide upon these things during life. One must either learn the truth, he says, or take the best doctrine he can find,and,"Embarking upon it as upon a raft, sail upon it through life in the midst of dangers, unless he can sail upon some stronger vessel, some d\vine revelation, and make his voyage more safely and securely." (85 d 1) Nothing, I think, could be closer to what Socrates feels. Simmias claims that the soul is a harmony which is invisible and incorporeal and divine. The lyre and its strings are bodies and therefore mortal, but what happens when the strings are broken or too tightly strung? The soul, the harmony, must perish. The remains of the body last a long time and then finally decay, but the soul--a mixture and harmony of the elements which compose our bodies--is· the first to vanish. Socrates suggests that Cebes raise his objection before anyone tries to answer Simmias. Cebes still worries that the soul will disperse when the body dies. His fear, he says, can best be expressed by the figure of a cloak, as Simmias' was by a lyre. (See 73 d 4) Which lasts longer, he asks, a man or a cloak? A man weaves and wears out many cloaks in his life, but he dies before the last one perishes. This, however, does not mean that the cloak is stronger than the man, but merely that the man has worn out many cloaks and died with the last one still * * * * * intact. So it is with the soul and the body. The soul lasts a long time and wears out many bodies and is constantly weaving anew that which wears out, but when the soul finally has woven its last and perishes, it is still wearing its last body. The body then quickly decays, · but it has outlived the soul. We cannot know which body will be the last that the soul weaves, but like the weaver who finally weaves his last cloak, the soul eventually weaves its last body and dies. Why does Socrates ask that these two objections--the objections of the lyre and the cloak--be asked together and then refuted together? In Cebes' short account of the soul as a weaver of cloaks, he uses forms of the verb apoluo ten times. It is this word which represents his greatest fear. We cannot forget that it is the festival of Apollo (ApollC5) which gives Socrates the reprieve, Apollo to whom Socrates writes his hymn, and Apollo Socrates claims to serve. Can it be mere coincidence that the symbols of Apollo are the lyre and the bow? Apollo is the god of archery, music and prophecy. It is said of his arrows in the Iliad: At the outset of their struggle, the beast appeared to be winning. When Socrates had finished listening to Simmias and Cebes, he sat surrounded by fourteen stunned men. Even Echecrates just listening to Phaedo recount the incident says, "Now I must begin over again and find another argument to convince me that when a man dies his soul does not perish with him." (88 d 6) They all needed to begin again, to re-think things through, to see if Socrates could confront the fear of dispersal, the final threat. Now you lie in the palace, handsome and fresh with dew, in the likeness of one whom he of the silver bow, Apollo, has attacked and killed with his gentle arrows. (Book 24 - 757) His arrows, though gentle, symbolize his distance. He is, as one of his epithets calls him, "far-shooting Apollo." If there is a connection between the lyre and the cloak and the lyre and the bow, the difference they point to is the opposition between the remoteness of the Apollonian bow and the closeness and protection of the Socratic cloak. The lyre, though, is something Socrates and Apollo share. The music Socrates plays is divine, his prophecies divinely inspired. Part of him is close and present and of the earth, but part of him is with the gods. 14 his feet. He had not just one enemy but two, and even Heracles could not handle that alone. He killed the crab and called his charioteer Iolaus to come help him. It was no longer a matter of pride. All he could think of was that the beast must be killed. Iolaus immediately set fire to a neighboring forest, and with flaming brands he seared the necks of the Hydra as its heads were lopped off, ensuring that no more could grow in their stead. Heracles' task was almost complete. Eight of the nine heads lay at his feet, but the ninth, the immortal head, stared confidently at the hero in challenge. Heracles tried in vain to perform the impossible but finally came to realize his limitations. That head would live forever. - Resignedly, Heracles buried the breathing head under a rock. He would die without seeing it killed. •, Heracles, son of Zeus, wore the armor of the gods when he undertook his labors. He carried Hermes' sword and Apollo's bow, and as he stood in battle, the golden breastplate he bore belonged to Vulcan. Word of Heracles' heroism had spread throughout the land and so he was called on to slay the nine-headed Hydra which dwelled in the marsh of Lerna. The beast would emerge from its abode and wreak havoc on the land, killing cattle and ravaging the country. Defeating it was no easy task: not only was it immense, but one of its nine heads was immortal. Heracles mounted his chariot driven by Iolaus, son of Iphiclus, and they rode to the marsh where the Hydra was said to live. When they arrived, Heracles stepped down from the chariot and went in quest of the many-headed beast. As he approached the springs of Amymone, the hole in which the creature lived loomed before him. He did not move any closer, but shot fiery darts at the hole until the Hydra emerged. It was more gruesome than he could have imagined, and as he grabbed onto one of its arms, it twisted itself about the hero's legs. Heracles beat its heads with his club but to no avail, for when one was crushed, two sprang up in its place. As he stood hopelessly clubbing the heads of the monster, a huge crab began to bite at * * * * * Heracles' strength lies in his ability to seek help, in his capacity to abandon pride for the sake of worthwhile accomplishment. If Heracles had not called on Iolaus, the beast which threatened would have devoured him. The triumph belongs to Heracles, but without Iolaus it would have be.en nothing at all. II Socrates' method of attack differs from that of Heracles. Though he might have divine gifts, they are not armor. He consoled Simmias and Cebes by listening to their fears pleasantly, gently and respectfully and soothed their doubts about his future by acting toward them as he always had. Whereas - his friends met earlier than usual at the courthouse that day, Socrates' habits did not change. He stroked Phaedo's head and played with his 15 �--,-- important than maintaining his pride. hair. Could any of the fourteen men assembled there truly believe that this seventy year old man facing death within hours, listening quietly to friends and playing with the hair of a beautiful young man, was eager to leave this life? As he strokes Phaedo' s hair, Socrates asks him if he will cut it off tomorrow in mourning. When Phaedo nods Socrates gently corrects him saying "You will cut it off today, and I will cut mine, if our argument dies and we cannot bring it to life again." (89 b 8) What would they be mourning? What is an argument such that it has a life? The life of this argument is the life of Socrates' soul, that of intellectual pursuit and virtuous action. · If the argument dies with Socrates, if moral 'virtue vanishes in the face of tyranny, in the face of those who have tried to quell it in him, then Socrates' soul will die. The immortality of Socrates' soul is the immortality of the way he has lived his life and questioned other people about the way they have lived theirs. The fear of death threatens all this. The immortality for which Socrates argues is the immortality of the dunamis and phronesis of the soul--the striving toward and the moral rightness. Argument immortalizes Socrates' soul, for it is in argument that men will continue to ask what virtue and knowledge are, while those who stop questioning will fall prey to the demands of tyrants. The fears and arguments of the Phaedo concern themselves with this world, for the greatest danger that could befall Socrates' soul is being forgotten on this earth. The continuation of the argument is the immortality of his soul. If the fear of mortality ends the argument, then that fear must be conquered. Socrates asks · Phaedo to lead the battle, saying he will help him as Iolaus did Heracles. Phaedo retreats from that responsibility preferring to play Iolaus to Socrates' Heracles. It is all the same, Socrates assures him, knowing that there is no time for discussions of heroism. It does not matter anymore who does what, only that it get done. As Heracles first had to kill the crab which threatened to prevent him from facing the true danger, so must Socrates destroy misology, the hatred of argument, before addressing the real beast, the fear of the soul's dispersal, which is the final reason to fear death. Misology, like the crab at Heracles' ankles, impedes facing true dangers head-on. Confrontations with the most serious questions cannot take place outside the forum of argument, and thus misology is a threat to all serious philosophic inquiry. If Simmias and Cebes come to hate argument, they will have no means by which to address their fears of the soul's mortality. But, if Simmias and Cebes can be convinced never to abandon argument, Socrates can be more certain that his way of life will not perish. Misologyr Socrates says, resembles misanthropy. We come to hate both arguments and men when we think they are perfectly good and true but later find out otherwise. Arguments, like men, are very rarely all true or all false, but we must never revile argument totally, believing it to hold no truth whatsoever. Individual arguments are like single blows struck in a battle: neither is of much importance in itself--each matters only in the cumulative effect. So must we not look for proof in a single argument, but in the discussion as a whole. We ought never to think argument unsound, but should rather realize our own lack of preparation for understanding it. Socrates tells Simmias and Cebes to strive * * * * * Not even Heracles could take on both the Hydra and the crab, and so he called for Iolaus to come to his aid, knowing that winning the battle was more existence elsewhere prior to entering the body. Though he addresses only Simmias' objection, he asks the opinions of both Simmias and Cebes in regard to the recollection account. The bringing of that theory into this argument must have more significance than the refutation of Simmias' idea that the soul is a harmony. He is, I think, testing their affinity for one argument, making them choose between two things which individually seem right. He challenges their ability to revise old thoughts in the light of new ideas. Simmias and Cebes are united in their conviction that it is the best argument given so far, and Simmias goes on to add that he would be surprised if he ever felt differently about it. Socrates plays on Simmias' admission and immediately points out that the harmony account conflicts directly with the recollection argument~ because, in order for the soul to be a harmony, the body would have to exist before the soul so that it could come together in such a way as to create the harmonized soul. When Simmias sees this conflict, he unquestioningly gives up his theory without considering that it might be right and the recollection account wrong. Why does he give up so easily? Why is he afraid to surrender a theory that had once seemed certain but now conflicts with a new idea? Socrates will not let him abandon his account yet and submits another argument against it, hoping that Simmias will attempt to defend his thesis. Socrates objects that the soul can never be more or less of a soul, but there can be different degrees of harmonization, and thus Simmias' analogy collapses. Simm.ias again agrees with Socrates that his account fails, but his acquiescent response is not what Socrates wanted, and so he tries once more to provoke Simmias into argument. Socrates' third refutation of the harmony account is based on the idea that the soul presides over the body and thus cannot be controlled by the corporeal in the way that harmony is determined by the lyre. He chooses an example in support of the dominion of the soul from the ·for this understanding "for the sake of all your future life, and I because of my impending death." (91 a) As he prepares to £ace their objections he warns them: "But you, if you do as I ask, will give little thought to Socrates and much more to the truth." (91 c) He wants them to stop pitying him and themselves and pay close attention to what is being said. They will need these truths for the rest of their lives, and he will not be there to remind them. They have gradually been weaned from hearing only about the past and now must face something new, something they can keep with them to help· carry on the Socratic way of life. As Socrates restates the doubts of Simmias and Cebes, I am struck again "by the question: Why are these doubts expressed and refuted together? When the objections lie side by side we easily see the lyre and the cloak in opposition to the lyre and the bow, but is this comparison with Apollo all that Plato intends by this uncharacteristic structure? Perhaps a clue can be found in Socrates' own words when he suggests that Cebes gives his objection before Simmias' objection is addressed. Socrates says: "Then when we have heard them, we can either agree with them, if they seem to strike the proper note (~ ti dokosi prosaidein), or, if they do not, we can proceed to argue in defense of our reasoning." (86 e 4) The unusual ordering displays a sense of music, a desire to hear the properly struck note--the note to which Socrates must respond by saying what he wants to before he dies. He listens to these objections and searches for that impetus, for he does not want merely to speak unconnected thoughts. He wants his ideas to flow from Simmias' and Cebes' fears as the proper response in a piece of counterpoint. With. both of their objections in front of him, he will have a clearer idea of where he must take them so that they may yield the fruits he hopes they contain. Socrates asks both Simmias and Cebes how they feel about the recollection argument as a proof for the soul's 16 17 -- �dialogues, quoted out of context,. but rather its context adds poignantly to our understanding of what Socrates faces. Our knowledge of Odysseus amplifies what we know about Socrates; for Socrates, at that moment, is Odysseus. He is a man who has traveled and told the tales of his travels. He has encoun.tered men and gods and learned from both. He stands at the gates of the union he has sought for many years, but as the moment of surrender nears, both Socrates and Odysseus feel apprehension. Plato lets us know that he will no longer play games by the seriousness with which he quotes Homer. Irony needs time and there is no more time. Socrates' song, mirrored in Odysseus' agony in the fore-court, draws to its portentous climax in the awareness Socrates shares with Odysseus that the effect of much of what he says will depend on how he utilizes the little time he has left. twentieth book of the Odyssey. As Penelope lay alone in her bed weeping for her husband, Odysseus bedded down in the fore-court of his house unknown to all but Telemachos and Eurykleia. He heard the voices and laughter of the women who had shamelessly slept with the suitors and wanted to kill them all then, not to let them pass another night with the men who were devouring his property. And he thought about the suitors themselves-could he conquer so many? In this yearning to act and his uncertainty in how to act, He smote his breast, and thus he chid his heart: Endure it, heart, thou didst bear worse than this. (Book 20 - 17) Socrates gives this as an example of the soul overcoming the desires of the heart. The soul is a ruler and far more divine than a harmony; in this way the reference to Homer concludes their discussion. At that moment in the Odyssey from which Plato quotes, Odysseus faces much of what Socrates does in the Phaedo. As Socrates has sought death, so has Odysseus longed for Penelope. Each of them, though, has perhaps taken a longer route than necessary to get there out of love for what the world has brought them. For each, one task must be performed before he achieves his goal: setting his city in order. (This cannot be done entirely, but each can make a proper beginning.) Both Odysseus and Socrates realize that their efforts will be more successful if they wait for the right time. Odysseus understands that the slaying of the suitors will be more powerful and shocking if he waits a little longer, as Socrates knows that Simmias and Cebes will be affected more by his words if he waits until they are prepared to hear them. Each must make his heart endure this restraint. The citing of Homer fits in perfectly with Socrates' story. There is no irony. It is not, as is so common in the * * * * * Only one head remained, the immortal head. In this mood of approaching the end of a long odyssey, Socrates begins to address Cebes' objection, calling his friends together to "charge the foe in Homeric fashion." (95 b 9) Let us not forget that the most important step in Odysseus' battle against the suitors was revealing himself as who he was. All else followed simply from that. Before we look at Socrates' response to Cebes' objection, let us think about what it means to say that the soul is a weaver of cloaks. Cebes describes it this way: For if the body is constantly changing and being destroyed while the man still lives, and the soul is always weaving anew that which wears out, then when the soul perishes it must 18 necessarily have on its last garment, and this only will survive it, and when the soul has perished, then the body will at once show its natural weakness and will quickly disappear in decay. (87 d 10) A cloak is not unique to one person but can be shared by several. Many may wear and be protected by the same cloak, as a group of men may share in and agree with the same argument. Socrates arms himself with argument as Heracles does with Vulcan' s golden breastplate, for it is with his cloak of argument that he defends himself against the tyrants and sophists. Socrates' arguments are the weavings of his soul which he wears like a cloak. When he dies, his last cloak will outlive him, and it will be the inheritance he leaves. Simmias and Cebes and the other followers will wear it and make it theirs. They will adopt his arguments, his way of life, but· that cloak will not last forever, and when it starts to tear, they will need to know how to weave one anew. They cannot continue to live off what Socrates created. If the tradition is to be kept alive, it must have new growth, new life. Each soul must learn to weave its own cloak. Before Socrates begins his refutation of Cebes' fear that the soul will ultimately perish, he finds himself in thought. He begins by saying that he will tell them "my own experience" (96 a 2) with investigating the cause of generation and decay. His story is an uncovering, a stripping down. He reaches back. to his first intellectual pursuits and tells of a young man filled with questions about heaven and earth and bodies and why they come to be. This is what he has been· waiting to tell them. He has been waiting to give them a model of how to begin a philosophic inquiry, starting naively and working without a teacher. Socrates wants to ensure that when he leaves them they will not be without the means to continue the lives they've started. As Socrates' story unfolds we learn that his confusion with the questions of physical realities became so great that he abandoned his quest. He then began to search for the cause of the way things are and looked for someone who could teach him that the cause is rational--which Socrates interprets as meaning that things are this way because it is best for them to be this way. He thought Anaxagoras could teach him such things and explain what is the best for all things and good for the whole. He eagerly listened for someone to confirm what he hoped was the truth. He found Anaxagoras' books and read them voraciously, for he wanted to know the truth as quickly as possible• But Anaxagoras called air and ether and water the causes, not mind. Socrates wanted someone to teach the cause and not "the thing without which the cause could not be." (99 b 4) Deciding that no one could teach him such a thing, and still young and in search of the truth, he set out on his second voyage (deuteros plous) to find it for himself. Socrates' series of voyages echoes Simmias' description that man must either find the truth or set sail (diapleusai) through life upon the best doctrine he can find. (85 c, d) Socrates, unable to find the truth about the real cause of generation and decay, embarked on a safe but simple voyage. His second sailing consisted of looking for causes through conceptions and not through the senses. He determined that things are great because of greatness, and small because of smallness. No one can overthrow such an answer. It is indisputable. Socrates speaks to these young men who will soon be alone and without a teacher, looking for answers and not knowing where to look, as he once was. His words are a gift to them--a gift of assurance. He started as they are now and came to see the things he does because he pursued what tried to elude him. He clung to argument but always searched for a better way, a deuteros plous. As Socrates reveals himself, he tells Simmias and Cebes that they too can do what he has done. His words say, "You are right to have hope." 19 �Throughout most of the dialogue, Simmias and Cebes are the only men who respond to Socrates. After hearing, though, that great things are caused by greatness, one of the others--"! just don't remember who it was" (103 a 3) --objected vehemently that this was in direct contradiction with the argument that opposites come from opposites. Socrates praises this unknown man, and in doing so, praises all the unknown men for their attentiveness and interest and for their readiness to speak, even after long hours of silence. This unnamed man is every man who sat by Socrates' side on the day of his death. The safe but simple account is a good starting place, but one ought not be satisfied there. Socrates has a more ingenious account, an account that might satisfy Cebes' objections. The new account does not say that the cause of what is hot is heat, but rather fire. Instead of looking toward conceptions for causes, he looks toward the earth. In this way, snow causes cold and fever illness. But snow does not admit of heat; it must either withdraw from heat or perish. Socrates then asks Cebes to answer his questions, not "in their own words, but do as I do." (105 b 7) He must · go beyond the safe but stupid answer and look fLr the more ingenious cause. It is the soul and not life, he answers, which causes the body in which it is to be alive. And the soul, causing life, does not admit of death ... but here the account breaks down. When Socrates establishes this way of answering he says that things like snow do not admit their opposites and thus either withdraw o~ perish when the opposites approach. In his account of the soul, however, he concludes that the soul does not admit of death and so is immortal, that is, it withdraws at the approach of death. He does not consider the possibility of its perishing. The same sort of omission is made early in the dialogue when Socrates says, "For, if pure knowledge is impossible while the body is with us, one of two things must follow, either it cannot be acquired at all or only when we are dead." (66 e 4) In the ensuing discussion, though, no mention is made of the possibility that pure knowledge is unattainable, as here there is no talk about the soul's perishing at the approach of death. * * * * * Heracles, realizing his defeat, placed the breathing head under a rock. Others might come and attempt what he was unable to do.· The arguments are left open-ended. They are there for us to ponder, for us to think about how they might be concluded. They remind Simmias and Cebes that the work is unfinished, that they must try to go beyond what Socrates has said. Simmias and Cebes must recognize that argument, like purification, is an on-going process, never completed in this life. In the last sentence of the dialogue there is a hint that Socrates' followers realize that. Phaedo says, "Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, who was, as we may say (hos hemeis phamen an) , of all those of his time whom we have-known, the best and wisest and most righteous man." (118 a 16) The "as we may say" and "whom we have known" seem to show the understanding that their experience has been limited and individual. They do not make sweeping statements about his unmatchable greatness; they simply say that in his time he was the greatest man they had known. This leaves room for Socrates to be surpassed, or at least challenged. And Socrates, I think, wants to be challenged. He wants men to try to do more and know more and question more than he has. By leaving his arguments unfinished or inconclusive, he invites Simmias and Cebes to take up his challenge. In his conclusion, Socrates says, "All I think would agree that god and the principle of life, and anything else that is immortal, can never perish." (106 d 5) 20 But can the theory of the forms ever perish? Can moral virtue disappear from men's actions? Will the ability to oppose tyrants always exist? The greatest fear expressed by Simmias and Cebes is the fear of dispersal, the fear that the soul will dissolve "like a breath." ( 70 a 7) They fear that the soul is a breath, a breath that utters words, a breath saturated with meaning; and thus the re-utterance of the same words saves the meaning, breathes the same breath. The fear of dispersal is the fear that these words will never again come together in this way, with this meaning, and that the Socratic vision will scatter in the political winds. The fear of dispersal is the fear that the cloak, the symbol of the manifestations of Socrates' soul in this world, will fall apart and not be sewn together. The fear of dispersal is the fear that these men, the inheritors of the tradition, will never again come together as brethren, as men who share. the same breath. They came together as followers of Socrates, men who shared the same questions and goals. Socrates brought them together, but who will keep them together. once he is gone? The fear of dispersal is • the fear that what has been good in this life will dissolve with the death of Socrates. The greatest fear expressed by Socrates is not what the future will bring for his soul in Hades, but what will happen to the Socratic ideas on earth. His greatest wor,ry is that the threat of death will keep men from proper action, wil 1 put power in the hands of tyrants. He must show his followers that death does not punish right action but rewards it. He must show them that the peril of death ought never to determine their actions. Simrnias and Cebes and the other heirs will decide the immortality of Socrates' legacy on ·this earth, and so it is they who must be persuaded not to fear death. Even if the arguments in this dialogue do not convince us that the soul is immortal, if we remain uncertain that good deeds will be rewarded in the after-life,· we at least know that no man has ever faced death as serenely, as nobly and as generously as Socrates. He does not cling to life but surrenders it before sunset. If at the beginning we thought that the daybreak meeting foretold an Aristotelian tragedy, a drama that encompasses a full day, we are now assured that the tragedy which might have come to pass did not. As Socrates prepares to drink the poison, he calmly asks if he may pour a libation to a deity from the cup that will bring his death. And this brave man who must die on the charge of impiety is forbidden by the state which thus accused him to pay one last tribute to the gods. He prays, nevertheless, for a fortunate departure and drinks the hemlock. His friends cannot control themselves and weep, not for him, but for themselves, and Phaedo, in his distress, wraps his face in his cloak. We cannot know the destiny of the soul of Socrates, but by following the threads of the myths, Plato invites us to speculate on Socrates' fate. In the first myth, Theseus, by slaying the minotaur, saved himself as well a• the fourteen youths. If the analogy between the two stories holds, then this dialogue which frees Socrates' friends from their fear of death must also save Socrates. How else but in preserving his tradition does conquering the fear of death save Socrates? Theseus left Athens bearing black sails and, having promised his father that if he were victorious, he would return with white sails. When he returned, though, he forgot to change the sails, and so was thought to have been slain by the minotaur. Thus Theseus, believed by all to be dead, returned home in victory. And Socrates? Immediately before Socrates speaks his last words, he uncovers his face which had been covered. In the Phaedrus Socrates covers his head when he speaks words that are not his own (237 a 4) and then uncovers it when he regains his true identity (243 b 6). In the Phaedo Socrates' face is covered while the attendant who gave him the poison 21 �pinches his feet and legs to test for numbness. The attendant tells Socrates' friends that their teacher is growing cold and rigid, yet the man who is becoming numb has his face covered, is not the real Socrates. The true Socrates is the man who replies to Crito's question about how to bury him by saying, "However you please, if you can catch me and I do not get away from you." ( 115 c 4) The true Socrates is the man whose final words are1 "Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius. Pay it and do not neglect it." (118 a 8) The true Socrates is not growing numb but is grateful for having been healed. Crito asks Socrates what they can do to serve him, and Socrates tells him: Horner, Iliad, trans. by R. Lattimore, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951) Problems With Kant, Problems With Faith Richard Miller Odyssey, trans. by R. Lattimore, (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1965) Kirk, G.S., The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957) Klein, Jacob, A Commentary on Plato's Meno, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965) What I always say, Crito, nothing new. If you take care of yourselves you will serve me and mine and yourselves ... if you neglect yourselves and are not willing to live following step by step, as it were, in the path marked out by our present and past discussions, you will accomplish nothing. Otto, W.F., The Homeric Gods, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1954) Plato, Apology, trans. by H. N. Fowler, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914) Epistles, trans. by Rev. R.G. Bury, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1929) (115 b 3) And what will Socrates have accomplished? Theseus could not have slain the minotaur without Ariadne's thread, as Heracles could not have destroyed the Hydra without Iolaus' aid. Can the Socratic tradition continue if Phaedo does not tell his account to Echecrates? The spirits of Theseus and Heracles die when we stop . telling their stories. What will ensure the immortality of the spirit of Socrates? Meno, trans. by W.K.C. Guthrie in Plato: The Collected Dialogues-edited by E. Hamilton and H. Cairns, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961) Plato, Phaedo, trans. by H.N. Fowler, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914) BIBLIOGRAPHY Phaedrus, trans. by H.N. Fowler, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914) Anthon, C., Classical Dictionary, (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1854) Republic, trans. by A. Bloom, (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1968) Aristotle, De Poetica, trans. by I. Bywater in The Basic Works of Aristotle edited by R. McKean, (New York: Random House, 1941) Sophist, trans. by F.M. Cornford in Plato: The Collected Dialogues 22 Kant's Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals is "nothing rnorethan the search for and establishment of the supreme principle of morality (392) ." This search ends with the categorical imperative, which presents the reader with a rule for moral behavior and an obligation to follow this rule. Before it is possible to embrace the categorical imperative as the solution to man's moral confusion, it is necessary to understand the course of Kant's journey. Is he justified in his final assertion that "the practical use of reason with respect to freedom leads to an absolute necessity, but to the necessity only of laws of actions of a rational being as such (463)"? That is, does the concept of a free will, properly understood, inevitably lead to the supreme principle of morality? I will attempt to answer this question by focusing on Kant's argument in the final section of the Foundation. The first step in Kant's argument to estab.lish the necessity of the concept of free will is seeing the will as a cause in rational beings. The will may be described as free because "it can be effective independently of foreign causes determining it (446)." That is only to say that the will is not deterrnin'ed by the laws of natural necessity, such as gravity. For example, whereas natural necessity governs the fall of the rock from my hand, it does not govern my decision to allow the rock to fall. This decision was prompted by my will; it was caused by my will. Once the will is seen as a cause, Kant's argument continues, it must be seen as governed by some law. This follows because the concept of cause includes laws which establish an effect. This is clear if we return to our example with the rock. In order for something to fall (effect) , it must be dropped (cause); this relationship of cause to effect is governed by a universal law (gravity). Thus, to recognize the free will as a cause implies that it is "a causality according to immutable laws, but of a peculiar kind (446) ." Therefore, the will must be governed by a law. But if this law were imposed from outside the will, it would be indistinguishable from natural necessity. And, as we have seen, the will is understood to be a cause outside the realm of natural necessity. It follows then that the will must be governed by an internally imposed law. But Kant has previously shown that a will which governs itself, which is at once legislator and legislated, will act in accordance with the principle of universalizing maxims. From this we may conclude that "a free will and a will under moral laws are identical (447) ." Thus, once the will is seen as a cause, one is apparently necessarily led to the categorical imperative, i.e. the compulsion to universalize personal moral maxims. But, isn't there a problem in Kant's reasoning here? By treating the will as an appearance, by reasoning about the will as if the categories applied to it, Kant seems to have broken a rule in his own system. Kant states about man that: As regards whatever there may be in him of pure activity (whatever comes into consciousness, not through affection of the senses, but immediately) he must count himself as 23 �belonging to the intellectual world, of which, however he knows nothing further (451) • as being free. It only means that, to be so viewed, it must be looked at in a special way. Thus, Kant can only answer the question by saying that the actions of rational beings presuppose a free will. That is, a rational being regards his will as free, merely because it is his will. If a rational being did not Consider itself as being outside the laws of natural necessity, then all of its actions, i.e. all of its thoughts leading to actions, would be determined by some exterior power. Clearly, man, as rational being, does not view his thoughts as being determined by some law akin to gravity. Thus, all rational beings presuppose a free will. This is not to say that the will is free, but only that it is considered as such. We designate the will as free because we cannot think of it in any other way. So far so good, but how does the imputation of the free will as cause lead to "inunutable laws"? To answer this question, we must turn to the second section. Kant states that: Whatever comes into consciousness through the senses is an appearance of a thing. The rock falls: this effect is part of the world of sense and is governed by the law of natural necessity, the law of the world of appearances. On the other hand, reasoning comes into consciousness spontaneously, without any prompting of the senses. Man cannot speak accurately about this world, for it is the world behind the appearances, the land of the mysterious thing-in-itself. This statement about man's nature appears to disrupt Kant' s previous argument because of the relationship between reason and the will. If the will is part of the intelligible world, then man cannot speak about it and certainly cannot reason about it as if it were an appearance. Kant states that "since reason is required in order to derive actions from laws, the will is nothing but practical reason (412)." It follows from this that the will resides with reason in the intelligible world, the world of which man "knows nothing." The will is an aspect of reason; it is not an appearance. Thus, carrying the empirical implications of the word "cause" into the intelligible world, thereby allowing for the subjection of the will to an "inunutable law," seems to contradict Kant's previous statements about the intelligible world. Is this the case? Has Kant actually become overwhelmed by the very same inclinations that he set about controlling in the Critique? Upon reflection, it is clear that Kant has made no such error. He is saying that if the will may be seen as free, then morality follows. The problem with saying this lies exactly with the objection raised above; how can the will be seen as free when it is not in the sensible world and therefore cannot be described as having any properties? Clearly, in the strictest sense, it cannot. However, this does not mean that the will is not viewed Man and, in general every rational being, exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will (428). Man always serves as the end for his own actions. Remove the man and the desire for the ice cream is removed; however remove the desire and the man remains. The ice cream is a means for satisfying the man. Man treats all objects in this way, as a means for accomplishing his own ends. On the other hand, rational beings are designated "persons" because their nature indicates that they are ends in themselves, i.e., things which may not be used merely as means (428) . Thus man qua rational being recognizes all other men qua rational beings as ends not means. This leads to an imperative which 24 governs man' s actions toward man, are effected by the will: same order as gravity, yet it is one that you choose to submit yourself to. Once you have so chosen, the law takes on the force of natural necessity in the intelligible world; namely, you have no more choice of doing what is commanded by the categorical imperative than a rock has of falling;. Again, what makes a man choose to do this? Kant says flat out that "an explanation of how and why the universality of the maxim as law (and hence morality) interests us is completely impossible for us men (461)." In short, Kant cannot explicitly state an incentive for acting this way as opposed to any other. To do so would place an incentive in the will's path which, as Kant says in the beginni'ng of the treatise, debases any action. That is, the will is considered good when it acts without regard to the consequences of the action; the man who does the right thing without expecting a reward or in spite of the punishment that will follow is most highly praised. Nonetheless, ~t hazards a suggestion for complying to this moral system: which Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another always as an end, and never as a means only (429). From this point, the step to the categorical imperative is relatively easy. As we have seen, the imperative stated above falls out of considering man only as a rational being. Man, however, has, if you will, a dual nature: rational and empirical. The imperative becomes categorical when applied to the world of sense. That is, in the intelligible world, all my actions would naturally accord with the imperative; there is no reason for my actions to be otherwise, since man considered as rational acts in accordance with his reason. However, man lives in the world of sense, thus the imperative can only express how things should or ought to happen, not necessarily how they will happen. In the world of sense, natural necessity governs how things will happen. Nonetheless, the imperative is still applicable because it rules over a different domain than the law of_ natural necessity. I cannot will the rock not to fall once I have released it. I can will myself not to drop the rock on my neighbor's head. Thus, the law of the intelligible world does not conflict with the law of natural necessity. Thus, the imperative must still be in effect when man is considered in the empiric~! world, for it does not conflict with the activities of the empirical world. This is Kant's argument. He recognizes the problems with it. Namely, what on earth would compel someone to follow the categorical imperative? What, in effect, makes it binding? Granting the questionable step from the intelligible world to the sensible world, which allows for the governing of the will, as cause, by a law, one comes up with a peculiar law indeed. It is supposed to be a law of the Through the glorious ideal of a universal realm of endsin-themselves (rational beings) a lively interest in the moral law can be awakened in us. To that realm we can belong as members only when we carefully conduct ourselves according to maxims of freedom as if they were laws of nature (462-463). c Obviously, this reason merely explains why the people who do ascribe to this code of conduct do ascribe to it; it is not a compelling argument for those outside the "faith," who have no interest in acting to attain such a kingdom. In light of the fact that there can be no stated incentive for adopting the categorical imperative, one may well wonder at the advantage of adopting Kant's moral system over any other. In trying to deal sensibly with the problems of metaphysics, it seems that Kant has ended 25 �where religion begins: unfathomable -faith. Just as one is never able to state clearly why one has faith in a certain religion, the same problem afflicts Kant's system. One believes because one has chosen to do so. This is the mystery that Kant can never address, as he is well aware; he can only outline what one believes in, not why. Thus, while one may make sense of Kant' s argument, one need not be led to embrace its doctrine. Egg, Beat Her John Keith The irrelevant hen - men will die in a glove Loving like ducks from the earth above. Shooting Mr. Larry O. what self defeat, In a glad bag •.. you know, a ministry. Why! Why! What Why What Love's candied apples devoid of a hut. Black toothbrush seemingly lost, My gash hung up, upside down on a cross. 26 Ho Eni Autos En Heauto Joe DeGrazia There follows an attempt at supplementing Plato's assertion in ·Timaeus (35a-40d) that the motions of mind can be fruitfully compared to the motions of those gods who reveal themselves to us, as they will, in the planets. Both can be seen as moving one way but must be understood as a forced unity of contrary motions. This contrariness makes appearance contradict reality, as Plato asserts at 39a,· except in the period of the whole, measured by a perfect number, when the two motions come around to each other (39). Once upon a time, a casual observer at sunset (an acolyte assisting day's end rituals to Apollo) glanced up as he was lugging all those lustral bowls, and was struck by the new moon in its twilight splendor. Thereafter, he began to watch her each dusk at odd moments: crescent Artemis was at first close by her brother as he finished his daily course; but each day Apollo pulled away a bit from the· moon--call it Artemis' chariot, which set later and later while slowly waxing round. It was as if Artemis were steadily falling behind the far-darter (flagging as her horns blunted) , on some east-west hippodrome course. After what was to come to be called a "moon's" time, honoring the chaste huntress and midwife, our attendant· saw Apollo lap his sister's waning team. What is more, this watching Artemis grow and shrink was eventually to show our lackadaisical youth the whole sta~ry sky. From day to month, as he idly looked up, after sprinkling barley at altarside. twilight, this catechumen began also to notice two very special stars. At one time or another, or perhaps even together, they revealed themselves to him dropping behind the sun as the moon had, though not so quickly, yet along the same broad lane in the sun-wards southern sky. That would be luscious Aphrodite, then, next brightest after Artemis, and next most •conspicuously mutable; she came to trail Leta's son by about an eighth of a lap and then kept pace. And the other star would be mercurial winking Hermes, Zeus' deceitful messenger, slacking off the sun's pace at most only a few lengths. Our apprentice proceeded to watch, no longer bored, but in sheer amazement, as both of those gods got their second wind, then went and caught up to the sun again. Artemis would never keep pace try as she may , he knew, but · he re we re Aphrodite and Hermes actually giving Apollo a run for his money. Our hero's name was Mimas. After he began intently following these wheeling gods into the dusk, he happened also to be detailed to daybreak duty, for some liturgical exigency or- other. As a consequence, he had not much sooner seen the chariots of Hermes and Aphrodite overhaul Apollo from behind (after lagging for a while at nightfall), than he was astonished to spot them again, coming off the turn into the dawn sky, yes, outsprinting the sun's fiery steeds, and gaining on them daily--though, then again, only by just so much and for so long, after which Apollo rather slowly pulled· into the lead again. Time and again this would happen. It was a three-way dead-heat Mimas was following--wi th chaste Artemis sadly ·mismatched, steadily losing ground, and lapped by each of the leaders every thirty c 27 �Sundays, the highest deity's decade-ish Dial, and the generation-long Saturnalia. Odds were taken on exactly how long it· would take for all the gods to return to the same position they had held at any one given time; but to whose progeny could one entrust the ancestral kitty for such a mullimillenial sweepstakes? The priests of Apollo regarded the whole business as profoundly blasphemous. But Mimas was now wealthy enough to style himself a visionary. What a world it was, too, that he envisioned--where all divine entities incline the s·ame way! He had not yet been admitted to the inner-sanctum mysteries, of course; so he renounced 'his vows and meandered off to the city, intending to use his knowledge of the divinities to make book in the bigtime. This heavenly horse-racing through the night sky was something he knew he could lay safe odds on: it was a race that always would end up just as it started, you just played the percentages in between. One night at that race track Mimas chanced to fall in with golden-thighed Pythagoras, who was looking to stake or bankroll his own way to beat the house. Cagily, they began comparing notes, always out for a better tip. or so courses, bringing up the rear. Still, each of the "moons" could be used to determine a leg of the race. Between her waning horns would be the finish line. Mimas took his fellow acolytes to the cleaners, betting on the monthly lucifer. His apprenticeship and initiation seemed to take ages and ages till ordination. The skies had distracted him, however, from the sole worship of golden Apollo into the gilded edges of gambling. During what seemed eons of altar-side sacrificial meniality ("slaying and flaying" as he called it) then holding spits and wreathing wine into the feasting night's nobility, Mimas began to recognize more gods as they played at their off-Olympus track. He realized that some of them were actually faster then the sun, and not just in spurts either; over time, in fact they would lap Apollo running away. The distant bowman seemed not all that swift, then, in the long run; not as precipitous as red-g'laring Ares, who would overtake the sun once every twenty odd times that Apollo sped past Artemis; not as fleet as golden Zeus, who would pass the sun god once almost every twelve of those so-called virginal "months"; nm: as quick as cool-glowing Kronos (edging even zeusl) who would lap Apollo yet more often than that even. Then came the wonder·of wonders! The very backdrop of stars, which our aging novitiate had heretofore counted as fellow spectators at this grand chariot race, those same stars, always keeping pace with one another racing as a single body through myriad lanes of heaven, yet tilting their course to the god's hippodrome, those very stars were absolutely the fastest of all! Mimas soon began to use them to mark off legs of the race. Thus, each time all the stars passed Artemis would thereafter be called a month; they would then proceed to lap Apollo in what we would come to call the Annual Ring, Ares in about two of those, Zeus in twelve or so, and Kronos in some twenty-nine. Or we could give each separate lapping its own race's name: The. Arena, say, which took about a month of ' !. P. . .d~:·t·. ·-t.. ~ . '. '· M. P. M. P. M. P. M. P. M. 28 "There's no way the gods move all the same way! That's absurd! Each has two different motions in opposite directions." "What? you mean they go forward and backward at the same time?" "The gods can do anything they want, can't they? "But that's not even imaginable!" "Think of it this way. The stars move from east to west daily, right? The planets want to move from west to east, however; but they find it difficult to make any headway, shouldering like seagulls into a strong headwind." "That's elegant. But my way is P. M. P. so much simpler." "Nobody ever said the gods were simple, friend--though at times even I have found that notion alluring. But look at it this way. Take your view of things: You say Ares, Zeus, and Kronos all lap the sun regularly, OK? But have you ever noticed anything peculiar about their behavior?" "Well, they all seem to run the same kind of race. I mean, tactically. Whenever each one has rounded the turn into a position less than half a course away from lapping Apollo (you know, just about when you see each rising as the sun sets?) each will sprint a bit first, and then let his horses blow for a while, before easing into the stretch of this leg of the race and catching up with Apollo again." "That's not bad for a guess. At least you noticed one anomaly. What you mean, though, is that they are then stationary and regressing at opposition." "Stationary my eye! And how can you say the gods regress?" "You have to get that flighty race-track image out of your head. That's just poetic license. Your true scientist only uses such talk to make book with. The truth is quite the opposite. What you call. the fastest god is really the slowest. You've got it backwards." "It works just fine by me. You name the leg, I'll pick the winner. And also it's what I see happen." "That's a mere hayseed knack you've got worked up for yourself. But what you haven't got is the vaguest notion of divine essence. Gods wouldn't M. P. M. P. M. P. M. P. M. P. M. P. 29 be caught dead easing up on their reins to breathe their steeds. Who ever heard of divine horses wind-broke with heaves?" "Why do they slow down and afterwards speed up again, then?" "They don't--that's the point. It is just plain unthinkable that they should • "Didn't I 'think' of it?" "You can't have been, strictly-speaking, thinking when you came up with that notion. You seemed to understand that divine motion was regular--as far as concerns what you called 'lapping' at least. But you didn't delve deeply enough, much less rigorously at all. Divine motion must be intelligible, thoroughly." "Hey, wait just a minute! Didn't you just say the gods can do anything they want?" "Would the gods want to be deviants? truants? Would the gods want to be untrue to themselves even just for aft instant?" "Zeus took a shine to Ganymede, didn't he? And he's been bulls, eagles, swans, money -all sorts of things- when he's on the make. That sounds like 'being untrue' in some sense, no? to Hera anyway." "That's hokum, it's old hat, corn, a thing of the past. That's ikonizing the gods into the shapes of their appearances." "That's the way they reveal themselves!" "No! The truth is quite otherwise. Just the opposite of what you believe you think." "Now I only 'believe' I think!" "It's not knowledge you're dealing with, so it's not �thinking you're doing about it. That kind of stuff is all for the birds. You can't even begin to explain how regular lappings can have irregular stretch~s." M. "So what? At least I don't boss the gods around." P. "All you do is ascribe a rag tag irregularity to them. And it makes all the difference in the world. You're just conjecturing from the way things strike you, believing whatever makes sense, mere opinionated sensation. You can't even know what you're talking about, when you act like that. What you think about must, absolutely must, revolve around itself as your mind does. Divine motion must be uniformly circular and even, like thought. And knowledge is dimensionless revolution." M. "Yeah? Well don't bet on it: my mind wanders, and so do my gods. A fig for your circular. thinking." · At those words , Pythagoras sighed and turned away. Our prodigal acolyte was bursting with so much zeal, however, that he turned himself in no time flat into a denizen of the air, the mocking bird, and promptly fluttered off. Pythagoras chose to ignore what may_ have been construed to be an omen: after all, his were the ways of science. It was merely poetic justice, he thought, that such a transformation should take place: such is the lot· of those who take things at face value. There is nothing auspicious in their flightiness. Thus it is , however, that time out of mind Mimas has come to haunt what would come to be known as the Academy. From that night o~ he could always be heard perched among the light-mottled sycamores regularly enchanting the stars with litanies ornithological, his trove of bird call lore. There must be a moral here somewhere. One might argue that· Mimas'. opinions were true, but the figures he backed them with were not mathematical--call them statistical, perhaps, rather than geometric figures. The figure of heaven's racetrack remains moot. What we can "know" of it shows that Mimas did "indeed" put the cart before the horse, though--for if the gods are racing, as we "know" it, it's in the other direction, and all positions are reversed. Artemis, the last, will be first, moving eastwards against the onrushing µniverse, progressing about an outstreched arm's hand span a day. Hermes and Aphrodite , jockeying for second place, manage to move a handspan or so against the framing stars, in the time it takes Artemis to lap them. Ares is twice that slow, Zeus some twelve times slower, and aged Kronos the first becomes last, almost three times as slow as Zeus. Sic transit gloria coeli, and with it the notions of mind. But maybe the change did them good. You figure it out. 30 The Mirror Held Up to Nature: A Study of Imitation in Don Quixote George Iannacone Gaul can do battle with giants and wicked enchanters, although no such are now found in the world. The men of the past can appear stronger and more courageous than ourselves, for they are extraordinary as the world they inhabit. The ingenious gentleman of La Mancha, _however, did not live in the distant past, ·nor in some far away land. He is forever a contemporary of his readers, inhabiting the same ordinary wo-rld: ·· To •· Fruly understand the contemporary sense in·which Don Quixote is written, we might bear in mind an analogy between the world of chivalfY and our own romanticized "wild west". Quixote would then be analogous to an imitator of gun-slinging heroes in, perhaps, modern day Kansas, mistaking fast food hamburger stands for bawdy saloons. Unlike the books of chivalry, Don Quixote's book is not written according to the poetical system of things. All which happens in this book is possible in our world as well. As the story opens, its hero is a nameless old gentleman who has spent much of his life reading fantastical books. During these years the distinction between the poetical world of knight errantry and his own rather uneventful existence became blurred until he slipped into a world of dreams in which he too slew giants and matched wits with malicious dwarves. The old man gave himself the name, Don Quixote de la Mancha, and assumed the identity of · a noble knight. The real world of experience was transformed into the world of his poetic imaginings as Don Quixote began to live his fiction. The suggestion of a cowboy riding past hamburger stands brings to mind a comic picture. Such was the p~cture "Poets have formed what they call the poetical system of things which, though it be believed neither by themselves nor their readers, may be esteemed a sufficient foundation for any fiction." Hume: Treatise on Human Nature The poetical system of things, according to Hume, is one in which we understand by 'Venus' or 'Mercury not a living entity, whom we find in the world of our experience, but a fictional being, whose existence is granted in a realm to which we do not belong. This other realm takes its name from the Greek, poiesis, the act of making, which Aristotle describes in his Poetics as a process of imitation, mimnesis. Poetical imitation describes not what has happened but what may happen. A poet's characters must remain consistent, and his plot must unfold according to the laws of probability and necessity. Historical imitation, in contrast, relates events as they actually transpired. In a history, the criterion of truth is experience, a criterion from which poetry, by its very name, has been freed. A poet may include gods or monsters in his play beca~se his art requires us only to pretend belief. He int reduces this pretended belief, as Hume says, be separating the poetical system of things, in which his story lies, from the world of our experience. To achieve the separation of the poetical and historical worlds, poets often remove their stories in time or place from their audience. The tales of knights-errant are set in the distant past, so that the deeds of their heroes may appear possible. Thus, Don Amadis of 31 �,. '! .I presented to the first readers of Don Quixote. The book begins as pute comedy and Quixote is its clown. This comedy originates in the disconnection between the hero and his world. Don Quixote believes the poetical system of things to be literally true, but his contemporary setting makes that belief appear ridiculous. Quixote's madness consists in his attempt to imitate the heroes of chivalry. During his first and second sallies he demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the rules of knight errantry. These rules can be sUlllllled up in five general formulas: 1. A knight errant must have a lady love to whose name he dedicates the honors he wins in battle. This rule is _t~e most important, for "A kni1:11!t ·without a lady ~ove is like a body ·without a soul." Quixote _~ust remake the world of his own · experience for his actions to be real since he is his own hero and the world is his Stage. His story is presented to us by a narrator who shows that Quixote's transformation of the world is only internal; Spain remains untransformed despite him. Were Quixote his own chronicler, however, we would see Spain through his own poetic eyes. Rocinante would be a noble steed, La Mancha a rich land of gold and pageantry. Instead it is a dusty plain and on it rides a comic fool who dreams a better world. Quixote's comic appearance results from the fact that he does not relate his 1 own adventures. Thus, the comedy o:t: Don 1Quixote rests on_ a problem of authorship. -~e___ ~s portrayed as a bumbling old fool who thinks himself a noble knight. But "The cleverest character in a comedy is the clown," as Don Quixote says, "since he who mqkes hi,self out to be a simpleton cannot be one." Quixote knows that in the eyes of others he must appear comic, but his actions have a nobility which transcends this apparent comedy. This nobility he demonstrates in his penance in the Sierra Morena. Don Quixote undertakes his penance to win renown and to prove himself "the most complet§ and absolute knight errant in the world." He plans to imitate the penance of Don Amadis of Gaul, the greatest knight in chivalry. Quixote compares himself to a painter who studies the best originals to achieve perfection in his art. Sancho points out, however, that this knight had reasons to suffer, whereas Quixqte has none. In Quixote's reply to this objection can be seen the true nobility of his calling and a knightliness which transcends that of his model: "That," said Don Quixote," is the point of the thing, that is the beautiful part of it. What thanks does a knight errant deserve for going mad when he has good cause? The thing is to go out of my head without any occasion for it, thus letting my lady see,i! I do this for 1 opportunities that may and do make of us famous knigJits as well as better Christians." - 5. The adventures of a worthy knight errant are written up in books to serve as an example of virtue. 4. A knight can be assured of final success, in which he wins his lady's hand and perhaps a kingdom: "As a reward for his valor and the might of his arm, the poor fellow could already see himself crowned Emperor5 of Trebizond at the very least ••.. " He then bestows the governorship of an island on his squire, in return for his services. These formulas for knight errantry are empirical laws, derived from the only source of such knowledge, the histories of knights errant. For this reason, the fifth rule, with which this paper is chiefly concerned, is as important for a true knight errant as any of the others. When Don Quixote pronounces himself a knight errant, his actions and his world conform to these rules. Ordinary things become poetically transformed into the stuff of Don Quixote's worlg. A skinny old nag becomes Rocinante, the horse before all other horses. Everything met with by Don Quixote, he names anew, except his squire, who is content to be Sancho Panza until the day he dies. The power of naming is a poet's power, not a knight's. So too is the power to turn ordinary circumstances into knightly adventures. When Quixote remakes the world, he is acting as a poet and thus is the author of his own tale. The hero decides each of his adventures as they take place, thus actually making his own story. Quixote's imitation of knight errantry differs from that of a conventional poet in that he is the hero of his own story, a unique and original imitato.r. A writer can make the actions of his hero appear realistic by setting him in a world where they are pos~ible. 2. In a knight errant' s world live monsters, enchanters, bandits, and renegade knights. The enchanters are capable of casting spells over whole lands and aid or oppose knights as they will. In this world a knight errant can expect to find numerous adventures in which to prove himself and win renown. 3. A knight errant "would right every manner of wrong, placing himself in sifuations of the greatest peril." In addition to the qualities of courage and justice, a knight embodies all the Christian virtues: " In confronting giants, it is the sin of pride which we slay, even as we combat envy with generosity and goodness of heart; anger with equanimity and a calin bearing; gluttony and overfondness for sleep, by eating little when we do eat, and by keeping long vigils; lust and lewdness with the loyality to those whom we have made the mistress of our affections; and sloth by going everywhere in the world in search of 32 l her in t~ dry, what I would do in the wet." This is a true gem of Quixotic wisdom. Don Quixote's penance involves a greater suffering than that of any knight found in a book. Quixote's suffering for his lady is compounded with his suffering for an occasion to demonstrate his love. For his lady, Quixote endures not only a conventional penance but the comedy occasioned by his lack of an apparent cause for his actions. All Quixote's actions now appear in a new light. They are not justified by any cause that can be found in his circumstances. Quixote acts as he does · because such is the way of knight ·errantry. He who does a great act simply for the nobility of its purpose is a .greater knight than the-Dne---Who is allowed · that act by circumstance. Circumstance allows Quixote few opportunities to demonstrate his bravery; indeed, circumstances are his greatest adversary. His courage in the face of such an enemy, however, is dauntless. Don Amadis of Gaul must be brave in the face of attacking lions, but Don Quixote de la Mancha must contend with lions who refuse to come out of their cage. This is Quixotic courage, the courage of a man who retains his dignity despite the mockery made of him by the world. ' From his penance onward, : Quixote's face acquires a gravity and nobility it did not have before. His lordly mien shines above the comic spectacle of the captive brought home in a cage. We see that it is the world that has misunderstood Quixote, not Quixote the world. Henceforth, when we laugh at his comic exploits, we realize that this comedy itself is testament to Don Quixote's noble suffering and courage. As I hope I have shown, Quixotic suffering and courage are greater than those of any of his models. Quixote fights his battles with his own circumstances. He reasons that these circumstances are the work of some evil enchanter who renders the world ordinary. Since he believes in this enchanter, the 33 �capture of Quixote is not his defeat, for it leaves his faith in his own powers of poetic imitation intact. Held prisoner in his own village, Don Quixote hears the news that his exploits have been recorded and published. This news does not surprise him, for the deeds of a great knight errant are essentially imitable (rule 5). All worthy knights are written up in histories, for, by definition, their actions are spudaiai: "If it were true that such a history - existed, being about a knight errant, then it must be eloquent and lofty in tone, a splendid and distinguished piece of work a~i veracious in its details." In reality, Book I of Quixote's history has been anything but lofty in tone. For the most part the knight has been port rayed as quite ridiculous. In his own eyes, however, his adventures are very serious and he is to be admired for his quixotic courage. Although he is not surprised that he is imitable in writing, Quixote wonders how his histories have been so rapidly reported and compiled. The simultaneity of Quixote's life and his book introduces a fictional problem: If author and hero inhabit the same world, how is it that they never meet? Quixote offers the only plausible solution: the book is the work of an enchanter. If this is so, then Quixote indeed inhabits the poetical realm of knight errantry, since the second rule has been proven true. Therefore, the giants Quixote did battle with really were giants and were made into windmills by enchantment. The author has portrayed these giants as if they truly were windmills. He has thus deceived us into believing that the world is ordinary and that Quixote is a fool for thinking otherwise. Therefore, he is the same evil enchanter who renders Quixote's world ordinary: the knight's mortal enemy. Quixote is especially anxious, because his enchanter is a Moor, Cid Hamete Benengali "and from the Moors y~y could never hope for any word of truth." The purpose of his calling, according to Quixote, is "to serve as a pattern and example to future ages wherein knights errant may see what steps they should follow if they would climb to t£2 honorable summit and pinnacle of arms." Only for a Moor would Quixote's Christian calling of knight errantry be a subject for ridicule. This is the reason for Cervantes' choice of Benengali as an intermediate author for Don Quixote. Cervantes himself is an author Quixote has read (see Book I, Ch. VI) and therefore cannot be an enemy to the knight. His book, Galatea may well have contribute~ to Quixote's ideas of proper imitation. In proper imitation, according to Quixote, the author remains true to the characters of those portrayed. He should omit details which tend to discredit the hero, as did Virgil in his Aeneid, for, as Quixote tell us, "Aeneas was not so pioy~ as Virgil would have us believe." Cervantes shows us that he agrees with Quixote's ideas in his introduction to Ch. v, Book II. He considers the chapter apocryphal because it introduces Sancho speaking in ·a style untrue to his rustic character. Benengali, on the other hand, entreats the readers at the beginning of Ch. VIII: "Blessed be Allah the mighty .•. and declares that he utters these blessing on finding that he has got Don Quixote and Sancho back into the field and that the readers of his delightful history may reckon that from this point the exploits and humor of the knight and his squire begin. He begs them to forget.the past knight errantries of the Ingenious Gentleman, and fix their eyes on those which are to come and are now beginning on the road to Tobosa, just as the ot£~rs began on the plain of Montiel." He considers Quixote's discussion of proper imitation of little interest to the readers. The first seven chapters of this story are of great importance, however, for as we have seen, Quixote would reject 34 his cfiaracter is extraordinary~ he is the greatest knight errant in all the world. Further, since the author is an enchanter, the world Quixote lives in is a made world, a product of poetic art. If Quixote could defeat this Moorish enchanter, his true knightly character would shine forth. To defeat Benengali, Quixote needs ' the aid of a friendly enchanter, one who agrees with his theory of imitation. The problem of authorship,· which binds the book in comic satire, can be solved only by recourse to a higher author. Even this author, however, must 1 be left behind as Quixote descends into • :the cave of Montesinos. Quixote descends alone into this cave and ._~i~ ._ !s the sole account of what took . place there. This adventure is -of- Quixote's own authorship and so befits the noble knight. It is Quixote's own imitation of the wandering hero who descends into Hell to receive a vision of his great task. Unlike Aeneas who may be considered the model hero of this type, Quixote ascends from the underworld only to have his great vision disbelieved. Benengali considers this adventure apocryphal because it exceeds all reasonable bounds. He agrees with Sancho, however, that the knight would not lie about such things and leaves the truth of the matter to the judgement of the readers. This adventure is the great secret of Don Quixote. His own squire does not believe it took place: "For it's my opinion, begging your warship's pardon, that it was all fraud and ficti?15', or at least that you dreamt it." In his descent into the cave, Quixote leaves behind the world of our experience and goes where our eyes cannot follow. The adventure he relates is one with those of romantic chivalry, a world found only in books. All found there are poetic personages who have been imprisoned in this underworld by evil enchanters. They have been waiting for Don Quixote to come and dispel the charm which hides them from the light of the world. This great his written imitation as the spurious work of an un-Christian enemy. Quixote's discussion of imitation introduces another aspect of the fictional problem mentioned earlier. Until now, we as readers have assumed that the Quixote we see in print is the only one there is. Now, we realize that there are, in fact, two Quixotes. The first is the noble knight errant authored by Quixote himself. The second is the comic fool who mistakes inns for castles and street tarts for damsels in distress. This problem is unique to Don Quixote because Quixote is himself an imitator. He has decided who Quixote is and what his actions should be ' by the five rules of knight errantry. He has set down guidelines for his portrayal in accordance with his theories on imitation. Benengali ignores these ~µ,idelines, providing details which discredit the. hero and make him out to be a fool. This is the same problem of authorship mentioned - earlier, now in greater detail. Quixote is not only the author of his adventures,but the critic of his chronicle as well. This problem of authorship will become important in the later part of the book, when Don Quixote encounters his readers, the Duke and Duchess. He is misunderstood by these readers because he has been misrepresented to them. The news of his history has been reported to Quixote by Sanson Carrasco. Sanson defends Benengali's portrayal against Quixote's charge that it is a false imitation. To remain true to a hero's fine character, he says, is poetic imitation, but Quixote's story, is a history and an historian must remain faithful to literal truth. An historian, according to Sanson, must add or omit nothing to what has taken place, on any pretext whatsoever. This distinction between poetry and history is in complete agreement with that of Aristotle, referred to at the beginning of this essay. Since Quixote inhabits the contemporary world, there is nothing extraordinary about his circumstances. Thus his book is a history. Quixote believes, however, that. one 35 �adventure is marked for Quixote alone. His task is to raise the poetical world up to the plane of experience. This task is the resurrection of chivalry, the aim of Quixote's noble undertaking. The underworld in which these : personages are imprisoned is the realm invented by the writers of romantic books. It is like the island in Shakespeare's The Tempest in which the enchanter Prospero holds spirits imprisoned by his art. Like Prospero, and Shakespeare himself, the writers of knight errantry are artists. Imitation is their craft but it is Don Quixote's life. His task is to free poetical characters from the prison in which they have been bound by art. To do this, Quixote must change imitation from the -exclusive province. of art into the domain of honest, simple men. He must defeat art on _its own territory and make the world poetical. The second of these two objectives is realized in Don Quixote's battle with a mock image of himself: Sanson Carrasco. j Sanson Carrasco is introduced into the story as a Bachelor of ~~s. He is described as a "rare comedian" . and a man "of a malicious disposition (who) would delight in nothing more than making 1 6port for himself, by ridiculing others." His admiration for Quixote is pure artifice; Sanson plays the part of a loving admirer of Quixote's chivalry and laughs at the success of this deception. He is delighted by the spectacle of a foolish old man who thinks he can become a knight errant simply by acting the part. Duplicity is the word which best describes Sanson's imitation of admiration; he has a double soul. Quixote, in contrast, is a simple man. Sanson will never consider this simplicity noble because the ingenuous old man cannot distinguish artifice from honest action. The greatest artificer is the Devil himself, who can assume any shape he wishes. In league with this evil power is the puppet master, Don Pedro. Although his presence in this story is brief, Don Pedro is important as an example of the villainy of art. He is the pattern from which Sanson and the Duke and Duchess are pressed. Don Pedro is the same Ginesillo de Paparilla, the former galley slave, who stole Sancho's ass in the Sierra Morena. This attempt was so artfully done that it escaped even the attention of the author. Don Pedro is a master of disguises and has no peer in knavery and deception. Appearances are the stock of his trade and his skill lies in deceiving simple souls such as Don Quixote and Sancho. He is not an enchanter, but merely a trickster, capable of playing many roles, like the joker in a deck of cards. One role of Don Pedro is that of a puppet master, in which he parades images before our eyes. This. is his natural role, for the purpose - of his art is to manipulate men like puppets on a string. To Don Quixote and -Sancho he presents a story of romantic chivalry: that of Don Gayferos' rescue of his wife from the Moors.· All goes well with the performance until that moment when the Moors close in ·on the fleeing lovers. Don Quixote can no. longer control his fear for the knight; he stands up, draws his sword, and hacks the pasteboard Moors to bi ts. For Don Quixote, the puppets became the people they were meant to represent. Quixote ls the first human being ever to cross the inviolable line between the audience and the stage. He identifies so strongly with Don Gayferos that his dramatic fear is no longer pleasure, but pain. Don Quixote is deceived by this artist into taking pasteboard figures for real people. So too will he be deceived by the Duke and Duchess. Quixote may lose himself in a drama of knight errantry but he knows the value of the stage. In a discourse with Sancho, he speaks of the actors and writers of the stage holding mirrors before our eyes. "Nothing is able to give us a more just idea of nature, and what than we are or ought to 17 be, comedians and comedies." The 36 • 1_, rare comedian Sanson Carrasco believes that the ridiculous picture painted of Quixote in Book I of the knight's history gives us a just idea of Quixote's true nature. He- disguises himself as a knight errant, and stages a meeting with Don Quixote. Sanson's imitation _of knight errantry is by art, for he believes neither Quixote nor himself to be a knight. The motive for his disguise is to give Quixote a true knightly adventure, one in which he must fail. Since Quixote is actually a bµmbling old fool, the bachelor can be assured of the battle's outcome. No one will be hurt and this madman will be proved a counterfeit knight. This artificial encounter is a trial by combat for Quixote, for Sanson challenges his very identity as a knight errant. As the sun rises on their contest, Quixote beholds the Knight of the Wood wearing, for his armor, ,a coat of mirrors. The man who holds this mirror up to nature refuses to show his face or to reveal his name. He is no-man, the incarnate power of artful imitation. His claim is that of the artist: we imitate only by hiding our true identity. Quixote believes, however, that by imitation we become what we truly are. He believes that poetry is a transformation, not deception. The power of poetry to transform a man is at stake in this battle. The battle with Sanson Carrasco would never have taken place were it not for Benengali's history. Quixote's picture of a knight errant has been reproduced in print and comes to challenge him as a flesh and blood knight. Held up to Quixote is a distorted mirror, intended to reflect back the image of a comic fool. Standing before him is an imitation twice removed, reflected by both Benengali and Sanson. The conception of Quixote's book as a history, which both men share, is occasioned by their opinion that our world is not extraordinary. The world Quixote has constructed is, therefore, a fiction. A defeat of this mock knight would demonstrate a correspondence between Quixote' s poetical fiction and the world of his own experience. It would render the real world poetical. This artificial adventure becomes real as Quixote triumphs over the mock knight. Although the duel itself is real, since Quixote does battle with and defeats . a real man, the expected does not happen. The manner in which the knight vanquishes, ~is opponent is so strange and unlikely, 1t could only happen to Quixote. In a word, it is characteristically quixotic. With a thrust of his lance, Quixote has broken the spell which bound his adventures in ordinary circumstances. At last his book has become true to the character of its hero. Quixote has succeeded in making the world poetical. Quixote's success in this battle supports his view that his book is the work of a poet, not an historian. The poet is Cervantes, true author of Don Quixote. He has quietly supported Quixote's views on proper imitation and now intervenes in the chronicle on the part of his hero. He is the friendly enchanter of greater power than Benengali for that writer is his own invention. Quixote's victory is a miracle of the author's own making.. It is the most subtle Deus ex Machina ever performed on the stage. With a stroke of his sword, Don Quixote cut poetical imitation Jree from its moorings in the past and allowed it to sail the uncharted waters of his own present time. He has demonstrated that our own circumstances can truly conform to our poetical vision of ourselves. He has defeated art on its own territory, forcing Sanson Carrasco to take this knight errantr:'l seriously, if he is to defeat Quixote. Take it seriously he does; Sanson now wishes not to deceive Quixote but to truly defeat him. He plots another scheme, not as a joke, but in deadly earnest, .to defeat Quixote in a true battle. This battle, and its consequences will be the subject of the last section of this essay. Don Quixote's defeat of Sanson Carrasco makes him a successful knight errant in the world, as well as in his own imaginings. His aim to defend the poor 37 �and oppressed may now be realized. Quixote, however, is no ordinary knight,· but an imitator, who looks to poetry as the schema for his actions. In an advent~re which follows, the role of this imitative hero can be seen. To thi~ adventure I now turn, to derive the lesson of Don Quixote. In Book I of Quixote's story, he is told two tales of romantic intrigue. Within his own tales these are fictions, such as "The Story of One Too Curious for His Own Good" . In the second Book, however, Quixote and Sancho are invited not to hear such a tale, but to be present within one. This is the story of Poor Basil. The student recounting the story thus far, compares it to that of Pyramus and Thisbe, which Don Quixote has just heard recounted in a sonnet. He judged this sonnet to be the work of an absolute poet, meaning that it ends as it should, with the two lovers joined at last. The story of Basil and his love, Quiteria, is prevented from ending as it should by the rich Camancho who would have Quiteria for his own bride. At Comancho's wedding, a play is performed which reflects the story's action. The contest between weal th and love in the play ends as it should, with the forces of Cupid winning the day. Basil's story is in need of a champion of romance and poetry for the proper completion of its action. When Quixote sees the play, he recognizes that Basil's champion is his role to play. By holding a mirror up to Quixote, the writer of this play inspired the knight to noble action. Such, also, is the purpose of Don Quixote itself, for it is the work of an absolute poet. In it we find a character, Don Quixote, who has the courage and noble purpose to imitate the actions of the stage in life itself. We, the readers, can see in Don Quixote a role worthy of imitation in our own lives. This imitation of Quixote becomes explicit when he meets his own readers within the course of the book itself. As the sun is setting on the day of. their adventure with the enchanted bark, Don Quixote and Sancho emerge from a wood, cross a meadow, and are received into the\ company of their readers. The publishing of his history during Quixote's own life made such a crossing possible. When he sallied forth a third time, it became inevitable that the world of Quixote's actions and that of · his readers would finally intersect. The wood from which Quixote emerges signifies an obscurity between these two; it is a wood between worlds. On one side of this wood Quixote is seen as a man; on the other he is known only as a character from a book. I have described Quixote's crossing from the audience to the stage when he cut apart the cardboard-Moors. Now he crosses that line again, this time from the other side. This crossing is an intersection of worlds on two levels. The first is the one just described. For the Duke and Duchess, a character from a work of imitation has stepped into their midst. Having been delighted but not instructed by Don Quixote, they yearn for more Quixotic adventures. The Duke and Duchess do not wish to have these adventures themselves, however, since they consider them comic and those who laugh loudest at others wish least to be laughed at themselves. On this side of the wood, Don Quixote is known only as the fool of nature. The cause of this misunderstanding of the knight is his misrepresentation by Benengali. It was Benengali' s art which first made Don Quixote appear comic. When the knight appears before the Duke and Duchess, they do not seek the reasons for his madness nor attempto to understand his undertaking. Like Sanson Carrasco, · they only pretend to believe Quixote' s knight errantry. In their wicked minds the Duke and Duchess devise artful imitations of Quixote's own poetic imagination. They dupe him into thinking that he has at last found the world of knight errantry. The second crossing referred to earlier i.s this belief of Quixote's that he has entered the realm of chivalry. In fact, he has entered the prison of art. The contrivances of the Duke and Duchess bind Quixote with chains he cannot see. 38 . •I His hosts usurp his tale with adventures of their own design. Their ill contrived and overdone designs have all the imperfections of the storier 8 of chivalry. In the words of the canon, venting h,.is spleen on such works: own tale, in its simple poetry, has transcended the works he is imitating. When Don Quixote thinks he has finally become a true knight, he has, in fact, become the fool of art. Deception is not the lesson of Don Quixote but it is the only one the artful soul can learn. Don Quixote• s true tea~hing is learned only by his simple squire, Sancho Panza. Sancho is as free from craft as his master and his is the ·. only true imitation of Don Quixote. Sancho Panza is given the chance to author his own story in the adventure of the 'flying horse' . This adventure was devised to dupe Don Quixote and Sancho into thinking that they flew through the sky· Actually, they sat as blindfolded fools in the Duke's courtyard. When asked to recount his adventures, Sancho has a wonderful fable to tell: "Their style is uncouth, their exploits incredible, their love immodest, their civility impertinent, their battles tedious, their languages absurd, their voyages preposterous, and in short, they are altogether void of solid • • ingenuity. I ' 19 This is the world of chivalry which Don Quixote has taken for pure, unalloyed gold. Now it is seen for what it is: the artificial product of a poor imagination that substitutes spectacle for true ingenuity of plot. Spectacle is the chief element of the adventures contrived by the Duke and Duchess. According to Aristotle, it is the element in imitation least connected to poetry. Spectacle is more properly the ~ork of stage hands. The Duke and Duchess introduce this element, absent in Don Quixote's own authorship, and thus destroy the purity of his tale. Don Quixote's true genius lies in his use of ordinary objects and situations in his story, for a genius sees what others have not seen. He is the 'Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha' who cannot rely on sp~ctacle for he has no stage hands. Don Quixote is a knight not because he looks the part but because his purpose is noble his actions courageous, and his soui humble. Purity of hear:t is the ess~nce of Don Quixote's knight errantry. Th ability to see a barber's basin as : magical helmet is the beauty of his p~et ry. Quixote' s purity is stained by h~s association with the Duke and Duchess, .his poetry maligned by the success of th . . .. eir. dec~ption. Don Quixote may be ingenious in his own imitation of knight errantry, but his simple soul cannot see the contrivances of art for what they tr_uly are. Neither can he see that his "Senora, as we were flying through the region of fire, or so my ma~ter told me •... and so very, very quietly,. and without anyone seeing me, I lifted the handkerchief ever so little, close to my nose, and looked down at the earth. It seemed as if the whole earth was no bigger than a grain of mustard, and the people walking about on it were a little larger than hazelnuts .... Then as we went through the reg~B where the seven little she-goats were and seeing that as a lad I'd been ~ goatherd in my country, the minute I laid eyes on them I felt like getting down and playing with them a bit, and if I hadn't done so, I think I would have bu rs t. And so, what do I do? Without saying anthing to my master, or anbody else, I slip off Clavileno as quietly as you please, and for three quarters of an hour I have a good time with these goats which are like gilly flowers, and all the time Clavil~~o doesn't stir from the spot." Al though the Duke and Duchess laugh 39 �,r heartily at their joke, Sancho's adventure also gives Don Quixote reason to smile. QUixote does not believe this tale; he knows as well as the Duke and Duchess that Sancho never dismounted from the horse. Sancho's defense of his story is that they hav.e been travelling by enchantment, a reply to the ordinary typical of Don Quixote. The knight smiles because his squire has learned the method of his madness. Quixote can now admit the secret of his adventure in the cave of Montesinos to his squire turned disciple. In an aside to Sancho, he says: "Sancho, if you want us to believe what you saw in heaven, then you must believe me when I tell you what I saw in the cave 2 ~f Montesinos. I need say no more." What the knight need not say is that he invented his adventures in the cave as surely as Sancho invented his tale of the little sheep in the sky. Both admit that nothing happened in these adventures, but they will continue telling their stories and believing them as well. In other words, Don QUixote's madness is an act of the will. He deliberately chooses madness because a madman alone can see an extraordinary world. This choice is wonderfully Quixotic. What thanks does a madman deserve for going mad? He has just cause for his actions. To be sane and yet act mad is to act without just cause. This is true madness: QUixotic madness. Don QUixote's imitation is more truly mad than the fact of madness, just as quixotic knight errantry is more truly knightly than that of Don Amadis of Gaul. The -value of Quixote's madness lies in the fact that his book lies open before us. Sitting at home, he would have passed his last days without an adventure to his name. Now, both he and Sancho "had something to ta~~ about forever had [they] lived so long." Through his madnes.s, Don QUixote has had the chance to instruct his readers in courage, humility, and the virtue of finding inspiration in poetry. The inspiration we derive from Don Quixote is an imitation of the hero'.s own role. An imitation of Don Quixote is one of imitation itself. To be like Quixote, we must look to poetry for the best originals. We can only believe the world of poetry to be imitable if we believe our own world to be poetical. We first found reasons for this belief when Don Quixote defeated Sanson Carrasco. The poetical nature of our own world truly shines forth when Sancho is transformed from a simple squire into a governor as wise as Sol.omen. Sancho Panza could never have become the great governor he was had he not, in his imagination, first reached up and touched the stars. To become what we ought to be, we must first become poetic madmen, in imitation of Don Quixote, as Sancho has done. Don Quixote is thus a mirror held up to our own nature; in his eyes we can see a vision of what we can become. Poetry exists to intruct, as well as delight the readers, says the canon in Ch. XLVIII, Book I. This is the true lesson of Don Quixote. I am sure there is a reader of Don Quixote who would consider, as would Hume, that this lesson is just nonsense. To this reader, I extend my sympathy. He must spend his time vainly trying to prove the existence of the world of our experience and denying the imagination its wings. What thanks does a man deserve for trying to prove that the world of our experience exists? No, the thing is to attempt to prove the existence of the world beyond all possible experience. Such would be a true Quixotic enterprise in philosophy. Much earlier in this essay, I made the claim that Don Quixote is the work of an absolute poet. All imitation of the Quixotic enterprise rests on this claim for without it the proportion [readers: Quixote::QUixote:the stage] is destroyed. When Don QUixote called the sonnet of Pyramus and Thisbe the work of an absolute poet, he meant that the ending was proper to the story. For Don Quixote to inspire 40 I • J.l us to action, it must have a proper ending as well. Don Quixote does not end with the knight's final success. He does not win a kingdom, nor his lady's hand. Unlike most tales of chivalry or those of the wandering hero~s, Odysseus and Aeneas, Don Quixote ends with the knight's defeat. "-In his last adventures, Don Quixote finds an artist, Don Antonio, who loves him and is . willing to build a world of deception in which to house the knight forever. In this edifice of art, Don Quixote is to be protected from the knowledge that he is not capable of true knightly adventures. Don Antonio builds a temple to Quixote; all who enter must vow not to disturb the knight's madness. This temple is brought crash~ng down upon Quixo2~' s head by his nemesis, Sanson Carrasco. Sanson Carrasco appears before Don Quixote not as the knight of the mirrors, but as a real knight. As an artist, he was shorn of his power to defeat the cknight by deception. The mirrors he wore in the previous battle were crescents. Now, his shield is emblazoned with a full moon, symbolizing that his power has reached its full height. The time has come for Sanson Carrasco to defeat Don Quixote. The moon on Sanson's shield is also a symbol of resurrection and rebirth. To defeat Don Quixote, Sanson Carrasco had to return as a knight. His imitation of Quixote has only one purpose: the knight's defeat. When the original knight falls from his horse, this irni ta tor also ceases to be a knight, since his calling has been fulfilled. As a reincarnation of Quixote's knight errantry, Sanson Carrasco symbolizes the spurious sequel to Book I, published by "an Aragonese, who styles· himself a native of Tordesillas. 1125 When Don Quixote is defeated, the imposter in the spurious sequel ceases to be Don Quixote. How can he still have adventures when the real Don Quixote has ceased to be a knight? His defeat as a knight is Don Quixo~e's own death. Don Q\iixote made his story his life and in creating his plot must accept that it has an end. It is impossible for Don Quixote to become another character because his defeat as a knight is also his defeat as a poet. Does this defeat mean that Quixote's lesson is false? Can we imitate a hero who has failed? To find the answer to this question we must again look to the example of Sancho Panza. Only Sancho Panza would be fool enough to believe Quixote's promise of a governorship. Just before they meet the Duke and Duchess, Sancho threatens to abandon this stupid calling of knight errantry. All he sees are defeats, all he receives are blanketings and bruises. He sees no way in the world that Don Quixote's vision can succeed. The knight upbraids him: "Turn, then, the reins, or better, the halter of your ass, and go back to your home, for you are not going one step further with me ••• Oh man who has more of the beast in him than of the human! ••.. So you are leaving me just when I had firmly resolved to make you governor of the best island in the world? ..•• honey is not for the ass's mouth. An ass you are and an ass you will be to your dying day, for I think that day will come before you will ever realize 26 that you are a stupid beast." These words move Sancho to tears, and he answers: "Master, I will grant you that all I lack is a tail and I would be an ass .... Forgive me, your Grace; have mercy on my foolishness. Remember that I know little and if I talk too much, that is due to weakness, rather than to malice. But he who sins and mends 26 his way commends himself to God." Commend yourself to God and to your 41 �master, Sancho, and you will truly be transformed. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. Blessed indeed is poor San~ho who does not see yet still believes. The defeat of Don Quixote hides his vision from our sight. To truly imitate him, however, our belief must be an act of the will, like Quixote's own. A true believer in Don Quixote's poetry is a madman and a fool in the eyes of the world. What thanks does a man deserve, I may ask, for running mad when he has just cause? Don Quixote asks us to run mad without a cause, without any reasonable hoe for success. His defeat destroys such hope and thus compels us to a truly Quixotic imitation of Don Quixote. For this reason, defeat is the proper end for the book. It completes the lesson of Don Quixote by turning our eyes from worldly success to the beauty of Don Quixote's undertaking. The true value of Don Quixote's madness is that it allows him to see a more beautiful world. Only when we look past his defeat to "the glory that, in ages to come, shall be eternal in the ethereal and celestial regions" have we understood Don Quixote's true calling. Only then will the lessons of this great and wondrous knight be ours to learn. 3. Book I, Ch. I; Putnam 4. Book II, Ch. VIII; Putnam 5. Book I, Ch. I; Putnam 6. ROCIN-hack, ANTE-before. This may also signify that he was but an ordinary hack before Quixote transformed him. Springtime Gretchen Berg for Julie On the road where picket spears the air, · limit points beyond, in a bank past the church 7. Book II, Ch. III; Putnam 8. Book I, Ch. XXIII; Putnam 9. Book I, Ch. XXV; Putnam where once I placed, thighs deep in snow, a rose for the Virgin, now tree roots grapple sky; liquid slips the tabled rock to swerve, elusive tress of wondrous weft. 10. Book II, Ch. Ill; Putnam 11. Book II, Ch. III; Putnam 12. Book I, Ch. XLVII; Cohen I remember other rivers, broad as seas, harsh gritty beaches over which the gulls t 1 l t ' silent, 13. Book II, Ch. III; Putnam cliff's edge where hemlock stalks like fern; 14. Book II, Ch. VIII; Cohen dark trees make water bright, or bright make dark. 15. Book II, Ch. XXV; Cohen On the hill a smoky echo lines the road 16. Book II, CH. XII; Ozell granite, marble, coal---what is not gathered, 18. I have used three different translations for this paper to vary the style of the quotations. The Putnam and Cohen translations are more literal, but the Ozell much more fun to read. striped and flat where rain flowed; mica 17. FOOTNOTES Book II, Ch. III; Ozell In English, there is a pun on the canon's title, since he is literally reciting a canon for proper imitation. carved and woven, in this timely stream? Above it bushes bead with bloom, later with berry, hoop in festival; the lilac crooks These are the Pleiades. from branch, receding vistas beckon 21. I am indebted to Mr. McGrath for this thought. Book I, Ch. XLVII; Ozell 20. 1. 19. Book II, Ch. XVI; Putnam through arcs of green, wreathing victor's garland in unconscious air. 2. Book I, Ch. I; Putnam 22. Book II, Ch. XVI; Putnam Every wave of fullness casts a web of imitation, yellow leaf sustained by shadowed blue. Hair and a ribbon float on my shoulder; it is cold and I go home. 42 43 �Playing With _Images SUsan Magwre of the image is the unnaturalness. It is unnatural for any mother to tend to a child of a different species, thou?h studies tell us it has been done. It is monstrous for a human to su~kle an animal--this is horrible particularly because man is held to be superior to the lower animals, not at all on the same level. This unnaturalness is the root of the third striking aspect of these images--the topsy-turviness of each. In The Bacchae passage there is a two-fold topsy-turviness, a sense of odd-juxtapositions. First, the mess~ng~r is relating a tale we didn t expect--instead of the wanton, lusting females he tells us of a pastoral scene, women of all ages asleep among fallen oak leaves. we feel the earthy calm as he describes one, "half sinking on a bed of deep pine greenery." Then, as we start to ease into the sweet-smelling sof~ness, ~e describes these same women girting their skirts with quick, hissing snakes, and suckling wild animals at their breast; we are aghast, and are shaken. out ?f the softness. The magic of the image is that horrible proceeds to 11 seem the even sweet--the women "smile in love ! he · describes them as "young mothers with a mother's breast"--we start to lapse back into the softness. It seems not so bad, actually, this peaceful suckling, till he reminds us of the "babes at home forgotten!" we are again jangled and left not just with the horrible image, but now the horror stains ourselves; we too felt the spell. In simple terms The Bacchae is a play Should Pentheus about faith and nature. Dionysus really a believe in Dionysus? Is God? Is Cadmus wrong to dress _u~ in skins The Bacchae: Messenger's speech (690-700) [Describing the Theban women under Dionysus' spell] And one a young fawn held, and one a wild wolf cub, and fed them with white milk, and smiled in love, young mothers with a mother's breast and babes at home forgotten! Antony and Cleopatra: scene (V i i 308) (to applies to her breast) Cleopatra's death an asp which she Cleo:with thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate Of life at once untie: poor venomous fool, Be angry, and despatch. O, couldst thou speak, That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass, Unpolicied! o Eastern Star! Char: Cleo:Peace, Peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse asleep? These images stand out as horrible scenes. They are horrible for several reasons. First, each image inv~lv~s the reader (or viewer).. The descriptio~ . of the human body, particularly so sensitive a part of the body as the breast, causes one to feel the image personally, especially (or perhaps only?) a woman~ f~r whom the breast is a symbol of what it is to be woman--biologically, emotional~y (sensually), socially ("role" of woman in society). In each case the most striking aspect 44 .J and dance like a young man, honoring the God? Is it unbecoming to his age and· dignity; is it unnatural for him to relax. the bounds of his person, to step outside of what's expected of him as king? The image related above contains many, of the same elements. We do not see what the messenger tells us, yet we believe him. It is unnatural for the women to suckle wild animals--it seems horrible, yet is is peaceful and beautiful at the same time. Finally, we too have succumed to the enchantment which moves the whole play. Topsy-turviness is at work also in the Antony and Cleopatra passage. Cleopatra's words to the asp are moving, harsh words. They are spoken strongly--her directive, "be angry, and· despatch" resembles a leader's orders--to his men. Power underlies this speech--the asp's power to kill, and lack of power to speak; Caesar's power, which is the cause of Cleopatra's action; and her own power, now eclipsed by Caesar. We see Cleopatra as a royal queen, a leader. What follows seems oddly-juxtaposed. Cleopatra urges "peace!" She presents herself as a mother caring for her babe--such a different role for Cleopatra!, a role which heretofore was unimaginable. Although previously she has spoken of her children, no image has been presented as soft and maternal, as thoroughly womanly as this. One is struck by the difference between her two speeches, one so forceful, the other so soft. The image does not stop there, however. Here again is the horrible , unnaturalness of a woman nursing a lover creature--particularly striking as in this case it's a serpent. (This brings to mind, of course, the Genesis story of woman "causing" the fall of man.) The topsy-turviness is carried even one step further--in this case the "baby" causes the nurse to sleep, making a horrible image chilling as well. This metaphor stands out as important in the context of the whole play because of the light it sheds on Cleopatra. Earlier I said this is the image which most presents Cleopatra as "thoroughly womanly". I hesitate, and re-examine that suggestion, yet it still seems true. Earlier in the play we see Cleopatra as a beauty, a lover, an enchantress, a flirt, an emotional one who makes mistakes and changes her mind, but in all of these instances she seems not most woman, but most queen. The scene where she .is most a woman is, to be sure, not at all natural to woman. One never sees Cleopatra as thoroughly woman in a natural sense. The ·worm of Nilus kills the human; the country of the Nile, the power and lack of power kills the queen. Perhaps ~ Cleopatra can be woman? "Husband, I c·ome : Now to that name, courage prove my title!" (V ii 286) my 45 �Negation, Willing and the Places of the Soul "William O'Grady For Frances H. Stephen Morse How many men Have tried to walk Your cobbled heart, And in a quiet rain Have slipped and Washed away Amid a thousand tiny Rivers of Regret. This lecture has three parts. In the first part I shall sketch Hegel's presentation of the primacy of the subject in modern metaphysics and of negativity as the meaning of subjectivity. In the second part I shall sketch Heidegger's attempt to expose willing as the core of thinking not only in the thought of Nietzsche but already in that of Descartes and even in that of Plato. In the third part I shall try to bring out some suggestions contained in Plato's Timaeus, not indeed about the subject or the self, but about what human soul might be. I hope that the coherence of the three parts will emerge in the course of the lecture. I. Scholarship H. Stephen Morse Quiet settles in the room. The light Above the dark old desk illuminates A page of Greek, and brings light to a bright Bronze panoply of men at war. The.Ga~es Before the field stand open, and within, A father and a wife are fixed with.dread~ While far away, three grinning la~ies spin Each footfall into their great, timeless web. A ringless finger on an aged ha~d Marks place. No flicker of a lip or eye Disturbs the face --like wind upon the grass-Of he who reads. For on that wall he stands, As Homer's tale fills up both Earth and Sky Like rich red wine within a crystal glass. 46 tree and human thinking about the tree have already grown together by the time any of us appears on the scene. Moreover, this concrescence, this having grown together, belongs to the being of the tree as well as to the being of human thinking--this is one of Hegel's great thoughts, which he learned from Aristotle. Thus in reading a book about trees I am facing the tree and human thinking about the tree as having grown together; I am thinking about the tree concretely, as is not possible for me as I stand in a field facing the tree in what now appears as its nakedness. Hegel took his experience of reading books very seriously. In that experience he felt himself to be most deeply in touch with the world in the fullness of its being. The books he took most seriously--this brings us to the second preliminary consideration--were those of Aristotle. In two matters of utmost importance he simply follows Aristotle. At the end of his Encylopedia, presenting the all-encompassing circular education, Hegel says that Aristotle alone named God truly: noesis noeseos, thinking of thinking. That means for Hegel: thinking is the most active activity, the most energetic energy, both as world-building (thinking produces In the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel writes: "According to my view, which must justify itself by the presentation of the system, everything depends on this, that we comprehend and express the true not only as substance but just as much as subject." We must try to understand this statement, which is central in Hegel's thinking. But two preliminary considerations may help us orient ourselves toward that thinking. First, one of the most important words in the language of Hegel's thinking is "concrete." By it he means almost the opposite of what we might suppose. We are in the habit of saying, for example that to experience a tree concretely we must walk into the middle of a field and stand face to face with the tree; if we read a book about trees, we are encountering the tree only abstractly. For Hegel the situation is reversed: to read a book about a tree is to experience the tree as concretely as may be. The reason for the reversal is this. To experience a tree concretely is to experience it in its concrescence, its having grown together with the other things on which it depends and with which it deeply belongs: air, water, soil, sunshine, but also human thinking. The 47 �the Roman world, thinking produces the Aeneid) and as self-contained: thinking is of all activities the one in which sheer aliveness is most concentrated. Second, Hegel.never wavers in following Aristotle's view that in the most important motions the end is effectively present in the beginning, as the oak tree is at work in the acorn. Hegel however disagrees with Aristotle in two points that are almost as decisive. He thinks Aristotle is wrong in supposing that the part of the soul that thinks is separate from the part that loves, hates and remembers. From Hegel's point of view Aristotelian nous--the capacity to receive the intelligible--is merely inhuman rather than authentically di vine. Hegel has learned from the Christian doctrine of the incarnation and passion of God Himself that the relation of human and divine can be truly understood only under the symbol of the crucifixion: thus we read on the final page of the Phenomenology that absolute knowing is accomplished through the "recollection and Golgotha of Absolute Spirit." Second, and connected with this, Hegel thinks the tragic poets were right as against Aristotle: the truth about the divine is revealed in the fate of human beings within human communities rather than in the coming to be and passing away of things without special reference to human communities. Let us return to Hegel's assertion that what is crucial is to understand the true not only as substance but just as much as subject. It is a commonplace to say that since Descartes the subject, the "I think," has been the beginning for metaphysics and that in Kant's "Copernican Revolution" human subjectivity wins its decisive victory. But the Cartesian and Kantian positions, though important for Hegel, are not sufficient. For in them the so-called subject, which has indeed been accorded primacy, is still being understood fundamentally as a substance~ Descartes speaks of a "thinking substance" and Kant of a "transcendental I," which is always one and the same, which was never young, which does not tremble in the face of I i j death. Against these insufficiently radical attempts to establish the primacy of the subject, Hegel insists that subjectivity is a movement, the movement of self~positing, of throwing itself under (sub-jacere) a world of things so as to become what it is, rather than a constant standing under or lying under (substance, hupokeimenon.) To secure the being of the subject against being construed on the model of substance, Hegel speaks of subjectivity as negativity. Being as a whole is revealed in and through the being that can think and . say "no" and, moreover, can carry th is "no" out in practice. In Hegel's discussion the work of negativity is unfolded in three stages. First, the process of lifting off "chair" from "this chair here" (which process since Aristotle--and on the basis of a misunderstanding of him-- has been called "abstraction," that is aphairesis, that is "lifting off") is understood by Hegel in a dramatic and violent way. To lift off "chair" from "this chair here" is to destroy "this hereness," to do away with "immediate existence," the being here or there of particular beings as they are given to us. It is, by the power of our thinking, to overcome mere giveness. Second, the very discursiveness of human thinking, the motion of thought from part to part, is understood by Hegel as exhibiting what he calls "the tremendous power of the negative." That we think and speak at all means, according to Hegel, not only that we transform "this chair here" into "chair" but also that we separate "chair" from all other things in the world, in general, in our thinking and speaking we separate parts from the concrete wholes to which they belong and which alone are actual. In Hegel' s language, the discursiveness of human understanding introduces "the unactual" but this introduction of the unactual is the very action which makes change possible by making room for change: change can only mean re- arrangement of parts; t o say II no II to the whole does not generate progress but rather annihilation in the form of suicide 48 or of merely theoretical nihilism. Finally, the power of human thinking to destroy immediate existence in the form of the "this-hereness" in which things are given to us, and to tear particular things out of the contexts in which we encounter them, is seen in its full prodigiousness only when we follow Hegel in supposing that the self is passionately disposed to say no to what it primarily faces -- that it is radically restless and dissatisfied -- and this because at bottom it is passionately disposed to say no to itself: it is in every respect "unhappy consciousness," the telling name given by Hegel to the hero of his greatest book. The difference, according to Hegel in the~ntroduction" to the Phenomenology, between natural things and human existence is that "consciousness destroys every form of limited satisfaction for itself" so that serious education for human beings is a "way of despair," that is, as the German word Verzweiflung suggests, a way of being torn in two as a violent conversation takes place within each of us between "natural conciousness" and "real knowledge. " Or, as we may say, the ultimate meaning of Hegel's claim that the subject belongs within the true just as deeply as do the beings which the subject faces, and that the core of subjectivity is negativity, is that thinking is willing and that willing properly issues, not in praise and love -- "I love you: I will that you be" as the Franciscan thinker Duns Scotus has it -- but rather in revolution. Here, However, Hegel's thinking takes a somewhat unexpected turn. For, in his understanding, revolution is for the sake of the fullness of being. What , I have called the fullness of being, Hegel designates as "living substance" in contrast to substance thought of as constituted by the beings in the world · opposed to subject. From the point of view of "living substance," Hegel says: "What seems to happen outside it, as an activity directed against it, is its own doing; and thus the substance shows that it is essentially subject. When it has shown this completely, the spirit has made its existence equal to its essence" and, we may 49 add, history has come to i:ts proper end. Or, as Hegel said earlier, in and through the discursiveness of human thinking, understood as "the tremendous power of the negative," "the concrete separates itself and makes itself unactual," so that it can move itself. There is no more fundamental thought. in Hegel than that the oak tree is effectively present in the acorn. In this final point, of course, Hegel is by no means a representative modern thinker. For our purposes let us return to the assertion that the deepest posture of human beings toward the world in which they primarily find themselves is negative, that thinking is willing and that willing issues not in affirmation or praise, but in destruction. Heidegger can help us with this. II. I shall draw primarily on a long essay called "Nietzsche's Word ' God is dead'" in which Heidegger in a set of wide-ranging reflections interprets section 125 of Nietzsche's Gay Science. In that section, entitled "The Madman," a madman carrying a lantern in the bright morning hours runs into the market place to announce that God is dead and, just as astounding, that we are his murderers, you and I. It is this second assertion which Heidegger is especially concerned to understand. As his interpretation develops, the murdering of God is understood as the murdering of the meaningfulness of all that is. In other words, guided by Nietzsche but going beyond his analysis, Heidegger tries to understand nihilism, "that uncanniest of guests that stands at our door." According to Nietzsche, nihilism means that "the highest values hitherto are devaluing themselves," so that what is required is a "revaluation of all values," as the subtitle of Nietzsche's unfinished masterwork, The Will to Power, has it. But Heidegger isled to ';Qnder about the very language of "value" which abounds· in Nietzsche's writings: valuing, devaluing, creating new values. Perhaps nihilism means not that the highest values devalue �,---! i themselves but rather that what is, what offers itself to us by appearing to ·us, should be evaluated at all, should be driven into some sort of order by reference to one extrinsic standard or other. The central attempt of Heidegger's essay is to explore whether nihilism can be understood in this second sense and, if so, where its origins are to be found. We cannot follow Heidegger's discussion in all its richness and complexity. Its decisive steps are: first, to show the dependence of Nietzsche's understanding of value on his understanding of will, and second, to point to the presence of a willful element in thinking as understood by Descartes and even by Plato. As he writes sweepingly in another place: "Thinking, understood in the traditional way, is a kind of willing." According to Heidegger, the most important thought in the final phase of Nietzsche's philosophizing is "will to pewer." Will to power is said by Nietzsche to be "the innermost essence of Being." But the phrase "will to power" is likely to mislead us, as Heidegger points out, since according to Nietzsche's understanding willing as such generates power: the will to humility is just as powerful, just as powergenerating, as the will to domination over others. Therefore he proposes that we understand will to power as will to will; that is, the "innermost essence of Being" is to be understood as the will willing itself, the willing of willing. Heidegger goes on to claim that "Modern metaphysics, as the metaphysics of subjectness, thinks the Being of what is in the sense of will." He understands Nietzsche's great thought as the culmination of modern metaphysics, completing the elevation of willing to unchallenged supremacy within the relation of human being to being as a whole, so that in our time "the earth itself can show itself only as the object of assault, an assault that, in human willing, establishes itself as total objectification." Heidegger identifies the grounding principle of Nietzsche's metaphysics, the metaphysics of ,)the will to power, and notices that it is a v~J-_\le-:9rinctple: . ~'Art is worth more than truth. " He wonders about evaluative thinking altogether, and this leads him back to a consideration of Descartes, Plato and the pre-Socratic thinkers. I shall present a sketch of the sketch he gives. In Descartes' thought, that which constantly underlies everything that is, (the hypokeimenon in Aristotle's language) is the cogito, the "I think" of the fundamental proposition "I think, therefore I am." But the Cartesian cogito means co-agito; to cogitate means to co-agitate; "I think" means "I drive together into· the unity of a system." Cartesian thinking, according to Heidegger, is fundamentally willful, doing violence to beings rather than letting them be what they are. Nothing is more characteristic of Heidegger's own late writings than the passionate insistence on the will-not-to-will, which is meant to prepare the way for the tranquillity of "letting-be," that is, of thinking that lets things be what they are. Heidegger perceives the same element of willfulness, which refuses to let beings be what they are, in the thought of Plato, though in a less blatant form. For there the eide, the non-appearing beings of thought-;- are ultimately understood as measures, in relation to which everyth.ing that offers itself to us by appearing to us must inevitably fail to measure up, and hence is said to be only in a certain measure. The positing of the-idea of the Good is murderous of Being, that is, destroys the meaning- fulness of what appears. Meaningfulness is now conferred only by the willfully established frame within which what appears is allowed to appear. Heidegger writes in another place: "From the standpoint of space, the difference is this: appearing in the first and authentic sense of bringing-itself-tostand in togetherness involves space, which it first conquers; as it stands there, it creates space for itself; it produces space and everything pertaining to it; it is not something copied. Appearing in the second sense (i.e. , Platonically 50 essence of this willing." understood) emerges from an already finished space; it is situated in the rigid measures of this space, and we see it by looking toward it. The vision makes the thing. Now the vision becomes decisive, instead of the thing itself. Appearing in the first sense opens up space. Appearing in the (Platonic) sense merely circumscribes and measures the space that has already been opened. Thus in order to encounter a kind of thinking that does not represent to itself what it thinks about but rather allows it .!£. be present in its own way, that places nothing before itself (Kant's characteristic word vorstellen, usually translated "represent" means literally "to place before") but rather heeds what comes before it, we must turn to the pre-Socratic thinkers. And this Heidegger has done repeatedly, with the greatest seriousness and with the greatest and most imaginative sympathy. But even in Heracleitus and Parmenides, Heidegger concludes·, "Being is not thought as Being." In these thinkers there is indeed no distortion through willfulness, but there is a kind of obliviousness of the mystery of Being. What is lacking even in Heracleitus and Parmenides is insight into the tragic character of the thinker's relation to Being, the insight that Being must be thought historically with a vision to its withholding itself from man, withdrawing from man variously in various epochs, thereby engendering a variety of tragedies of thought. Heidegger, who seems never to have given thought to tragedies of action such as Sophocles and Shakespeare present, regards the history of metaphysiqs not skeptically or negatively but tragically, as a sequence of shatterings against fatefully appointed limits of which the configuration changes from epoch to epoch, but never the immensity. Thus his final word on the "willfulness" that characterizes the traditional understanding of thinking is this: "The false opinion easily arises that the human will is the origin of the will to will. In fact, on the contrary, man is being willed by the will to will without even experiencing the III. we began by considering a little the meaning of Hegel's claim that to comprehend the true we must begin with subjectivity of the subject and above all must understand subjec~ivity as negativity. With the help of Heidegger's reflections on the role of willing within metaphysical speculation since Descartes, we tried to see Hegel's view.not merely as one of several important alternatives but rather as a radicalization and unsurpassably acute expression of a t!=!ndency that has been powerful for centuries. We have also been stirred--I at least have been stirred--by two further claims of Heidegger: first, that the traditional understanding of thinking, according to which thinking is a kind of willing, is so murderously destructive of meaningfulnes~ in our experience of the world that the only hope for us is to attempt to renounce willing, to will not to will, and then wait to see if we can learn to let things be as they are; second,· that this tradition in which thinking is at bottom a kind of willing originates with Plato. Although these matters are difficult to judge, I believe Heidegger may be right in his first claim. I doubt that his second claim is true. But I think it might be worthwhile for us now to pay some attention to Plato's way of speaking about the human soul. With this in view, I propose that we look at the Timaeus. There are several reasons for this choice. One is that while.· we are reading and talking about the Timaeus, it is almost impossible for us to forget that playfulness has a proper place in discussions of the most important matters. ·I fear that our consideration of Hegel and Heidegger may have induced us to forget this. The Timaeus seems to me to be, in the guise of presentation of the genesis of the visible and touchable world, above all an invitation to think about the human soul in· certain ways. This hypothesis is at least plausible: after all, the "feast of words" 51 �offered to Socrates as recompense for his own gift of tpe day before --something like the conversation recounted in the Republic--is meant to delight Socrates; and Socrates seems to take delight most of all in words about the human soul. I shall consider certain statements about the soul contained in Timaeus' mythical account of how soul was fashioned ·and apportioned, as well as what seems to be implied .about the soul in Timaeus' account of "the receptacle." But first we must notice a remarkable feature of this dialogue altogether, namely its undercutting of oppositions that seem. familiar and well-established in other dialogues. Two examples seem especially important. The most famous phrase from the Timaeus is eikos muthos, likely story. But 27 lines after the first occurrence of this phrase, the very same set of words is referred to as eikos logos. The difference between muthos and logos, so emphatically insisted upon in other dialogues, seems far from clear-cut in the Timaeus. We shall have to try to understand why this is. not possible to place intellect directly into body. Rather, it was necessary to place intellect in soul and soul in body. Soul appears first within this account as a bonding thing, necessary for the. holding together of intellect and body. Even more: Timaeus' account seems to imply that only mortal soul can serve this function. For soon we encounter this powerful . conjunction: "in order that the.re might be mortal th~ngs and the whole might be truly a whole." The wholeness, the oneness of the world is an acute problem in the Timaeus as it is not in the great central images of the Republic. The divided ~ine, though it has sections, has no gaps;· it is one continuous line. Similarly the path leading out of the cave into the sunlight is one path. But in the Timaeus we are presented emphatically with the image of a demiurge who looks up there to see the changeless originals in the image of which he fashions the material down here. We imagine him, as we imagine any craftsman, looking repeatedly back and forth between the model and the copy which i$ gradually taking shape. As his gaze moves between model and copy, it encounters vacancy. Are there two widely separated worlds, one unchanging and invisible, the .other changing and visible, or are they somehow one? They are somehow one, Timaeus' account implies; only because there are mortals, beings who live but do not live forever, ·who, themselves perishable, long for the imperishable, so that their very longing holds the two worlds together, bonds them into one world. We shall return to this theme. Various remarkable things are said by Timaeus about the fashioning and distribution of soul. Let us consider three which seem at first sight very strange and even outrageous: the world is an animal, the courses of the planets are made of soul, and the soul itself is made of music. I think that these propositions appear outrageous only on the basis of essentially Hegelian premisses, namely that human beings have in the beginning a radically negative relation to the world, that there is no primary experience of Again, the opposition at the he?rt of the ~, the opposition between memory-understood as merely idiosyncratic and closely associated with Meno' s incapacity to learn--and recollection as the soul's· descent into itself beyond memory, seems in the Timaeus to be somehow undercut as we hear of Cri tias' attempt to reach back at once into himself and beyond himself in order to recover an account he heard when young from his old grandfather who heard it from his father who heard it from Solon who heard it from an Egyptian priest who relied upon written records extending back 8000 years that is, to within a thousand years of the time of the event to be recovered. Let us turn now to the introduction of soul within Timaeus' account of the framing of the world in which we find ourselves. The non-envious demiurge, we are told, discovered upon consideration that among visible things none lacking intellect is more beautiful than wi:iat has intellect, comparing wholes with wholes. But it was 52 feeling at home in the world, but rather one experiences the urgent need to make oneself at home, by violent deeds of mind and hand, in a world that is primarily alien. For, apart from these premisses, what is more natural than to regard the world around us as composed above all of what is alive and what sustains life, so that the cosmos would most like to be called to ~, the living being? And can it really be that what is alive is alien to us? Descartes could suppose that dogs and horses, unlike human beings, are mere machines. But no one, I think, who has looked into the eyes of an injured dog he was trying to help, could take this supposition seriously: in such a gaze soul knows that it is indeed encountering soul. Again, the soul does not seem to find the motion of the heavenly lights alien: we wish upon stars, wonder at times at their special brilliance, which we delight in pointing out to each other; and investigating their complex regularities involves deep satisfaction. So little do we find the motion of those lights alien that it makes sense, to me at least, to say that their courses are made of soul. I have always imagined that such men as Ptolemy, Copernicus, Brahe and Kepler must have had deeply healthy souls and that Ptolemy was speaking from authentic experience when he said that the benefit of his astro- nomical studies was to train the imagination how "not to forget in whatever things. we happen upon the consideration of their beautiful and well-ordered disposition." I think that there are elements of our experience which Hegel explains bett~~ than anyone else; but I do not think that subjectivity understood as negativity and Abraham understood as the archetypal unhappy consciousness which refuses to be at home in the world are models that illuminate our experience of living under the starry skies and alongside all manner of living things. Finally, if Timaeus' account makes any sense at all, that is, if soul is what holds together intellect and body, and thereby holds together that which is 53 unchangeable and that which is forever changing, then it makes sense to say that if soul is made of anything, it is made of music. For in music we face the mystery of the inseparable unity of number ratio (logos) , than which nothing pleases intellect more, and sensibility of such depth that it seems that without music we could .hardly know who we are as. feeling beings existing in time. In the beginning of Timaeus' account of the demiurge's introduction of intellect-in-soul into body, we hear not that the motions of the visible world had been disorderly in general., but rather that they had been "out of tune" (plemmelos). That the soul is made of music seems to imply that our relation to logoi, accounts of all kinds, is inseparable from such things as Critias' memory of his grandfather's eagerness in telling and his own delight in hearing the account ··of Athens of old, the telling itself having taken place during a religious festival in honor of Dionysus in which children born duririg the year were admitted into the companionship of the city. The question is whether there is anything in our experience more trustworthy than such tales, tales inseparable from the circumstances of the telling of them. I think the dialogue suggests that there may be nothing more trustworthy. We remember how the Timaeus begins: "One, two, three--but where is the fourth?" It is hard not to think, among other things, of the fourth--that is the uppermost--section of the divided line. But if the fourth section is missing, the section in which the soul exhibits its power of making its way "without images by the forms (eide) themselves through themselves," then the remaining three powers of the soul must somehow comprehend the living whole which in the Timaeus the soul faces. But that means that pistis, trust, has become the in-between power, the power of the soul that sustains the movement from consideration of image to consideration of original and back again. The most beautiful example I know of the high dignity of the action of trusting �1 , ' . i ! within what seems a purely theoretical consideration occurs near the end of the Sophist. The stranger asks Theatetus whether he like almost everyone else supposes that the world around us was thrown up by chance, or whether he supposes that some sort of provident care was involved. Theatetus, who is about 18 years old, says that he thinks about that question all. the time -- what a wonderful young. man! I cannot help interjecting -but that, probably because he is young, he at one time holds the one view, at another time the other. · But now, Theatetus continues, as I look upon your face and know that you· think there has been provident care involved, I think that too. The stranger replies that he suspects that, being the young man he is, Theatetus will always somehow incline to that view. There is no hint of apology or embarrassment in this exchange. I think that the main purpose of the Timaeus is to speak of soul in such a way that we can see why there should be no apology or embarrassment. In the following Tima~us' account of the fashioning and distribution of soul, we have perhaps learned something about the place -- or better, the places -- of soul in the world that surrounds us. Could it make sense also to speak of the places within the soul, of shallower or deeper places within the soul from which our words variously come, of places in our hearts into which we receive certain persons and certain things? I think that Timaeus' discussion of the "receptacle" (hypodoche) is an attempt to address this question. That discussion is after all an attempt to speak of_ a "within which," a "place," having "depth," prior to the existence of body, namely at a (mythically conceived) time prior to the introduction of regular plane surfaces arranged in three ·dimensions. At this time we encounter nothing of body except certain "powers" and "traces" (dunameis and ichn~) . Thus the being of the receptacle is said by Timaeus to be reachable only with difficulty by a kind of "bastard reasoning" with the help of "nonsensing" ·(the word i I I l anaisth~sia used strangely). I do not know exactly what these strange phrases mean, but it seems clear that Timaeus does not wish his speaking about the receptacle to · be understood as merely metaphorical, that is, as involving the mere transfer to another domain of words belonging primarily and most properly to the domain of body. Again, there are moments during Timaeus' account when it is difficult not to understand the receptacle as "intellectual soul" pure and simple. This is especially true if one has read the third book of Aristotle'e treatise on the soul. That which is to receive all incoming forms without deforming them must itself be perfectly formless -- this language is used by Timaeus of the receptacle and by Aristotle of the soul's power of knowing. The use by both of the uncommon word para-phainein, to appear alongside, makes the coincidence all the more striking. Finally, Timaeus passes almost insensibly from speaking of the receptacle as chora,place or room, which receives all bodies (somata), to speaking of it as the genes of place -- roughly, the class of place which receives not things but classes of things. It looks very much as if an attempt, perhaps bound not to succeed entirely, is being made to speak of a way of being that underlies the being of body and the being of soul. We must try to see how far we can discern the results of this attempt. First, however, we must backtrack and notice two things about the introduction of the receptacle into Timaeus' account. The first is rather obvious. The first part of Timaeus' account had dealt chiefly with the things fashioned through intellect, through nous. Now the role of necessity must be taken into account, since the visible whole has come into being through the persuasion of necessity by intellect, so that "for the most part" the things coming into being might be led toward what is best. Necessity, anank~, is said to have the form of the "errant cause," and as Timaeus' thinking and ours descends into its realm, the realm of mere "powers" and 54 "traces," we must invoke, not merely the gods in general as at the beginning of the first account, but--the words are said solemnly, I think--God the Savior (thees soter). It is in connection with the ~ontation of the possibility of chaos that the receptacle is introduced as a third thing in addition to the model and its copy. But there is also a second point to be noticed about Timaeus' second beginning. We now distinguish in our thinking among that which comes to be, that within which it comes to be, and the source from which what comes to be is born, springs forth. "Is born, springs forth" is my translation of phuetai. The verb phuein, from which is formed the noun phusis, usually translated "nature," means "to beget" or "to send forth shoots." In the passive it means "to be born" and "to grow. " With the use of this word we are emphatically in the realm of what is alive as, we now realize, was not quite the case in the first account. For then the two words repeatedly used to characterize the activity of the demiurge were plattein, to fashion by molding (the source of our word "plastic"), and sunhist~mi, to bring to stand together. We were at bottom still in the realm of statue-making. And surely we do not forget that the whole "feast of words" to be presented to Socrates was animated by Socrates' dissatisfaction with mere statues -- he had wanted to see something alive. The dialogue seems to suggest that if we are to see something truly alive, the form of the errant cause must somehow be taken into account and God the Savior invoked. 55 Let us return to the receptacle itself. How are we to understand its receiving function? It is said to be a place (topos) to provide room (chora). These are rather indefinite and neutral words. But the receptacle is also said to provide hedra for all things that have birth. Hedra can be understood neutrally as "place," but its richest as well as its quite .frequent meaning is "shrine" or "temple." The place provided by the receptacle seems to be a very special ~::me. Above all, "receptacle" does not seem to be an adequate translation for hypodoche, a noun formed from the verb hypodechomai. The primary meaning of this verb is "to welcome." It is the word that is used, for example, in book 14 of the Odyssey when the disguised Odysseus is said to delight in his heart because the swineherd Eumaeus "knew how to give welcome." Could this strangest of dialogues be suggesting that our world is the sort of "within which" that gives welcome to what is born into it; and that there are, as well, souls in the world which are able to give still more intimate welcome to what springs forth? We do after all say such things as: "she has a place in her heart for him." The muthos or logos presented by Timaeus seems to me to come closer than anything else in the Platonic dialogues to suggesting that the place we have in our hearts for persons and things is the very best place to be, better even than the hyperouranios topos, the super-heavenly place, spoken of in the Phaedras as the abode of the changeless originals which truly are. One wonders what the listening Socrates thinks about this suggestion. �. 1 . ' I ! l Making Much Ado About "Nothing" Jim Bailey 'l'he play Much Ado About Nothing (pronounced "noting")* is all about noting or nothing. The word nothing has three common uses in the play. Primarily, it refers to the noting of appearances which happens whenever people interact and is responsible for reputation and etiquette. In short, since we interact as we see one another, "noting" is responsible for what we call society. Secondly, the word noting is used to refer to the playing of notes. The interaction of notes in a symphony or dancers in a dance is used to symbolize the way we interact. Finally, the play discusses whether fashion and etiquette are nothing or merely show. If so, Shakespeare makes a great deal ~ut ~f this "nothing". Much Ado About Nothing is all about the masks, rules of etiquette and formalities that often happen when people come together. Society provides a framework whereby conflicts can be resolved (i.e. whereby lndividuals can triumph or yield as they ~ill or must) in which each party can maintain his integrity. At the very beginning of the play, Leonato, who must give welcome to the prince Don Pedro, gains esteem and favor rather than lo~e face by giving much more than he is required to. Politeness enables him to maintain his esteem in his own eyes and those of others by giving of his own free will and thus avoiding the appearance of necessity. Similarly, masks enable the characters to be truthful without threatening one another's integrity and self-esteem. In this way, Bea.trice is * Onions, C.T. A Shakespeare Glossary. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1978 . . able to tell Benedick what she thinks of his jesting and his being everyman' s man without having him reject her criticism, even though her criticism does hurt him. Behind a mask she can tell him what she · never could tell him face to face. Similarly, Benedick's and Beatrice's acquaintances stage conversations within the play to be overheard by Benedick and. Beatrice respect!vely, to cbnvince them to love one another. The staged conversations enable the conversants to speak openly and whoever is noting the conversation to take to heart what is said without losing face. As Hero says when on stage before Beatrice: "As Beatrice is, cannot be commendable. But who dare tell her so? If I should speak she would mock me into air." (Act III, scene i, lines 73-75) Masks and stages are for the benefit of the one noting and they enable him to see what he would not see without them. The characters of the play use such appearances to smooth over and resolve real conflicts harmoniously. Moreover, the characters in Much Ado About Nothing value masks because they care about how others note and esteem them. People value reputation and they often act in consideration of it. Perhaps because of this, out of town blind dates are the most exciting since they are not concerned with reputation but will be true to their desires. Being in another town, like being unknown or behind a mask, allows a person to act as he would not ordinarily act for fear of disapproval. But among neighbors most men seek to be known or noted as they would like to be. The honest person wears true apparel. He appears as he is. So Hero says, "Seemed I ever otherwise to you?"'1V,i,53) to mean 56 was I ever otherwise? However, just as most men strive to present their best side to the world and to hide that side of themselves of which they are ashamed, so the villain only utters the truth about himself in secret, while he presents falsity and deception to the world. Don John's lack of concern for reputation (i.e. how he is seen) reflects his lack of self-esteem or care to be worthy of the esteem of others. The villain only uses appearances to deceive and to hide his true nature. Nonetheless, men who deceive by appearances, if carefully noted, will be seen to be deformed or not quite true. In this way the Devil is named "Deformed". Deformed is the one who "borrows money in God's name, the which he hath used so long and neve·r paid that now men grow hard·. hearted and will lend nothing for God's sake." (V,i,310-314) Those who use appearances and etiquette in order to deceive, destroy harmony, and cause men not to trust one another. Just as Don John leads Claudio to falsely imagine what he cannot see clearly, all villains use words and masks to cause men to imagine things to be otherwise than they are. But because deception depends upon the deceived one's vision being obscured it can always be revealed. Because all deceptions deform the truth they_ can neither bear close scrutiny nor long acquaintance. Deceptions must be maintained, but the truth establishes itself. Hence, by carefully noting Hero, whom he has known for years, the Friar knows that she is innocent when she denies the deceived Claudio's accusations. , The task of the court (as represented by Dogberry and Verges) is to reveal villainy by means of such careful noting. Dogberry and Verges always say exactly the opposite of what they mean, but their meaning and intent are nonetheless unmistakable. Dogberry, flouting appearances by speaking words of nonsense, forces men to observe his true appearance, attitude and intent. Villains, on the other hand, distract the eye from inward rottenness with gaudy outward show. Shakespeare also uses "noting" in a musical sense to refer to people's banter and flattery of one another. Because Benedick's wit notes or plays on everything he sees, Claudio says of him: "his jesting spirit is now crept into a lutestring and now governed by stops." (III,ii, 56-57) A true wit can give pleasure and can flatter with notes as do minstrels. Thus, when Benedick loses his mirth he is like a minstrel without his lyre. So Don Pedro says of him, "What a pretty thing a man is when he goes in his doublet and hose and leaves off his wit." (V,i, 98-99) Men flatter to pleasure others and to be in turn well noted by · them.A "man of note" is one who is well noted, or rather one who is well thought of and whose praises are sung. Shakespeare continues this metaphor to describe characters who are disconcerted or sick as being out of tune. Certainly when someone is out of tune he is not well noted. The theme of the play is strikingly revealed through the interaction of Benedick and Beatrice. They both think of themselves as self sufficient and each continually strives to maintain his own personal integrity. Neither of them will admit to himself or to others his want of the other. Only when each is convinced of the other's love does he declare his love, and then he declares it as being for the sake of the other. We all have had the experience of gaining confidence to show our affection for someone because that person has made some initial show of affection. In the case of Benedick and Beatrice there appear to be two reasons that they hesitate to show their admiration of one another. First, each is afraid of being shunned by the other as undesirable and thus losing esteem in both his own and the other's eyes. Secondly, they don't want to endanger their high ideas of themselves by admitting affection for someone who 1s less than perfect. Benedick and Beatrice perform a delicate dance in which they slowly unmask their love for one another. First they have a battle of wits, being afraid to 57 �I I I . i (with good intention) . Benedick says that he only for pity and Beatrice says only take Benedick to save iv, 90-96) admit affection openly, in order for each to protect his fragile self esteem and pride. Then, because each hears that the other is madly in love with him, each admits his love as being for the sake of the other, each feeling triumphant and confident in his own integrity. Both Benedick and Beatrice feel as if they can give their love magnanimously in response to the other's need whereas pride prevents them from first admitting their own love. Nonetheless, others have to praise Benedick to Beatrice and vice versa so that each of them can requite the other's love without losing self esteem. Benedick even seeks to gain face by not pridefully rejecting Beatrice. Benedick and Beatrice see themselves as others see them, or rather they esteem themselves as they are esteemed by the world. To the end, even after the deceptive staging of the others is revealed, · takes Beatrice that she will his life. (V, Shakespeare sums up his comments on noting and what it entails in a brief interchange between Borachio and Conrade: Borachio: ... thou knowest that the fashion of a doublet, or a hat, or a cloak, is nothing to man. Conrade: Yes, it is apparel. Borachio: I mean the fashion. Conrade: Yes, the fashion is the fashion. (III, iii, 117-122) Perhaps this says best of all why Shakespeare made much ado about nothing. 58 �l I St. John's College Annapolis, MD 21404 i l I I .i 1 I � 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. 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For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bergren, Kathleen Burlein, Ann Cooper, Barbara Holland, Christian Maguire, Susan Marklin, Martin Miller, Richard Mullen, Alexander Sokolik Merle Sachs, Joe, 1946- Title A name given to the resource Energeia, Fall 1982 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Fall 1982. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Energeia Fall 1982 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Energeia Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1da4e0ffd3ccc6a2095dbeed71cfc01c.pdf febe3aefec5007982aa7c84185da8cd8 PDF Text Text ~~---"2Siic--·-,-,..T-..i~..---i'in-iro~~-r-~-...;::17r'--..,..~~-r--.~~-lr---.i~--,~ --1& q"t---........ SPRING, 1983 �CONTENTS PLATO'S FRIENDSHIP 1 ON SHAKESPEARE'S SONNET LXXI Laurence Berns 11 THE GENESIS OF MODERN SCIENCE IN GALILEO'S CONCEPT OF MATHEMATIZABLE NATURE Pierre H. Gragnier 13 - ON THE NATURE OF CONES AND CONIC SECTIONS Michael Landry -20 SUBSTANCE IN BOOK VII OF THE METAPHYSICS Cover: POINT OF TRA NQUILITY by M o rris Lo uis (1 912-1962). 1958, A cry lic. Photo courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden , Smithsonian Institution , Washington , 0 . C. Llffey Thorpe Lisa Tomasi 26 A TRANSLATION OF VALERY'S ''PALME" John Tracy 30 THE BREATH OF KINGS: ON THE TRAGEDY OF KING RICHARD THE SECOND Jonathan Antonio Edelman 33 A NOTE ON THE MATTHEW PASSION Elliott Zuckerman 43 NO EXIT A TRANSLATION OF SARTRE'S HUIS CLOS Wendell Finner 47 IN THE WAKE Andrew J. Krivak 24 THE TRESTLE - Andrew J. Krivak 25 CITY BLOCKS Richard E. Miller 29 SHORT STORY Liz Waldner 42 POEM John S. Carnes 46 Printed by the St. John 's College Press St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland ; WILLING BUT WEAK Poetry �ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself. STAFF Kathleen Bergren Ann Burlein Barbara Cooper Christian Holland Susan Maguire Martin Marklin Richard Miller Alexandra Mullen Joe Sachs Merle Sokolik Plato's Friendship Liffey Thorpe that I went to a college that required all its freshmen to study one year of Greek. But my choice to continue with the language, after the external compulsions to do so were removed, stemmed from my conviction that I could not befriend Plato, which I very much wanted to do, unless I could enter and inhabit his world, as I believed I could only do by learning his language. That was twelve years ago, and on good days I can almost believe that I have entered, and do inhabit Plato's world, if only as a resident alien. I should say, I think, that while I have come to believe that a deep acquaintance with Plato cannot be achieved without Greek, knowledge of Greek by no means guarantees understanding, much less friendship. And I am also aware that there are many people who read the dialogues in translation only, who deal better with the philosophical issues in them than many who read the dialogues in Greek --and I include myself. Still, it's one of those academic oddities, that while very few people would ever think of devoting themselves to Dante, or to Lady Murasaki, or to Homer or Aeschylus, without knowledge of the author's languages, not a few people who have, .at best, a passing-fair familiarity with the Greek alphabet, write books and articles on Plato, and on Aristotle, every day. And in light of this, I shouldn't be surprised, though I often am, at how often Plato's dialogues are discussed with little or no reference to their dramatic There are two kinds of things that I want to talk about this afternoon. First, I want to describe for you some of the reasons I have had for befriending--and being befriended by--Plato. This may make the afternoon somewhat more personal than those who asked me to speak intended. But I will try to compensate for this in the other thing I am planning, that is, to demonstrate some of the particular ways in which reading Plato's dialogues in Greek, rather than ·in translation, can make a difference, a difference not only in how one apprehends Plato's thought, but even sometimes, in what one apprehends. But I assume-that most of you already believe at least some of this, that whenever possible, it is preferable to read an author's works in that author's language, rather than in translation. It is one of those widely circulated opinions that translation means sacrifice, if not . complete sacrifice of meaning, then sacrifice of a good deal of an author's sense. Still, I know that I am usually curious about just what this sacrifice entails in the case of a particular author. I would like, for instance, to have a sense of the sense of Dante's Inferno, or of Lady Murasaki's Tales. And so it is on my mind today to try to convey to you some of that "sense of the sense" of Plato, what the experience of approaching Plato's thought through his language may be like. Let me first explain how it was I began to read Plato in Greek. It is true Liffey Thorpe is a former student on the Annapolis campus. She is now teaching at Earlham; this talk was first delivered before that community November 3, 1982. 1 �and linguistic features, as if Plato's meaning could be apprehended quite apart from the particular dramatic contexts with which he chose to give form and shape to that meaning. And yet, people who do not experience Plato in his language rarely, if ever, feel that a distinction between a dialogue's logos- -what is said--and its erga- -what is done, between the matter and the manner of matter, is a useful, or even possible distinction to make. Let me begin, then, by explaining something of the provenance of my relationship with Plato. I th ink you know that last month our freshmen class read the Lys is in Humanities. The Lysis was, for many, their first encounter with Plato. And I got to thinking, as we were reading it, and as thoughts of this lecture began to loom, that it had been almost exactly twelve year s since I had read a dialogue for the first time. I was then a freshman at St. John's College, and the dialogue was not the Lysis, but an even shorter work, the Ion. But St. John's made up for the brevity of that first encounter by requ1r1ng us, in subsequent weeks, to read as wel 1: the Apology, the Cri to, the Euthyphron, the Phaedo, Theaetetus, Sophist, Parmenides, Timaeus, Meno, Gorgias, Phaedrus, Symposium, and the Republic. You could say that St. John's tried harder to Platonise its freshmen than Boswell did to Johsonise his land. And you might also expect that, given this immersion-theory of platonisation, it would have been surprising had my affection for Plato failed to take root. But my first impressions of the dialogues were pretty inauspicious, as I ·rememher them. And the marginalia that litte r ~y first volume of Plato's dia logues c nf irm that I was, on the whole, unenchanted by Sokrates, nonplussed by the bizarre conversations he habitually struck up with anyone he happened to run into, and annoyed--as people who don't under stand what they are reading. I wanted to believe that Sokrates was no fool, because people whose opinions I trusted seemed to think he was not. But secretly, I was convinced that Sokrates suffered from having been born before most people had had time to figure most things out. After a while, we moved en classe to some of the headier dialogues: the Parmenides and the Theaetetus. I didn't know what epistemology was, but I did begin to think that Sokrates was getting a lot smarter. I enjoyed the third-man argument, what I understood of it . And al though I thought it odd that crates of pigeons and wax tablets should occur to anyone as useful models of cognitiveretrieval systems, I wasn't sure I could come up with anything better. It struck me that human error was not so easy to explain, that how most people know things; and how they manage to make mistakes about the things they suppos~dly know, were questions worth thinking about. So I was partialiy converted, though not yet what I could call a friend. I mentioned that by design of the St. John 's curriculum I was, at the same time, taking a year of Greek . And this is where you will see how I finally capitulated and became a friend and admirer of Plato's. Learning Greek at St. John's might best be described as the "hit-or-miss" theory of language learning. It is college policy that every teacher at St. John's should, at one time.or another, teach all the courses of the curriculum. As it happened, my Greek teacher was still trying to achieve detante with the first declension on the day classes began. (I might add that, despite this, Bob Anderson was the most important teacher of my life.) I didn't learn much Greek that year, but for some reason I liked it, and that winter I decided to · apply my very rudimentary skills to Plato's Cri to--the choice was merely fortuitous, as the Crito was the only Greek text I then owned . If I have anything true to say to you today, it is that nothing on earth more effectively slows down one 's ability to read a complete sentence than Greek. If you want to experience deliberate, painstaking, incremental comprehension, the sort where, midway through a sentence you've forgotten what was said at the beginning, and could almost believe that, 1 ike one of Zeno's paradoxes, no matter 2 how much you cover, you will never reach an end-~try reading something in Greek. I spent a month reading the first page of the Crito. And I was more acutely aware of what I was reading than I had ever before been. I became aware of how deliberately Plato had chosen words, words whose connotations were often highly apposite to the visible situation of Sokrates' incarceration and imminent execution. In particular, I came to one exchange between Sok rates and Cri to that gave me special trouble. (You may remember that the Crito is the dialogue in which Crito comes to Sokrates in his prison, on behalf of Sokrates' friends, to persuade him to escape; Sokrates declines the offer.) At a certain point, Sokrates explains to Cri to how he knows that he will not be executed on the following day, but on · the day after that. He says that he had had a dream, in which a woman appeared to him and announced: "Oh Sokrates, nµaTL XEV TPLTaTw ~~Lnv EPL8w~ov ~XOLO~ ~ - The six words I have just read slowed down my reading even more, because they are written, not in Plato's attic Greek, but in the more ancient, epic dialect. The six words form a single line of epic hexameter, so it took me longer to . figure out what Sokrates' dream-lady was saying: "Oh Sokrates, on the third day you will reach lovely Phthia." Now once I had this, I became curious to know what poem Sokrates' dream was making reference to. The line is from Iliad Book IX, and it is Akhilles who speaks these words: "On the third day I will reach lovely Phthia." --Akh~lles, when he refuses to be persuaded by his friends, who have come to persuade him to return to battle against Troy. His friends off er several face-saving proposals, but Akhilles, whom Homer calls by his epithet µLvuw.5'a6Lo~ "minute-lived," because he is young and doomed and he will, in fact, return to battle and die, and will never see his homeland again--Akhilles says he will leave Troy and start home: "And on the third day I will reach lovely Phthia." I was struck by two things as I considered this. First, that the word naming Akhilles' homeland, Phthia, ~~Ln , is very nearly another word, ~~Lw , [phthio], meaning, "to perish1 to waste away and vanish." The pun, if it was intended, is in Homer, reflecting, perhaps, Akhilles' unique dilemma, that, stay or leave, either way he is doomed to perish, either by quick death ~n the battlefield, or through living out an obscure, invisible life in Phthia that would earn him namelessness forever. And I was struck, too, by what seemed to be the unavoidable suggestion of a compari•on between those two critical moments in the lives of Akhilles and Sokrates, where the refusal to be persuaded by friends would have profound mortal consequences for each. But the comparison is not an exact fit. In something of a similar situation, Sokrates, unlike Akhilles, never wavers in his conviction that what he is doing is right, while Akhilles will finally change his mind, and will choose heroic immortality. It made me aware, this passage, of Plato urging me to reflect on the heroic dimensions of his Sokrates, who, in his stark jail cell, faces a choice .that even the most splendid pattern of Greek heroes faced. And in · a way , the dream transformed that visible cell and placed Sokrates right there on the plains of Troy. I read the next line, Crito' s response to Sokrates' dream: five words, utterly clear: "AToltov To €vunv1..ov ili rwxpaTE~ • "Your dream, Sokratea, is aTOltOV {atopon]." That word aTOltO\) means, literally, "without a place," "placeless." "Your dream, Sokrates," says Cri to, "has no place here." If you read a translation of ~Crito, you will most likely find - Cri to' s reply translated something like, "Strange dream, that, Sokratesl" This isn't really inaccurate, for aTonov comes to mean "strange." But in this translation we lose a good deal of the irony of Crito's obtuseness, his failure to see how perfectly in place and appos.ite Sokrates' Homeric dream is. It was here, then, that I saw the place, the Teno~, {toposl, that Plato had 3 �He does not know what . a getting into. He cannot say what a sophist sophist is. And he only dimly "thinks he teaches. what he might learn from knows" Protagoras. At this point, Sokrates delivers one of his rare lectures. .I can't quote the whole of it, but according to Sokrates, sophists are like people who sell foods, but with these differences: one, in what they sell, for food vendors sell nourishment for the body, while sophists sell nourishment for the soul. The second difference is in how they sell their wares: for food vendoTs sell foods in containers that can be carried home and examined, to avoj d the risk of cofl sumi. ng poisonous or harmful foods; whereas sophists sell what is necessarily, as it were, consumed on the premises. For there exists no container to carry away what these men sell . Hippokrates asks what it is that sophists sell, and it is Sokrates' answer that I want to quote you from two current English translations, the ones you would be most likely to read . The first is taken from the by Bobbs- Merrill edition, translated Martin Ostwald. Hippokrates asks what created for me, the reader of his Cri to. Sokrates does not explain his dream, or the allusion to Akhilles; and yet the allusion is unmistakably there. And at that moment, I no longer tried to identify my point of view with the person Sokrates is speaking to, with Crito. I became a third person in the dialogue, a person for whom Plato was taking special pains to point out what Crito himself seems not · to notice. This passage from the Cri to illustrates, then, what is always evident to me in Plato's dialogues, the deliberateness with which Plato invites, and sets a place, a 1onos, for his audience, so that we become, not merely listeners , but shareholders in the dialogue -- as when Sokrates' Homeric dream invites me to envision what is not actually visible, that scene in Iliad IX . I will try to go a 1 i ttle further now, and discuss why I think Plato's attempt to involve his audience so directly in the dialogues can be crucial to his ulterior, philosophical aims . The passage I want next to consider comes from the Protagoras. And I will need to give some contextual background first. Early in the Protagoras, Sokrates engages in a conversation with a young Athenian, Hippokrates. Hippokrates is older than, say, Lysis and Menexenus. He has finished his education in the gymnasi um, and now wants to do graduate work with the sophist Protagoras . Hippokrates is so eager to study with Protagoras that he tells Sokrates, with all the innocent candor of someone who has never had to earn a living, that he is prepared to pay Protagoras not only all of his own mon ey- -b ; wh i ch I suppose he means his parents ' money--but is prepared to pay the sophist all his friends' money as well. Sok rates, of course, hasn't got ar.y money, but Hippokrates knows that Sokrates does have a gift for getting people's attention, and hopes that he will agree to introduce him to Protagoras. But in the course of their interview--you can probably anticipate this--it transpires that Hippokrates has little idea what he's sophists sell, and Sokrates replies,· "Surely," I said, "knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, ..... For there is far greater risk in buying knowledge, than in buying food and drink . The one you purch~se of the wholesale or retail dealer and carry them away in other vessels ..... But you cannot buy knowledge and carry it away in other vessels; when you have paid for it, you must receive it into the soul and go on your way, either greatly harmed or greatly benefited." This is also, in essence, the translation found in the Modern Library series. In the Bollingen collected dialogues, this passage, translated by Mr. Guthrie, reads: "Indeed, the risk you run in purchasing knowledge is much greater than in buying provisions. When you 4 What Sokrates is really talking about here, then, is the problem of received opinions and learning. The problem looks something 1 ike this: Knowledge, the apprehension of truth, is never fallible, never in error. And knowledge, whatever it may be, must be grasped from out of those things that we have in mind; for it seems impossible that we could ever know something that we don't have in mind. But we can have lots of things in mind: false opinions as wel 1 as true opinions. But the certainty that what we have in mind is true, not false, opinion--the certainty that we have apprehended the truth, knowledge -- can only be gotten through examination, o~E~L..Sr [skepsis]. And the difficulty is, that to merely learn things--that is, simply to take them in, whatever you are told--provides no container, no ayyECov [aggeion], to use Sokrates' word: something by which it becomes possible to hold learning at a distance while it is examined for possible truth. It is here that recollection, as Sokrates speaks of it in the Meno and elsewhere, becomes important: since truth can never be grasped in what is immediately seen, or simply learned, it must be buy food and drink, you can carry it away from the shop or warehouse in a receptacle, .••.• But knowledge cannot be taken away in a parcel. When you have paid for it, you must receive it directly into your soul, benefitted or harmed accordingly." Now I want to consider, first, what Sokrates seems to be saying about the matter, ~ Protagot:"as sells, which in these translations is "knowledge." If you had to reason out Sokrates' epistemology on the basis of these passages, you might conclude that Sokrates, like the often misquoted Pope, thinks that knowledge can be a· dangerous thing, that the knowledge sophists sell has, at least, the potential for doing harm to Hippokrates' soul. We might wonder, does Sokrates--does Plato? - -believe that knowledge can be dangerous because there are some things we ought not know about? Or that too 1 ittle--or too much--knowledge might injure the soul? A reader more familiar with Plato's works might figure that something is suspicious here, since elsewhere, and always, Sokrates is immovable on at least this point, that knowledge, E:noTnJ.lil , is virtue, strength, and a good thing for the soul. And how could what is good for the soul harm the soul? But the word Sokrates uses here to describe the commodity that sophists sell is not the word commonly translated as "knowledge", ETIL..onh1n ,nor even its near synonym, "wisdom" oo<pLa • The word is µa.er)µa Ta' [mathemata] , that is, "learnable th in gs." A mathemata is anything that a person can learn: doxa, opinions, both true ones and false ones. Pope never said that knowledge is a dangerous thing, and neither did Sokrates. But learning could be, because learning--but not knowledge in the very precise sense in which Plato and Sokrates always use that word--learning could be fallible, untrue, deceptive. Sophists like Protagoras sold learning, µa~nµaTa~ and so, for instance, one could, for perhaps three drachmas, purchase a proof for squaring circles, or an argument to demonstrate the existence of not-being. apprehended through a process of skepsis, examination, and will always amount to a kind of second, reflective, sight, a recovery of truth that escaped notice when it wa~ first "seen." · This notion 0£ the danger of received opinion is prevalent, of course, in most dialogues. And it arises, not only in connection with the sophists, but, perhaps more insidiously, in the matter of poetry. I say "insidiously," because poetry was the first and most important leg in a young Athenian's education--as we see, for instance, in the Lysis. Athenian education, to µa~EC'V Ta µa~nµaTa to learn learning, consisted chiefly of memorizing -- taking in mind -- the words of the poets: Homer, Hesiod, Solon, Simonides. Protagoras himself recognizes what is clearly a common opinion among Greeks, that "The mark of a truly educated person is being well-versed in poetry." In the Lysis we see two young boys, Lysis and Menexenus, who are undergoing just such a .5 �skepsis . I will return to this point, because I want to su9gest that in the form of the dialogue, in the particular ways that Plato invites the reader · to take an active part, not mere 1 y as audience, he has attempted to solve that problem of received learning, by designing a contain er, a yy ECov I that forces skepsis. Now I want to look at another passage, also from Protagoras, where again the Greek 1 anguage prov ides a sense that translations often do not . The Protagoras, I should say, is like the Lysis, and at least half of all socratic dialogues, in being a "recollected" dialogue: that is, it is a dialogue that Sokrates Rlready has in mind and is recollecting . In this sense, then, the Protagoras -- and the Lysis -- are not, in the first place, imitations of dialogue , they ar e imitations of monologue recollecting the dialogue . The Protagoras is fairly long . About midway through, in the middle of a dis cussion about human virtue and wisdom and justice, Protagoras answers one of Sokrates' questions by introducing a quite different point on the useful and the good. It's pretty clear that Protagoras is deliberately sabotaging the argument, because he's had enough of Sokrates' questions, and suspects that he is beginning to appear a lau9hingstock, 11 cna y~>-a0 T o <; in front of his colleagues and prosepcti ve students. So Protagoras changes the subject by introducing a short speech on the useful and the good. It really is brief, too: both in comparison with other answers that he has given, and compar·ed with answers that Sok rates h imse 1 f has made. Protagoras' speech earns him plenty of audience applause. But this is what Sokrates says (and here I again quote from two current English translations) : "Protagoras," (he says ) , 11 I have a wre t ched memo r y, and when any one makes a long speech to me, I never remember what he is talking about . . . so now, having such a bad memory, I will ask you to cut your answers shorter." A second translation reads: "Protagoras, I happen to be a "traditional" education, "traditional" in the exact sense of its Greek synonym n:apa61., 6 ova1., [paradidonai] , "to hand over to." Lysis and Menexenus are not empty wax tablets onto which Sokrates introduces new ideas, only later to scratch out. Sokrates is working, as he so often does, with the stuff, the µaBriµarn, , that Ly sis and Menexnus already have in mind: these words of Solon's, the 1 ine of friendship by Homer, and again by Hesiod, the opinions of Empedocles, and Euripides, the ideas of more contemporary th inkers, the anti-logicians, and the sophists. Their heads are full of "received wisdom" by the time Sokrates talks to them. And even in the dialogue's name, Lysis,/\.uoL s , as any Greek speaker would have heard, we can hear the sense_ of "breaking down," or "destroying," (as wel 1 as the more favor able sense of "solution , " as to some enigma) . And against those who have maintained that in this dialogue Plato has attempted to vindicate Sokrates of charg~s of co r rupting the young, I can't imagine that Anytus and Meletus could have done better _than this dialogue to find evidence of Sokrates' almost systematic calling into question of the traditional tenets of received wisdom. Let me back up a bit here and just review what point I wanted to make about that passage from the Protagoras. Sokrates objects, not simply to the matter that sophists sell,--and now I mean to include poetry, too--but, more important, his objection is made about the manner in which all µa.BnµaTa, learning, is received: uncritically, without a container that would make skepsis possible . I have talked about one passage from · the Cri to and one from the Protagoras. In both instances, translation has tended to obscure, or to distract from, Plato's meaning. I have also brough t up, in connection with the Protagoras, a particular way in which Plato, through Sokrates, articulates the "problem of learning," and of received opinions and ideas. For learning is received in the mind, or the soul, uncritically, that is, without a container, ayyE COV , that WOU 1 d encourage 6 forgetful sort of person, and if someone speaks to me at length, I forget what he is talking about ... So since you are dealing with someone with a bad memory, cut your answers short and make them briefer." Even in these translations, you're not likely to miss the irony. In fact, if Sokrates is claiming to "have a bad memory, 11 --that he cannot remember what Protagoras has just been saying--it wouldn't amount to a very interesting irony, since it would be merely and blatantly false. For it is obvious by the very conditions of the Protagoras-remember I said it was a recollected dialogue--that Sokrates has no trouble recalling verbatim entire conversations, including, here, Protagoras' disquisition on the useful and the good, as well as his own claim of having a bad memory. Only o ne translation of the two I read conveys in part better the sense of Sokrates' words, £n:LA.noµwv TL,~ wv [epilesmon tis on tungkano], "I happen to be a forgetful sort of person. 11 'Ei(1.,/..,noµwv, [epilesmon], the wo rd often translated as "having a bad memory," is an adjective from the verb epilanthanomai meaning "to escape o ne's own notice," "to forget." Now it is merely false for Sokrates to claim to have a bad memory. His capacity to recall what is said is never, in any dialogue, a matter of dispute, (although Ei(LATlalJWV could convey the sense of "bad memory," describing, that is, a constitutional incapacity for remembering.) But when Sok rates says he is £n: 1., A.noµwv, and in view of the evidence that he does not suffer from an inability to recall what is said, we may avail ourselves of that other sense of E:n:1.,A.noµwv that is, "forgetful." In this sense, E: j( 1., A. naµwv describes one who is 1 iable to fail to notice something, but without connoting that forgetfulness is any permanent condition. Thus, for instance, when Sokrates says in the Apology that he almost "forgot same verb himself" (using that epilanthanomai) because his accusers spoke so persuasively, we need not think he means that he was ever in serious jeopardy of permanent amnesia of his identity; only that, confronting those false appearances promoted by Anytus and Meletus, Sokrates momentarily lost sight of his true self. When, then, Sokrates claims to be EnLAnoµwv in the Protagoras, he is not merely telling a great lie about his ability to recall--! grant that level of irony--he is as well telling a great truth about himself: that he is a profoundly forgetful person, a person, that is, who is ever intent on recovering, in the face of conflicting or false appearances, something that is true, but that has somehow escaped his notice. Sokrates is (n: 1., )..r)oµwv in that sense of being always self-conscious of a concern for the forgotten, the unnoticed. Indeed, . this sense of forgetfulness is at the very heart of Sokrates' habitual self- recognition: that he knows that he does not know: he is self-conscious of his ignorance, his failure to notice, truth that is concealed by appearances. I want to point out, too, that in the example I have been talking about, in the Protagoras, it is not, I think,Protagoras' speech that Sokrates really means he is liable to forget. It is, he says~ n:E:p 1., o ~ 6 A.oy os ~ v "what the argument was about. 11 And this, I take it, is not the sophist's disquisition on the useful and the good, but those more remote arguments about human virtue and justice and courage. But what difference does it make, how we understand EltL ATfoµw v--not as "having a bad memory," but as "forgetful"? I have mentioned the Greek names for a number of words I have talked about. And now I want to introduce one more, the word for "truth, 11 &)..nBE1.,a, [aletheia]. The etymology of this word has been disputed, but many Greeks, and certainly Plato, regarded a/.., rl~E \., CI. 1 S etymon as derived from A.avBavw, [ lanthano]: )..n{Jn , [lethe], meaning "forgotten. II Thus aAr)BE LCI., truth --the "a" negates lethe--means something like "unforgotten" or "un-concealed." In fact, th~s same word A.n~n is contained in that very word for forgetful,En:L)..noµwv. 7 �only what Plato says, but how Plato says: my sense that Plato alway~attempted to create a room, a place, for his reader. To conclude I want to turn to the dialogue that is explicitly concerned with friendship, the Lysis . Here, Sokrates attempts to elicit from two young boys, Lysis and Menexenus, a definition of what a friend is . We have only to look at the conclusion to see that the attempt fails: "But what a friend is, we have been unable to dis cover . 11 The immediate reason for the failure is the intrusion of the two pedagogues who have come to take Lysis and Menexenus away; had they not _app~ared, Sokrates intended to turn the conversation ov~r t0 those standing on the periphery, oL TIEPlEOT W TES [hoi periestotes] , the observers of conversation. The failure of the Lysis makes it one of those dialogues sometimes described as "aporetic," which is to say, inconclusive, unsuccessful. That word, "aporetic," like two other words I have mentioned today--aletheia and atopon- -is compounded of the negative prefix a - and a noun: nopos. ITopos is a lovely word . It is cognate with our words "port" and "ford"-- TIOpo s means "a way" or "a passageway from here to there," a road that gets somewhere. Thus "a- poretic" dialogues are so- called because they fail to complete a passage, fail to get from here to there. Sok.r ates speaks the word TIO po s in describing at the end of the Lysis the two pedagogues: they were, he says, anopo1., lAporoi], that is, impossible to get past, impossible to get through. And so, he continues, we had to break up the discussion, 6 1.,EA. uoa -µ Ev: you can hear Lysis' - Auo1.,s - name in that word, dielusamen. So the discussion breaks up. And yet, we cannot be satisfied, I think, that the afternoon was merely u~successful. For we must keep in mind that th e whole Lysis is a performance of Socratic recollection, which at least implies that, al though the actual conversation achieved no llG ~os , somehow i n the reco] lection of it, and the OHE(j;l S of it- - the distanced examination of it--maybe there exists some Tiopo s; some way of getting to the truth, (It is also the name of the mythological river of forgetfulness, the Lethe . I guess I'm lucky my parentE didn't know Greek when they thought to name me after a river.) Some of you may recogniz.e what I am saying from Martin Heidegger's Introduc tion to Metaphysics, where he discusses aA.n~ElO., as being, for the Greeks a matter of unconcealment, the apprehension of what is there but has escaped notice, has been forgotten. At any rate, for Plato, it was in the nature of truth, aA. nBE 1.,a, to make its appearance as something unforgotten, disclosed. It is this performance of recollection that Sokrates speaks of in the Meno, the process, through skepsis, of apprehending what has momentarily escaped notice. In the Lysis, for instance, Sokrates describes philosophy as that desire for what one properly possesses but does not grasp, namely, wisdom. For Sok rates, philosophy is that desire for wisdom in the face of ignorance, which makes him the perfectly f orgetful man, attending always to the attempt to discover, through skepsis I the truth I l~A nB E \., 0., and to recognize it as truth, to remember what he has forgotten, to notice what has escaped notice. Socratic forgetfulness has less --if anything--to do with "having a bad memory" as with Sokr.ates' habitual self-consciousness that he is failing to notice something, failing to notice the truth. I said I was going to try to convey something of the experience of reading Plato in Greek. In some instances, it is the experience of apprehending connotations that are difficult to convey in translation: the sense of ctTOITOV as "out of place" as well as, more idiomatically, "strange," or £:TI 1., A. rfoµw v as "forgetful" rather than "having a bad memory;" and the sound of A.nBn in ETILAno µuJV and aA.r)Baa And it is also the experience of apprehending with perhaps more accuracy what Plato means, as for example uctBnµa1u ,learning, but not knowledge. I said, too, that I wanted to explain something of what endears me to Plato's words, and makes me regard Plato as something of a friend--that I enjoy not a 8 aA.nBELO'.. Yet it is characteristic of aporetic and recollected dialogues that Sokrates never adverts to direct speech to tell us the result of his OHE(j;LS. The Lysis gives us only that imitation of Sokrates' "second-look;" the results of it must finally be ou r own . I began by talking about the conclusion of the Lys is. Now perhaps when I tell you what the first word of that dialogue is, you will hear something in it that you would not have heard before: the first word is EnopEBoµnv, [eporeuomen]. ' ETiopEuoµn \. is a verb, and in .m ost English translations you will find that this word has been translated, "I was walking" or "I was going ." There are at 1 east a dozen verbs in the Greek vocabulary that mean something like going or walking or traveling on foot. ~Plato chose the verb poreuomai, which means travel, but particularly, literally in the sense of making ~ opos a passage for oneself . Thus when Sok rates begins ,ETiopn1oµnv, he is saying, "I was attempting to make a way for myself" --I've translated that "attempting," because the form is in the imperfect tense, and this imperfect--uncompleted--aspect does not imply · that the activity was completed. "I was attempting to make a way for myself," says Sokrates, "from the Academy to the Lyceum." In fact, for all we know, Sokrates never did get to the Lyceum; at least his attempt was frustrated by those people who persuafied him to enter the gymnasium instead . But cnopc1c5µnv I tells us something else, not about Sokrates' literal travel between two places, but about his travel in speech, what he later describes as "a difficult road," the conversation about friendship with Lysis and Menexenus, where he attempted to find his way. So we hear in ETiopEuo11nv the literal nopo~ that Sokrates attempts and fails, to cross the distance between Academy and Lyceum; and the hint, too, of that figurative travel, in speech, to get from the appea ra nce of friendship to a knowledge of what a friend is, and this too fails. But I want to suggest that in ETiopEuoµ nv we h~ar the p~ssibility of a third rropos 9 attempted, that is, the recollection of truth. For we have, in the Ly sis, not direct conversation, but conve rsat ion at a remove, a distance, contained in the imitation of socratic OXE~LS. And so for us, the reader, the Lysis becomes a road that we, too, may travel. Let me give you one example of the sort of thing that we, as readers, are able to notice in the Lysis, something that suggests that although the Tiopos was not found in speech, something at least was accomplished in the course of the dialogue, something encouraging. Throughout the Lysis, Lysis and Mene xe nus ~re conspicuously close friends. I say "conspicuous1y" because, in describing them, Plato has chosen to use a rather rare inflection of Greek nouns and verbs, the so-called dual. The dual, which was common enough in epic language consists of a particular set of wordendings that designate pairs of things: hands, eyes, feet, oxen . But as I have said, by Plato's time this form had become obsolete, and twos of things were no longer differentiated from threes or fours or hundreds of things. But Plato makes the friendship between Lysis and Menexenus conspicuous to the Greek reader by always designating these two friends in the dual: E'yEAaochnv aµcpw, "they both-together-as-a-pair laughed"; < LA. w yap E: a T o v , p "for the two of you are friends"; Ecpa1nv, "they spoke together"; 01>vE:cpchnv, "the two agreed in unison ." The boy's unaimity, their absorption in each other, is signified, too, in the early conversation in which Sokrates attempts to distinguish them from each other: Which of you is older? Which nobler? Which wiser? Juster? Wealthier? These are things, says Menexenus, that "we spend a lot of time arguing about." And you cound say that Sokrates' remark, that friends share all things,xoLva Ta TWV cp(A.wv [koina ta ton philon) , applies, at least trivially, to these boys: each shares the other's characteristics; at least, they are unable to distinguish themselves. But by the end of the Ly sis, something has changed. The communality of a �friendship is no longer mone~, looks, age, pedigree , but a shared pursuit of knowl edge in the face of self- conscious ignorance. They are, says Sokrates , t.pLAOL , (philoi 1 , but the object of their love, their desire, is no longer merely one another, but, in the recognition that they are equals in ignorance, a desire for what is truly c.pL.\o v , dear, namely, wisdom. In the final words of the dialogue, Sokrates describes this circle of friends, a circle that is now wider by one, and distinguishes itself as a group of those who stand on the periphe r y, observers but not participants: "Well, now, Lysis and Menexenus, we have become laughing s tocks -- I, an old man, and you . Fo r those people will say as they leave that though we believe ou rs elves frie nds --f o r I place even myself in you r midst --what a friend is, we have been unable to discove r." To the people standing around as observers, O TIEPLEOTWTE~ , the sight of L other people 's ignorance appears as an object o f r idicule : Sokrates and the boys have become laughable in the eyes of others . But am0ng themselves, as friends, friends whose cornmuna 1 i ty is the pursuit of what is truly dear, wisdom, the recognition of ignorance will never appear ridiculous. Before their conversation with Sokrates , Lysis and Menexenus had only themselves as objects of philia . But the dialogue has created a new place, a new T O ll O~ , and a new starting place from which to make a journey, a llopo~. The enlargement of the circle of friends is shown in Sokrates ' words, ~aL Eµ l yap i) µ Cv TL Br µL., [kai eme gar en hurnin titherni), "for I place even myself in your midst . " I began some time ago by saying that on a good day I can be 1 ieve that I have entered, and am inhabiting, Plato's world . For me, the invitation to enter came through the language, Gr eek . It i s 1 an gu age that always for ces r eflection , language that, in its own way, becomes a way, ll opos; • And on good days when I am reading Plato , I can believe that I am standing, not on the periphery of the dialogue among oC llEP LOT W T C~ , but that I, too, "place myself in the midst" of that ci r cle of friends who have all things in common . cv 1 On Shakespeare's Sonnet LXXI laurence Berns No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell. Nay, if you read this line, remember not The hand that writ it; for I love you so, That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot If thinking on me then should make you woe. o, if, I say, you look upon this verse When I perhaps compounded am with clay, Do not so much a·s my poor name rehearse, But let your love even with my life decay, Lest the wise world should look into your moan, And mock you with me after I am gone. The first quatrain of this poem is bleak as bleak can be. The poet addresses his love with his own death either :i'..n prospect or accomplished. The funeral ringing of the church bells is sad, bemoaning the loss, but also comforting, raising the hope of passage, perhaps, to a better place. The poet will have none of this comfort: the bell, surly and sullen, warns, even threatens. There is a reminder of the usual expectations, for he does not say " the " or " our " vile world, but "this" vile world, suggesting that there is another. Fleeing from this vile world, supposedly to a more peaceful place~ again rouses religious expectations. This world is styled vile in comparison to that more perfect heavenly one. If the poet wants to remind us of the usual hopes, it is only to dash them to the ground more strongly. This world is vile, but death is a dwelling with greater vileness, with vilest worms. If life is vile, and its ending vilest, the advice of the first line is plausible. Yet, despite - the meaning of the words, the ringing assonance and alliteration of the first four lines is not unpleasant. The steadi--. ness and regularity of the bell's ringing somehow suggests the natural regularity of c9ming into being and passing away. The first clause of the second quatrain repeats the advice of the first lines of the poem. At the same time, howeyer, it draws our attention to the poem itself and "the hand that ~rit it". But the way the advice is offered seems to make it impossible to follow. The sudden change of tone in the sweetly simple declaration, "for I love you so", deepens the paradox. Is this the kind of language lovers are likely to forget? The central word in the first of the central lines of the whol.e poem is "sweet". For lovers Mr . Berns is a tutor at the Annpolis campus. 10 11 �whose love has been mutual the world cannot have been al together vi le. Sweet times breed sweet thoughts. The poet seems to have contrived this poem so as to be remembered, not forgotten by his beloved, but only in the beloved' s sweet · thoughts. Theirs is a proud love. The poet would rather be forgotten, if thinking on him would only bring on woe. By exhorting the reader to do what is impossible, the third quatrain elaborates the conceit of the first line and a half of the second quatrain. The final sestet as a whole is designed to relieve and to sweeten the sadness of the beloved. The poet plays with his beloved even after he is dead. By the ninth line of the poem, "O, if, I say, you look upon this verse", there is no longer any question about whether these lines will be read. Surely, the poet doth protest too much. The advice, however, is backed up by a threat: if the beloved does not forget the poet, the wise world will mock. Along with the sentiments of the first quatrain, the wise world, or the worldly wise, think that all hopes for immortality are ridiculous and vulgar . In this sonnet, taken by itself, the poet seems to agree with the worldly wise. Established religion's consolation, belief in an after-life, seems to be rejected. The words soul and spirit never occur. But the wise world may not be as wise as it thinks: the poet may have found a way of preserving something of himself even after he is gone. He preserves only that ~art of himsel~ whi~h he regards worthy of survival, thi::· sv•eet and playful thought-provoking part. 1 The word "with" in the final line of the poem abounds in fruitful ambiguity. It could mean that the poet will join the wise world in mocking his love if the beloved persists in bemoaning the poet's loss. It could also mean that the wise world would use him, the poet, as the instrument of its mockery. It could even mean that the poet "and" his love "together" will be mocked, if the beloved should openly bemoan their loss. The poet knows that nothing can obliterate the sorrow from the death of those we love. Yet by mixing a spirit of sweet loving playfulness with that sorrow he has contriv2d to transform lover's moans to smiles. . 1. In the third foot of the twelfth line the only major break in metrical regulari ty, substituting anapaest for iamb, suggests that the love is stretched out rather than cut short . 2 . Sonnets LXXI to LXXIV may form some kind of unity. I have tried to interpret Sonnet LXXI by itself. The central lines of Sonnet LXXIV, however, seem to express the central thought of this sonnet as well: The earth can have but earth, which is his due; My spirit is thine, the better part of me. The Genesis of Modern Science In Galileo's Concept of Mathematizable .Nature Pierre H. Gagnier The general aim of !h~ Crisis of th~ Eur opean Scie nces and Transcendental Phenomenology involves the critical exploration of the history of modern philosophy, considered according to its radical meaning as apodeictic science. The task of modern science, and its failure to fulfil that task, contain hidden sources which point to the necessity of a transcendental science . of phenomenology. This science is then developed in light of the examination of the pregiven "life-world", and of the problem of transcendentally ungrounded psychology. In the examination of philosophy, phenomenology is presented as the hidden telos of modern apodeictic science . Husserl opens the whole work with an explication of the crisis of this science. Thus presented, it constitutes a most important motivation for the whole work. In order, however, to understand the crisis and its importance, the nature of science must first be understood. The . beginning of this task lies in the uncovering of the hidden roots of modern science through the examination of its radical f ormation in Galileo ' s thinking. My beginning then will follow closely Husserl's setting out of this genesis, and I will confine my efforts to a more or less pedestrian tracing of his footsteps. Why must analysis of the meaning of modern science begin with a look at Galileo? The task of modern science could not .b e t a ken up until its range was delimited and made specific, and this determination arises out of the re- alization v~rsally of Galileo's idea of a uni - mathematizable world whose nature ' is disclosed through mathematical physics. The motives for this idea will lead us to .the motives~ behind moder~ philosophy whi~h constitute its hidden telos. This first motive arises from a two-fold source, or two_interrelated givens. The first is the array of special sciences inherited from the ancients . Each of these sciences presides over an ~ priori region which is finite; although they yield neceisary truths, these sciences draw their objects from a finite realm. For instance, Euclidian ,geometry is not the science of all of the infinite number of possible, geometric configurations, but rather the science of all the geometrical objects that fall under its exhaustible purveyance. The other given is a new idea about science, a new attitude toward universal and apodeictic reasoning, through which the old sciences are taken up and given infinite tasks. Thus Euclidean geometry leads to the method by which an infinite yet delimited region of possible ! priori- geometrical knowledge is systematically ·disclosed, or in another manner of speaking, it leads to the· method by which the infinite realm of geometrical ~ priori knowledge is systematically constructible in advance according to universal principles. These two givens motivate an unexamined. presentiment in Galileo: that the realm of objective being is a rational tota lity tha t c an be constructed in advance ! priori by its own universal science. This presentiment Pierre H. Gagnier, a junior, wrote this paper for Mr. Lenkowski's prece~torial on Husserl's, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. 12 13 �leads to the mathematization of nature in Galileo's physics. The meaning of the mathematization of nature can be discovered in the train of thought which led Galileo to it . This train of thought involves presuppositions the problematic nature of which Galileo does not see. First, if we examine what is given for Galileo in this respect, we find 1) that the world presents itself as objective in everyday experience, and 2) that pure mathematics is a science of absolute, self-evident validity. The presupposition that remains unexamined for Galileo is this: it is to be taken for granted that the content of objective experience is the very thing which makes it objective, and is thus its true nature; and this "true nature" consists in ideal mathematical properties . The apodeictic science of these properties is mathemat ics, and specifically, geometry. In orde r to explicate the meaning of this presupposition, the "meaning" of geometry which guided Galileo must be examined . The "meaning" of geometry contains notions of which Galileo may or may not be explicitly aware. Nevertheless our investigation attempts to formulate these notions. In Husserl's analysis of geometry, pure rational geometrical space never means the abstracted transformations which the imagination derives from sense, · for these will always be sensible, however abstract or arbitrary, and they will always be "thinkable only in gradations: the more or less straight, flat, circular, etc. " Sensible things, considered as shapes, whether empirically intuited or abstractly conceived, are only approximately self-identical, that is, approxi ~ately the same things at different times, app r o x . ately the same as themselves, and approx i ma tely the same in other things. They are not exactly identifiable in terms of shape . On the othe r hand , they have shape determinations which are capable of ever more accurate measurement. As the technology of measurement improves, the accuracy of determination improves. As improvement proceeds, it comes to be seen as improvement toward something, and this something comes to mean the ideal lifil= it-shapes of pure geometry. These limit-shapes are unattainable poles of perfection and constitute the realm of "pure thinking", which uses a systematic method of idealization and construction to gain knowledge of this realm. Rut this root meaning of geometry need not be formulated, nor even become a matter of interest in oraer to be employed as ideal method . In fact, as such, it is a cultural accomplishment which does not give evidence of that which gave it its original meaning. The original meaning is obscured, or "sedimented" over by consequent cultural accretions. of meaning. Nevertheless, geometry arises out of the idealization of objectively standardized shapes. In time the discovery is made that all conceivable ideal shapes may be constructed by . the~ priori, universal and systematic method of pure geometry, so that it becomes, in and of itself, the science of an infinite ~ priori. Geometry was a given for Galileo, and though he did not know it, its meaning arose out of the art of measur ement. The art of measurement was itself a tradition given to him which guided him in his relation of empirical matters to the pure mathematical ideals of limit. The idea of mathematical limits set a task to the art of measurement, according to which a method is developed of progressive approximation to geometrical ideals. Pure geometry, remaining autonomous, provides a means and guidance for this task. Since the meaning of geometry was "sedimented" for Galileo, he did not know that it arose from the art of measurement, but he did know that geometry was applied to the art of measurement. For Husserl, "sedimentation" is the process through which original and originary meanings are lost or forgotten. The question which was hidden for Galileo becomes urgent in the unfolding of the late r misdirection of European science: how does the self - evidence "work", by which pure geometry arises out of the art of measure as an origin itself of knowledge? In any case, Galileo sees that geometry, through the art of measurement, achieves obj ecti ve, identical, non-relative demon- 14 strations of truth by its progressive approximations from empirical givens to geometrical idealities. For him, this is a way to see what truly is, with respect to phenomena. At this point Galileo's application of geometry to appearances presents us with a great difficulty. Pure geometry can only be applied to intuited and conceived bodies as abstract spatiotemporal entities. But bodies present themselves to us as concrete. In order to clarify this problem, we must first investigate what we mean by concrete int.ui tions . There are two aspects to this meaning of bodies .as concrete in actual and possible experience: 1) shape is foxm · "filled in" with the "matter" of specific sense qualities, and 2) concrete qualities are concrete because they hang together. But they do not ·just hang together, rather, qualitative changes are related interdependently in a meaningful way. For example, if I move a brown cup from .one location to another, the qualities of location and color will be interrelated. This manner of interdependence · conforms to types of relatedness which give to sensible bodies which exist together the character of the belonging together. In other words, the ways in which bodies present themselves in everyday experience are typical, and the typicality is one by which they present themselves as being essentially causally related to one another. In fact, this typicality is part of the essential structure of the life world. (With respect to this discussion, the "life-world" is merely the world of everyday experience, pregiven before the adoption of any scientific attitude. Thus the life-world can be characterized as prescientific experience.) We are now i~ a position to disclose something more of this essential structure of the life world. The things of the world of everyday life can be characterized as behaving according to an over-all empirical "style·." They have . "habits" of typical behavior which are made possible by this one habit of the _flowing present of intuition, by which it is always for us a world, and not only a world, but one which continues as it has up .to now. By freely varying in imagination the possibilities of this world, the horizon within which they are found is explicated, and the invariant general style which persists throughout can be seen as the essential meaning of the life world. Much . more remains to be said regarding this method of free variation and its present application, but Husserl only assures us ~hat if one were to t~ke up this investigation, one would see that this over-all style is universal- . .!x invariant, and that everything intuited in everyday life is bound by this a priori. This is not a Kantian sense of priori, according to which the ! priori would be a principle prerequisite to any experience, or which stands before experience and dictates its form. The meaning of all intuitions is to be worldly. That is, they belong together in a whole totality of one world, and this world is one because everything in it has the style of belonging together according to causal regulation. Why a priori? No argument is given; perhaps the implication may be drawn that since the . world . of possible intuition is whole only through this style, it cannot be derived ! posteriori ·, and so must be ! priori. That is to say, I can only have a worldly object in relation to a whole world which is prior to it. This causal style discovered in life makes possible the systematic knowledge of the everyday world. Explanations of how and why events occur, as well as predictions of future events from knowledge of present situations are made possible. But if we are to build exact, scientific knowledge from this, .we need more than the general insight that the experiencible is causally related in a single, whole world- horizon. This is the task of an infinite apodeictic science. As such, this science must be the means of constructing the world according to ! priori causal principles, from a meagre base of contingent data. Just as in the realm of pure geometry, any shape is theoretically constructible, so in the realm of the 15 a �intuitable world, any event should be collocation ot all c:ualitative properties . predictable, and capable of being "con Any method that achieves this must include all concrete qualjties as mathematizable, vincingly" verified back in experience . To state this problem is to express the insomuch as they all participate in the Thus natur~ would be task of philosophy: knowing the world in • causal world style . a serious scien~if ic way can have meaning the subject mat te r of this epi s temic and be possible only if there can be science of the world . In order to devised a method by which we can systemat accomplish this, however, the specific ically 1 ) construct, in advance, the world sense qualiti e s, or plenum qualities must of infinite causalities, starting from be found to be indirectly mathematizable . In order tu continue, we must look at direct experience, and 2) verify this construction, accomplishing both in spite specific sense qualities in order to see what it is about them that r equires that of the infinitude of causality and the they be mathemati z able only indirectly, if meagre and r elative nature of direct at all . The whol e notion here is contrary experience . Mathematics itself points to to modern pre s uppositions , used as we are the possibility of accomplishing this task to assuming that measurement r elates through two of its own accomplishments . The first is actually its hidden genesis, always to idealiti e s . We only assume , for insta nce , that a plenum quality such as the idealizing of the world in-respect to spatiotempor al shape, whe r eby shape is sound is d e term i ned by transverse sine waves because of ou r s cientific attitude . abstracted f r om relat~ve, subjective , and vaguely rep r esented object s of sense and It is just this attitude which is ul ti imaqin a tion, and an infinj te uni vers P 0f ~at e l v und e r inves t j0ot i o n he r e, and which we must endeavor to get behind . We must perfectly determined ideal objec ~ s is abst r act ·f r om our e v e ry day wo r ld of bodies apodeictical ly gene r ated a prior i and the ir s p e cific se n se qu a lities (which is absolu t ely . The second accG;plishment was diffe r ent fr om t h e abst r ac t. io n of thei r not hidden fr om Galileo . Through it , spati otempo r al s hape s ) , and con side r t hem g e omet r y retu rns t o the s ens i ble wo r ld to in this aspect . F irst, we find that there f i nd pract i cal application in the art of .is· no immediate ex act measur e for them, meas uring, and guides the method in o r der although we do sense , and have concepts to att a i n obj e ctive knowledge of sensible of , their essential gradations--e . g . more matte r s in respect to their approximate or less hot , cold, light, dark, loud, spatiotempor ality, and in order to predict soft, etc . Exact measurement requires through induction previously unknown, empirical approximation to ideal struc unobservable events . This accomplishment tures which have been constructed objec within the art of measurement is not to be tively in a dvance , s uch as the objective confused with universal mathematical world of pur e geomet r y . The only ~ priori physics, the origin of which is not yet structure of the world we have is explicated. What I refer to here are spatiotempora:; shapes are abstractable finite inductions such as the special from all possible bodies, and their s cience of a s t r onomy which Galileo inher ultimate abst r action encompassing all i ted f r om t he ancient s . fo r ms is the infinite extension of the B ~t a lthough these t wo accomplishunive r se . Idealized, this gives us one ment s po i n t to the possib i lity of a pure science of the world form: pure universal apodeictic constructive science, geometr y. The specific sense qualities we are still f aced with our original are not idealizable analogously, are not difficulty: how can the art of idealizing part of some qua li tati ve world form, and abstractive features of concrete bodies have no measure approximating ideal exact yield a method for the apodeictic science objective constructions given in advance. of all qualities of sensible plena? So, the plena can only be Experience can be characterized as having mathematized, if at all, indirectly . If two aspects: a spatiotemporal aspect, and we turn again to a prescientific attitude a plenum aspect. The plenum aspect is the 16 toward the world of everyday life, and perform the same method of free variation as before, we find that the over-all style of the world includes three predetermined meanings. These are undetermined anticipations of essential regulated ways that shapes relate to specifically sensible qualities. 1) It is predetermined that all things of the world present themselves in the form of space-time. 2) The style of general causality is of this sort: that actual shapes require actual plena. 3) The style of general causality is universal concrete causality. That is, cause relations constitute the infinite world horizon, and every cause and effect is necessary for concrete bodies, for shape aspect as well as plenum aspect. But this may not be so helpful.· These predetermined meanings of concrete bodies hold only with respect to bodies insofar as they are actual and concrete. ·When the plenum aspect is abstracted, we still have not shown that that aspect is dependent in a consistent causal way on · the shape aspect. Our investigation of the realm of possible experience has not shown us that every possible change in a plenum must somehow have a causal counterpart in the shape aspect. This seems strange to us because science gives us assurances about the mathematical nature of plena qualities, while the prescientific world does not. But it is even more strange to note that for Galileo, this assurance is not available. Such being the case, hoW-Could he arrive at his conception of an infinite mathematizable causally integrated nature, in which all plena events can be systematically, though indirectly, determinable through mathematical idealities? The answer to this question is the explanation of the hidden source of Galileo's conception of nature as mathematizable in its c o ncrete actuality. As was indicated earlier, this motive does not arise from prescientific experience. All such experience basically consists in vague and indeterminate dependencies between plenum characteristics and shape c.haracteristics. Even where these dependencies are more determinate, for example the functional dependency of tone on string length, such cases are comparatively rare and not obviously connected with one another in terms of their inductive clarity. · In other words, the basic indeterminate habit of causality of the world of everyday life can provide no source for 'the kind of attitude that Galileo's concept of nature entails-- an attitude of analytical inquiry aimed at the nexus of shape/plenum causal dependencies. In addition to this difficulty, there are two other difficulties behind Galileo's conception of nature: 1) we still have no method for measuring the plena, and 2) with regard to the measuring of space, the prescient if ic era did not yet have methods of space-time measurement adequate to · some visible shape events. Finally, the hypothesis that would suggest this universal causality is foreign to the prescientific world experience. The source of Galileo's view does, however, arise from at least two causes. First, there was a general attitude prevalent which is part of the vague attitude often referred to today as the Renaissance. This attitude involved an inclination to intellectual boldness a nd exuberant hypc>theses. Sec. nd, there was a o very powerful tool available to these men--the infinite,. universal and ideal realm of pure mathematics, with its apodeictic, constructive science. When these two factors are combined, a strong and constructive belief in mathematics is able to lay o ut a completely new task for science, as the source (through technology and the art of measurement) of objective knowledge about the world. This depends upon four prerequisites: 1) the discovery of methods for measuring everything encompassed in geometry, 2) the determination that the whole world is mathematizable with respect to these methods, 3) the possibility of successful induction from particulars, and 4) the determination that the plenum aspect is indirectly mathematizable. All of these gave rise to a universal idea for Galileo, the true meaning of its hypothetical nature being unknown to him: an essential "inductibility" or universal inductivity characterizes the world of possible 17 �intuition, and announces itself in everyday experience, while possessing a hidden infinity. What does it mean to say that this universal inductivity announces itself in everyday life, and that it has a hidden infinity? It was already shown that mathematical shape idealities are the poles of infinite approximations. This is manifested in their extensive and . intensive infinities, whereby mathematical space is infinite in extension and infinitely divisible. When mathematical shapes are applied to concrete, intuitively given experience, they give up their character of being independent from the plenum aspect. In this application they cause actual bodies to become idealized to the extent that they are charged with the same infinities, i.e. these infinities become part of the actual bodies. This "substruction" implies that the plenum qualitie~ become charged with the same infinities since the n 1 Pnnm qualities are inseparable from spatiotemporal qualities. So, in prescientific experience (the attitude from which this hypothesis arises) we find universal causality to be an obvious general and invariable style of possible experience, but only as a vague indeterminate interdependence of events. The application of mathematics to the space aspect of the prescient if ic world causes it to be charged with ideal infinities, and since it is essentially concrete, there is also a hidden infinity substructed for the particular sense qualities, or the plenum aspect. Galileo makes this infinity explicit in his universal idea of the mathematizability of pature. 'I'hough we have come some way in the clarification of the source of Galileo's conception of physics, we still have need of a methodical approach to the determining of the ways in which factual shapes and their plena stand in causal relation to one another. This methodical approach can arise from certain presuppositions involved in the idea of a universal inductivity. These presuppositions present themselves as "how's" pointing to the methodical exposition of the causal relations in question. Each presuppo sition must be clarified; that is, in order to realize the idea of a universal inductivity, each presupposition about the ways shape and plenum are causally related will arise in the consideratio n of method, as a question of "how?", which must be answered in order to bring the presupposition to determinateness. Each "how" leads to its succeeding "how": 1) How do I methodically regulate this inductive task? 2) How are we to determine causality in both aspects ( shape and plenum) of bodily data? 3) How is methodical measurement to disclose pro~ gressively the hidden infinities within this data? 4) How are the resultant shape approximations to make apparent progressivelY. perfect indirect measurements of plena qualities? 5) And lastly, how are these approximations according to all their ideally possible occurrences, to make concrete bodies scientifically determinable? These questions are answered not by any systematic deduction of what possibilities are derived in principle from all the presuppositions essential to this universal idea. Rather, the questions are formulated and answered through what Husserl calls a "passionate praxis of inquiry" which yields discoveries. Because of this approach, the method must be built on unclarified grounds--upon a hypothesis which is not recognized as such. In this light, Galileo is a discoverer; his task is to realize his idea of general inductivity through a twofold process: 1) of inquiring into actual experiences, and 2) of achieving discoveries therefrom. He develops methods according to the anticipations of his hypothesis, and applies them to the intuitable world. These anticipations may be no more than hunches, or matters of instinct, but when he finds them demonstrated by experience, his idea is realized. Discoveries enable more developments in method and set the stage for more discoveries, and Galileo finds that some of these causal relations can be expressed mathematically as formulae, or laws of 18 physics. There is another way of describing the realization of Galileo's hypothesis, by proceeding from the consideration of the twofold nature of the measuring praxis which was discussed earlier. On the one hand, this art yields only inexact quantities. But it also yields the capability of more exact measurement through its own self-improvement. This steady improvement gives the inexactitude of the measurements a new sense--they become approximations. It then only becomes necessary that the end to which the approximations advance be made explicit. Here the unclarif ied relatedness of the world to pure mathematics comes into play; the approximations acquire meaning as being approximations toward ideal, self-identical, perfectly exact mathematical quantities; that is, unattainable poles of accuracy approachable only through progressive improvement of measurement in infinitum. Galileo's method, considered first in regard to the unfolding of inductive discovery, and secondly in regard to the explication of hidden infinities through the art of measurement, can now be considered in regard to the general sense which it possesses as a whole, and which is carried over from the prescientif ic world's invariant over-all style. This over-all style involves a totality of types by which particulars present themselves to us as being related according to the over-all style. For instance, the pencil I hold is an instance of the type, "combustible solid bodies," and as such will burn if I let it fall into a fire. This typical nature of experience is carried over into the Galilean idealization of the world. As formulae are derived from experience, they can be referred to experience in order to ideally · objectify particular events. In the case of my pencil, the rate of its free fall, and its rate of combustion are determinable for any given instance according to mathematical laws of nature. And so these systematically acquired formulae are expressions of general, causal, concrete interdependencies in the form of numerical functional dependencies, and their meaning as such lies in the Galilean idea of a universal physics explicated above. Most important for the considerations Husserl is engaged in, Galileo's physics and its motivation in the idea of universal inductivity, are radically hypothetical. Their necessity is not grounded according to ~ priori principles in the life-world. Therefore the inductive verification of Galileo's physics will never make universal inductivity anything other than a hypothesis. It is throughout the undeniable progress of Galileo's science nothing more than an unendingly verified hypothesis. Like _ the approximations by which the art of measurement approaches true objective determinations in infinitum, the approximations of successive theories to "true nature" proceed in infinitum as toward ideal poles. But this is only an analogy. The ideal poles of theorv are not a region of idealities like the pure shapes are. Pure shapes are realizable mathematically, but the poles of theory are not attainable through my finite progress. They are historically open-ended. This is a consequence of the explication of Galileo's idea of physics which is not properly part of the matter at hand. The hypothesis that Galileo took to be granted--the universal inductivity of nature with its science of mathematical physics--is, in all its complicated motivations from given concepts and presuppositions, the original source of the modern conception of science. 19 �H ILLUSTRATION On the Nature of Cones and Conic Sections Michael Landry A 0 This paper deals with the geometry of J Third, for the hyperbola and ellipse cones and conic sections. In one sense it is concerned with the principle properties of conic sections as revealed by Appollonius of Perga in Book I of his Conics. In quite another sense it is concerned with those properties of cones that Apollonius does not reveal. Given three cones (See Illustration) , let pl a nes be passed through the axes cutting off axial triangles, ABC. Let a nother plane be passed through the cones cutting the base in the line GF so that GF is perpendicular to BC. Let this plane, called the plane of reference, be posi tioned in three separate ways with respect to one side of the axial triangle (we will use AC ) . First, let DE (the intersection of the plane of reference and the axial triangle) be parallel to AC. Second, let DE intersect AC extended past the vertex, outside of the cone at H. Third, let DE intersect AC extended past the b ase (but within the cone extended) at H. We now have th.ree types of conic sections, FOG, named parabola, hyperbola and ellipse respectively. In Book I, propositions 11, 12 and 13 of his Conics, Apollonius sets out the basic properties of the p arabola, ·hyperbola and ellipse. First, in all thre ~ c on e s he c on structs p line, DJ, perpendicular to DE at D. Second, for the parabola he determines the length of DJ by the following contrivance: J he first d r aws a line through the point A parallel to DE and intersecting BC (exten ded) at M. He then determines the length of DJ in this way: DA :DJ : : rect. BA,AC :BC 2 2 HD:DJ :: AM : rect. BM,MC Using these contrivances, then proves that in the : Parabola, Hyperbol a, El 1 ipse, GE 2 GE GE 2 2 Apollonius B = DE,DJ F F DE,DJ + DE,JO where JO is determined by the rati o HD : DJ .. DE : JO HYPERBOLA PARABOLA A DE,DJ - DE , JO by the same rati o. Now, a moment's thought, should reveal that the contrivances which determine DJ stand on no geometrical foundations. They are not logically obvious for the purpose they serve, nor is their derivation indicated in the slightest. Because the contrivances are right fo r their pu r pose, Apollonius is able to prove his propositions, but he does this without revealing anything about the sense of the contrivances. However, since they work so wel i · in the proofs, the overwhelming tendency is to ignore this problem and to pass to other, more profound mysteries. Th e first real difficulty that confronts a student of the Conics is the possibl~ difference between the parabola Michael Landry is a graduate of the Santa Fe campus. He wrote this paper while at St. John' Si it has since become a spark of insight passed from class to class. 20 C(M,N) M H ELLIPSE and the other two sections. This problem is extremely subtle. One intuitively sens e s no difference . Yet, the two separate contrivances suggest a difference, and Apollonius' techniqµe of sepa- 21 rate proofs tends to confirm it. If one tries to demonstrate a kind of sameness, the contrivances actually impede a rigorous proof. I have to report that if the ttue �nature of the contrivances is k nown a n d understood, the pro blem vanis he s. Th ere is no difference between the parabo la a nd the other two secti o ns. If, c o nsidering the differences bet ween them, t he hyperbola and the ellipse are said t o be the same because the same c on triva n ce serves them both, then, necessari 1 y, t he parabola must be said t o be the same as the hyperbola and the ellipse since, in fact, one and the same contrivan c e serves all three. This may be easily demonstrated: If, through the point D on the axial triangle, the. line DK be drawn parallel to the base, with a little manipulation we find that: t he r e f o re, DA:DJ .. AB,AC:BC 2 therefore, DA:DJ comp. AB:BC, AC:BC and since, AB:BC .. DA:DK and, AC:BC .. DE:BE therefore, DA: DJ c omp. DA: DK, DE:BE and compounding both sides with DK:DA, comp. DK: DA, DA: DJ . . comp. DK: DA, DA:DK, DE:BE therefore, :: DE:BE. Th e c on trivances are ide n tical. We mu s t n o l o nger think of them as two, but as o ne. Thu s we c o nfro n t a n unsuspected my stery at the very heart of the ge ometry o f con es an d c o nic secti o ns. In o rder t o give a full explanation o f this mystery. I p r o p o se t o set o ut a new proo f b eginning with the passing of planes through a cone. Fo r c on venience I will use three cones and · suggest that all constructions and c ontrivances be applied to all three cones at the same time. ( 1 ) Let the cones be set out and cut by planes as described above. (2 ) Through the point D on the axial triangle, let the line DK be drawn parallel to the base BC. ( 3) Through the p o ints A and K on the axial triangle, let the lines ALM and KN be drawn parallel to DE, the dia meter of the section. (Observe that in the parabola the points K and L coincide as do the points C, M and N. Th is proof will remain one proof if these p o ints are distinguished though they coincide. Point K is the intersection of DK and AC; point L is the intersection of DK and a 1 ine drawn through the point A parallel to DE: etc. )_ 2 (4 ) Now in each cone GE = BE,EC, f o r BC is the diameter of a circl e , and GE is p erpendicular to it (Eucl. III.31; VI. 8, Po rism ) . But, in the: (A) In the parabola, DK: DJ DK:DJ :: DE:BE. 2 Earabo la, GE == BE, EC a nd s ince , EC = EN (B ) And in the hyperbol a 2 and ellipse, HD:DJ .. AM :BM,MC = DK t h erefo re, and since, BE, DK. hyperbo la, there f1..,re, BE,EC HD:DJ c omp. AM:MC, AM:BM AM :MC .. HD : DK but, therefo re, GE = EC therefo re, and , (Eu cl. I. 3 4 ) AM:BM .. DE : BE 2 EN + NC = BE,EN and compoundin g both sides with DK:HD , c omp . DK: HD , HD: DJ :: comp . DK:HD , HD: DK, DE:BE + BE,NC ( Euc l. II. 1) HD:DJ comp . HD : DK, DE:BE and si n ce, th eref o re, 22 = DK EN GE 2 = (Eu cl. I. 34 ) BE ,DK + BE ,NC ellipse, GE 2 (5) Let DJ be drawn perpendicular to DE, and let it be contrived that: = BE,EC c:ind adding the r2ct. BE,NC to both sides, GE + BE,NC = BE,EC + BE,NC but, EC + NC = EN therefore, GE BE,DK = DE,DJ 2 2 + BE,NC therefore, GE and since, EN = DK therefore, GE 2 This, then, is the heart of our mystery, for the contrivance may be rewritten: BE,EN (Eucl .II.I) DK:DJ : : DE :BE since the product of the means is equal to the product of the extremes. The route from this contrivance to that of Apollonius' is simply a matter of manipulation. The new contrivances, at least the contrivance for the hyperbola and the ellipse, become necessary because of a difficulty inherent in the next step. (6) Let JO be drawn, and let it be con trived that: . = BE,EN - BE,NC (Eucl. I. 34) = BE,DK - BE,NC We have therefore, Parabola: GE Hyperbola: GE ElliEse: GE 2 2 2 BE,DK BE,NC = DE,JO BE,DK + BE,NC BE,DK - BE,NC. or, Now, two important things may be said about these three equalities. The first is that they all may be expressed by the 2 general equation: GE = BE, DK ~ BE, NC. DE:BE :: NC:JO (7) The transposition is complete, for now we have: Parabola: GE 2 Since in the parabola the points N and C coincide, the rect . BE,NC is simply equal to zero. Thus, the factor vanishes from the equation. Yet, it may be said to exist, for the generality holds. Second, it is essential to recognize that the line DK is a natural geometric "parameter" generated by the passing of planes through a cone . DK is a constant and va~ies not a whit as GE increases from zero to infinity . To proceed with the proof, we must reason as follows: since GE lies in the plane of reference as well as in the base of the cone, and since DE varies directly as BE, it ~ possible to transpose the value o f GE f r om the base of the cone to the plane of reference while maintaining equality. The problem is essentially that of altering the parameter DK to accommodate DE instead of BE. Since 2 GE is a function of two rectangles, BE,DK and BE,NC, the transposition is most easily accomplished in two steps. 23 HyEerbola: GE ElliEse: GE = DE,DJ 2 2 (5) DE,DJ + DE,JO (5 & 6) DE,DJ - DE,JO (5 & 6) A difficulty exists, however. How will the rectangle DE,JO be accounted for as GE increases? The difficulty is solved because of the interesting relationship between DE and JO. (8) Since, DK:DJ .. DE:BE (5) and, DE: BE . . NC : JO (6) therefore, ex aequali, DK: DJ : : NC : JO and alternately, DK:NC : : DJ :JO but since, DK:NC .. HD:KN therefore, HD:KN .. DJ : JO �= DE and since, KN theref o re, nec e ss i ty for it exp lai ned , t here r emains the problem of expl a i n i ng the new contrivance for the parabo la: HD:DE .. DJ:JO and alternately, (Eu c l . I. 34 ) DA:DJ :: BA,AC:BC HD:DJ :: DE:JO. Thus we find that DE:JO is always given rati o . The procedure cont r ivance : is obvious . If the DK : DJ . . DE : BE be corrected to 2 HD : DJ .. AM :BM,MC i n one step it becomes possible to find the new paramet e r DJ and to set out the ratio HD:DJ of t he sides of the rectangle DE, JO wh~h is constantly the diff e rence between GE and the rectangle DE,DJ . With the new contrivance f o r the hyperbola and ellipse set ou t, and the In the Wake Andrew J. Krivak And t here he lay beneath one hundred sad bouquets. They b e nt t o kiss hi s fa c e-a t i r ed wh i t e , his powe rfu l hands with faded spots of ag e now holding what we can' t, a r osary entwi ned in finge rs clutching the bead of the r esur rect i on--then knelt to p r ay for themse lves . Dr y your tear s, Ste lla . W a re the dead. e Andrew It was simply a matter of time. Each lacked the foolish balance of a boy, It was a way over the river that the ease of a familiar road, demanded time from other ways. and the concentration that fear dissolves. The other ways she knew; Again she saw the river -- through but the trestle was as straight and fast the ties her foot was caught in. as the train that ran over it. She looked at her baby. The train ridde.n only by old engineers In desperation growing with the and brakemen easing it over the rails sound of the train, she wrapped on time; the trestle walked upon only by his blanket tightly around him. village boys flirting in time with Her tears streaked his face as she kissed him, then threw him off, the train on time, feet with animal his blanket fluttering as he fell grace that touch the ties down, down into the river below. the rails are riding on, the flash of river between each one as they She l ooked up at the boy standing in front of her, watching, dumb. streak, head down, back to the shore they came from; just in time. Through the tears her eyes asked why? Why he did not run? She set out across thinking He looked at the track ahead, only of the other side, th'e -water b~low, and.the woman next to him. and her son, blanketed in her arms as he stirred in his sleep. She laid her head on the rails, sobbing. As he reached to touch her Her thoughts carried her halfway across the trestle, to the boy the train screamed by, helpless. yelling as he ran towards her, his voice slowly being overtaken by the roar of the train. The mome nt of dumb realization ... "That was so long a go," s he sa i d , stood still. Her eyes absorbed the trestle , and I could see the tear that told the boy, the train, the river t he sto ry fi l l her eye a nd rust the trestles that crossed rivers and below that flowed to her side. In fear's attempt to gather up all the memories that each time b r ough t another tear, falling what has foolishly been laid down, she turned to run, not from the train, and shattering like crystal in the past. He was seven years old when she but back -- back to where there was t o ld him about Mother, the train, more than one way to go . a nd t he fisherme n who had saved him. But step takes step a nd never gives up the steps it has taken . A. J . Krivak is a fres hman. h istor y . 24 J. Krivak 2 Since there is no line HD in the parabo la, t he line DA is an obvi ou s c hoice. However, t here is no real necessity for t he new contrivance since both the old and new perform the same function. They merely find the parameter DJ . The argument that the new contrivance can be stated in terms of given lines in the axial triangle, whereas in the old contrivance the line DK must be constructed, can be countered by arguing the i mportance of DK . Without DK the way back is lost! We will never know how long Apollonius thought about that fascinating fact before he decided to pull his little joke. We can only accept it and stand in awe of this master of al 1 geometricians, Apollonius of Perga. in a The Trestle His narrative poems arise from sto ries o f his family's 25 �Substance in Book VIII of the Metaphysics Lisa Tomasi ov ) Being (To has two senses: the individuality or " thisness " (To6E n ) , and the "what" (TL ~OTG) of the thing. By the opening of Book VII Aristotle has equated the what with substance (ouoLa as the primary meaning of being and is ready to explain what he thinks substance is. After explaining what substance is, he will be able to answer other questions which he lists in the second chapter; What things are substances? Are there any substances besides sensible ones (e.g. forms of sensible substances)? How do sensible substances exist? Is there any nonsensible substance capable of separate existence (i . e. any pure unsubstantial forms)? But first, what is substance? The four most immediate possibilities are substrate, essence, universal, and genus. Aristotle devotes chapter 3 to a discussion of substrate, chapters 4, 5, 6 to essence, and chapters 13-16 to universal and genus. But what about the chapters not mentioned? Chapters 7, 8, 9 discuss generation; 10, 11, 12 discuss parts of definition, matter, and form again; and 17 concludes by saying that substance is the cause (i.e. the form) by virtue of which the matter is a definite thing. Although these latter chapters do not inunediately appear to fall under any ~f the headings essence, substrate, universa l, or genus, they · bear on the discussion of substance. The word that repeatedly crops up in, and unites these chapters as well as the first one, is form. Form is continually the subject of Book VII. It is not surprising that by the final chapter substance- is form. But let's start at the beginning to see how form is introduced. The first possible meaning of substance that Aristotle discusses is substrate. (uno~ELµEvov) - that which underlies all the predicates of anything. There are three senses of substrate: mattf'r ( uA.n ) , form ( µopqin ) , and their combination. Matter might be thought to be substance since like substance it is -always predicated, but never predicates . But since substance has separability and individuality - thisness - which matter lacks, the two cannot be one. Neither could the combination of form and matter qualify as substance at least until form has been discussed . And so begins the discussion of form - under the heading of essence. Essence, roughly speaking, is that which a thing is said to be by its own nature. It does not include the whiteness of a surface, nor its smoothness; neither of these attributes is part of the definition of surface. The essence of a thing includes only what is necessary to define it without actually using its name. The close relation between essence and definition implies what things can be said to have essence: all things whose account is a definition. Definitions are those accounts which do not involve the predication of one thing of another. Therefore only species of a genus can have definition and essence in the primary sense. That is, only substances have unqualified essence. Lisa Tomasi, an Annapolis senior, wrote this paper for Miss Brann's preceptorial on Aristotle's Metaphysics. 26 parts: form and matter. Neither part is With this conclusion, Aristotle itself generated1 generation is their excludes such things as snubness from the combination. That form is not generated category of substance. Snub means snub but is the same in the generator and the nose. The word involves the name of its . generated are Aristotle's first points subject (nose) _ and cannot be explained about form with regard to generation. He apart from it. For this reason it cannot also speaks as if form and essence are the be included in those things whose account same thing in several places: "The thing is a definition. It is not a substance, in the sense of form or essence is not and has no essence, unless qualifiedly. generated." (1032bl). Thus far the arguments about essence But perhaps there remains a differhave not shown whether essence is subence between essence and subst ance , sinc e : stance. But at least we conclude from them that substances alone, in the primary ·"By substance without matter I mean the essence." (1032b15) .. Aristotle's first sense, have essence. In chapter 6 inquiry into substance was form or matter Aristotle approaches the identification of or both. Now he seems to be claiming that a thing's essence and its substance by way it is both matter and form or essence of their identification with the particuunless he thinks at least some substance lar thing itself. If it could be shown actually is without matter. But that that a particular thing is its own eswould imply that forms exist of themselves sence, and that substance is the same as independently of matter. He clearly the particular thing, the rest would argues against that being the case. It is follow. Is the particular thing the same impossible, since then an individual as its essence? Terms denoting the uni?n composed of form and mat-t:-er must itself of a subject with an accident cannot be contain another individual, the form. the- ·same as their essence since a def ini ':"" Generation of individual composites would tion does not include accidents. But be ·impossible if each form was its own terms denoting unpredicated subjects are individual. "Form means 'of such a kind:' the same as their essence, according to 1 it is not a definite individual, but we the following arguments. produce or generate from the individual First, if a thing is separate from something 'of such a kind;' and when it is its essence that thing will be unknowable, generated it is an individual 'of such a since we know things by knowing their kind.'" (1033b23) Thus form or essence essence. Also, if we could separate a seems to be more and more identified with thing from its essence, we could next the "whatness" - substance. It describes separate that essence (as a thing) from the nature of each thing, but not its its own essence, and so on to infinity. individuality, for many things share a Therefore in the case of primary and Form cannot by itself be common form. self- subsistent terms, the individual substance, however, since substance is thing is the same as its essence. that which exists independently1 form does Aristotle does not conclude from this not. that substance and essence are one, since Next Aristotle takes up a discussion he has not argued that the individual of definition. It is an enlargement upon thing is the same as its substance. his earlier explanation of definition in Rather he seems to leave this train of its relation to essence. Definition is of thought behind in order to discuss form the form: it is divided into parts which from a different viewpoint that of correspond to the parts of the form of the generation. subject. Matter can compose parts of the Generation, whether by nature, art, concrete subject, but not of the form. or accident, is always by something, out These material parts are posterior to the of something, and into something. By the whole1 the parts that compose the ·definiform of sphere, bronze is generated into a tion, and the essence which it describes, bronze sphere. Therefore, that which is are prior to the whole. These latter generated is always divisible into two 27 �one rather than many indi~iduals. Secondparts refer to ' the universal since only ly the universal is always the predicate the universal can be defined. The conof a subject, while the substance is never crete subject, with its material parts, a predicate of a subject. cannot be defined. Thus essence is the Neither can the universal be sub"what" of substance - the definable part. stance in the sense of being part of a The .material which makes the individual is sub~. ect' s essence. 'Animal' might be not included in the definition. considered a substance which is part of a The importance of matter in the man's essence. But then the substance man discussion of substance as essence comes contains the "substance" animal . But forward in the 11th chapter: "to dispose since animal is a universal it cannot be of the matter is going too far; for some prior to substance. Thus substances things are presumably a particular form in cannot be composed of other substances. a particular matte r." (1036b23) The Especially since each substance is itself material parts are in the concrete an individual, there is no way to unite substance, even though they are excluded from the formula of the substance . Things · one substance to another or to include one in another. which do not have any material (for These conclusions lead Aristotle into example, crookedness) therefore are the a difficulty which he admits at the close same as their essence; but material of the chapter. That is, since substance things cannot be. cannot be composed of universals, and only There remains to be discussed yet universals can be defined, it would seem another aspect of definition - its unity. that :;ubst.ance:; <n>=> undefinable . But Aristotle asks: what constitutes the substance must be definable since it is unity of a thir.g of which we say that the the "whatness" of every being . f ormu la is a definition? First of all a Aristotle does not need to argue defin it ion of a species ·consists of the against the fou rth alternative meaning of name of t he genus a nd at least one substance, the genus. This argument is dif ferentia. These parts form a whole included in that of the universal, since because they have no existence apart from the genus is a universal. The unive rsal one another. Each differentia specifies argument applies as well to Plato's Forms. what form the genus has taken in the case For either the Form of animal must be of the species being defined . The genus different in man than in horse, or man and is as matter to the dif ferentia which give horse will have the same substance. If it it form. Neither part can exist except as is different in each case of animal, it a part of the whole object; the names for cannot exist outside o f the individuals as each part can make sense only as pa rts of a separate unity. And certainly, man and the whole definition. horse cannot have the same substance if Each dif ferentia presupposes the one they are to be different individuals. before it. "Two-footedness" presupposes Thus of the four possible substances, "footed". It is the last differentia that genus and universal have been denied, is most simply the definition of the thing substrate in so far as it is matter has s ince it includes all the rest. This last also been denied, while form and essence · is the ultimate specification of the form remain. Aristotle's last chapter takes of the subject being defined. Aristotle yet another tack at explaining how form calls this form the substance . and essence are substance. In chapter .13, Aristotle take·s up the Substance is a principle and a cause. question of wh~ther or not the universal We ask: why does this bronze sphere exist is substance. He concludes that it is not, for the following reasons. Substance - what is the cause of this bronze sphere? its substance is the cause. is that which . gives each inaividual its We answer: uniqueness; the universal is that which is But we still do not know what is meant by common to many things. If individual s substance because we have not asked the We must ask instead: shared a common substance, they would be question properly. 28 why is this bronze spherical - what is the cause of the sphericalness in the bronze? And answer: the form of the sphere in the material bronze is the cause. Then the substan.ce is 'the- forl'D1n the material. It is that which causes the material to be an .individual thing. Cicy Blocks Richard E. Miller Drunk Father has hurled poor Ganymede from his quarters, carel~ssly sweeping long bolts of lightening from h~s unmade ~ed. 1 These hissing threads unravel, kink and explode against the night s canvas, while you and I, huddled around the embers of our past,. reach across the invading blackness with words and stories to warm, to reassure. wrap myself in heaven's cloak, trailing clouds and stars behind my cape of silver night. Flying above the reaching fingers of our fence, I enter your world; we spoke of travel, the--jewel you found on sleeping Italy's breast, street violence that drove you into the gardens to hide, children sailing boats on the pond. Encouraged, I chop further into this jungle, through fields, thickets of memories, seeking the colored, alphabetized blocks that found you. I walk into this city I which crumbles, recoiling in fear as the drunkard relinquishes his hold; household lights up, refrigerator hums to life: power back on. Behind the security of carefully replaced masks we grope in empty wells for something to say. Peeking through the clearing storm, stars shine down on silent houses, losing the struggle with buzzing street lamps for night's domain. Richard Miller a senior; this poem is part of a set entitled "Offering", for which he received the Baird Award this year . 29 �A Translation of Valery's ''Palme" John Tracy Barely veiling the brilliance of his awesome grace, an angel sets before me soft bread and smooth milk. His eye forms a sign, the hint of a prayer that calls to my vision: --Calm, calm, rest calm! Recall the burden of a palm bearing the ponderance of its gifts. De sa gr~ce redoutable Voilant peine l'~clat, Un ange met sur ma table Le pain tendre, le lait plat; Il me fait de la paupiere Le signe d'une priere Qui parle ma vision: -Calme, calme, reste calme! Connais le poids d'une palme Portant sa profusion! For its form is fulfilled as it bows in accord with the abundance of its wealth. Its weighty fruit becomes its bonds . See how it sways, and how this pliant thread, dividing the present from the past, separates without ceremony the allure of the earth from the weight of the firmament. Pour autant qu'elle se plie A l'abondance des biens, Sa figure est accomplie, Ses fruits lourds sont ses liens. Admire comme elle vibre, Et comme une lente fibre Qui divise le moment, / ' Departage sans mystere L'attirance de la terre Et le poids du firmament! This fair mediatrix, rocking between shade and sun, recalls the sibyl in her wisdom and her slumber. The ample pa lm r ocks r ound place; never to be wearied with hellos or goodbyes. How noble, how tender, how worthy is it to await the hand of the gods. Ce bel arbitre mobile Entre l'ombre et le soleil, Simule d'une sibylle La sagesse et le sommeil. Auteur d'une m~me place L'ample palme ne se lasse Des appels ni des adieux ... Qu'elle est noble, qu'elle est tendre! Qu'elle est digne de s'attendre A la seule main des dieux! about a a one L'or l~ger qu'elle murmure Sonne au simple doigt de l'air, Et d'une soyeuse armure. Charge 1 1 fune du desert. The delicate gold it whispers rings through the purity of the air, and fills the desert's soul with its silken weave. John Tracy, currently a senior in Annapolis, wrote this translation for his Junior Language tutorial. 30 It sends forth to the desert winds which spray it with grains of sand an everlasting voice serving it as oracle, and imagining to announce the miracle its burden is to sing. Une voix imperissable, Qu'elle rend au vent de sable Qui l'arrose de ses grains, A soi-~me sert d'oracle, Et se flatte du miracle, Que se chantent les chagrins. Yet between sand and sky it stands unaware that each day dawns to make its honey of a sweetness measured by a divine time, a time not keeping count of days, but concealing them well in an essence where it acquires all the _ fragrances of love. Cependant qu'elle s'ignore Entre le sable et le ciel, Chaque jour qui luit encore Lui compose un peu de miel. Sa douceur est mesuree Par la.divine duree Qui ne compte pas les jours, Mais bien qui les dissimule Dans un sue ou s'accumule Tout l'arome des amours. If sometime you despair, or if, despite your tears, revered rigor labors under a shade of languor, do not accuse a sage of being miserly who prepares such gold and influence. For through this solemn sap eternal hope climbs to its maturity! Parfois si l'on d~sespere, Si l'adorable rigueur Malgre tes larmes n'opere Que sous ombre de langueur, A N'accuse pas d'etre avare . . , Une Sage qui prepare Tant d'or et d'autorit~: Par la s~ve solennelle Une esp~rance ~ter~elle Monte la maturit'! These days which seem to you empty and lost to the universe have thirsty roots which work the deserts with select and hairy substance and through the darkness delve never resting til they've reached the very bowels of the earth in search of the deep waters the summits do require. Ces jours qui te semblent vides Et perdus pour l'univers Ont des racines avides Qui travaillent les d~serts. La substance chevelue Par les tenebres elue Ne peut s'arr~ter jamais, Jusqu'aux entrailles du monde, De poursuivre l'eau profonde Que demandent les sonunets. Patience, patience, patience amid the blue! Within each seed of silence lies the hope of ripened fruit! The gladsome prize shall come! A dove, a breeze, a gentle rustling, a woman seeking rest, shall let loose this rain at which you fall to your knees! Patience, patience, Patience dans l'azur! Chaque atome de silence Est la chance d'un fruit m~r! . Viendra l'heureuse surprise: Une colombe, la brise, L'~branlement le plus doux, Une fenune qui s'appuie, Feront tomber cette pluie ' . Ou l'on se Jette "a genoux l Let a nation now fall, Palm, . . . They may not withstand! ,,, / Qu'un peuple 'a present s'ecroule, Palme! ..• irr~sistiblement! a 31 �Dans la poudre qu'il se roule Sur les fruits du firmament! Tu n'as pas perdu ces heures, Si l~g~re tu demeures Apres ces beaux abandons; Pareille celui qui pense Et dont l'ame se depense A s'accro1tre de ses dons! In .the dust let them roll among the fruits of the firmament! You have not lost these hours If you do linger awhile amid the remains of these abandonings like he who reflects, and whose soul's sole concern lies in his gifts' in c rease! Jonathan Antonio Edelman a Notes to the translation: The initial difficulty of the translation of ·the poem was purely of my own invention. I struggled to provide a smooth beginning to the poem, but upon closer examination of the French, I realized that this was uncalled for. The angel interrupts, or rather bursts into the poet's thoughts; there is no smooth introduction in · the poem. "De ~ grace redoutable. . " begins in mid-sentence, and eminates to its beginning "Un ange met sur ma table" much like a pebble cast in a pool fo r ms ripples eminating from the focus of the stone's splash. The bril liance of the angel is immediately contrasted to the simplicity of its offe rings, and the exhortation of its eyes. Its appearance is a disturbance, but its eyes bid the poet "reste calme". Its annunciation recalls images -oft.he poet whose work becomes a burden like the burden of ,. a palm laden with ripe fruit; his work nearly completed is most heavy on his mind, most burdensome, most tiresome. The image of the palm is designed to comfort the poet by showing him the necessity of this burdensome time. The second and third stanzas invoke the time and timeless image of the palm as it stands as mediatrix between the earth and heaven. The palm becomes a pendulum whose fruits form the bob, and whose stalk forms the thread. Its incessant swayings recall images of sibyls; just as the sibyl sits fixed within her temple, the palm is set upon the sands never to move from the focus of its rocking. They await the hand of the gods, each anchored by ito . ardor. The Breath of Kings: On the Tragedy of King Richard the Second The fourth stanza compares the gentle murmuring of the palm to the oracles of the sibyl, and may be compared to the song of the poet whose gentle force can enchant the burdensome from man. The fifth stanza returns us to the palm fruits and the seeming timelessness of their maturation. Their sweetness is measured not by time, but by that which conceals time within itself. This compul sion of time, in the sixth stanza, seems to be the catalyst for the angel's opening exhortation, "Calme, calme, rest e calrne ! " . Fruition must ~measured ~this~low (saplike) progression of divine tim~. The poet despairs and his days seem slow and empty. In the seventh stanza, these empty days seem so because of the depths that t~eir roots must delve to provide food for their summits, just as the palm must delve its roots to provide food for its fruits; time falls second to the concerns of ripening fruit. In the eighth stanza, the angel soo t he s t h e p o et with 't s wh i spers of "patience". This echoes the "calme" of the first stanza . The silences, the "jours vides", become seminal, possessing the "chance d' un fruit m~r". They shall fall naturally, or from some other occur~nce: "une colombe, la brise, une femme" or perhaps the angel-of the f i.rst stanza shall cause the shower of ripened fruit. The angel c omforts the p o et with the hope that the seeming empty times are not in vain if we recall the necessity of slow time for ripe fruit. The Tragedy of King Richard the Second speaks of a second fall of man, caused by an anointed king who breaks his bond with his kinsman. Though pointing to a resolution, Richard II itself offers no solution. It is a study of a breakdown between language itself, and what language addresses. This breakdown is concurrent with the decay of a theological-political order which binds men not only to each other but to God. At the center of the conflict lies the succession of Kingship, from Richard to Bolingbroke, men who are in many ways incommensurate in speech and action. Shakespeare juxtaposes Richard's use of language with Bolingbroke's by showing how each uses titles, oaths and bonds, and by showing how each regards the significance of the pardons he bestows. Although allusions to the Fall occur throughout the play, the two major discussions of the Fall occur in Gaunt's speech (II, i, 31ff) and the garden scene (III, iv). These sections are particularly important in understanding the movement of the play, for they are not historical; that is, not subject to any limitations other than those which Shakespeare de termined. These scenes act as a commentary on the play, indicating perspectives from which to consider the events ~ Gaunt's speech in part deals with the fall of England from its sacred position in the world. Just before he dies, Gaunt considers himself "a prophet new inspi r ed" . (II , i , 31) He speaks of England as "this other Eden, demi-paradise... This blessed plot ... John Edelman is Sophomore essay. 32 currently a senior teeming womb of royal kings... Renowned for their deeds as far from home for Christian service and true chivalry as •. . blessed Mary's Son ... " (II, i, 42ff). However, this "other Eden" verges on a Fall. For rather t,han · conquer other nations in the name of Chri.st, England has set upon itself. The garden scene further links the succession of kings to the story of Adam. The gardener compares the garden he tends to the "garden" of England. Unlike Adam or the gardener, the king has not tended his garden. Instead Bolingbroke performs this task: "The weeds [Bushy, Green, and Wiltshire] which his [Richard's) broad spreading leaves did shelter, That seem'd in eating him to hold him up, Are plucked up root and all by ~olingbroke--" (III, iv, 50ff) The King ought to be an Adam to England, yet Richard is unable to tend his garden. The Queen rebukes the gardener and refers t o the fall of Richard as " a second f all of cursed man." (III, iv, 76 ) The fall of Eng land results from Richard's breach of faith with his subjects. In seizing the properties of Lancaster, Richard undermines an order which links the nation to God. Allusions to Christ and the Passion are numerous in the play , R ·char d• s comparing himself to Christ being the most . frequent. That so dishonest a king can in Annapolis. 33 "The Breath of Kings" is his �ref er to himself as a Christ can be understood in light of his seeing himself as blameless and martyred. Richard's lack of awareness concerning the implications of his action exemplifies this . Though Richard clearly sees others' transgressions and the implications of these acts, he does not realize that he acts dishonestly . "Revolt our subjects? That we cannot mend; They breach their faith to God as well as me." (III, i i lOlff) Bolingbroke, on the other hand, is quite conscious of the implications of his actions, both against men and the crown. This awareness is what allows Bolingbroke, unlike Richard, to be essentially poli tically mined, a quality necessary for good kingship. The comparison of Richard to Christ further suggests the position of king Richard in relation to God, as God's anointed, tending his people. However, the corrupt Richard is incapable of the concerns for his flock that a Christ must have . Bolingbroke is like Christ in some of those aspects in which Richard is deficient. He comes to right wrongs, and whether he knows it or not, takes the sin which must be committed, that is, the demise of Richard, unto himself. He dies in the Jerusalem room, rather than in Jerusalem. The juxtaposition of some of the characteristics of Adam, Christ, and good kingship in the two men is part of a conflict · in which neither Richard nor Bolingbroke is the solution, for each is incomplete. The resolution of the conflict must occur in a man who is the synthesis of the best elements of the two. A story concerning the second fall, because it occurs after Christ, must be a political drama. Neither God, His first creation, nor His Son is directly present in the world. Instead, the king who is both divine and political is present. The concern of Richard II lies in the welfare of the State, for the proper governing of God's kingdom on earth is at stake. . A second fall has to do with the identity of the king as man, and his relation to God and the State. Eventually it becomes the story of how a legitimate king is re-established and what kind of man he must be. Richard's kingship is discussed mainly by Richard himself, though also by the Bishop of Carlisle, Gaunt and York. In I, ii the Duchess of Gloucester confronts Gaunt with his failure to speak out against the King's involvement in the death of Gloucester. Gaunt replies that it is not his place to correct the misdeeds of the king: "God's is the quarrel; for God's substitute, His deputy anointed in His sight, Hath causes his death; the which if wrongfully Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift an angry arm against his minister." (I, ii, 37ff) The problem of correcting Richard, culminating in his deposition, is more complicated than merely acting against him because of his position in relation to God. Action against the king is sacrilege, and the effects of such a move would be devastating. Carlisle speaks to this problem in IV: "What subject can give sentence on his King? And who sits here that is not Richard's subject? •.. And shall the figure of God's majesty, His captain, steward, deputy-elect, Anointed, crowned, planted many years, Be judged by subject and inferior breath, And he himself not present?" If this were to occur, Carlisle continues, England would be called Golgotha. Thus the deposition of Richard, is a "heinous, black and obscene" deed. (IV, i, 121ff) Richard must be deposed "legitimately", that is, in such a way that no one 34 takes the crown from him. The problem of <leposi tion is developed in Richard's speech in III, ii: "Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm off an anointed King; The breath of worldly men cannot depose The deputy elected by the Lord" (III, ii, 54-57ff ) The course that Bolingbroke takes is to orchestrate events so as to put Richard in a position where Richard himself must abdicate. Although this technically frees Bolingbroke from responsibility for the deposition itself, it is questionable· whether the king can abdicate legitimately. For, it is not clear whether Richard is a "worldly" man. The Abbott of Westminster, Carlisle and Aumerle in IV, i, refuse to acknowledge the validity of the succession of Bolingbroke and plot against him. Concurrent with the breakdown of a social order, words change in relation to that which they address. Because he is something of a poet, Richard's interest lies in how the moment can be made into words. this. (I, i, 152-159ff) Bolingbroke's use of metaphor is much more straightforward. His diction is muscular and rough in comparison with Richard's fine diction. Prior to the entrance of the King, (III, iii, 54ff) the Duke utters one of his few lengthy metaphors in the play. However, he carefully roots the imagery in the matter which he describes: "Be he the fire, I'll be the yielding water: The rage be his, whilst on the earth I rain My waters; on the earth and not on him." (III, iii, 55-60ff) In Act III, iii, 176ff Northumberland asks Richard to meet Bolingbroke: "My lord, in the base court he doth attend To speak with you; may it please you to come down?" Richard's response exploits the idea of corning down into the "base court", where he will surrender himself to Bolingbroke: "Down, down I come, like glist'ring Phaeton, Wanting the manage of unruly jades. In the base court? The greater his despair, the more Base court where kings grow base, poetic he becomes, and the more detached To come at traitors' calls, and do his words are from the world. In I, i, them grace! Richard calls Bolingbroke and Mowbray into In the base court? Come down? Down his presence: court! Down King!" " ... face to face, When Bolingbroke kneels before Richard, And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear the king still clings to the pun: The accuser and accused freely speak. Fair cousin, you debase your High-stomach'd are they both, and princely knee full of ,ire, To make the base earth proud with In rage deaf as the sea, hasty as kissing it ... " fire." Richard is interested in the stories (I, i, 15-19ff) that will be told of his experience as The opposition in his speech describes the · tragic rather then in the experience moment eloquently. It is almost too itself. In III, ii, line 150ff and v, i, poetic. The emphasis is on the opposition line 40f f, Richard speaks of telling sad stories about the deposing of kings. He of words and metaphors rather than the is concerned with how the event is mani confrontation itself. The seiffested in words and with the effect of the containedness of the metaphor is curious; words on an audience rather than with the it is as if the metaphor takes over in nature of the event itself. relation to itself rather than the words The modes of speaking of Richard and in relation to that of which they speak. Bolingbroke are manifest in the manner in The "physician" metaphor is an example of 3.5 ,, �which they name and .t he importance they attach to a name. The act of naming speaks to both an object's movement in the physical world by virtue of its name, and the name's movement in language. When these two aspects are severed, the name no longer corresponds to the complete nature of a named object. Bolingbroke's use of names is characterized by his manipulation of different titles in order to justify what he must accomplish. However, Bolingbroke recognizes that an object has to have its own character without a name. Richard takes more seriously what the name itself signifies in the physical world. When he abdicates he is not simply disturbed because he is no longer king, but also because he no longer has a name. Without his title, Richard has little sense' of himself apart from "untitled." A striking example of Bolingbroke' s use of names occurs in II, 111 when Berkeley must deliver a message to the Duke. Bolingbroke refuses to accept the message unless Berkeley addresses Bolingbroke as "Lancaster". Berk: "My Lord of Hereford, my message is to you. Bal: My Lord, my answer is to Lancaster; And I am come to seek that name in England; And I must find that title in your tongue, Before I make reply to aught you say." (II, iii, 69-73ff) Bolingbroke is concerned with being addressed as Lancaster because it is that name which lends legitimacy to his return to England. In the subsequent encounter with York, Bolingbroke responds to York's chastising by calling attention to his title: "As I was banished, I was banish'd Hereford; But as I come, I come for Lancaster. (II, iii, 112-113ff) In Bolingbroke's message to Richard, in III, iii, Bolingbroke refers to himself as "Henry Bolingbroke" rather than the preferred "Lancaster". In order to 36 acquire an audience with the King, he uses a title that Richard will accept. The Duke's usage is conventional, in that he will call himself by a given name according to how the name facilitates his movement. Richard's concern with names and usage is less conventional than Bolingbroke's because his identity, his sense of self, is bound in a name. In III, ii, Richard is shocked by news which Salisbury bears, that twenty thousand of the king's men have fled. The King despairs and Aumerle tells him to remember who he is. Richard composes himself by remembering not only that he is King but that his name is King: "I have forgot myself: am I not King? Awake thou coward majesty! Thou sleepest. Is not the King's name twenty thousand names? Arm, arm, my name! (III, ii, 83 -86ff ) Richard is quite conscious of the meaning of his title. As long as he remembers what he is call~d, he is secure. Richard's concern for his name becomes more pronounced as he nears his demise. He refers to himself in the third person, not as "King Richard" but simply as "the King". His actions are subject to his title: "What must the King do now? - - must he loose The name of King? O God's name, let it go." (III , iii, 143-146ff) At th.e conclusion of this speech, he refers to Bolingbroke as "King Bolingbroke" and himself as '!Richard". In a sense, self-indulgent Richard has already imagined himself as deposed, unnamed himself from kingship and acts according to his lack of title. In IV, i, Richard abdicates. His speech essentially consists in un-naming himself. Anything more than un-naming and disavowing his decrees (such as naming his crimes and thereby himself as a criminal) , is out of the question for Richard. At the conclusion of the speech, rather than refer to himself with a title, he prefaces his name with a negation to title: "God save King Har ry, unking'd Richard says." (IV , i, 220ff) The problem of re-naming himself without a title to define him becomes central to Richard's speech. Northumberland petitions Richard to name his crimes: North: "My LordRich: No Lord of thine, thou haught insulting man, Nor no man's Lord; I have no name, no title, No, not that name was given me at the font But tis usurp'd; ... And know not now what name to call myself! ( IV, i, 253-259ff) It is in part due to Richard's self-indulqence that he is insulted by Northumberland's naming him "My Lord," for Richard enjoys the role of nameless, deposed King. No doubt this is linked to his interest in language and the manipulations he can effect with the words. However, in part, it reflects Richard's true d is orientation and sorrow in his loss, which for Richard is a loss of identity. Without his title, he is "no man's Lord" . Without his kingship, Richard feels that he is nothing. The abdiction speech is typical of Richard's tendency to negate rather than affirm. A good king must not only negate, but affirm in order to command. He must be able to give as well as take back . Unable to make amends between the quarrelling Bolingbroke and Mowbray, Richard comments: "We were not born to sue, but to command; Which since we cannot do to make you friends, Be ready, as your lives shall answer it .... " (I, i, 196ff) Richard is both an ineffective and incomplete king, for he cannot unite Bolingbroke and Mowbray by means of his word. In Act IV, when Richard abdicates the throne, he must do it with his own words. Again, he is the only person who can remove himself from his position. However, it is not clear who can legitimately name Henry as King. It is through Richard's characteristic negation that he gives up the title. When Bolingbroke asks Richard if he is "contented to resign the crown", Richard begins his abdication . His language marks a departure from the connections of words to things, to a connection of words to words. This occurs when Richard is about. to give up his title, a word which is his most significant connection to the world and to himself . Curiously, his speech begins with a pun: "I no; no I; for nothing I must be; Therefore no no, for I resign to thee. (IV, i, 201-202ff) Full of obvious negation, the first words are ambiguous. Because the written word is a symbol for a sound and the play is meant to be spoken, many meanings can be derived from these lines. "I" can by "ay" or "eye". The word "no" can be negation o r "know". Thus, the first line can mean "Yes, no; no, yes" indicating that Richard is ambivalent about resigning. The fourth word "yes" is the answer to the question Bolingbroke asks: he must resign. Another meaning might be: "I know no I", that . he must be nothing; without his name, he cannot know who he is. Another meaning could be : I know no 'yes'". That is to say, Richard, because he is nothing, can affirm nothing . The next line is also ambiguous . It can be understood to be a simple repetition of "no" . Because Richard must resign there can be no "no" to Bolingbroke's question. Anothe r meaning could be: "therefore know 'no' for T resign to thee"; Richard tells Bolingbroke to "know negation" and "Now mark me, how I will undo myself." Richard proceeds to negate his kingship. Richard gives his crown "from off my head", his sceptre "from my hand" and his kingly pride "from out of . my heart". He then washes "away" his balm and gives "away" his crown with his own tears and hands. His tongue denies his "sacred state" and his breath releases himself 37 �from "all duty's rites". He forswears, foregoes, and denies. Richard's conception of language, in which the name of an object has more bearing on the object than the object on the name, makes words which refer to· appearance rather than essence affect him. Flattery is the use of words in order to please, rather than to speak truly. In II, Gaunt tells Richard that he has been wounded by flatterers: "And though too careless a patient as thou art Commits't thy anointed body to the cure Of those physicians that first wounded thee. A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown .•. " (II, i, 97-lOOff) Flattery has caused an illness which overtakes Richard. Richard's "illness" is manifested in his inability to hear good counsel. For instead of hearing good counsel, his ears are "stopp'd with other flattering sounds, as praises, of whose taste the wise are fond". .< II, i 17ff) That is, the wise are made "fond" by the "lascivious meters" of flattery. The flatterers of the King - Bushy, Green, and the Earl of Wiltshire - are sentenced by Bolingbroke in III, i. They have "misled a Prince, a royal King •.. made a divorce betwixt his Queen and him." They have made the King "misinterpret" Bolingbroke. Misinterpretation is a breakdown in communication, in which the hearing of the words is correct but the intention is misconstrued. These f la~terers cause Bolingbroke to "sigh" his "English breath in foreign clouds". That is in banishment, which Mowbray refers to as "speechless death which robs my tongue of breathing native breath." In other words, the real punishment in banishment has to do with speech. To be divorced from one's native tongue and unable to understand and be understood is banishment. In II, Northumberland states that the King is "basely led by flatterers", and that he is no longer himself. Flattery not only causes Richard to dissociate himself from his subjects but from his kingship. Pardoning and the use of pardons indicate the relation of language to God, for pardons must be made in relation to God in order to be meaningful. In the breakdown of society's relation to God through its relationship to the King, the meaning of the pardon loses its clarity. Before York's discovery of Aumerle' s involvement in the plot against King Henry, Aumerle asks his father to pardon him from showing his father the letter he carries. York does not pardon him. Upon reading the letter, he goes to the King to seek condemnation of his son. Aumerle arrives before York and asks the King to pardon him before the nature of his crime is disclosed. The king consents on the condition that the crime was merely intended rather than committed. Bat because · plotting against. the crown is treason , the pardon is not val id. The Duchess of York enters and refuses to rise from her knees until the King pardons "Rutland." Pity must move the King to pardon Rutland. The Duchess impresses the importance of pardoning on the King: "No word like 'pardon' for a King's mouths so meet." (V, iii, 118) . York continues to protest and finally urges Henry to speak the words in French: "Speak it in French, King, say "pardonne moy'" (V, III, 119). Even though the words are practically the same, the meaning is different. The Duchess comments that·this sort of usage: "Sets't the word itself against the word!" (V ,iii, 122), for word is set against word when the intended meaning and the accepted meaning differ. Henry does pardon Rutland. But the worth of the pardon is not clear. Henry is not a king by proper succession, therefore pardons do not have their original import because the King's relationship to God is precarious. His position is "King" rather than "rightful King." Henry's accession to the throne introduces into politics the question of the nature of "treason" if one's king is not anointed. Henry's pardon of Rutland is conditional: "I shall pardon him as God shall pardon me." (V, iii, 131) Henry's 38 pardon of Rutland is contingent on his own relation to God, that is, whether he has been pardoned for his own usurpation and treason against Richard. The Duchess asks Henry to repeat his pardon for : "Twice saying "pardon" doth not pardon twain, But makes one pardon strong." (V, iii, 132-133) Speaking a pardon twice does not negate a pardon, but strengthens it. This stand in contrast to Richard's speech of negation . The giving of pardons is necessary for a king. After Henry repeats his pardon, the Duchess calls him "a god on earth" (V, 111, 134). For the Duchess, to pardon, a king must be a divine giver of grace. The problem with all the pardons in Richard II lies in their undetermined relationship to God. When Richard pardons Mowbray it is unclear to Mowbray if, in fact, he has been pardoned. When Bolingbroke pardons, it is unclear what that means. Oaths and bonds are perhaps the most significant element of language which loses meaning when the social order breaks down. When oaths are made but not kept, the importance of language and one's word is diminished in its relation to that which it speaks. Oaths are made not only in relation to physical things but also in relation to God, for they are bound in God . Breaking oaths, therefore, is breaking a bond with God . Oaths and bonds are essential to holding society together, particularly a Christian society. In Act I, scene i, the truth of what Bolingbroke says rests on its relation to heaven: "Heaven be the record of my speech". This is characteristic of the oaths in Richard II. Their verity rests in a bond with heaven. In Act II, scene i Gaunt sees the decay of England in the decay of its bonds, for it was once: "bound with the triumphant sea," but "Is now bound in with shame, With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds." (II, i, 61-64) Its bond is not with God or the sea, it is with shame and on "rotten parchment bonds". York tells the king that if he seizes the Duke of Hereford's rights, he is no longer himself, for he breaks the bonds that insure his office: "Be not thyself~ for now art thou a King But by fair sequence and succession?" (II, i, 198-199) In breaking his bond with his subjects, the king breaks his bond with God, and thus the crown. The King's theft of Hereford's rights also indicates Richard's lack of concern for succession which stands in contrast to Henry's interest in Hal. In concert with Bolingbroke's mode of speaking, his treatment of oaths is quite literal. He is able to avoid breaking the "letter" of the oath because the meaning of the letter is ambiguous. In act II, scene iv, Northumberland claims: "The noble Duke hath sworn his coming is but for his own." What exactly is "his own" is unclear. However, it becomes England. The beginning of Act IV is analogous to Act I, scene i, in that Bolingbroke, rather than Richard, presides over a conflict between nobles. In contrast to Richard's inability to deal with the conflict in Act. I, even though the scene is characterized by verbal chaos, Bolingbroke effectively controls the quarrelling lords. There is no indication which lords are speaking the truth, because oaths are meaningless in England's fallen state. When Richard abdicates he asks God to pardon all oaths made to himself and to keep all vows unbroken which are sworn to God. This separation of oaths made to Richard from those made to God accentuates the separation of Richard from his past and from God. Oaths to a King are meaningful only when the King has a relation to God. The most startling example of the change in the relation of language . to what it speaks in respect to oaths and bonds occurs when Aumerle must carry his bond in 39 �his doublet. This contrasts with York's reference to his pledge to be loyal to Henry earlier in that scene. Significantly, Aumerle's action occurs after Richard has abdicated. The value of a verbal oath is lost with the loss of an anointed King. In order for Aumerle's bond to be valid, he must carry it. Words are not significant unless written. Even more striking is the necessity for Aumerle' s taking of the Sacrament (IV, i, 328ff) in order for him to maintain secrecy. One must not merely swear, but partake in Holy Communion in order to be bound. The only link to God and true speech is theological. The secular coDUDunity under God is lost. The culmination of Richard's separation from the world occurs in Act V. Because he is alone, Richard is unable to "compare this prison ..• unto the world". He is unable to see how his isolation is analogous to his isolation in the world. Richard constructs a world from thought and word. In order to do this, he must split himself into two parts: brain as mother and soul as father to thoughts and consequently words. The naming of these divisions is curious because the brain or intellect is traditionally male and soul female. This kind of reversal is characteristic of Richard in that"he is turning the relationship of words and the world inside-out. The marriage of brain and soul begets "a generation of still breeding thoughts". In being a poet, Richard is a begetter of words rather than flesh , and his lack of concern for succession is a manifestation of this. The world Richard creates mocks the outside world, and is distinct from it. It is a world of words and their relationships are of words to words. Richard names three orders of thoughts: "the better sort .•• intermix't with scruples", those "tending to ambition", and "those tending to content". The first sort are described as setting "the word itself against the word". Considering the Biblical citations he makes one would expect that "the Word" would be set against "the flesh". However, for Richard there is no t~ue flesh in his world nor true Word, but merely words. The setting of word against word indicates Richard's inability to see the complexity of his position as King or ex-King, that is, the culmination of Word and flesh in his having been anointed King. There is no Word in Richard's flesh. He is merely named King. Richard as "unking'd Richard" no longer has the name King and is merely flesh. Yet, oddly, Richard's existence to himself is an existence in words. Rather than being the "Word made flesh " , that is, God's anointed and agent by seeing justice done in the flesh, Richard turns flesh into words, and resides in a world where words have more substance than flesh. The "thoughts tending to ambition .•. plot unlikely wonders". Unable to break through the prison to the outside, his thoughts are unable to break out and make real contact with the world. They are contained within him and "die in their own pride". "Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves". They are content because they do not differ from others who bear a similar burden. Flattery contents them. Thus, thoughts which have only incidental connection to the outside world are buoyed up by words which please and incur illness rather than address the essence of the situation. Richard can be a King and wish he were a beggar; from beggar he returns to King. When he thinks of being banished by Bolingbroke, he becomes nothing. When confronted by the man who causes his .un-naming, instead of the Richard under the mask of King, unking' d Richard appears. When stripped of the words and the name of King, Richard finds himself little more than words. In Act II, scene i, line llff, Gaunt speaks of the setting sun and the music at the end of men's lives. None of Gaunt's music comes through Richard's ears. For his ears have been stopp 'd by flattering sounds. For Gaunt, the "music at the close, as the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last ... " For Richard, however, when the sun is about to set for the last time, the sun hears music as "sour-sweet" because the time is not kept. Richard 40 takes the music inside himself and once again, creates a world in which his interest is in the relation of words to words, a relation more important than the music itself. However, it is from this music that he finally calls into question his acts and inability to hear. "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me." (V, v, 49ff) Richard has become Bolingbroke's "Jack o' the Clock". A mannikin, not flesh nor word, but merely the mock of a man which marks time. It is not surprising that music maddens Richard. For he has become so corrupt that he is unable to take the cure which David administered to Saul: Music. In his inside-out world, Richard's madness is wisdom to Richard, and the first king's cure is maddening to him. Al though Richard I I has an ending, the conflicts of the play remain unresolved. Bolingbroke's succession and Richard• s death mark change rather than resolution. Both the problems of his own kingship and the repercussions of Richard's deposition and death plague 41 Bolingbroke throughout his reign. In the subsequent episodes of the Richarc,-Henry cycle, the events of which the Bishop of Carlisle foretells (IV, i, 114ff ) actually occur. As the society gets thrown into greater disorder, so too, language suffers a greater separation from that which it speaks. The Tragedy of King Richard the Second not only speaks of an end, but points to a beginning. Like Adam banished from Eden, Richard cannot be reinstated, nor can England be restored to its previ ous state. As in the completion of the Fall of Man by the coming of Christ, there must come a man who in both word and deed completes the fall of Richard by changing the effect of the past and the meaning of kingship. This will occur three plays later, when Hal makes the convoluted speech of Falstaff his own, thereby transforming it into a new speech. With it, Hal can make his faults into virtues. For him, even wooing a French Queen in a language not quite French brings a new Queen for England. �Willing but Weak A Note on the Matthew Passion Short Story Liz Waldner Elliott Zuckerman Posole soaks in a bowl and makes little kissing noises. This morning cats on the compost pile cried musically--at, to, for? Is a preposition appropriate here? I am always so content in the mornings. I lay listening before I What fol lows is a spelling - out of the obvious. It is presented as a shapes in air r eminder or review for students who have analyzed moments in the recitatives of threading through ear, discerning whether not cats but babies of our kind cried, at which I should have to go out into the morning in bathrobe to be afraid at the world uncontained by the ideal, to find babies crying the waving strands of our singing on the compost pile. Last night in the evening, in that high and uninhabited place of empty house and dark window, above the din of busyness, beneath the mountain with storm at its head, headdress of cloud purple and blue, a black- headed girl cried loudly over a low adobe wall into the evening--at, to, for? I came walking beneath her on the road below the wall and was stood before her crying out over the wall into the evening not at, not to, not for; neither to inquire nor to console, although these rose in the throat: only crying might go through air. She cried and cried. Only crying could go through air. All the empty houses with doors ajar admitting wind and spil 1 ing darkness: inside the moment stillness and around it the crunching of foot on gravel, juniper and cedar threshing air; around it the balloon-like journey of child- voice upward into first dark. Far below and far behind it noise of car- going and of dog. A woman appeared and she walked into the yard of the house of the crying girl in silence and she put fist to door or to drawing of door on wall with no window: no sound. She caught there bringing fist to door, door to fist, wind going through crying girl hair, and dirt, in the darkening wind. Cloud, drawn over all of our heads to the darker mountain, stayed. The moment I rose to see cats a noise from the kitchen. Posole soaking in a bowl fell over the edge in the kitchen where nobody was, in the white kitchen full of light. I lay back down as if told, not knowing . the Matthew Passion, and as an example for those who want to do so now. Closely following the harmony where the music closely imitates the text -- or comments on it -- can impress on the memory the motions of the progressions themselves. The diction is technical, and the musical examples by themselves can tell the story. Behind them lies the brief passage of Bach's music. And behind what Bach does lies tonal music itself, the power of which, alluded to here, ought, I think, to be an occasion of recurrent wonder. The text is from the 4lst ve r se of the 26th chapter of Matthew, and it is set by Bach in section 30 of the Passion, measures 7- 9 (page 49 of the Peters vocal score) . It is sung by Jesus himself, with his unique accompaniment of strings: Liz Waldner has contr ibuted awoke , several 42 pieces to Energeia. E~ - I In the vocal part there is one tone for each syllable. If we elide the second syllable of 'spirit', the standard English translati on can repla ce the German word for word -- with the important exception of 'aber' ('but ' ) . The music depicts the three aspects o f Jesus 's observation about his disciples: the willingness of the spirit, the weakness of the fles h , and, between them, the 'but'. At the start o f measure 7 , G minor has been established in a c a dence. The vocal line has dropped to a low B-f lat, the mino r third of the triad, and (approp riate ly for the word 'fallet') the lowest tone sung in this recitative. The Mr. Zuckerman, a tutor in Annapolis, contributed this piece as the first of several comments on the Matthew Passion; further installments will appear in later issues of Energeia. 43 �willingness of the spirit is shown in the vocal line by the brightening of the minor into the parallel major: Again, harmonically one would expect the following resolution if there were no 'but': wil-liJ The . B- natural on 'willig ' is especially strong because it is approached in the ascent Cs) 1 2 i· But the instrumental bass adds another dimension. The willingness is not only bright but expansive, because the F- natural below turns the B-natural into the upper tone of the tritone of C major: The notation of the c hords in closed score r eveals what has happened to all the voices . The F has descended · ' correctly' to E . The B and the D are common tones to both chords. The surprise alteration is the chromatic lifting of G to G- sharp -tone § of C is sharpened to become the leading tone of A (minor) . In Bach's scoring the significant changes occur in the outer voices, an 'expansion' of f. urther willingness : In the surprise resolution that follows the contradiction, the low F does indeed go the half - ~tep downward to E: /\ 7 ~~.3 ~ The new dominant - seventh will t ually r esolve normally: It is, of course, a dimin ished- seventh chord, the 'headless' . tetrad, the most ambiguous . It can be accounted f or as pointing to E -- qr ,• in A minor, dim vn 7 of v . But. here it (weakly) follows the chord it 'ought' to p r ecede -- o r , to put it ano ther way in the light of the subsequent return to the v 7 , it interpolates itself as a st r iking r eve r sal in the otherwise no r mal cadence in A minor . The 'weakness' , as we hea r it, is strongly asserted . The r e is anothe r way of viewing the 'wea k ' progression . The (first) domi nan t - se ven t h of A mino r res olves ' co rrec tly' : even- ~ But the E is not 3 of C major. Instead it is made the root of a major triad. Moreover, since we have just heard the D's of ' aber' , we hear the new chord as a dominant- seventh: And one expects the resolution outward to the tonic of C : but the diminished fifth below each of the resolution tones are slipped in unde r neath : --9- ~ -:).-&- ~ ~ [ +J But the r e i s still ·the ' weakness' to be accounted f o r. The oute r vo i ce s e xpand a half - step further : Harmonically, the tones on 'willig' constitute the last inversion (V 2 ) of the dominant- seventh in C: Up to 'abe r ' , the voc al l i ne ascended . 'das Duri.ng Fle is c h schwach' i t now descends twice , in minor thirds : ~-1 ~ h as ist . two The D's of 'aber' thus belong to two different dominant- seventh chords, one . pointing· to C and the other td its relative minor: l;z'·lO The O's of 'aber' belong to that chord and seem to complete it: 44 The chord on 'schwach', outlined by the A, and is fifth D- sharp diminished completed with another diminished fifth, F- sharp and C: The ascent between them is the interval of the dimished fourth . There will be more to say about this interval in late r inst~llments of these comments. 45 �A harmonic summary shows that the willingness sets out to be a cadence in c : major. At the 'but' it becomes instead a cadence, with a 'weak' the relative minor: interpolation, in No Exit A Translation of Sartre's Huis Clos Wendell Finner C Ma..jor vo1. v1 • Wi I{ i~j Poem John S. Carnes Awkward are the silences, slow stutters time - when I would tell you of the love of mine. And yet, I would not wish to be too smooth and glib. _The freshet in its thicket runs both fast and pure, and our love too has merrily been borne along. Yet, did it not slow and stutter some we would not find ourselves with the needs to think upon. Thus I am glad to find no easy speech and think it not wrong being without a ready word for it will come when it is called I've heard. (The stage depicts a Second Empire drawing-room, with a bronze on the mantlepiece. Enter Valet, Garcin . ) GARCIN(looking around): So here we are. VALET: Here. GARCIN: This is it . . . VALET: This is it. GARCIN: I . . . I suppose one gets used to the furniture eventually. VALET: That depends on the individual. GARCIN: Are all the rooms like this? VALET: Think. Chinese, Hindus come here. What would you have them do with a Second Empire armchair? GARCIN: And me? What would you have me do with one? Do you know who I was? Bah. . . it doesn't matter. After all, I always lived with furniture I didn't like, in artificial situations; I loved it. An artificial situation in a Louis-Phillippe dining-room--does that tell you anything? VALET: You'll see; a Second Empire drawing-room is no worse. GARCIN: Ah, good . Good, good, good. Still, I didn't expect. .y ou do know what they say down there? VALET: About what? GARCIN: Uh. . (La rge, vague gesture) About all this. VALET: How could you be 1 iev~ such foolishness? From people who have never set foot here? After all, if they had come here . . . GARCIN: Of course. (They laugh together, then Garcin becomes suddenly serious again): Where are the spikes? VALET: What? GARCIN: The spikes, the grilles, the leather funnels. VALET: You're joking. GARCIN : Oh? Oh, good . No, I wasn't joking. (Silence. He paces.) No mirrors, no windows. Of course, nothing breakable. (With sudden violence) : And why have they taken my toothbrush? VALET: Ah, yes. Now your human dignity returns. It's amazing. GARCIN: Please spare me your intimacies. I am well aware of my position, but I will not allow you to . . . VALET: There, there. Forgive me. What can you expect--all ou r clients ask the same question. 'Where are the spikes,' they say. At that moment, I swear to you that they don't dream of personal hygiene. Only then, when they are reassured, then the toothbrush. But can't you think about it, for the love of God? After all, I ask you, why would you brush your teeth? GARCIN: Yes, indeed, why? (Looks around.) And why look in a mirror? But the bronze, after a while. • I imagine there will be moments when I' 11 look at that with open eyes, eh? Come on, come on, there's nothing to hide. I ' m well aware of my position, I tell you. Do you want me to tell you how it goes? A fellow suffocates, he sinks, he drowns, only he sees beyond the water. And what does he see? A bronze by Barbidienne. What a nightmare! All right, you're probably forbidden to answer; I won't insist. But remember: one doesn' t take me by surprise. You won't be able to boast that you've caught me unawares; I look the Wendell 1 Finner is a senior in Annapolis. He translated Sartre's Huis Clos for a s · pr1ng 983 production by the King William Players, produced by Copyright 1983 by Wendell Finner. Craig Bradshaw. John Carnes is a senior fn Annapolis. 46 47 �situation in the face. (Begins to pace again.) So, no toothbrush.· No bed either. Since we never sleep, right? VALET: You seel GA RC IN: I could have bet on it. Why would one sleep? Sleep takes you from behind. You feel your eyes closing, but why sleep? You stretch out on the sofa, and poof. • sleep flies away. Then you get up, rub your eyes, and it starts all over again. VALET: What a romantic you arel GARCIN: Be quiet. I won't cry, I won't tremble, but I want to look the situation in the face. I don't want it to jump me from behind, without my seeing it. Romantic? Nonetheless, there is no need for sleep. Why sleep if you're not sleepy? Perfect. Wait. Wait--why is it painful? I've got it; it's a life without interruption. VALET: What interruption? GARCIN(imitating him): What interruption? (Suspiciously) : Look at me. I thought so. That explains your intolerably tactless stare. My word, they're shriveled up. VALET: What are you talking about? GARCIN: Your eyelids. We, we close our eyelids. A blink, it's called. A little flash of black, a curtain that falls and rises again; the break is complete. The eye is moistened; the world annihilated. You . couldn't know how refreshing it is. Four thousand rests an hour. Four thousand little escapes. And when I say four thousand. .so, I'm to live without eyelids? Don't be an. idiot. No eyelids, no sleep, it's all the same. I shall sleep no· more. .But how am I going to stand it? Try to understand; make an effort. I'm a teasing type, you see, and I • • • I like to tease myself. But I . . . I can't tease myself endlessly: down there there were nights. I slept. I slept softly. To compensate. I made myself simple dreams. There was a meadow. .A meadow, that's all. I dreamed I was walking there. Is it daytime? VALET: You can see for yourself, the lights are on. GARCIN: Right. I meant your daytime. Outside. VALET(bewildered): Outside? GARCIN: Outside l On the other side of these walls. VALET: There's a hallway. GARCIN: And at the end of the hall? There are other rooms, and other VALET: halls, and stairways. GARCIN: And then? That's all. VALET: GARCIN: You must have a day off. Where do you go? VALET: To my uncle's, on the third floor. He's the head valet. GARCIN: I should have guessed. Where's the light switch? VALET: There is none. GARCIN: What? Can't you turn it off? VALET: The management can cut the current. But I don't remember their having done so on this floor. We've got all the power we want. GARCIN: All right. So, one must live with open eyes . . . VALET(ironically): Live?. GARCIN: Don't quibble over a question of vocabulary. The eyes open. Forever. There will be broad daylight in my eyes. And in my head. (Pause . ) And i f I swung the bronze at the light bulb, would it go out? VALET: It's too heavy. GARCIN (grasping the bronze and trying to lift it): You're right. It's too heavy. VALET (after a moment of silence) : Very well; if you have no further need of me, I' 1 leave you . GARCIN(startled): You're leaving? Goodbye. (The valet reaches the door) Wait. (valet returns) This is a bel 1, here? (valet nods) I can ring it if I want you and you must come? VALET: In principle, yes . But it's unreliable. There's something jammed in the mechanism. (Ga re in goes to the bel 1 and pushes the button . Ringing sound ) GARCIN: It works! VALET(astonished): It works. (Ring s it himself) But don't get carried away~ it won't last. Well, at your service. GARCIN (making a gesture to retain him): I. . • VALET : 48 CAPCIN: c=i nd r I C'K s Nothing. 1:p t he (Go~s to th e raper-knjf c ) mantle What's this.' VALET : You can s e P for yourself; a paper-kDifo. GA RLlN: The re are books here ? VALET: No. GARCIN: 'l'hcn what good if' it ? (Vakt shrugs ) All rig h t. Go ahead. (Val e t exits. Garcin go e s t o the bronze and pats it with his hand. He sits down; stands up again. He go e s t o the bell and presses the button. The bell does not ring. I-le tries two or three times, in vain. He goes to the door and t ric·s to open it, without any Juck. He calls:) Garcon! Garcon! (No answer. He rains a s hower of blows on the do o r with his fists while calling the valet. Then he c alrns aown sudden 1 y and goes to sit down. At this moment, the door opens and I nez e nters, followed by the valet. ) VALET: You called? GARCIN (starts to answer, then notices Inez) : No. VALET ( turning to Inez): This is your room, Madame. (Silence from Inez) If you have ar>y questions. . (Inez remains silent. The valet is disappointed): Usually our clients lik e to acquaint themselves . I won't insist. Anyway, as for the toothbrush, the bell, and the Barbidienne bronze, this gentleman is informed and can answer as well as I can. (Exits . ) (S ilence. Gare in does not look at Inez. Inez looks around, then speaks gruffly to Garcin . ) INEZ: Where's Florence? (S ilence from Garcin. ) I said, where's Florence? GARCIN: I don't know. INEZ: Is this the best you can do? Torture by absence? Well, it's no good. Florence was a little fool and I don't miss her. GA RC IN: I beg your pardon; who do you take me for? INEZ: You? You're the torturer. GARCIN(Starts, then laughs): What an amusing mistake. Really, the torturer! You came in, you looked at me, and you thought, 'This is the torturer.' What foolishness! The valet is ridiculous; he should have introduced us . The torturer! I am Joseph Gare in, publicist and man of letters. Really, we're in this together, madame . . . INEZ (dryly): Inez Serrano. Mademoiselle. GARCJN: Very good. Perfect. The ice is broken. So you see the look of a torturer in me? And how does one recognize them, the torturers? INEZ: They have a frightened look. GARCIN: Frightened? How curious. Of whom? Their victims? INEZ: Go on! I know what I'm talking abo~t. I've seen myself in the mirror. GARCIN: In the mirror'! (Looks around.) It's annoying; they've taken everything that resembles a mirror. (Pause . ) In any case, I can assure you that I'm not afraid. I don't take the situation lightly; I'm quite aware of its gravity. But I'm not afraid. INEZ(Shrugs): That's ycur business. (Paus e. ) Do you take a walk outside, now and then? GARCIN: The door is bolted. INEZ: Too bad. GARCIN: I can see quite well that my presence annoys you. And personally, I'd rather be alone. I need to put my life in order and collect myself. But I'm sure we cc..n come to terms with each other. I don't talk, I seldom stir, and I make little noise. Only, if I might 'suggest something, we must maintain an extreme politeness between us. It will be our best defense. INEZ: I'm not polite. GA RC IN: I' 11 be polite enough for two. (Sil ence. Garcin sits on the sofa. Inez paces back and forth.) INEZ(looking at him): Your mouth. GARCIN (to rn from his trance ) : Excuse me? INEZ: Can 't you stop your mouth? It twists under your nose like a top . GARCIN: I beg your pardon. I didn't realize. INEZ: It annoys me. (Tic from Garcin.) You pretend to be polite and you let your face run wild. You're not alone and you have no right to impose the spectacle of your fear on me. Yes? 49 �~ - GARCIN (gets up and crosses toward her) : And you, you're not afraid? INEZ: Why should I be? Fear; that was fine before, when we had hope. GARCIN: There's no longer any hope, but we're always before . We have not begun to suffer, mademoiselle. INEZ: I know. (Pause.) So? What's going to happen? GARCIN: I don't know. I'm waiting. (Long pause. Garcin sits . down again. Inez resumes her pacing. Garcin' s mouth twitches and, after a glance at Inez, he hides his face in his hands. Enter Estelle and Valet. Estelle looks at Garcin, who has not raised his head. ) ESTELLE: No I No, no, don't raise your head. I know why you're hiding it in your . hands; I know you don't have a face anymore. (Garcin removes his hands . ) Oh! (Pause.) I don't know you. GARCIN: I'm not the torturer, madame. ESTELLE: I didn't take you for the torturer. I. • I thought someone was playing a trick on me . (To valet) : Who are you waiting for? VALET: No one else is coming. ESTELLE(relieved): Then we'll be all alone; monsieur, madame, and I? (Starts to laugh.) GARCIN(dryly): There' s nothing to laugh about. ESTELLE (still laughing ) : · But these sofas are so ugly! And look how t~ey're arranged. It's like New Year's at Aunt Marie's. To each his own, I suppose. This one ' s mine ? (To v a let) : But I c a n' t sit there, it's a catastrophe; I'm wearing light blue and it's spinach green. INEZ: Would you like mine? ESTELLE: The red sofa? You're t oo kind, but that's hardly an improvement. No, it's the luck of the draw. I go t the green one; I' 11 keep it. (Pause. ) The only one which would do, barely, is monsieur's. INEZ: Did you hear her, Garcin? GARCIN ( starting ) : The. .sofa. Ohl Excuse me. (Gets up. ) It's your's, madame. ESTELLE: Thank you. (Takes off her coat and lays it on the sofa. Pause.) Since we've got to live together, we should get acquainted. I'm Estelle Rigault. (Garcin bows and starts to give his name, but Inez crosses in front of him.) INEZ: Inez Serrano. The pleasure is mine. GARCIN (bows again ) : Joseph Garcin. VALET: Have you any further need of me? I'll ring fo~ ESTELLE: No, go ahead. you. (Valet bows and exits. ) INEZ: You' re very pretty. I wish I had flowers to welcome you with. ESTELLE: Flowers? Yes, I loved flowers. But they'd wilt here; it's too hot. Bah ... the important thing is to keep our good humor. Are you . . . ? INEZ: Yes, last week. And you? ESTELLE: Me? Yesterday . The funeral isn ' t over yet. (She speaks quite naturally, as if she sees what she is describing.) The wind's mussing my sister's veil. She's doing what she can to cry. Come on, come on, make an effort. There! Two tears, two tiny tears sparkling under her veil. Olga Jardet is quite unattrac tive this morning. She's supporting my sister by the arm. She's not crying because of her mascara, and if I were her. . . She was my best friend . INEZ: You suffered? ESTELLE: No, I was mostly unconscious. INEZ: What . . . ? ESTELLE: Pneumonia. (Same manner as before ) : Well, that's it; they' re le~v­ ing. Goodbye! Goodbye I Such handshaking. My husband is sick with grief; he stayed home. (To Inez ) : And you? INEZ: Gas. ESTELLE: And you, monsieur? GARCIN: Twelve bullets in my hide. (Gestures to Estelle. ) Excuse me; I'm no t a very respectable dead man. ESTELLE: Oh! Please, monsieur, if only you wouldn't use such crude terms. It's . . . it's shocking. And, after all, what does it mean? Maybe we ' ve never been so alive. If we abso lutely have t o name this ... state of things, I suggest we call it absence; that will be more c orrect. Have you been absent long? GARCIN: About a month. ESTELLE: Where are you from? 50 ESTELLE (dryly ) : Well, we don't have the GARCIN : Rio . same tastes . That's all that proves. (To ESTELLE: I'm from Paris. Do you have anyone left, down there? Inez ) : Do you like them, men in s hirtsleeves? GARCIN : My wife . (Same manner as INEZ : Shirtsleeves or no, I don't like Estelle) : She's come to the bar r acks, men much . like she does eve r y day . They won't let ESTELLE ( looking at the others in her in. She ' s staring through the bars. She doesn't know that I'm absent yet, but amazement ) : But why, why have they put us together? she suspects it . She's leaving now . She's all in black . So much the bet INEZ (stifling an outburst ) : What are you saying? te r-- she won't have to change . She's not crying; she never cried . It ' s a nice ESTELLE : I look at the two of you and I sunny day, and she's al 1 in black in the think that we must room together . .I expected to find friends, family . deserted street, with the wide eyes of a victim . Ah, she irritates me . (Long INEZ : One excellent friend with a hole in the middle of his face . pause . Garcin sits on the middle sofa and puts his head in his hands . ) ESTELLE : Him, too . He danced the tango Estelle! INEZ : like a professional . But us, us; why have they put us together? ESTELLE : Monsieur, Monsieur Garcin! GARCIN : Ex cuse me? GARCIN : It's just chance . They put ESTELLE : You're sitting on my sofa . people where they can, in the order of their a r rival . (To Inez ) : Why are you GARCIN : Oh, excuse me. (Gets up . ) laughing? ESTELLE : You seem so absorbed . GARCIN: I ' m putting my life in order . INEZ: Because you amuse me with your (Inez laughs. ) Those ·who laugh would de 'chance' . Do you have such a need to well to imitate me . reassure yourself? They leave nothing to chance . INEZ : It is in orde r , my life . Totally in order . It's put itself in ESTELLE(timidly ) : But perhaps we've met bef o re? order, down there, and I don ' t need to t r ouble myself with it . INEZ : Never. I would not have forgot ten you . GARCIN: Really? You think it's that ESTELLE: Or maybe we have acquaintances simple! (Wipes his forehead . ) What heat! in common . Do you know the Dubois You'll allow me? (Starts to take off his Seymours? jacket. ' ESTELLE : No! (More softly ) : No . I INEZ: I'd be surprised. detest men in shi r tsleeves. ESTELLE: But they entertain everybody. GARCIN (putting his jacket back on ) : Fine . INEZ: What do they do? (Pause . ) Myself, I spent my nights in the ESTELLE (surprised ) : They don't do editorial rooms . It was always anything . They have a chateau in Careze, oppressively hot . (Pause . Same manner as and . . . before ) : It is oppressively hot . It's INEZ : We l l, I worked in the Post night- time . Office. ESTELLE: Let's see; yes, it's night ESTELLE (backing away slightly ) : Oh! You already. Olga is undressing . How quickly · mean. .? (Pause . ) And you, monsieur time passes, on earth . Garcin? INEZ : It's night . They' v e put t he GARCIN: I never left Rio. seals on the door to my room . The room is ESTELLE : Then you're quite right. Chance da r k and empty . has brought us together. GARCIN : They've put their jackets on the INEZ: Chance. Then the furniture is back of their chairs and rolled their by chance. It's by chance that the sofa sleeves up above the elbow. It smells of on the right is spinach green and the one men and cigars. I liked living among men on the left is burgundy. Chance, is it? in shirtsleeves . 51 �All right, try to move them and then tell me what you think. And the bronze, that's just chance also? And the heat? This heat? (Long pause.) I tell you everything is regulated. Even the smallest details are chosen with love. This room was waiting for us. ESTELLE: But how could that be? It's all so hideous, so hard and angular. I always detested angles. INEZ (shrugs): Do you think I lived in a Second Empire drawing-room? (Pause.) ESTELLE: Then everything was foreseen? INEZ: Everything. And we were matched up. ESTELLE: Then it's not by chance that you, you are facing me? (Pause.) But what do they expect? INEZ : I don ' t know. But they expect something. ESTELLE: I can't tolerate anyone expecting something from me. It gives me a sudden desire to do the contrary. INEZ: Well, do it. Do it, then. But you don't know what it is they want. ESTELLE: (stamping her foot): It's insufferable. I should be subjected to something by you two? (Examines them.) You two. There are faces which I can read at first glance. But yours tell me nothing. GARCIN(suddenly, to Inez): All right, why are we together? You've said enough -about it1 now finish it. INEZ (astonished) : But I know absolutely nothing about it. GARCIN: We must know. (~eflects for a moment) INEZ: If only each of us had the courage to say . . . GARCIN: What? Estelle! INEZ: ESTELLE: Yes? What did you do? Why did they INEZ: send you here? ESTELLE(excited): But I don't know1 I don't know at all. I even wonder if it isn't a mistake. (To Inez): Don't smile. Think of the number of people who. . .who become ~sent every day. They come here by the thousands and they're only the responsibility of subordinates, uneducated employees. How could you imagine that there'd be no mistakes? But don't smile at me. (To Garcin): And you, tell me something. If they're mistaken in my case, they could be mistaken in yours. (To Inez): And yours, too. Isn't it just as good to think we're here by mistake? INEZ: Is that all you have to tell us? ESTELLE: What more do you want to know? I have nothing to hide. I was an orphan; poor. I raised my younger brother. An old friend of my father's asked for my hand. He was rich and kind; I accepted. What would you have done in my place? My brother was sickly and his health required a lot of attention. I lived with my husband for six years without a cloud. Then two years ago I met the man I was destined to love. We recognized it at first sight. He wanted me to run off with him, but I refused. After that, I caught pneumonia. That's all. One could, perhaps, charge me with sacrificing my youth to an old man. (To Garcin): Do you think that would be a fault? GARCIN: Certainly not. And you, do you think it would be a fault to live according to one's own principles? ESTELLE: Who could reproach you for that? GARCIN: I edited a pacifist · journal. The war broke out. What to do? All eyes were fixed on me: 'does he dare?' Well, I dared. I crossed my arms and they shot me. Where's the fault? Where is the fault? ESTELLE(placing her hand on his arm): There is no fault. You are . . . INEZ (perfect irony) : A Hero. And your_, wife, Garcin? GARCIN: All right, what? I pulled her from the gutter. ESTELLE(to Inez): You see! You see! INEZ: I see. (Pause. ) Who are you acting this comedy for? We're alone. ESTELLE(saucily): Alone? INEZ : Among thieves. .We are in hell, my dear; there is never· a mistake and people are never damned for nothing. ESTELLE: Be quiet. INEZ: In hell! Damned! Damned! ESTELLE: Quiet . Will you be quiet? I forbid you to use such vulgar words. INEZ: The little saint, damned. The 52 spotless hero, damned . We had our moment of pleasure, didn't we? There were people who suffered on our account until we died and this amused us greatly. Now we must pay. GARCIN (threatening gesture ) : Will you keep quiet? INEZ ( looking at him without fear, though with great surprise ) : Ha! (Pause. ) Wait! I've got it; I know why they've put us together ! GARCIN: Be careful what you say . INEZ: Yo u'll see how stupid it is. Incredibly stupid! There's no physical torture, right? Yet we are in hell. And no one else will come . No one. We will remain here alone with one another until the end. Right? In short, there's someone missing: the torturer. GARCIN(softly) · I know it well. INEZ: So, they've perfected an economy of personnel. It's the clients who provide the service themselves, like a cafeteria. ESTELLE: What are you trying to say? INEZ: The torturer is each of us, for the other two. ( A pause while they digest this news.) GARCIN ( softly ) : I will not be your torturer. I wish you no harm and I've got nothing to do with you. Nothing. It's quite simple. Here, each of us in our own corner; here's our weapon. You here; you here; myself here. And silence. Not a word--that's no t too difficult, is it? Each of us has plenty to do by ourselves. I think I could go ten thousand years without speaking. ESTELLE: I've got to keep quiet? GARCIN: Yes. And we. .we will be saved. Just keep quiet. Look to yourself, don't raise your head. Agreed? INEZ: Agreed. ESTELLE (hesitates ) : Agreed. GARCIN: Well, then, goodbye. (He goes to his sofa and puts his head in his hands. ) Inez begins to sing (A long pause. to herself. ) INEZ: On Whitemantle Street they built a platform, And spread the bran below, And it was a pretty scaffold On Whitemantle Street, you know. The headsman he was up at dawn, He'd quite a job to do, To chop off the heads of generals, The bishops' and the admirals' On Whitemantle Street, it's true. To Whitemantle Street the ladies came, With all their pretty frills, But their heads they had to go, Heads along with hats would roll, In the gutter of Whitemantle Street. (During this time, Estelle restores her makeup. She powders herself and restlessly looks around for a mirror. She searches her bag, then turns to Garcin.) ESTELLE: Have you got a mirror , monsieur? (Garcin does not respond. ) A mirror, a pocket- glass, whatever? (No response.) If you're going to leave me all alone, at least get me a mirror. (Garcin buries his face in his hands. ) INEZ (eagerly ) : I've got a mirror in my bag. (Searches her bag and says resentfully ) : They must have taken it from me in the office. ESTELLE: How annoying. (Pause. She clo ses her eyes and sways unsteadily. Inez rushes to steady her. ) INEZ: What's the matter? ESTELLE (opens her eyes and smiles): I feel so strange. (Touches herself.) It doesn't have this ef feet on you. When I can't see myself, I can touch myself as much as I like; I wonder if I really exist. INEZ: You're lucky. Me, I feel myself constantly, from inside. ESTELLE: Oh, yes, from inside. .Everything that happens in people's heads is so vague. It wearies me. (Pause.) There 53 �\ are six huge mirrors in my bedroom. I see t h em. I see them. They reflect the lov e-seat, the rug, the window. . How empty it is, a mirror without me. Whenever I spoke, I'd place myself so there'd be o n e I could look at .myself in. I talked; and I saw myself talking. I saw myself as others saw me; it kept me on my toes. (With despair ) : My lipstick! I'm sure I put it on crooked. I simply can't spend all of eternity without a mirror. INEZ: Couldn't I be your mirror? Come, come pay me a visit. Here, sit on my sofa. ESTELLE (indicating Garcin ) : But ... INEZ: Let's not worry about him. ESTELLE: We're not going to hurt one another1 you said so yourself. INEZ: Do I look like I want to hurt you? ESTELLE: One never knows INEZ: It's you who' 11 hurt me. But what difference can it make? If I've got to suffer, it might as well be on your account. Sit down. A little closer. There. Look into my eyes. Do you see yourself there? ESTELLE: But I 'm so tiny. I can barely see myself. INEZ: But I see you. All of you. Ask me questions. No mirror could be more faithful. (Estelle, embarrassed, turns toward Garcin as if to call for help.) ESTELLE: Monsieur! Monsieur! We're not boring you with our chatter, are we? (Garcin does not respond.) INEZ: Leave him be , he doesn't count; we're alone. Interrogate me. ESTELLE: Did I put my lipstick on right? INEZ: Let me see. Not too well. ESTELLE : I wondered. Good thing (glance at Gare ~ , ) no one saw me. I'll try again. INEZ: ·r hat' s better. No. Follow the line of your lips; I'll guide you. There, there. Good. ESTELLE: As good as when I came in? INEZ: Better. It's heavier, crueler. A diabolical mouth. ESTELLE: Hnmun. And that's good? How irritating, when I can't decide for myself. You swear that it's all right? INEZ: You're beautiful. ESTELLE: But do you have any taste? Do you have !!!Y taste? How irritating; how simply irritating. INEZ: I've got your taste, since I like you. Look at me. Smile. I'm not so ugly any more. Aren't I better than a mirror? ESTELLE: I don't know. You intimidate me. My reflection in the mirrors was tame. I knew i t so well . If I smile--my smile will fall into your pupils and God only knows what will become of it. INEZ: And what's to stop you from taming me? (They look at each other. Estelle smiles, a little bit fascinated } Wouldn't you like to be my friend? · ESTELLE: I have trouble making friends with women. INEZ: Especially with postal clerks, I suppose? What's that there, at the bottom of your cheek? A pimple? ESTELLE (startled): A pimple, that's horrible! Where? INEZ: There, there! I'm just a bird-trap, and I've got you, my little dove! There's no need to blush. Not the slightest. And if the mirror should lie? Or if I shut my eyes, if I refused to look at you-- what would you do with all that beauty? Don't be frightened, I must look at you; my eyes will stay wide open. And I'll be gentle, very gentle. But it's up to you. (Pause.) ESTELLE: You like me? INEZ: Very much! (Pause.) ESTELLE (nodding in Garcin' s direction): I want him to notice me too . INEZ: Ha! Because he's a man. (To ~arcin); You win. (Garcin does not respond.) But look over here! (Still no response.) Don't play this game; you haven't missed a word we've said. GARCIN (Abruptly raising his head ) : You can say that again; I haven't missed a word. It was no good to stick my fingers in my ears; you just kept on chattering inside my head. · Will you leave me alone now? I've got no business with you. INEZ: And the child; have you got some business with her? I've seen your tricks-- it's for her sake that you put on such airs. .54 GARCI N: Le ave me alone , I te11· you . Someone's talk i ng about me at the jour nal an d I want to listen . And I couldn ' t ca r e less about the ch i ld , i f t hat ' ll make you happ y. ESTELLE: Thank you . I d i dn 't mean t o be r ude . GARCIN : ESTELLE : Pig! (A pause . The y s t and, fa c i ng each othe r. ) GARCI N: Th e re ! (Pau se ) I b e gg e d you to be qui e t . ES'l,ELLE: She s t a r ted i t . She came to o f fer me he r mi rro r, and I didn ' t ask he r f o r anything . INEZ: Nothing . You ju s t r ubbed aga i nst h i m a nd conto rted you r s e lf so he ' d l ook at you . ESTELLE : And so? GARCIN : Are you bot h i diots? Don 't you see whe re we are ? Ju st keep qu iet! (Pau se. ) W onl y have t o s it back down , e pe a ce f ully , clo s e our ey e s and try t o fo rget th e presenc e o f the othe r s . (A pau s e . He sits. The women r e turn t o the ir p laces wi th he si t an t s t e p s. Ine z s udd enly turns back. ) INEZ: Ha! Fo r get. How chi l dish . I fe el you i n my bones . Your s i l e nce sc re ams in my ear s. You could nail your mouth shut , cut out you r tongue , but can you k eep you r s elf fr om exist ing? St op you r thoughts? I hea r i t , it goes tick, tick, like an a lar m clock , and I know you hea r mine . It's no use cur ling up on your sofa ; you 're everywhere . The sounds a r e soiled when they r each me becaus e you've hea r d them on the way . You've even stolen my face -- you can see it and I can ' t . And he r ? He r ? You ' ve r obbed me of he r. If we were alonP . do v o u think she ' cl dnre treat me the way she does? No, no : take your hands f r om your face . I won't leave you alone , i t would be too convenient . You would stay the r e, unconscious, sunk in you r self like a buddha . I'd have my eyes s hut, but I'd hear h er o ff e r you a l l t he little no i ses of her life, even the rustle of her dre ss, and she'd send you smiles that you wouldn't even see . . . None of that . I want to choose my hell; I want to look at you with open eyes and struggle face to face . GARCIN : Good enough . I suppose it had to come to thi s-- they ' ve manipulat e d u s l ike child r en . If only they'd put me i n with men . . . men know how to keep quiet . I t wouldn ' t be too much to ask . (C r osses to Estelle and places his hand unde r he r chin . ) So 1 please you , my p r etty? You ' ve been giving me the eye ? ESTELLE : Don ' t touch me . GARCIN : Bah! Le t' s put ou r selve s at ease. I loved women a lot, you k now. And they loved me a lot . So r el a x, we 've go t Poli teness-- what for? nothing t o lo s e . Ce r emonie s-- what ' s the use? Among u s? Soon we'll be as naked as worms. ESTELLE : Leave me alone . GARCIN : As wo r ms . Oh , I e xpecte d th is. I demanded nothing f r om you , no t h i ng but p eace and a l it tle quiet . I put my f inge r s in my ear s . Gome z wa s spe aki ng , sta nd i ng between t h e t ab l e s, a nd a l l the c omrades at t he jour nal were lis te n i ng . In s hi rts le eve s. I wanted t o unde r stand what he was s aying -- it wasn't e as y ; t h i ng s on earth h a ppen so qu i ck ly . Couldn It you k eep quiet? Now i t I s all ove r, he ' s not talking any mo r e ; a l l that he think s about me is back inside h is head . Good enough ; we ' ll just have to see . it through to the end . Naked as wo r ms : I want to know who I'm dealing with . INEZ : You know . You al r eady know. GARCIN: Until each of us has admitted why we were condemned, we know noth i ng . You, the blonde, you sta r t . Why? Tell us . why; you r honesty can p r event disasters. ·when we know our monste rs . . Come on , why? ESTELLE: I te ll you I d on 't k now . They didn't want to tell me . GARCIN : I know , it was the same with me ; they didn ' t want to answe r. But I know. You ' re afraid to go first? All right, I'll begin . (long pause . ) I am not ve r y nice . We know you we r e a Go ahead . INEZ : des e rter . GARCIN : Leave that be . Don't even mention it . I'm he r e because I to r tu red my wife . That's all . For five-years . Of course, she's still suffering . There : when I speak of her I see he r. It's Gome z I'm interested in and it's her I see . Whe r e's Gomez? Five years . Say, they've 55 �given her my things . She's sitting by the window, with my jacket on her knees . The jacket with twelve holes. The blood, you'd think it was rust . The edges of the holes are burnt . Ha! It's a museum piece, a historic jacket . And I wore it. Won't you cry? Won't you end it with tea r s? I'd come home d r unk as a pig, smelling of wine and women . She'd have waited up all night for me; she never cried . Not one word of reproach; naturally. Just her eyes. Those .huge eyes. I don't regret a thing. I' 11 pay for it, but I don't reg r et a thing . It's snowing outside. But won't you cry? She's a women with a flai r for martyrdom . INEZ (almost softly) : Why did you make her suffer? GARCIN : Because it was easy . One word was enough to make her change color ; she was a sensitive thing. Ha! Not a single reproach . I was quite a tease . I waited . But no , not a single I wait ed foreve r . reproach . I pulled her · from the gutter, you und er stand . She's r unning her hand ove r t he jacke t, wi t hout looking at it , her fi nge r s g r oping blindly for the holes . What are you waiting for? What are you hoping for? I tell you I don't regret a thing. There you have it. She admired me too much . Understand? INEZ: No. No one admired me. GARCIN: So much the better. So much the better for you. All this must seem quite abstract to you. Well, here's a story. I brought a mulatto woman home with me . What nights! My wife went to bed first, but she must have heard us. She got up first, and since we'd slept late, she brought us breakfast in bed. INEZ: Cad! GARCIN : Yes, yes, a well loved cad. (Seems d i s t r acted.) No, nothing . It's Gomez, but he's not talking about me. Damn! Anyway, that's what I'm doing here. And you? INEZ: Well, I'm what they call down there a fallen woman. Already damned, of course. So it came as no great surprise. GARCIN: That's it? INEZ: No, there was also that affair with Florence. But that's a tale of corpses . Three corpses. First him, then she and I. No one's left, below . I am at peace. The room, only. I see the room, from time to time. Empty, with the shutters closed. Oh . Oh! They've taken the seals off . For Rent It's for rent. There's a sign on the door. It's . . . mocking. GARCIN: Three. You did say three? INEZ: Yes. GARCIN: One man and two women? INEZ : Yes. GARCIN: Wait . (Pause . ) He killed himself? INEZ: Him? He was incapable of it. But not for lack of suffering. He was crushed by a trolley . It was comical! I lived with them-- he was my cousin. GARCIN: Florence was blonde? INEZ: Blonde? (Glance at Estelle.) You know, I don ' t reg r et a thing, but I don't enjoy telling you this story much. GARCIN : Go on! Go on ! You were disgusted with him? INEZ : Little by little . For example, he made t his noise when he drank; he snuffled i n his glass . Little things . Oh! He was a sor r y sort, vulnerable. What are you smiling at? GARCING: Because I'm not vulnerable. INEZ: We'll see. I slipped into her; she saw him through my eyes . After a while, she was in my grasp. we took a room on the other side of town. GARCIN: And then? INEZ: And then there was the trolley. I told her every day, 'Well, my darling, we had him killed . ' (Pause . ) I am wicked. GARCIN: Yes. Sc aIT T. INEZ: No. You're not wicked. It's something different. GARCIN: What? INEZ: I'll tell you later. Me, I'm wicked . That is to say I need the suffering of others in order to exist. A torch. A to r ch in thei r hea r ts. When I'm alone, I flicker out. For six months I blazed in her heart. I burned it out. She got up one night; went and turned on the gas without my knowing it; then she lay down beside me. There you have it. GARCIN: Hmmm! INEZ: What? 56 GARCIN: Nothing. That's not right. INEZ: No, it's not right. So? GARCIN: Oh. You've got a point. (To Estelle. ) And you, what did you do? ESTELLE: I told you, I know nothing about it. I tried to ask myself . GARCIN: Good. We'll help. This fellow with the shattered face, who's he? ESTELLE: What fellow? INEZ: You know quite well. The one you were afraid of when you came in. ESTELLE: He's a friend. GARCIN: Why were you afraid of him? ESTELLE: You have no right to interrogate me. INEZ: He killed himself because of you? ESTELLE: No. Don't be foolish. GARCIN: So why did he frighten you? He put a shot into his face, eh? Is that what carried off his head? ESTELLE: Quiet! Be quiet! GARCIN: Because of you! Because of you! INEZ: Shot because of you! ESTELLE: Leave me alone! You frighten me! I want to leave! I want to leave! (She rushes to'the door and shakes it. ) GARCIN: Go ahead. Myself, I couldn't ask for more. But the door is locked from the outside. (Estelle rings, but the bell does not sound. Inez and Garcin laugh. Estelle turns around to face them, with her back to the door.) ESTELLE (her voice slow and harsh) : You are beastly. INEZ: Perfectly beastly. So? And this fellow who killed himself on your account; he was your )over? GARCIN: Of course he was her lover. And he wanted to have her for himself alone. Isn't that true? INEZ: And he danced the tango like a professional, but he was poor, I imagine. (Long pause. ) GARCIN: You were asked if he was poor. ESTELLE: Yes, he was poor. GARCIN: And then again, you had your reputation to preserve. One day he came and begged you, and you laughed. INEZ? Well? Well? You laughed? Was it for that he killed himself? ESTELLE: Was it with those same eyes that you looked at Florence? INEZ: Yes. (A pause. Estelle begins to laugh.) ESTELLE: You haven't got it at all. (She straightens up and looks at them, keeping her back to the door. Dry and provocative tone:) He wanted to give me his child. There, are you happy? GARCIN: And you, you didn't want it. ESTELLE: No. The child came anyway. I left to spend five months in Switzerland. No one knew anything about it. It was a girl. Roger was at my side when she was born. He was delighted to have a girl. But not me. GARCIN: And then? ESTELLE: There was a balcony, above a lake. I took a large stone. He cried, "Estelle, I beg you, I beseech you." I hated him. He saw everything. He bent over the railing and watched the rings in the lake. GARCIN: Then? ESTELLE: That was all. I returned to Paris. He, he did what he wanted. GARCIN: He blew his head off? ESTELLE: Yes, quite. It wasn't worth the trouble. My husband never suspected a thing. (Pause) I hate you. (Dry sobs.) GA RC IN: Useless. The tears don't flow here. ESTELLE: I am horrible! I am horrible! (Pause . ) If only you knew how I hate you! INEZ (taking her in her arms) : My poor darling! (To Garcin): The inquest is over. No point in keeping that torturer's scowl. GARCIN: A torturer's (Looks around) I'd give anythino to see myself in a mirror. (Pause . ) How hot it isl (Mechanically removes his jacket.) Oh! Excuse me. (Starts to put it back on.) ESTELLE: You can stay in shirtsleeves. For now . GARCIN: Don't be angry with me, Estelle. ESTELLE: I'm not angry with you. INEZ: And me? Are you angry with me? ESTELLE: Yes. INEZ: Well, Garcin, we're as naked as worms. Do you see it more clearly? GA RC IN: I don't know. Perhaps it's - a little clearer. (Timidly) : Can't we try to help one another? INEZ: I don't need any help. 57 �GARCIN: They've tangled all the strings, Inez. If you make the slightest movement, if you raise your hand to fan yourself, Estelle and I feel the tug. None of us can save ourselves alone; we've got to pull together in this, or sink together. Choose. (Pause . ) What is it? INEZ: They've rented it! The windows are wide open. A man's sitting on my bed. They've rented it! They've rented it! Come in, come in, don't be embarrassed. It's a woman. She goes to him and puts her hands on his shoulders Why don't they turn on the light-- one can hardly see. Are they going to embrace? This room is mine. Mine! And why don't they light it? I can't see any more. What are they whispering? Is he going to fondle her on my bed? She says it's noon and sunny. So I'm going blind. (Pause.) Finished. No more. I no longer see; I no longer hear. Well, I suppose I'm finished with the earth. No more alibis. (Shudders.) I feel empty. Now I'm completely dead. Totally here. You were saying? Something about helping me, I think? GARCIN: Yes. INEZ: Help me do what? GARCIN: Frustrate th~ir tricks. INEZ: And in return? GARCIN: You'll help me. It wouldn't take much, Inez, just a bit of good will. INEZ: Good will And where do you want me to get it? I am rotten. GARCIN: And me? (Pause . ) But if we tried? INEZ: I' m dried up. I can neither give nor receive; how can I help you? (Pause. She looks at Estelle, who has ·her head in her hands.) Florence was blonde. GARCIN: This little one will be your torturer, you know. INEZ: That could be just what I fear. GARCIN: It's through her that they'll get to you. As for me, I . • . I I pay no attention to her. If you were to What? INEZ: GARCIN: It's a trap. They' re watching to see if you'll let yourself be caught. INEZ: I know. And you, you're a trap. Do you think they haven't foreseen your very words? And that they don't have hidden pitfalls that we can't see? .Everything's a trap. But what does that make me? A trap for her. Maybe I' 11 be the one to catch her. GARCIN: You won't catch anything. We run after each other like the horses on a merry-go-round, without ever catching up; you can be sure they've arranged everything. Let it go, Inez. Open your hands, let go. Or else you'll make us all miserable. INEZ: Do I look like someone who lets go? I know what awaits me: I'm going to burn; I am burning, and I know that it's endless. I know it all-- do you think I'll let go? I will have her; she'll see you through my eyes, like Florence saw the other one. How can you tell me about your misery? I tell you I know it all and yet I don't feel sorry for myself. A trap, ha! A trap. Of course I'm caught in a trap. And what then?. So much the better, if it makes them happy. GARCIN (taking her by the shoulders): Me, I can feel sorry for you. Look at me; we're naked. Naked to the bone; I know your inner heart. We are bound together-do you think I should want to hurt you? I don't regret a thing, I'm not complaining, I am dried up too. But for you, I can feel sorry. INEZ (having left his hands there while he spoke, recoils ) : Don't touch me. I hate being touched. And keep your pity. Come now, Garcin; there are plenty of traps for you in this room. For you. Set just for you. You'd do better to mind your own business. (Pause . ) If you leave us alone, the child and I, I' 11 be · in no position to harm you. GARCIN (looks at her for a moment, then shrugs): All right. ESTELLE: (rai sing her head) : Help, Garcin. GARCIN : What do you want from me? ESTELLE (rising and approaching him): Me, you can• help me. GARCIN: Talk to her. (Inez has approached Estelle, and is standing behind her, without touching her. During the following exchange she speaks practically into Estelle's ear. Estelle,_ facing 58 Garcin, responds uniquely to him, as if he . were the one questioning her, though he looks at her without speaking.) ESTELLE: I beg you; you promised, Garcin, you promised! Quickly, quickly; I don't want to be alone. Olga has taken him dancing. INEZ: Who? ESTELLE: Pierre. They' re dancing together. INEZ: Who's Pierre? ESTELLE: A little fool. He called me his live ly brook .' He loved roe . She's taken him dancing. INEZ: Do you love him? ESTELLE: They're sitting down. She's all out of breath. Why is she dancing? At least it'll make her lose some weight. Of course not. Of course I didn't love him . He's eighteen years old , and I'm no cradle robber. INEZ: Then let them be. What can they do to you? ESTELLE: He was mine. INEZ: Nothing on earth is yours any more. ESTELLE: He was mine. INEZ: Yes, he was . Try to take him, try to touchhiro. Olga, she can touch him. Can't she? She can hold his hands, stroke his knees. ESTELLE: She's pressing her enormous breasts against him; she's breathing in his face. Tom Thumb, poor Tom Thumb, what keeps you from laughing in her face? Ah, one · glance from roe would have been enough, she never would have dared Am I truly no more? INEZ: No more. And there is nothing left of you on earth. All that belongs to you is here . Would you like the paper-knife? The bronze by Barbidienne? The blue sofa is yours. And I, darling, I am yours forever. ESTELLE: Oh? Mine forever? Well then, which of you dared to call roe their · lively brook? You are not deceived, you others, you know that I am filth. Think of me, Pierre; don't think, but of me; defend me. As long as you are thinking, 'My lively brook, my dearest lively brook,' I'm only half here; only half guilty. Below, I am a lively brook, at your side. She's as red as a tomato. See, it's impossible; we've laughed at her toget her a hundred times. What is that song? I loved it so much . Oh, the St. Louis Blues . Go ahead; dance, dance . You'd laugh if you could see it, Garcin. She can't do a thing without my seeing it. I see you, I see you, with your tired hair - do, looking so overcome. I see how you step on his feet. It's enough to die laughing. Come on! Faster, faster! How he pulls and pushes her. It's indecent . Faster! 'You're so light,' he always told me. Come on! Come on! (Dances as she speaks.) She's laughing, she dances across my view. Our dear Estelle! What, our dear Estelle? Oh , be quiet! You didn't even shed a tear at the funeral. And she says, 'our dear Estelle.' She's got the nerve to speak of him of me . Come on! In time. She's not one who can talk and dance at the same time. What? No! No! Don 't tell him! I give up; take him, keep him, do with him what you will, but don't tell him (She has stopped dancing . ) Good . You can keep him for now. She told him everything, Garcin: Roger, the trip to Switzerland; she told him the whole story. 'Our dear Estelle was not No, no, after all, I wasn't . He shook his head with a sad look , but you couldn't say the news upset him. Keep him for now. I don't grudge you his long eyelashes or his girlish manners. But he called me his lively brook, his crystal. Well, the crystal is in pieces. 'Our dear Estelle. ' Dance! Dance! Come on! In time. One, two. (Dances.) I'd give the whole world to return to earth for a moment, a single moment, to dance with him. (Dance s. Long pause.) I don't hear so well any more. They've turned down the lights, like for a tango. Why are they playing so softly? Louder! How far away it seems. I I don't hear anything at all now. (Stops dancing.) Nothing. The earth has . le.ft me. Garcin, look at me. Take me in your arms. (Inez, behind Estelle, motions to Garcin to move aside.) INEZ (impe riously ) : Garcin! 59 �GARCIN (retreats a step and indicates Inez): Talk to her. ESTELLE: (gripping him): Don't go! Are you a man? Look at me, though, don't turn your eyes away. Is it so painful? I 've got golden hair, and after all, someone killed himself for me. I beg you; you've got to look at something. If it's not me, it'll be the bronze, or the table, or the sofas. I'm still more pleasant to look at. Listen; I tumbled into their hearts like a little bird fallen from its nest. Pick me up, take me into your heart, you'll see how nice I can be. GA RC IN (pushing her away, with dif f iculty): Talk to her, I tell you. ESTELLE: Her? She doesn't count; she's a woman. INEZ: I don't count? But, my little bird, my little dove, you've been in the shelter of my heart for some time now. · Don't be afraid; I'll look at you without a break, without even a blink. You will live in my eyes like a speck of gold in a ray of sunshine. ESTELLE: A ray of sunshine? Hal Get lost! You've tried to catch me already, and you've seen well enough that it failed. INEZ: Estelle I My lively brook, my crystal. ESTELLE: Your crystal? What a joke. Who do you think you' re fooling? Everyone knows that I flung my child out the window. The crystal is in pieces on the ground, and 1 don't care. I'm nothing but an empty skin-- and my skin is not for you. INEZ: Come! You' 11 be whatever you like; a lively brook, a briny brook. In the depths of my eyes you'll have whatever you desire . ESTELLE: Let me go! You have no eyes I But what do I have to do to make you let me go? Here! (She spits in her face. Inez quickly releases her.) INEZ: Garcin I You' 11 pay for this! (Pause. Garcin shrugs and goes to Estelle.) GARCIN: So you want a man. ESTELLE: A man? No. You. GARCIN: Don't bother. Any man would do. I 'm to be found here, so it' s me . Good enough. (Takes her shoulders.) I've got nothing to please you, you 'know~- I'm not a little fool and I don't dance the tango. ESTELLE : I ' 11 take you as you ar~ . Perhaps I'll change you. GARCIN: I doubt it. I'll be distracted. I 've got other things on my mind. ESTELLE: What things? GARCIN: It wouldn't interest you. ESTELLE: I'll sit on your sofa. I'll wait for you to bother with me. (Inez laughs.) INEZ: Ha! Bitch! On your belly! On your belly! And he's not even handsome. ESTELLE (to Garcin): Don't listen to her. She has no eyes, she has no ears. She doesn't count. GARCIN: I'll give you what I can. It's not much. I won't love you; I know you too well. ESTELLE: But you desire me? GARCIN: Yes. ESTELLE: That's all I want. GARCIN: Then . . . (Leans toward her.) INEZ: Estelle! Garcin! You're losing your senses! I'm here, me! GARCIN: I see. So? INEZ: In front of me? You you can't! ESTELLE.: Why not? I used to undress in front of my chambermaid. INEZ (grabbing Garcin): Let go! Let go! Don't touch her with your filthy male hands. GARCIN (pushes her away violently) : There: I 'm no gentleman, and I won' t be afraid to hit a woman. lNEZ: You promised me, Garcin, you promised! Please; you promised me! GARCIN: It' s you who broke our agreement. INEZ (Lets go and moves back to the edge of the set) : Do what you like; you' re stronger than me. But remember that I'm here and I'm watching. My eyes won't leave you, Garcin; you'll have to embrace under my stare. How I hate the both of you! Go on, love! Love! We are in hell and I'll have my turn. (During the following scene she stares silently at them.) 60 GARCIN (returning to Estelle and taking her by the shoulders): Kiss me. (Pause.) He leans over, then abruptly straightens up again.) ESTELLE (annoyed gesture:) Ha! (Pause.) I told you to pay no attention to her. GARCIN: She matters. (Pause.) Gomez is at the journal. They've closed the windows; it must be winter. For six months they've I told you I'd be distracted. They ' re shivering; they've kept their coats on. It's curious-- they're so cold, down there, and I'm so hot. This time they're talking about me. ESTELLE: Will this last long? (Pause.) Tell me what he's saying, anyway. GARCIN: Nothing. He's not saying a thing. He's scum, that's all. Just scum. Ha! (Returns to Estelle.) Back to us! Will you love me? ESTELLE (smile) : Who knows? GARCIN: Will you have faith in me? ESTELLE: What a silly question! You' 11 be constantly in my sight and there's only Inez for you to cheat on me with . GARCIN: True. (Pause. He releases her shoulders.) I meant a different kind of faith. (Listens.) Go on, go on! Say what you like; I'm not there to defend myself. (To Estelle.) You've got to have faith in me, Estelle. ESTELLE: What a fuss! But you've got my mouth, my arms, my entire body, and everything could be so simple My faith? But I've got no faith to give. You're annoying me terribly. You must have done something pretty awful to beg for my faith so. GARCIN: They shot me. ESTELLE: I know; you refused to go . So? GARCIN: I . . . I didn't exactly refuse. (To the invisible ones.) He speaks well, he accuses me as well as the can, but he hasn't said what I should have done. Should I have gone to the general's office and said, 'I won't go, general?' What foolishness! They'd just have locked me up. I wanted to testify, to testify, myself. I didn't want them to suppress my side of things. (To Estelle.) I . . I took the train. They pinched me at the border. ESTELLE: Where would you have gone? GA RC IN: Mexico City. I figured on starting a pacifist journal there. (Long pause.) Well, say something. ESTELLE: What do you want me to say? You did what you could since you didn't want to fight. (Garcin makes an annoyed gesture.) Oh, darling, I've no idea how to answer you. INEZ: You should tell him, my treasure, that he ran away like a lion. For he did run away, your great darling. That's what's torturing him. GARCIN: Ran away, left, call it what you will. ESTELLE: But you had to run away. If YOU Id Stayed they WOUld have put YOU in handcuffs. GARCIN: True. (Pause.) Estelle, am I a coward ? ESTELLE: But I know nothing about it, my love. I'm not in your skin. It's for you to decide. GARCIN (weary gesture): I can't decide. ESTELLE: Well, after all, you should remember; you have must have had reasons for doing what you did. GARCIN: Yes. ESTELLE : We 11? GARCIN: Are they the real reasons? ESTELLE: How tangled you are. GARCIN: I wanted to testify . . . I . . . I had thought about it for so long . Are they the real reasons? INEZ: Ha! That's the question. Are they the real reasons? You deliberated; you didn't want to enter it lightly. But fear, hate, and all the filth hidden inside; these are also reasons. Go on, look, interrogate yourself. GARCIN: Shut up! Do you think I need your advice? I paced in my cell, all night, all day. The window to the door, the door to the window. I lay in wait for myself. I followed my tracks. It seemed as if I'd spent an entire lifetime questioning myself. But the deed was still there. I . . . I'd taken the train that much was certain. But why_ ? Why? Eventually I came to think that my death would decide: if I died properly, it would prove that I'm not a coward. INEZ: And how did you die, Garcin? 61 �GARCIN: Badly. (Inez bursts into But I'm out of the game; they'll keep the laughter.) Oh I It was simply a bodily records and not worry about me, and· weakness. I'm not ashamed. It's just they're right, since I'm dead. Finished like a rat. {Laughs.) I've fall en into that everything remains in suspense, for the public domain. (Long pause) eternity. (To Estelle): Come here, you. ESTELLE {softly ) : Garcin. Look at me. I need to have someone GARCIN: You're there? Good, listen, you looking at me when they talk about me on earth. I love green eyes. can do me a favor. No, don't flinch. I know, it seems funny for someo ne to ask INEZ: Green eyes? Well, look at that. you for help, you're not used to it. But And you, Estelle, do you love cowards? if you wanted to, it you tried, couldn't ESTELLE: What's it to me? Coward or not, as long as he kisses well. we perhaps love one another for good? Look, there are a thousand people who' 11 GARCIN: They' re shaking their heads and repeat that I'm a coward. But what's puffing on their cigars; they' re bored. that, a thousand? If there were one soul, They're thinking, 'Garcin's a coward'; just one, who' 11 swear against all ·their tiredly, weakly. Still, history's got to forces that I didn't run away, that I think something. Garcin is a coward. couldn't have run away, that I had That's what they've decided; them, my courage, that I am straight, I . • • I'm comrades. In six months they'll be positive that I' 11 be saved! Will you saying, "yellow as Garcin." You two are believe me? You'll be dearer to me than lucky; no one on earth thinks about you any I myself. more. Me, my life doesn't end so easily. INEZ: And your wife, Garcin? ESTELLE (laughing): Idiot! Dear idiot? Do you think I could love a coward? GARCIN: What about my wife? She's dead. INEZ: De?d? GARCIN: But you said . . . ESTELLE: I was teasing you. I loved men, GARCIN: I must have forgotten to tell Garcin, real men, with rough skin, strong you. She died not long ago. It's been about two months now. hands. You haven't got the chin of a INEZ: Of grief? coward, you haven't got a coward's mouth, or a coward's voice, or the hair of a GARCIN: Of course, of grief. What do you coward. And it's for you mouth, your think she'd die of? So, all is well. The voice, your hair that I love you. war is over, my wife is dead, and I have a GARCIN: Is it true? Is it really true? place in history. (He emits a dry sob and ESTELLE: Do you want me to swear it to covers his face with his hands. Estelle you? holds him.) GARCIN: So, I defy them all; the ones ESTELLE: Darling, darling. Look at me, down .there and the ones here. Estelle, my darling. · Touch me, touch me. (Takes we' 11 stroll out o f hell. (Inez bursts his hand and places it on her throat.) out laughing. He stops and looks a her.) Put your hand on my throat. (Garcin What is it? attempts to pull away.) Leave your hand, INEZ {laughing): But she doesn't believe leave it here, don't stir. They will die, a word she says. How could you be so all of themr what does it matter what they naive? 'Estelle, am I coward?' If only think. Forget them. There's no one but you knew how much s}1e cares! me. ESTELLE: Inez I (To Gare in.) Don't GARCIN- (withdraws his hand) : They won't listen to her. If you want my faith forget me. They'll die, but others will you've got to give me yours. come who'll pass it on. I've left my life INEZ: Of course, of course! Trust her. in their hands. She needs a man, that you can believe, she ESTELLE: Ahl You think too much. needs a man' s arms around · her waist, a GARCIN: What else is there to do? man's smell, a man's desire in the eyes of Before, I acted . Oh I To go back a man. As for the rest . . . Hal She'd with them for one day • . What a lie I suffering, which tickles and caresses and tell you that you're God the Father, if it is never bad enough. (Grabs for the would make you happy . button and presses it. ) Will you open? GARCIN : Estelle! Is this true? Answer (The door opens suddenly, and he just me : is it true? avoids falling. ) Ah! (A long silence.) ESTELLE: What do you want me to say? I INEZ: Well, Garcin? Go ahead. don't understand a word of all these GARCIN (slowly): I wonder why that door stories. (Stamps her foot) How annoying opened. this all is! Even if you were a coward, I INEZ: What are you waiting for? Go, go, would love you . There! Is that enough quickly . for you? (Pause . ) GARCIN: I'm not going out there. GARCIN (to both women ) : You disgust me! INEZ: And you, Estelle? (Estell e does (Walks to the doo r. ) not move. Inez laughs . ) So? Which? ESTELLE: What are you doing? GARCIN: Leaving . Which of the three? The way is free -- so what's keeping us? Ha! It's enough to INEZ (quickly) : You won't get far; the die laughing . We're inseparable. door's locked . (Estelle pounces on her from behind) GARCIN : They'll open it, I tell you. ESTELLE: Inseparable? Garcin! Help me, (Pounds on the door.) I can't tolerate help me, quick . We' 11 drag her out and you any more. I can't. (Este lle runs to shut the door behind he r; she'll see. him . He thrusts her away.) Go away! You INEZ (str uggling): Estelle! Estelle! I disqust me even more than she does. I beg you, keep me. Not in the hall; don't don't want to be swallowed by your eyes. throw me in the hall! You 're clammy; you' re soft! You are an GARCIN : Let her go. octopus, a swamp . (Beats on the door.) ESTELLE : You're a fool, she hates you. Will you open? GARCIN: It's because of her tha t I ESTELLE: Garcin , I beg you, please don't stayed. (Estelle releases Inez, and looks go . I won't talk to you, I'll leave you at Garcin in amazement.) all alone, but don't go. Inez has shown INEZ: Because of me? (Pause . ) Well, her claws; I don't want to stay alone with her. good enough; close the door. It's ten times hotter since it opened . (Garcin GARCIN: Look after yourself. I never crosses to the door and closes it.) asked you to come. Because of me? It Is so ESTELLE: Coward! Coward! Oh! true;you are a coward. GARCIN: Yes. You, you know what a coward INEZ (appr oaching Estelle) : Well, my ' is . INEZ: Yes, I know that . dove, aren't you happy? You spat in my GARCIN: You know what evil is, and shame, face to please him, and we quarrelled and fear. There were days when you saw because of him. But he ' s leaving, the through youself, right to the heart. And kill- joy; he's going to leave us girls it shattered you. And the next day you alone could do nothing but think, but you could ESTELLE: It won't do you any good . If no longer understand the revelation of the that door opens, I'm gone . day before. Yes, you know the cost of INEZ: Where? evil. And if you say that I'm a coward, ESTELLE: It doesn 't matter where. As far it's because you've lived with it , right? from you as possible . (Gare in has not INEZ: Yes . stopped beating on the door.) It's you I've got to convince, GARCIN: Open! Open it! I'll accept GARCIN: you are of my breed. Did you imagine that everything: the boot, the pincers, the I was going to leave? I couldn't leave molten lead, the tongs, the garrotte; everything that burns and tears . I want you here, triumphant, with all those to suffer for the good. Better a hundred thoughts in your head, all those thoughts stings, better the whip, the acid, than about me. this suffering in the head, this phantom INEZ: You truly want tp convince me? 62 63 �GARCIN: I want nothing more. I don't hear them any more, you know. No doubt they' re finished with me. Finished; the case is closed, I 'm no longer on earth, not even as a coward. We ' re alone here , Inez; there's nobody but you two to think of me. She doesn't count. But you, you who hate me; if you believe me, you' 11 save me. INEZ: This won't be easy. Look at · me. I've .got a thick skull. GARCIN: I'll give it all the time it takes. INEZ: Well, you've got all of time. All of time. GARCIN (takes her by the shoulders): Look, everyone's got their own tastes, right? Me, I didn't give a damn about money , or love. I wanted to be a man. A real man. I put everything on one horse. Is it possible to be a coward when one takes the most dangerous routes? Can you judge an entire life by one act? INEZ: Why not? For thirty years you dreamed that you had courage, and you allowed yourself a thousand petty weaknesses because for heres everything is permitted. How convenient! And then, at the hour of danger, you were up against the wall and. • . you took the train for Mexico. GARCIN: I did not dream of that heroism. I chose it. A man is what he wants to be. INEZ: Prove it. Prove it wasn't a dream. Only acts determine what it is one wants. GARCIN: I died ·too soon. I didn't have the time to finish my acts. INEZ: One always dies too soon-- or too late. But the life is there, finished; the line is drawn; you've got to take the total. Besides your life, you've got nothing. GARCIN: Viper! You've got an answer for everything. INEZ: Come on, come onl Don't give up. It should be easy to persuade me. Look for arguments, make an effort. (Garcin shrugs.) Well, well? I told you you were vulnerable. Ha! How you' 11 pay for it now. You are a coward, Garcin; a coward because I will it. I will it, you hear? I will it. And yet see how weak I am, a 64 breath of air. I'm nothing but the eye that sees you, the colorless thought that thinks you. (He walks toward her with open hands • ) Ha! They are open, these great manly hands. But what are you hoping for? You can't catch a thought in your hands. Come on, you haven' t got a choice: you'll have to convince me. I've got you. ESTELLE: Garcin! What? GARCIN: ESTELLE: Avenge yourself. How? GARCIN: ESTELLE: Embrace me; you'll hear her sing. That's true, Inez. You have got GARCIN: too. (Holds me, but I've got you, Estelle. Inez lets out a cry.) Hal Coward! Coward! Go ahead. INEZ: Go ahead and console yourself with women. ESTELLE: Sing, Inez, sing! INEZ: The handsome couple! If only you could see his great hand on the flat of y·o ur back, pawing at the flesh and the cloth. He has wet hands. He sweats. It's leaving a blue stain on your dress. ESTELLE: Sing I Sing! Squeeze me tighter, Garcin; she'll burst. INEZ: Yes, squeeze her tightly, Garcin, squeeze her. Mingle your heats. It's good, love 1 eh, Gare in? It' s deep and mild, like sleep. But I won't let you sleep. (Gesture from Garcin.) ESTELLE: Don't listen to her. Take my lips; I am totally yours. INEZ: Well, what are you waiting for? Do as you're told. Garcin the coward holds in his arms Estelle the infanticide. Betting is opened. Will Garcin the coward embrace her? I see you, I see you 1 by myself I am . a crowd. The crowd, Garcin, the crowd; do you hear them? (Muttering.) Coward l Coward! Coward! Coward! You flee in vain; I won't let you go. What are you seeking in her lips? Forgetfulness? But I won't forget you . It's me you must convince. Me. Go on! Go onl I'm waiting. · You see, Estelle, he's losing his grip, he's as tame as a puppy • . • You can't have himl GARCIN: So it will never.be night. Never. INEZ: You'll see me always. GARCIN: INEZ: Always. (Ga re in releases Estelle and takes several steps upstage. He approaches the bronze.) GARCIN: The bronze . . . (Caresses it.) So here we are now. The bronze is here; I contemplate it and I realize I'm in hell. I tell you everything was foreseen. They p~edicted that I'd stand before this mantle, with my hand on the bronze, and all eyes upon me. All those eyes, devouring me. (Suddenly turns around.) Ha! 'l'here ' s only two of you? I thought there would be a lot more. (Laughs.) So, it's hell, here . I never would have thought You remember-- the brimstone, the spikes, the grilles . . Ah! What a joke . No need of the grille. Hell? It's The Othe rs. ESTELLE: Darling! GARCIN (pushing her away): Leave me alone. She stands between us. I can't love you while she's watching. ESTELLE: Ha! Well, she won't see you any more. (Takes the paper-knife from the table, rushes to Tn c'!z and stabs her several times.) INEZ: (struggles with her, laughing): What are you doing, what are you doing, are you mad? You know quite well I 1 m dead. ESTELLE: Dead? (She drops the knife. Inez picks it up and stabs herself with rage. ) Dead! Dead! Dead! Not a knife INEZ: It's already been or poison, or hanging. done, understand? And we are together forever. (Laugh s.) ESTELLE (burst of laughter) : Forever? My god, how comical! Forever! GARCIN (laughs , looking at the others): Forever! (They sit, each on his own sofa. A long silence. They stop laughing and regard one another. Garcin gets up.) Well, let's get on with it. CURTAIN 65 �- - - - ·- - -- - - - - -- - - Non-Prof it Org. BULK RATE U. S. POSTAGE PAID . St. John's Collegf2 Annapolis, Marylanu 21404 I I 'l ·1 PERMIT No. 120 ANNAP OL,IS, 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. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. ii, 65 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper 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/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bergren, Kathleen Burlein, Ann Cooper, Barbara Holland, Christian Maguire, Susan Marklin, Martin Miller, Richard Mullen, Alexander Sokolik Merle Sachs, Joe, 1946- Title A name given to the resource Energeia, Spring 1983 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Spring 1983. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Energeia Spring 1983 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Energeia Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/434dd881e88758387fb47297229e1b3a.pdf eb2a0fef027ea742e8542da8f88e6273 PDF Text Text SPECIAL ISSUE 1983 �ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself. Ti ••• vou Cover: Kevin Tracy, '83, submitted this watercolor for the Baird Award last y ear. E v ~p yELa c;w . . n. (Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1072b) The contents of this issue of Energeia have been selected by Annapolis Pr ize Committee and produced by the Ene r geia staff . STAFF PRIZE COMMITTEE Printed by the St. John's College Press St. John 's College, Annapolis, Maryland Chai r man : Robert Druecker James Carey Hugh McGrath William Mullen Jonathan Tuck the Editor: Faculty Advisor: Christian Holland Kathy Buckler Ann Burlein Zoe Churchville Martin Marklin Alexandra Mullen Merle Sokolik J oe Sachs Energeia is a non - p r ofit s t udent magazine with an in- house cir culation to the s tudents , faculty , alumni , and staff of St . John ' s Co lleg e, Annapolis and Santa Fe . Ene r geia is published thrice yearly, in the Fall, Winter, and Spring . The Fall issue is reserv ed for the student work of the previous school year which has been selected by the Prize Conunittee fo r public recognition . For the Winter and Spring issues the Energeia staff we lcomes submissions fr om all members of the comrnunity--essays , poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings , and . the like. Note: A brief desc r iption of the author accompanies all work not by cur rent St. John's students. Please include some such statement along with your submission . Thank you. �All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy: Reflections on Beauty in Plato, Kant, Schiller, and Heidegger Barbara Cooper CONTENTS ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY: Barbara Cooper REFLECTIONS ON BEAUTY IN PLATO, KANT, SCHILLER, AND HEIDEGGER 1 TRANSLATION OF A GREEK TEXT George McDowell 30 RACINE'S PHAEDRA: REMEMBERING WHO WE ARE Lisa Eckstrom 32 TRANSLATION OF A FRENCH TEXT Geraldine McDowell 52 Leslie Bellisario 54 BECOMING ACQUAINTED WITH A KNOT Ann Burlein 55 BEETHOVEN .. . A COMEDIAN?! Kenneth Martin 71 KYRIE Jerry Spires 74 THE HARMONY OF THE SOLIDS Martin Marklin 79 . ORIGINAL ENGLISH POEM Wisdom, for Plato, seems no t to be a noun synonymous with "knowledge of what is," but a verb indicating how to attain that knowledge. For Plato our experience of beauty is erotic; we desire it and move towards it to possess it. Diotima suggests that love (and poetry as well) comes from a desire to be immortal and to beget what is "one's own." If begetting "one's own" means •coming fully into one's own, then love of beauty results finally in a kind of possession of self, the kind of possession which, in the Phaedrus, one attains by seeing oneself mirrored in one's beloved. In the Phaedrus Socrates says that, of all the imitations of what is (in the fullest sense) that appear in the world for humans, beauty alone comes through vision. Vision is the sharpest of our Introduction If we gather together the various notions that Socrates has about beauty we find that, although in the Republic he holds art at arm's length, he also respects beauty highly: in the Phaedrus and in the Symposium Socrates describes beauty as a sort of catalyst or ladder in the search for the Good. In the Republic we see art as dangerous for three reasons: it is not real; it can induce imitation of ways of being in the world which are not the highest and best ways; and finally because, if a poet can move us powerfully towards what he sees as good and true, can he not with equal power compel us in the opposite direction either deliberately or through poor judgment? It is this third objection , I think, which colors much of Socrates' thought about the poet, for he thinks of the poet as the archetype for the craftsman who founds a state, and the unjust man is "like the clever craftsman. 111 Socrates' reservations about poetry indicate his immense respect for its power. In the Symposium Diotima hints that poetr y is like love of the beautiful, whi ch a cts as a spiritual intermediary between the realm of what is most fully and the realm of human being : spirits "weld both sides together and merge them into one g r eat whole . 112 Diotima characterizes love as "at once desirous and full of wisdom, a lifetime seeker af t er truth, an adept in sorcery, ench antme n t, and seduction." 3 In Plato, love and poetry a re not themselves Truth, but a r e r athe r the means to attain it . senses; for Plato and the Greeks, to have seen is to know and all knowing is in some sense "insight." Therefore beauty is ekphanestaton kai erasmiotaton. 4 Beauty shows itself and shines forth most, and of all things is the most lovely and lovable . By appearing for us in this world Beauty leads us back to that higher world beyond the sensible realm. Socrates seems pri marily to be speaking of human beauty here; however, in the end of the dialogue Socrates makes several suggestions about how a piece of writing must be constructed to be pleasing. It must be constructed "like a living creature" and, like a lover, it must be appropriate to the type of soul which it will move.s Thus Socrates' discussion of how the love of a beautiful individual can lead us Barbara Cooper,'83, is currently studying contemporary African music in Kenya on a grant from The Watson Foundation. She is the founder of Energeia. 1 �to love of the Beautiful and the Good applies equally to the love of beautiful poetry or of art in general. The dialogue itself is an example of the power of beautiful art to lead one to the Good, for this speech is lovingly constructed for Phaedrus so that he will not, by following Lysias, neglect one of the most important aspects of life: love of an individual. Although beauty is not the Good itself, it in some ways resembles the Good. In the Republic Socrates uses the sun as an image of the Good. Beauty likewise shines and brings to light the being of things; however, we can behold beauty without being blinded. In the Republic it is not clear how it is humanly possible to stare directly into the sun, or the Good, in its full radiance. In the Phaedrus we discover that beauty is astraptousan: the brilliance of beauty is fleeting like a flash of lightening or the reflection of sunlight on metal.6 Beauty seems to allow us to experience the Good momentarily and to give us a sense of the direction of its source without blinding us in the meantime. In some sense Beauty is closer and more approachable to us as humans than the Good . Thus although in the Republic Socrates seems to relegate art to a position of minor importance, in the Symposium and Phaedrus he seems to suggest that art and beauty can have the highest possible role in human experience. To accord to art the r ole which he gives it in the Republic, Socrates must believe two things: first, that as imitation of the real, it must be less than the real; and second, that beca\lse it is neither real in this world nor true in the full sense in which ·the Good is True, it can have no truth or reality at all. On the question of beauty, as with so many questions, Plato's dialogues serve as a starting point to which later authors respond. In this pape r I shall offer three subsequent discussions of beauty and I shall examine how they differ from Socratic thought. In doing so I shall gather together some notions which I feel describe some aspect of my own experience of beauty. Although it is in response to ,_ Plato, this paper is not intended as a refutation of Plato, for often he is the deeper and more responsible thinker. As I discuss these va ~ious approaches to beauty in art, I shall keep in mind the problems involved in any discussion of aesthetics. I begin with a discussion of Kant, for whom beauty does not reside somewhere far beyond us, but rather in ourselves. His subjective description of beauty accounts for our sense that in experiencing beauty we are learning about ourselves as humans. I then consider Schiller; while Plato believes that poetry, as ~ appearance, can be a danger to society, Schiller believes that precisely because it is appearance poetry leads us to our full humanity. I conclude my discussion with Heidegger, for whom we not only learn about the true because of beauty and art, but Beauty in art is itself a manifestation of the True. Truth resides in the same realm as we do. I shall close this paper with my own understanding of the role of beauty in our own everyday lives, and with a discussion of the difficulties involved in trying to describe what beautiful art is. I. An alternative to thinking of Beauty as residing in the supersensible realm is to claim that beauty is nothing else than sensation. In "Of the Standard of Taste," Hume points out that a judgment about beauty in art must depend on the condition of the "organs" of the man perceiving the work of art. If a man lacks delicacy, practice, experience in comparison, or impartiality, he will not judge well and we will say that he lacks taste. In order to have good taste a man must have good sense. We praise a man of good taste, and his own good sense becomes our standard of taste. Thus the standard by which we judge a judgment of taste lies not in the object, but in the faculties of the man judging. Taste is a kind of health. our sense of beauty is literally bound up with our faculties of sensation and our reaction to a piece of art is "sentiment." Although I may not be able to judge well about a piece of art myself, someone whose faculties are in better order and 2 more practiced may be able to point out to me what is good or bad in the art work, and I can come to see what he has seen. Hume responds to the question of whether there can be some objective standard of taste that we must trust the judgment of those men whose good sense distinguishes· them. For Kant the consequence of Hume' s notion that beauty is not a quality of things, but rather exists in the mind which contemplates them, is that a judgment of beauty must be universal. Kant follows Hume in presupposing that all men must have the same faculties, and that therefore, if I perceive an object to be beautiful, I will expect others to judge it to be so as well. Whereas Hume's essay addresses a dilemma in aesthetics, Kant's Critique of Judgment addresses the workings of the human mind. The Critique describes the nature of the judging faculty rather than the nature of works of art. For Kant the word "aesthetic" does not initially mean "pertaining to the beautiful" or "the science of the beautiful." It is used according to the ancient distinction of aistheta kai noeta. The "aesthetic" pertains to how we perceive the world and to how living in the world feels to us. However, to feel does not mean, for example, "I perceive that this is red" (as it did in the Critique of Pure Reason), but rather "I sense orfeel within my faculties that this is beautiful." Kant uses the word "subjective" in the Critique of Judgment to describe anything which has to do with the subject's sense of himself and of his feelings. Beauty does not reside in the object. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant accounts for how we make judgments about the state of being of objects of perception. We make what he calls "determinant . judgments": we receive perceptions in the medium of space and time and our imagination spontaneously acts on them to synthesize or "determine" them according to the rules set down by the categories. Understanding, as the faculty which contains the law-giving categories, gives the laws to which imagination adheres in giving unity to our perceptions. Productive imagination presents before the mind's eye 1 an object of perception synthesized into a unified thing, or a "presentation." The categories of the understanding are not (as for Aristotle) predicates but are rather functions of the mind by which imagination synthesizes perceptions. In a judgment imagination unifies a particular and places it under a universal (a category), e.g. this vase is red. However in the Critique of Judgmen~we discover that not all ]udgments are determined according to the rules set out in the categories. "Beauty," for example is not a concept or category. This is an astounding notion: we do not think beauty, we feel it. Some of the perceptions we receive cannot be conveniently cate-. gorized according to the rules set out by the categories. In order to unify these perceptions, the mind makes a rule for itself. If my perception isn't unified into a universal of the sort provided by the categories, what sort of universal will account for it? If I must make the rule up anew for each particular instance, there will be only one member of my universal. In synthesizing this particular I make a universal, so that in a judgment of beauty the particular and the universal are the same. I perceive in the object some unity which gives it a universal character . Kant calls this universal character of the artwork an aesthetical idea. An aesthetical idea arises from the presentation of a form which gives occasion to the imagination "to spread itself over a number of kindred representations that arouse more thought than can be expressed in a concept determined by words. "7 For example Jupiter's eagle with the lightning in its claws is an attribute of Jupiter which tells us more about his power and majesty than ordinary words can express. How can I call several different things beautiful if each of them occasions a new aesthetical idea formed by the ~magination according to a self-made law? My judgment that a thing is beautiful accompanies the feeling that I have upon synthesizing the perceptions. If my feeling is one of "free play," I call the object beautiful. If, on the other hand , I 3 �neations _! la grecque , foliage for bo r de rs or wall papers. 11 8 The mystery of the Critique of Judg ment is: how does imagination synthesize formally something whose content is not space or time? That is, how does it syn- . thesize something which cannot be schematized as ordinary perceptions are? The object has some unity beyond that which we synthesize when we synthesize what we have received in space and time . Of course the judgment itself pertains to the harmony of the faculties of the subject when they are in free play. However the activity of the mind is incited by something in the object. F.0r me the mystery behind Kant's terminology redeems it, for it is an admission that beauty is not at bottom analyzable. Some objects have a unity beyond anything we can describe in speech bound by the concepts of the understanding. As Valery comments: The seducer beguiles us with the hope that everything will reduce itself to categorical terms and so achieve completion, tha t everything will culminate in the Word . Bu t we must answe r t he demon with this simple observation: the effect of the Beautiful upon a man is to make him mute. 9 Although we began by supposing that beauty does not dwell in the object, but in the subject, it seems that our feeling is called forth by s omething in the object. Insofar as beauty happens in the subject , it is not an attribute of an object, but a state of mind. Mind in itself is not subject to the formal intuitions, for my awareness of myself has to do only indirectly with space and time . Self awareness arises from my attention to the spontaneity of my imagination. My mind is immediately mine and I cannot help but feel how it is working. The feeling that my mind is at play is called forth by the freedom of objects of nature and art, for while they conform in many ways to conceptual syntheses, they occasion more thought than can be accounted for by the categories. Let us consider two examples of how feel awe, I call the object sublime. Thus aesthetic judgments are not strictly speaking attributable to the thing, but to my own feeling upon perceiving it. Beauty is not a category but a reflection of the mind on its own feeling. Hence aesthetic judgments are reflective rather than determinant . The feeling the mind experiences arises from the interplay of the imag i nation and the understanding. If the understanding along with the imag ination were simply to categorize, they would be "working," as when I make the judgment that the vase is red. But when imagination makes a judgment according to no set law, it makes a law for itself in playful imitation of the categorical laws. The understanding and imagination are "in play . " It might seem that in describing beauty as free play Kant trivializes the importance of beauty in our lives. We play when we find the time, and we are not serious when we play. However Kant's choice of the word play points in another direction as well, for when we work we are under the constraint of necessity. We work because we have to work~ we do not enjoy it and in some sense we are enslaved by it. If our perception of beauty is play, then when we perceive beauty, we are, for a time at least, entirely autono mous. We are ou r own maste rs. In making a judgment of beauty we are acting freely. Although the imagination in free play generates a rule for itse lf, Kant con ceives the synthesis involved in a judgment of beauty to be "formal." Imaginaton's autonomy is not wholly arbi trary and capricious, fo r the understanding sets down the example which imagination will follow . The rule imagination makes for itself will be by analogy to those o f determinant judgments . Determinant judgments synthesize perceptions formed by space and time . Since all my presentations will be of things in space and time (including my "I") which can only be represented by imagination through inner sense (time) as linear, everything represented by imagination must be formal. For Kant, beauty must always lie in the "form" of the thing, and he offers as examples flowe rs, s hells, "deli- 4 We sense that if one part were missing or if something were moved the unity of the painting would be destroyed. We cannot pin down why just this arrangement so pleases us. The mind seems to be able to perceive and enjoy the appropriateness of this particular curve being given to this particular object, where it might not have been found since nothing required it to be there. Free play, then, might be interpreted in several ways. I can sense the appropriateness of this cur ve to this vase; or I can sense the seemingly deliberate near-adherence to law in something which plays ~ith forms so that, for example, they are not quite perfectly geometrical . In both cases imagination obeys no given law. The vase did not have to have that curve simply to be a vase, yet I made that curve an essential part of my experience of the vase . The laws of synthesis of an object do not give me the Cezanne still life as a dynamic unity of objects. Kant calls this recognition of the appropriateness or deliberateness of form "purposiveness." Ordinarily we call the cause of an object, in the sense of formal or final cause, its "purpose." It is the formal end which the object will attain when it is unified and which will be perceived by us as a form. through the concepts. However, beautiful things do no t have purpose in the sense of form through the concepts. Nonetheless, they do seem to have form, and the form looks as if it were prescribed for them in the same way that a formal cause is. We call such objects "purposive." A judgment of beauty then "has nothing at its basis but the form of the purposivenss of an object (or of its mode of representation)." 11 Kant's parenthetical remark reminds us of the question of the l ocat ion of beauty. Does purposiveness arise from the object, or from our perception of it? The wo r k suggests that the object is purposive for me, yet not eve ry object can elicit this feeling. Judgments of beauty arise from my internal sense that the thing has non-conceptual form, and this sense only arises f o r the r elation of my imagination free play might work. If I l ook at Cezanne' s "The Basket of Apples" (plate 48, The Visual Arts as Human Experience) 10 my determinant judgment will give me colors in positions, certain shapes, and these shapes as relatively large and small. But how are these presentations unified for me into one image? For example, I immediately recognize the dish of cookies as just that, but the shape of the dish is not strictly geometric (cf . p . 250). The table edges do not match up, and the bottle is not symmetrical . Nonetheless my imagination immediately and effortlessly offers these elements to my mind's eye as a whole image whose parts . make sense. • To enjoy the real forms in the painting my mind must toy with the image to recognize how it thwarts the laws of perspective . The real beauty of the painting lies not only in the shapes but in the dynamic quality Cezanne achieves by shifting the dish one way and the table another, and by presenting the fruit as both on the tabletop and levitating above it . Perhaps free play comes not simply with form, but also with the activity to which a piece of art invites us through the interplay of its elements. To appreciate this painting we cannot simply imprint the forms upon our retina; we must allow it to set us at play on a teeter- totter of perspective and weight . The upper right-hand corner of the table wants to rise, but is balanced by the sheer bulk of the basket of fruit . An example of free play closer to what Kant has in mind is Claesz' s "Still Life ' (plate 40 , The Visual Arts as Human Experience). Thispainting ~far more conventional and each of the images within it is beautiful in a way that the elements of the Cezanne, taken individually, cannot be since their beauty arises from their balance. In this painting the various · curves of the objects are lovely in thems e lv e s . We e njoy the shape of the glass because it has just this curve, and the ellipse of the chalice lip because it has just that shape. We run our eyes over the forms just as we run our hands over the pleasing curves of a piece of sculpture. The particular arrangement of the elements on the table is also beautiful. 5 �to my understanding . My i maginat ion finds i n the object s omething l i ke a purpos e and reflects on it in compar ison with the s trict formality of the concepts . In orde r to give me the objec t a s an object o f thought my imagination mu s t supply fo r itself some r ule similar to those of the understanding in orde r to captu r e this pur posiveness. My pleasure a r ises f r om t he p l ayful agreement o f my i magination's own law , a n d the laws o f the understanding . If my enjoyment stems from the autonomous imagination's flirtation with the law of the understanding, it depends upon my sense that the understanding is law for everyone. I will be pleased with the play of my f a culties only if, in contrast with the norm, they a r e acting f r eely . What sort of norm is this? It must be the normal activity of mind, not simply my mind but any human mind. Kant claims that a judgment of beauty p r ecedes the fee l ing of pleasur e . Contr a r y to what might have been expected, the judgment of beauty is not uni ve rsa l because it i s universally pleasant; r athe r , it is pleasant fo r everyone because it is universal . "Hence, " c onc l ude s Kant, "it is t he universal capability of communication of the mental s tat e in the given r epr e s entat ion wh ich . . must b e f undamenta l and must have t he ple as ure in the object a s its c onsequent. 11 1 2 Tast e i s t hen "the fac u lty o f j udg i ng a p r iori of t h e conununicab i l ity o f f eelings t h at a r e bound up with a give n r epr e sentat i on. 11 13 This remarkable notion r equires t hat we think b eau ty as firs t and f o r emost something wh i ch p r oduce s the same feeling in e v eryone . We o r dinarily think o f beauty a s s ometh i ng which move s u s pe r sonally and which may take on great e r appe a l when we f ind our judgment reinfo r c e d b y someone el se . I am not sur e tha t Kant's description r ings true fo r me ; it is very important to me that my enjoyment o f be aut y is finally couched in my sense of myself as a human, but I am not at all sur e that communicability is the condition of my enjoyment . Unive r sal communicability can only ari s e in an object if a ll men have t he same faculties in common . Taste , then , i s a k i nd of common s ense which accounts tor our ability to compar e ou r own judgment wi th that of the collective r eason of humanity . It requires unprejudiced , consist ent, and "enlar ged t hought . " We say that a man has enlarged thought i f he "disr e gar ds the subjective private conditions of h i s own judgment , 11 14 and in so doing puts himself in thought in the place of everyone else . We see now why Kant claims that a judgment of beauty must be universal . We will expect everyone to ag r ee with it; for , since we all have the same faculties, we will have the same experience when faced with a painting. The communicability of the feeling to a l l with the same fa cul ties makes the experience universal. How would Hume respond? It seems obviou s that ever yone does not ag r ee about what is beautiful . Hume would say that I cannot e xperience beauty unless my faculties a r e i n order . Someone with good taste has "str ong sense , united to deli cate sentiment, improved by practice, per fected by comparison, and cleared of all p r ejudice . " 15 Furthermore some things wil l appeal to some people because of thei r characte r s ; an old man may love Tacitus and a young man may love Ovid . No blame attaches i tse l f to such preferences , for " it is almost impo ssib l e not t o fee l a predilection f o r t h a t which suits our particu lar t u rn and d isposition . 11 16 Kant i s mo re t e r se in h i s e xplanation o f how judgme nt s may v ary . I sense that h i s explanation ar ises more f r om philos ophi c nece ssity than f r om the tole r ant ob s e r vat i on of a c t ua l human f eel i ng : "eve r yone mu s t admit that a judgment about beauty , i n which the least interest mingles , is ve r y pa r tial and is not a pu r e judgment of taste . 1117 A judgment of beauty must be "disinterested . " It i s he r e, and not so much in his claim that beauty is subjective rather than objective, that Kant's rea l argument with Plato shows itself . A judgment of beaut y is not e r ot i c; I must be speaking very loosely to speak of "love of the beautiful" at all . Kant claims, counter to Plato and our own simplest notions of beauty, that it is not the "object of des ire . " We do not , strictly speaking, even 6 desire to look at beautiful things, although Aristotle claims that we desire to look at and t o know all things . Ordinarily , we think of beauty as a source of motion, as something which, like the beloved in the Phaedrus , draws us with its radi ance . For Dante, to fail to be moved by beauty is sin, and he is scolded by Beatr ice for f o rgetting her divine beauty and following earthly things . Kant, however , wants to claim that I must not be moved by beauty ; my enjoyment of it must be entirely free and unconstrained . In other words, an experience of the beauti ful cannot be an "emotional" experience. It turns out that the consequence of claiming that beauty is no object outside of me is that I have nothing to move to wards . For Plato an experience of beauty is bound to be an important experience , for it will move us towards something . For Kant the experience is merely internal and solely of symbolic interest . One could try to temper the revolu tionary quality of Kant's claim by remarking that my enjoyment of art. must not come from anything private o r peculiar to me, but from those things which I share with all humanity. I must not like the painting because I like fruit, or because it is something I would like to own for its investment value or its c o l or scheme (should it happen to match my living room ) . In other words , I cannot take a simply private interest in the painting, and I cannot use it as a means to some end. Perhaps, then, because my enjoyment f ollows upon a judgment that results from . the universal nature of human faculties, I am permitted to take an interest in the painting because in l ooking at it I am joining in with all humanity to discover something we all share in c ommon . However, Kant does not even allow for this enticing possibility. I personally am at a lo s s to i magine why anyone would devote so much time, energy and t hought t o beautiful art if he is no t to take an interest in it_. Perhaps Kant imagines that we somehow run into beauty and are preoccupied with it f o r a time, as a child is amused when placed in a sandbox. It seems t o me that Plato's account o f our exp erience of beauty is far truer to the experie nce. W do love beautifu l e things, and although we may not desire to po ssess them (I am perfect l y happy to leave my favorite p aintings in museums) we do take an interest in their existence. The world would seem a far p oo rer place if the Louvre were destroyed. We take delight in the thought that such wo nderful things could share the world with us. In other words, we l ove them in much the same way that we love people; we can never pos sess them, we feel a desire to be in their presence, and we feel a deep loss when they disappear . We do no t love them for their usefulness, but simply f o r what they are . Although we may be aware that their presence is beneficial t o us, we do not pursue them for our own benefit: love is never a means to an end. It seems to me that Plato is very wise, in the Pha~drus, when he places a discussio n o f l ove of an individual next to the discussion of a pleasing wo rk of art. Kant, however, has a philosophical rather than an aesthetic reason for de scribing beauty as he d oes. For Kant, the whole power of beauty lies n o t in the beautiful object but in the subject's free response to the object. Art should no t be compelling and the experie nce o f the beautiful in art canno t be pathe tic. Kant is willing t o make such radica l claims because he sees beauty as the symbo l of our own free will. Free play gives testimo ny to the ability of man to make a universal of a particular. If Kant were to allow even an interest in universal humanity to enter into a judgment o f beauty, t he judgment would inclu de a kind o f desire; we would no l onger have in beauty a symbol of morality becau se the mo tive behind the j udgment would no l o nger be the judgment itself, but rather s ome other e nd such as knowledge. The j udgment o f beauty would then be a means rather than an end. As the symbol of morality, the judgment must be entirely autonomou s, a nd must treat beauty never as a mean s but always as an end. Thus f o r Kant t he conse quence o f claiming that a feeli ng o f beauty results from its u n iversal conunu ni c a b ili t y is that we find things beau tifu l because they cal l forth in u s a n awareness o f the freedom of 7 �my own experience of art . Nothing important to my experience of painting and music will be accounted for by describing oscillations and wavelengths, much as I enjoy the Timaeus. Even if my experience could be reduced to mathematics, I would know nothing more about why colors in a Monet strike me; Heidegger will later claim that it is precisely such analyses which make it so difficult for moderns to reach real being and beauty . Kant limit s his n otion becaus e he i s strongly rooted to the idea that because all our experience must be spatial and temporal, it can only be represented (conceptually or through free play) by something linear and mathematical. One might argue with Kant about his point in two ways: one could argue on Kant's own terms, or one could abandon Kant's vocabulary and invent a manner of speaking of one's own . I shall do both. First, if my feeling of beauty belongs essentially to my sense of myself, then it arises in some way akin to the way in which I am conscious of myself. Every presentation which my imagination offers to my mind's eye must also be able to be accompanied by my thought, "I experience this sensation. " In other words, prior to my synthesis of an object I must have a synthesis of the self experiencing that object. I experience the object in time (which was linear) , however I experience myself in my awareness of my own spontaneous synthesis in imagination. This spontaneity occu rs in some sense beyond time, for it subjects i t s elf t o a synthesis of itself in t i me. Con sequently my experience of myself and of my feelings is temporal, yet beyond time. However, to argue without being limited by Kant's vocabulary: the time by which we measure our work may be subject to measurement as if it were a time - line, but the time which we have to ourselves in play seems to stretch or become concen . trated depending on our involvement in what we are doing. Time seems sometimes to be more than one - dimensional. When I become absorbed in something , time seems thicker, or to stand still. At other times, it can perform magical leaps, and can pass by before I have had time to our own faculties. Kant buries the beauty of this notion in his terminology: "the subjective condition of all judgments is the faculty of judgment itself."18 we subject our own faculties to inspection by themselves. The imagination itself subsumes itself under the understanding itself, such that the freedom of the f o rmer harmonizes with the law of the latter . Kant is proposing that in making a judgment of beauty we are in fact playing with our faculties themselves in a self-conscious exercise of our own freedom to conform to law. The ultimate freedom for Kant is the freedom to conform to one's own law. Full freedom means complete self-consistency. In making a judgment of beauty (by making a particular into a universal) I am providing myself and others with an image of moral freedom, in which I act only "in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law. 111 9 Then beauty is only meaningful in society and in culture, for it rests on ·communicability and it hints at morality. Beauty, through "common sense," yields the self-conscious sense of oneself as a social being . Kant's suggestive notion of free play accords with certain aspects of my experi ence of art, although it by no means exhaustively describes art. However it seems to me that he l i mits the notion unnecessar ily by thinking of form exclusively in t erms of delineation, rather than thinking of it as the whole form or "look" o f a wo r k o f art. The who l e o f a painting, for e x ample, arises from the interplay of many elements, only one o f which is delineation. What Kant takes to be bare delineation o r outline , I prefer to think of as the shape emerging from the complex interrelations of many parts . Kant hesitates to accept music and the art of color as beautiful rather than merely pleasant sensations. He offers a somewhat obscure argument for why they might be admitted; however, his argument depends upon their being essentially mathematical. If music and color can only be accepted into Kant's account of free play because they are mathematical, I must re ject the notion because it disagrees with 8 grasp its passage. To think of our experience of art in time as merely linear when we experience leaps and bounds in our memories, and stretches and intensif ications when we contemplate, seems entirely too limited. Allow me, then, to offer my own elaboration on Kant's notion of free play so that it can describe more of the depth of my experience of art. Since it is clear to me that a black and white repro duction c annot always capture the essence of a colorful work of art, I will submit that color is just as much an element of beauty as size, position, shape and line. Compare, for example, the color with the black and white reproduction of Albers' "Study for an Early Diary" (plate 52, page 271, The Visual Arts as Human Experience ) . Much Of the exercisewhich this painting invites is lost in black and white, for part of the play consists in the intensity of the blue box fighting with the size and position of the yellow. The shapes themselves become interesting because of their positions as well as because of their forms. or compare Monet's "Rouen Cathedral, Early Morning" (plate 44, Visual Arts) with the black and white reproduction (p. 234). The black and white picture looks like an unfocused photograph taken from an interesting angle . The color picture draws us into a damp, light-bathed atmosphere . We strain our eyes upwards to whe r e the warm colors of the sunlight b a l ance the cool colors engulfing the ground on whi ch we stand . Texture and dens i t y pla y with color to give the effect of morning light. Something happens in the color picture . There is something purposive in the particular yellow-green which Monet uses to balance the purple - blue , but there is nothing strictly law- abiding about his use of the s e colo rs. Similarly a certain melody in a Dvorak string quartet belongs to t he cello at just that moment, although we couldn't s ay why. A jazz trumpet solo would become something altogether different if it were played on the piano. It seems to me that we experience purposiveness in the interplay of many elements in art, and that to consider free play purely f o rmally limits it. Kant's no tion (when expanded) captures the sense o f restful mo tion which some works cause and which we enjoy in the awareness that anyone would enjoy it. In appreciating that work we are j oining in with all of our cultures in an activity which exercises our own spontaneous creation of lawful form. Let us see what else we can learn about beauty from Kant. He chooses to distinguish between the beautiful and t h e sublime, claiming that while beauty "brings with it a feeling of the furtherance of life, 112 0 the sublime is: a mere appendix to the aesthetical judging of purposiveness, because by means of it no particular form is represented in nature, but there is only developed a purposive use which the imaginatio n makes of its representation.21 Beauty results in restful contemplation while the sublime results in an emotional exercise of the imagination. In a judgment of beauty, imagination approximates itself to the understanding by spontaneously making a universal law for a particular. In a judgment of the sublime, imagination stretches itself beyond its limits t o try to encompass in experience the boundlessness of the ideas of reason . In both cases my imagination is active. Although Kant gives precedence to the feeling of beauty, I myself believe that the sublime can be of equal importance in our experience of beaut iful a rt . F ree play may begin to describe my experience of Monet's painting of a cathedral, but it cannot describe my feeling when · I enter the Rouen cathedral. Whereas Kant intends to describe beauty exhaustively with his notion of free play, I think of free play as only a part of beauty, another part of which is the sublime . If we think of beauty as a source of self-discovery for man (both as an individual and as a race ) then, while playful beauty gives man an i mage of his own freed om, the sublime gives him an image of his own reason. Reaso n is the aspect o f the mind which strives to encompass and to know everything, as in Aristotle's claim 9 �self in a search to grasp the idea which one already has within oneself , an idea of an absolute whole. Kant's sublime de scribes for me the feeling that one some times has that the only appropriate response to a work of art is joyful tears. Kant offers as examples of this kind of sublime beauty St. Peter's in Rome and the Pyramids. Because our judgment of the sublime and the beautiful rests upon our sense of ourse lves as rational members of humankind, our judgments are produced only in the context of culture and of our common faculties. Kant claims that the sublime has its roots in human nature, "in that which, alike with common understanding, we can impute to and expect of every one, viz. in the tendency to the feeling for (practical) ideas, i.e. to what is moral."24 We presuppose taste and feeling in any man of culture. Since the moral ideas arise from reason, and the sublime is a sort of image of our reason, we ascribe a feeling for sublime beauty to any moral man. Kant claims that both beauty and the sublime are purposive in reference to moral feeling; the beautiful prepares us to revere something, not for the sake of s ome private end, but for the sake of its form, while the sublime leads us to respect something beyond our own sensible interests . Kant makes the limited claim that an inte r est in the beauty of nature ... i s always a mark of a good soul; and ... when thi s interest is habitual, it at least indicates a frame of mind favorable to the moral feelingJ5 One is startled, however, to discover at the conclusion of the Aesthetic that Kant has made a reversal, for the final sentence of the first part of the Critique of Judgment reads: "the true propaedeutic for the foundation of taste is the development of moral ideas and the culture of the moral feeling .••. "'ii76" ~It seems clear that culture and an appreciation of beauty are bound to one another, but it is not clear whether a taste for beauty leads to morality, or whether morality leads to taste . Kant very sensibly leaves the relationship ambiguous. that all men desire to know. In sublime judgments the imagination reaches out in an attempt to perform the function of reason. Consequently a judgment that something is sublime, like a judgment of beauty, refers not to the object but the judging subject. The judgment refers to the mind's feeling when faced with an object such as the sea or a cathedral: "the mind feels itself raised in its own judgment if •.• it. .. finds the whole power of imagination inadequate to its ideas. 11 22 While a judgment of beauty rests on objective purposiveness, a judgment of the sublime rests on subjective purposiveness . In a judgment of beauty some unity belonging to the object occasions my judgment, while in a judgment of the sublime my own relative smallness occasions my judgment . Consequently the sublime "is not to be sought in the things · of nature, but only in our ideas. 11 23 Kant's discussion of how this feeling works on us characterizes my own feeling in the face of some few very moving works of art. I am torn two ways: I feel torn because the whole of my imagination can never equal the enormity I face and at the same time I feel warmed and excited by the attempt to capture the whole of the work, as if I were reaching for something beyond the everyday . The cathedrals, which were built for the greater glory of God, do succeed both in uplifting us and in giving us a pained sense of our own limitations . A very great symphony can produce the same effect, when we swim in the sounds and can never hope to grasp them all. To come away from a cathedral having simply admired its lines would be never to have faced it at all. Our mind enters into a disturbed conflict in which we are drawn forward by our imagination's attempts to grasp the whole, yet we are discouraged by the futility of our attempt. Nonetheless, in attempting to equal the ideas of reason in imagination we demonstrate to ourselves that we indeed have such ideas. One can conceive of someone entering into a cathedral and remarking only that it is large. To be awed by the cathedral, Kant very plausibly argues, is to involve one - 10 II Schiller, however, borrows Kant's ideas and boldly claims that artistic beauty will be man's means to reach a moral condition. For him the question of how man can attain political freedom and his full humanity is answered by Beauty, "since it is through Beauty that we arrive at Freedom. 11 2 7 Ideal Beauty will lead us to our ideal nature in which the harmony of our faculties renders us free. It is the task of culture to realize this ideal man in all of us. As the title of his book, The Aesthetic Education of Man, indicates, Schiller is concerned to educate mankind aesthetically so that mankind can become moral. One must admire Schiller for the nobility of his interest. Schiller reinterprets Kant's analysis of the faculties (understanding, judgment and reason) so that it can describe the present division of humanity as a whole. Kant's faculties become impulses or drives towards the rational, the sensual, and the beautiful. Just as judgment mediates between the understanding and reason, so for Schiller the impulse towards the beautiful mediates between the sensual and the rational. In the ideal man the impulses towards reason and sensation are balanced. Modern man, however, has become fragmented. The harmony of the ancients has been lost in the name of Progress and Utility. In order to further the technical arts man has specialized. Some neglect reason in favor of the sensual (like the man who works solely with his hands), while others neglect their senses in favor of reason (l ike those who theorize and invent). Schiller is conscious of the dual nature of art: like anything powerful it can be dangerous as well as beneficial. Through the specialization of the arts, Rea'Son and . the Ideal have become removed from sensation and reality: we his readers feel the truth of his claim in our own imbalance between the speculative and the i ntuitive'. Schiller's striking description of modern man anticipates the thought of Hegel and Marx: Eternally chained to only one single little fragment of the 11 whole, Man himself grew to be only a fragment; with the monotonous noise of the wheel he drives everlastingly in his ears, he never develops the harmony o f his being, and instead of imprinting humanity upon his nature he becomes merely the imprint o f his occupation, of his science. 28 In a dialectic process akin to Hegel's, Schiller describes the progress of history as being reso lved by a Higher Act. This Higher Act is Culture; through it the third impulse (the play impulse towards the beautiful } develops. This impulse corresponds to Kant's faculties in free play. For Schiller, Nature and sensation always combine, while the progress of the understanding demands division and separation. The power of reason performs a second synthesis yielding a new whole. This recombining synthesis manifests itself in history. Our new harmony will not simply be a return to the original harmonized state of the ancients, for the Higher Act will unite the simplicity of the ancients with the historical self-consciousness of the moderns.29 The antagonism between the sensual and formal impulses will be instrumental in this move towards Culture; however, as long as the conflict persists we are only on the way towards culture. Culture will be a state in whi ch our rational and sensual impulses are harmonized by ~ur impulse towards the beautiful. For Schiller the conflict of sense and form in humanity as a whole manifests itself in the individual as a conflict between condition and person. The condition corresponds to the changing particular who is bound to the sensual sequence of time; it is the verbal aspect of my being. The person is the enduring "I" which is an unchanging universal ideal outside of and encompassing all time. Man exists both in the immediacy of the sensu al and as an "I" in some way unaltered by time. Schiller sees mode r n man as caught up in the fragmentation of his own duality: particular v ersus universal, sense versus form, finite versus infinite, �reality versus ideality. Cultur e mu s t bring about a harmony between man's dual impulses. Ar t preserves the ideal humanity embodied in the Greeks: "truth lives on in illusion, and from the copy the original will once again be restored." 3 O For Schiller appearance or illusion does not fall short of the real, as for Plato, but rather it opens up towards the i deal. Schiller exalts the power of appearance. The artist, like Orestes, cleanses the present age by using material from his own age and the form from a nobler time, "from beyond all time, [borrowed] from the absolute unchangeable unity of his being . " 3 l The artist must give the world the direction towards the good by surrounding it with "noble, great and ingenious forms . until actuality is overpowered by appearance and Nature by Art . 1132 Art brings · about the Ideal by reconciling the warring impulses of reason and sensation. The sensuality of beauty will soften the restraint of the overly rational man, while a rt's formality will tighten the slack sensual man . The ideal condition will be "sternness with oneself combined with tenderness towards others." 3 3 The inharmonious man is either unsympathetic or self-indulgent. The impulse towards beauty balances the sensual and rational impulses because it makes use of both of them. This play impulse aims at "the extinc tion of time in time," for it attempts to reconcile the rational (atemporal) with the sensual (in time ) . 34 Because the rational is associated with the universal, and the sensual with the particular, the play impulse echoes Kant's moral imperative, whereby one's own particular act must be treated as if it were to become a universal law. Kant simply points to .the similarity between an aesthetic judgment and a moral judgment by calling beauty the symbol of morality . Schiller, however, in a display of his own poetic freedom, equates the synthesis of the material and formal with that of the universal and particular, so that the play impulse results in yet a third synthesis of physical with moral necessity in man's aesthetic freedom . Whereas for Kant freedom means autonomous self- consistency, for Schiller freedom means that we are not bound to a mere physical necessity, but can unite obedience to physical law with obedience to moral law. The freedom exhibited in a judgment of beauty, by uniting the sensual-particular with the rational-universal, makes manifest man's moral freedom . Thus "living shape," the realization of free play, suggests both the vitality of a beautiful form and the moral shape a life will take on if it follows the harmo ny of beauty . The aesthetic art for Schiller becomes the art of living, anc:i the fulfillment of this life is play : "man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly Man when he is playing . " 3 5 · I am reminded of Aristotle's conviction that to be fully alive and at work is one's ful lest pleasure . We see here the glimmerings of the notion that what it is for man to be is to be at play : to be creatively at work on his life. Play takes on the sense of ergon, a being at work in the sense of fulfilling what is most necessary for man to be a man . For Heidegger as well beauty is a way of being at work in the world . Thus freedom from necessity in Schiller means play, a play involving the whole shape of o ne's life among men. Schiller has learned from Kant that beauty is not simply an attribute of things, but a state of mind as well : it is certainly form, because we contemplate it; but it is a t the same time life, because we feel it. In a word it is at once our state and our act . 36 Schiller founds his notion of "living shape" on several Kantian notions. First, a judgment of beauty is a reflection on the harmony of our faculties. Second, in viewing beauty we must reconcile the uni versal and the particular. Finally, our concept of the ideal of Beauty amounts to an awareness of our own boundless powers of rational thought . Schiller, like me, is inclined to combine Kant's notions of the sublime and the beautiful. Kant would 12 never posit a "rational concept of beauty," for beauty is not a concept but an idea of the imagination, a reflection on the. state of our own faculties. Schiller considers the recognition of beauty to be proof of our ability to pass beyond the finite just as for Kant the imagination's attempts to encompass the sublime are an image of our boundless rationality. For Schiller, free play affords a triumphant proof that passivity by no means excludes activity, any more than matter does form, or limitation infinity that consequently Man's moral freedom is by no means abolished by his necessary physical dependence.37 This union of disparities in our experience of beauty proves the compatibility of the finite with the infinite, and consequently proves that an individual act can become a universal act. It proves the possibility of a sublime ideal humanity. Schiller means far more by "beauty," "living shape," and "culture" than is implied in our fine arts. When he claims that culture will lead us to ideal humanity, I think that he is aware that no mere intellectual revolution, no blood-bath, and no mere conviction in human free will can lead us to the realization of a peaceful, free world and of our ideal humanity. By culture Schiller means something like what the Latin root suggests: man is nurtured and cultivated into the organic whole which is his ideal condition only through the attentions of his culture. He must grow up out of the earth of nature, but he will only grow freely and well if some artificial attention is given to his form. The illusion and artificiality of human custom makes man conscious of his own power over the nature whose sensual law he cannot escape. Art is only beautiful if we are conscious of it as man-made. our imposition of form on our world yields )Ur sense of moral freedom. action, not for the sake of some necessary of self-interested end, but purely for the sake of freedom. Freedom cannot be imposed by revolution, it must grow up out of the fabric of everyday life. Schiller elevates Kant's "disinterestedness" to the stature of the source of our humanity. Schiller's description of fragmented man yearning to become reunited portrays convincingly the modern world and much of modern art. Man's desire to find a home in the universe and to become one with it may be founded on Schiller's distinction of person and condition. We are often painfully conscious of ourselves as fragmented infinitesimals existing in time yet groping to find a way to equal the world we live in. We sense that the whole of what is excedes us in importance and being, and would like to feel one with the whole rather than separate. Baudelaire's poem, "Les Phares," describes the same yearning: Ces mas maledictions, ces blasphemes, ces plaintes, Ces extases, ces eris, ces pleura, ces Te Deum, Sont~n echo redit par mille labyrinthes; C'est pour les coeurs mortels un divin opium! C'est un cri repete par mille sentinelles,. Un ordre renvoye par mille portevoix; C'est un phare allume sur mille citadelles, Un appel de chasseurs perdus dans lee grands bois! Ces c'est vraiment, Seigneur, le meilleur temoignage Que nous puissions donner de notre dignite · Que cet ardent sanglot qui roule d'age Et vient mourir au bord de votre eternite ! 38 Beautiful illusion is the exercise and manifestation of our freedom. Thus the art of living entails making every moment o f one's life a poetic act, a deliberate exercise of In this poem artists from Michelangelo and da Vinci to Goya and Delacroix all join in one cry lamenting 13 �man's loss of classical innocence. It is the cry itself, the yearning to become one with God's eternity, which gives testimony to man's dignity . This cry repeats itself t hroughout different worlds and ages, al ways reaching for the eternal and timeless as waves reach for the shore . The preceding poem ("J'aime le souvenir de ces epoques nus . . ") s ugge~ts that we are no longer all that we could be, because we lost our youthful innocence t o the God of Utility . Baudelaire captures t he ache we have to return to that innocent, unified state. Of ten we do experience beauty as an attempt to escape from the limitations of time, or to capture time in a moment . This sense of being freed from time ac cords with Kant's description of beauty as a concept which is not a schematization of time through the categories . Although our experience of beauty is temporal we are no longer enslaved by time; our experience is the extinction of time in time. We are not limited by the spatial and temporal qua lity of art, for we become immersed in the entire world t he work of art depicts . Each of the painters in "Les Phares" creates a world, yet when I experience tho se worlds I am not subject to their time or space; rather, I sense for a moment those worlds as a whole. Our consciousness that our experience is not , for onc e, subjec t t o time give s us a sense of f reedom and wholene s s which Schiller calls "universal" and "infinite." I think of Soc rate s gaz ing in timele ss contemplation at the beginning of the Symposium , or of myself when I am "lost in thought." Insofar as we have not yet attained to the reintegration of our faculties or impulses, I think that Schiller's description of modern man hits the mark , and, in comparison with Kant's reduction of the significance of beauty to a symbol, I respect his sense that Beauty can be extremely powerful. I also admire his wisdom in recognizing that full humanity and freedom cannot be imposed, but must, just as the word "ethics" implies, come from custom and habituation. Nonetheless his conception of beauty and Culture as the road to morality dis turbs me deeply. Schiller himself admits that one could argue that precisely because taste pays heed only to form and never to content, it finally gives a soul a dangerous tendency to neglect all reality entirely and to sacrifice truth and mortality to an attractive facade . 39 Schiller dismisses this enormous problem, the problem of the Republic, and all the examples that history has to offer of its likelihood , in two paragraphs . He responds by positing a pure rational concept of Beauty , and "by this conception we are to discover whether what experience calls beautiful is entitled to the name. 114 0 This Beauty cannot be discovered through experience; it must be sought along the path of abstraction , and it can be inf erred simply from the possibility of a nature that is both sensuous and rational; in a word, Beauty must be exhibited as a necessary condition of humanity. 41 We must pursue Beauty because "those who do not venture out beyond actuality will never capture Tr uth . 11 42 Beauty is thus an ideal towards which we strive . This argument is, for me, mere poetic rhe tor ic . Why should we strive for an ideal that Schiller cannot prove we even have, and which we do not know to be iden tical with the Good o r truth? At the foundation of this argument lies Schiller's certainty that we, like Socrates, wi ll in some way ass ociate the beautiful with the Good, and the Good with truth . I do believe that art brings out a certain t r uth , but I am not sure that that truth is always moral truth. Schiller perhaps argues from his own conception of what higher art must be and has in mind his own politically oriented writings. However it would be dangerous, to say the least, to assume that the reader will take Schiller and Goethe as his examples rather than some less scrupulous poet. For me, much of Schiller's writing gains its force from its poetic formulation and not from its argumentation. I have frequently resorted to quoting Schiller rather than paraphrasing him, for he is at heart not a philosopher but a poet. He would like to give his arguments the force of necessary reasoning, as if they were logically deduced. However, his arguments often make use of poetic license. Because of their generality and ambiguity (for example, what precisely are Higher Art, Culture, and Beauty?) his letters are a perfect example o f how art can be dangerous . Schiller gives the impression of having logically presented a necessary truth when he has, in fact, employed poetic persuasion. For Schiller's argument to work, art must act on particular men to make them more harmonized. It is not clear how art is to perform its function, since the arts cannot move men: an impassioned fine art is a contradiction in terms; for the inevitable effect of the Beautiful is freedom from passions. No less selfcontradictory is the notion of a fine instructive (didactic) or improving (moral) art, for nothing is more at variance with the concept of Beauty than that it should have a tendentious effect upon the character.43 Beauty, apparently, does not teach us or compel us. How then do we become more moral? ThQ move towards Culture can only happen in individuals, yet it is not clear how the harmonization is to take place unless Culture in Schiller's sense has already been achieved. Once a whole culture becomes involved in beautiful appearance, it might plausibly be argued that anyone growing up under its influence will be moral. But how are we to reach Culture? If the transformation is to take place in individuals through culture (in the sense of fine arts as we think of them) I am tempted to laugh cynically with Alex, the hero-villain of ~ Clockwork Orange: - - Civilized my syphilized yarbles. Music always sort of sharpened me up, O my brothers and made me feel like old Bog himself, ready to make with the old donner and and have blitzen vecks and pti tsas creeching away in my ha ha ha power. 44 For Alex the form and "lawfulness" of art express dominance, seduction and violence. Because Culture in Schiller's sense has not yet been attained, the art around Alex does not mold him towards moral freedom but towards lawless violence. Schiller claims that through art the sensual and rational impulses will be harmonized; however, in Alex the rational impulse imposes itself violently on the sensual and the sensual overwhelms the rational. The artificial world Burgess portrays may be full of illusion, yet it is not an expression of free choice made manifest in free play. The strict conformity to appearanc_e drives Alex to desire to break free from lawful imprisonment to exercise his freedom in lawless violence. His violence, at least, is not illusory. I have serious doubts about Schiller's claim that beauty leads to morality. Hitler and Stalin appointed ministers of culture, but that did not make them Cultured. Art, beauty and culture do not imply humanitarianism. Schiller has not adequately explained how Culture is to come about through the instrument of the conflict of sense and reason, yet his writing persuades us that it will. My fear is that Schiller's Aesthetic Education, for all its optimism and beauty, will distract us from our attention to. morality itself. I would like to believe what Schiller claims but I have not yet seen justification. When Socrates condemns art as imitation in the Republic he fears the political consequences of illusion. Not all art is illusory, for not all that is artfully made aims to deceive. But Socrates is aware that, because beauty is powerful, it can lead us astray. Schiller's description of the sensual and rational impulses in some ways resembles ~OCJ:~•' tripartite soul in the Phaedrus. Schiller seems to ignore Socrates' image and its implications on his own theory. Certainly the sensual element and the rational element must work together when they perceive and pursue Beauty; however, in 14 15 �the Phaedrus one is always conscious of the danger that Beauty will provoke one of the elements to thoughtless and destructive action . The experience of beauty may in fact unbalance us . It would be foolish to avoid beauty al together on that account, but it must be approached with great caution . What I miss in Schiller is a sense of rese r ve in the face of beauty . There are many k i nds of illusion we can be drawn to and cau gh t up in; we must be very sure what we mean by beautiful illusion if we are to pursue it . Having noted that the danger of art disharmonized mankind in the first place, Schiller would have done well to bear this danger more in mind when he sang the praise of "Higher Art . " III Nevertheless there is something deeply true in Schiller's assertion that "we are citizens of an age, as well as of a State . " 45 The needs and tastes of our centur y cannot help but form our sense of the world, and we owe allegiance to our own time ; it would be wrong to ignore its conce r ns whethe r they please us o r not . Schiller's awareness of the historical nature of humanity gives him an understanding of beauty which will account f or the histo r y o f art . Nothing in Kant • s ae sthet i cs can describe why each of the painters in "Les Phares " so emphatical ly c r eat e s a world of his own, governed by the age f r om which he emerges . Only with the a dvent of a sense of histo ry and o f t h e development of human consciousness within it can we account for changes in style, subject and emphasis . Art seems to have the power to draw us into a world or age; we do not simply stand back and observe the form, or even simply feel the play of our faculties . we find ourselves faced with a new way of being in the world . Heidegger, upon being moved by a Van Gogh painting, comments that "in the vicinity of the work we [are] suddenly somewhere else than we usually tend to be." 4 6 Let us consider for a moment several different works of art: Copland ' s "Appalachian Spring," Munch's "The Cr y , " and Homer ' s Iliad . When we encount er each of these works , we experience the world i n wholly different ways , all of which may seem true or real to us . The world of "Appalachian Spr ing" is hopeful, young, decidedly American and highly conscious of the natural world . Munch's "The Cry" (p . 1000, . Key Monuments of the History of Art) calls forth an age-old despair, a sense of alienation from oneself and from the wor ld . In Homer's Il iad a l iving , teeming, colorful picture of the world embraces the unity and blessedness of everything , in spite of the toil and pain without which that unity would not be pos ~ sible . Although each of these worlds becomes real for us, each corresponds to a partic ular time or age , and each comes out of the sense of the world and the concerns that pervaded that age. Copland was an American in a time when the American dream seemed possible; Munch was a product of European malaise brought on by industrialization and the shadow of the world wars . In Homer' s time the gods seemed active in the world, forming and o r dering it . None of this means that I must know the histo r y behind the work to be drawn into a world, but it does determine how those worlds are historical . How i s it po s sible for a work of art to draw us into a world? Heidegger speaks of a r t as d r awing us into a wo r ld, and although he means by "world" something more ontological than I have in mind in this discussion of aesthetics , we can learn much from his thoughts on the mat ter . Heidegger has his own interpretation of Kantian "disinte r estedness . " While fo r Kant disinterestedness allows for a purely free judgment about an object, Heidegger takes it to be the most pathetic experi ence we can have of an object: "precisely by means of the 'devoid of interest' the essential relation to the object itself comes into play."'+ / We see that whi le in Kant the beauty in a work of art happens within the free play of the subject, for Heidegger it occurs in the relationship of the receptive subject ·to the work of art . An experience of beauty requires that I approach the work without imposing any of my own needs, desires or expectations upon it . Only then will it present itself to me fully . Heidegger quite literally intends to say that my manner of approach ing the beings of the world alters their manner of being present in the world for me . The work has an integrity of its own which I must not violate if I wish to ex perience it . For Kant the importance of disinterestedness arises not from a need to experience the work honestly, but from the necessity that our judgment be free . Heidegger emphasizes that disinterestedness is not apathy or indifference, but a bearing towards things . When I face works of art I must take an interest in them for what they are in themselves; I must allow . them to .move me . Heidegger follows Plato in believing that the beautiful is that which shines forth most and which is most lovable . He too believes that beauty can lead the observer to truth as in the Phaedrus; or rathe r, Heidegger believes that beauty, in its shining, is a manifestation of truth and is not simply an appearance : "Beauty is one way in which truth occur s as unconcealedness . 114 8 While for Plato the r ealm of what truly is keeps its distance f rom the realm in which beauty appears in art , Heidegger believes that art tells the truth . Plato is unwilling to claim that beauty can give birth to anything but "wisdom" . Yet when I am faced with a work of art I sometimes want to claim that it te ls a k ind of tru t h abou t the world , even though the char acters may not be r eal . No one ever spoke as Phedre speaks , and few people would eve r be faced with the conflicts she faces , yet there is something t rue abou t how we see the world t h r ough the work . Her raw emotion is t rue to life , whether or not we will ever e x pe rience it in such an undiluted manner . Socrates does not permi t this kind o f interpretation of art, for if a thing is not a real table or an ideal table, it is less than either of them . Heidegger claims that art is not less than reality, but more . Art brings out the reality of real things by telling a kind of truth about them . Philosophy, in the course of its his tory, has obscured the reality of things by imposing various interpretations upon them . Things have been thought of as made up of subject and accident, of the unity of the manifold of sensation, and as mat ter and form. Heidegger claims that none of these ways of speaking about a thing allows it to be what it is in itself . He calls these theories "thing concepts," and points out that our relationship to things may more properly belong to the realm o f feeling than ratiocination: Perhaps however what we call feeling or mood is more reasonable that is, more intelligently perceptive ... because it was more open to Being than all that reason which, having meanwhile become ratio, was misinterpreted as being rational. 49 Because Kant a r ose out of and con tinued the tradition of thinking of things th r ough conceptual machinery rather than allowing them to move us , Kant is in a sense responsible for the rarity of our e xperience of beauty . He i degge r claims that the prevailing thing - concept of informed matter a r ises from our sense that all things either have a u s e for us o r seem to have one . Matter is always formec by the end or telos we find fo r it . Heidegger would claim that all Kant ' s tal} of purposiveness indicates Kant ' s inabili ty to think of things of the world withoui simultaneously refer r ing to t he ir usE (whether actual or apparent) . Even ir admitting to the non - conceptual element ir a judgment of beauty , Kant must resort tc conceptualization : beauty becomes an "indeterminant concept . " Thus we most of t en approach things a~ use - objects o r equipment . To experience < thing as it really is we must p r event our selves from imposing anything £ n i t , w~ must allow what is in the thing to shrn itself . Here is ho;- Heidegger describe: what we perceive when we allow a Van Gog] painting of peasant shoes to "speak" : From the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toilsome tread of the worker stares forth 16 17 �In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained self refusal in the fallow desolation of the wintry field ... This equipment belongs to the earth and is protected in the world of the peasant woman.so Heidegger's feeling description of an experience of the Van Gogh painting captu r es more of our sense of the wo r ld of the painting than Kant's free play does. The painting makes us more conscious of the life behind the shoes than of the forms involved in their portrayal. The shoes seemed at first to be mere equipment, but, because of their reliable usualness, they give the peasant woman a secure world in which she can reap the mys terious benefits of the earth. Heidegger sees the being of things as a conflict of earth and world rather than of form and matter or sensation and reason. The shoes are part of the peasant woman's world and they bring he r into contact with the earth. The work of art has its quality as a work because in it the conflict of the earth and world is at work . This conflict works on us, the viewers, in our own world. Art is, for Heidegger, "the truth of beings setting itself to work. 11 51 Art does not testify to our freedom or lead us to morality, it sets up a world through the wo r k it performs on us. In depicting a world the work gives birth to a world . Heidegger does not mean that it creat es an atmo s phe re but that it literally creates a new world. The beings of the world take on a new being because of the power of art. In our ordinary transaction with things, we use them and use them up. We use bricks to make a house, leather to make shoes . We live in a world of useful things. However in the creation of a work of art, the material does not disappear in usefulness, but rather becomes more noticeable. When we see a stone sculpture, the stone suddenly becomes remarkable and beautiful, unlike the brick of the house. In a poem words are not simply useful for getting something done; we dwell on them and enjoy them for their sound and new meaning. After reading "Les Phares" a beacon is something new for us. While Schiller claims that "the real artistic secret of the master consists in his annihilating the material by means of the form, 1152 Heidegger insists that in the work of art the material first ceases to be an object to be worked on and becomes something which acts on its own. I think Heidegger is quite right about this; in the tubes, Monet ' s paints are merely red and green; once they are brought into conflict with one another in the painting, they come into their own and come alive. We of ten speak of a lyric melody, as if the very tones could sing, and we a·r e first conscious of the beauty of wood or metal when they have become part of an icon or statue rather than of a table or car. 53 A good artist does not impose anything upon the material but rather works with the material to find the form within it:" As Aristotle or Michelangelo would agree, the sculptor finds the statue in the stone. Art does not allow us to take its subject matter or material for granted. The stone is no longer mere stone, and the form of the man is not simply "some man." Things which seem familiar and ordinary are revealed by art to be extra- ordinary. Heidegger describes our sense that when we look at a work of art we are seeing what it depicts for the very first time. Rodin ' s sculpture of "La Belle Heaulmiere" (p. 146 , The Visual Arts as Human Ex pe r ience) makes us see the degradation and despair of an old woman as if we had never seen it before. Joself Albers' "Study for an Early Diary" (plate 52) gives us the sense that that particular blue is for the first time remarkable and lovely. Things in the world are no longer mere things, but entities with a bein~ that has nothing to do with their usefulness or purpose for us. This sense that the work of art gives us that things have an integrity and being of their own Heidegger calls "selfsubsistence." The unity we find in a work of art arises from the conflict of world Thus our sense and earth enacted in it. 18 of the thing as an entity in itself arises from the conflict of world and earth . In the wo r k of art "that which is as a whole --world and earth in their coun54 terplay-- attains to unconcealedness . " The interplay which for Kant resided in the play of the faculties, fo r Heidegger arise s in our consciousness of the primal conflict of world and earth. When Heidegger speaks of "unconcealedness , " he is thinking of the Gr eek word for truth, aletheia . The etymology of the word (a- lanthano) hints that truth is the un- hidden and un - forgotten . However , just as for Heraclitus Nature likes to hide , so for Heidegger the unhidden truth about things is that they protect their being by hiding it : Trut h is un- truth , insofar as there belong s to it the reservo ir of the not - yet- uncovered ... In unconcealedness, as truth , the r e occur s also the othe r "un- " of a double restraint or r efusal . Truth occurs as such in the oppositio n of clearing and double concealing . 55 We see this opposition of clearing and concealing in the conflict of world and earth, so that Truth happens in the conflict between the r eticent natu r e of things and thei r manner o f appearing in t he world . The hidden character of things in part arises from our habit of imposing use and intellectual constructs upon them; it is not as though we could impose our will and thought on things forever without caus i ng them i n some way to turn their backs on us. The unconcealed characte r of things is the being they have in spite of or because of our approach to them . These two aspects, earth and world, are differ ent, but are never separated and cannot be resolved . Heidegger's account of art and our wo r ld may s ound e soteric, but I think he is describing something common to our experience . I will offer several simple examples of what he means . In the picture of David Smith's three abstract sculptures (p. 697, Janson, History of Art), the conflict of world and earth appe~rs in the stark contrast between the bold, worldly forms in steel, and the secretive , ancient and earthly forms of the branching tree and the mountains in the distance . A sculpture is always influenced by its setting, which is why a traveling exhibition of sculpture is a contradiction in terms : the same sculpture becomes a new sculpture i n every new setting . The setting is par t of the sculpture . In the same way a piece of architecture is altered by the city- scape which grows up around it. When Santa Fe was no more than a settlement , the Sanctuario stood out for miles as a work looming towards heaven . Now it huddles privately amid the buildings towering above it. In some way it is a different building now, for while it once proclaimed man's desire to pray to God, it now re proaches us for our pride and forgetful ness. These examples show how the con flict Heidegger describes can arise in the world into which the work of art enters . However this tension arises within the w·o rk itself as well. Smith's sculptures deny gravity and our expectations . They are nothing like natural forms, or the forms we are used to seeing in useful steel structures . They seem top - heavy and unlikely; they do not look like they should balance . The world the sculpture sets up counters the earthly setting i n which we find it . Smith plays with our expectations of heavy metal and gravity and thus sets ou r world on edge . Buckminster Fuller often plays with th i s tension between the "stuff" he works wi t h and the natural laws to which it must adhere. The metal of his architecture pulls and pushes into a particular conf iguration. The result is a structure which bears itself up because of the conflict. Fuller calls this conflict "tensegri ty , " for the tension brings about the integrity or unity of the form (see p . 486, History of Modern Art) . If we return to Monet's "Raue n Cathedral" we find this tension in the difference between the atmosphere Monet creates with his play on light and color, and what we know to be the solid, touchable "stuff" of the cathedral and paints. In the Rodin the conflict arises between the openly sagging dejection of 19 �By showing a particular thing from any given angle, he, Durer the painter, brings to the fore not only one single isolated view which offers itself to the eye ... Heidegger then elaborates on this thought: By showing any given individual thing as this particular thing, in its singularity, he makes Being itself visible: in a particular hare, the Being of the hare; in a particular animal, the animality. 59 Heidegger quite literally thinks of art as a "drawing" out from nature of the truth of objects . The act of drawing creates exactly the sort of conflict he has in mind between world and earth. The outline of the form along with the shadings which give it depth, fight with the negative space, the blankness of the paper which conceals the being of the thing the artist draws out. The artist captures the essential conflict between the form of a thing in the world and the earth from which it takes its context . The form is defined by everything which it is not (see, for example, Durer's self-portrait, p. 7 4 7, Key Monuments of the History of Art) . T~ drawing-out which the artist performs "does not let the opponents break apart; it brings the opposition of measure and boundary into their common outline ."6 0 Heidegger gives form as much or more emphasis than Kant does, for the look of the thing, its figure, shape, or Gestalt is the manifestation of the strife between world and earth. Because the conflict of world and earth arises both in the work of art and in our perception of it, it is essential to the work of art that we, as viewers, be conscious of it as a work and not as a use - object. When we see the art as art, we are drawn into the world of the w~k. At the same time, our response to the work draws the world depicted into our own world . We no longer see an old woman as an old woman once we have been drawn into the world of "La Belle Heaulmiere." However we do not find the woman extraordinary until we have seen her as extraordinary in a work of art. Part of the woman's world and the smooth, sheltered beauty of the reserved bronze from which she emerges . Although we can sometimes point out the worldly and earthly aspects of the work, the two aspects are not like parts which can be separated and scrutinized one at a time. One arises out of or in the presence of the other . This interplay illuminates everything which the art work touches on : the material, the f orm , the subject of the work, and the things in the world which the work depicts. The work sheds light on the things of the world: "this shining, joined in the work, is the beautiful. 11 56 Like Plato, Heidegger thinks of beauty as a brief illumination of truth. For Plato, beauty is like the sun and the Good except that we receive only brilliant flashes of it in a kind of flashback or insight. Heidegger also thinks of our experience of beauty as a kind of insight except that, f or him, the true is not simply reflected in the beautiful; it actually comes into being and manifests itself in the beautiful. Thus the making of art is "determined and pervaded by the nature of creation." 5 7 The poet's action is called "creative" not by analogy with God's act, but as synonymous with it. Art does not imitate, o r invite free play; it evokes: "to create is to cause something to emerge as a thing that has been brought forth. 11 58 Truth does not exist somewhere removed f r om the conflict o f world and earth; it occurs in that conflict. The appearance of truth is for Heidegger, as for Hegel, histo rical. For Plato, it would make no sense to think of the artist as creative, fqr everything which "is" in the fullest sense has always been, beyond time and human life. Once truth is seen as historical and the being which is most fully being resides in the world of knowing men , human creativity makes sense . In his commentary on Plato's Republic, Heidegger points our that for Plato art stands far removed from truth. Art can only capture a single angle or "look" of a thing. In response Heidegger offers Erasmus' characterization of Albrecht Durer: 20 The viewer creates the work by responding the beauty o f an object of art lies in our appropriately to it so that the world awareness that it is meant to be opened up by the work becomes part of the artificial . Plastic flowers are meant to world of the viewer . The artwork works on deceive us; their purpose is a pleasant the viewer and his world, while the viewer atmosphere. When we discover that they sets the work at work in the world . are plastic, they become repulsive. The distinction between creator, art Japanese silk flowers, on the other hand , work and observer is lost in Heidegger , are even more remarkable and lovely once for all merge in the worlding of the world we discover that they are man-made, for which the art creates. When a work of art they are not meant to trick us but to .comes into the world, it offers the pos delight us with their delicate perfection . sibility of a new and different world. Art transports us from the realm of Because human being is historical, art the ordinary because "the work casts beacts as a sort of prophetic projection or fore itself the eventful fact that the announcement to man of his own possibilwork is as this work." 61 The work of art ities. Man's response to the work creates does not allow us to ignore its being, as a new world which itself draws man into a we usually do with the things in the new state of being, just as the statue world : " ... and what is more commonplace becomes a new work when placed in a new than this, that a being is? In a work, by setting. contrast, this fact, that it is as a work, Art is an arche; it is a source and . . h a t 15 unusua 1 . 1162 . 15 JUSt w beginning of worlds and ways of being in Our response to each work of art will the world. The source of the work of art be different, and the appropriate response is the art already at work in the world; to a work preserves it. For example, for seeing the David Smith statues set against a religious work of art to maintain its the New England hillside may set me to being as religious, I must let it enter work to recreate the world I see when into my devotional life . Heidegger claims David Smith's world conflicts with his that if I cannot pray in a temple, it is earth. Each work evokes a new world, no longer the work of art which it was for which in turn enters into the conflict of the Greeks. Once I impose some other reearth and world to produce a new work, sponse upon the work I am depriving it of from which another world emerges. Art its work-being, for it no longer works on throws man into a new state of being; me in its full integrity . The work transHeidegger sees in art the power to draw a ports us into a world newly opened up to thing forward into its full actuality, us; we are displaced, or transported out somewhat as Aristotle's final or formal of the realm of the ordinary: cause moves the things of the world. Yet To submit to this displacement Heidegger's history seems not to have a means : to transform our final end (as Hegel's does), for every accustomed ties to the world and world consists in a conflict which can earth and henceforth to never be resolved, and which causes a new restrain all usual doing and world. It will always produce new art prizing, knowing and looking, in works, new drawings. We will never be order to stay within the truth trapped, like Kant or Hegel, in a world of that is happening in the work ... our own making: This letting the work be a work Modern subjectivism ... immed ' ately we call the preserving of the interprets creation , taking it as work. 63 the self - sovereign subject's Thus the being of the work as work performance of genius. . . But depends as much upon my preserving it as (poetic projection] never comes it does on the original creation of the from Nothing in that what is work . A Michelangelo tomb is only a tomb projected by it is only the if it has bones in it; a Vermeer ought withheld vocation of the properly to adorn the wall o f a house. 21 �historical being of man itself.64 Although man is creative for Heidegger, it is equally true to say that art itself is creative. Heidegger, like Schiller, recognizes that man both creates and is created by his culture. An artist can only draw upon the world before him to create his art; history consists of his successive responses to the worlds created by art. For Kant, the power of genius is far more mysterious and subjective than Heidegger's creativity , for we do not know its source. The artist tries, by means of imagination, which emulates the play of reason in its quest after a maximum, to go beyond the limits of experience and to present [rational ideas] to sense with a completeness of which there is no example in nature.65 Whereas Kant's genius spontaneously attempts internally to go beyond what the world offers to him, Heidegger's poet man ifests externally, in his work and being, an attempt to join in with the being of what appears through the agency of art . Because Heidegger's poet has a source outside himself, one cannot escape the question: whence comes the eternally gen erative power of this source? Aristotle's answer to this question is " God," the prime mover and eternal nous . Heidegger evades the question by emphasizing the historical nature of the being of things and of art. There will always be things and art to elicit a response in the poet (much as there wil alway s be fathers to generate sons in Aristotle). Yet Heidegge r claims that "language speaks" and that somehow the poet listens to the silence of being. At the risk of sounding Socratic I must ask, if "language" always speaks to the poet throughout the change able ages, must it not be one thing? Heidegger must believe that there is a sense in which the fullest being of things rests in language. Heidegger's poet lis tens to this language in the same way that Plato's demiurge looks to the shining of the forms. Heidegger cannot escape the implication that there exists something divine which calls upon the poet as the prophet who can lead the world towards Being. This thing, Art itself perhaps, brings us full circle, for we are once again claiming with Plato that Being (or Beauty, Truth, Art) is not in the subject but in something towards which the poet looks. Heidegger must presuppose something of a religious inclination in his reader to be convincing. The religious tenor of his writing provokes an objection similar to the one I raised against Schiller. Heidegger has his own peculiar language and style, and the greatest difficulty in writing about him is avoiding falling into his own language . Heidegger wants to avoid using · ordinary speech, for ordinary speech cannot draw us out of the world of use - objects in which we are inunersed. His work cannot be convincing dialectically because to use logic and argumentation would be to rely upon the sort of conceptual framework Heidegger wants us to abandon. Heidegger must let the language he has created persuade us. However Heidegger's position is difficult, for he is not a poet himself, but the prophet pointing to the saving power of poetry . His writing is not poetry, and it cannot be philosophy in the sense of post-Kantian conceptualization. Heidegger's difficult style, which is so self-conscious as to become at times strained and artificial, results from his attempt to write in a language which cannot be treated as mere equipment . It must be reflected upon because it is extraordinary. Consequently Heidegger cannot prove to me that Truth is historical and that reality happens in the art work. He must rely on wordplay, etymologies and apt expressions. If I am convinced by the essay, it is because it "seems right to me" and describes well my sense that art draws me into a world, a notion which Kant neglects . I am not sure whether his claim that the only true mode of speech left to us is poetry is right, but I am sometimes inclined to think that the images in Plato and Aristotle will move me in the world long after I have forgotten the arguments. For me the greatest appeal in Heidegger lies not in a powerful argument but in the 22 finds its context . When I walk in Paris very honest complexity and con fusion in and s8e the towers of Notre Dame set his notion of Art. I imagine that he is against the straight bold lines of aware of the circularity of his argument . Montparnasse, a conflict comes alive for Beauty is not something which can be an me and I see each of the buildings anew . alyzed, conceptua li zed and packed away. The past world is the stuff out of which with beauty, as with life, the questioning modern man is formed. We are as much made is all . Art has some power over the viewof our heritage as we are of flesh and er and the creator which, by its very nabone, and in some ways that past is as ture, cannot be fully understood , but unr espons ive and unyielding as the hills which can create new worlds for us . of New England . Heidegger's thought seems essentially It seems to me that Heidegger does optimistic to me: the truth can be right not take our confrontation with works of before us if we only open ourselves to it. art which are not contemporary seriously It is in someways a return to the stance enough. A work may in fact come into full of pre - Cartesian thinkers, for whom play long after it was created, as with epistemology was not an issue because Bach, Baudelaire, and Heidegger's own fa there was no unbridgeable gap between us vorite poet, Holderlin. If anything is and the thing-in-itself. We can know as peculiarly true of us moderns, it is that much of the truth as we allow ourselves to we cannot appreciate the art of our own perceive . time. Heidegger is far more sensitive to Perhaps it is this observation which the power and mystery of beauty than Kant prompted Heidegger ~s uppose that works is . However, there is at least one of art can become mere art objects . Beglaring problem in Heidegger's account of ·cause the art work consists in conflict, the beauty in art . If we think of art perhaps conflict must enter into our preshistorically as contextual form ( such that ervation of it. To preserve a Vermeer as the being of things depends on their a Vermeer, the middle - class Dutchman lived surroundings) , we are forced to say that with the painting in his house. It was once the surroundings change the art work not a museum piece . Perhaps to preserve a is no longer at work as a piece of art . piece of modern art I must reject it . The Heidegger claims that once the world of a projective power of modern art may lie in work of art has passed we can no longer the sense that I have that it conflicts experience that work; it has become an art with my understanding of the world . Once object . the work of Schonberg or Pollock has beCertainly it is true that the world come merely palatable it is no longer proof the temple is gone. I cannot pray in jecting us beyond what we are. The modern it, I cannot see it as the appearance of aesthete ·who can complacently claim to the gods. Nonetheless I would claim that enjoy and understand the music of his time it is still at work in the world. It may in fact be simply enjoying his culstands against the new·world and works on tural achievement ("broadening one's me in a new way. When I look up at the mind") rather than being provoked by a vault of a cathedral, that experience con radical, extraordinary work which origiflicts with the experience I recall of how nates a new world . the world appears when I look up in the Certainly we o f ten call modern works streets of New York and see skyscrapers "ahead of thei r time," which suggests that re aching for the sky. My experience of we can only enjoy them later, orice they no the cathedral consists in a different conlonger conflict with the world in which we flict of world and earth than that which live. However, for Heidegger, the work medieval man experienced . For him the consists in that conflict, and only pre cathedral stood against the boundless hotentiousness leads us to claim that we rizon and the fields worked by the peasappreciate art which is dead, because the ants. For me it stands as the earth primal conflict in which it consists no against which the world of mode rn activity 23 �longer exists . Part of me agrees that Notre Dame may be lost to a bus load of camera- clicking tourists (me included) , but another part of me knows that the cathedral still shapes the world of Paris for those who live there . Heidegger's concern for conflict ex plains why we have so much difficulty experiencing the art of the recent past . It has been digested and accepted and has lost much of its original sheen. Once it is olde r we c an o nc e again face i t as something venerable and extraordinary . When it was first made, it was startling and remarkable . But ten or twenty years after it was made it stands little chance of exciting much interest . However, none of these observations are universal, for Shakespeare has always been appreciated while Bach was only tepidly received in his own time, and Andy Warhol, I suspect , will go down in art history as a mere nov elty . The question we are now left with is : in what sense was and is the art work "created" if it continues working even after the "original" conflict which the poet drew out has been left behind? The work has s ome powe r not invested in it by its creator. If the cathedral is as much the context for my experience of Paris as the hil ls a r e fo r my e xperience of Smith ' s sculptur es, what s o r t of thing is "earth"? It ha s both a created and an elemental being . Not only c a n we not dis t inguish b e tween the work , a r tist and viewe r , we cannot finally distinguish the c r eated from the natural. Wor l d and earth , al though they are wonderfully apt prelimi na r y distinctions, prove finally to blend somewhat . Art seems to be mo r e complex than even Heidegge r had imagined . fecundity , and an energy quite comparable to that which springs from love; unable , in this new object of his attention, to separate necessity from the arbitrary, contemplation from action, matter from mind-- the philosopher, I say, kept trying to apply his usual methods of reduction by exhaustion and progressive division to this monster of the Fable of Intellect, this sphinx or griffin, siren o r centaur , i n wh i ch s e n sati on, dream, instinct, reflecti0n, rhythm, and excess are as closely intermingled as chemical elements in living bodies; this strange thing which nature sometimes offers us, but as though by chance, and which at other times is formed , at the cost of immense effort s , by man, who puts into it every bit of his mind, time, determination, in short, his life . Paul Valery, "Aesthetics 11 6 6 It seems appropriate to end this paper with the words of the poet Valery re flec t ing on the whole aesthetic question . With bis precisely aimed barbs of humor and irony , be laughs at us for the absurd it y of our effor ts . Kan t, Schiller and Heidegger all a t temp t to describe beauty a s a mons t e r with a dual n at u r e , but Vale r y su gges ts t ha t art is t oo p r o te an and complex for ou r natur al process of int e lle ctual div ision t o conque r. The elemen t s ent e r ing into our experience of beau t y a r e many and are int angible: they j oin together int o compl ex c r ys t alline struc t ures which dissolve or recombine t he moment we scrutinize them . Although our whole inve stigation is somewhat ludicrous, neve r theless it did bear some fruit . Beauty seems to teach us something about ourselves as humans. No other animals indulge in free play, none discover t heir own f r eedom fr om necessit y o r the boundless character of their thought. None grope beyond t h ei r individuality to find a sense of themselves in the universal whole of things . Certainly none create a world for themselves. If some of the details of our studies have jangled, if some have conflicted and cancelled , we Conclusion Thus, in the presence of that mysterious pleasure of which I am speaking, the philosopher, justly concerned with giving it a categorical place, a universal meaning, and intelligible function; fascinated by, yet curious about the combination here of sensuality, 24 must not dismi ss our search as useless but acknowledge the complexity of ou r subject . For Valery sug gests , a r t is probably more or ganic than we would like to admit . We would like to pin ar t and beauty down , to me asu r e them and move on to other things, but like t he electron , ou r own words, and l i fe itself it eludes us . Valery claims that man puts every bit of himself into art; we might recall Schi ller's conviction that the greatest piece of art is the art of living. For Kant as well, beauty, as the symbol of morality, seems instrumental in the very living of life. Certainly, if art and our sense of life are intimately bound , man ought to take an interest in aesthe t ics. Why should the very seed of life elude us? Heidegger, Valery and Kant all suggest that art is essentially poetic , since t hey place poetry and language above t he other arts. Art seems in some way linked to language, or at least to our attempts t o symbolize , communicate and t ransform our internal p r ivate sense of being into something more external and public, so that we and our fellow men can examine and enjoy it more re a dily . Yet t he language we ordinarily use (the language of grammar and dialectic) proves ironically to be a clumsy instrument for describing what beauty is. Is it a noun , removed and far away from us , or is it a verb depic t ing our own subjective activity? Perhaps it is an adjective, but to what shall we attach it? To my faculties, or to some object outside of me , or to the relationship of subject to object? Or is it an adverb describing the nature of the motion of my faculties? Does the adverb perhaps describe the work of the object on me, or of me on the object? The answer to these questions is probably that all have some truth. Poetry does not demand logical exclusion, for as Valery points ·out, "when poets repair to the enchanted forest of Language it is with the express purpose of getting lost. 11 6 7 I am reminded of the Baudelaire poem "Correspondances:" La Nature est un temple ou de vivants piliers Laissent parf ois sortir de confuses paroles; L'homme y passee a travers des forets de symboles Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers. 68 The poetic is so difficult to analyse or describe precisely because what art itself attempts to capture is so complex: the very forest of life and nature it s elf. If we have had trouble defining artistic beauty, neither can we define life: " s ome men have tried to define life; their efforts have always been rather futile, but life is there just the same. 1169 Each artist attempts in his way to re-evoke the world as it seems to him; art does not talk about things, it presents them before us as experience . To talk about art is in some way beside the point. Art does not happen in analysis, but in experience, in feeling and sensation. Most artists would rather let their works speak for themselves, as if the works had a kind of vitality separate from that of their authors, and a language of their own . we humans live in a historical world that changes constantly; the artist finds new aspects of life to respond to, or he responds to those which have troubled or inspired man as a human for centuries. There will always be love poems, but only in our own century can an artist address the insanity of a rac e to selfannihilation. The word "life" takes on a new meaning at every moment, and yet the faculties with which we feel it we share with all humankind . In general , art seems to have the character that we as moderns can look back to appreciate and experience the art of our predecessors, but one cannot imagine Homer appreciating Camus ~· Art is as alive and changing as the human co nditio n. Being alive means feeling, and as Wallace Stevens comments, "it is quite possible to have a feeling about the world which creates a need that no thing satisfies except poetry. 117 0 Stevens is not alone in this sentiment; Valery too fe l t that some things we experience ask to be depicted in art. Art d o es n o t simply express, for ordinary wo rds can express things. It is a way o f making sense of 25 �living . The artist does not always begin a work with a clear end in view, a message to be expressed . Often the very making of the thing is a way of coming to an understanding of the world, or at least of sensing the world more fully. The poet's concern may be to communicate with himself. If it happens that we, his human audience , can experience in his art something of what he felt in making it, so much the better . Rilke advises the young poet to search within himself , with i n hi s own feelings, memories and desires. The test of the worth of a poet's verse must be his own experience of life, not the opinion of others. In the Republic, Plato says that the Good is the source of all things right and beautiful, universally for all beings . 71 Many things can be measured, analyzed and discussed , but at least part of the Good in the life of all beings is not simply orthos . This other part may not always be perfect, correct or right, but it is beautiful . Ordinary speech cannot describe this aspect of life , for it does not belong to the realm of the philosopher, but to that of the poet . To ignore the kalon would be to be only half alive. To claim that what the poet depicts in his beautiful art has its source in the good may s eem perverse . Baudelaire's poems are flowers arising from evil . Munch 's "The Cry" wr enches us with the agony of isolation. How can these beauti f ul depictions be children of the Good? Perhaps what art depicts is not the Good it self , but t h e route to the Good. The wo r ld Munch depicts is not beautiful, but his art is; when we feel that ugly world vividly through the ?ainting, we pronounce the artwork to be beautiful. The beauty in the painting arises from its ability to make us feel . Baudelaire attempts to shock his audience out of the "ennui" which gnaws at life and dulls its b r illiance. Munch ' s painting prevents us from becoming numb to the world and from ceasing to live because we can no longer feel. The alienation we sense in "The Cry" seems an expression of the despair Munch feels in a world where humans turn their backs on one another's feeling . If we turn our backs on feeling , if we deny our sensual nature, we are not fully human. Sensuality may lead to ex cess, ugliness and pain, but it also brings with it wonder, delight and pleasure . The good beauty can lead us to seems to be an enlivened sense of being, a more alert perception of the world and a greater sensitivity to the feeling of those who surround us . The heavens pro claim the glory of God; each moment of e xis t e nc e must b e savor ed even in its ug liness, for unless we feel this world we are not fully alive . The poet might re spond to Socrates, you are blasphemous, for you belittle the grace that God gave you in simply letting you live in this world in this form, whatever its limi tations . It seems to me that the task of the modern artist is enormous. We have so alienated ourselves from our world that we doubt our very kinship with it . The knower (with whom we most identify ourselves) can no longer reach the sensual wor ld ; our souls are not made of the same stuff as the cosmos . How can we feel at home? Where is our place? Is my soul , like Baudelair e ' s, a tomb? : --Mon ame est un tombeau que, mauvais cenobite ; Depuis l ' eternite je parcours et j 'habite ; Rien n' embellit les murs de ce clo itre odieux. 72 Are we trapped in a mausoleum of life , no longer able t o live and feel? I f feeling me ans f eeli ng t he agony of Cezanne , Van Gogh , Munch , do we want this feeling? They were more vulnerable to life than most of us ; i t is the burden of the genius to have his senses heightened at the expense of his protective skin. I often think that in this , at least, Heidegger was right: without conflict, s t ruggle , and pr ob ably pain, t h e r e wou ld be no ar t , no beauty, and no truth about life in this wo r ld . Row can we b e ar t o be in such a world? But how can we dare t o claim that it should be otherwise? Life is what we are given. We may choose to try to change its quality, to annihilate what is ugly or evil in it, or simply to 26 come to terms with it, but there will always remain the astounding fact that it is ours for no other reason than that we should live. It seems to me that beautiful art moves us because it struggles with the irrational fact that we exist, which fact is not a mere object of knowledge but life itself. We do not know life, we live it; art helps us work through this mystery, play with it, delight, despair and puzzle over it. Art is above all else an invitation to live and make an art of living. Although beauty may overwhelm us, daze us with its genius or estrange us with its power, it will always awaken in us a sense that, at least for the moment we experienced it, we were facing life. Beautiful art enhances our sense of life. Life turns out not to be subjective or objective, rational or irrational, beautiful or ugly, but all of these things in a kaleidoscope of forms of which we are only a member. Seeing the beauty in life arise out of its contradictory and confusing nature is the end of art. .Auden's tribute to Yeats ends with a summons to the poet: Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With Make Sing In a Stop this You shall You shall eyes You shall You shall the farming of a verse a vineyard of a curse, of human unsu ccess rapture of distress; In the deserts o f the heart Let the hea l ing fountain start, In the prison o f his days . 73 Teach the free man how to praise. Each poet inhabits a different world, yet we all share the world in common. The poet must teach us how to praise life, and the source of life, even in the face of its incomprehensibility. Like Adam and Eve exiled from the Garden we must sweat over the soil of evil to reap the fruit of suffering. Only the free man can praise, the man who has risen above the inclination to numb his pain, who rather works upon it so that, by freely embracing and cultivating it, he is no longer imprisoned in life, but living. No animal other than man can remark upon his being in the world and rej o ice in it. Art, like man's very being in the world, is extraordinary. It is essential to art that we know it to be gratuitous, because life itself is a gift o f grace. Art jolts us from our complacency and ennui and gives us a sense that if art can be a conscious blending of chance and necessity, whim and choice, so also can life be. The po et invite s us to make our lives into a poem, or at least t o j oin into life, like a Greek cho rus which is conscious of the play as -a play, yet which jo ins in and reflects on its action. However, I may be drawing upon myself my own criticism of Schiller and Heidegger. Allow me t o let a poet speak as a poet: day and night with me and you shall po ssess the o rigin o f all po ems, there are mil l ions o f s u ns left, possess the good of the earth an d sun • . . no longer take things at second or third hand . . . no r l ook through the o f the dead . . . nor feed o n the spectre s i n b ooks, no t look through my eyes either, nor take thing s from me, 74 listen to all sides and filter them fr om you rself. 27 �Footnotes 1. Bloom 360e . Plato, Republic , (New York: Basic trans . Books, by A. 1968), 2. This and all quotations from the Symposium and Phaedrus are taken from Plato: The Collected Dialogues, ed. by E. Hamilton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). The passage cited is 202e. See also 205c. 3. Symposium, 203d. 4. Phaedrus, 250d. 5. See Phaedrus, 264c and 271b. 6. Ibid., 254b. 7.Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Judgment, trans. by J . H. Bernard (New York: Macmillan, 1951), p.158. 8 . Ibid . , p . 66 . 9 . Valery, Paul, "Aesthetics," trans. by R.Manheim in Aesthetics, ed. by R. Manheim (New York: Random House, 1956), p.58 . 10. Weismann, Donald, The Visual Arts as Human Experience, (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice- Hall, 1975). 11. Judgment, p . 56. 12. Ibid. , p. 51 13 . Ibid., p.138. 14. Ibid., p.137. 15. Hume, David, " Of the Standard of Taste," in Of the Standard ~Taste, ed. by J . Lenz, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1980), p.17. 16. Ibid., p.20. 17. Judgment. p.39. 18. Ibid., p.1 29 . 19 . Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the --Metaphysics of Morals, trans. by H.J . Paton (New York: Harper and Row, 1964) , p. 70. 20. Judgment, p.83. 21. Ibid., p.85. 22. Ibid., p.95. 23. Ibid. , p.88. 24. Ib1d., p.105. 25. Ibid. , p.141 . 26. Ibid., p.202. 27. Schiller, Friedrich, On the Aestetic Education of Man, trans. by R. Snell (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980), p.27. 28. Ibid., p.40 . 29 . I learned this from Gisela Bern's essay "Schiller's Drama--Fulfillment of History and Philosophy in Poetry," in The St. John's Review, Summer 1982. See p.23. 30. Aesthetic Education, p.52. I have altered Snell's translation to read "in illusion" since Schiller uses " Tauschung" consistently to mean "illusion or appearance." 31. Ibid., pp.51-52. 32. Ibid., p.55. 33. Ibid ., p.71 . 34. Ibid., p.74. 35. Ibid., p.80 . 36 . Ibid., p . 122 . 37. Ibid. 38. Baudelaire, Charles, Les Fleurs du Mal et Autres Poems (Paris: Garnier - Fl~mmarion, 1964), p.42. 39. Aesthetic Education, p.57. 40. Ibid., p.59. 41. Ibid., p . 60. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., pp.106- 107 . 44. Burgess, Anthony, A Clockwork Orange (New York: Random House, 1981), p . 45 . 45. Aesthetic Education, p.25. 46. Heidegge r, Martin, "The Or gin of the Work of Art," in Poetry, · Language, Thought, trans. by A. Hofstadter (New York : Harper and Row, 1971), p.35 . 47 . Heidegger , Martin, Nietzsche (Volume I: The Will to Power as Art), trans. D. F . Krell (San Francisco:- Harper and Row, 1979), p.110. 48. " Origin ," p . 56. 49 . Ibid., p.25. 50. Ibid., pp.33-34. 51. Ibid., p.36. 52. °AeSthetic Education, p.106. 53. I would, howeve r , claim t hat the wood can come to life in a lovingly crafted table which is so well made that it not only functions, but draws attention to its being a table because it so perfectly performs as a table. 54. "Origin," p.56. SS. Ibid., p.60. 28 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 65 . 66. 67 . 68. 69. 70 . Stevens, Wallace, Poems E.Y_ Wallace Stevens, sele cted by S.F. Morse, (New York: Rand om House, 1959), pp.v-vi. 71. Republic, 517c. 72. Les Fleurs du Mal, p. 44. 73. Auden, W.H.-,-Selected Poetry of W .R. Auden (New York: Random House, 1971) , p.54. 74. Whitman, Walt, Leaves E_f Grass, ed . by M. Cowley (New York: Viking Press, 1969), p .26 . Ibid., p.56. Ibid., p.60. Ibid. Nietzsche, pp.186-187 "Origin," p. 63 . Ibid., p.65. Ibid. Ibid., p.76. Ibid., p.158. "Aesthetics," p.48. Ibid . Les Fleurs du Mal, p.39. "Aesthetics," p.6 0 . Bibliography Auden, W.R. Selected Poetry .£.!.. }i_.!!_. Auden New York: Random House, 1971. Baudelaire, Charles. Les Fleurs du Mal~ Autre Poems. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1964. Berns, Gisela. "Schiller's Drama--Fulf illment of History and Philosophy in Poetry." The St. John's Review, Summer 1982. Heidegger, Martin. Nietzsche. Volume I: The Will to Power As Art . Translated by D~Krell. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979 . -----Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by A. Hofstadter. New York: Harper and Row,· 1971. Hume David. Of the Standard .£.!..Taste. 'Edited by--:f. Lenz. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1980. Ka~t, Immanuel . Critique .£.!..Judgment. Translated by J.H. Bernard. New York: Macmillan, 1951. -----Groundwork of the Metaphysics .£.!.. Morals. Translated by H.J. Paton. New York: Harper and Row, 1964. Plato. Phaedrus . Translated by R. Hackforth in The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Edited by E. Hamilton and - Cairns. p rinc eton·· Princeton · · H. University Press, 1973. -----Republic. Translated by A. Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1968. -----Symposium. Translated by M. Joyce in The Collected Dialogues ~Plato. Edited by E. Hamilton and H. Cairns. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1973. . Schiller, Friedrich . On the Aesthetic Education of Man. Translated by R. Snell. NeW-York: Frederich Ungar Publishing Co ., 1980. Stevens, Wallace. Poems E_y Wallace Stevens. Selected by S.F. Morse . New York: Random House, 1959. Va 1 ery, p au 1 · "Aesthetics." Translated d . by R. Manheim in Aesthetics. Edite by R. Manheim. New York: Random House, Inc., 1964. Whitman, Walt. Leaves ~Grass .. ~dit ed by M. Cowley. New York: Viking Press , 1969. Art Publications Englewood Cliffs : Prentice-Hall Arnason, R.H. History .£.!..Modern Art. New Inc., an d Harry N. Abrams, Inc., York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc-.-,-1974. 1962. Janson, H.W. History .£.!..Art. Englewo od . DL The Visual Arts as Human We1smann, · · -- Cliffs: Prentice-Hall Inc. and Harry Experience.--"E°nglewood Cliffs: N. Abrams, Inc., 1977. Prentice-Hall Inc., 1979 . -----Key Monuments .£.!.. the History ~Art. Many thanks to Miss Brann, Mr. Mr. Zeiderman and Richard. 29 0 ' Grady, �-------------- From Plato's Phaedrus Translation George McDowell In our present state there is no splendor in the likenesses of justice and moderation and whatever else to souls is precious, although by means of imperfect organs and with difficulty, a few are able to discern in these likenesses some semblance of the originals. Beauty however, was radiant to behold when, in company· with that fortunate choir, we followed Zeus and others followed other gods, and looked on a blessed sight and spectacle, and were initiated into that which is properly called the most divine of the mysteries. Fulfilled, we celebrated unaffected by the evils that awaited us in later days, and witnessed in brilliant light perfect, innocent, peaceful and sacred visions. We were as yet undefiled: free of the bodies in which we are now confined as are oysters in their shells. Let these things then serve as a tribute to memory, on account of which I have spoken overlong in yearning for a distant past. Beauty, as we observed, did indeed shine brightly amidst those visions, and coming hither, we were again able to perceive her glistening splendor through the most distinct of our senses. But even though sight is the keenest of the body's senses, from it wisdom remains hidden; for how powerful would be the love inspired in us for wisdom, as well as for those other equally lovely ideas, if we but had clear images of them within our view. As it is, however, to beauty alone falls the ordination to be both the most v isible and the most beloved . George McDowell attended St. John's in Annapolis for three years. He is now a first year law student at The University of Maryland in Baltimore. 30 31 �Racine's Phaedra: Remembering Who We Are Lisa Eckstrom 109 2 Examinez ma vie, et s ongez qui je suis. le sang fa tale and ignore the story of Helios our grandsire; we refuse to admit both as co-existent. We must not forget Misfortune in Racine's Phaedra that there are true stories as well as comes not from inability to know who we false even though the true stories may are, but from inability to be who we are. tell us conflicting things. The stories Phaedra is a play full of myths and may be of things within us, true things genealogies. We are told the stories of which are in conf lie t. Phaedra remind~ our fore~athers, and apprehend our coming Hippolytus: de~truction, all the while clinging to the 598 Dans le fond de mon coeur vous ne maJesty of our history, for we are pouviez pas lire. descended from the Gods. we are the Hipp~l~tus, the lover of Purity, does not Children of the Earth, and we are the recognize Phaedra as a daughter of Purity. Children of the Sun, the Children of Light It is the other story that he remembers and Purity. 1151 Phedre est d'un sang, Seigneur,' We depend on our stories to know vous le savez trap bien, who we are, and to know what it is to be a De toutes ces horreurs plus rempli If we are told false man .or a woman. que le mien. stories, we will see the world as it is The story of Phaedra is not complete not, .and we may become lost. The glorious unless the story of ~ sang fatale is told stories of the exploits of his father as.a part of her lineage from the Sun. convince Hippolytus that he lives in a This paper will trace the stories of the world in which men ki'll monsters· tw~ major families in the play, the Hippoly~us is destroyed. Oenone, the Children of the Sun, and the Children of woma~ who has raised Phaedra, offers her the Earth. Since a Honste is portrayed stories of the gods: as a member of one of these families, and 1304 Les Dieux meme, les Dieux de ' since Monsters play significant roles in 1 , Olympe habitants, t~eit histories, Monsters will be Qui d'un bruit si terrible discussed as well · It will be necessary epouvantent les crimes J ~ to ex~lor: the relationship of Oenone (and Ont brule quelquefois de feux of Theramene briefly) to those whom they illegitimes. serve as false interpreters · Rac1ne ' s · Oenone's interpretation is clear: Mortal, account of who men and women a re will be submit to a mortal fate. Oenone's role as found not only in the stories he has the story-teller will not end here: she will characters tell, but in their tell Theseus the deceptive stories that interpretations as well. lead to Hippolytus' death. All stories need not be deceptive, though stories that come from within are ****** CHILDREN OF THE SUN complex. In order to achieve a n on-c on tr adict ory account of who we are, We first view Phaedra when she has we of ten te ll one sto ry and ignore rallied her strength in order to see and another. We c oncen trate on the story o f show herself before t he Sun her A 32 grandfather for the last time. The unrelenting brightness of the Sun, a symbol of life and purity, is exceedingly difficult to bear. As a child of the light, she has been instilled with a remarkable sense of innocence and guilt. She sees unhesitatingly: There is only black and white. Crime is crime; innocence is innocence. There are no ambiguities in her distinctions. Just as the light of the day allows nothing within i ts reach to remain hidden, so too the inherited light within Phaedra exposes the darkness of her incestuous love. She may have fallen; there may be no turning back; but she remembers the difference between innocence and sin. She sees no consolation in the fact that she. has sinned in her heart only, and not in deed. She has. sinned. She has blackened what once was all of light. She must exercise the only control she has: she must die. Her first words 153 N'allons point plus avant . Demeurons, chere Oenone: Je ne me soutiens plus, ma force m'abandonne. Mes yeux sont eblouis du jour que je revoi, Et mes genoux tremblant s se derobent sous moi . Helas ! re- echo Theramene's desc r iption of Phaedra as a woman searching fo r dea t h. Phaedra seeks r est . She seeks to be r eleased from her torment, yet she places herself before the Sun . Why would Racine choose to introduce Phaedr a imp l or i ng He l i os r a t he r than Death? The precedent of addressing Helios is set neither by Euripides, nor by Seneca . Placing herself before the Sun is the final act of exposure for Phaedra. By d.o ing so, she acknowledges all that was once pure and majestic within he r . She does sC> for the last time. She can no longe r cla im pur i t y a nd majes t y . The journey is difficult, for Phaedra will not be able to rest under the Sun's gaze as she would be able to rest in the oblivion of death. The Sun's rays compel her to acknowledge that she has betrayed the nobility that she claimed as a descendant of the Sun. Hence, before the Sun, the trappings of earthly nobility seem especially ludicrous: . Que ces vains o r nements, que ces voiles me pesent! Quelle importune main, en formant tous ces noeuds, 160 A pris soir sur mon f r ont d'assembler mes cheveux? Tout m'afflige et me nuit , et conspire a me nuire . The cares taken for her app e a rance are meager provisions against the horror t ha t t he Sun exposes. Oenone mistakes her reaction : 165 Vous- meme, rappelant votre force premiere; Vous vouli~z vous montrer et revoir la lumiere; Vous la voyez , Madame; et prete a vous cacher , Vous haissez le jour que vous veniez chercher? Phaedra does not hate t he day; she hates the blackness which the light of the Sun exposes. The horror of constant l y haying to confront herself as s.inner, o f 1'.ever having some small clause or condition with which to excuse and hide herself , ravages and tortures a soul whose ances.try has imbued it with a signal sense of purity . She calls out: Noble et brillant auteur d'une triste famille , 170 Toi, dont ma me r e osait se ~an ter d'et r e fille ; Qui peut- etre r ougis du t r ouble ou t u me v o is , Soleil , je te viens voir pour la derniere fois. Racine thus reminds us of Phaedr a's glorious ancestry. He int r oduces us to Phaedra, not as the child of Pasiphae , the woman who lusted after the bull, but as the child of Helios. As the Child of Helios , Pha edr a i s noble and b rilliant , · possessing dignity and purity . The stress is Racine's: Euripides does not mention Helios in this context, and Seneca does so only briefly. In Seneca's Hippolytus, Oenone mentions Helios as Phaedra's grandfather while trying to dissuade Phaedra from her love for Hippolytus.l 33 �From Phaedra's first words, Racine reminds us that we are descendend from purity and that we have it within us. "Soleil, je te viens voir pour la derniere fois" is taken from a line in Euripides' Hippolytus. Aphrodite reveals that today is the last day that Hippolytus will see the Sun. By attributing the line to Phaedra, Racine shifts the focus from Hippolytus to Phaedra. There is something eerie in a mortal's knowing it is her last day. It is as if all that Aphrodite knew in the ancient play is now contained within the characters. Though Phaedra gathered her strength to show herself before the Sun, the humiliation is too great. She needs to hide, and cannot hide behind any outward trappings. It is her own imagination that provides the release; escape comes from within. 176 Dieux! Que ne suis-je assise a l'ombre des forets! Quand pourrai-je au travers d'une noble poussiere Suivre de l'oeil un char fuyant dans la carriere? From despair her imagination has taken her to a place beyond the Sun's reach, where the distinctions she cannot avoid would disappear. She cannot see clearly; the image is only murky; fine details are obscured by the dust and shade. The power of Phaedra's imagination is that it can carry her beyond the desire to be out of the Sun's glare and in the comforting shade of the forest associated with Hippolytus, to a definite, though conjured, time. "Quand pourrai-je .•. " places Phaedra in a future world where she will be able to gaze at Hippolytus unashamed. The reality of such a world may now compete with the demands of the real world (of the Sun's gaze) placed on her. There can be no such world: Light, when it enters darkness, does not lose itself in the darkness, but illumines the darkness. Though Phaedra may at times free herself from the strictness with which she judges herself, she will always return to it; she carries it within her and cannot ignore it. Phaedra's imagination implants the seed of a false and therefore cruel hope that there may be such a time of oblivion , a time in which she need not regard her incestuous and adulterous love with horror. She catches hold of herself almost immediately; but it is already too late: Insensee au suis -je ? et qu'ai 180 ]e dit? Ou laisse-je egarer mes voeux, et mon esprit? She struggles to place herself before the sun again , to leave the realm of the imaginary shade. Esprit, properly functioning, must be a quality of the day, of clarity and distinctions. Once she places herself in the world of the. imagination, it can no longer be relied on; its power is cut short: 181 Je l'ai perdu: Les Dieux m'en ont ravi l'usage . The boundaries of Phaedra's shame are expanding. Even earthly dignity is becoming impossible. Oenone, la rougeur me couvre le visage, Je te laispe trop vois mes honteuses douleurs, 185 Et mes yeux, malgre moi, se remplissent de pleurs. Though Oenone urges her to cling to life, Reparez promptement votre force abattue, 215 Tandis que de VOS jours prets a se consumer La flambeau dure encore, et peut se rallumer. Phaedra's path must be to death. When she sees clearly, she knows that there can be no repair. She has made a journey to say goodbye to the Sun, to acknowledge the purity she could once claim as her own, and she realizes that if she were to continue to live, she would have to compromise her sense of purity and impurity: 217 J'en ai trap prolonge la coupable duree Oenone does break Phaedra's silence; she will not spare her. When Oenone assumed the position of the suppliant, Phaedra had to choose between two forms of piety. It would be impious for Phaedra to turn away Oenone, and it would be impious for Phaedra to break her silence. Phaedra has been presented with an escape: she has been presented with a pious means of telling her secret . She takes it. As Phaedra considers where to begin the story she must tell Oenone, her other history comes to mind. She reminds Oenone of her other ancestors, her mother Pasiphae (and thus indirectly her halfbrother the Minotaur) and her sister Ariadne. As a member of such a family, Phaedra knows the horror of the impending disaster, not from prior experience, but from her genealogical history . Racine reminds us in this recitation of ancestors that Phaedra has a unique viewpoint. Not only has she inherited a sense of purity from Helios , but she has inhereited something else which is just as essential, le sang fatale. As her resolve (to keep her shame concealed) cn1mbles, she recalls this other knowledge that her bizarre genealogy gives her. She recalls the mother and sister who were destroyed. She knows passion, though she was never before its prey. She knows the disaster of its false oblivion: O haine de Venus! 0 fatale colere! 250 Dans quels egarements l'amour j eta ma mere! 253 Ariane, ma soeur! De quel amour blessee, Vous mourutes aux bards OU vous f\ites laissee ! 257 Puisque Venus le veut, de ce sang deplorable Je peris la derniere, et la plus miserable. ........... Graces au Ciel, mes mains ne sont point criminelles: Plut aux Dieux que mon coeur fut innocent comme elles! Phaedra's attention has turned from the Sun to the blood she shares with her mother and sister. They too became lost. It must be remembered that they shared Phaedra's royal descent from the sun, that they too were once of purity and light. Phaedra has no illusions that the grasp of eras on her is anything other than fatale . She knows that if she lives, she is lost . She does not have the strength to turn back. She has tried. She has banished Hippolytus; she has offered sacrifices to Venus. She knows that she has lost her ability to see her world clearly, unobscured by imagination, and thus knows that she has lost mastery of herself. Phaedra then begins her story for Oenone. She no longer lists her ancestors, but tells her own history . Having remembered Helios' purity and ability to expose impurity, and having remembered the sufferings of her mother and sister, Phaedra recognizes her condition and the horror of it: 305 Ce n'est plus une ardeur dans mes veines cachee; C'est Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee: J'ai concu pour mon crime une juste terreur. J'ai pris la vie en haine, et ma flamme en horreur. Je voulais en mourant prendre soin de ma gloire, Et derober au jour une flamme ~ si noire. She resolves to die, She understands her helplessness. "C' est Venus toute e t. e r e a sa proie attachee." Phaedra sees: she is small and she will never overcome her predato.r. Every moment she lives is only a brief postponement of her inevitable destruction and a prolongation of her torture and terror. She has been caught. Venus has her within her grasp. Phaedra will be destroyed . Under such conditions, one desires that the destruction be swift and therefore merciful. As before, however, her resolve to die cannot be sustained. A messenger interrupts her thoughts and brings news of Theseus' death. Phaedra says nothing. It is Oenone who paints a picture as deadly Je t'en ai dit assez. Epargne-moi le reste. Je meurs, pour ne point faire un aveu si funeste . 34 35 �as that of any imagination: 350 Vivez, vous n'avez plus de reproche a vous faire. Votre f lamme devient une f lamme ordinaire. Thesee en expirant vient de rompre les noeuds, Qui f aisaient tout le crime et l'horreur de vos feux. Knowing her ancestry, how could love ever become ordinaire? Within her family love has never been ordinary. It has been monstrous and destructive. Moreover, Oenone's words are false legally and morally. 2 The world Oenone presents is a false world, but it is a world in which Venus' curse no longer exists, a world in which Phaedra could live. She releases herself into a false world which may only be imagined. With the stories told and the. ancestry delineated, Racine properly begins his play. We will learn more of Phaedra's ancestry as the play develops, but we may not begin until properly instructed in the myths that run concurrent throughout the play. At almost every turning point, there is a history that will guide Phaedra or will explain her behavior. Phaedra the grand-daughter of the Sun has postponed dying, though to live she must make moral ly compromising decisions. As the descen dant of Helios, such decisions will go against her nature. We are reminded of our Christian ancestry in Adam and Eve . Through Adam we are the fallen descendants of God. Remembering Phaedra's ancestry, we see ourselves as descended from purity (God) that has fallen (Adam) . We see ourselves as the unwilling and helpless prey of sin. We have moments of clarity, in which we see sin as sin and innocence as innocence; yet we constantly lose our way. We believe we may hide behind extenuating circumstances. But in reality we learn that nothing is hidden from the All-Seeing Sun, though we sometimes take flight in our imagination from the Sun within. This Christian perspective will be discussed further later, but sho~ld be noted here. Part of the power of the play is that it tells us . not only who we are as Christians, but where we are hiding as Christians as well, and exposes the lies that encourage us. Like the strong undertow that pulls Hippolytus further and further from himself, so Hippolytus' presence draws out all that Phaedra would wish hidden. She cannot restrain herself from seeing him. She reasons that she must plead for her child . She then loses her way in his presence. The conflict had become intolerable for Phaedra; her strength was not sufficient to keep her feelings hidden, though she demanded of herself that she do so. Caught between opposing desires, Phaedra's imagination gave release. In Act One, Phaedra's imagination created a future; in Act Two, it creates a past that never was. Phaedra struggles to retain clarity and is unable. A longing to disclose her love· finds its way into her speech: 598 Dans le fond de mon coeur vous ne pouviez pas lire. 615 Ah, Seigneur! que le Ciel, j'ose ici l'attester, De cette loi commune a voulu m'excepter! Qu'un soin bien different me trouble, et me devore! 629 •... Je m'egare, Seigneur, ma folle ardeur malgre moi se declare. In these lines, Phaedra catches herself before she discloses too much to be misunderstood. As Phaedra begins to paint the picture of Theseus, and to imagine his past exploits, she becomes hopelessly lost in an unreal world and thus becomes unaware of Hippolytus' presence before her, though indeed it is that which made this flight of the imagination necessary. The artist is free to change particulars, and in this flight she does so. Her imagination becomes overtly creative: 640 Tel qu'on depeint nos Dieux, ou tel que je vous voi. Her imagination then moves beyond the picture to a story, rearranging details in 36 such a way that Phaedra lives in a past where it is honorable and even virtuous to love Hippolytus. In this imaginary past, she is his rescuer, his heroine, and his lover . She begins: 645 Que faisiez - vous alors: Pourquoi sans Hippolyte Des heros de la Grece assembla-ti l l'elite? Pourquoi, trop jeune encore, ne putes-vous alors Entrer dans le vaisseau qui le mit sur nos bords? "If only things had been different" is Phaedra's tone in this quat rain. The tone then changes. Phaedra begins to alter the details of Theseus' famous descent into the labyrinthe. Her description is strikingly sexual. The descent into the labyrinth will be discussed in depth in the section of this essay on Monsters. It is significant here that it is Phaedra's imagination which betrays her, not Oenone and not Phaedra herself -- that is, not Phaedra as the descendant of Purity. Phaedra's imagination mediates between the desires inf lamed by the curse which Venus has put on her family, and the purity that Phaedra demands of herself as a Child of the Sun, and which, to the degree that she is a Child of the Sun, Phaedra possesses. The power of this imagination is such that when Phaedra discloses all, she is blind to the shocked Hippolytus before her. Her question : 665 Et sur quoi ju~ez-vous que j'en perds la memoire, Prince? Aurais-je perdu tout le soin de ma gloire? is genuine . It is only after a moment has elapsed in which she collects l).erself that Phaedra realizes what she has done. She knows that Hippolytus has understood her meaning, "Ah, cruel, tu m'as trop entendue." Her shame has greatly expanded; she must now prepare to die. Preparing for death, Phaedra again recalls her ancestors and the history of their destruction: 677 Objet infortune des vengeances· celestes, Je m'abhorre encor plus que tune me detestes. Les Dieux m'en sont temoins, ces Dieux qui dans mon f lanc Ont allume le f eu fatal a tout mon sang, Ces Dieux qui se sont f ait une gloire cruelle De seduire le coeur d'une faible mortelle. Remembering her ancestors, Phaedra is able to understand what has happened. She understands what she has done. She understaf1.ds the horror of it; and she knows herself as helpless and guilty at the same time. She begs Hippolytus to kill her, and when he hesitates, she grabs his sword to kill herself. It is then that Oenone takes the role of Phaedra's baser inclination to live at all cost. Human beings cling stubbornly to life; self-destruction eludes Phaedra again and again. "Faibles proj ets d' un coeur trop plein de ce qu'il aime!" Mortals cannot bear extended exposure of self-examination, which are kinds of deaths or humiliations. Phaedra could not have continued demeaning herself-674 J'aime . Ne pense pas qu'au moment que . j e t' aime , Innocente a mes yeux je m'approuve moi-meme, Ni que du fol amour qui trouble ma raison Ma lache complaisance ait nourri le poison. --without her imagination or Oenone has tening to offer some escape. Having exposed an unrequited and shameful love, Phaedra desires to be hidden as Act Three begins. 740 Cache moi bien plutot, je n'ai que trop parle Mes fureurs au dehors ont ose se repandre. J'ai dit ce que jamais on ne devait entendre. And Oenone does try to hide Phaedra from herself as well as others. Pascal's ideas of diversion immediately come to mind. Oenone acts as Phaedra's imagination, 37 �~roposing deliverance . Remembering the last line of the labyrinth speech, it is as if Phaedra now wishes that she and Hippolytus would be lost forever: 0 t oi . qui vois la honte ou je .' . suis descendue, Implacable Venus, suis-je assez conf ondue? Tu ne s~urais plus loin pousser ta cruaute. Ton :riomphe est parfait, taus tes traits ont porte. Cruelle, si tu veux une gloire nouvelle, Attaque un ennemi qui te soit plus rebelle. Hippolyte te fuit, et bravant ton courroux, Jamais a tes autels n'a flechi 820 les genoux. . ~haedra has begun a descent which is gaining speed; she has lost control. She has lost her ability to act as a Child of the Sun with the advent of all the worlds her imagination has imposed: she no ~onger sees clearly, knowing innocence as innocence and sin as sin. She has entered the murky worlds of her imagination in which s?e must depend on her . own blurred perceptions and the perceptions of her nurse to guide her . She has entered into the oblivion of eros. The restraints with which the play began can call to her only faintly. She has no rest · Her sin h as . grown. Oenone's advice under such conditions 11 faut d'un vain amour etouffer 825 la pensee, Madame. Rappelez votre vertu passee. seems wildly optimistic. It is as if Phaedra had abandoned herself to the tid that Hippolytus mentioned earlier. could no longer reach the shore, the undertow being too great' so she allowed herself to be swept out to sea • N~, f ~ f rom shore; Oenone does not understand that there is no returning to it. Phaedra hears that Theseus is al. Sh . 1 ive. e again rea izes that she must die. The story of the world in which Theseus was d~ad, and in which she and Hippolytus might have come to love each other has diversions to prevent Phaedra rom dwelling on the shame and horror of her condition. Oenone proposed that Phaedra involve herself in the govern i ng of Ath ens, since Phaedra is a descendant of Minos. Minos, however, does not play a determining role in what kind f h bei Ph d . o uman . ng ae ra is. We know Phaedra primarily as the daughter of Helios. The descendant of Helios cannot replace lost Virtue by embracing worldly Honor. She answers Oenone , no t as the daughter of a great King, but as the descendant of purity and clarity: 760 Moi, regner! Moi, ranger un Etat sous ma loi! Quand ma f aible raison ne regne plus sur moi, Lorsque j'ai de mes sens abandonne l'empire, Quand sous un joug honteux a peine j e respire, Quand je me meurs. Oenone cannot let Phaedra die. She easily discards one diversion for the next' and advises a more desparate action "F " Phaedra cannot. ' uyez. Phaedra has crossed a boundary, which, once crossed cannot be re-crossed. There is no turning back nor escaping. She can move only if she moves forward, into the madness: Enf in, tous tes conseils ne sont 791 plus de saison. Sers ma fureur, Oenone, et non point ma raison. Phaedra's character is such that it . does not admit of a middle course; her passion takes on the proportio~ of greatness that her purity possesses. Her command renders Phaedra as the grand-daughter of Helios passive. As she concluded the labyrinth speech, Phaedra imagined that she could find herself again in love. S a 1va t• th h ion roug love is no longer .bl possi e; Phaedra acquiesces in despair and then begins to imagine a different Hippolytus.(781) Three times Phaedra has prepared to die' and three times she has lost her resolve. Alone, without hope of delivering herself from Venus, she abandons herself to Venus, hoping for another kind of s~: Act Four begins after Oenone's been shown false. She sees clearly: lies to Theseus have been successful. 853 Je connais mes fureurs, je les Hippolytus has been banished. Yfuile begrappelle toutes. ging Theseus to spare his son, Phaedra 857 Mourons. Setant d'horreurs qu'un learns of Hippolytus' love for Aricie. trepas me delivre. Suddenly, a second story has proved false. Est-ce un malheur si grand que de Hippolytus is not unable to love. Perhaps cesser de vivre? he feels reserve for Phaedra alone of all Phaedra's only fear is for her children. women: As the daughter of an infamous mother, 1203 Hippolyte est sensible et ne sent Phaedra realizes the shame that they will rien pour moi! carry with them. Phaedra must acknowledge a real Oenone grows bold: Hippolytus. She can no longer freely 885 Pourquoi done lui ceder une imagine a time when she will be the woman victoire entiere? to break his cold reserve. Vous le craignez . Osez l'accuser Though her own imagination has la premiere deceived her, Phaedra attributes the deDu crime dont il peut vous charger ception first to Hipploytus and Aricie: aujourd'hui. 1231 Ils s'aiment! Par quel charme Qui vous dementira? Tout parle ont-ils trompe mes yeux contre lui. Comment se sont-ils vus? Depuis Yet Phaedra still clings to her respect quand? Dans quel lieux? for light and purity: She then ascribes the deception to Oenone: 893 Moi , que j'ose opprimer et noircir 1233 Tu le savais. Pourquoi me l'innocence! lassais-tu seduire? Oenone refuses to be dissuaded. The esDe leur furtive ardeur ne cape from death involves the substitution pouvais-tu m'instruire? of one world for another as before. The Les a-t-on vu souvent se parler, world of the Sun, where Virtue alone is se chercher? important, is replaced by the world of Dans le fond des f orets Earth, in which Honor is important. allaient'ils se cacher? Phaedra will neve r regain Virtue, but she Phaedra has known only what it is to may retain Honor, if she will only sacrilove guiltily; she tries to imagine what fice the standards with which Virtue has it is to love innocently: imbued her. Oneone assures her: 1237 Helas! Ils se voyaient avec pleine 907 ... pour sauver notre Honneur licence. combattu, Le ciel de leurs soupirs 11 faut immoler tout, et meme la approuvait l'innocence . Vertu. Ils suivaient sans remords leur Phaedra again relinquishes control, as she penchant amoureux. did before to Venus (815). She believes Though Hippolytus and Aricie have been she may release herself into another's together on stage only briefly, we realize hands, so that her own may no longer be that such is not their love. Phaedra has held accountable; it is a substitute for once again imagined falsely, She then the death for which she has been searchcompares her own plight in a world without ing, a relinquishment of self, to a woman illusions to the plight of the lovers in whose only desire is to keep her alive~ this false world of her own making: blindly disregarding all else: 1241 Et moi, trist rebut de la Nature 911 Fais ce que tu voudras, je entiere, m'abandonne a toi. Je me cachais au jour, je fuyais Dans le trouble ou je suis je ne la lumiere. puis rien pour moi. La Mort est le seul Dieu que Phaedra cannot escape so easily. Such a j'osais implorer. death is not a real one. 39 38 �J'attendais le moment ou j'allais expirer. Phaedra is filled with an enormous jealousy and hatred, the magnitude of which she is conscious of only later: 1271 Mes homicides mains promptes a me venger Dans le sang innocent brulent de se plonger. The false world angers her and she sees herself as victim only . At line 1264, Phaedra sees who she has become. It startles her: 1264 Que f ais-je? Ou ma raison se va-t-elle egarer? Moi jalouse! At one time, she relinquished herself to Oenone, but she realizes now that she can never escape herself. "Je respire a la fois l'inceste et l'imposture." (1270) She will meet herself everywhere in the of those who know her: eyes 1273 Miserable! Et je vis? Et je soutiens la vue . De ce sacre Soleil dont je suis descendue? J'ai pour aieul le Pere et le Maitre des Dieux: Le Ciel; tout l'U.nivers est plein de mes aieux. Ou me cacher? Fuyons dans la nuit infernale. Mais que dis-je? Mon pere y tient l'urne fatale. ........ Que diras-tu, mon pere , a ce spectacle horrible? Remembering the harshness of the sun's gaze, Phaedra longs again for darkn f " ess, or escape. Let us fly into the night of Hell." The lines express a 4esperation that is necessarily Phaedra's. There is no escape. In Hell she will be judged by her father, as the sun judges her on earth. There is no forgetfulness offered in death. What she had imagined before was false. There is no such escape for Racine's Phaedra, though there was for the Phaedra of Euripides. Oenone once again attempts to calm 40 her. Phaedra, however, strong with the remembrance of her ancestors, will not be calmed: 1310 Au jour que je fuyais c'est toi qui m'as rendue. Tes prieres m'ont fait oublier mon devoir. The day has come when Phaedra's hands can no longer be considered innocent: she has spo~en to Hippolytus who alone prevented their love from being consummated. Her hands long to become yet guiltier. She longs to plunge them into the innocent blood of Aricie. She knows that her lies are responsible for Hippolytus' departure . and will soon discover that she has caused his death. When Phaedra speaks in Act Five, she has already taken the poison that Medea, another grand-daughter of Helios brought to Athens. Phaedra no longer desires anything hidden: 1633 Le fer aurait deja tranche ma destinee Mais je laissais gemir la Vertu thought it advantageous tc have Aricie descended from the Earth, may be related to both these functions. As a love interest, the symmetrical contrast to Phaedra is perfect. Phaedr2 is the grand-daughter of the Sun, AriciE is the grand-daughter of the Earth . Phaedra is not a virgin, she is a mother ; Aricie is a virgin . Phaedra is in power! Aricie is not . Though Aricie is nowhen near as magnificent and developed a~ Phaedra, she does possess qualities whicl are easily contrasted with those of Phaedra. The political struggle seems contrived, perhaps because it is not stressec in Euripides' Hippolytus . One wonders wh; Racine developed it. This section wilJ offer no solution6, but can only point ir the general directions where the solution~ may lie. a THE Ch~LDREN OF THE EARTH I. 421 soup~onnee J'ai voulu, devant vous exposant mes remords, Par un chemin plus lent descendre chez les morts. Slowly, and paradoxically, a greatness returns to Phaedra in this speech. It is the old paradox of the gospels, "Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted. 11 As Phaedra exposes her crimes before her husband, we see a woman humbling herself and we the audience exalt her. She take~ on moral dignity. Part of the distate when Phaedra savagely blames Oenone is that we wish to see Phaedra continue to humble herself. We cannot exalt her for the way she treats Oenone . Phaedra turns on a woman who has been faithful to her. Oenone has served and loved Phaedra. We do not wan: people to be treated in this way. It is only in the context of reviling herself through Oenone that such treatment of her nurse can be made palatable to us With the death of Oenone and Phaedra come~ Why Racine the death of the imagination which deceives. Dying, Phaedra again turns to the Sun: 1641 Deja je ne vois plus qu'a travers un nuage Et le ciel, et l'epoux que ma presence CJUtrage; Et la mort mes yeux derobant la clarte Rend au jour, qu'ils souillaient toute sa purete. There is a strange diurnal motion talking plice at the close of the play. As Phaedra dies and renders herself to the darkness of death, her last word is purete. The Sun has been rendered its purity, its full brightness. The confusion between day and night in which the play began ha~ been overcome. The Rightful Heirs Aricie is the rightful heir to thE throne of Athens according to youn1 Hippolytus. Aegeus and his son Thesern have placed themselves in the successi01 to the throne by adoption and murder . Though Hippolytus is genuine in his belieJ that Aricie deserves the throne, are we tc take his belief as that of Racine? Hippolytus displays an amazing amoun· of innocence and ignorance t o the ways o: court when he is astonished that Phaedr wins the confidence of the chiefs o Athens to rule. He objects: 728 ••••• Dieux , qui la connaissez, Est-ce done sa vertu que vous recompensez? Perhaps his acknowle'1gement of Aricie a : the rightful ruler stems from the sam4 innocence. He does not realize that botl possession of power and a rightful clai1 to the throne are necessary to establisl oneself as ruler. Or perhaps his acknow· ledgement of Aricie as the rightful rule 1 stems from the love he has for her. If Hippolytus is correct, and AriciE is the rightful ruler of Athens, wha1 could this signify for Racine? Athens if set apart from other Greek cities by itf belief that its people sprang from th~ Reste du sang d'un Roi, noble fils de la Terre, Je suis seule echappee aux fureurs de la guerre, J'ai perdu dans la fleur de leur jeune saison Six freres quel espoir d'une illustre maison! Le fer moissonna tout, et la Terre humectee But a regret le sang des neveux d'Erechtee 494 Je VOUS cede, OU plutot je VOUS rends une place, Un sceptre que jadis vos aieux ont recu De ce f ameux mortel que la Terre a conc;.u. From the Preface, we know that Racine claims that Aricie "n' est point un personnage de mon invention," and he cites references in Virgil. Aricie's genealogy is however Racine's invention. Racine has made her a descendant of the Pallantides, not history or mythology. Aricie' s two principal functions in the play are as a love-interest for Hipploytus, and as a further complication in the political struggle between Hippolytus and Phaedra. 41 �local Attic soil. This myth was often used to promote its democracy, for if everyone had the common ancestor, the Earth, everyone was a prince or princess. The very multiplicity of the Pallantides (of ten portrayed as being fifty brothers) suggests that the proper power to rule is not located in a single individual. II. The French King Those in the audience would have been struck by the similarity of Phaedra's claim of the Sun as an ancestor, and the French Monarch's claim to be a direct descendant of the Sun. They may have recognized Theramene and Oenone as the servile ministers of the King. Racine's intentions now become unclear: One reading of Aricie's lineage would suggest that Racine is endorsing the rule of the children of the Earth, and is making some c~iticism, however weak, of the existing monarch. Yet one assumes that Aricie' s desire to tyrannically master Hippolytus is some criticism of her ability to rule as well. III. Theseus The impressions left by the political maneuverings in the play suggest that one 's political fate has nothing to do with one's virtue or worthiness. Racine is unusual in his treatment of Theseus. Theseus is represented, not as the tremendous hero of other myths, but as one who tampers with the natural order of things in his treatment of Aricie and her brothers. He murders the Pallantides and forces their mother Earth to unwillingly drink their blood. He is an adventurer. In a play where adultery is held up in horror, Theseus' descent into hell is anything but glorious. What was he doing trying to help his friend steal another man's wife? Theseus' friend seems to merit being thrown to the monster. The act of feeding the King to his own monster is presented in such a way as would ·rob all greatness from it. Theseus' treatment of Hippolytus, and Racine's with-holding of the final reconciliation scene between father and son, render Theseus singularly unworthy of our sympathy in this play. The mighty King has been exposed for what he is now, apart from what he may have been in the past: he is blind when it is most necessary to see; he is away when his wife and son need him most; and though he accepts Aricie at the close of the play, he is still unchanged. He honors Hippolytus' request only to appease his ghost. Theseus has not regained the sight needed to re-establish himself as a hero. Some of Phaedra's speeches suggest that Theseus was once like Hippolytus-young and innocent. Hippolytus, the bastard son of Theseus, is ungainly, inept at the ways of court, and lacking in proper manners. Honor and honesty give him dignity. He is killed by a father who cannot see Hippolytus as anything other than a projection of himself. Thus Theseus believes that Hippolytus is cunning, though Hippolytus is never cunning in this play. Theseus is cunning. The play suggests that Hippolytus' lack of such cunning is a consequence of the time spent in the forest, away from the corrupting influence of the court. IV. Oenone and Theramene Oenone and Theramene· are the only characters in the play not descended from nobility. Yet they cannot be made to represent the common people. Oenone and Theramene are members of the court, as ministers and courtiers are. There are no common people in this play; we see no alternative society proposed to that of the court. MONSTERS Hippolytus sees a monst~r : 700 Digne fils du heros qu~ ~·~ donne le jour, Delivre l'univers d'un Monstre qui t'irrite. La veuve de Thesee ose aimer Hippolyte? Crois-moi, Fe Monstre affreux ne doit point t'echapper. Phaedra sees a monster: 882 Mais ne me trompez point, vous last words: 1641 Deja je ne vois plus qu'a travers un nuage Et le ciel et l'epoux que ma presence out rage; Et la mort, a mes yeux derobant la clarte Rend au jour, qu'ils souillaient toute sa purete. Phaedra's eyes sullied the day. It is a strange image. The monstrous in some sense comes out of one 's self, and affixes itself to that which one sees. est-il cher encore? De quel oeil voyez-vouz ce Prince audacieux? Je le vois com.me. un Monstre ef froyable a mes yeux . Theseus sees a monster: Perfide, oses-tu bien te montrer devant moi? Monstre, qu'a trop longtemps epargne le tonnerre, Reste impur des Brigands dont j'ai purge la terre. One wonders at the vast number of monsters found in Phaedra. They are everywhere in the play. As the play begins, Theramene and Hippolytus are recalling Hippolytus' youth and the stories he was told about the exploits of Theseus, the great monster-slayer . As the play p r oceeds, we realize that there are not only mythological monsters, but moral ones as well. We see the two kinds of - monsters blended in the Minotaur: the monstrous love gives birth to a mythological monster. The two principal scenes in the play, the scene in which Phaedra declares her love for Hippolytus, and the scene in which we are given a description of Hippolytus' death, both involve monsters. To know who we are in Racine's Phaedra, we must explore our kinship with these strange creations who live in our stories and in our sight. II . Sexuality and Monsters What then are mythological monsters? The monster in the labyrinth and the monster which rises out of the sea in the fifth act both ' fit Aristotle's definition of what is monstrous. They are the unnatural combination of natural parts. What do the half-man/half-bull and the bull-serpent represent? We know them in the play through the stories told about them. They are used primarily to tell stories of conflicts between foes who wish to destroy each other . In Monsters we meet that which in reality exists within us. By creating Monsters outside ourselves, we separate ourselves from the desires or inclinations which they represent. (To understand this separation, we remember the relationship between Oenone and· Phaedra. Oenone is an embodiment of the baser motives of Phaedra. Through the creation of Oenone, we become aware that the true Phaedra exists ou tside these inclinations, that Phaedra as a descendant of Helios interacts with these desires but has an exis tence .a part from them. So too with our monsters.) We confront our monsters. We fight mythical battles in our stories, and sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. In doing so, we have a clearer account of the struggle within and the forces which guide us. Monsters represent all that WP. fear or hate within ourselves . The Minotaur represents a blina sexuality, sexuality without human vision. The monster does not have human sight: He is a man whose head has been replaced by a bull's . I. Eyes and Monsters The monstrous is contained within our sight. It is from something within, something emanated from our eyes, that beings who exist outside ourse lves are transfigured into monsters. The identification of something as monstrous is always dependent on the one who sees. We remember Oenone' s question and Phaedra's reply: Mais ne me trompez point, vous 882 est-il cher encore? De quel oeil voyez ce Prince audacieux? Je le vois com.me un Monstre ef froyable a mes yeux. We also must remind ourselves of Phaedra's 42 43 �Racine's description of the descent into the labyrinth beginning at line 649 is clearly sexual. Phaedra offers to guide the virgin Hippolytus through the many detours of the vast retreat of the monster: 659 Campagne du peril qu'il vous fallait chercher, Moi- meme devant vous j'aurais voulu marcher, Et Phedre au Labyrinthe avec vous descendue, Se serait avec vous retrouvee, ou perdue. As Phaedra guides Hippolytus, they will meet the Monster, a monster molded out of the sexuality within Phaedra. The last line, "Se serait avec vous retrouvee, ou perdue." suggests that through the confrontation with sexuality she will either find herself again, though in some sense annhilated in the sexual encounter, or will become simply lost, for ever annhilated. The line contains a self-absorbtion which is particularly striking considering · the sexual initiation of the youth. .That Hippolytus may find himself or be lost for ever is not considered. The world in which she leads him is made dangerous by Racine: Hippolytus is totally dependent on Phaedra as guide, and may be destroyed at any moment. The suspicion that Phaedra is confronting a monster which lies within her is confirmed a few lines later: 700 Digne fils du heros qui t'a donne le j our, Delivre l' univers d' un M onstre qui t 'irrite. La veuve de Thesee ose aimer Hippolyte? Crois - moi, ce Monstre affreux ne doit point t'-echapper . Things become confused; the monster does es c ape . Phaedra takes Hippolytus' sword and he is un-manned. Before Phaedra can thrust the sword into her own breast, she is interrupted by Oenone. Phaedra and Hippolytus have become lost within the labyrinth without fully conf rooting the monster; they are neither found nor lost . By addressing Hippolytus as the "digne fils du heros," we are reminded, and so is he , of the sto r ies which Theramene told him about his father killing monsters. Hippolytus has been raised on a tradition that human beings can conquer and vanquish monsters. It is Theramene, the teller of tales about Theseus, who de.scribes the bull-serpent in Act V. The bull of the labyrinth has reappeared. Hippolytus, firmly believing in the legends that human beings kill monsters, believes himself c a pable of k i lling t he monster: 1530 Hippolyte lui seul digne fils d'un· heros, Arrete ses coursiers, saisit ses javelots, Pousse au Monster et d'un dard lance d'une main sure Il lui f ait dans le flanc une large blessure . Hippolytus, however, has been lied to. Monsters, when struck with human lances do not die, they grow angrier: 1531 De rage et de douleur le Monstre bondissant Vient aux pieds des chevaux tomber en mugissant, Se roule, et leur presente une gueule enflammee, Quiles co~vre de feu, de sang, . et de fumee. Hippolytus cannot slay the monster . Nor does the Mons t er directly slay Hippolytus. The reins with which Hippolytus curbs and cont r ols his ho r ses become tangled, and they drag him to his death . The horses, associated with Hippolytus' masculinit y t h r oughout t he p l ay , become so frightened that he can no longer · master them-- they flee in horror. Theramene's deception, i.e. that human beings may kill monsters, has pushed Hippolytus into a situation in which, deceived about what is real, he must battle something real. In this regard, Theramene's role take s on similariti e s to that of Oenone. Theramene has told the boy Hippolytus s t ories which inspire a mortal greatness which is false, and which leave him vulnerable, with no true account of the world. Oenone has told Phaedra stories which would release her from the greatness which she would impose on her- 44 self . Such stories, if believed, would render Phaedra vulnerable, thinking she was safe when she was not . ' III . Sin and Monsters The role of the reappearing Monster is the role of Sin. Theramene has lied to Hippolytus about the nature of Sin and its destructiveness . He has taught that sin could be overcome by mortals · without any divine intervention. When we ask who we are, we answer with stories that tell us that monsters are originally foreign to us, and separate from us, and at the same time, stories that tell us that we will always have to fight with our monsters, since they come from within. Racine's comparison of sin and sexuality is not based on a prudish way of seeing the world. Rather, he bases the analogy on the anarchy they produce within the body of the lover or the sinner: "We know that the law is spiritual; but I am not : I am unspiritual, the purchased slave of sin . I do not even acknowledge my own actions as mine, for what I do is not what I want to do, but what I detest." (Romans, 7.14 - 15) Within the play, both love and sin are described as things against which we struggle unsuccessfully; and which, though coming from ·within ourselves as things we inherit whether it be le sang fatale or our fallen natures, are portrayed as separate from our very selves. Lust is separate in Phaedra's nature, something added on as a curse to that natur.e which cannot shake it off, We are the prey of Venus as well as Sin. By separating out our f allen-ness (sin) and putting it into a monster, we are ourselves pure, hopelessly battling against that which must conque r u s . Two lessons are explicit: As human beings we are the descendants both of Purity and of fallen Purity. Our pure nature, however, battles our fallen- ness, which though in our bloodline, is extrinsic to us . Secondly, we realize that human beings unless some special di- vine intervention occurs cannot conquer the monster sin. Both such precepts would agree with the Jansenists views Racine was espousing. Jansenists refused to accept a lax morality for men: men as descendants of God, should be held accountable fo r their sins. They further objected to the idea that men could conquer sin without divine grace. Such views are propounded in t h e Fifth Provincial Letter especiall y : Go and see some of these worthy fathers, I beseech you, and I am confident that you will soon discover, in the laxity of their moral system, the explanation of their doctrine about grace. You will then see the Christian virtues exhibited in such a strange aspect, so completely stripped of the charity which is the life and soul of them--you will see so many crimes palliated and irregularities tolerated, that you will no longer be surprised a t thei r maintaining that 'all men have always enough of grace' to lead a pious life, in the sense in which they understand piety. Their morality being entirely Pagan, natu re is quite competent to its observance. (Pascal , Pr ov i ncial Letters Modern Library edition, 376 . ) --P:- OEN ONE Oenone is the confidante to Phaedra, a familiar dramatic device that rescues a play from having too many s _ liloquies . o Yet this role is complicated in Phaedra in that, as Racine tells us, Oenone is also the embodiment of Phaedra's baser intentions. Throughout the play, she is that within Phaedra which would keep Phaedra alive at all cost. Therefore, she of ten functions like the imagination. She provides interpretations which ameliorate intolerable situations by manipulating the 45 �particulars of certain stories· She creates new worlds in which we may live more comfortably. This further complicates Oenone's role: Creating morally comfortable worlds is a J esuit function (according to Jansenists .) Oenone appears to be so much of a Jesui t at times that her speeches and Phaed ra's accusations against her seem to be taken directly out of Pascal's Pr ovinci~l Letter. Oenone, like the J esuits, will deceive us as t o who we are and what is expected of us . As Phaedra first seeks purif i cation before the Sun, t he Sun's rays become unbearable, and her imagination paints. a picture of shade, of forest, and of a time when all will be well. Oenone will als o off er escapes for Phaedra. She will paint reality in such a way that what properly should drive Phaedra to suicide does not. Her only concern is t o keep P~aedra alive: 229 Quoiqu'il vous reste a peine une faible lumiere, Mon ame chez l es morts descendra la premiere. When Panope gives the news that Theseus is dead, Phaedra is silent. It is Oenone who interprets the news; in t h e news, she sees a world in which Phaedra need not kill herself: 349 Vivez, vous n'avez plus de reproche a vous faire. Votre flamme devient une f lannne ordinaire. The ever-pragmatic Oenone prop oses tha t Phaedra suggest an alliance with Hippolytus against Aricie. In Act II, when Phaedra grabs Hippolytus' sword a fter giving herself away b ef ore_ him, Oenone rushes in and stops her: 712 Que faites-vous, Madame? Justes Dieux! Mais on vient . Evitez des temoins odieux, Venez, rentrez, fuyez une honte certa·i ne. After that disaster, Oenone must propose another diversion. She proposes power: 753 Ainsi, dans vos malheurs ne songeant qu'a vous plaindre , Vous nourrissez un feu, qu'il vous faudrait eteindre. Ne vaudrait-il pas mieux, digne sang de Minos, Dans de plus nobles soins chercher votre rep os , Contre un ingrat qui plait recourir a la fuite, Regner, et de l ' Etat embasser la conduite? When Phaedra objec ts that she cannot possibly rule, Oenone, undaunted comes up · When with another alternative: "F uyez . " Phaedra objects : Je ne le puis quitter Oenone replies Vous l'osates bannir, nous n'osez l'eviter. Oenone will not despair. Despair is the appropriate response. Phaedra accuses Oenone of planting false hope in Phaedra's heart. Oenone s~es no shame in planting hope , whether it be false or true: Helas! de vos malheurs innocent ou coupable, De quoi pour vous sauver n'etais-je point capable? Mais si jamais l'offense irrita vos esprits, Pouv ez-vous d'un superbe oubl ier les mepris? Avec quels yeux cruels sa rigueur obs tinee Vous laissait a ses pieds peu s'en faut prosternee! Que son f arouche o rgueil le rendai t odieux! 780 Qu e PhedTe en ce moment n'avait-elle mes yeux! Oenone 1 s eyes filter out all that would render Phaedra dishonorable or unworthy of life. She will see no shame in being a mor ta l subject to nature. When Hippoly tus begins to seem too danger ous fo r her mistress' happiness, Oenone tries to dissuade Phaedra from seeing Hippolytus as someone who could ever return her love. Oenone is quick t o recognize that Hippolytus is now the enemy and poses a threat to Phaedra. Thus she reasons: 787 Songez qu'une barbare en son sein 46 l' a forme . e'en est fait .• Pourquoi done lui ceder une victoire entiere? Vous le craignez . Osez l'accuser la premiere Du crime dont il peut vous charger auj ourd 'hui. Qui vous dementira? Tout parle contre lui. She is quite willing to sacrifice Virtue . Virtue, if kept alive, would cause an earthly death. Virtue must be sacrificed to Honor, which keeps one alive on the earth: pour sauver notre 907 Honneur combattu, 11 faut immoler tout, et meme la Vertu. Phaedra submits to the force which keeps her alive: In the face of destruction, she yields to Oenone. She cannot face annihilation without trying to escape. No human being in the play can. It is part of what Racine considers hidden within us. Oenone then tells the false story .to Theseus. Phaedra discovers in turn that Theseus has implored Neptune to kill Hippolytus, and that Hippolytus loved Aricie. Phaedra, after a considerable struggle with herself, realizes that she has sinned. Yet, instead of urging confession or some other means of purification, Oenone who would continue Phaedra's earthly existence at all costs , puts Phaedra's Christian soul in jeopardy: 1295 He! repoussez, Madame, une injuste terreur . Regardez d'un autre oeil u.ie excusable erreur. One must not make repentance into nothing; one must not excuse sins as simply errors. Pascal complained of the Jesuits: But, father, do you suppose that a man is worthy of receiving absolution, when he will submit to nothing painful to expiate his offences? And, in these circumstances, ought you not to retain rather than remit their sins?,, Are you not aware of t~~ extent of your ministry, ·and that you have 873 885 and 789 11 a pour tout le sexe une haine fatale. Phaedra then issues the famous command in response: 790 Enfin, tous tes conseils ne sent plus de saison. Sers ma fureur, Oenone, et non point ma raison. Oenone has been working under the illusion that she could protect Phaedra in Act One by convincing her that her love was only ordinaire. She believes there is something safe in being "only human". Rather than combat that which comes from within, Oenone proposes that we submit and not think about the horror of our condition. Yet we see in the play that once abandoned, Virtue can never again be recovered. In abandoning Virtue, we abandon who we are as descendants of th~ Sun. Oenone claims that we may rest in some murky middle ground where distinctions are not altogether forgotten, but are put so sufficiently far from mind that we need no longer feel guilty. I f i t is proper to submit to a mortal fate, we need no abso lution: all we do is in harmony with our natures. Racine claims there is no middle ground: Once we move out of the Sun's realm, our motion gathers impetus and we move far beyond the reach of the Sun's distinctions. We cannot move in and out of the two regions with ease : we cannot recall lost Virtue. With the advent o f Theseus, Oenone advises: 826 Madame. Rappelez votre vertu passee . How does one go about recalling Virtue after trying to seduce one's stepson? If one sees the crime with the horror with which Phaedra sees it no such recalling is possible . She knows her~elf as a sinner. There is not getting around it. Phaedra knows she must die. Oenone's response "Vous mourez?" is an expression of surprise. Oenone cannot imagine a situation which would merit Phaedra's death. Oenone refuses to regret or to.repent the past: 47 �t he powe r o f bind ing and l oosing? Do y ou imagine t hat you are a t l i berty t o give a b s o lut ion ind ifferent ly to all who ask it , and without a scertai n i.ng b eforehand if J esus Chr i st loo ses in h eaven tho se whom y ou loo se in earth ? (Prov inc ial Letters, p. 45 3) Oenone then exp l ains why n o painful expia tion i s necess a ry: 1297 Vou s aimez. On ne peut v ainc re sa des t inee. Par un charme fata l v ous futes entrain ee. Est-ce done un prodige i nou i parmi nous? L 'amou n' a-t-il enco re triomphe que d e vous ? La f aible s se aux humains n 'es t que trop n atu r e lle. M rte lle, s ub issez l e sort d 'un e a mortelle. Vous vous pla i gne z d' un joug impose de s l on gt emps. Les Dieux meme, l es Dieux de l ' Ol ymp e h a b itants, Qui d 'un " r ui t si terrible b e p ouvantent l es crimes, Ont brule quelquefois de f eux i lleg itimes. To those fami l iar with the Jansenist, accusations against the Jesuits, Oenone s arfamiliar as well. The are guments 1 Jesui t s, as portrayed in the Pr ovincia Letters, are ready t o conclu de f r em the weakness of men , that morality must be loosened in o rder that it migh t be:ome more comfortab l e for men. Th e J ansenists regarded this as highest heresy. The weakness of humanity must n o t be catered t o . We serve each other b e s t by reminding each other t o be virtuou s . The Jesuits like Oenone believe t h at mor ality mu st accomodate itself to human weakness: "You know," h e said, "that t he rul ing p ass ion of p ersons in t ha t rank of life is ' t h e po i nt of hono r, ' wh i ch is p erp etually dr iving t hem into acts of violenc e appare ntly quite at v ar iance wit h Christian piety; so that in fact, they would be almost a l l o f them exclud ed fr om our confession al s, had not our fathers relaxed a litt l e from the strictness of re l igion, to accomodate themse l ves to t h e weakness of humanity. Anxious t o k eep on goo d terms b oth with the Gospel , by d o ing their duty to God , and with the men o f t h e wor l d, by showing ch arit y to their neighbo r,they n eed e d a l l the wisdom they po ssessed t o devise expedie nts f or so nicely ad j usting ma tters as t o permit these gent l emen t o adopt the methods usual ly re so rted t o fo r vindi c ating t hei r h on or, without wound i ng their con s ciences, and t h us re concile two t h i ng s s o opp os ite t o e~ch o ther as piety and t h e point o f honor. Bu t sire, in prop ortion t o t h e ut i lity o f the design, was the d if f iculty of the execution .•• (The Provincial Letters, P· 40 2. The underlining is my own. ) They forget that we are the descendants of God and Purity; they would have us forget that s i n i s some thing outs ' de ot ourselves with which we must battle. J esuits were in p ower in France. They l ed the Sorbonne and held sway at c ontra l d h were c ourt. Jansenists bel ieve t ey mislead ing nations; henc e Phaed ra accu s es Oenone: 1319 Puis se le juste Cie l dignement te payer; Et pui sse t on supp l ice a j amais e ff rayer Tous ceux qui, comme t oi, p ar de laches a d res ses , De s Princes ma lhe u reux nourris s en t les fa i blesses, Les poussent au p enchant ou l e u r coeur est enclin, Et leur osent du crime aplanir le chemin; Detestables flatteurs, present le plus funeste Qui puisse faire aux Rois la colere celeste. The role rif advisors at Court is thus exposed: flattery and deception are seen as necessarily accompanying that life. The Jansenists remind us that as the des c end a n t s of Adam we have a penchant for sin. Excusing our sin before proper expiation is made will be disastrous. We will not repent properly and we will be damned. It was Helios, le t us recall, who shed his light in the skies, dispersing the cloud which hid Venus and Mars as they were love-making . Indeed, it was this very action which had led Venus in retaliation to curse all Helios' descendants ..• (Bettina L. Knapp, Jean Racine - Mythos and Renewal in Modern Theatre, p . 171) Helios' descendants will always see through the clouds that imagination creates to obscure the horror of t heir actions. And the descendants of Helios will always have actions that excite their horror; they will not be able to e scape Venus. We are the fallen mixture of purity and godliness and all the desires which Racine labels base. We are the noble children of gods, and we are monsters . Our stories explain ourselves to ourselves in those terms. We are born with the at tributes of Helios and with the curse of Venus locked within us . Dest r uction will come from within and is inevitable. It is not within our power to save ourselves . As children of t he Sun, we are engendered with an ability to judge according to spiritual lawt- a s well as earthly laws. .We know the difference b etween Virtue and Honor . Lines 907 and 221 depend on our ability to make that distinction . For all our know edge of spiritual laws, however, we a re s till unable to prevent ourselves from sinning . We remember Romans 7 . 14- 25: We know that the law is spiritual; but I am not: I am unspiritual, the purchased slave of sin . I do not even acknowledge my own a ct ions as mine, for what I do is not what I want to do, but what I detest. But i f what I do is agains t my will, it means that I agree with the law and hold it to be admirable. But as things are, it is no longer I who CONCLUSION 598 Dans le fond de mon coeur vous ne pouviez pas lire If only one character could have know the depths of another's heart , if only the i s olat ion t hat surrounds each character we r e not so horrible, if only Racine had c reated another wo r ld in t he play, perhaps for g iv ene ss and expiation could have been possible between men and women, and especially between fathe r s and sons . Ye t t her e is none . There are no human confessors to absolve the characters of the i r crimes . Unlike Euripides, Racine offe r s no reconciliation between father and son. The r e is absolut e ly no consolation in this wor ld. We are fallen. Perhaps on ce we mi ght h av e s e en into the depths of one another's h e a r ts , but such is not the world in which we n ow live. We a r e cursed, as all the d e scendants of Helios were cursed, and as all t he descendants of Adam were expelled from the Garden . We cannot rely on ear thly forgiveness. Caught between the intolerable conflicts within us , our i maginat_ons of ten provide temporary but i unt rustworthy escapes. Yet , as the descendants of Helios and God , a part of our nature will always see through deception. In the ancient myth, it was the ability to see through a cloud tha t r esulted in the curse: 49 48 �does not. Whether this is because the play is set in pagan times, or whether Racine meant something more, we do not know. Racine insists however, that we must never abandon that knowledge of ourselves as descendants of God. We must never stop attempting to purify ourselves, we must never abandon the distinctions between sin and innocence. We must not let the Jesuits mislead us. Pascal warns us: .... they conceal their carnal and worldly policy under the garb of divine and Christian prudence as if the faith, and tradition, its ally, were not always one and the same at all times and in all places, as if it were the part of the rule to bend in conformity to the subject which it was meant to regulate; and as if souls, to be purified from their pollutions, had only to corrupt the law of the Lord, in place of the 'the law of the Lord, which is clean and pure, converting the soul which lieth in sin' and . bringing it into conformity with its salutary lessons! (The Provincial Letters, p. 376) perform the action, but sin that lodges in me. For I know that nothing good lodges within me in my unspiritual nature I mean -- for though the will to do good · is there, the deed is not. The good which I want to do, I fail to do: but what I do is the wrong which is against my will and i f what I do is against my will, clearly it is no longer I who am the agent, but sin that has its lodgings in me. I discover this principle then: that when I want to do the right, only the wrong is within my reach. In my inmost self I delight in the law of God, but I perceive that there is in my bodily members a different law, fighting against the law that my reason approves and making me a prisoner under the law of sin. Miserable creature that I am, who is there to rescue me out of this body doomed to death? God alone, through Jesus Christ our Lord! Thanks be to God! In a word then, I myself, subject to God's law as a rational being am yet, in my unspiritual nature, a slave to the law of sin. (The New English Bible. The underlining is my own.) F<'otnotes 1. Racine may also have been tempted to stress the lineage from th S f h e un, apart rom t fe mythological significances , as a mea~s o commenting on the French royalty. It is us~ful to note here that Phaedra and French Kings share the same ancestry. 2. R. C. Knight, in his notes on Phedre gives three examples: 1) the Ch . i , Canon L . rist an aw· I Corinthians 5 1 ( "I actually hear reports of sexuai i~orality among you, immorality such as even pagans do not tolerate: the union of a man with As Phaedra dies, her last word is purity. She herself is not yet pure. The day i s pure . Bo t h t h e l ov e of puri ty and the curse are her inheritance. In dying, she pays final homage to purity . She remembers who she really is. She achieves a moral dignity within our eyes once again. In such a dignity, she may rest. One of the important differences between this passage and Racine's Phaedra is that Paul offers a God who intercedes. Racine 50 51 his father's wife.") 2) the list prohibited degrees in the 1662 Book Commop , Prayer and 3) French Law o o Note: When I use the t " erm Jesuit" withi· the body of this no th. b paper, I am claimin ing a out the Society of Jesus toda or about the arguments of the Jesuit y Racine's d s o. ~y, apart from how they hav1 b een explicated by the J i i 1 ansen sts espec a ly by Pascal in The p i . . Letters. -rov ncia . �Translation A Poem by Francis Jammes Geraldine McDowell I IL VA NEIGER ••• THE TIME HAS COME FOR SNOW ... A Leopold Bauby To Leopold Bauby Il va neiger dans quelques jours. Je me souviens De l'an dernier. Je me souviens de mes tristesses Au coin du feu. Si l'on m'avait demande: qu'est-ce? J'aurais dit: laissez-moi tranquille . Ce n'est rien. The time has come for snow. I harken back to last year's snow. Back to my sadnesses by fire's glow. If I'd been asked, "What is't?" I would have said, "Leave me in peace. 'Tis naught . " J'ai bien refl echi , l'annee avant, dans ma chambre, Pendant que la neige lourde tombait dehors. J'ai reflechi pour rien. A present connne alors Je fume une pipe en bois avec un bout d'ambre. I've contemplated in my room ere now, while outside snow fell heavy covering all. My contemplation's vain. For now, as then, I sit beside the hearth and smoke my pipe. Ma vieille connnode en chene sent toujours bon. Mais moi j'etais bete parce que ces choses Ne pouvaient pas changer et que c'est une pose De vouloir chasser les choses que nous savons. And still my oaken chest of drawers smells rich. Such foolishness to think these things could change! They never change. It is pretentiousness to want to chase the things already known. Pourquoi done pensons-nous et parlons-nous? C'est drole; Nos larmes et nos b&isers, eux, ne parlent pas Et cependant nous les comprenons, et les pas D'un ami sont plus doux que de douces paroles. For Our are our On a baptise les etoiles sans penser Qu'elles n'avaient pas besoin de nom, et les nombres Qui prouvent que les belles cometes dans l ' omb r e Passeront, ne les forceront pas a passer. We've christened stars which have no need of names . And ratios foretelling comets' flights are not their moving force. Now then, where are my sadnesses of old? I faint recall. Et De Je Si maintenant meme, OU sont mes vieilles tristesses l'an dernier? A peine si je m'en souviens. dirais: laissez-moi tranquille, ce n'est rien, dans ma chambre on venait me demander: qu'est-ce? why then do we think and speak? Odd thing; tears and kisses, speechless though they be understood no less, and sweet steps which friends do make are sweeter than sweet words. ~nd I would say, "Leave me in peace. 'Tis naught," if I were asked while in my room, "What is't?" 1888. 1888. De l'Angelus de l'Aube a l'Angelus du Soir From the Prayer of the Morning to the Prayer of the Evening Geraldine McDowell attended St. John's in Annapolis for three years. She is now a junior at Goucher College . 52 53 I �Becoming· Acquainted with a Knot Ann Burlein . Sometimes my mo t h er , s ey e s were green a s g r a ss. How grey t hey gr ow . Un de r the t rees of autumn , red an d blue Paint p or t raits of my r ace . When I r oll over , and b r u s h as i d e t he l e aves The gras s i s s til l green. Burr owing close I see my mo t her ' s eye s ag ain. (I s your soul dus t y , mama , too? Look fo r me , she s ays , I canno t r e a ch t o se e . ) Red is f o r bu r n i ng and Au t umn mus t end . Now tha t t h e win t e r' s come I 'm sure My mo t he r' s e ye s a r e unde rneath t h e s n ow A mi l e d eep and mo r e . They are t he r e t o be fo und And a wi sh i s a s p ade win ter must give way t o spring. And e v e n t he wh iteness Of Leslie S . Bellisario Nov emb er 7 t h , 19 82 Leslie Bel lisario , ' 8 3, · s c u rrently wr iting f i ct i on in London . Seeking to uncover the nature of t he soul, Aristotle learns the range of his inquiry by investigating the doc t rines of previous philosophers. From these he gleans a statement of the attributes which we think belong to the soul because of its na t ure : ·1 ) the ability to discriminate (which is the work of thought and sensation) , and 2) the ability to move from place to place (which results from t he previous ability , since the cause of locomotion desire cannot occur unless the animal imagines something 1 ) • 2 In describing both thought and sensation as methods of discrimination (to krinein) , Ari stotle r ecognizes a shar ing of activity between the thinking and sentient soul - an activity which results in gnosis . 3 result of this sharing, As a Ar istotle separates these faculties more in terms of their objects than in terms of t h e i r activities . Since, for Aristotle , to apprehend means to become like the ob ject of apprehension (a lthough in a unique way) , these objects determine the nature of both the activity of app r ehension and the knowledge which the soul becomes as a r e sult o f this activity . So before we can under stand the soul as the faculty by which man comes to know , we need to under stand, first the things which the soul k nows, and then the nature of that knowl edge . 4 Knowledge and sensation may be so marked off as to correspond to things •.. the knowing and sentient powers of the soul are potentially these things .. . and they must either be these things themselves or their forms . Certainly they cannot be the things themselves; for it is not the stone itself that is in the soul but the form of the stone . 5 Both the sensing and the thinking sou l apprehend forms , by virtue of which we say one faculty senses flesh, and the other knows the essence of flesh . 6 But what i s a form and how do these two forms diffe r from one another? Aristotle pref aces his investigation into the parts of the soul by placing form in the genus of things we call substance . But the science which enquires most fully into substance is first philosophy, for to first philosophy alone belongs the investigation of being qua being . We use the term 'being ' in many senses: something 'is' if it is 1) one, 2) true, 3) either potentially or ac t ually as we say it to be, or 4) one of the categories . Despite this multiplicity , these senses are not equivocal , 7 because "all of these (senses) are related to something which is one and a single nature" . 8 In our investiga t ion of being, t hen, we mus t first examine this central nature, fo r we cannot know any of the othe r senses unt i l we know the one upon which they depend . But after we l ook at the a ious senses of 'being' Aristotle claim s to. encompass , analogous predication seems impossible . Do these diverse senses really point to one nature, as do t he different things we call 'healthy' because they signify either a sign of health or a cause of health? Perhaps the senses which mean ' t o be true' and 'to be one' do . For while ' being' and 'unity 1 do not mean the same thing, they follow one another , since t o be one means to be nothing other than one of the categories . 9 Indeed, what is one is not distinct from what is a being. 1 O Further, we speak truly when we speak of something which is, but falsely when we speak 1) of something which is not as if l. 55 54 �but rather , if anything, it is that which walks or that which sits that is a being . These latter appear to be beings in a higher degree, because there is something definite in each of them , namely, the underlying subject; and this is the substance and the individual. 1 7 Aristotle separat es whatness f rom the other categories because of 'definiteness ' -- that on account of which things appear to be to a higher degree . Translated as 'definite', literally, horismos means 'having been marked off by boundaries' . Elsewhere, Aristotle calls this notion of having been set apart and made distinct p eculiarity (to idion) . In the Topics, Aristotle names the types of things we predicate . One of these, to idion , consists of two par ts : 1 ) properties, whatever belongs to a thing and can be predicated conve r tibly of it ; and 2 ) essence o r whatness. 18 Thi s de r i vation reveals that the idea of peculiar ity underlies and determines our notion of whatness . The d ominant meaning of idios is uniquenes s ; it s i gnifi e s something t hat pe rt ains to one person alone . Often in d icat i ng s ometh i ng t hat b y its v e r y n atu r e i s p ri vate o r p ersonal , i t opposes koinos and d e mosios . Homer uses the word in ex actly this s e nse : Telemachos , when spe ak ing to Nesto r a t Py lo s wh ere he has t rav e lled seek i n g news of his f ather , says : "This is a p r ivate matter, not public business I tell you (prex is d ' he d ' idie ou demois) . I follow the fame of my fa ther , on the chance of hearing of the great Odysseus ... " l 9 A young man's quest to learn about himself in seeking word of his father is an idion, something that by its n a t u r e b e l ong s to him a lone. Ta idia are o ne's private interests, one's own p r operty ; an idiotes is a private person who , due to a preoccupation with his own affairs, does not participate in those of the city . Thus idi o s has its roots in the idea of s omething that, because of its . it is , o r 2) of some t hing which is as i f it is not . 11 Howeve r, a category -- esp ecially 'whatness' -seems neither to point towa r ds nor to be an activity . To ask "What is it?" seems ve r y differen t from asking "What does it do?" . Ye t Ar istotle , in identifying ousia as the sens e o f ' to be ' which signifies tha t which is firs t among all things , merges· wha t n e ss and ac t uality . In Book 7 , he selects whatness as the p r imary sense nf being 12 in 9, he asserts actuality as the being of a thing . 13 But how can we rec o ncile these two senses, which appear so diverse, into one idea of being? Why is to be at work to be definite? And can we describe all sub stances to exactly the same degree by these two ways? A discussion of the categories , the fourth sense of ' to be', begins Book 6. Immediately, Aristotle o pposes the category signifying whatness to those re maining, for "it is evident that of these (i.e . , the categories) the primar y sense is whatness, and used in this sense it signifies a substance" 1 4 • He identifies being and whatness naturally and with as surance - - phaneron. For whenever some thing exists, it exists as itself -- some one, de f inite thing . (Only in thought can the fact that a thing is be separate f r om what it is and even then tha t s epar a tion se r ves only as a momentary p r elude, insures that the proceeding i nv est i gation i nto whatness does not rea lly i n q u i r e i n t o n o th i ng . 15) Unl i k e Plat o , Ar i sto t le does not find t he nature of being in being itself, but r ather in whatness . 16 So certain o f this connection between whatness and being, Ar istotle can even envision someone asking whether affections e x ist at all : Because of this (the primacy of whatness), one might even raise the problem whether walking, being heal thy, sitting and the others of this kind are beings or not beings; f o r by nature each o f these d o es not exist by itself and canno t be separated from a substance , 56 p r ivate natu re, s et s its el f apa rt f r om things we share . Such a thing become s separate a nd d isti n ct s i mpl y b ec a u se it conce r ns t h e owner a lo n e . Ye t thi s eso te ri c s epar ation does n o t result in c o n ce a lment ; rat her, we c al l a t hing pe cul iar i f its wh a t nes s makes it come for th to e xhibit i tse l f. 2 0Be caus e of t h ) s t he ' separ at ion th a t b e longs to pecul iar i t y cause s a thi n g to b e come d e fini te . Peculiarit y the n , as the Topics indic ates, p r ovides t h e key t o t he puz zle o f ousia . This ch a r ac teri s t ic alone do we as cr ibe with c erta in ty t o subs t anc e, fo r by 'a thing's substance' we me a n t h at whic h i s peculiar to it. But as with al l kn owl edge that is mo re kn own to the individual, confusion and generality mark our n o tion of peculiarity; rather than know ing explicitly the type of peculiarity which belongs to substance, we have only a vague notion of a many-faceted whole. First philosophy attempts to unpack this whole, to isolate the parts compounded within and set each out distinctly so that our confused awareness can become definite, complete, and articulable knowledge.21 Aristotle begins 'unpacking' by explaining why whatness --when it signifies subs t ance is primary among the categories . His reasons parallel the theory of pros hen predication which he states in Book 3: "In every case a science is concerned mainly with that which is first, both 1) that on which the others depend, and 2) as that through which the others are named".22 A substance is 1) prior in time because it can exist independently, requiring nothing else in order to be. It is also pri o r 2 ) in logos (for we can't define any o f the other categories wit ho ut referring to sub stance ) , and 3) in knowle d ge (fo r only when we und erstand a th i ng's subs t anc e do we unde rs t a nd t h e t h i n g ) . Chapter One su gge s ts t h at comp os . ite s ap p e ar t o be to a higher degree be caus e of the p r esenc e in each o f an unde r lyin g subjec t. I n Chap ter Three, by ex~mining the n o t ion o f ' und e rlyin g sub •J ect', Arist o tle r efines t he id e a of sepa~ate wh ich led us to consi der an under l v i n g subj e ct as a sub stance . He describes substance as that o f whic h we pre d i c ate I 57 o t h er t h i n g s , bu t which it self we nev e r pred icate o f o t h er th ings.2 3 He su g gests t h is f o r mu l at ion because it seems to indicate a t y pe of se lf - sufficient separation -- t h e kind which b e lo ng s to ind ividuals (a t oma kai hen arithmo i ) . 24 Bu t t he f o r e m .ost d i stinction o f an y u nde r lvin g subj e c t is ~ot sepa r a te n e ss bu t t he- a b i l ity ti re c eive s ome t h ing . Ye t by 'subs tance' wi do n o t primarily me a n such a p o tent i al , a : t he c ase of matter t he · . · primar u n derly i ng sub J ·ec t -- s hows . Whi"l e ma tt e 1 · has a . t ype o f ultima te s eparabil it y i i t ha t it alone can e x i st afte r we r emov t a ll e ls e, matter i n t h i s state is n o 1 defin ite (b ut wou ld a ppear as n o thing25 ) : therefore it can 't be a subst a nce. j substance is n o t th a t whic h is separabl E ~t t h e expense of all else, but that whi c l is b o th separable and a this.26 SeparatE because of its definiteness, a sub s tancE is peculiar. After concluding with the suggestion that form seems to be substance ir the highest degree (since it lacks thE indefiniteness present in composites duE to their material parts), Aristotle re~reats, asserting this to be most perple x ing · 2 7 F or h ow can a form be separable and a this, and also be a part of a com. ? posite · We can always point to tode ti, but we can never point to a form without po~nting to something else as well. ThuE A:isto~le starts again, this time be gin ning with something more famil i a r to u s His reliance upon what we al r eady kno~ shapes Chapter Four, which stresses sp eP c} -- how we say things are. Such ar emphasis highlights the new element of separability he investigates the ability t o be a l one in staterr.ent ( or in the wo rds o f Ch a p ter One, pr io rity in · · knowl e dg e ) . Fou r exa mi n es es s ence, Ch ap ter what we say a t hing t o be in vi rtue of it se lf . By e xplo r ing t his noti on of ' sep arate in virtue of one's self', Aristotle re fi ne s fu rt h er. our n ot i on o f pe c uliarit y . He beg i n s by ex cluding two ins t ances of ' i n vir t ue of itself ' p r ed i ca1) when a pr o perty b elo ngs ess e n . t~on : .~i a lly ; and 2 ) when we predi c ate o f an 'acciden ta l c omp o s i te it s u nd er l ying sub - �ject (for example, when we predicate the definition of 'man' of the composite 'white man'). These disqualifications reveal that substance kath'auta is that which we can utter alone; to be separable means to be said alone. Essence does not belong to something in such a way as to require the statement of its underlying subject in its definition; rather, to b~ the essence is to be the thing. Essence corresponds to the thing in a way in which 28 accidents and properties do no t . Aristotle now returns to sensible composites, asking whether a white man (a composite plus an accident, which is the only type of composite we ever find since all sensible substances, because of their matter, have attributes) is an instance of an essence at all. Aristotle concludes he is not, strictly speaking: But an essence is just a this, whereas if something is said of something else we do not have just a this, eg. a white man is not just a this, if a this belongs only to substances. 29 The type . of separation that belongs to peculiarity belongs also to things which are primary . Something is primary if, in its logos, we do not predicate anything at all. Essence is the only thing we can state in this way: Essence, then, will belong to nothing which is not a species of a genus, but only to a species of a genus; for it is these that are thought to be stated neither according to participation, nor with an attribute, nor with an accident. 30 But a genus does not participate in its differentiae 3 l, nor does a composite re quire its accidents in order to be. Also, if essence belongs to something , · n what way is it primary? Clearly, we don't think about an individual without also considering different things about him; I can't think about Socrates without also considering attributes such as snub-nosed or philosopher. If I were to omit such things, I would be thinking, not of Socrates, but of 'man• . so while separate spatially fr~m the rest of the world, 32 an individual.is . . not separate from attributes whose being differs from his. Because these attributes can change, every individual is somehow indeterminate -there is something of the infinite about each of us. We can separate in thought, howevgenus from its differentiae. I can er, a 'animal' without also thinking think 'bird' and all the remaining 'dog' , or even without thinking dif ferentiae -a genus is However, any at a 11 . indeterminate because these dif ferentiae vary greatly. So while we can separate a genus in thought, in order to speak definitely, we connect the genus with one of its differentiae. Since both an individual and a genus involve potential, and we ~nderstand potential only by reference to .its :orresponding actuality 33 , neither primar~. A species too involves potential, for it includes the intelligible matter of the genus to which it belongs . Yet .both ~n individual and a genus contain, in addition to intelligible matter, still other potentialities which render them even more indefinite. Thus Aristotle chooses species as essence because a species is both separate in thought and a this. Essence, which is prior in knowledge, expresses the thing most fully since it corresponds to ~he thing. But unlike the individual to which it corresponds, such essence is never c omplete y separ ate because it must ~lways act in matter. But how can something we separate in thought not also be separate :s simply? In Chapters Four and Five, Aristotle speaks of essence as belonging. 34 While not denying this relation, Chapter Six asserts that essence is the same as each particular thing. How can. essen:e have this dual relation -- especially ~f an essence is a species? What does it mean to be the same as that whi~h makes one separate because of what it is. . Aristotle provides a syllogism: We judg~ (dokoumen) each thing to be nothing other than its own substance. We say (legomen) that the substance of each thing 58 is the essence . Therefore, he implies, .each thing is the same as its essence. 3 5 Strictly speaking, the conclusion is that we judge or say each thing to be the same as its essence. Thus he says: "From these arguments it is clear that each thing and its essence are one and the same, but not by accident, and that to know each thing is to know its essence." 3"'0The sameness of essence and thing is sameness in knowledge or in speech; essence signifies the thing. 37 To signify (semainein) means to indicate by signs, to declare and also to interpret or explain. Essence declares a thing; the sameness between essence and its composite arises from the manner in which essence accomplishes this declaration. But since essence is substance, sameness in thought would seem to separate a thing's substance from the thing -- to claim that while in a sense each thing is its substance, the two really only become identical by an act of intellect. But Ar istotle rejects this view . 38 The 'to be' of each thing and the thing, then, must be one and the same, not only in the soul , but in the world external to the soul as well . Clearly though, they can't be identical in all re spec t s : Chapters Three and Four assert essence to be a this, but not i t s compos ites . So by 'one and the same' Aristotle must mean 1) that essence and its composite are together in one place and 2) to the extent that they exist together, some one thing exists which both are. This one th i ng , the form of the individual compos ite, functions as the means by which essence declares the thing. Aristotle investigates this (and thereby investigates the extent to which essence can be both a species and be primary) by studying generation. All destructible things are generat ed by something (a form identical in kind with that of the thing generated), into something (which we signify by a form), and out of something (which, because it is a privation, has in a sense the same form as the other two). Throughout the entire process, matter is present, since every change requires the potential to be and not to be. It is matter that becomes something, changing from a 'that' to being 'that- en'.39 This manner of speaking makes it clear that matter is not an active cause of the such-this it becomes, for matter functions as the under lying subject upon which something else acts . Forro plays the dynamic role . An example of generation by art clarifies the nature of form. "Things generated by art are those whose form is in the soul. 1140 Such a generation con sists of two parts, with noes is first. Thinking begins from the principle or form: Now the healthy is generated when a man thinks as follows: since health is so-and-so, if the subject is to be healthy it is to have such-and-such, let us say uniformity, and if uniformity, then warmth; ahd he always thinks in this manner until he arrives at something final which he himself can produce.41 This fin al stage must be potentially in the body, needing only something to make it actual. The second part of generation, poiesis, refers to the motion from this instant onward from the end of thinking, through stages until the form in the soul - health - becomes present in the body. This example presents form at work; it reveals from to be an active whatness . The form in the s ou l -- the essence -- determines both the thinking and the production by organizing them towards itself. Essence oversees the process and imposes its requirements at every stage. In 4, Aristotle recognizes a sense of dynarnis which means " ... the principle of change or of motion which exists in another thing or in the same thing qua other". 4 2 In this sense, essence has a dynamic nature. Thus essence, by existing in the composite, is one and the same as the composite not simply, but in so far as it orders the nature of the thing. Yet why does Aristotle mention stages? 4 3 Even in the case of an animal's acquisition of its soul he speaks of a ·gradual development: 59 �essence, but that each thing is its es ... it is not the fact that sence. Now, 'We judge A to be A's x' is when an animal is f o rmed, at unde rstandable when only essence and matthat same moment a human ter compose A, and matter in itself is being , o r a ho rse, o r any unknowable . 48 But how can a thing, not be othe r particular sort of thought in terms o f s ometh ing that belongs animal is f o r med , because to it, but be that some t hing? A is A, not the end or completio n is the A's x -- espec ially when x excludes n ot last of all, and that which only matter, but t he individual a ttribute s is peculiar to a thing is by which I distinguish A as an individual . the end of its process of When concluding his study of genformation . 44 eration , Aristotle re cognizes this : The significance o f the stages ... in some cases the essence appe ars two -fo ld. The form in a composite of a thing and the thing are is n o t immediately perfect (hence the two the same, as in first sub stages of actuality hexis and stances; ... (By 'f i rst sub entelecheia) nor entirely simp le (present stance' I mean one which is without c ombinat i on with another type o f not stated as being in being4 5) . The stage s account f o r varia something else or in an tion and individuality . Not a mere direct underly ing subject as in actualization of one p o tential, generation matter). But things which is a gradual process during which matter's exist as matter, or which diverse potentialities become actual include matter, are not the 46 and actual to different degrees. With same as their essence ... 49 animate things, these variations continue Because only a first substance is both throughout the creature's lifetime . This separate from matter and separate in continual change however, does not indithought, it alone 'is' in the fullest cate a ceaseless flux -- that we must at sense. However, the substances we find in any ~iven instant give the composite a the world, because they need to act in different name and definition because its matter, can't be separate in every way, 'to be' has always just changed . The form and therefo re can't be totally (both, 1) the stages i.e. , the 47 self-sufficient. Hence. we do not refer composite' s properties and perfections all other beings to substances such as and 2) the attributes we receive these, fo r the one and central nature must through s ens ation) does determine the be simple in all respec ts. composite -- and all the constituents of Chapters Thirteen through Fifteen the form do not remain constant; but the d "sclose another falling short of essence essence, which does rema · n constant, when it is not simple. Thi rteen begins by determines the form. While attributes can r ejecting universals as substances. Each add or take away from the sensible form, of the numerous arguments he presents in so far as they cannot alter the hinges upon a fundamental claim which composite's determining principle arises fr om his notion of sameness. He essence, they can't alter the composite. says that when present in a thing, subThus essence -- not sensible form stance i s present as something pec u liar to -- de clares the co~posite, becau se essence that thing. 5 0 A universal, as the one is the s ource o f the composite' s nature . within the many, is peculiar to no hing Most clearly, then, samenes s in knowledge and s o cannot be substance, because t hings differs from complete sameness, for eswhose substance is one have one essence sence is neither the composite's material and ~re themselves one . 51 But how can we c onstituent, nor simply all the actuidentify essence with substance, then, if alities that comprise its form. Yet the an essence is a species? c onclus i on o f the syllogism that began In a sense, when essence acts in Chapter Six omits the dokoumen and legomen matter, it fragments~ found here and found of the premisses, and asserts, not that we there, essence in each instance makes its judge each thing to be the same as its matter peculiar. Such substances possess 60 oneness in kind, not numerical unity. This differs from the unity of a genus in terms of self-sufficiency, since a species, once generated, does not require its instances in order to be, as does a genus. In the case of first substances, however, nothing inhibits the type of sameness they possess; because they do not require matter, essence and substance here are one, simply. Before unravelling some further difficu lties which arise from essence's fragmentation, Aristotle closes his arguments against universals by repeating his central theme. This time, however, he states it in a new way: the actuality of each thing makes it separate.52 Actuality implies separateness; substance sets each thing apart because of what it is. Separateness provides the first link between whatness and actuality. Chapter Fifteen intensifies the problems which arise from the reduplication of essence in matter . Answering the question "Of what is definition possible?", Aristotle concludes that we can only define things which are both common in some way (not indivisible in place as are individuals) and eternal. If ess~nce exists 'in' each thing, and we cannot define these composites because they do not remain, neither can we define essence. But we define substance most of a1153 and think substance most of all to be p~rma­ nent and unchanging. 54 Clearly, essence possesses a type of permanence, since it preserves oneness in kind from one generation to the next. Permanence without qualification belongs only to first substances . But when we view essence solely as whatness, we cannot account for this permanence . Thinking of essence as that which sets each thing apart because of what it is leads Aristotle to focus upon : the 'setting apart' , thereby unpacking the i notion of. actuality. Chapter Sixteen ; illustrates this progression. In Sixteen, Aristotle identifies the fallacy in two wide-spread notions of substance. " •.. most of what are regarded as substances are potentialities. n5~ The parts of animals, whether we consider them as parts (in which case they are not sepa- rate), or not as parts (but as matter), cannot be substances. For in either case they are ·potential and therefore not primary. " ... for none of them is one, but they exist like a heap until they are . transformed and a uni Y is pro d uced out of "t · t~em." 56 One cannot understand a heap without considering its many elements; one can understand a unity, a heap transfo:med, . by ~onsidering only the type of un~ty. it is by considering its principle or cause. Which is to say, one needs to understand the unity itself, simply. . Neither are universals primary, since we must always ref er them to that of which they are the principle.57 Therefore Aristotle claims that they, too, cannot be substances. In the case of both the universal and material elements of a thing, then, to be potential is not to be one for potentiality is alwayi indeterminat~. To be one, as Chapter Thirteen state~, is to be actual. Aristotle's vision of substance as primary verges on actuality, for ~ctuality implies oneness, and thus also implies separation in virtue of what one is. At this point, Aristotle chooses to " ... continue the discussion from another starting point, so to say, 11 58 by asserting substance to be a principle and a cause . We seek the causes of sensible t~ings in two ways, for we can inquire either 1) Why is. A A? or 2) Why does B belong to A? Only the latter expresses t~e investigation properly, because the f 1:st either i~tends the second (although f ~ils to sr,ec1fy the belonging) , or the first asks Why is a thing its wb.atness?". But when we ask why something is itself, we ask, not whether there exists a cause of its being itself (for the thing's exis tence makes this clear), but what that cause is . Yet as Chap ter One makes clear there exists no other, more fundamentai cause for Aristotle than the . 'what' that the thing is; a thing is because it is its essence. Because of the presence of essence in matter then, when we ask why a thing is, we need to ask why something belongs to something else. For when we seek the 61 �c ause of existence or unity in a comp o site, we seek the unity itself -- we seek t he essence which belongs to the composite. This cause is the final cause and in cases of generation the efficient cause. Compounds which a re one in totalit y the n, consist of material elements and t h e c aus e which makes t he se elements one defini te thing. This las t i s n ot an element , bu t " ... t h e subs tanc e of e ach t hing; for this is the first cause of the thing's existence". This leads Aristotle to identify essence with nature; since " ... those (objects) that are substances are formed according to nature or by nature, the sub stance of these would appear to be this nature which is not an element bu t a principle." 59 The Physics asserts nature to be the principle of movement or rest in a thing.60 Is substance really such a principle? Throughout 6, Aristotle depicted substance as that which, because of what it was, made a thing peculiar. We knew essence as 'the what the thing was and is and always will be' ; any 'making' which resulted from this whatness took place somewhat secondarily. Now however, the 'making' has become identical with the whatness: essence is what we say the t hing to be in virtue of itself . Before , Aristo t l e -emphasized 'selfness' ; now he emphas ize s the at emporal 'to be ' . This shift began in Chapter Seven, which describes whatness as a cause in so f ar as essence acts dyn ami cally . But why should whatness aut omatically give rise t o movement? Can we really combine these two ways of seeing substance, as Aristotle 61 does in his description of essence? By his very method of presentation, Aristotle seems t o say that whatness and actuality are by nature intertwined, and their as similation inevitable. Yet they app ear to conflict. Essence is a this. But when substance acts in matter and determines the nature of the r esultant composite, it no longer seems a this (as Seventeen's insistence upon predRather, it acts as a ication indicates). quality : But the f orm signifies a such and this is not a this and a definite thing; and what the artist makes and the man begets is a such from a this, and what is generated is a such-this . 6 3 No whatness except first substance is ever separate from matter. Yet whenever we speak about essence at work in matter, we also speak about suchness, for forms can f unction as the d i fferences between things . 63 However, we distinguish two types of differences those between individuals and those between species ~ A composite becomes a man because essence sets matter apart and makes it definite . Yet since essence acts in this way mo r e than once, thi s 'setting apart' also groups composites. Hence, essence in itself does not set matter directly apar t, for it unit es individuals in kind . Of the differences between indi viduals , those attributes which ma n if est an individual's p r ogress towards its es sence -- proper ties -- s et the individual apart in the greatest degree . Snubness does not distinguish only Soc rates; the way in which Socrates was what every man is said to be does set Socrates apart from all others . So we call a thing 'such' in vir tue of its essence, but we call a thi ng a ' this ' in virtue of certain particularitie s of its sensible form . Yet the very properties we select to distin gui s h an indiv idual r e f ec t · t s e ssence. Indeed, becau se essence acts as a potency, directing all that occurs towards itself, it both causes the cornposite's properties and alters its accidents (and these two together comprise sensible form ) . Theref o re essence not the properties makes the thing a this. And e ven though essence, due to its fragmentation, acts as a such when it determines basic characteristics, the act of essence itself is still a this. 64 The thisness o f essence appears as suchness then, solely because o f its pres""" ence in matter. But all substances except first substances act in matter. Therefore only first substances are peculiar in the fullest sense for only they bo th act and 62 are a this without qualification. But can an act ever be a this? What does it mean to be in act? In place of a definition, Aristotle opposes actuality to ' potentialities and then to motion. "Energeia is the existence of a thing, not in the way that we say something exists potentially." 65 The examples he cites fall into three classes: 1) the exercise of an ability, which he contrasts with the ability; 2) something we separate from its matter, which he opposes to the matter; and 3) the finished product, to the raw material. In a sense, all three perform the same act -- the act of being what we sa~ each to be. When seeing, the eye is doing what an .eye is said to do; when separated, the line segment is being . i~self rather than a part of some large line . They also if we speak ~nalogically -- share whatness, for each is the accomplishment of an intention Energeia then, is both an act and an end. Derived from erg on , energeia, points t~ entelecheia. This same set of relations creates the opposition between energeia and kines is. While a motion has limit (toperas), a motion is not an end (telos); rather, it e xit s for the sake of something other than itself . Hence, we call a motion incomplete (ateleia). An actualit~, while not finished in the way of a motion (for an actuality can continue ~ndefinitely), nevertheless completes itself at any time because it is its own end· Due to its completeness, energeia points to entelecheia. . But can we identify actuality, as Aristotle describes it, with substance? When we viewed substance as whatness, peculiarity characterized substance most of all. The peculiarity of actuality its ' t h. ' isness ' , becomes manifest as completeness. In Book 6, Aristotle unpacked the separateness compounded within peculiarity by examining the three ways in which whatness is prior. Actuality is prior in the same three ways. It is prior in formula: "that .which is primarily capable is capable by view of the fact that it may be an actuality". 66 Secondly, only a thing in actuality can bring a potential into act.67 This moving cause can either resemble the po tential, in which case the priority arises from time (for example, a seed becomes actual because of its parent), or it can differ, in which case the priority arises because the substance of the cause is eternal simply, while the substance of the thing caused is permanent only in a qualified way. Priority in substance precedes temporal priority because, in order to become actual, every potential relies ultimately upon necessary and indestructible things -- upon eternally active substances. In either case, however, actuality is both self-sufficient and the efficient cause of destructible things. · Finally, we said essence was prior in knowledge, because we understand a thing in the highest degree when we under stand its essence. Essence declares a thing, as Chapter Seven shows, because it acts as a·final cause. An actuality, as complete, is also a final cause. Thus it, too, declares a thing. These three priorities reveal that definiteness does belong to an actuality . We call a thing peculiar when it sets itself apart in virtue of what it is; we say a thing is in act when it sets itself apart in virtue of what it is doing . Aristotle's two visions of substance need not contradict. If something has, in itself and because of itself, a tendency for change, we call that thing 'natural' .68 Since essence ·acts as a final cause, it is a principle of movement which initiates and governs the progress of the composite in its actuality and towards itself. (For · example, if the essence of an animal is to partake in the divine by the preservation of its species, an animal -- because of • desire -- will feed itself and reproduce.) In such a principle resides the nature of each composite. Yet essence does not abandon peculiarity when it acts as · a nature, for an act can be a this. Thus in Aristotle's vision of a substance as nature, whatness and actuality merge clearly. But if we view essences 63 �in this way we must also regard only first substances and souls as genuine substances as things which are substances not merely by an analogy. This merging of whatness and actuality then, transforms the investigation of De Anima into an investigation of substance, as substance appears due to its fragmentation in matter. Just as the Metaphysics progresses towards the Prime Mover as 'substance' in the fullest sense, so De Anima focusses upon one particular principle of movement as the most complete expression of substance when present in destructible things. Fo r De Anima investigates man's last differentia, his ability to know. This ability rests upon a meeting or encounter between the soul and its object. As a result of this meeting, the soul becomes a likeness (to homoion) of this object and exists iila way like that object (homoiotai).69 Hence the object upon which the soul focusses determines the nature of both the activity of meeting and the knowledge in which this meeting results. Now the soul encounters two types of objects -- sensible and intelligible. As the soul comes t o know them, it becomes all things. 7 0 What then, are these objects, which t ogether contain all our world? What does the soul really·come to know by means of this meeting in which the soul preserves itself by progressing towards its own actuality? The division between sensible and intelligible objects coincides with the .division in the Metaphysics between sensible form and essence: Since there is a difference between magnitude and the es se nce of magnitude, flesh and the essence of flesh ... and since fl esh exists not without matter but as this snubness in this nose, it is by the sentient power that the soul discriminates the hot and the cold and the thing s whose formula is flesh; but by the intellect that the soul discriminates the essence of flesh. 71 Therefore when sensing, the soul encounters sensible form -- the form of a composite in so far as the form is sensible; when thinking, the soul encounters essence -what we say the composite to be in virtue of itself. This distinction first appeared in the Metaphysics when Aristotle spoke about generation in 6,7 (pg. 9-11). For in his example of generation by art, he distinguished the essence of health from the various stages in which the doctor produces that form in the body. The stages seem to express the individuality and diversity which mark every composite simply because 1) essence acts as a first actuality and 2) essence is present in matter, which has diverse potentials. Yet although these stages involve individuality, they still progress towards heal th, their cause. Likewise, although the soul re ceives the perceptible attributes in all their individuality, these attributes still point towards essence, their source. Yet even though essence causes this showing forth of itself -- i.e., causes the attributes, while we sense the attributes, we d o not sense essence itself (j ust as the form of heal th regulates the stages which lead to it without becoming identical· with them). We, too, acknowle dge a difference between sensible form and essence: for while we sense water (sensible f o rm) , we wou ld not say that we know water -- but we do know what water is (e ssence ) . And while we drink water, we would not claim to drink what water is. Therefore even our manner of speech suggestS a tension between these two methods of knowing. The s ource of this tensi on lies in the work within the composite that each object perf orms. For essence, as a first actuality whic.h directs the composite onward and towards itself, strains against the present actualities o f the sensible form. This strain constructs a conflict between what the composite appears at this moment to be and what the composi te strives to be. Since both o f these in some sense are the composite (although neither is simply identic al with it ) , it 64 1 seems as if we can know some one composite in two respects -- for we can encounter essence or sensible form (essence as it manifests itself ~hen in matter). But before we know anything in either of these two ways, the soul attends to its object; a 'meeting' occurs. The meeting from which sensation arises appears to be a sort of mediated touching -we come to know each composite through 'touching' its perceptible qualities.72 When I see a robin, it 'touches' me by its color and shape; when I hear it, it 't ouc hes' me by its sound . Sensible form functions as a mediator whose activity enables us to know an individual compos ite . We recognize this immediate connection between attributes and their composite in our speech while I can say "I see a color" or "I hear a sound" without mentioning the subject in which they must be present, when I am actually sensing I would be far more likely to say "I see a bird" than "I see the color of a bird", or "I hear a bird" than "I hear the sound of a bird". While we can separate an attribute from its composite --because they do in fact differ whenever the soul encounters the world we r ecognize their connection : sensible form is essence as essence reveals itself when in combination with potentiality, with indeterminacy. The process in which sensible form becomes known manifests even further the indirect nature of sensation. For we always receive sensible form through an intervening medium which is of a physical nature, such as ai r or flesh. 7 3 Yet despite the involvement of a physical medium, and the related fact that the p r oper sensibles have a close connection with the proximate matter of their composite, we never 'touch' matter. When I 'touch' a composite -- matter that a form has made actual, such as any one of the four elements or their combinations -I 'touch', not its matter, but the actuality in the matter . Since matter, when not in combination with a form, is nothing but potentiality, a type of non-being, 74 a soul can never encounter it. Whenever the soul a~prehends an object, it meets a being. In the case of the meeting we call thought, the soul requires neither a medi · um nor an organ. For an essence is not , being in so far as being shows i tselj through secondary categories associate~ with proximate matter; rather, it is c being simply. Therefore whenever the sou ~ contacts essence, it contacts being di rectly by an indivisible act in ar indivisible time. 75 (Aristotle use~ thigein in place of haphe -- his usuaJ word for touch -- to describe this rare meeting.) As a result of this direct contact, the intellect comes to know ar essence in a way in which such being~ never exist actually outside the soul -as separate. Yet despite its separation fron sensible matter, such essence is still not primary in the fullest sense. Rather, since the actuality that is an essence makes definite one potential of its genus, essence becomes part of an intelligible composite. 76 As a result of the action of essence in the intelligible matter of its genus, the soul can define essence - unlike first substances - because it can analyze essence into its constituents.77 But when the soul meets these two different objects -- sensible form and es sence -- in these two different ways, what does it know? What sort of thing is an aisthema or a noema? What do they reveal to us? In Book 2 of De Anima, Aristotle says: That which acts in producing actual sensation is external to the thing which senses it, and this is the visible thing or the audible thing (to horaton kai .!.£_ akouston~r any of the other sensible objects; and the cause of this is the fact that sensation, when actual is of an individual object. Knowledge, on the other hand, is of things universally taken, and these exist in the soul in a certain manner.78 Because sensible form arises from the activity of essence in matter, sensation car only result in knowledge of individuaJ 65 �expresses that end. Therefore when I hear facts or in groupings of these facts. a whisper behind me, and then a scream, I Thus sensation tells me that this fire is discriminate between the two on the basis hot, or that this round, sweet, red thing of their purpose, which I discover from which I find on a certain tree each year differences in their qualities. But in autumn is an apple. Since, as we sense knowledge of the function for which a qualities, we become aware of the form thing appears to be shaped merely points these qualities somehow express, even our to whatness; the soul has not yet reached most basic sensations are not simple; a clear understanding of the one orde ring rather, they connect a quality or qualfunction which causes all the rest. ities with the composite, which underlies However, as we describe sensation them . For when seeing, I see a particular and thought in relation to what each rebird, as its color and shape reveal it to veals about whatness, the strength of the be. Sensation acquaints us with what is difference between the two dwindles. Why at any given moment, for it tells us how then does Aristotle insist so strongly things appear. By making known the upon the importance of isolating the . one phainomena, sensation enables us to take ordering function? Aristotle states this effective practical action. difference most strongly when he contrasts Therefore when we sense, we the relation each holds to wonder. ('Won'touch' certain differentiae of an indider', to thaumazo comes from theaomai vidual composite 79 ; when we think, we conwhich means to gaze at or behold , and tact a composite's last differentia hence also, to contemplate). (Teleuta diaphona) -- the principle which Knowledge of a phenomenon fails to sets the composite apart because of its satisfy wonder -- indeed, it is the source peculiarity. 8 0 This knowledge of the which sparks our amazement. And while whatness of thing explains the combinarepeated sensations can dull or stifle tions sensation makes known by revealing wonder, they cannot bring us to the contheir cause. trary state -- knowledge of the cause can. But to know the precise contents For example, once a geometrician knows the of such an explanation seems a difficult cause of the incommensurability between a thing. A proton noema is not a definition diagonal and the side of its square, nothbecause when we define something we dis ing would make him wonder more than if he tinguish between its materi al and actual found a diagonal which was commensurable parts yet we contact essence by an with its side. We feel wonder whenever we indivisible act in an indivisible time. can't give an account of something because Indeed, such knowledge precedes it contradicts our expectations definition. But if we don't _really know whenever we are perplexed (aporoumen) and what a thing is until we define it, how lack a way (aporos). 81 Once we know a · can we claim, merely by contac i g thing's cause, however, we can account for essence, to know whatness? it; at this point, conviction (pistis) A similar ~roblem surfaces in the replaces wonder. cas~ of sensation, since the knowledge in Aristotle calls this knowledge which sensation results connects with which satisfies wonder 'wisdom' , and aswhatness, while it also precedes def in iserts it to be the highest of all the scit ion. For when we 't ouch' qualities such ences. He calls 'experience' the most as sound or color, we become aware of the advanced knowledge which the soul becomes essence which causes them, and therefore as a result of sensation. If the strain say that we sense the composite substance between essence and sensible form in which we find them. But in this 'awarbetween thinking and sensing is more eness' we neither contact essence nor dethan just ostensible, it should find its fine it; rather, we gain a sense of the highest e~pression in a conflict between composite's purpose. Because a composexperience and wisdom. ite' s final cause -- its essence -- orders When Aristotle explains the varithe entire composite towards the attainment of itself, sensible form 66 ous ways in which the soul encounters the world, he constructs a hierarchy, all the levels of which arise originally from the soul's ability to encounter sensible form. ... out of many sensations memory comes to be, and out of many memories of the same thing experience comes to be. Out of experience, or out of the universal which has come to rest in the soul, and which, being the one alongside the many, is the same in all of them a . . principle of art or ' of science (comes to be).82 Because the diverse memorie~ which combine to create experience concern sensible form, the soul responsible f or experience is the sentient soul. But A~i~totle also describes experience as similar homoios to wisdom83 , and s pea k s o f . . . it with a universal, for experience is the logos. of ~any memories. Although these me~ories differ in content, because each points to one common thing, they together form ~ system or unit of obse rvations. In ex~erience, the soul recognizes the exist~nce of a cause and effect relationship, for it applies the past to the p:esent but the reason for the success of this ~pplication remains unknown. when a certain set of events occurs (for instance, a child has a fever, sore throat, and lethargy) , experience tells us what to do. to remedy the situation (to give the child medicine since he has strep throat). However, experience can not reveal that t~is medicine cures the child because it kills the particular strain of bacteria responsible for strep throat. 84 Thus wh~le it provides an account of the memories which act as its material, experience cannot account for itself Rather, either science or art provides t~e account we desire . Now wisdom is the highest of all the sciences, for it studies the causes and principles upon which all beings depend. Therefore, as a result of following the method which seeks the one function that orders all the remaining activities we come to know an essence which cannot b~ known by sensation because it doesn't reside in matter. Such a science is not a productive science: . .. for it was when almost all the necessities of life were supplied, both for comfort and activity, that such thinking began to be sought. Clearly then, we do not seek this science for any other need; but just as a man is said to be free if he exists for his own sake and not for the sake of somebody else, so this alone of all the sciences is free for only this science exist~ for its own sake Does t?e tension then, between experience and w~sdom, sensing and thinking, find voice in this self-sufficiency? Has Aristotle cemented the division between sensible form and essence in the estrangement of first philosophy from all other knowledge? . But Aristotle envisions these differe~t ways of encountering the world as form~n~ a hierarchy. Thus, rather than straining against each other, experience leads to wisdom, just as sensib\e form leads to and is ordered by essence. · ~lisdo~, while it does not require the ot.her sciences, regulates them -- practical and speculative alike -- because all th th' o er ings depend upon and strive to resemble the primary object of its investigation.BG Because all other substances stand as u~derlying subjects in relation to this fi~st .p rinciple, whoever knows this first princi~le u~~erstands potentially all other things. Therefore, in order to po~sess the deepest under~tanding of the t~ings and actions around us, we require wi~dom. Yet we do not by nature desire ~his understanding because of the benefits it . renders with respect to these other obJects; rather, we desire it for its own sake. But when a man possesses wisdom he knows not merely the first principles' . but also that which follows from them. 8B To contact essence is not sufficient in o~der ~o be wise; we need to reflect ~iscursively as well. So, then, what do we 67 �know by the act in which we contact an essence? would not the nature of this knowledge be similar to that which the first philosopher possesses of the primary principle? But· what would such knowledge be? Aristotle says : Those who wish to succeed in arriving at answers will find it profitable to go over the difficulties; for answers successfully arrived at are solutions to dif fi - cul ties previously dis cussed , and one cannot untie a knot if he is ignorant of it . 89 Before we can understand the es sence of man -- the essence of ourselves - - we need to understand l ) the object of the soul's activity being (both sensible form and essence ) , and 2)the result of this activity (aisthema and noerna). Clearly then, our difficult knot remains still tied, awaiting a f urthe r attempt. 68 Footnotes 37.Topics, 103b~l. 38.Metaphysics, l033b26-30. and On Interpretations, 16a4-9. 39.Metaphysics, 1033a18-22. 40.Ibid., 1032bl. While there seems to be an inconsistency in naming both essence (the form in th~ soul which determines generation) and the properties and accidents by 'form' ,this is really only another expression of analogous predication. While the two do differ, both are actualities although to different degrees. 41.Ibid., 1032b5-10. 42.Ibid., 1019a15-21. 43.Ibid., 1032b26-28. 44.Generation of Animals, 736a35-bll.45 .Metaphysics, 1037b15~17. 46.Physics, 193b13-19. 47.Properties and perfections are closely related-perhaps even identical. For a property is something that belongs to its composite because of its essence, for example, the ability to learn grammar is a property of man. Thus, properties are essence, improperly understood. Perfections are similar: "For neither the habits of the body nor those of the soul are alterations. For of the habits, some are virtues and others vices ... a virtue is a kind of perfection (for when each thing acquires its virtue it is said to be perfect; for a thing exists in the highest degree according to nature when, to use an example, like a perfect circle, it has become a circle in the highest sense and the best circle), while a vice is a destruction or departure from that perfection." Physics, 246a10-17. 48.Metaphysics, 1036a9-10. 1.De Anima, 433a31-32; 433b29-31. 2.Ibid., 432al5-17. 3.Ibid., 432a30-32. 4.Ibid., 415al5-23. 5.Ibid., 43lb24-a3. 6.Ibid., 429bl3-18. 7.Metaphysics, 1017a9- b9 . 8.Ibid., 1003a33-34. 9.Ibid., 1054a13-19. 10.Ibid., 1003b23-24. 11.Ibid., 1011b25-28. 12.Ibid., 1028a15. 13.Ibid., 1048a32. 14.Ibid., 1028a14-15. 15.Ibid., 1041b4-5; and Posterior Analytics, 89b36-a15. 6.Ibid., 1054a10-13; 1053b16-23. 17.Ibid., 1028a20-31. 18.Topics, 101b19-24. 19.0dyssey, Book III, line 82-84. 20.Metaphysics, 1003a10. A substance is a this and can be exhibited 21.Physics, 184a16-b14. 22.Metaphysics, 1003b16-18. 23.Ibid., 1024a8-9. 24.Categories, 3b10. 25.Metaphysics, 1029a27. Matter would appear as nothing because, in o rder for it to be absolutely separate, we must remove the attributes which bound matter (length, width, and depth) and also those which make matter's presence known to us (colo r ), because the being of these attributes is not the same as that o f matter (which is solely potential) 26.Ibid., 1029a26. 27.Ibid., 1029a33. 28.Ibid., 1007a29-b16. 29 . Ibid . , 1030a3 - 5. 30.Ibid., 1030a12-14. 31 . Ibid., 1037b17-21. 32.Ibid., 1052a23-29. 33.Ibid., 1050a9-10. 34.Ibid., 1030a30. 35.Ibid., 1031a15-18. 36.Metaphysics, 1030b19-21. 69 �F or the form, which is a this and sepa rable in formula (only) • • • II Ibid .' 104228-29. 65.Ibid . , 1048a32- 33. 66 .Ibid ., 1049b13- 14. 67 .Ibid., 1029b32- a28 . 68.Physics, 192bl6-21. 69 . De Anima, 418a6-7. 70.Ibid.,43lb20-23. 71 . Ibid ., 429bl0-18. 72.Ibid., 41Ra?4-~h . . 7 3 .Ibid . , 423b12-17. 74 .Metaphysics, 1089a26- 31 . 75 . De Anima, 430bl4-16. 76 . Just as we call both the sensible c ompo site and its essence ' substance' (because the first points to the second) , so we call both the intelligible c omposite of species plus genus and also just the part of the composite that is actual 'ess ence' . 77.Metaphysics, 1045-34-35. 78.De Anima, 417b20-23. 79.Metaphysics, 1042b32-35. These diff e r entiae are members of the secondary categories. SO . Ibid ., 1038al6-30. 81 .Ibid., 982bl7 . 82 .Posterior Analytics , 100a3-9 . 83 . Metaphysics, 98la2 - 3. 84 .Ibid., 98la4-12. 85.Ibid., 982bl2 -2 8 . 86 . Ibid., 1072bl4; and Nichomachean Ethics,114lb23- 24, and 1145al0- ll. 87.Metaphysics, 982a21- 23 , and 992b3 -4. 88 . Nichomachean Ethics , 114la16-20. 89 . Metaphysics , 995a28- 30 . 49.Ibid;, 1037h1 -R~ SO.Ibid., 1038b24. 51.Ibid., 103Bb14-15. 52.Ibid., 1039a8. 53.Ibid., 1034a20. 54.A substance, because it is prior in time, is that upon which all other beings depend. If no substances were to exist, nothing would exist. Therefore it seems as if substances are eternal. Metaphysics, 107lb5 - 8. 55.Ibid., 1048b5- 6. 56.Ibid., 1040b9-10. 57.Categories, 8a31- b2. 58.Metaphysics, 1041a7-8. 59.Ibid . , 104lb27 -32. 60.Physics, 192b22-23. 61.Metaphysics, 1029b14-15. 62.Ibid., 1033b23-25. 63.Categories, lOall-13 : A fourth genus of qualities is the shape or the form of each thing, and we may add to these straightness and curvature and other like them . For a thing, in virtue of each of these, is said to be such and such ." Topics, 144a20 -22: " ... the differentia alway s signifies a quali ty." three 64 . When speaking of the kinds of substance Aristotle says: " ... another is nature, which is a this, and it is that to which something changes , and a possession ... In some cases, that which is a this does not exist apart from a composite substance." Metaphysics, 107 0all-16. or again: " ... in another sense it (substance) is the formula 70 Beethoven ... A Comedian?! Kenneth Martin At the time that Beethoven wrote the Third Symphony, there was a certain form for the composer to follow when he wrote a symphony. This form dictated the number of movements and a certain order in which. they were to be placed. Since the movements were entitled according to the tempo at which it was to be played, this order also dictated the tempo of each movement . For instance the first movement of the Third Symphony is entitled "Allegro con brio". This means merry, with spirit. Beethoven breaks from this tradition when he writes the second and third movements. Traditionally the second movement was slow--Beethoven keeps that, but he entitles the movement "Marcia funebre" which means funeral march. He seems to want to place an image in the listeners mind . To make sure that the image gets there, he gives the movement a title which will place it there. The image is that of a funeral--thus one of grief. The third movement he entitles "Scherzo" which means joke. The traditional third movement of a symphony was a minuet. This is a dance in 3/4 time which was played quickly. Why does Beethoven bring a joke into his symphony and why is it a joke? Before we approach the techni cal question of "how is it a joke?", we shall put forth a hypothesis about why he chooses a scherzo. As we mentioned before, Beethoven breaks tradition at first with the second movement--the funeral march. This is an extremely slow movement designed to convey a feeling of grief to the listener. At the conclusion of this movement the listener is immersed in a cloud of grief. This cloud is thick, making it difficult to breathe or move. The listener is in danger of suffocating or drowning because he is so saturated with grief. For Beethoven to leave the listener in that cloud of grief is to stab him in the heart and let him bleed. Since he immersed us into that cloud, he now has to reach out to us and help us back into the clear air. He does this by telling us a joke. Beethoven realizes that although . grief is an important thing for humans to express, it should not overwhelm us and become part of us. If grief does ove rwhelm us, it is bad because grieving is basically a selfish emotion. When someone dies, the mourning is not for the person who died, but for the lives that have to go on living without him. After all, if we believe in life after death, we should rejoice for the person who died, for he' has moved to someplace better. Thus it can be seen that grief is a selfish thing and when a person lets it overwhelm him, he is being selfish. Beethoven seems to think that the best way to move a person from grief is to make him laugh. Let us see how he attempts this difficult task. The third movement is a masterpiece whose main purpose is to keep the audience off balance. Throughout the piece, al though the tempo never changes, it is difficult to keep in time with the music. It keeps running away from the listener, who is trying to catch it and make it part of him. Beethoven never lets . the l~stener catch up, because if he does, he will become wrapped in his own inner world . He lets this happen in the second movement. Now he wants us to become part of society again. This means we have to strive to catch what we want--as in the third movement. To make clearer what I mean by keeping someone off balance, to let him laugh, let us glance at how a comedian 71 �r works. A comedian's job is a difficult one, because his audience's purpose is to be made to laugh. Since they expect this it makes the comedian's job tougher, because that is the easiest way to make people laugh--to give them the unexpected. But it has to be unexpected in an uncertain way. For instance, a comedian who came out and read a tragic poem probably would not get laughed at, for tragedy is simply the opposite of comedy. The comedian has to move in a completely different motion than the audience would ever expect. A good stand up comedian never lets his audience rest once he has got them laughing. He tells a joke and when it is over he immediately tells another. If the audience does not laugh, he can sometimes salvage it by buffoonery. If the audience does laugh, as soon as they have quieted enough to hear him speak, he begins another joke. This way the audience does not have time to get its expectations straight. Thus they laugh more easily. Beethoven does much the same thing. The movement opens in 3/4 time with three beats to a measure. He states the theme of the ·movement in the first fifteen measures of the piece. By the end of the seventh measure the listener's sense of time is already confused. If he has a score, he knows it is 3/4 time, otherwise he is in limbo. In the first place the music is moving so fast that it is impossible to count each beat in the measure, so the listener is left to tapping his foot to the first beat of every measure . The problem with this is that the listener has to trust his ear to tell him which beat is the first beat of the measure. Usually, since it is the strongest beat in the measure and composers use it as such, it is easily found. However Beethoven fools everyone because he starts on the last beat of a measure and uses a one, two count to fool the listener into 2/ 4 time. This is accomplished by emphasizing every other beat, thus the person counts 2/4. But at measure nine he slips in an extra unaccented beat--meaning that we are in 3/4 time. The listener starts tapping every one of the one, two, three count. Then at measure sixteen he jumps back into the 2/4 time of the first seven measures . The listener is off balance again. At measure twenty-two, he moves back into 3/4 emphasizing the first beat of each measure again. Then at thirty he reenters 2/4 time.. This lasts until measure forty-two where 3/4 time asserts itself again. We stay in 3/4 time until measure fifty-eight where 2/4 comes in again. This is a confused section where it is tough to get any sort of rhythym at all. This confusion lasts to measure seventy where 3/4 is emphasized strongly by the violas and contra bass playing the same note (D) eleven times through three and two-thirds measures (70 - 73) then moving to another note (Bb) on the first beat of bar seventy-four and playing it eleven times through another three and two-thirds measures (74 -7 7) . Then at the last beat of bar seventy-seven we move back to the one, two punch of 2/4 time. This back and forth motion lasts until bar one hundred and sixteen. we have been in 2/4 since bar one hundred and eleven. Then we get three successive sets of quarter notes moving to half notes. These throw our timing off completely. The nearest thing we can grasp is 3/4, but it is difficult because the strong beat comes on two of the measure, instead of one where we need it to get the sense of 3/4 time. As soon as these three bars (116 -119 ) are finished we get a solid statement of 3/4 time with two bars (122-3) which state one chor d on each beat in the first bar then another chord on all three beats of the second. Then in bar one hundred twenty four we get that confused quarter note to half note step again. After this set (124 -7 ) we get another set in a 3/4 time as before. This lasts until bar one hundred and forty four where 3/4 reasserts itself by playing the melody notes only on the first beat of the measure. This moves us all the way to the repeat o f bar one hundred and sixty four in 3/ 4 time. It is evident then, that Beethoven strives to keep us off balance and does so in the first section of the movement. 72 The trio which begins at measure again, gi~ing us our sure 3/4 time. This one hundred and sixty seven and ends at lasts until bar four hundred and twenty measure two hundred and sixty, may be the only place where we have a chance to catch 1 two wher~ he gives us an authentic cadence on th~ first beat of a measure. This octhe music. Al though the tempo stays the curs in bars four hundred twenty one to same, the fact that the same note is being four hundred twenty two. This gives a held over a longer period of time tends to sure sense of 3/4 time. make us think of a slower tempo. From bar . H~ m~ves into the coda in a 2/ 4 one hundred and sixty seven to bar two time· This is seen in bar four hundred hundred and six he uses the last beat of a measure to emphasize the first beat o.f the . and twenty three in the timpani giving us a. one, two count. Then the violins and next measure. This gives the liste-~~r a viola com~ in emphasizing the 2/4. Oversteady sense of 3/4 time which lasts for a top of this .2/4 time in the bass, he puts time. This enables the listener to catch the melody in 3/ 4 with the clarinet and his breath and get some stable ground for foggotto playing two dotted quarter notes a.moment. A moment later he plunges the back to back followed by a quarter note on listener into a trio of flute, clarinet, the first beat of the measure (425 -27 ) . and bassoon (Fogotto) at bar two hundred The flute joins with the melody in bar and six. Our sense of 3/4 time lasts for four hundred and twenty nine.to four huna measure before he starts emphasizing dred and thirty one . Then we get a solid every other beat again. The listener f al2/ 4 from bars four hundred thirty one to ters, striving to get in time with the f~ur hundred and thirty nine with the enmelody. This lasts from bar two hundred tire orchestra moving at one two, one two. and six to ?ar two hundred and twenty five T~en at four hundred and thirty nine he w~ere a trio of horns comes in with the gives us a cadence on one, then two rests. first melody of the trio to bring us back Bar four hundred and forty and four hunto 3/4 time. Again Beethoven just lets dred and forty one do the same. This the listener get the feel of the rhythm pushes us again to 3/4 time and ends the before he changes it again. we last in piece . 3/4 until the repeat at bar two hundred It becomes evident that Beethoven and sixty. ha~ masterfully designed this movQment to At two hundred and twenty five of bring the listener out of his own inner th~ 7econd ending he brings us back to the world of grief and self pity. He strives or i?in~l theme of the movement, starting ~o mo.ve us to a shared outer world full of again in 2/4 time. This part is almost an ~oy in that sharing. If hE: gives us a e~act ~eplica of the beginning. The cruJoyf~l sounding piece in which we are able cial difference occurs in measures three to f i~d our timing, he offers us a way hundred and eighty one to three hundred back into that inner world whicL is so and eighty five. This is the spot where lonely. By constantly shifting tfi.-, rhythm we are used to a quarter note to half note ~rom 2/4 to 3/4 he refuses the way to that t~ quarter note half note cadence~ we inner world. Before we can get there we finally have come to terms with the back have to be able to become as one with the and forth motion from 2/4 to 3/4. Then m~sic ~ This can only happen if we are here he moves to 2/2 time. Our timing is wit~ it rhythmically. Thus in chasing the thrown into outer space. This is the climusic to become one with it we forget ourmax of the joke and "the joke is on us". selves and think of the music, or even From there he move back into a 2/4 at mea better, of someone else . Thus, the third sure three hundred and eighty five uritil movement is not a joke so much as an end arou~d four hundred and one . Here he emto g!:i;_eving. phasizes the first beat of every measure 73 �Kyrie Jerry Spires / ~ \ ,, I I ~ I a ~- ,, .. ' e · u· 5°"'. 1 .. I': I ... / -e t\ .. ... "' - & ~ • . - .._,- - ... . .. ,,. \ -" ~- ,.~. ~- ~,, ~ , a.- ... ~ . II ' .... ~Ill.I ~ - --... . --:) . I I I .. - . _. t.5-· ~ ·- ~ ~ I I . .I "" - .. .. - .. ., • I Loi;• r r.-.. r' I . --. I.I. . I I I - I • - I - I I I r I ~~. Jt.. !I J. 1 i,.. ,,.., - I - I - I sb ... fI• - ..'- - ..,, . .. ... I c ..i. . . . . - I ..... -. I ./ I ... I 'T ·1 .. r "". ~· I ,_ I "" g ,.-. I• . . I I I I .. I -, I ..,. I - . I I • c; • I • I I T I ....____....., ~ - , ,.. ~ I I I ! P"' T I I ...... :i / - r r- ~ ·~ - IT ci; ', I 1 S~N. \- - ..r • ,.. I t ef " t ~ ..... ti: .... - \ . . •· I I I r l' I I I ..i I I ' .. J I I I I I I ,.t1'1 E.· - I ,.,, " I r " l I ,,,,. I I --- I I r kLl I I I l'1 • I I r-,...,,, - I r I I . .. - l' I .. l T .: r ~ c• I I I ., "'P I 1· I I e. I I . ... . r E- I T I I I I I I I - I a • s~ .' ... , - Nlf'=" Ill I I I I .._____...'"' u• - ~ ~o~ . T T I -.- L::; II ,_, I I .. I \.J LZ' - I":', ,. I I 11 ./) . ~j ,!M ~ r I ~ 'Sot4 . - 1T 0 . I l ,_ , _, · I - I ~ Lli - rr I ~- I.El- I I ~ Q.~ I I a I I I E• "'r.- I " • - e.- n I I I I J I I • ..- r •e - I ,_ I • l"'\l I ~ • 5QN. - r I I E I - -i 1 !.!;· I I 91 I '- . ' 'I I I -,,., r I I I ' -' - r- ~ I'</ _,, - I I - • rll I - I 75 74 -• r r ! l I - l ~ I ... l... ' J ~Otl \ I ,,./' I I I k..'/" I"" 1..f- I ·- (J ~ 1'.'I • ~ ,, I ' V.,.' / • P..I J il· ) Jerry Spires attended st. John's in Annapolis for two years. He is now studying liberal arts at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. The Xyrie here printed is part of his Mass entitled "The Solemn Joy". I ~~ ~~ ~ j _/ e.- ...--... -.... / r." - I I - ~ I i'.'I· ~-~ - r if - ~ . I •IOM. - ·- •,. ..J ~ t"'\ . : S"r{ - ' - I I lt-.p - ' I I l I - r (\,J I l£· - - I I I I I - I I I . I / I - ~ 1t.S.ti·~ I I ~ ~ - ... ' r,-. I I "" II • I~. / I I -i '- I LJUYL..l ,I I I I I I I i ~ ~· ~\-~ ~. ...... . /.\ I -~ I I > I &J I l.f • l _, - f I I ~ 'T • nlJ I ~ · - - r I ~ ,_ . I CV. I I . r I -i I • !- -. . r r ·1 ,.._ r'i " ~ - I I ' -T I ~ - I e.- - "" -· . r.. I I .- ,, 11.a ..' I t:ll· J ~) I ,, I ,. M I I I ' - I I ~~·'-\"I! ~ ~ -- - r , ,.. • A 11 n ~ r1 ~ ' - Lj II r I I .~ ,.... I �~ , / -• ... I ~ , , \. I I I I ~ C/111.\ • , I ~ / I •. '\ \.~ ".: - I I I I - ,_ J ~ I \ ' l " J .. ' . I - ' I e~, II' - J .. -- l t ~ 'II ; - \ I I I - 11 LI· - ' T I - ~ .... I I Clll. •• I -m I I . u ,. \I" I .. I - "" I "'---"' I - I I ~ • 30f'l • -· J. i.- I• . ,. • I I I"" r- I I . .- - - ~ · .. l l) ' t \ l I I I I I I"' I I I E· ....... [ I ! - - Lf; - I I ,- I I I I ' I I I ' J_ I· .... ..,, I l.4 ··I l JoM _ ,_ i..- ~ S•N I ~- ., I r' I I I I l I I I I I I I I ' ' ...,1 c· t· - I I I 1 I 1..E; - -. I I .. ' r-. ~~ I I I ' I ......... I (,")/ "1....._ n _.j(_] Sotl.- ~ I· ,... ,_J I I i • I• - ~ .. I -I !"" I I . r - ... .. J :L. I - I .....____... I ... f ~ ~ I I - 1 cat&l· -\'Te - - I"' I I I l" I I I I I -· - ew-«.1- Jllil. T ,_ Ii..il· . • S• l'l I I '• r I I Le• I 77 76 - i I ~ r • ~"!'" n~ S..~J. - I ' I I I I ~ I I I I I _. ! I I 'I 'l I - .......-1 ~ I .. --,. I I - I I I I .. r I .... I, _ "'" . ~!~ ..... ,. - 1· - c.iic.1- • '$0"4 r... I .,. '-" 1\ _Ji tlc..,. - !:>' 1 1.•· - Jott . .5.,,i l" ,,..---.....,. I E· ' ' •.lff ,.. ' -. . .. - I I I i I I ~ LI• I I -m C:1U.1• - ,... LI a ~ I ·I· - !"" I I . ,,.. I I !.- t - I I I I I -,. "" I I I I .. ~ } I I I I I I I I A I .,.. I I I . ,. I I - I I I ... .. I ~ ... I E· ·si"i I I •-, I li - .. r- I E'· I LJ - - I - .I!! l I -.J ...._ .-,, I .- ~- I I . ,, J....V I .. U• ,.. ' 50"', \ ,J --.. - . - - I ' I ' I 1 II (.M. I • -,.. l I ) I ' ... CM I ' l . ~ -~ . , E· I I I I - I I I i. - I I " - ., .. -· ... -,, ' ~ .. ,, , _ .., l .. ~- ~ .----..... . ~ .... 6 I -1 • SllN, l ..,, "' I I - - \ I Tl I ,,,,,...-..., - - ..... I .,~ lf. . ~I - I _,. ~~ -- . .. ~- I .J+r ,. ft I . .... ' I I r;;1' r-i . 1 I I J I l ,J. ..- I 1' - I I ,,, I ~ I .. . -r I ~ - IS· I e•~1· .J &· I • I . r u LI '\.. ... I r1 11 .A - / - 11 I h I ) c~- "" " .. . - "' ·31'£ ' L I r,o... I I \ I I I ! I . ~. ./1 I ' I I I I QI . I• d C.~1- .. -. ' ' -,,,;[ l - Li- I I I I I I , ~-V -~ -do ~ ,, ... \ ' I " ) ~ ~ I I ~I ! I II I I - . . . .... I I • ) - ",. I _ l �The Harmony of the Solids Martin Marklin . A ~reject ~-o.r . the .~ab_ora~ory Mr. Curtis Wilson, Advisor Preface: -SO' . I sense I have today witnessed something great! It is my intention to show in this little paper something remarkable which I happened upon not totally by accident, namely this: there is indeed audible harmony among the five regular solids. These solids, celebrated since the days of Pythagoras and Plato, have more harmony and design than I suspect has been known until today. But before I begin to give my account, permit me, kind reader, to recount the occasion of such a blessed finding and to explain why I undertook this endeavor. It was some months ago that I first was introduced to the study of acoustics, and undoubtedly the most fascinating phenomenon of this science was the Harmonic Overtone Series of a vibrating string. While I was perusing those small whole number ratios, I recollected seeing them before in my geometrical studies. For I had discovered in Euclid's Thirteenth Book that, for at least three of the five regular solids, the edges were related in square to the diameter by small whole number ratios. What a beautiful coincidence! Lest I lose someone before I even begin, allow me to recall here the ratios of the five regular solids and those of · the Harmonic Overtone Series: Octahedron: The square on the diameter of the comprehending sphere is double the square on the side of the octahedron. (side of octahedron) 2 : (diameter) 2 ::1:2 Cube: The square on the diameter of the comprehending sphere is triple the square on the side of the cube. (side of cube ) 2 : (diameter ) 2 ::1:3 Icosahedron: The side of the icosahedron is the irrational straight line called minor. Dodecahedron: The side of the dodecahedron is the · irrational straight line called apotome . I The Harmonic Overtone Series 1 2 3 4 5 2 3 4 5 6 Octave Fifth Fourth Major Third Minor Third Now what was innnediately obvious to me was that the octave and the octahedron have the same ratio, namely 1: 2. Moreover, the octave and the octahedron embody the same number eight: eight notes in the *The symbol ()~ is not algebraic. It is a short way of expressing "The square constructed on ..• " It would be inconsistent to think here that one should multiply the length of the side by itself. 78 Tetrahedron: The square on the diameter of the comprehending sphere is one and a half times the square on the side of the pyramid. (side of tetrahedron) 2 *: (diameter)2::2:3 79 I �former and eight faces in the latter. Now this similarity could hardly be accounted a simple coincidence! And so I set out upon my search for perfection, to see where blessed nature left fingerprints of her perfection. I looked to geometry and music, for my presumption was that music is in a sense "sensed mathematics". The five regular solids were not new models of perfection, harmony, and creation. They go as far back as Pythagoras and Plato; and perhaps the best lighting for the solids appears in Plato's Timaeus, in which Timaeus tells his "likely story" of creation. But his account is not a creation account--and by creation I mean strictly "creation from nothing"--for the demiurge fashions the world after archtypes eternal and perfect. Timaeus links the solids to the four elements: For bodies to be bodies they must be both tangible and visible which are the results of earth and fire, respectively. Earth is represented by the cube and fire by the tetrahedron . Now between any two solid bodies there need to be two proportionals. Hence, water (icosahedron) and air (octahedron) serve to bind these two elements together. The fifth solid, the dodecahedron, serves as the container for the other elements. But even better than this, I had for my guide Master Johannes Kepler, who said that God the creator was a playful, geometricizing God. By this Kepler meant that God created the world out of love and for de light . Fur thermore, God used the two tools of the geome ter, the straight-edge and the compass. Even though the phrase "Harmony of the Spheres" - -to describe celestial mechanics-preceeds Kepler by many centuries (it goes back to Pythagoras, who claimed that he and a few other select persons in history were capable of training themselves to audibly hear the .musical harmony of the planetary heavens) , Kepler used this as his foundation for his Harmonice Mundi (Harmonics of the World). (intelligible, not audible) with dissonant tunings, like certain syncopations or cadences (wherewith men imitate these natural dissonances), Hence it · is no longer a surprise that man, the ape of his Creator, should finally have discovered the art of singing polyphonically · (per concentum) , which was unknown to the ancients, namely in order that he might play the everlastingness of all created time in some short part of an hour by rneana· of an artistic concord of mau1y ·· voices and that he might to some extent taste the satisfaction of God the Workman with His own works, in that very sweet sense of delight elicited from this music which imitates God. --Harmonice, Book v, Chapter 7 Now the phrase "not audible" befuddled me, and I resolved to try to make audible harmonies by means of the five regular solids, in light of the coincident ratios with the harmonic overtone series. First Beginnings : My first i nclination was to construct out of wire the regular solids, given the correct d i me ns i ons so that they would be comprehended withi n the same sphere . My thinking was this : since the edges of the solids were in harmonic ratios, why not make them as one tunes a string? In this manner the notes produced by the plucked strings would give the harmonic intervals of the octave, the fifth, the fourth, and so on. What signi f icance this would h ave l We now str etch strings over several feet within a piano. Wouldn't it be beautiful to have those very same ratios given within the confines of one sphere, determined by the five regular solids--the most perfect of all rectilineal bodies. For the mystery of the five regular solids . Accordingly the movements of the heavens are nothing except a certain everlasting polyphony 80 lies in the fact that there are precisely five and no more . Moreover, the regular solids are the most a. rectilineal body can approach the sphere, the perfectly curved. My enthusiasm was not enough, however, to surmount the obstacle of "conunensurable only in square". For no sooner had I begun my calculations than I realized that those small .whole number ratios applied only to the squares constructed on the sides of the solids. To a geometer these squares mean area, not the algebraic notion of taking a length times itself . It became increasingly clearer to me that my polyphonic model would not be so easy to construe~. I had already begun, whether I had realized at the time or not, my war on incommensurability. One day, however, I learned that while string-lengths exhibit a one dimensional vibration mode, drums require two- dimensional membranes to sound their natural resonances. What a joy and what new hope this news brought to me! Once again I had the hope of somehow circumventing "commensurable only in square". And why not drums? For the five regular solids are three-dimensional bodies; they are polyhedra and not polygons . Why should their natural resonance be limited by a one-dimensional string length? It would be far more appropriate to construct the solids as drums, thus letting the whole body sound its own natural resonance. And so I undertook to study drums and the wave equations appropriate to drum-heads . The first bit of infor mati on was shocking: drums, like bells, do not exhibit a harmonic overtone series like a vibrating string or a column of air. For drums and bells, their partials above the fundamental are inharmonic and their resonance not linear. Two of the most important contributing factors to the pitch of a drum are the volume of enclosed air and the size of the vibrating membrane. The trapped air will reinforce certain partials and cancel others; if this were not the case, one would simply get a "thud" and no musical pitch . Also important to the pitch is the thickness and tension of the membrane. Now each of the five regular solids had its own particular volume, surface area, and lateral face area. I thought to myself: "If I could keep my drum-head of constant thickness and tension- - then perhaps I might be able to bypass 'commensurable only in square'" . Just perhaps in combining the specific volume with the specific aperture of each of the solids, I might arrive at notes harmonically related. For by this time it was clear that what I was hoping was that the natural resonances of the five solids as drums would be in small whole number ratios. Constructing the Solids: The construction of each solid begins by taking a segment equal to the diameter of the given sphere, the sphere within which the regular solid will be comprehended. The diameter is divided into a specific ratio, and a perpendicular is set out from the point of division to the circumference. Lines connecting the ends of the diameter to the point on the circumference give three right and similar triangles. The following two theorems are vitally important for Euclid's proofs in Book Thirteen: A B AB . : AD : : AD : AC (sim . tri.) AC dup . AB : AD (AB) .2 : (AD) .2 dup. AB AD (VI. 20) 1) AB : AC : : (AB) .2 : (AD) .2 AB : AB 2) 81 AB AC . . (AB) BC . . (AB) .2 (AD) .2 .2 (DB) .2 �_.,.;-- - Octahedron Now let us consider more closely the specific construction of the octahedron, the tetrahedron, and the cube. What was noted before about the octave and the octahedron also holds for the diapente (fifth) and the pyramid. But where does the cube lead us? It alone gives us the interval of the twelfth, a fifth above the range of the octave. It would complete things, it appears at first glance, if the ratio of the cube were 3:4, the same as the diatesseron ( fourth). But in fact, the ratio of the cube, namely 1:3, does not appear in any of the octave's intervals. Consider the diagram below. Circle ABFE is the circumference of the sphere circumscribing the five regular solids, and AB is its diameter. BE is the side of octahedron, AF the tetrahedron, and BF the cube. Let us assign 6 units to the square constructed on the diameter. ( It is important to remember that the numerical unit 6 refers to the square constructed on the side AB, not to the specific length of AB). ·~ already know the ratios of the octah~ ~ron* (1 :2 ), the tetrahedron ( 2: 3) , and the cube ( 1 : 3) • Consequently, the square on length AF will be 4, and the square on length BF will be 2. B AD:AB .. 1 : 2 AD : AB . . (AC) :z (AB ) 2 2 (AC ) :z : ( AB ) : : 1 : 2 A Tetrahedron AD: AB:: 2 : 3 AD : AB : : (AC ) 2 (AC) 2 : (AB ) :2 •• (AB) :z 2 : 3 A Cube BD : AB : : 1 : 3 (AB ) :z BD : AB : : (CB ) :z (DB ) :z : (AB) :z : : 1 : 3 *For the sake of clarity and brevity, I will introduce the term "rati o of the (octahedron) (BE) 2 (tetrahedron) (AF) 2 (cube) (BF) (octahedron ) (BE) 2 2 .. 3 : 4 3 : 4 (diatessaron) .. .. .. 2 : 3 2 : 3 (diapente) (cube) (BF) (tetrahedron ) 2 (AF) .2 .. .. 2 : 4 2 : 4 (octave) We can immediately deduce·, from looking only at the tetrahedron and the octahedron, that the square on the side of the octahedron has to the square on the side of the tetrahedron the ratio of 3:4. This ratio, the diatessaron, is the complementary ratio that when compounded with the dipente gives the octave. Arithmetically, we see that 2:3 compounded with 3:4 gives 1:2. Hence, the fifth and the fourth, the two major consonances within the octave, are unequal but complementar y parts that together make a complete and ordered whole, a harmonious whole, the octave. This is precisely what we mean by harmony . Just as the Pythagoreans needed only the octave and the fifth to generate the entire musical scale, so too the octahedron and the tetrahedron will gene rate the other intervals. We saw that the ratio of the octahedron together with the ratio of the tetrahedron gave us the fourth. Alter nately, we get the fifth from the ratios o f the octahedron and the cube. Since the ratio of the octahedron appears in both equations, we can see how closely the cube and the tetrahedron are related-...;.not as regards the ratios of their sides to the diameter, but with respect to the octahedron itself, the octave. Perhaps the most striking proof that the pyramid and the cube are indeed complementary is this : the square on the side of the pyramid has to the square on the side of the cube the ratio 1 : 2 or the octave. A beautiful illustration of all this is seen in compounding ratios. Since triangle AFB is right, we know that the square on the side of the cube when added to the square on the side of the tetrahedron is equal to in area the square on the side of the diameter. (Euclid I . 47). In other words, (BF) 2 + (AF) 2 2 • (AB) Moreover, the square on the diameter is twice as large (2 : 1) as the square on the side of the octahedron. When the ratio 2 : 3 is compounded with the ration 3: 4, the number 3 is used as the middle term. In · the same manner we can use length BE as the middle term: (BF) 2 I (BE) 3 :2 comp . comp. (BE) 3 2 : (AF) 4 2:: •• .. (BF) 2: (AF) 4 2 2 1 2 (octave) proceeded this way: So the groundwork was laid and I begah to experiment . I first constr ucted models of the solids, given a compre hending sphere whose diameter is 20 centimeters. I made the faces out o f ~ inch plexi- glass, and during the assemblage I left one face out. Thi s was to be the opening for my drum. To assure the same tension and thickness in the membrane, I used the same drum- head for all the solids . It was constructed out of 0 . 003 inch mylar stretched between a 10 inch embroidery hoop. - I placed the taut membrane over the open-faced solid, whicb was supported by its edges (to avoid any dampening of the solid) . The over-hang of membrane was dampened by ~ inch foam, upor which was placed 260 grams, evenly dis persed. I repeated this very same procedure for each of the solids. Upon the exposed membrane · I placed poppy seeds, weighed out to 0 .1 gram. l held a four-inch speaker to one face of octahedron" to mean "the ratio of the square constructed on the side of the octahedron to the square constructed on the diameter of the comprehending sphere". Hence, the "ratio of the octahedron" is 1:2; "of the tetrahedron", 2:3; and "of the cube", 1:3. 83 82 2 : �the solid by means of a rubb er band (again, I placed spacers between the rubber band and the edges to avoid any unnecessary dampening). The speaker was hooked up to a frequency generator. My hypothesis was this: I would excite the air inside the solid at different frequenc ies and notice when the membrane would resonate. The advantage of this set-up was that it took into account at the same time both the volume of the solid as well as the size, thickness, and tautness of the membrane. The frequencies at which resonance would occur, I could be sure, would be the natural. resonance of the collective body. The poppy seeds were on the membrane to indicate when there was resonance as well as the mode of oscillation. Since my frequency generator did not have enough power, it was unable to detect the resonance of the unaided membrane. Moreover, the poppy seeds would move when they sat on points of oscillation, seeking nodal points (points of inactivity). Since the drum head could have an infinite number of modes of oscillation, and since four of my membranes were neither circular nor rectangular, I had no way of reasonably foretelling the pattern of oscillation. The poppy seeds would trace such a pattern. Now even before I began my experimentation I knew that there would be inaccuracy. For one thing, my models were constructed with a bevel on each face . When I removed one face, I was left with an extruding bevel which gave a lateral surf ace area greater in proportion to the inner volume of the solid (the thickness, as you recall was~ inch). Furthermore, I did not know how accurately callibrated my frequency generator was, p~rticularly since it was incremented at 20 cycles per second. Given all this, I searched not for precise experimental data, but rather for large pattern s. And patterns I did receive. The following graphs record at what frequency and to what intensity the particu lar s o lid resonates. I had no way o f measuring the intensity o f the resonance other than to watch the activity of the poppy seeds and listen with my ear. Thus, the recordings A, B, C, D are subject to my own limitations. D The _ Findings: c I took the strongest lowest frequency of each of the solids as its fundamental. In all cases I was able to reach a strong second partial, many times with greater intensity than the fundamental. The closest that I came to harmonics was with the cube, where the fundamental was around 350 cps and the second partial (harmonic?) was at 73 0 cps, nearly a 1:2 ratio. This would seem to make sense, f o r the cube in many respects is the most "regular" of the solids, by virtue of its parallelism and perpendicularity. But even more astonishing than this was the pattern and sequence to the fundamentals. First of all, they all fell within the same octave, which happened to be the middle register on the piano, with the dodecahedron being very nearly middle C ( 270 cps ) . And except for the icosahedron and dodecahedron, this pattern holds: as the solids increase in volume or in the number of faces, the frequency decreases. This also is what one wqu.ld B A >- !::: (/) z w 1- z I 300 I I 4 00 5 00 6 00 700 I 800 9 00 1000 1100 1200 1300 I I 1500 14 00 1600 I 1700 18 00 1 9 00 2 000 FREQ UENCY (CPS ) TETRAHEDRON VIEW SHOW ING CONSTRUCTION OF EDG E Natural Resonances for the Five Regular Solids Pitch Solid Frequeng Tetrahedron F 46 0 2 850 - 950 A# Cube F 340 -360 2 73 0 F# Octahedron Icosahedron Dodecahedron &4 ON E OF FOUR FACES TETRAHEDRON fT>:.o.s• F 325 2 1125 D# F 27 0 2 64 0 3 87 5 ~ E F 310,320 2 800 3 1100 I NSCRIBED WITH IN A . SPKER E c TETRAHEDRON DIHEDRAL LENGTH EDGE SLANT HEIGHT A POTH EM 0 .81649658 0. 70710678 0 . 23570226 RADIUS 0.47140452 AREA FACE 0 .2886751 SURFACE 1.1547005 VI EW SHOWING ALTITUDE OF ZONE VI EW SHOW ING DIHEDRAL ANGLE 85 VOLUME 0.06415003 ANGLE FACE SOLID DIHEDRAL 60° 180° 70.53° �D D c c B B A A > >- I- !::: v; (/) z z w 1- z I I 300 <4 00 600 !SOO 700 800 900 1000 1100 I I I I I I I I 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 I z 300 I I 400 500 600 FREQUENCY FREQ U ENC Y (C PS) CUBE I w 1- 700 I 800 900 1000 I 1100 1200 I 1300 I I I I 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 (CPS) OCTAHEDRON VIEW SHOWING VIEW SHOWING CONSTRUCTION CONSTRUCTION OF EDGE d=1 d=1 ONE OF SIX FACES ON E OF EIGHT FACES CUBE OCTAHEDRON I NSCRIBEO WITH IN A SPHERE INSCRIBED WIT+llN A SPHERE CUBE LENGTH EDGE SLANT HEIGHT APOTHEM RADIUS OCTAHEDRON 0.57735027 0.57735027 0.28867514 0.40824829 ACE UR FACE VI EW SHOWING ALTITUDE OF ZONE o.3 VOLUME 0.1924501 VIEW SHOWING DIHEDRAL ANGLE 86 2.0 ANG LE FACE SOLID DIHEDRAL 90° 270° 90 LENGTH EDGE S LANT HEIGHT APOTHEM RADIUS ''°'~ ~ VI EW SHOWING A!-TITUDE OF ZONE V=6 87 E=l2 0.70710678 0.61237244 0.20412415 0.40824829 AREA FACE SURFACE VIEW SHOWING DIHEDRAL ANGLE F=8 0.2165064 1 7320508 VOLUME 1.6 ANG!,.t; FACE SOLID DIHEDRAL 60° 240° 109.5° �D D c c B B A A >- >- 1- t: z c;; w z I (/) z 1- ,..---, I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I 300 4 00 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 FREQUENCY UJ 1- I I I I I 300 z 400 500 600 700 FREQUENCY (CP S ) DODECAHEDRON I 800 I 900 1000 I 1100 1200 I 1300 I 1500 1400 I 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 (CPS) ICOSAHEDRON VIEW SHOWING VI EW SHOWING CONSTRUCTION CONSTRUCTION OF EDGE OF EDGE ONE ONE OF TWELVE OF TWENTY FACES FACES lCOSAHEDRON DODECAHEDRON INSCRIBED WITHI~ A SPHERE IN SCR I BED WITHIN A SPHERE DODECAHEDRON LENGTH EDGE SLANT HEIGHT A POTH EM RADIUS V=20 F=l2 VI EW SHOWING DIHEDRAL ANGLE 88 ICOSAHEDRON LENGTH EDGE SLANT HEIGHT APOTHEM 0.1585094 1.902113 VOLUME 0.2519204 ANGLE FACE SOLID CIH ECRAL 0.5257311 0.4552965 Q1517655 RArn~ 0.35682209 0.54909274 0.24556174 0.303531 AREA FACE SURFACE VI E W SHOWING ALTITUDE OF ZONE E=JO Q~35~ ~A~R~E~A_______ 108° 324° 116.5° VIEW SHOWING ALTITUDE OF ZONE VIEW SHOWING DIHEDRAL ANGLE 89 _AN_G_L_E...__ ____, 0.1196817 FACE 60° 2.3936353 SOLID 300° 10 _V_O_L_U_M_E--..,,.0....,.3,....,1=7..,,0...,.18"'"84"'""" DIHEDRAL 138• FACE SURFACE �expect. A larger volume would produce a lower pitch, hence a lower frequency. I hesitate to draw any more conclusions, given the known inaccuracies of the instruments and models . But the results that I have received thus far, however imprecise, lead me to suspect that more awaits to be discovered. Yes, I am guilty of suspecting that there is harmonic perfection in the five regular solids, but even more than that . I should t h i nk t h at one would be able to sense s uch harmony with one's ears, that is to say audibly. Acknowledgements : Allow me he r e to acknowledge those persons who generously gave of t heir time and advice and talents to this endeavor. First of all, I wish to thank Mrs . Allanbrook, my music tutor, fo r her patience despite my ple t hora of questions . Mr. Herbert Neustadt de serves my gratitude for his obliging and professional advice. I am grateful to Mr . Nicholas Maistrellis and Mr . Roy Ar mstrong for providing me with working space and technical assistance. My very special admiration and thanks goes to Mr. Curtis Wilson, a modest and humble adviser. 90 �Non -Profit O rg . BUL~ RATE U. S. POSTAGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 PAI D PERMIT No. 120 ANNAPOLIS, M D. � 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. 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For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Holland, Christian (Editor) Title A name given to the resource Energeia, Special Issue 1983 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 Description An account of the resource Special Issue of the Energeia, published in 1983. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Energeia Special Issue 1983 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Energeia Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/293e527f408585b7be2082db2f41a166.pdf 153374adbf415021ad197748f56df046 PDF Text Text WINTER, 1984 I i �ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself. n... voO £v( py£La ' w~ ... (Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1 0 72b ) COVER: Self-Portrait by Kaethe Kollwirz (1867-1945). 1924, Charcoal. STAFF INSIDE PRINT: La Disputa Del Sacramento by Raphael (1483-1520). 1509-1510, Frescoe. Edito r: Photo courtesy of Vatican Museum, Vatican City, Italy. Faculty Adviso r: Christian Ho lland Kathy Buckle r Ann Burlein Zoe Churchv i lle Frank Durgin Martin Marklin Alexandra Mullen Merle Soko lik J oe Sachs Energeia is a n on-profit student magazine with an in-house circulation to the students, faculty, alumni, and staff of St. J ohn's College, Annapolis and Santa Fe. Energeia is published thrice yearly, in the Fall, Winter, and Spring. The Fall issue is reserved for the student work of the previous school year which has been selected by the Prize Conunittee for public recognition. Fo r the Winter and Spring issues the Energeia otaff welcomes submissions from all members of the conununity--essays, poems, sto ries, o riginal math proo fs, lab projects, drawings, and the like. Note: A brief descriptio n of the autho r accompanies all work not by current St. John's students. Please include some such statement along with your submission. Thank you. ___ __.,....,...._ - �After The First Death There Is· No Other Caroline Allen The harm that went before I I took, and it was great" Agamemnon opens with an agreed - upon sign and then a kind of silence . The watchman waits on the roof for a beacon that has been ten years in showing-- the sign of Tr oy's capture . When it finally appears, he sends word to Clytemnestra, and r ejoices fo r a moment, but says, "an ox stands upon my tongue . " This gives us a better sense of the strength of his feeling than anything else could have done . Clytemnest r a , too , when she receives the news, will be silent for a long time. The old men of the chorus arrive, and, the beacon reminding them of the past t hat gives it its content, they remember the cause and beginning of the Trojan Wa r. I t is a song with that par ticular sadness of reminiscence . Their first metaphor is one of revenge for lost children (49 - 54), one which will become peculiarly appropriate . Before the mystery of indiscriminate death for both good and evil people, and of misery for everyone caused by so few, they can only conclude : "It goes as it goes/ now . The end will be destiny" (67- 8). Aged man is "a dream that falters in daylight" (82). Clytemnestra is apparently busy among the altars; the old men turn to her, hoping for comfort: " . .. speak . Be healer to this perplexity" (97 - 99) . The "perplexity" they feel is primarily over the meaning of the beacon, but also, and not less importantly, it is the perplexity they suffer as they try to understand the past. She gives them no answer; they return to the past: there was a portent of Agamemnon and Menelaus, two "kings of birds" which tore open and ate a pregnant hare. The birds which in the previous song avenged their own offspring, now destroy another's. The seer interprets this to mean that Troy will indeed fall to the Greeks, but now he is afraid that Artemis is angered at the manner in which the sign was given. The portent will be taken not simply as sign, but as a cause in itself. What it will be cause of we do not yet know, but the congenital terror of the Atreidae seems to gather itself up once more, remembering "the child who will be avenged" (155). The old men, before they can bring themselves to go on with the story, call on Zeus for some understanding which they never receive. As if somehow to justify what is so inexplicable, they say that understanding comes through suffering. Even grace from the daimones is violent to men (180). Now they tell of how the ships were becalmed at Aulis, the armies angered . According to the seer, the only way to placate Artemis, so that the ships can leave, was for Agamemnon to kill his daughter Iphigeneia, for the eagle himself to kill his own offspring . For the sake of the revenge of Troy, Agamemnon agrees, though he agonizes over the choice. Once it is made, however, he changes horribly (anagnos, anieros), becoming an Atreid quite in line with the family's violent tradition. He orders his men to hold Iphigeneia silent, so that she cannot utter any curse against him. But she is trying to utter another kind of speech, her love's persuasion , not h a t e. In total silence the action takes place. Even the old men cannot CONTENTS AFTER THE FIRST DEATH THERE IS NO OTHER Caroline Allen THE POWER OF THE LIKELY STORY Peter Kalkavage 18 SOLITUDE IN THE CONFESSIONS Anne-Marie Kamensky 26 THE BIBLE AND THE HUMAN HEART William O'Grady 28 SONNET Stephen Morse 34 THE ACTUALITY OF SYMBOLISM IN RAPHAEL'S DISPUTA Pedro Martinez-Fraga 35 SELF-LOVE, DIVERSION, AND THE SEARCH FOR A TRUE IDENTITY Zoe Churchville 44 TIME James Mensch 47 Lenore Brown 58 Christian Holland 64 : EMMA'S RECONCILIATION OF I MANNERS AND HONESTY EDGAR'S GROWTH IN KING LEAR (903 - 4) 1 Caroline Allen graduated from the Annapolis campus in '79. She currently lives in Mendocino, California. All quotes in her paper are from Richard Lattimore's translation of Aeschylus' Oresteia. \I 1 �bring themselves to speak of it. Once more, to convince themselves and us, they say, "those only learn to suffer" (250) as if in some way this all had to be. It is clear they have not really faced Iphigeneia's death, that they cannot. Clytemnestra has heard all this, and to some extent, the chorus is probably speaking her thoughts. She too will be remembering all the events at the beginning of the war that has now ended. Whatever her thoughts about Iphigeneia's story, she too hopes that from this night a blessing day will be born (264-5 ). She tells the old men about . the capture of Troy, but they are doubtful. To convince them she recreates the beacon's transmission from Mount Ida to Argos, as if she were watching it. Still watching, as it were, she sees the destruction of Troy, the chaos, the murders, the violation of the temples. She knows her man, and what she is imagining is indeed happening. Her cry "o let there be no fresh wrong done!" (374) is not hypocritical, though she herself plans a wrong; she is momentarily caught by the horror and inevitability of the last ten years and their culmination. The chorus joins in her prayer , but clear ly do not think , as she does , of how Agamemnon might be acting . The just man will be upheld, the unjust brought low. But then they begin to think of the people's misery, and are afraid that . Agamemnon may have to suffer, not for anything he did to the Trojan people, but for what he inflicted on his own people. To this mood of apprehension, the Herald enters . He announces Agamemnon's return and the defilement of the altars of Troy almost in the same breath. The Herald is boasting of this . The old men hint at something wrong in the house, presumably Aegisthus's presence, and the Herald. admits that his tidings are not of unmixed joy . The war was terrible, but at least they have the glory, and can forget now. Clytemnestra now speaks in a series of incredible ironies, where every word can be interpreted to be true, but in an opposite sense to the expected one : her joy at Agamemnon's homecoming, of her faithfulness. It was she who understood the meaning of the beacons, only she who trusted her understanding . Now she dismisses the Herald--she does not need to hear the story, she'll hear it from Agamemnon--though she knows she will never hear it, for she will kill him first . But we have seen how much she knows already. She leaves . Though the Herald is r eluctant to speak of bad things, and thereby b r ing evil into this happy day (636- 7), he admits some more bad news --Menelaus is lost . How • could one woman be the instrument of so much evil? the old men sing. Agamemnon enters with Cassandra in tow. The old men greet him rather ambivalently at fi rs t -- they are careful not to give undue praise . They admit that at first they were angry at Agamemnon for warring with Troy merely for Helen's sake-but now that they actually see him, they forget their anger and remember their love for him. Agamemnon seems to hear none of their uneasiness. First he thanks the gods for their cooperation with him ( ! ), and boasts of how he has ruine d Troy. He s ounds almost petulant as he complains about his comrades - at- arms. Clytemnestra greets him in a curious and strongly- felt speech. First she talks about how difficult it is for a wife to live at home with her husband at war, hearing every rumor about him, a prey to the worst kind of uncertainty. Here as in the speech about the beacons the vividness of her imagination is amazingly compelling, and so her speech moves us in spite of our knowledge of the murder she is about to commit. In addition, it is not unreasonable to think that this was how she really felt before Iphigeneia was killed. Then she explains that Orestes is not present because of these very fears she suffered. For me: the running springs that were my tears have dried utterly up, nor left one drop within. I keep the pain upon my eyes where late at night I wept over the beacons long ago set for your sake, untended left forever. In the midst of dreams the whisper that a gnat's thin wings could winnow broke 2 J I f I my sleep apart. I thought I saw you suffer wounds more than the time that slep t wi~h me could ever hold. (887-94 ) It is c onson ant with Clytemnestra's character that , even when s he has to lie, s he tells the truth i n some sense . If her tears have dried, it is because she no longer loves Agamemnon and misses him, instead hates him , and has even ceased to cry for Iphigeneia. If she dreamed of Agamemnon's death, it was more as a plan than as a fear. Now her "suffering is past ," she can act. She orders her maidens to spread out a rich purple car pet for Agamemnon to walk on . It is, for Clytemnestra , the symbol of his blood guilt, and shows the path by which Justice leads him to his death. Agamemnon is weak: though at first he is afraid of out raging the gods (rather a hypocritical piety after his sacrileges in Troy ) , he does not withstand Clytemnestra. She insists that he act like what he is, a king; in effect, she is demanding that he be responsible for himself. He boasts in speech--how different is that from stepping on the carpet? It is when she appeals to his sense of superiority, however, that he yields. Clytemnestra answers · his fears with defiance ( 958-9) commenting that in the days when she wanted to bring him home alive, she would have done more than this to accomplish it. Agamemnon is capable of speaking only in platitudes, in echoes of proverbs. Clytemnestra counters this with her knowledge of the present, her experience. Again, her concrete imagination triumphs over other characters' abstraction. Agamemnon passes into the house, the center of his bloodcurse. We never see him again. The Chorus sing of their fear of past horror. What they are most afraid of is the very thing they do not understand: the past's acting in the present . The fear they cannot identify is of the curse. They hope that if a man be well-intentioned, he will never be ruined utterly, but then they remember the finality of death, before which even Zeus is powerless, and then they are sure of nothing. Clytemnestra orders Cassandra into the house, but Cassandra ignores her . The Queen recognizes that Cassandra is los t in "her own wild t hought" --the Queen too is lost in her own. Perhaps it is at this moment that Clytemnestra determines to kill Cassandra as well as Agamemnon . She goes into the house. Now Cassandra speaks--screams rather. She is lost in a prophetic vision: she sees the furies of the house, and Clytemnestra's mur de r. Her prophecies a re not understood , so she explains the first: she has seen the furies of an ancient blood-guilt hanging ove r the house of Atr eus . This the old men understand, and they wonder at her . She tells then how Apollo made her his prophetess because of his love for her, and how , because she broke her word to him, she was never believed again. Just as the old men assure her that they do believe her, she is caught up in ano ther vision, this time of Thyestes's children murdered, and again of Clytemnestra. Once more, the old men understand her vision of the past, but not of the future . Cassandra describes her own approaching death; again, they do not understand. Speech has failed. One effect o f this long delay between Agamemnon's disappearance and his murder is that most of our sympathy is for Cassandra. This is strengthened by her last exchange with the Chorus : they praise her c ou rage and say it is noble to die so bravely; she counters with "Alas for you, father and for your lordly sons" (1 3 0 5 ) . In her reply we are reminded, not only of the transgressions of Paris and Agamemnon, but of the entirely inexplicable necessity of death and the heroism of man before it. Cassandra asks one thing before she dies, that Agamemnon's avengers will remember her as well. The pathos of her death is thereby unalloyed, for no one, not even Apollo, will remember her in the action to come . The old men are singing of man's unquenchable thirst for glory when Agamemnon is struck down . The men of the Chorus dissolve in confusion, are incapable of acting. Before they can decide on anything, Clytemnestra appears ove r the bodies. -What follows is a kind of trial, in which Clytemnestra answers the old men's every charge, not so much with self- justi ficat ion , although there is that, as with 3 �utter defiance. I will have more to say later about this episode; for the moment, I will point out that Clytemnestra shows the pointlessness of the Chorus' threats of exile or death. She goes on to counter their lamentations for Agamemnon with a very bitter dirge for Iphigeneia. Now the old men perceive the Atreus curse in opera tion: they see the line of bargain with the household Fury; we must wonder if she can really appease the Fury, put the curse to sleep, or if she has really become part of it herself. Aegisthus enters and for the first time we hear the entire story of the curse of the Atreides: Atreus, to revenge himself on his brother Thyestes, killed and served up Thyestes's children to their father, who ate them . When Thyestes discovered the truth, he cursed Atreus and fled, with the one surviving child, Aegisthus. It is this curse which the characters generally feel to be operating on them. Aegisthus, with his boasting and lying, his cruel threats, seems completely despicable, the more so as we compare his defensive hot temper with Clytemnestra's coolness. Just as Aegisthus and the old men are coming to blows, Clytemnestra intervenes. Reminding Aegisthus that what they hope for is no more bloodshed, she shows herself sincere in this hope. Though the old men are spared, and Clytemnestra plans to bring order to the house, Aegisthus's threats reinforce the ominous ending. Blood will cry out for more blood, the Fury will never depart. Who acts, shall endure (313) The second play, The Libation Bearers, opens at Agamemnon's tomb. Orestes has returned with his friend Pylades to Argos; he leaves a lock of hair as a token of himself at the grave. While there, he sees a group of women, the Chorus of Libation Bearers, approaching the tomb, and recognizes his sister Electra among them. He hides. Electra has come at her mother's order, to make propitiating libations on Agamemnon's grave. This libation is absolutely key; for instead of propitiating and quieting Agamemnon's ghost, Electra and Orestes will use the occasion to call upon the ghost as an avenging spirit. Electra does not know how to make the offering, because she and Clytemnestra mean such entirely different things by it. Clytemnestra has avenged once; now she is suffering from the perversion of life that her murder entailed. Electra has never yet acted in this way; hers is a call to action, not to rest. The women advise her to ·pray for herself and Orestes , and for the coming of some avenger. There is some question for Electra as to whether this is right--the first sign of the hesitancy preponderating throughout the play. She makes the prayer, not to the gods, but to her father, asking . him for the return of Orestes, in a sense the return of himself . As the women are also praying for an avenger, Electra finds Orestes' lock of hair, and recognizes it. Then she finds his footprints, recognizes these too. Euripides was to ridicule this scene as completely far-fetched in his Electra, but the point is to express the power of the blood-kinship. There would not be the power there is in this family if blood did not speak to blood in this way. Electra recreated Orestes, in a way, parallel to the way Agamemnon's spirit is called back to power. Orestes reveals himself to her. Together they pray to Zeus: their prayer is for the salvation of the line, in them. Orestes tells us that Apollo is on his side, in fact has even ordered Orestes to kill Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. In a rather ambiguous passage, he says that Apollo told him that if he does not kill Aegis thus and Clytemnestra, his father's furies will punish him, Orestes. The question cannot help but come up: if we believe in furies "brought to fulfillment from (the) father's blood" (284), why then have these furies not attacked Clytemnestra? It seems there is some question in Orestes' mind as well (297), but he sets 4 it · aside; regardless of any compulsion from Apollo, "here is work that must be done." Not the least· of this is the need to en.ct his exile, to become a true member of the house, and a king. Electra, Orestes and the Libation Bearers turn once again to the father, in pru.yer and lamentation. This is a summoning, a calling up of subterranean powers. One reason Orestes is hunted by furies when Clytemnestra is not is because Clytemnestr6 asked no help in the murder, called on no gods before it was done. Orestes and F:lectra waken the furies in this prayer, waken them to avenge Agamemnon, but because they are Atreidae and cursed, the furies will turn against them as well. The feeling mounts; Orestes commits himself completely (438) . As the ten sion builds and finds E::~xvression in lhe stichornythia, Orestes is aware o f the moral ambiguity of the situation: "Ares ( 1 warstren<Jth' is Lattimore 's translation ) shall collide with Ares, right with right" (881) . l '. . ncl .in the chorus's lyricism we hear the supernatura l forces gathering: "The da,y of doom has waited long. I They call for it. It may come." (464 -5 ) The women t('1.l urestes of the dream Clytemnestra has had: slte gave birth to a sndke, nursed it, and it drew blood from her breast. Though this dream is prophetic, it is also a vision of Clytemnestra's present state. She has murdered, struck against her children, through the man who was their fa th er, and her fertility, motherhood, is now perverted. She is the snake - mother, a snake herself. The dream is a true sign of Clytemnestrd'S realization that the deal with the Atreid fury has not bee11 successful, and that by acting as party to the curse, she has succumbed to it herself. Orestes interprets the prophecy: "I turn . sna)(e to kill her." 'l'his interpretation is st.riking because Clyterm1estra is so often identified as a snake . Orestes' s dream divinaticm begins a change in him . In many ways he becomes very like his mother, with her strength of r~solution. This identification with the mother will be crucial in the conflict between them. When she killed Agamemnon, Clytemnestra had no sense that she was destroying herself. Orestes' suffering even as he kills hi s mother is based on his sense of kinship, the union of their selves. There follows the planning of the murder, a kin<l of false rehearsal. Orestes does not anticipate meeting Clytemnestra first., and speaks only of killing Aegis thus, though it is Clytemnestra who is the actual murderer. He does not confront her death, does not prepare himself for it, as he does for Aegisthus's. The murder to come he dedicates to the Atreides' fury, "never starved for blood." He and Electra leave for the palace. The chorus of women sing of fearsome things bred in the P.arth, and of "the female force, the desperate love" (599-6 00) . 'l'hey recount stories of women who murdered their sons, th~ir fathers and their husbands. But "Destiny harruners out the sword" (647) of vengence, a child. Orestes and Py lades are received at the palace . Ore st es asks to speak to Aegisthus; instead, Clytemnestra comes out. What we never find out is whether or not she recognizes Orestes . Either alternative is plausible. She sends word to Aegisthus to go with his men to meet Orestes (769), ar.c th~s might indicate that she recognizes Orestes, but does not want the household to know. On the other hand, she has presumably not seen Orestes for fifteen yearb, ·so it would not be surprising if she did not recognize him. I think the ambiguity is probably intentional. At any rate, Clytenmestra seems not to recognize Orest:es, who invents- - apparently on the spur of the moment--a story: he has come to inform the parents that Orestes is dead . He asks again to see Aegisthus. Clytemnestra bursts into laments. · Once again the curse has struck the house of Atreus. She leaves. The chorus of women wonder how to help Orestes, when Cilissa, his old nurse, comes out lamenting his death, and the constant misfortune of her household. She is going to summon Aegisthus and his followers. The women tell her to bring Aegisthus alone; then they intimate to her that Orestes is actually not dead. They pray to 5 �Zeus : "let the old murder breed no more"; to Apollo and Hermes, they pray for Orestes ' success, another invocation of the gathering powe r s. Aegisthus enters , oddly un- delighted by the "death" of Orestes . He is also not sur e the repor t is true, ironically enough . He goes back to question the messenger/ Or estes , and a few moments later we hear his dying cry . The women withdraw in terror . One of Aegisthus' followers emerges, trying to reach Clytemnestra . "I tell you, he is alive and killing the dead" (886) . She immediately understands , and whatever remorse she may have felt about a dead Orestes, it is quenched at the thought of an avenging Orestes . To the last she will try to defend herself -- "so far gone a r e we in this wretched fight" (891) . Orestes faces her , tells her Aegisthus is dead . Clytemnestra confronts Orestes directly with the fact of her motherhood, and succeeds so far in giving him pause that Pylades must remind him of Apollo's command . Against the gathering of gods and furies invoked behind Orestes, Clytemnestr a opposes only herself, her birth- giving and her mortality . Only fighting in this way could possibly succeed , opposing death with life , and it has always been Clytemnestr a's way to oppose as directly as possible , but when she now presents herself as mothe r , as life - giver, she lays claim to something t hat is no longer he r s, and the attempt must fail . Su r ely Clytemnestra even knows this --her own dreams have told he r so . She does not give up, howeve r, f i r st pleading, then th r eatening. So strong she that the face - off degenerates into an e x change of arguments and blame . The verbal opposition between mother and s on becomes more and more r emoved f r om the situation . As if to f o r ce it , Clytemnes t r a r eminds Or estes of hi s intention : "I think, child , that you mean to kill you mother" (92 2 ) . Orestes' response, "It will be you who kill you r self , it wil l not be I" , encomp asse s ma ny levels of meaning : She kills he r self by fo r cing the issue ; she destroye d her s elf wh e n she killed Agamemnon; she , as t he bear er of her own- murderer, is herself responsible for he r death; Orestes has become her in order to kill her . Now all is truly decided . Cl ytemne stra , who has f aced death be f ore , se e ms mo r e sad t han fea rful . She r eminding Or estes of who he really is, he r eminding her of her crime against him, they enter the house . Clytemnestr a is silent when she dies . Now that the vengeance i s a ccomplished, the women , the liba tion bear ers , are moved enough to pity the dead couple . But they are happy that the "chain of bloodlettings" is ended . Here, and in their entire song , we know them to be deceived, just as Clytemnestra was deceived . The r e is no peace yet . I will discuss the scene that follows in greater detail later on . Orestes r eveals the bodies, and the r obe that Clytemnestr a used to kill Agamemnon . He p r oclaims his deed , just as his mother did hers, but then begins to wonder about his right . He begins to realize what lies ahead for him . At this moment, the Furies appear , to him alone . The women of the chorus think he is going mad . In agony : " You c a n no t see t hem, but I s e e t h em . I am d ri v e n I from this place . I can stay here no longer" (1061- 2) . Orestes leaves the stage. Now even the chorus knows nothing is over, that the "chain of bloodlettings" cannot be broken . The two murders in the first two plays of the Oresteia are murders of revenge. Both take place in the character of the avenger--alastor, in fact, both avengers are furies . It is necessary to examine the condition of the avenger which makes this act possible. The first and most accessible consideration is the avenger's name for himself --alastor--the unforgetting one . Both Clytemnestra and Orestes are moved first of all by the memory of a death. The strength of this memory is seen in the way they can recreate in speech events at which they were not present : several times, as if obsessed by the details; Clytemnestra, who does not often speak what is in her heart, is spoken for by the old men at the . beginning of the Agamemnon, and her bitter comment: It must be Iphigeneia his child, who else, shall greet her father by the whirling stream and the ferry of tears t o cl o se h i m i n her a rms and kiss h im. ( 1555-9) attests to the vividness with which she remembers Iph igeneia's death. Bo th c h aracters' speeches after they commit t heir murders relate e n tirely t o the earlier murders . That Clytemnestra and Orestes sh ould be s o caught up with deaths some years distant only heightens our sense of them as characters i rrevocably bound to what is past, t o memory. The preeminen ce o f the ala~t o r in t h e two plays finds a dramatic embodiment in the murd e rs hidd en behind t h e doo rs, murders which affect us not by being seen but by bei ng spoken, like the murders in the past which are not seen but nevertheless are somehow pre s ent. This kind of identificat i on of the self as a fury g r ows from the experi e nce of death as a direct and compelling l o ss. A death canno t be f o rgotten when ev~rything in your o wn life reminds you of i t--whe n t he de a t h depri v es y ou. As the irrevo cable loss, death is therefo re the most unaccep t ab le kind o f l o ss, since it is mo st painful and therefo re most compelling t o acti on , and at the same time, all acti o n against it is futile. The person confront ing t he de ath is r obbed o f a ' final cause in any kind of action. The on ly case in wh ich there seems to be a possibility of acting a g ai n st t h e death is wh en a murde r has been commi tted. Here, dea th itse lf is embodied in the mu rderer, its c a use, and a murde r f o r r evenge assuage s the avenger's l o ss by at l east ·c ombatting it. The need to take rev e nge is no t a need to " s e e justice don e ," no matter how the avenger may defe nd h is acti on in t his ma nner. No one would tak e re venge f o r some o ne they did n't kno w, f o r whom they have no int ense f ee li ngs . The charac ter of the act, premeditated a nd yet recognizably an act " o f passio n," p re c l ude s t h is. Th e r e f o re, it can not be considered that t he act is in any way separa t e, t o r t he a ve nger, fr om the people i nvolved. I n this same l ine o f thou ght, it is c l ear that the identity of the perso n who i s avenged is mo re impor t a nt t h an tha t o f the person f o r whom vengeance i s take n. If rev enge can be see n t o be f ou nded on a n exp erie n ce o f death a s loss, what must the relation be b etween the ave nger and the o ne who s e de a th i s a ve nged ? The answer to this reveals o ne o f the r ev enge mur de r's mos t c ommon cha r ac ter istic s: revenge is a f amily a ff a ir. It is whe n t he a v enger a nd the one ave nge d are re l ated by b l ood, prefe rab ly in t h e same f ami ly nuc l e us , t h a t t h ere e xis t s t he r equired inte n sity o f feeling t o corrunit a re ve nge mu r de r. (Avenging a fr iend is ave ng i ng a second self.) When the avenger and the one avenged are related by blood, two things can c o ntribute t o this i ntensity: t h e pro x imi t y of peopl e in the s ame f amily me ans that their i n terrela t i o ns go o n at t he d e e pes t leve l in thei r s ou ls, a nd c an mo st affect their reas on, a nd even where this p r o ximi t y does not exist (as is the case with Agamemno n and Or e stes ) , a blow at you r blood r e lat i on i s a b l ow at y o urself, becau se the knowl edge o f s h ared bl ood g i ve s a sense of unity which d o es no t o t h erwise exist. It is clear t hat b oth Clyt emnestra and Ores t es feel that they hav e been struck at personally by the murd ers o f Iph igenei a a nd Ag ame mnon : Clytemnestra calls her child, "my pain grown into love" (Ag. 1417 ) ; Orestes and Electra are most moved in their prayers by the tho ught of t h e mse l ves as the i r f a t he r's childre n and at his life b eyond death. There is a kind o f co nfusion of se l ves i n the family: ind ividual rights c o nflict with one ano ther, and just where the par ent e nd s a nd the child b e g ins is no t a l way s easy t o determine . So it is with i n t h e f ami l y t ha t d eath wi ll be the mo st dire ct l o ss. I n the "pu rest" revenge, t h a t i s, t he one mos t int en s e l y a nd compell ing l y fe l t, b o t h the o ne avenged and the one on whom venge a n c e is taken are· b l ood r elations , f o r 6 7 is Swung to the red act drives the fury within your brain .. . (Ag. 1427) �- I -- ~I in this case the power of the avenger's original love for the one he kills gives strength to the need to kill him, and also strengthens the feeling of love for and loss of the one being avenged. The love it is not hard to imagine Clytemnestra once feeling for Agamemnon translates into a most powerful hatred wher: he kills their child, the more so since Iphigeneia's murder strikes not only against Clytemnestra, but against her love as well. For Orestes , the exceptional horroL of Agamemnon's death is that his mother could kill the father of her own son. As we become aware of the peculiarly family-oriented nature of revenge, it is easier to take in another aspect of it: the avenger feels compelled to do what he does. The real patron spirit of revenge is ananke, not dike. When you are struck at you must defend yourself. When the self is threatened, and the source of the threat is someone you can act against, you must act in order to live with yourself. In Clytemnestra's murder of Agamemnon, this necessity has the shape of the family fury dancing on the roof, the Atreides curse which she took on by marrying an Atreid and bearing Atreidea children; for Orestes, compulsion comes in the shape of Apollu, who threatens him with the furies' devastation. Clytemnestra and Orestes think the necessity ·is outside them; it is not, it is part of their ancestry. The necessity is felt, rather than completely recognized; it is in the blood, not the mind. So it is also the unspeakableness of death that can lead you to take revenge. Language is a vehicle, and what can be put into words can somehow be sent, put away,· from yourself, and so you can be free of it. But it seems impossible to contain and dispell death like this, when you face it in the way described above. Moreover, you are entirely alone in this confusion of selves, an impingement of the dead person's self-hood on your own, but whatever confusion you suffer between yourself, the living, and the dead, you face death with no others but the dead for company. Unable to speak, to free yourself, you act. When a reachable cause for death can be seen you act against that cause, in an attempt to end the confrontation. We see revenge implicating the family: a confrontation so profound as to bring about a revenge murder can happen only when the feeling between the avenger and the one avenged is this deep to begin with. And the need for revenge is entirely compelling when the murderer, the original cause of the death, is also family, also a part of yourself, because this expresses the knowledge that, after the confrontation, death is in you somehow, that is, acknowledged, felt, granted reality, and the blow struck against death is now self-destructive as well as self-defensive. If what is suffered cannot become what is learned, it is incarnated in action. But the confronting death cannot be "learned," cannot be worked into any kind of an account; instead you recreate it. There seems to be no adequate language for death, no vehicle of expression with which to encompass it. Clytemnestra and Orestes face something unspeakable, unknowable, when they imagine the deaths of Iphigeneia and Agamemnon, and they face it alone . Clytemnestra is silent or dissembling before she takes revenge--we can imagine ten years of wordless brooding, imagining, reliving, nightmares. Orestes says: "Father, o my dread father, what thing can I say, can I accomplish ... to mark and reach you there in your chamber with light that will match your dark? (L .B. 315-9) And when he first sees the Furies, the incarnation of the revenge murder, he is incapable of communicating to the chorus o f women the horror o f what he sees. You are appropriately speechless when truly confronted for the first time with death. (This is especially true for Aeschylus, who seldom makes death more fathomable by giving it a personality, calling it a god or a daimon.} This kind of confrontation happens seldom, if at all, and, if it ever happens more than once, it is never with the same force as it had the first time. This "true confrontation" is what happens when you have nowhere else to look but at death, when the death is so I I, I close to you that you f.eel the existence and inevitability of your own death , when the deat h creates such a loss that you feel part of you really to have died. The death shatters the world, liter ally , into what makes you feel alive and what reminds you of d e ath . It cuts you off from the past , irrevocably, a past which you must then p r ot e ct in memory (you become an alastor), and it leaves you suspended in an unimaginable future . Truly confronting death, you look into the soul of darkness, the inexplicabl8, the unspeakable. Bc th Clytemnestra and Orestes suffer this confrontation , and this can be seen in the two "trial" scenes of the first two plays . Both Clytemnestra and Orestes exult ove r the bodies, and completely reject any pity for the ones they have slain . Both are far removed from anything anyone around them can say; they are quite unaffected . Lost in their very evocative, "pc,etic" speech, they are never so far away, so alone and so lyi. ica 1 as when they recour.t their murders, and remember those they have avenged. There are some important differences . Clytemnestra is silent about Iphigeneia before the murder of Agamemnon; Orestes tries to speak of Agamemnon's death. Clytemnestra is "tried" by others; Orestes must justify his act to himself. Orestes suffers from seeing his mother dead, as Clytemnestra did not suffer from Agame~on's death -- this is the course of the eloquence and the note of sadness in Orestes' s~eeches . In a way, he has to now take vengeance on himself, as he suffers ane~, looking on Clyterrmestra dead, the confrontation with death. Clytemnestra does not re - confront death when she looks on Agamemnon--she has faced it completely before, in imagination. Last and not least, Orestes goes through a moment of hesitation, of re - consideration, t.hat Clytemnestra presumably did not. This moment of decision brings in a possibility of choice that was not evident in the first play, and that we hardly would expect here, since Orestes acts also under Apollo's compulsion. The compulsion towards revenge is then brought into a clearer light by this juxta~ position with the choosing of revenge. 1 ... signed clear in the splash of/ blood over your eyes (Ag_. 1429) It seems that to take revenge resolves a situation for the avenger, relieves him of the burden death has laid on him. But the act of revenge throws you into the heart of a terrible paradox : by striking a blow against death, you only give it more credellce . You have to strike back at the death that is a blow against yourself, but to strike back only acknowledges the death's power over you. This ~aradox is the phenomenal flesh of an opposition of contradictories which stretches before you in the confroritation with death. The contradiction lies essential 1 y in this : It is one 1 s own death one faces, and is required to take in , in imagination; it is the interruption, the c~asing, of yourself as you now exist for yourself ; this imagining is demanded by the confrontation, and yet is impossi ble . ~escartes found the assuranct> of existence in self- consciousness: ~ pense (that is, I am aware of myself thinking), done~ suis. We (and Aeschylus) could find it in this way: I know t am alive, because when I imagine myself dead, the world does not appear on the same terms as it does right now . This is not really a conclusive argument. It cannot be . Your aliveness and your death together are like a transcendental illusion; your mind goes back and forth from one side to the other and cannot stop sh if ting, can only become aware of each side's equal power and contradictoriness . If you were never to see death, you might never know it existe d, and often when you are aware of it, it is not a complete awareness; it is a limited one which permits you to ignore it. Only such a confrontation as an avenger suffers is vivid enough, powerful enough, to precipitate you into this contradiction. Lying on top of it, closer to the surface, as it were, is a parallel contra diction, one bound to the first one. You almost always have the sense of yourself as being freely self-determined. No matter how often you tell yourself that, not only is everything in the hands of fate, the moira, but you yourself are not even 8 9 �-I free of your own past, the hope wells up continually that it is your own self that determines your phenomenal future, that every decision is determinant. It is doom that one has to speak of, convince oneself of. Freedom is the more deeply-rooted belief. The belief in your freedom is more likely to lead you i11to self-deception, than the belief in your fatedness (as with Oedipus) . The chorus of old men in the Agamemnon give a fine example of this. No sooner do they mourn necessity than they say, in effect: yet I cannot believe that right action is meaningless. They turn from the inexplicable doom of the Trojan war to the meaning of the beacon. The pathos of this lies in the fact that the hope of self-determination is so continually battered in the course of the play--we see that curse everywhere. The fundamental challenge to your belief in your freedom comes from the awareness of death. You thought you controlled your destiny--someone can cut you down like an animal, and never even know how alive you really were. (Orestes agonizes over the dehumanizing nature of the trap his mother set for Agamemnon . ) In addition, after the confrontation with death, the attempt to protect the lost past results, as we have seen, in an abrogation of freedom. You thought you were free-now, challenged by death, your imagination presents you with a new picture: of every step, every seeming choice in your life taking you a step closer to you~ death; of your every struggle only weaving you more tightly into the net. This is different from reminding yourself that there is much acting in the world that is outside you; this is a real picture, a reality of the imagination. The avenger decides to accept death, believe in it, and act against it. He decides to accept compulsion, and be compelled (to take revenge). He has to react towards the contradiction in some way, because he suffers so much from it, and besides, "to act is to endure." Yet, with a contradiction of this order, a transcendental illusion, deciding for one side or the other is not a real solution. Before the avenger decides, both death and life, compulsion and freedom, exist equally for him. Now all is death, all is compulsion, those are the realities, even though the heart knows they are false. Saddest of all, the mind and heart cannot surrender totally to the decision. The very presence of the one contrary suggests the other. Thought turns itself, over and over again, from the one into the other, and though the avenger's life is not committed to one side of the contradiction, it never really goes away. You acted in order to suffer no longer from the contradiction; now you discover that even after acting you suff~r. This is the opposition we find in the Agamemnon and the Libation Bearers; more shaded, harder to penetrate, more ambiguously drawn in the former; in full light, high relief, in the latter. Bearing this (the contradiction) in mind, it is clear why the sympathy for Agamemnon expressed by the old men after his death is so overpowered by the vividness and · clarity of Clytemnestra's speech. She faced no contradiction after this death, this was no confrontation for her--that came when Iphigeneia was killed. Before, she did not (could not) speak of Iphigeneia's death; now she is powerfully eloquent. (I feel that one could almost rest the entire case for Clytemnestra on the extraordinary power of lines 1552-9, holding love, hatred, bitterness, exaltation and the most incredible determination not to regret, all in so brief a space.) It is not until the Libation Bearers, when we see what Orestes suffers when he thinks of his father's death, that sympathy or sadness for Agamemnon becomes at all prominent in the trilogy's mechanism. In the Agamemnon, the poetry is much more involved with the curse and with Clytemnestra 's criminality. Clytemnestra and Orestes decide to take revenge, suffering from death's contradiction as they do. It is their imagination that makes them suffer, and makes them endure tq suffer. When they defend their acts of revenge, it is always by re~erring to the former aliveness of the one they avenged. Iphigeneia and Agamemnon were alive in the past, are alive in memory, yet now they are, forever, dead. It is the power of their imagination that makes it plausible to conceive of Clytemnestra and Orestes as facing death in this way--it is imagination which keeps the death real 10 .. JI and con s tantly before them . In this context, Orestes' similarity to Clytemnestra important . As remarked earlier, they both haye the power t o describe, with great clarity, events at which they were not present. For Orestes, this is surely an inheritance from Clytemnestra . It makes his murder of her even more awesome, that he must kill her who is the source of so much of his power and at the same time the efficient and material cause of his suffering (material cause because she gives him the wherewithal to suffer). And so the Libation Bearers ends with the pending appearance of the Furies, the embodiment of death and necessity. Nothing is resolved; we are as if hung in a net of perplexity. We can at least breathe at the end of Agamemnon; at the end of the Libation Bearers it seems that nothing is possible. The curse will go on and on, from curse to act to curse to act, · forever. In the characters of Clytemnestra and Orestes we have experienced death twice, more crucially and stupefyingly each time: we can never be the same again. the power and the terror of our music (309) The Eumenides opens in Delphi, at the oracle of Apollo, where Pythia enters the god's chamber and finds Orestes, suppliant, and the Furies asleep there. The Furies are horrible in appearance, and blast whatever they come near. Pythia calls on Apollo. Apollo enters, and reassures Orestes that he will continue to give him protection, but tells the suppliant that he must go to Pallas Athene's temple, where he will be judged by ones "whose words have magic in their figures," that is, the power Apollo does not have, to free Orestes from the Furies (and the curse). Apollo and Orestes depart for Athens. The ghost of Clytemnestra appears, driving the sleeping Furies to waken and chase Orestes . Finally they do, and discover that Orestes has escaped. Enraged, they cry out against Apollo, and warn that the "cursed suppliant ... shall feel against his head / another murderer rising out of the same seed." ( 1 76 - 7) . The murderer "from the same seed" makes it clear that the curse referred to is Thyestes' curse, and that it still is operative . It is the Furies now who suffer from Clytemnestra's death as did Orestes from Agamemnon's. The first argument between the Furies and Apollo does not accomplish much more than abuse. Both sides state their case; the Furies claim their right, and duty even, to avenge Clytemnestra; Apollo rejects them completely as not even belonging any more among the new, Olympian gods. The Furies leave to hunt down Orestes, Apollo to accompany him. The scene changes to Athene's temple in Athens, where Orestes asks Athene for a trial. He is now purified of the murder- blood, but not yet free of the Atreides curse. The Furies are hard on his tracks; he calls on Athene for her protection. The Furies sing a binding song, a song of holding "the memory of evil" (384). They are agents of Destiny, goddesses which even Zeus may disdain but cannot overrule . They have chosen overthrow of houses, where the Battlegod grown within strikes near and dear down. (353 - 9, 366 - 8) They are the goddesses pertaining to family curse, the murder perpetuated via blood-kinship. Athene enters, in response to Orestes' prayer. She insists on hearing both sides of the dispute, and not only must she hear both sides, but both sides must speak to hear each other, question and answer each other, so that each claim can be weighed, not just alone, but in respect to the other. Otherwise, there is only half lI 11 �- I the argument (428) . The Furies agree to grant her the power to choose between claims. What Athene chooses is not to choose at all, but to convene a tribunal to give the dilemma more consideration . The Furies warn that much will be lost if they are overthrown: they are a terror to some, but to many, the victims, they are a comfort. Moreover, "the r e are times when fear is good" (517) . It keeps men from going to extremes . The trial begins. The Furies present their case first . For them, all that is required is to establish the fact the Orestes did kill Clytemnestra; their vengeance will fall on Orestes just as effect follows upon cause . Apollo is able to show that this kind of thinking leads to a confusion of conflicting right, and to the perpet uation, not resolution, of the blood- guilt, but he is unable to counter the Furies' arguments completely. The Furies force him to admit that, since even Zeus cannot restore life, murder, even for revenge, is criminal . He is forced to employ an argument which I think is meant to make us uncomfortable: he claims that the mother does not share real blood- kinship with her child . He points to Athene as "proof" (?) of this, but he himself had earlier claimed that the Furies could not use gods as examples, since gods are not the same as men . The Furies' case is frightening; Apollo's is specious . Athene announces that should there be a tie vote, she will break it in Orestes' favor. She admits that she usually supports the man rather than the woman, but unlike Apollo, she does not try to ground this in natural fact . She admits it to be her own partiality. The votes are even; Orestes "has escaped the charge of blood" (752). He thanks Athene, promises friend s hip between Argos and Athens, and goes home, no longer an exile. The Furies must be placated; they threaten to destroy the land and its inhabitants. In their grief at their overthrow, they hear nothing, they repeat themselves. Athene comforts them: they have not been beaten or dishonored, for the trial was a free choice, not a rejection of the Furies. She acknowledges a need her city has of them: they are older than she, and have therefore a wisdom she does not; they have a power, the power to make men afraid, that would be good to have in the city. Calling on Persuasion, she asks them to stay in the city, where they will be honored as patronesses . Finally they hear her and are persuaded . Together they pray, the Furies for . birth and peaceful life, Athene for fear and respect of the law. A new chorus forms, with women from the city, and a procession in purple robes escorts the Furies/Eumenides to their new home underground. "Zeus the all - seeing met with destiny to confirm" this new peace (1045 - 6) . Home , home, o high, o aspiring I Daughters of Night ... (Eu . 1033) Revenge has failed as a means of resolving the contradiction presented by death . What other means are there to deal with an unavoidable dilemma? If the two contradictories can somehow be seen together as mutually necessary, albeit contradictory, the contradiction will not be dissolved, but it can be lived with. Death will not be any less real; you can never be the person you were before the confrontation, but you will not have to decide for one side or lose the other. The question of who is most guilty in the Oresteia, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra or Orestes, is one we will cease to ask, since it has been made clear that the various judgments as to culpability have only brought death to the principals . To see past "cause and effect" like this, to unite death and life, is obviously going to require language . It is in this context that the new language of the Eumenides, that of persuasion, will be important. But first, let us consider the dramatic movement of the Eumenides, to see if this notion of union is justified. The easy thing, reading the Oresteia, is to 12 notice either the brute force of the inexplicable, constantly acting on people, or the great "triumph of reason" at the end. II) the first case, one fails to notice that, through the trial's agency, Orestes is really made free of the past, and the curse is no longer internal to him; in the second case, one fails to see that the triumph for Athene is not Orestes' acquittal, but succeeding at persuading the Furies, as Eumenides to stay in her ci ty--now there is a much greater force for prosperity than the law by itself could be. Clearly the great transition is not simply from blind dike to godlike mercy. There is no grace here. There is no forgiveness, only acquittal. There is not even that for Clytemnestra, yet Orestes is perhaps as culpable as she. How have things changed? The Eumenides' final prayer must be considered together with Athene's. They are not praying just for life, but for ordered life, one in which a proper balance is attained. The Eumenides pray for the fields to be fertile: we know that the ground is made fertile by the dead matter in it, that life must die before new life comes. The Eumenides pray for no death "before its time." While they pray for the land, its fertility, and t..hat there be no civil war, no self- destruction, Athene is reminding us that there will be evil people to be punished, and that the Furies/ Eumenides are not simply "kindly ones" but also judges, and "difficult to soften". In the weight of the poetry ~e find both death and life . The "transformation" of the Furies is not a complete change fr om one state to another. It is not said that they change their horrible looks; they do not change from blind animal forces into embodiments of reason. They go underground; it is their relation to us that has changed. Like Clytemnestra, they are the snakemother, giving birth to death, perpetuating it in the world; now their birth-giving nature is not changed but turned towards life as well. Again, if the F~ries speak for the past, and Apollo for the future, what we have here is not so much a choice between them, but a choice to be free of them both. The choice is Athene's gift, for she is concerned with the here-and-no w, and she alone is not bound up with time, being ageless, having sprung full-grown from the brain of Zeus. She alone is not conditioned by either past or future. When all we had was revenge, we were compelled by the past. Now we are free of it, but we do not forget. If memory necessitates actions, we now give up that memory to law, which has itself the capacity to cause, and so we have possibility, where before we had only the contradiction of will and freedom. 'l'he jury gives a tie vote: Apollo and the Furies are both still with us . Somehow we must have both, memo ry and prophecy, in the city. So we must be aware that Aeschylus sees salvation, whether for Orestes, Clytemnestra or Cassandra, only in the union of dark and light, the profound and the immediate. It is not a compromise, nor is it simply an acceptance of good and evil as linked, hard to distinguish, in human life. An inadequate way of putting it is to say that you can't see light without dark, nor dark without light. This is inadequate because it puts the basis for the union in human perception, and I suspect Aeschylus has in mind a union extending further than the human mind. The union, in which Aeschylus strives to include us, by means of the drama, is ineffable. The question of how this union can be communicated will help us understand why the Oresteia had to be a drama in poetry. This problem of the unspeakable leads us back to an earlier point: the confrontation with death was, in the Agamemnon and the Libation Bearers, of surpassing force, because there was no language with which to give it distance. The imagination continued to present you with a terrible awareness, whic h could not be spoken and thereby controlled. To strike against that which thus forced itself on you became a compelling consideration. If, somehow, a language could be found to express the death and the confrontation with it, the memory would cease to be a cause. That somehow this happens in the Eumenides is clear. The Furies are tormented by memory. Their very function, avenging, is not-forgetting. As long as death 13 �cannot be spoken, it cannot in any way be forgotten. The law is enough to save Orestes, to help us live with the contradiction of death, but by itself it cannot free us f r om the goad of compulsion wielded by our loss . For the Furies a loss has been ~ade good: in r~turn for not being able to avenge Clytemnestra, i~ return for her life, they a r e given a new life , that of Athens . But this is not what will always happen with us. The loss remains, the memory remains, but the power of memory to compel will compel us differently: towards a reaffirmation of life, rather than a despairing acceptance of death . The Eumenides underground get their power from their dark (and by this I mean un- rational) nature, just as Clytemnestra gets hers from her powerful imagination; now the forcefulness of feeling is turned towards the living . It is as if the powe r of unspeakable death is used in the cause of unfathomable life; instead of trying to put death into words we counter it by evoking life, in our language . If we could be - speak death, we ~ould send it away ~rom us . I~st~ad we b r ing life closer to us, by be - speaking life . The death stays i n u s, but i t is underg r ound : g iving us its power wi thou t p erp etuati ng it. singing follow all our footsteps have see~ the r esolution taking place in the Eumenides to depend on accomtwo things : unifying a contradiction and expr essing something unspeakable . It remains to consider how this can happen . I will try to show that in the Ores~eia , it is by means of two special capacities o f langua ge : f o r be~ng meta phorical, and for being persuasive . Metaphor in the poet r y of Aeschylus (and , I thi nk, in poetry in gener al, but let ~~at pass) has more power than its existence as a par t of speech would suggest . Its name, from metaphero, to carry along, makes it sound a lot like language in general : a vehicle for a content in thought . But a metaphor is really a vehicle for two cont ents ; the i mmediate cont ent--the one suggested by the words themselves --and the metaphorical content-- the content that is somehow carried along by the immediate one · The metaphorical content is one which is e xpressed without ever bein- directly g spoken . One tends to think ~hat the second content , the metaphorical one, is simply grasped by . the understand1n9 by means of analogy . I think this is not the case, at leas t not ~ n Aeschylean metaphor , par tly for the simple reason that the analogies in t he Oresteia gene r a l ly degener a t e into a confusion of mingled causes and misrep r e sentations, whe r eas the me t aphors themselves , no matter how often used and radi c a lly re - u sed , always give c l ear , vivid images , that speak ve r y succinctly . I am going to be r adical and claim that what happens is a v ery special kind of r e~ognition, not a Kantian comparison of a representation with a concept that yields a ?udgment ~out . tha~ representation, but a recognitio n tied who lly t o the imag ination . Imagination is a part of the soul which is immediate to both the external wor ld and the mind, acting on both . That which is grasped by the imagination is a lso t.hereby g r asped by the mind , but not necess arily acco r ding to the mind's m~chanis~ . I~ could be a " grasping" on the level of a sensor y perception , witb that kind of :mmediacy . . The metaphor , too , would be causal language , in a way: instead of deducing from it the metaphorical content , it {the metaphor) would "inform" you of the metaphorical content, causing that content to arise in the imagination . To the objection that metap hor s , as symbols , simply cannot be causal not even ~n Aes.chylus, I can only ask: what about portents? which are clearly s~olic and JUSt as clearly , in the Or esteia , tied causally to the events they portend . The metaphor , which carries a meaning without ever speaking it, can enable us to speak the unspeakable . However it succeeds in conveying the unspoken sense we have all had the.e~per~ence that it often does . I suspect it is a slightly divi~e thing, metaphor, divine in the same manner as Delphic prophecies, and that it is the use of metaphor that gives poetry its powers of enlightenment and delusion . Be that as it . W~ (Eu . 1047) plish1n~ 14 may, metaphor's blessing is that it can be used to give language access to regions where it heretofore had no possibility of penetrating, to provide a middle ground between the immediate and the abstract; its danger turns out to be that it acts (or can act) causally. I will try to show this by an examination of three extraordinary metaphors in the first two plays. The first is the one which, one way or another, causes Iphi geneia's death: that of the eagles devouring the hare. Acco rding to the seer, its metapho r i cal sense is that Agamemnon and Menelaus will capture Troy. But the metapho r docs n o t c onvey its message and then get f o rgotten--it angers Artemis. I reiterate : the incredible thing, the ultimately d isastrous t h ing, is that it is not t h e metapho r's meaning , but the metapho r itself, its immediate content, that a ngers Artemis (we are g o ing on Calchas' word here, j u st as Agamemnon does--it's al l we h ave ) , and s o is eventu ally part of the mechanism resulting in I phi geneia's death. The seco nd example of a metaphor's acting causally is the whole episode o f the carpet. Here t o o, tho ugh t h e meaning o f the carpet is, f o r Clytemn estr a s ymbo lic, though she does n ot kill Agamemno n because h e stepped o n t h e carpet, h e, and we, the audience, react t o the metapho r's first c o ntent, its i mme di ate c o ntent. In fact, Agamemno n is unaware of the metapho rica l c onte n t (except, perhaps, f o r a vague feeling that there is mo re here than meets the eye) . Tho ugh the carp et says for Clytemnestra what she canno t say a l o ud, namely, that Agamemnon's p ath is a bloo dy one, and though its greatest impo rtance is therefo re as a metapho r, still, it participates by i ts elf in t h e ac t ion , as t he b ath o f Agamemno n's doom . From the eagle portent (said t o be se nt by Ze u s ) to that o f Clytemnestra's carpet, we have a movement t owa rds the ab st ract. The last metap h o r t o be c o nsidered , Clytemnestra's dream, i s even mo re s o , a nd h as a mor e abstra ct p owe r over its perceivers. The dream reveals somet hing abo ut Clytemne s tra b ut it is taken by the characters t o be prophetic. This alone rais e the q uestion o f causali t y- prophecies often s e e m t o be causal, as in the case o f Oedipus. And the dream has caused Clytemnestra t o send the libation bearers t o Agamemno n's g rave. But it also acts on Orestes through his imaginatio n: as has been remarked, h e b e g ins a c hange. His reaction t o the dream is, "I turn snake to kill her," and this i s what happ ens. Here the entire action of the episode--dream, recou nting o f it, and reaction--has taken place s o lely in the regions of thought, ye t t he p ower o f t h e d ream-portent is n o less than that of the eagles, o r the carpet. Let me give two mo re pieces of evidence that wo rds are felt by t h e characters of the Oresteia, and, I think, by Aeschylus himself, to h ave the p ower o f acting as causes. When Iphi geneia is about to be killed, she is gagged s o that she may not speak a curse against her murderers. Whe n the Herald arrives, he is mo st reluc tant to speak of the storm that scattered the Argive sh i ps, because "it is no t well to stain the blessing o f this day with speech o f evil weight." In a play, (as opposed to mime ) where language is really what gives the possibility of action, all language will have the p ower o f invocation/evocatio n, but in the Oresteia, certain characters' lang uage is mor e p owerful than o t h ers' . The chorus is at times empowered t o call up a n actio n for the p u rpo s e o f narratio n, but it is always o nly a narrative p ower. Cassandra's s p e ech has a n o bvious p ower, but it is no t clear whether it is really hers, o r Apo llo 's. Agamemnon seems capable o f speaking o nly in platitudes, "by the b ook," that is, i n c onc epts. I t is Clytemnestra and Orestes, the avengers, who are able t o make even ts l ive a g ain in their speech, and for whom events are never entirely past as l o ng as t h ey are c a ught in their imaginations. So it is the same faculty which makes t h em s u ff e r mo st from the dea t hs they must a v e n ge t hat makes them most deadly . The powe r of wo rds t o be c a us al is als o derived from the imagi nation . Let me now t urn t o t he o the r capa c i ty o f langua ge , t hat fo r pe r suas i on . The persuasion we see in the Oreste ia i s f ound onl y i n t he Eume nid e s, a nd it is only Athe ne who uses it. Pe rsuasion o fte n has a n e l eme nt of coe rcion, but in t h e Eumenides t h is is c arefully abjur ed . At hen e g oe s so fa r as t o mention t hat she can 15 �use Zeus' thunderbolts, but she refrains from dwelling upon this, instead converting the Furies' lamentation with a picture of what their position will be if they will not curse Athens. It is by re-iterating their power to choose, by acknowledging their importance, and the control they, not she, have over their future, that Athene convinces the Furies to become "kindly" ones . There is nothing in the first two plays like this; even the exchange in which Clytemnestra is trying to dissuade Orestes from killing her is really no more than each antagonist stating his right and cause. The persuasion in the Eumenides, then, relies fundamentally on the notion of choice. If there were no choice, there would be no persuasion. Further, the persuasion itself contains, as part of its appeal, an iteration of the existence of choice: "I will try to persuade you because I will not (may not) compel you ." We have to say then, odd though it may seem, that the language of persuasion is not causal. Its whole premise lies in the fact that between compulsion and freedom there is action which is neither compelled nor gratuitous , illuminated by reason and speech. The existence of persuasion indicates the existence of possibility. ~And the existence of possibility indicates the capacity for change. Here again is something new. We can def le ct compulsion; we can placate the Furies, thereby changing destiny, for the Furies are the agents of destiny. But this change is only made possible by acknowledging that the Furies do have power, and that we cannot make their power cease, even if we can oppose it (with thunderbolts). It is by re cognizing and not denying the Furies ' power to cause death that Athene is effective in changing them . The existence of possibility, indicated by the use of persuasion, is a new resolution of the contradiction of freedom and compulsion, fitting the description given earlier. The resolution of the contradiction of life and death is contained in the particular choice Athene presents the Furies: not between life and death, but between being spirits of death and being spirits of life and death. The Furies/ Eumenides who will continue to have their power of doom (a double - edged doom, of both good and bad), become the power behind the law, the union in the face of death that binds up a community. That thing in the community that speaks in the language of persuasion is law, which has the power to compel, and yet in order to be law, does not compel, but leaves the subject free. We find, in the Oresteia, a form for the reaction to the confrontation with death; Thyestes' curse. At every death, the curse is invoked . The characters who avenge feel themselves to be compelled--the curse is the center of the compulsion. The curse in turn takes the form of the Furies, and it is their transformation that finally negates the curse. The curse is the memory of the past, it is the blow struck against death, which nevertheless perpetuates it. It perpetuates the will of the one who spoke it past his death--but by so enduring, it obviates the will of his descendents, his future selves and by enduring past the speaker's death, it ceases to be a power belonging to his will, to his self -determination , and it destroys, curses the speaker himself . The curse is revenge itself. After Thyestes uttered the curse on the Atreidae, he took no other revenge . This is crucial: something which belongs to action, which essentially is an action, has been turned into language. It is the unperformed action which enabled the curse to be pronounced, and it is the fact that the curse does not belong in language which gives it its power to cause, for it turns itself back into an action, over and over again, and after every new revenge murder, it is re-invoked, re-spoken by the avenger. It is they who perpetuate the curse. The curse then is language acting causally, and acting to perpetuate the contradiction of death and life, freedom and will. It is a perversion of metaphor, acting causally without in any way really relieving one of death, and a perversion of persuasion, acting through the avengers' own imagination, compelling the willingness 16 to be compelled. It cannot be opp~sed, for to oppose it makes it stronger. It must be transformed. Persuasion trans.forms it and metaphor makes of the power t o curse a power to bless. The Furies' binding-song turns into a prayer; it is still poetry, but now a song of deliverance. The Furies' power to destroy becomes the power that "gives content to" lawfulness, the power that unites life and death, freedom and compulsioL, · into a community. Th8 Oresteia puts the unspeakable into language. It suffers us to view death, and saves us from it,- because it confronts us in poetry, in metaphor, and in this way, the death that is never seen except in speech, yet is made real to us, can be carried away by the same vehicle that brought it so terrifyingly near. This could only happen in poetry. The Oreste ia persuades us that in a community, other people are metaphors for ourselves and so we can affect each other without acting as causes. This could only happen in drama. The Oresteia joins death to life--the distant, inpenetrable and threatening, to the immediate, inpenetrable and sustain ing. It joins life to death--the unspeakable, the mouseios, to the source of law and therefore of continuity. Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter Robed in the long friend, The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, Secret by the unmourning water Of the riding Thames. After the first death, there is no other. (A Refusal to Mourn the Death , by Fire, of a Child in London, Dylan Thomas) 17 �The Power of the Likely Story Peter Kalkavage I would like to speak with you this evening about Plato's Timaeus as a whole. I will not go into any great depth about anything. I will simply talk to you about what things the dialogue invites us to consider. I hope this lecture will serve as an introduction to your reading of this altogether strange book. T~e Timaeus is the Platonic story of return . It is about a homecoming of a very special and complex nature. In the Republic, you recall, Socrates attempts to found ~ ju.st city in speech. As the conversation goes on, Socrates' task of praising Justice becomes transformed into his praise of philosophy. Socrates exhorts Glaucon--and us indirectly--to lift our gaze away from sensed beauties to intellected beauties, away from becoming and towards the precise realm of being (Rep . VI, 518c 4-~2). In t~e ~imaeus, Plato takes us back to the world of becoming, to everything this world implies--our bodies and all their actions and sufferings, the visible heaven and its motions, the structure of the four elements and their transmutations, also the realm of political action and political history. The theme of the Timaeus is t~e s.o-called ".real world." The theme is also our inevitable membership in and fascination for this world. Strangely enough, this "real world" with which we think we are so familiar is presented in an extraordinary way. It is presented through the power of :tyths or stories. As readers of the Timaeus, we are faced with several great questions. These are (1) What is the structure and purpose of the world of becoming? (2) What in particular is our place within this world? and (3) What can we learn from the myths of the Timaeus about these pressing questions? The high- point of the dialogue is the famous likely story of Timaeus, the eikos mythes· This myth portrays and imitates the work it took to bring a cosmos into being. It is a story that mixes the nature of artful production with the nature of begetting. Like Socrates' effort in the Republic, the likely story tells of how a regime is founded. But the Timaeus does not begin with the question of the cosmos. It begins with the que s tion of the best political order. The likely story does not stand alone. A dramatic prologue, concerned for the most part with political q~estions, precedes the likely story and gives it its place. Before taking up the likely story, then, we must look briefly at this prologue. A casual glance at the men who meet Soc r ates at the start of the dialogue shows us that the Timaeus is about worldliness. It is a cosmopolitan dialogue. Critias is the Athenian aristocrat who studied with the sophists, wrote his own poetry, and became one of the thirty tyrants. Herrnocrates is the famous Sicilian statesman and orator we meet in Thucydides' history. As f o r Timaeus, here is what Socrates says ~bo~t hi~: "Timaeus here, being from Locri, the best- regulated city in Italy, who is inferior to nobody in these parts in substance and class, has managed the greatest offices and honors in his city; moreover, he has in my opinion come to the peak of all philosophy." In deed and in thought, Timaeus is a man of the world(Tim. 20al-5). He combines the study of natural order--especially the order of the heavens--with the ·Mr. Kalkavage is a tutor in Annapolis. He delivered this lecture, intended to be an introduction to the Timaeus, to the January Freshmen in the summer of '83. 18 political life . The central image . that governs the Timaeus is the feasting of Socrates . Yesterday Socrates played the host to Timaeus, Critias, ·Hermocrates, and some unnamed fourth. These men had asked Socrates what his views were about the best political order, and Socrates gratified them . Today the tables are turned. The former guests become hosts who must now, in the interests of justice, pay Socrates back with a feast of logos . They must give Socrates his rightful guest - gift. This provocative image of feasting Socrates goes along with an extremely important fact about the dialogue --Socrates does not cross - question anybody or inquire into anything. Instead he remains silent while his hosts entertain him with long speeches. The Timaeus presents us with a most uncharacteristic Socrates, a dressed-up Socrates who minds his own business and silently listens . If the task in most of -the other dialogues is to penetrate Socrates' ironic questioning, the task here is to understand his silent receptivity . What is it, one wonders, that fills Socrates' silence? But Socrates is not completely silent. He provides a disturbingly incomplete summary of the Republic and then announces the task he has imposed on his hosts . Socrates states this task in a two - fold way- - in the form of a desire and of an image. Like someone who beholds beautiful animals somewhere and desires to see them move and strive with one another, Socrates beholds the city he has founded and desires to see it engaged in what he calls a fitting war, a polemos prepon(l9b3-20c3). Socrates' desire is the reason why the action of the Timaeus takes place. This desire is not easy to understand and raises a number of difficult questions . Why is it right to compare the just city of the Republic to a beautiful animal? Even if it is true that the vision of a beautiful living thing begets in us the desire to see that thing move, why must the motion take the form of warfare? What in us, exactly, is gratified by such a vision, such a war- movie? Although it is difficult to understand the true basis of Socrates' desire, this desire introduces a central theme for the dialogue as a whole. It points to the desire to go beyond order simply to an actual living order, to go beyond mere speech to the world of deeds. Socrates' desire is the invitation to think together orderliness, life, and war. Cri tias has just the story to gratify Socrates, a story about an Athens grown young and beautiful . This Athens, according to Critias, is Socrates' own just city brought to life. Once upon a time, this young Athens fought and defeated the insolent Atlanteans when they tried to enslave the world. Critias says his account is no mere myth--like Socrates' speech the day before--but is "true in every way" (20d7 - 31, 26c7d3 ) . Critias' story about Solon's trip to Egypt is about far more than Athens' heroic past. It is also about the cosmic cycle of birth and death, the circle of time which governs all men and cities. Not altogether unlike Timaeus' story of circular motion, the story of Critias tells about the periodic births and deaths of great civilizations , about how what a civilization calls progress is in fact recol ect'on , recovery from the last destruction. Critias' story thus is an account of the eternal look, the eidos, of cosmic history. There are two things I want . to mention about Critias' story. The first is that the Egyptians are important for the stories of both Critias and Timaeus. When we first meet Solon in the story, he is showing off his memory. He tells the priests stories about what he considers to be the oldest things . He even tries to count the number of years ago all these things happened. But Solon is corrected by an extremely old priest. "Solon, Solon," the priest says, "you Greeks are always children . . . you are young in soul, every one of you"(22b4-8). The priest proceeds to show Solon how old everything is in the Egyptian city , how everything has been frozen in time, kept changeless through long-standing customs. Egypt is the land of conscientiousness. It is a land where the rulers are priests, scientists and historians all rolled into one. In its political structure, the Egyptian city is a bad likeness of the just city in the Republic. It is something of a joke. The 19 �l oud - mouth Thersites knew within hi s heart many wo rds but not according to a kosmos . He is ou kata kosmon, that is, indecent(Iliad II,214) . Kosmos, then, means a great deal more than the order of the physical universe. It points to the fact that human beings are in love with ornament and display . At the same time, kosmos implies the virtues connected with orde r liness and decency . In its dramatic form, the Timaeus imitates the various meanings of this rich word kosmos. Plato gives our imaginations a sort of parody of this fondness in us for what is showy and beautifully arranged . The gue~t - gi ft Socrates is supposed t o receive certainly seems to be "just right . " His hosts are perfectly suited (so we are told) to play the part of philosopher- statesmen. Cri tias' story is just the thing for Soc r ates' desire and for the current Athenian holiday as well . Timaeus is just the man to give a speech about the cosmos . Socrates has even dressed up for the occasion. He refers to himself as kekosmemenos(Tim . 20c2) . Of course, the absence of the fourth host is a haunting omission from the dialogue's own kosmos . It is curious that Plato's most formal, most artificial dialogue should also contain this emphatic absence , that the Timaeus should begin with an embarrassment . The sense of the phrase "likely story" is related to what I have been saying about the word kosmos. Timaeus gives two reason s why an account of becoming must take the form of a likely s tory . The first is that the cosmos itself has a likely mode of being. It is an image . But Timaeus gives a second reason. He addresses Socrates by name and reminds him that we have a human nature . It is fitting for us, says Timaeus , to accept the likely story and not to search beyond it . As Timaeus reminds us , the likely st6ry.belongs not to the region of Socratic inquiry but to the region of trust, pistis. Timaeus makes his point with the language of proportionality . Being, he says, is to becoming as truth is to trust(Tim . 29c3) . The likely story is geared to our humanness and receptivity. It is addressed not so much to our inquisitive selves but moreso to our very human selves who must at some point stop searching and take a stand . The likely story is addressed to our· spiritedness and not to a detached intellect . It furnishes us with a kind of shield of moving images in which we may safely place our trust. The story is largely about scientific matters --matters of physics, astronomy, and physiology . But it does not intend to speak to that Egyptian part of the soul that craves objectivity and factual accounts . If we take the likely story on its own terms, we come to see that "likely" does not mean "merely probable," that "story" does not mean "merely a myth." In its very strangeness, the likely story has a peculiar form of power . Timaeus reminds us at one point that we must guard this power, this dynamis(48dl - 4) . What does this power consist in? One of the great feats of the likely story is its ability to give us an image of things in their wholeness. Nothing in Timaeus' story is cut off , abstracted from the life of the whole - not even death or disease. Everything has place and therefore meaning. Even body, in its structure and motion , is permeated with the meaningful constructions of arithmetic and geometry . Another power lies in the way Timaeus presents the various sciences. All the sciences, especially music and astronomy, are closely connected by Timaeus with the good of the cosmos and the good of man . These sciences are shown to be moral as well as intellectual disciplines. But the greatest power of the likely story lies in its overall presentation of orderliness . A world- order is not something we can take for granted if we are at all moved by Timaeus' speech. The wo~ld is the result of an extraordinary effort. The demiurge must at one point force Same and Other together in order to make the music of the heavens. And the star- gods must wrestle with the great problem of joining the best in us to the worst if we are to have birth at all. It is true that Timaeus wishes to construct the best possible world in speech. But he fulfills this goal through the meeting and overcoming of obstacles, obstacles which exist not just because the gods are not smart enough or powerful enough but because of the nature of things. The greatest power of the likely story consists in this ability to show us Egyptian archives are loaded with stories about the past, stories of great deeds and cosmic annihilations. But the Egyptian city itself experiences no real change and has no history . This city seems to be that part ~f the cosmos that possesses stability, order, memory, and scientific accuracy--all these things without life and passion . The Egyptian city is a dead soul writ large. The second thing I want to mention about Critias' story has to do with the history of cities, especially Athens' history, and the circle of time. Cri tias tells us about the Atlanteans' fall from their once god- like condition. But he does not point out how deeply relevant this lesson is for his present-day Athens. The insolent campaign of the Atlanteans surely reminds us of Athens' campaign in Sicily. We have Herrnocrates in the dialogue to remind us of that event and its outcome. Closely related to the end of the war with Sparta is the overthrow of the democracy in Athens. Cri tias played a very large role in this violent event. In the Timaeus, Critias reaches back in memory for Athens' first and best condition. As I read his story, I think of men's attempts to reach back in time in deeds as well as in memory . I think of the historical Critias' attempt to revive the rule of the few. There is a great deal in the Timaeus to remind us of the fate of Athens. Perhaps no other dialogue (with the possible exception of the Menexenus) points more beyond and outside of its own mythos to the living deeds and speeches of history. If we say, then, that the Timaeus is about the cosmos, we must be careful that we refer to the entire realm of becoming. That means the realm of history as well as the order of nature. History and nature are put together in this dialogue. They constitute the two dimensions of what we mean by time . Timaeus' likely story, like the story of the Egyptian priest tells Solon, is about the cosmic order which gives life and death to all things within it . It is about the temporal space in which men, gods, and cities have thei r b eing . Cri tias gives Timaeus a place in the feasting of Socrates. Since Timaeu s i s the most astronomical of all of them, he must generate the cosmos down to the b i..rth of human nature. At this point, Cri tias will take over and give human na ;: u r e its political stamp (27a2 - b6) . But Timaeus may have designs of his own quite a~art from Critias' attempt to glorify young Athens . To see what these designs migh t b ep we must look at the likely story in its own terms . Timaeus' story is about the founding of the cosmic regime. Timaeus reaches back, much farther back than the memories of either Critias or the Egyptian priest can go, to the truly first and oldest things, to the true archai. A divine craftsman or demiurge is the hero of this story. The world comes to be out of this god's intelligent and generous nature . The god is not a grudging god. He wants all things to be like himself as far as this is possible. But the work of making a cosmos is also the gratification of a desire . Timaeus' story gratifies the desire Socrates had-- and which we ourselves might have -- to see a beautiful non - moving structure brought to ife . The dem ' urge gazes upon t his intelligible structure, this eidos of the world, and crafts a living image of it. The cosmic order also has a medicinal or curing function . It corrects and tunes a previous condition of disorder and noise . In its being as Timaeus says "not at peace," the pre - existing chaos resembles a city plagued by faction, a city out of tune with itself. For this reason, Socrates seems to be right when he c a lls the likely story a nomos, that is, a law and a song(Tim . 29d4-6). There are two matters of terminology I would like to address before I attempt to lead you through Timaeus' speech . The first matter has to do with the word kosmos. The second is about that all-important phrase, eikos mythos, "likely story." To get a sense of the word kosmos, we must remember this word's association with beautiful arrangements of all kinds and with moral splendor. If a man is kosmios, he acts and speaks in a fitting way on all occasions. Aristotle speaks of great - souledness, megalapsychia, as a kind of kosmos of the moral virtues. (Nie. Eth. IV,iii,1124al - 2). And Homer tells us in the second book of the Iliad that the 20 I\ 21 �c o-worker with i nt elligence i n the making of a world . Cosmos, says Tima e us , was in fact g e n er ated out of the systasis --the standing - together and conflict --o f i nt e lligence a nd necessity(4 7e5 - 48a 2 ) . Wha t is i t, then , that is finally responsible for the production of a cosmos? Wh a t h o l d s togethe r the purpose ful cause of intelligence and the non - purposeful cause of necessity? Timaeus' answe r is one that fits an account in the region of trust . It is an answer that also fits a statesman's view of the world . The bond between inte lligence and necessity is none other than persuasion . Intelligence is said to h a ve persuade d necessity to b a guided, for the most part, by the i ntellect's good intentions(4 8 a2 - 5) . Necessity, we see, is not entirely mindless . Like t he middle part of the soul Socrates speaks of in the Republic, necessity can be made to heed rea s on even t hough it does not possess reason . Ti maeus t akes on a great number of very difficult questions in his long story of nece s s ity . One such question is "wha t is a body?" But the greatest question in this pa r t of the story, and the most prov ocative and difficult for the whole likely story is this --What is the natur e o f space? What is that in which and out of which the wo r ld of body and change makes~ appearance? What is that fluid and e x citing su r face which causes the eidos of fire, for example , to be reflected? Timaeus calls t his principle of apparency the receptacle, the hypodoche . It is, he says, the mother and wet - nurse of becoming(49a4 - 6) . The word hypodoche comes from the verb hypodechornai . Two senses of this word are of s pecial importance for the Timaeus . The first is the sense of entertaining, being r ece ptive to, strangers . The receptacle takes on form the way Socrates accepts his guest - gift and the way we are asked by Timaeus to accept the likely story . The second sense of hypodechomai is "to conceive or become pregnant . " The receptacle is the place- giver of all things that come to be. It is their host . But it is also their life- giver . Space is not a void for Timaeus . Nor is it a merely passive medium . It is the original womb that gives appea r ance, motion, and life to the eide on which the demiurge gazes . Timaeus tells us a story about how god schematized space "by means of forms and numbers" (53a7-b5). He constructs the regular Platonic solids as the a r chetypes o r perfect models of the four elements, fire, air, earth and water . But he reminds us that these geometrical objects have their home in a living order . He tells us that the pyramid for example is not only the element but also the seed of fire(56b3 - 6) . It is wrong, th e n, to speak of a god who forced his will on chaos . The receptacle is not merely the absence of order . It is rather the potential for form . The receptacle , prior to the god's ordering, is filled with the traces of the four elements (53bl - 5) . These embryonic elements belong in their own regions of space but are constantly fighting for power in each other's territory . The receptacle is the place of this battle, this ambitious and turbulent change of place . The mother of becoming is endowed with a shaking or vibrating motion. As the elements wander and lose their place, she attempts through this shaking motion to send them back home . As the receptacle jostles the elements, she herself is jostled . Timaeus' account of the elements' interaction is filled with the language of cities at war . In the elemental strife, there are winners and losers, friends and enemies . The same thing is true about our bodily substances . At one point Timaeus tells us about the bad effects of bile on the whole body. If the body gets the upper hand, he says, bile will then be thrown out of the body ''like fugitives out of a city in revolt" (85e2 - 86a2) . Throughout the likely story, there are similar efforts to g r a t ify Soc r ates' desire for a "fitting war." The war of elements is made fitt i ng by Timaeus' enlistment of· mathematics. In Timaeus' story of the receptacle, place and change of place are inseparable. The regions or topoi of space are fixed . But one does not occupy a given place forever . Moreover, one cannot have place without holding on to one's place . In order to maintain our bodily health, for example, Timaeus says we must constantly be what we are up against whenever we speak and act within the world of becoming. If the story offers us a shield, a form of human safety, it seeks no less to expose us to the difficulties and risks within this world. Let us return now to the · story itself. The cosmos comes into being in this way--the demiurge decides that his product: will be the best and most beautiful only if it possesses intelligence, nous. But since intelligence cannot be placed directly in the body, god puts intelligence in the sotll and the soul in the body(Tim.30 bl-cl). When Timaeus goes on to build the soul of all things, what he constructs is the life of the intellect. The soul is rnan~fested in the circuitry of the heavenly motions. These outwardly appearing motions Timaeus identifies with the inner acts of thinking. They are the circles of Sarne and Other. The heavens, then, provide human beings with a magnificent and trusty image of the innermost self. Since our truest and intelligent selves for Timaeus originate in the stars, we may say that thinking--especially astronomical thinking--is the human soul's homecoming . Cosmos is a being in whom we see an image of ourselves. Like us the cosmos has body, soul, and intellect. But unlike us, it is a whole and not a part. As the whole of all partial beings such as ourselves and the cosmos is not in need of anything. It is a rotating sphere. It needs no hands or feet. It suffers neither disease nor old age. It is its own best friend. The soul of the cosmos i .s furthermore eternally active, always touching the whole of being and becoming and always engaged in giving accounts. It is fitting that Timaeus would call such a being a "happy god" (Tirn.34b8). With such a life as the cosmos enjoys, it is no wonder that our human good should consist in imitating this god. One point of great importance is the fact that the cosmos eternally gives accounts of itself to itself. Logos in this way becomes a life-giving feature of the whole, and our reflective activity is given its higher purpose. Men can give accounts because account-giving goes on eternally though in silence. When a human being gives an account, he taps and retrieves this silent eternal logos. He gives it voice. The fact that human beings think and speak is not a matter of indifference to the nature of things. Timaeus urges us to accept, to trust in a world which is fulfilled in its being only in the act of its being known and spoken about. The cosmic logos has its fruition in the human logos. Unless some human beings inquire into nature's secrets, the cosmos will not be a "happy god." Looked at as a whole, the likely story is downward in direction. It takes us on a journey from a changeless paradigm to a living cosmos. Once we are within this cosmos, we travel from the star-gods to man and from man to the various kinds of beasts. These beasts, like the sexual distinction, come into being because the "first men" were either cowardly, unjust, or stupid. Education is the return to our first ~nd best star-like condition. But within the likely story's downward journey, there is a radical break. Timaeus tells us that he left out the c a use that most physicists are constantly talking about. He left out the work of ananke, necessity, the work of mindless bodily interaction. To remedy this lack, he says he must begin all over again . Timaeus' second beginning is the most dramatic moment for the likely story. Earlier in his speech, Timaeus had been victimized by necessity, by what he calls "the form, the eidos, of the wandering cause." He constructed the body before the soul~ thus perv~rting the natural orae~r of first and second. He apologized by te17ing us that Just as men's deeds are subject to what is chancy and random, so are their words (34bl0-35al). What Timaeus now uncovers is that it is wrong to speak ill of.necessit~. For although it wanders and produces irregular untrustworthy effects, this cause is necessary for the construction of the whole. The gods make our eyes primarily so that we might gaze at the heavens and learn decency from them. But they cannot make the eyes without giving them the actual power of seeing. Contrary to its being simply identical with chance and chaos, necessity must be enlisted as a 22 I\ 23 �on the move. We must set up internal vibrations in order to withstand the attacks of the external, alien.world that seeks to destroy us. We must, he says, imitate the 'receptacle(88c7 - 89al). The entire life of becoming depends on circulation, and this circulation in turn depends on the warring elements. Without the perceptual instability of the receptacle and her contents, there could be no li fe in the cosmos. It is a great mistake to think that the life of human beings or cities can ever pave the permanence of a Socratic eidos. As Socrates reminds us in the Republic, even if the best city came into being, it would necessarily degenerate on account of unlucky marriages(546al-547a5). The story Solon brought back from Egypt stresses this truth, the truth that the cosmos is the divine shaker of all civilizations. In the likely story, all things change place, souls as well as bodies. If a man lives a good life and imitates the motions of the heavens, he returns to his first and best condition as a star~ If he fails to live such a life, he is reincarnated as a beast. All the animals, says Timaeus, keep passing into one another with the loss or gain of intelligence(Tim.92cl-3). Whenever anything in the world loses its place, the receptacle makes the necessary adjustments. Because of the receptacle, human life is ruled by the mysterious power of place . It is important to our happiness that we have place. Also it is important that we sometimes give up a place, that we change place. Ambition is the desire for a high place in the world. In the Antigone Creon curses the man who holds anything dear in place of his fatherland . He says such a man is nowhere, oudamou (Antigone 182 - 3) . Cri tias displays this political attachment to place by transforming the best city into Athens, by making much of his own family, and by referring to the festival at which the young become full-fledged members of the city. Timaeus' receptacle, along with its elemental powers, does more than furnish the demiurge with building material and tools. It is the power that constantly settles and unsettles human life. After Timaeus tries to clarify the difficult and obscure eidos of space, he tells a story about the mathematical structures that space was persuaded to take on . He constructs four of the five regular solids (all but the dodecahedron) and assigns them to the four primary bodies--earth, air, fire, and water. Timaeus' mythical physics, his putting together Empedocles and Pythagoras, is stunningly imaginative and gratifying. It is the counterpart to the construction of the soul out of the musical ratios. Timaeus' story of body and change is only secondarily an attempt to account for the actual phenomena. Its primary goal is to transform the bodily into the non-bodily, into the intelligible. It seeks to persuade us that the world of body could be imagined as a world of mathematical objects in motion. The story gives the human intellect a home within the otherwise unfriendly region of body. In the concluding portions of the likely story, Timaeus shows us how we were put together by the gods . There are three things I want to say about this part of the story. First, Timaeus builds us in such a way that our nature imitates the nature of the who e to which we belong . Second , our bodies are re-interpreted for us as the outward show of inner invisible truths about us. And third, our nature comes to be defined as the tension between intelligence and necessity I spoke about earlier . This tension now takes on a specific form. It is the tension between loving the intellect and loving life for its own sake. Timaeus will attempt to do justice to both these loves. The section about our bodies is filled with stories that are both tragic and comic. One such story concerns the neck. The neck was invented because the gods had to join the best in us to the worst in the best possible way. They have to j0in the head's divine circuits to the mortal parts o f the soul housed in our torso. The purpose of the neck is to join and to separate the god and the beast in us (Tim . 69d6-e3). The mouth too is defined by the cosmic dualism. It was made for the sake of the best and most beautiful stream of speech that flows out and the stream of nutrition that flows·in(Tim.75d5-e5). The story of hair is another memorable moment . If the gods did not in some way protect the head, our lives would be in great danger. But if they covered up the h ead with a great dea l of flesh, we would become stupid and insensiti~e(Tim~75e5-76d3). Hair is the compromise between long life and intelligence. As--mich, like the mouth and th~ neck, it is a reminder of the riddle that makes us who we are. All the physiological stories Timaeus tells us are designed to show how the soul comes to be revealed through the nature of the body . Timaeus shows us how immensely difficult it is to make a whole human being . This story of divine making in turn shows how difficult i~to be a whole human being. I have spoken very generally and very inconclusively about this amazing book . There is much that remains to be considered. The most important part of what remai~s does not have to do with the likely story's intricate puzzles . What we must wonder about finally is the likely story's silent listener . Has Socrates been gratified by the likely story? There is much in the story to indicate that he would be pleased with it . After all, Timaeus' speech does seem to gratify a desire Socrates had in his youth and which he speaks of in the Phaedo(Phaedo97b8 - 99d3) . I mean the desire that the good be invoked as a cause of becoming . Before we can understand Socrates' desire and possible gratification , we must beware of thinking that the likely story is the ultimate story for Plato . There are other stories in the dialogues, each one speaking in its own way about the cosmos and huma n place. I am thinking especially of the stories about the soul's topoi in the Phaedo and the Phaedrus . To a very great extent, Timaeus' story is about the virtues of lawfulness and moderation projected into the nature of the cosmos . It is about that necessary part of human and cosmic life that has to do with keeping one's place, with being just . The likely story is the sort of high- minded yet realistic speech one would expect from a man who was an astronomer and a great statesman . But let us remember. The recipient of the story is the erotic Socrates, a Socrates who asked to hear speeches because of his desirous nature, his love of gazing. In o ~ e r dialogues, Socrates is feisty . He is a troublemaker . In the Timaeus, he ~ is suspiciously well - behaved and kosmios . Socrates' desire, the true center of the Timaeus, confronts us with an important question --whether the likely story, for all its virtues and powers, is finally just to the nature of human desire, to the whole of human nature . I said at the beginning of this lecture that the Timaeus was the Platonic story of return. Is it a true and complete return to ourselves , a true homecoming? We have the silence of Socrates to remind us of this question. 24 25 �Solitude In The Confessions Ann-Marie Kamensky Augustine thinks and prays, hopes and weeps, in soli t ude . It washes him in dank black and miraculous light; it is his prison and pla c e of retreat ; in it , he loathes himself and eventually, loves himself . It is in solitude that he writes his Con fessions and sees the violent flow of hi s li f e ; a nd , like a crys t al p ri s m, we can hold his solitude up to the sun , and gaze at the harshness, the beauty, and the de spair of the Confessions through this single though varied ray . What is solitude? It isn't weak , pitiable loneliness, nor is it simply a stag nant reflection on oneself . In the Confessions , solitude is active, for it is when Augustine despairs of communicating with the outer world that he turns inward and questions most piercingly . Unable to e xpress himself to a deaf world , he questions and speaks to a silent , hidden God--but because of that very silence Augustin e must attempt _his own answe r s ... hence , his solitude becomes an action of thought , ques tioning and answering . As a young man , Augustine fought s olitude , searching instead for the security he found in loving women , the companionship of a group of friends . Although.he was in love with the very idea of love , he understood it solely as an e x change between peo ple -- solitude can be fearful abyss for the very young, void of a mother's or lover's careless caress, hence, Augustine embraced people wi thout reserve . However , per haps after he was led to theft, or disappointment from some relationship , Augustine began to twist away from people and turned towards the ideas of men . Love of changeable people became a passion for incorruptible truth . Reading Cicero, teaching the art of rhetoric and living as a Manichee, Augustine experienced a growing sensitivity of self . In spite of the cold ring one .might ac cuse a love of truth as having , no such callousing of emotions emerged in Augustine as he slowly d r ew away from the oute r world in sea r ch of wisdom . Often , he ran in g r eat washes of unutterable feeling , the black self - loathing swept by the rich red fo r ce of life , sometimes replaced by r are moments of e x trao r dinary grace . Because those feelings could not be spoken , Augustine began to tap the deep wells of his be ing and found his own soul; he rejected the material e xplanations of good and evil t he M aniche e s o ff e r ed a nd bega n t o exa mine his very capacity to wonder. In turning to explore the mind of man, he saw the act of wonder as the greatness of the mystery that is man . Though Augustine may have seen fleeting images of the mind working as a whole, he could only speak of its parts . One part flowed so naturally throughout his writing he was suddenly struck by its presence : memory . Calling it the force of life, he seemed to regard memory as a self within the self, a powerful observer of the "now" to whom we listen as it speaks . Because the memo r y is limited to past experiences, it may seem strange to conclude , "This is t he great f o r ce o f life in living man , mortal though he is!" , as Augustine does . But as he asks "What, then, am I, my God? What is my nature?", he sees knowledge, images of material things, emotions , and freedom to move from one to the other all contained in memory . The force of memory is not in escaping from the present into the past, but in recalling one's life and answering "What, then, am I, my God?" Augustine is haunted by some memories, as by the grief of death, and in turn must struggle to recall others , as in the memories of his childhood . As he 26 confesses, he examin es hi s memories and judges them as t hough thr ough the eyes of God . Pe r h aps this h e lp s to exp l a i n the teni;;e , c l imb i ng t one o f the book , f o r as Augus ti n e re- lives his memor ies a nd his f ully human err o r s he s imul t aneou s ly jud ge s because so t h em. Perh a p s t h e "fo r ce " o f memory becomes clea r e r in this contex t : much is r eve aled t h r ou gh rec a lling p ast actions and at the same time pronouncing p r e se nt judgements on them, one can har dly avoid answering at least in part , "What am I?' • Anothe r par t of the mind which Augustine explores is the part which l e arns ... knowledge . His beliefs on the acquisition of knowledge seem contradictory but become clear e r if one allows him two types of reference , that is, knowledge gained from the i nner source of solitude and knowledge gained from such outer sou r ces a s science, rhetoric and drama . Although he prays fevently fo r some glimmer of truth , he harshly condemns the Platonists , Manichees and finally, his own students in t heir pursuit for knowledge, or "it is better for them to find you and leave the q u es t i o n un a nswere d t han t o f ind the answer without finding you" , and refers to the Book of Wisdom, chapter 1 3: Ex cus e them , then , we may not; if their thoughts could reach far enough to form a judgement on the world about them, how is it , they found, on the way, no trace of Him who is Master of it? But what does Augustine point towards to replace there outer sour ces? What kind of knowledge i s gained f r om the s ou r ce of active solitude , the prism we a r e look ing through to unde r stand the Confessions? More than once, Augustine refers to Job , who helps e xplain the reason for taking the mystical path of solitude towards knowledge rather than any other path . In a speech on "God's unfathomable wisdom" Job says : 9 Man sets his hand to the granite rock and lays bare the roots of the mountains; he cuts galleries in the rocks . and gems of eve r y kind meet his eye ; he dams up the sou r ces of the streams and brings the hidden riches of the earth to light. But where can wisdom be found? And where is the source of understanding? No man knows the way to it; it is not found in the land of living men . 2 3 But God understands the way to it, he al0J1e knows its source; for he can see to th ends of the earth and he surveys everything under heaven . 28 An d h e s aid t o ma n : The fear of the Lord is wisdom, and to turn from evil is understanding . (Job 28) Thus , as Augustine queries the · stars, the mountains and the depths of the ocean -- "I asked the whole mass of the universe about my God, and it replied, 'I am not God, God is He who made me,'" -- he discovers that he must turn inwards . Rather than attain ing wisdom by fearing the violence of Nature, or the immense distance of terrible stars, the deepest fear of the Lo ~ d co~es from the attempt to know one's own thoughts and r eali z ing no man knows fully the spirit within him . Taught by no teache r , found in no riches of the earth, solitude is the source of the fear of the Lord . 27 �The Bible And The Human Heart William O'Grady "Create in me a pure heart" we hear in Psalm 51, traditionally associated with David after the prophet Nathan came to him because he had been with Bathsheba. I wish to talk about what these words addressed to God might mean, and about some of what the Bible teaches about the human heart. My reflections are organized into four parts : i ndica t i ons r ega rding the heart in Psalms 19, 51 and 73; ci r cumcision of the heart as the heart of the Law; the suffering servant and the healing of the heart in Deutero - Isaiah; and the relation between time and the purgation of the heart in Dante's Purgatorio . I. To c ome i n t o t ou c h with God ' s c re ation r equires , the Psalmist s eems t o tell us , t h a t we ours e l ves submit to being cr e a t ed -- not merely to having been created , but to be being cre ate d r ight now . Thus "create' in me a pure heart" seems to mean mo re than "clean se or pur ge my h eart . " It seems to mean : continue to create my hea r t , c re ate it in pu r ity , shape it and reshape it until it is as you would have it be . Thus to offer.the sacri f ice of a broken and contrite heart does not mean merely that, in quid pro quo fashion, however generously from God's side, his response to my sincere contrition is forgiveness and loving- kindness; but rather that in offering God my broken and contrite hear t, in saying yes to the brokenness and tornness of my own heart I am saying yes to his creating of my 'heart, of me, his creating of me right now . It seems that it is not a matter of earning a pure heart as a reward by b e aring one's pain in fortitude and g e ntleness; rather, to say yes to the creation in oneself of a heart whose whispe r ings are not vile and which can e x perience all that God gives as good -- as what it truly is -- is to say yes to the brokenness and contrition of the heart in process of creation : that is simply how hearts a r e created . Why this should be so I do not understand . Perhaps we can learn something -- not in the way of dispelling mystery but in the way of learning to face it mo r e sensitively and discerningly -- but turning first to a few passages from Deuteronomy and then to certain words from Isaiah . II . Psalm 51 both asks God to create in me a pure heart and offers to God my own broken and contrite heart in confidence that He will find the offering an acceptable sacrifice . Why should one so greatly wish to have a pure heart, and why does the offering to God of one ' s own pain avail in the creation of such a heart? To the first of these questions, the Psalms give two answers which particularly impress me. In Psalm 19, which begins "The heavens declare the glory of God" and passes without seam into praise of the sweetness of God's Law -- "sweeter than honey dripping from the comb " (as though nothing could be further from the Psalmist's mind than to distinguish between a natural creation and a human moral spiritual creation) -- the final petition addressed to God is that "the words of my mouth may always find favor in your presence, and the whisperings of my heart . " . One reason, I think, why one would wish greatly to have a pure heart, and even be willing to undergo suffering for the sake of having one , is that inescapably one must hear the whisperings of one's own heart, and no one could wish to listen all his days to vile whisperings -whisperings of jealousy , resentment , anger , revenge, whether or not these issue forth into overt actions . ' The beginning of Psalm 73 gives a second answer, compatible with the first . We hear : "The Lord is good to Israel; God gives good things to the pure in heart . " As the Psalm urifolds we realize that these words do not mean what we might at first supIt is not t hat Israel i s pure in h ear a n d t h a God there f ore gives her good p o se. things; nor that some portion of Israel is pure in heart and to that portion God gives good things. In general it is not as if God has two kinds of things to give, good things and bad things, and gives the one to one kind of human being and the other to another kind . Rather, God gives good things and nothing but good things to all human beings . But it is only the pure in heart who can experience ti 1e good things God gives to all human beings as good things, only the pure in heart who can experience the world as it truly is, only they who know whai is happeninq . To become pure in heart, to submit to the purification of one's hea r t , i s to c ome 'n t o touch with God's creation and with his always present ever contemporary action of creating. For what I a m trying to think about, the crucial passage in Deuteronomy is the one that ~peaks of circumcision o f the heart . Since our current habit is to pass easily f r om law to legalism , any connection between law and our hearts seems strange to us . The matter becomes str anger still when we read (Deuteronomy 10 : 15) that it is because God himself has a heart and set his heart on our fathers, that there is such a thing as the Law . I t hink these words from Martin Buber about the meaning of the wo r d i 1 Torah , " not r ightly t r anslated , he thinks, as "Law," will help us to make a beginning . " In the Hebrew Bible, Torah does not mean law, but direction, instruction, information . Moreh me ans not lawgiver but teacher . God is repeatedly called this i n Old Testament te x ts . 'Who is a teacher like him?' Job is asked, and Isaiah promises the future people of Zion : 'Thine eyes shall see thy Teacher' The Torah of God is unde r stood as God ' s instr uction in his way , and therefore not as a separate obj e ct . It includes laws , and indeed laws are its most vigorous objectivizations , but the Torah itsel f is essentially not the law . A vestige of the actual speaking always adheres to the conunanding word , the directing voice is always present or at least its sound is heard fading away . " Let us now hear about the circumcision of the heart : "Circumcise your heart then and be obstinate no longer, for the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lo r d s, the great god , t r iumphant and terrible , never partial , never to be bribed . It. i s he who sees justice done fo r the o r phan and the widow, who loves the stranger , and gives him food and clothing . Love t~e stranger then, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt . II ' , , To begin to understand what the. circumcision of the heart might be , let us consider the three verses preceding the words I just read : "And now Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you? . Only this, to fear the Lord your God, to follow all his ways, to love him , to serve the Lord your God with . your whole heart and your whole soul." I wish to propose four things about this passage : that the order of the verbs -fear, follow, love, serve -- is seriously meant; that fear of the Lord means, to begin with, a proper mistrust of the human heart -- that is, of my heart; that the Mr. O'Grady is a tutor in Annapolis . He delivered this lecture to the community in Annapolis on Good Friday of '83 . Another lecture by Mr . O'Grady, Negation, Willing and the Places of the Soul, can be found in the Fall issue, '82. passage from fear to love depends considerably on the right kind of use of and experience with our own power of imagination; and that one does not have a whole 29 28 �heart or whole soul with which to love anything until one has set out on this way which God has made available to use . one must begin by fearing God -- whatever exactly this As to my first claim : phrase may mean, at any rate it is not supposed that one should or could begin by loving Him . Then, out of fear or something like that , one a t tempts to follow his ways . And then, in the course of that attempt , one makes certain discoveries about what is possible in the world, about what is possible for oneself in relation to one's fellows. In reflecting on those discoveries -- and no amazing intellectual gifts are required for this reflection to lead where it ought -- one comes to see .what the world i? like, and becomes eager to love the maker of such a world; comes to .see what one's own way of discovery is like, and becomes eager to love the maker of such a way of discovery. Following His ways from fear becomes serving Him from love, and in that passage one discovers what it is to have a whole heart and a whole soul . I proposed earlier that an essential constituent of what is meant by "fear of the Lord" is a proper mistrust of the human heart . Let me read you another passage from Martin Buber, in which what I mean is said wonderfully : "The doctrine can best be described as that of granting direction to the human heart . The heart of man -- this unformulated insight is at the basis of the doctrine -- is by nature without direction, its impulses whirl it around in all directions, and no direction which the individual gathers from his world stands firm , each one finally is only able to intensify the whirl of his heart ; only in trust in God is there persistence: there is no true d irection except to God . But the heart cannot receive this direction from the human s pirit, but only from a life lived in the will of God . Hence the Torah has assigned to man actions agreeable to God, in the doing of which he learns to direct his heart to Him. According to this purpose of the Torah the decisive significance and value does not lie in the bulk of these actions in themselves but in the direction of the heart in them and through them . " I suggested that of decisive importance for the transition from fear to love is a certain kind of experience with imagination . To illustrate what I mean, let me cite this passage from Deuteronomy. "If you are making your fellow a loan on pledge, you are not to go into his house and seize the pledge, whatever it may be. You must stay outside and the man to whom you are making the loan shall bring the pledge out to you. And if the man is poor, you are not to go to bed with his pledge in your possession; you must return it to him at sunset so that he can sleep in his cloak and bless you; and it will be a good action on your part in the sight of the Lord your God. You are not to exploit the hired servant who is poor and destitute, whether he is one of your brothers or a stranger who lives in your towns . You must pay him his wage each day, not allowing the sun to set before you do, for he is poor and is anxious for it; . otherwise he may appeal to the Lord against you, .and it would be a sin for you." Such laws as these seem to rest on the recognition that our making each other's lives miserable only infrequently stems from sheer malice or greed or vindictiveness. So often the injury we cause our fellows sterns from inattention, from failure of imagination, unwillingness to bother to see. The "Law" gives us, among other things, practice in bothering to see, in paying attention, using our imagination, giving thought to what cannot immediately be seen. And once we have encountered our fellows in a truly attentive way, on whatever occasions, we cannot so easily cannot without knowing what we are doing, without knowing our right hand from our left -act maliciously, greedily, or vindictively toward our fellows; since now they are for us real people, like ourselves . Let me add one thought about the impo rtance of a directed sequence for the attempt to obey the Law. I shall speak for a moment of the New L~w, as the Gospel of Matthew presents it, that presentatio n beginning with Jesus' words: "Do not think that I have come to" abo lish the Law and the prophets-. I have come not to abolish them, but to complete them." These words come at the beginning of the so-called Sermo n o n the 30 ,, Mount , culminating, we are inclined to say, in the injunction to "turn the other cheek.'' Almost always we use this phrase with tongue in cheek, speaking knowingly of its impossibility, as if we knew that from experience. Let us try for a moment to be more cii;-cumspect, or at least slower. Several points seem to me remarkable in Jesus' teaching in this place. First, "turn the other cheek" goes beyond "resist not evil." What is enjoined is not passivity, non-doing, but an action, an offer: offer now, at this moment, the o ther cheek as well. Second, a very specific reason is given: so that you will become children of your father who is in heaven, who makes his sun to shine upon the good and the bad, his rain to fall upon the honest and the dishonest. I think this means: Everything that is in being, including every human being, God wishes to be. (One offers the second cheek, after all, not to evil in general but to some human being.) As I offer my other cheek to the man or woman who struck me, I am saying and meaning to him or her not "won't you be ashamed of yourself and change your ways?"; not "I am so self- possessed as to be superior to this situation, hence unprovokable-.i-;-but rather "as my father in heaven wants you to be, so do I -- who am and want to be his child - - want you to be; and that wanting you to be goes deeper in me than my not wanting to be struck by you as to which I make no calculation or guess about your response." But what I most want to say about this passage I can say more clearly and simply with regard to the passage that immediately follows it: "Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you." The love one can have for one's enemy after praying for him -- that is, talking to God about him, on his behalf, for him; imagining his good, imagining him, and asking God for his good - - would be, it seems to me, vastly different, deeper, richer, more tender, more imaginative, more real, than the duty enjoined love which precedes and somehow originally motivates our praying for him. III. In the book of Deutero- Isaiah there seems to be announced a new way in God's deal ing with man. In chapter 42 we hear of a servant of God "who does not cry out or shout aloud, or make his voice heard in the streets. He does not break the crushed reed nor quench the wavering flame." It seems that there will be a new inconspicuousness, gentleness, patience in God's dealing with man~ In chapters 52 and 53 it is powerfully impressed upon us that the servant is above all a suffering servant, and we hear the awesome words "in his wounds we are healed." I wish to make a suggestion about how we might begin to understand these words . I am not concerned to identify the suffering servant with Jesus of Nazareth, or with another individual human being who is still to come, or with Israel as a people . Rather, I am concerned to try to understand the suffering servant as an illuminating symbol of an ultimate human possibility, a symbol just as comprehensively pertinent as, say, the philosopher-king or the pagan hero. That is, I wish to ask: what would it'be like for us to understand the deepest part of our own experience with ultimate reference to one of whom it is said "in his wounds we are healed 11 I should also make d1ear that I have n o theological theory ~f atonement to pre sent. I find it disconcerting that these are usually couched in mechanical language -- a balance must be restored -- or in commercial metaphors -- a debt has been incurred and must be paid by someone especially qualified. I think that in those theories God is thought of as being mastered by necessities over which surely in truth he himself is master. In any case the text of Isaiah makes clear that we must look on as the one who is wounded suffers for us and that he must be willing that our healing should come through his being wounded. It is some human int~lligibility rather than cosmic or theoloqica~ intelligibility that we must hope to find. _Above all, it seems important to try to understand what in us is most in need of being healed. l\ 31 �Let me offer what I can by making this simple beginning. About 2000 years ago the rabbi Hillel spoke these words : "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if not now, when? And if I am only for myself, what am I?" The first two questions by themselves would seem to be merely rhetorical in a hard and cynical way: no one, as any fool knows, will be for me if I am not for myself. But when we hear the third question -- and if I am only for myself, what am I? -- we realize that the first questions, however shyly and mistrustfully, are genuine, even desperately hopeful questions. The questioner knows that everything would be different -- all sorts of extraordinary possibilities would have to be considered and maybe even tried out -if only I could know that there is someone in the world who is for me, who cares about my being as deeply and strongly as I care about my being. In the 13th century Duns Scotus, the follower of Aristotle and still more of St. Francis, wrote in his discussion of the human faculty of willing: Amo: Volo ut sis. I love you: I want you to be. And what if, loving you, wanting you to~aS-fully as you can be , I come to understand that what prevents you from being fully and freely is that you are so anxious for yourself, so fearful that unless you are forever busy being for yourself, not only will you . incur all sorts of particular practical disadvantages, but finally you will not be at all, since there is no one else with such care for your being as would sustain and nourish it and thereby hqld it in being. Then would not the response of love be: I will be for you. I will be for you in a way that is unambiguously visible to you. I will be less, so that you can be more, not of course because we are competitors, you and I, for some limited amount of being, but precisely because the one thing that prevents you from coming fully into your own, from being all that you can be, is your fear that only your own self-assertion maintains and upholds you in being. It is that desperate preoccupation from which, above all, you need to be healed. And when you have been healed from that by beholding the willingness with which I accept my own diminution, my own being made, f9r your sake, less -- less free and easy, less graceful, less powerful, less joyful -- then you will begin to see that you can be for me too, that we were made for each other, that the center is neither in you nor in me but between us, among us all, and that deeper than the sorrow of crucifixion -- and I am thinking especially of its daily undramatic forms -- there is the joy of overcoming the two most shameful and finally deadly things for human beings, which are aloneness and unfruitfulness: "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies it brings forth much fruit." IV . I would like to say something finally about how hearts might become pure -- most especially, might become beautiful; an~ in what way purgation works -- especially : what is the relationship between the soul that has been purged and the times of its life. In the 12th Canto of Dante's Purgatorio, the penitants receive a blessing from the angel of the terrace of the purgation of pride, the first and greatest of the sins to be purged. Hear Dante's description of the angel: "Towards us came the fair creature, clothed in white, and in his face he seemed like a trembling star at dawn." It is, I think, for a middle-aged man such as Dante was when he wrote this passage, the deepest of sadnesses to be aware of how beautiful a creature of G o~ =an be -- is meant to be -- and that you are not beautiful, because you have made yourself not-beautiful. That one is nevertheless found acceptable by God is a very great thing, and in a way it is enough. But in a way it is not enough. One had wanted to be beautiful, to seem to someone else "in one's face like a trembling star at dawn." And one still ~an~~ that, if only there were a way. 32 Dante seems to say that there is a way, and that is because hearts are full of time and times . If tha t were not so, purgation would perhaps have to be thought of as being like scu lpting, so that my heart through my actions and willings has come to have a certain shape, a certain look, on which the action of purgation must go to work as with a hammer and chisel, destroying and removing as much of what I have made myself into as necessary to reach a presentable shape, so that the great fear of the one purged is not so much the painfulness of the chiseling as it is that so little of me will be left that I won't any longer know what I mean when I say "I" -- even and precisely when I say "I love" or "I praise." But on the very terrace of the purgation of pride Dante presents an al together different image of how a beautiful heart -- now, a beautiful life -- can contain everything that I have in my life made my own . Dante speaks of an incomparable divine art able to produce " an image which was not silent" or "visible speech . " Thus we read (Canto 10) of Mary: "The angel who came to earth with the decree of the many - years - wept -for peace that opened heaven from its long interdict appeared be fore us so truly graven there in a gracious attitude that it did not seem a silent image. One would have sworn he heard 'Ave -- hail,' for she was imaged there who turned the key to open the supreme love, and in her bearing she had the word imprinted 'Ecce ancilla Dei' -- Behold the handmaid of the Lord." And then the Emperor Trajan: "Depicted there was the glorious deed of the Roman prince whose worth moved Gregory to his great victory -- I mean the emperor Trajan; and a poor widow was at his bridle in a posture of grief and in tears. The place about him seemed trampled and thronged with Knights and the eagles in gold above them moved visibly in the wind. The poor woman among all these seemed to say 'Lord, avenge me for my son that is dead, for whom I am stricken' and he to answer her 'Wait now till I return' and she 'My Lord' like one whose grief is urgent 'if thou return not?' and he 'He that is in my place will do it for thee' and she 'What shall another's goodness avail thee if thou art forgetful of thine own?'; he therefore 'Now take comfort, for I must fulfill my duty to you before I go . Justice requires it, and compassion bids me stay.' Dante concludes : "He [God] for whose sight nothing is ever new wrought this visible speech, new to us because it is not found here . " Now, I find two things in this passage very remarkable . The first is the notion of "visible speech" itself, of "an image that is not silent." For what God's art has accomplished is to bring together a visual image which as such gives wholeness and permanence, and speech as what is essentially temporal and transient. As St. Augustine tells us wonderfully: unless each syllable passes away to make room for the next, we would never hear the whole statement. And in Dante's imagination God has not merely fused the permanent and the transient, that which is whole all at once and that whose completeness requires sequence and hence passing away; but rather He, our Creator , has made us see that the whole and permanent image on which we can gaze without motion contains all of motion and time that was important. Nothing has been merely chiseled away, removed, destroyed to reach the final image. The second remarkable thing , is that although there is a very special beauty in the immediate, wholehearted and apparently uncomplicated response of Mary to her calling "Hail Behold the handmaid of the Lord" Trajan's recalcitrance, wrongheadedness and confusion seem to make an indispensable contribution to the loveliness of his own action of humility in finally dismounting -- getting off his high horse -- to do his simple duty. Surely, more humility was required of Trajan in the end than would have been required of him had he not collaborated with the widow in "creating a scene." In any event, although Mary's unfaltering humility is lovely indeed, it seems that Trajan in looking upon the image of his own action -- his own life -- could not simply regr~t his own recalcitrance and wrongheadedness. And could ·he not have seen 1n the image of himself -- the image of his heart as . it finall contained his life -- something a little like "a trerpbling star at dawn"? y 33 �.. Let me close with another reflection about Trajan, who seems to be a very important figure for Dante, being encountered on the first terrace of the mount of purgation and again in the 20th Canto of Paradise. There, deep in the indescribable beauty and joy of Paradise, Dante is still troubled over the destiny of the virtuous pagans. He asks about them in the heaven of justice. He receives a dogmatic theological answer, but then is permitted to see the presence in paradise of two pagans: the Trojan Ripheus; an obscure figure from the Aeneid, said there to have been the most just of the Trojans; and the pagan emperor Trajan, who was (according to a legend in which surely Dante did not believe literally) brought back to life on account of the prayers of Pope Gregory who was moved by the story of his life. After returning to earth he was baptized and thereby made capable of redemption. I think the real point of the story lies· elsewhere for Dante, and that it has much to do with how Dante understands pride. For it must be that Trajan accepted his salvation not as granted to him as a being apa r t, in isolation from others , "considered in his own right" as we say, but rather as a link in a chain, a member in a sequence of human persons moving and being moved. For consider: there is the widow moved by love of her lost son, then Trajan moved by a mother's love; then an eyewitness moved by Trajan's humility and telling the story of that; then a chronicler being moved by the story to write it down; then Gregory being moved by what he read to pray for Trajan; and finally God being moved by Gregory's prayers. In this sequence it is difficult to find praiseworthy initiatives; what seems praiseworthy, rather, is that each member be unwilling to allow a motion of love which began outside of himself or herself to end in himself or herself. Not to interrupt the motion of love through the world -- this seems to Dante to be the ~ighest action of which the human heart is capable. And to me too. Sonnet Stephen Morse What wonder man, a many mirrored task From hands, star-crafting, sparrow-shaping small. A middle art, with mind of size to ask Stars questions, sparrow's answers take with allEmbracing reason. He does not· only see, But sees beyond; mind breaks Earth's rope And grasps grand God-reflect'd philosophy. A seeming God, a veritable hope. But well, real, self reflecting flaw Distorts, bends, twists, corrupts, and smears Tru~ virtue; mixes earth and mind, a raw Wound festering on pride-yields-lust to tears. For brittle glass, God, canvass in me place, And paint with faith my heart in oils of grace. 34 II The Actuality Of Symbolism In Raphael's Disputa :r'"edro Martinez-Fraga Buried in a lengthy essay by Leon Battista, an Italian scholar, we find the fol lowing observation: Raphael's search for perfect form is in effect a quest for absolute value, for him form does not have a representative nature, but rather a value of its essentials a full and total representation of reality . Under the assumption that beauty itself already exists in nature, the artist can reveal it merely by choosing what is perfect and by composing with his choice of particular beauties the universal beauty which ancient and modern, outside time . and experience. I wish to take this general observation on the works of Raphael and examine how it may be applicable to the particular case of the "Disputa" . "Universal beauty" would be irrunediately obvious to anyone willing to admire it, producing in all a favorable aesthetic impression . There is a parallel between the universal intelligibility of beauty and that of the scriptures . In the "Disputa" Raphael studies the manner in which the scriptures are revealed to all , and by way of form he displays a beauty, an aesthetic experience, that would lack all value if it were not equally representative for everyone . Art and theology are collapsed into one . By relying on his technique, together with geometrical constructions and many of the principles in Alberti's Della Pittur a , Raphael uses art to universally unfold as an irrunediately obvious t ru th , the intimacy between light and darkness, revealed truth and human insufficiencies. The whole of the "Disputa" is both heavenly and terrestrial, miracle and history, thus stressing the unity between dogma and human wisdom . Raphael invite s u s to discover this two - fold nature in his fresco by placing special attention on "composition" (the design of painting which the parts harmoniously fit together as a whole) which guides the eye through the istoria . I shall divide my analysis of the painting into three parts . First, I shall trace the path which Raphael has constructed for the eye to follow by identifying the pattern of movements and the directions that are emphasized in the work ; secondly, I shall discuss the istoria and attempt to reconcile it with the title "Disputa"; and lastly,I shall discuss how perspective and geometry are the underlying principles of beauty and theology in this fresco . I. The body is said to have l'if e when it has certain voluntary movements . It is said to be dead when the members no longer are able to carry on the function of life, that is, movement and feeling. Therefore the painter, wishing to express life in things, will make every part in motion- but in motion he will keep loveliness and grace . 35 I I �Such is the case with the members of this fres co , particularly in the terrestrial realm. The figures at both ends of the painting are leaning forward (towar d the viewer ) and turning toward the center o f the bottom half . I believe that the most eloquent example is found with the figure on the bottom left hand side of the fresco, on the right hand side of the viewer. His gestures place our eye on the path that is to be followed. The eye is moved to the right of the painting where the r e is an unidentified character pointing at Sixthus IV, who is dres sed in a golden papal tiara and is looking in the general direction of the al tar whe re the host sits on the monstrance. Hence it is the indiv idual gestures that Alberti conside rs essential to the life of the paint ing which act as a whole to guide our attention to the monstrance. "A turned body, a thrust of the arm and the di re ction of a glance" are the sources of movement i n this particular example. The vanishing point, located slightly below the host , lends cohesion and a sense of culmination to the earthly realm. Having arrived at the vanishing point , we find that Raphael uses what Alberti def in es as the "most geometrical movements; " namely , those "which move upward into the air," to begin the transition from terrestrial to heavenly . In the "Disputa" an unidentified man stands on the left of the altar pointing to the heavens. · The re is an ascending movement that begins with the gesture of this figure from which the eye travels along the vertical line that symmetrically divides the f r esco . In this upward pull the heavenly figures that are the closest to the realm of human understanding are f our putti, two on either side o f the holy spirit , each holding one of the four gospels. From left to right we can read the first page of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Sitting on a cloud suspended in midai r above the four putti are Mary, Je sus and John the bapti st. Jesus , the central figure in the fresco, sits slightly higher than the other two . Perhaps it would be useful to pause here and examine the resources that Raphael uses in showing Jesus as the central figure. What the host is to t he bottom part , so is Chr ist to the whole of the painting . The figu r e of Christ displaying hi s wounds is seated in the center of a golden circle that is in turn framed by winged put ti . Raphael uses the luminosity both of the golden rays of the circle emanating from Jesus and of the color white to distinguish Jesus from God the Father who is situated above and behind Christ. Consequently it becomes clear how Raphael uses spatial arrangement and the reception of light to single Christ out from the three figures closest to him. What I interpret as being the three most important gestures of the fresco are also pointing toward Jesus . First, the unidentified figure to the left of the altar, followed by John the baptist, and lastly the third angel on the far left hand side of the heavens . The receding figures, angels and putti, surrounding Christ also emphasize his greatness. By combining light and dark shaded colors in the composition of the cloudbanks, Raphael constructs a sense of depth and consequently produces a semi - circular movement that echoes the pattern of movement of the figures below, making the Ghange in zones more fluid and tangible. Resorti ng to this blending o f lights and shades to create the illusion of depth is yet another example of how the reception of light is used just as prescribed by Alberti in Book Two of Della Pittura . Hence Raphael can reproduce the movement while preserving the individual identities of both realms. In the heavens the truth is evident and known to all . In this higher domain the excitement generated by human curiosity and its manifestation through gestures would seem out of place . Raphael's use of colors is always symbolically and technically in conte xt. For example, hierarchy and divinity are represented by the use of gold . In '·· ~ 1::: l ower part the papal tiara, the altar and the monstrance are all colored with gold . In the upper sphere the rays of the holy spirit and its background are painted in gold , as are the rays emanating from Christ, and the sphere behind God the Father that is filled with putti "dantesquely disappearing into the heavens." Technically it is interesting how a color is neve r isolated, with the exception of white. Flanking Jesus are the colors red and blue on the robes of John the Baptist and Mary 36 l r 11 respectively . Raphael lends context to t he colors by repeating them symmet ric ally . Thus the red on John the baptist's robe is repeated on the third angel on his side of the fresco, and on Paul , who is the first fi~ure from right to left on the opposite side of the fresco. The theme of red and blue is also found on the putti that outline the golden circle behind Jesus. In this general outline of the pictoral movement we are able to recognize two prominent characteristics of Raphael's style; the counterposi ti on of figures with violent and passive movements (particularly in the terrestrial realm) , and the realization of space . Vasari explains how Raphael sought to realize. space by emulating Bramante . "Lines become the development of restful curves, volumes alternate with open spaces in the same fashion that Bramante alternates solids with voids." Vasari's interpretation of the pictoral scheme relative to Bramante coincides in a clearly demonstrable way with the experience of the viewer . How are we to understand the interpretation which lead Vasari to call this fresco the "Disputa?" Let us examine the istoria in detail, and then proceed to draw a distinction between the message that the painting evokes, and the point of view that the artist suggests . To understand the istoria we must first meet its members. On the lower left side of the painting are Sts . Ambrose and Augustine, both sitting and dressed as bishops . At the feet of St. Augustine is his book with the title City of God written prominently on its side. Standing behind him is St . Thomas Aquinas, Pope Innocent the third, and St . Bonaventura with the red hat and garment of a cardinal. Following St. Bonaventure stands Pope Sixtus the fourth, (the tallest figure in the painting together with a personage that could possibly be Francesco Maria de Rovre, balancing the figure of Sixtus on the opposite side? , the uncle of Pope Julius the second . Dante's profile is seen behind Sixtus preceding Savanarola's. Raphael places Dante's profile , the symbol of light, behind Savanarola's which embodi~s both the darkness of his personal history, and that of his mystical theological interpretations . Dante shines and elucidates, Savanarola darkens and obscures . On the side of the al tar with his hands horizontally stretched toward the monstrance is St . Jerome . At his feet are two volumes. One volume contains the epistles, probably alluding to Paul's letter to the Corinthians in which he reiterates and interprets the last supper, adding the phrase "do this in memory of me . " It is from this epistle and not the gospels that the priest reads when, in celebrating mass, he blesses the bread and the wine so that they become the body and the blood of Christ through the mystery of transubstantiation . The other volume is the Bible which St . Jerome translated . Sitting close to him in a papal tiara is St . Gregory with the facial features of Pope Julius the second but without his beard. The figure can be identified as St . Gregory because of his halo, and because the book which he wrote entitled On Morals rests in front of the papal sandles. Standing in back of him is a self- portrait . To the extreme right hand side of the fresco is a fi gure that may be Fra Angelico, the great painter of the previous century . Yet because of the aged features of his face some scholars, including Vasari, believe it can not be Fra Angelico, who died at the age of fifty. Instead, they believe the figure to be St . Anthony . Fin'a lly, on the railing with his body leaning forward and his head turned in the direction of the al tar, is the unmistakable port.rai t of .Bramante, Raphael's friend and paesano. Hence in this lower realm we find the four doctors of the church (Gregory, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine) with the unique expressions of enlightenment and inspiration. In the remaining members of the clergy we discover raised eyebrows, and expressions of inquiry . The clergy and doctors of the church are surrounded by common people who project an air of enthusiasm and humility. In their faces and gesticulation they reveal a thirst for understanding which can only be quenched by those who have been blessed by the holy spirit . Perhaps they too are blessed souls called by curiosity but not chosen by God to understand the mysteries of faith . 37 �Alberti explains how "the soul is delighted by all copiousness and variety. For this reason copiousness and variety delight in painting. I say that an istoria is most copious in which their places are mixed old, young, maidens, women, youths, young boys • • • buildings, landscapes, and all similar things." In just half of this painting alone we can discover Raphael's fulfillment of Alberti's suggestions. II. Just as the lower realm is filled with contemporary and historical figures, so is the celestial part composed of Old and New Testament figures. Moving from the right to the left part of the fresco is St. Peter, Adam, John the evangelist, David, St. Stephen, Jeremiah, Judas Maccabeus, St. Lawrence, Moses, Matthew (or James the elder) , Abraham, and Paul. Each of the personages is painted with gestures and expressions that reflect his history. The expression of Mary, for example, is one of love and tenderness toward Jesus. Her face reflects the intensity of maternal love and concern. Abraham, who is portrayed holding a knife in his hand, has a look of agony and pain, as opposed to his counterpart on the opposite side, Adam, who is shown sitting in a very simple and carefree position. His facial expression is that of a simple man, naive and primary. Although each of the figures projects his individuality, we can generalize and say that the apostles are portrayed with an air of simplicity, the fathers of the church with grandeur, and the martyrs of the church with faith. Yet what are these figures doing? What can be the message of an istoria so richly populated that it is "a beauty that is simultaneously ancient and modern, outside time and experience?" There are no signs of debate, confrontation or dispute in the painting. On the contrary, it seems to be an exaltation of theology, a reaffirmation of the mystery of transubstantiation. This seems to be indicated not only by the gestures and expressions of the figures who are pointing toward the altar and listening with enthusiasm to the clergy members, but also by the division and perspective in the painting. On the lower extreme ends of the painting the symmetry is enlivened by having a natural setting on a small hill where the construction of the church is taking place; on the opposite end it is counter-balanced by the foundation of a great cathedral that was to be built by Bramante under the auspices of Julius the second. Thus even the symmetrical juxtaposition of nature and human craft (verdure and building blocks) is an extension of the very theme of praise and worship. The darkest mysteries of the Christian faith (particularly concerning Catholic dogma) can only be elucidated and understood by human wisdom when reason passively yields to the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. Hence the vertical which divides the painting equally can be traced from the bottom of the fresco. It symmetrically divides the monstrance, the Holy Spirit, the body of Jesus, and finally God the Father and the rhombus painted in back of his head. The most interesting aspect of this division is that Christ's head is slightly bent to his right. Jesus who is the link between heaven and earth, the embodiment of the Creator's love for man, can not be subjected to the rationalization of human understanding. The fresco seems to suggest, both by tilting Jesus' head beyond the vertical and by placing the vanishing point beneath the host, that as the trinity is to Jes~s so is the mystery of transubstantiation to the eucharist. Both are divine embodiments and not mere symbolism. · Jesus does not represent the Father and the Holy Spirit; their being is contained essentially in him. The sacrament of holy communion is founded on the belief that the ~ost becomes the body of Christ in that very moment when the priest invokes Paul's letter recounting the events of the last supper. Augustine writes: "The visible sacrifice is the sacrament, that is, the sacred sign of the invisible sacrament." It is no coincidence that Dominicans are well represented in the fresco, as is Thomas Aquinas whose theological writings concerning the sacraments they propagated as the official Catholic stance. In question six ty - five of the third part of the Summa Theologica , we find the following interpretation: Absolutely speaking, the sacrament of the Eucharist is the greatest of all the sacraments, and this may be shown in three ways. First from what is contained in the sacrament, for in the sacrament of the Eucharist Christ himself is contained substantially, whereas the other sacraments contain a certain instrumental power which is a share of Christ's power ... Now that which is essentially such is always of more account than that which is such by participation. After having read this passage, which even through the present date expounds the official interpretation of the Catholic church, we can see a greater similitude between the istoria and Raphael's style. Just as the symbolism of the eucharist is unique in that it is a symbol and at the same time essentially that which it represents, so too is Raphael's quest for a universal beauty, as we previously stated, founded on the notion that form should not have a representative value . Symbols should only represent themselves . The unity of form and essence in the religious symbols of the istoria, together with aesthetic unity that seeks to reveal a universal beauty by simultaneously bringing together the past and the present, heaven and earth beyond the realm of experience, seems to support the interpretation that there is harmony and not dispute in the istoria. That is to say, a general feeling of cohesion and agreement as is usually the case in an environment of praise and inquiry rather than debate and scepticism. In this way we can reconcile the istoria with its name if we take "disputa" in the medieval sense which the scholastics used meaning "inquiry" or "investigation" rather than dispute. Although the painting is very eloquent in revealing the said interpretation, I believe that Raphael suggests more . A detail of the altar shows the name of Julius the second inscribed twice on the mantle . Vasari concludes his interpretation of the "Disputa " in the following way: "Salvo che i quattro Dot tori della chiesa, che, illuminati dallo Spirito Santo, snodano, e risolvano con le scriture sacre tutti le cose degle Evangeli che sostengo quei putti, che gli hanno in mano volando pef 1' aria • . . res to (concludes Vasari) il papa di questa opera mol to soddisfato . " Vasari too seems to draw a subtle distinction between the message of the istoria and that of the artist . The "Disputa" exalts theology in its istoria and construction . The use of perspective lends cohesion to the terrestrial realm and also explains the mystery of the eucharist as being beyond the grasp of reason. Raphael's use of the vertical demonstrates how Jesus, the mystery of the Trinity and God's presence in time , cannot be subjected to the laws of r eason . Yet Raphael goes out o f his way to imply that the prevalent belief which he is attempting to represent through art in the form of universal beauty, is the point of view of his patron. The dogmatic currents that run through the church originate in the minds of men that have a particular name . Vasari tells us how the Pope was very pleased with an istoria that shows how man's interpretation of scripture is the product of divine inspiration. Raphael does something different by discreetly writing the pontiff's name twice on the mantle. Perhaps the difficulty of revealing two istorie, an artistic one described by the patron, and that of the artist himself, is analogous to the problem which Alberti's science of perspective faces . In perspective, one admires an istoria with utmost clarity but only from one point of view. When we change our position relative to the painting then the rigidity of that perfectly geometrical world collapses, and we are no longer staring out a window, but admiring the stillness of a contrived reality . The painting seems true and beautiful from a particular point of view; such is the nature of perspective. Raphael is telling us that the mystery of 38 39 �transubstantiation and divine revelation seems true and beautiful when seen through the eyes o f the pontiff; such is the nature of men . III. We have traveled through the analysis of this fresco trying to make sense of Battista's general observation concerning the works of Raphael in the context of the particular example of the "Disputa". Our movement has also been from general to specific, from what is more apparent and obvious to our eyes, to conjectures and principles that are less apparent. In these last few lines I shal 1 try to present the underlying principles of the beauty we see in matter by way of geometry. It is through geometry that the painter can be seen as sculptor . If form is the boundaries of matter, then Raphael has created a work of art whose harmony and beauty are founded on having the boundaries of matter coinciding with those of geometry. (See black and white reproduction, pg. 8.) The fresco is first divided in two by a vertical that transverses the main figure and is suggested by a vertical ray drawn at the top, as well as by the symmetrical distribution of masses on either side of this vertical, then in four by a horizontal line parallel to the steps leading to the alter, and drawn at the height suggested by the tip of the main ray that emanates from the Holy Spirit. This horizontal cut separates the divine from the earthly by resting beyond any of the verdure found in the terrestrial realm . This division shows how the masses in each of the four quadrilaterals is symmetrically divided : none outweighs the other. Three triangles dominate the painting . The first is suggested by the rhombus (which I believe to be "the geometrical model" of the painting) behind the head of God the Father, which encompasses Him together with Jesus, Mary, and John the baptist. The base of the triangle is found to be a t the height of the hands of Sts. Stephen and Lawrence; this height allows the base to be directly under the feet of John and Mary. The second triangle begins at the top of the ray which originally suggested the height of the main horizontal coinciding with it at one point . The angle is determined by the width of the altar and its base coincides with the base of the altar . The trilogy of triangles is completed by following the main ray of the Holy Spirit up to the chest of the dove . From here lines are drawn to the eyes of Pope Gregory and St . Ambrose, who are both gazing at the dove . By connecting these tw9 lines the base of the triangle is constructed. Returning to the principle triangle, the circle behind Jesus is continued and a diameter parallel to the principle horizontal is drawn. The sides of the triangle are elongated to point slightly below the feet of David and Moses on each of the r espective sides. A line is drawn under the feet of five figures on each side of the fresco, and the line parallel to it is drawn on top of the heads of the figures . The endpoints are connected by constructing a line parallel to the sides of the triangle. Hence the five figures on either side are inscribed by rectangles . Rectangles can also be inscribed around the angels on either side of the painting . Finally a fifth rectangle seems appropriate circumscribed around the four putti holding the gospels. It is constructed by using part of the main vertical and extending the tangent of the circle in which the dove is inscribed, parallel to the main horizontal, and by e re cting parallel lines perpendicular to this horizontal which are just extensions the outer edges of the gospels . The division of space is crucial to the success of a fresco. In the "Disputa" it becomes clear that Raphael took the architecture which frames the fresco into account before tracing the lines that would group the masses of the istoria into a cohesive whole. Testimony to this consideration is the distance between the heads of the two figures on either extreme of the cloud bank (Peter and Paul) and the circular design of 40 .I o f the wall directly above the lunar frame of the fresco. F r om these two points I have drawn two lines which a r e connected at .the bottom of the fresco with the main v e r tical . These lines form two sides of a rhombus that inscribes the altar and the principle figures of the fresco . I t is as if the rhombus painted behind God the Father had been enlarged . Besides producing a symmetry in the division of masses whose delicate distribution is rooted on geometr ical principles, these lines and their various intersections can be construed into seven "golden sections." (See Appendix) · Perhaps it is in this presence of geometry that Raphael discovers a unive::rsal beauty that js not representative, but meaningful in itself. Geometrical figures are the supreme symbols that represent nothing other than themselves. Appendix Golden Sections : 1 . From bottom of rhombus, to the first intersection of triangle inscribing altar to the beginning of rectangle inscribing figures on the cloud bank . 2. The line from eyes of Gregory to Ambrose and the lin e from either intersection with the triangle. figun~ to first 3. From Ambrose's eyes to the dove, but by horizontal . 4. The base of the main triangle cut by the circle drawn around Christ . 5. The hor izon but by both sides of the rhombus and the distance between the ~;id e of the rhombus and the point where the horizontal intersects the triangle . 6. Right side of the top of rhombus from the tangent point to Christ's circle and the whole side of rhombus. 7 . Sarne as above, but on the left hand side of the circle . 41 ��Pascal asserts that the nature of the human self is to think of and love only itself. This misplaced object of its love is the result of the faculty of imagina tion's almost complete control over us : "this arrogant force ... has established a second nature in man . " Imagination deceives us and leads us astray . Imagination is far more powerful than reason and was responsible for our fall from grace, when it persuaded us to make ourselves rather than God the object of our thoughts, desires, and love. As fall en creatures we are worked upon now more than ever by our imaginations, which have gone so far as to make us forget (or regard as 'unreasonable', as though the imagination cared at all about conforming our thoughts to reason alone) our fatal connection with the original sin of Adam and Eve . And yet only when we are mindful of the fallen nature that we have inherited can we begin to understand that state of grace into which we were originally created, and for which Christ has come to redeem us: "it is, however, an astounding thing that the mystery furthest from our ken, that of the transmission of sin, should be something without which we can have no knowledge of ourselves . " (Pensee 131, pg . 65.) Unfortunately, our nature is so degraded that it is impossible for us to remember what our original nature was and who our true love is, without the effectual workings of God's grace within us. And divine grace will not begin to transform us, by revealing our Hope, without first of all revealing ourselves to us. We have to see over and over again the composition of our self - love, and why the self, even when it is thoroughly sick of the bondage of self - love, is terrified of losing itself and turning inward to God . The nature of self-love, in turn, can be seen in our endless concern for our reputation, which is an imaginary self that we have constructed and continually refine in order to make ourselves out to be real and vivid - that is, central - to the minds of others, and especially so in our own minds . Although we ourselves are the object of our self - love, the fact remains that we realize that our selves cannot withstand scrutiny . Self - love still retains one trace of true love in its ability, albeit feeble and occurring only at odd moments, to discern the true from the false regarding the qualities it sees in the se lf . Self-love sees, with varying degrees of acknowledgement, the flaws and weaknesses of the self . These are insights which both disgust and enrage us, for we see nothing but a mass of ugly, essentially aimless, qualities . we may even see how much our "good" qualitie s hav e been tainted and deformed by our motives for doing certain things and for refraining from others . The alternative to looking beyond the self that 1s represented by qualities is far more unpleasant . Such an attempt provides the self with its first dreadful glimpse into the possibility that it may not have a self at all. This is not to say that the person doubts that he or she exists on a biological level; this is to say something much more frightening, namely, that the self suddenly and instinctively grasps that not only is there no definitive self which might give us a spiritual life, but there never will be such a self to be had . There can be no such thing as integrity for this particular person, there is no possibility of satisfying his desires, or of finding any kind of lasting purpose or peace of mind . The person will BE, but he will be nothing per SE, nothing defined. He will be a mere restless, yearning thing, and he will know that he is nothing . Once the self - if we can still call it that has suspected that there may be no real self , ~t is so shaken that it does everything in its power to avoid that thought . This is especially true if the person has not only begun to doubt the reality of the self, but has perceived, however dimly, that the salvation of the self rests in receiving God's grace and yet he cannot feel any of the effects of that redemption . Such a state of mind produces a feeling of frenzied despair, which is not simply a feeling of wretchedness . This is the condition of the mind that measures God's mercy and, though it believes that His mercy is more than sufficient to release others from their sins, it does not believe that God can heal its own particular soul . A person of this disposition may seek diversions with a hideous, incredible passion, but this is only because the person knows full well that he is avoiding introspection, which he fears will reveal more and more clearly to him his eternal exclusion from God's presence. He knows that truth and peace lie in the contemplation of the self in its relation to God, but he also is possessed by the superstitious feeling that there is no way for him to enjoy the good fruits of this contemplative life. At the same time he realizes that he has reached a stage where he can no longer lose himself in his various diversions . He may pursue the objects of his 'passions' with fervour, but this is only an attempt to divert himself from the sinking suspicion that he will never be redeemed and he will never be truly diverted. The majority of people, however, can actually be somewhat diverted from the feeling that the pursuit of self-knowledge, prayer and contemplation are absolutely c ri tical to their lives. Before the self looks down deep within itself and is stricken by the thought that there may be no self, it can easily engage itself in one or more of its passions. Self- love may be at its strongest and therefore at its blindest point , but the self still perceives that it cannot examine its love object too closely . Instead , the self spends a lot of time imagining qualities and circumstances which might satisfy its desire for self-knowledge (for example, it may imagine that it is introspective, truth- seeking, converted, etc). It builds a reputation to show to itself and to others, and does everything it can to prove that it is indeed such and such a person . This kind of protection of the self, which is actually a protection of the self from itself, always requires the acquisition of external things : that is, either we need money, possessions, another person, or we need to achieve certain goals for our self- improvement . Self- love's passion for the truth, which is usually never wholly obscured, is somewhat satisfied by its ability to maintain the self's reputation, no matter how many lies and contradictions this involves . The self is almost completely absorbed with itself, yet it finds that it cannot satisfy its desire to be thoroughly absorbed, to be the center of all of its thoughts and desires, e xcept through the acquisition of more and more things and qualities . Such an unenlightened pursuit of passion may continue for a long time . A great confrontation or loss, or the more mysterious workings o f God ' s grace may eventually lead the person to discover that the preservation of his reputation is not enough to keep his mind at ease. In fact, he may have the uncanny desire to ruin his reputation in order to find out who he is. At that time he may look into himself and upon seeing nothing but his own wretchedness and his real inability to be interested in the truth, he will need to pursue diversions rather than passions . He will see that he is really profoundly bored, restless, and anxious (Pensee 24, pg. 36), and he will flee from this vision with all his might. Because he has no idea what it is that he is ulti~ately seeking to divert himself from, he will think of his diversions as ends in themselves and it is entirely possible that he will spend his whole life in their thrall . In this case self - love may not manifest itself as self- love at all. The person will not appear to be obsessed with himself, but only with external objects or activities. Self - love is there, nevertheless, in its insistence on concealing the whole truth about itself from itself, and in its inability to achieve any kind of intimacy with other people. It may demand an inordinate amount of love 44 45 Self-Love, Diversion, And The Search For A True Identity Zoe Churchville �and attention from others in order to assure itself of the worth of its existence, or it may try to lose every disturbing thought of itself by loving another person with too much zeal. Self - love, then, does not seem to know much about love . It is obsessed with its object (which may not manifest itself as an obsession with the self at all ) , but only insofar as the object , which is the self, can be seen in external terms. Self- love is interested in the self only as a thing to be possessed, a thing with highly visible qualities for itself and for everyone else to see. Self-love can only permit the self to participate in the search for truth on an exte rnal, goal-oriented, fundamentally self-directed basis . The se lf insists upon knowing where it is going and what it has achieved. Whe n it realizes that love and truth do not reside in it, and moreover , that they only revea l unpleasant aspects of the self, the self either cannot admit that there is such truth, or it will not admit that truth is anything other than certain ideals of the self 's own making . Clearly there a re different levels of diversions for the self in its flight from itself . Unfortunately, precisely those diversions which seem to be most worthwhile, and therefore do not seem to be diversions, are the ones which MAY be turning us aside more than the basest, most unnecessary passion. These diversions may include intellectual pursuits and certain modes of submerging the self in religion . God will not let us make any external advances until we have turned inward beyond the self and the lack of self to Christ. (Th is means that God does expect us to bear t h e fruit of a definitive, though not to be comprehended spiritua l life. ) The self is expected to give up its desire and need for the security of doing certain things and acquiring certain things in order to define itself . I t is supposed to hate this quasi -self, or this kind of life, in order to find itself and the true life that can only be achieved through the grace of Jesus Chr ist . Then the self will receive the identity that God has willed for it, and will give to it through Christ. The incessant call t o such a search for Christ explain s the reality of ou r fear o f not having a self. The book o f Revelations promises us that there is a stone in heaven with our name written on it . But this is not the name that we now have ; it is a name that will truly identify us and that is now known only to God. If we endure until the end time, we will discover our name and understand what it has to do with our communion with Christ. In the meantime, we must trust in the necessity of having to lose ourselves in o rder to gain ourselves, and in the joy that is involved in Paul's claim that he himself no longer lives, but Christ lives in him.Paul says that we have the promise that t he sufferings of this present time - which are of ten due to anxieties f o r a self that we must deny, or a lack of self that we must approach and go beyond are not to be reckoned with the fut~re glory that is to be revealed. Time James Mensch I. There is one thing we can say with certainty about time . We all feel that we understand what it is until we are asked to explain it. Since this explanation is pre cisely the attempt of my lecture, I am going to begin by making a slight detour . I shall begin by considering a problem from Plato's Parmenides . From this, I hope to find an entrance point which shall lead us to our explanation of the nature of time. Let us begin with a little fragment of the dialogue, the Parmenides . 1 Socrates has just said that the ideas are "paradymes in nature and other things are like them and resemble them." He , then , defines "the participation of things in their ideas as itself nothing more than their having been made like their ideas ." Parmenides, the ever subtle dialectician, seizes on this point . He asks : "If the thing is like the idea, must not the idea be like the thing which has been made like it, at least with regard to the point of resemblance"? Since this statement is almost a tautalogy , Socrates cannot but assent . Parmenides then draws the dialectical net tighter . "But isn't it necessary," he asks , "for the two things which are alike to participate in one and the same thing?" "Necessarily," says Socrates . Whereupon Parmenides asks : "And that which the two participate in and are alike through such participation, . won't this itself be an idea?" Once again Socrates agrees and finds, to his surprise, that he has fallen into an infinite regress. Let me spell out the difficulty that Parmenides has drawn the young Socrates into ~· Its first premise is that when things are alike, we say they are such through their participating in some idea . Thus , chairs are similar by virtue of thei r participating in the idea of "chairness." Now, we come to this idea through ou r perceptions of individual chairs. Arising from this basis, the idea cannot be dissimilar from them. So our second premise is that the idea is like the individual participating in it. ·With this, we return to our first premise~Likeness arises whenever two things participate in one and the same idea. Thus, "chairness" and individual chairs must be similar by virtue of a new idea common to them both . And this third thing, if simi l ar to the first two , will demand f o r ~ts similarity a new idea . This last , if similar to the first three will demand yet another idea and so on indefinitely . What is the point that Plato is making here? It concerns, we can say, the being of the idea and the relation of this being to that of a thing . Is the idea of large objects, itself a large object? Is the idea of smallness itself small? Is the idea of a piece of black cloth , itself black and made out of cloth? As our negative answers to these questions indicate, we cannot predicate of the idea what we predicate of the thing participating in the idea . This distinction of predication Mr . Mensch graduated from the Annapolis campus in '67. He delivered this lecture in the spring of '79 to 47 46 the community in Santa Fe. �points to a distinction in being . The thing is an individual, material ent i t y. It has the predicates appropriate to this state of being . The . idea, however , is defined as being one thing present in many . Its being one - in- many rules out any notion that it is a material entity. Thus, as Parmenides notes, one thing can be present in many either as a whole or part by part . 2 A material thing can e xis t as a whole in many things only by being multiplied. At that point, however, it is many and not one . Similarly, it can exist part by part in many things only by being divided . What would a material part of an idea, for example, the idea of smallness, mean? •rhe sillyness of such a notion is apparent when Parmenides invites us to conceive of something getting smaller and smaller as material portions of the idea of the small are progressively added to it. If the idea is not a material thing, then we can say that the predicates appropri ate to such things, predicates such as large, small, black, made of cloth and so forth, are not appropriate to it. This conclusion allows to assert that the idea is not like the thing. Insofar as we can affirm this, we avoid the infinite regress of ideas we just described . This, however, leaves us with a worst difficulty. Our knowledge begins with the things about us . How are we to ascend to a knowledge of the ideas when we say that they are not like the things? Isn't the case, as Parmenides says, that the ideas "must remain unknown to us" -- since, in fact, they are not like any of the individual things which we sensibly know? 3 The dilemma which the Parmenides presents us with is, I think, not directly soluble . Something else must be added if we are to move away from the sterile dialectic of things being either like o r unlike the ideas which they participate in. What we need, in fact, is a medium between the things and the ideas . The medium must possess the qualities of both the . things and ideas and must, in fact, allow us the ascent from one to the othe r. 1 II . Let us now talk about time . It was Augustine that first suggested that time could be such a medium . In Book XI of the Confessions, he writes that " even when we learn from created things, which a re subject to change, we are led to the truth which does not change . "4 This truth is the "Word" of God . The Word is eternal and contains in 5 its eternity, as he elsewhere writes, all of what Plato called "ideas ." How is the ascent to the Word and, thus, to the ideas possible? The answer that can be drawn from Augustine is that time itself makes this possibl~ . Time is a medium which links the changing thing to the eternity in which "all is present . " The linking point, as we shall see, is the now . Augustine writes : "Time . . . is never all present at once . The past is always driven on by the future, the f utu re always follows on the heels of the past, and both the past and the future have their beginning and their end in the eternal present . If only men ' s minds could be seized and held still! They would see how eternity, in which there is neither past nor future, determines both past and future time." To bring us to the point of holding our minds still, Augustine begins with the following, rather startling fact . It is that the futur e does not yet exist and the past has ceased to exist. This fact is so simple and so close to us that like a pair o f glasses, it usually escapes our notice . Personal loss and the consequent longing f o r what is past as well as acute expectation and' the tedium of waiting for what will be does, at times, give us a sense of this fact . out of this sense comes a notion of being . Being means presence, or, to put this in Greek, ousia means parousia. Now, that which is present is at the present, that is, it shares with us a now . If 48 neither the past nor the future are, if only the present really is, then this last, in fact, is the place of being . What sort of being is this? If being is presence in t h e now, then it would seem to be , like the moment that occupies t h e now, t he most f leet ing type of being. The present moment is but for a moment and slips into the past, that is, into what is not . As Augustine says: "If, therefore, the present i s time only by reason of the fact that it moves on to become the past, how can we say that even the present is, when the reason why it is is that it is not to be? In other words, we cannot right l y say that time is , except by reason of i ts intending state o f non - being . " Augustine's po~nt here is that the moment of the now is constant l y present by virtue of being constantly new . Time is a process invo lving continual change . Thi s means that the moment of the now, regarded as part of this process, is only insofar as it changes into what is not -- i. e ., the past. This a nnihilation of the moment, does not , however, mean that t he process stops . A new moment appears, moving, as it were, from the future to the present . Here we can say two things. The first is that the very being of the present moment demands both the past and the future . The present momen t would not be in time, that is, would not be at a ll , if, as Augustine says, it did not "move on to become the past." Similar l y, it could not have come to be, if it had not, as part of the future, rep laced the present moment . What we have here is something worthy of our wonder. Granting that time is a pro cess of constant change, of moment rep l acing momen t in the ongoing now , none of time's moments can exist as an independe nt being. To give a moment such a being is to think of it apart from what precedes and follows it . But this is to place it outside of time . Since, however , the moment only exists as part of time, t his is not to think it at all . The conclusion here is that the moments of time can only be conceived and can only exist by virtue of the moment s that surround them . They are all dependent memb ers of a whole. We can also say that, like the points on a line , they exist, not as discrete (or separate ) entities, but as elements of a continuum . The sec ond thing we can say about time is that the now, with its constant appearing and van ishing of moments, is a pure e x ample of what we mean by becoming . It is, we can say , a pure form of the world of sensible things . This is a world which, to quote Plato, is ever anew "created, always in motion, becoming in place and vanishing again out of place." 6 How can we say, as we earlier did, that within the thought of the now there is the thought of a link between change and eterni ty-- in particular , the eternity of the ideas ? To quote Plato again, the being of an idea is "always the same, uncreated and indestructible . " It is a being "never receiving anything into itself from withou t nor itself going out to any other." 7 How can the present now, which continues to ex ist by receiving the moments of the future and, in the same process, yielding these moment s to the past , qualify as a link to the eternal being of the ideas? That there must be something more inherent in the concept of the now is indicated by the fact that our present conception does not allow us to speak of time as dur ation , that is , as long or short stretches of time . As Augustine writes, "We speak of a 'long' time and a 'sho rt' time, though only when we mean the past or the future . . . . But how can anything which does not exist be either long or short? For the past is no mo r e and the future is not yet . " In other words, if being is presence in the now and if a stretch of time includes by definition more moments than the one that occupies the present, then such a stretch is not yet thinkable. He re we can state a paradox-- a paradox out of whi ch a proper conception of the now can be drawn . As we h ave stated, the moment o f the now is not independent . As a mo ment of time , it exists only by virtue of the pastness into which it will flow and the futurity which will replace it . Since, however , both the past and the future are not, it is , in its own being, dependent on what is not . With this, we can be said to come to the parting of the philosophical ways . Holding fast to the notion of being as presence, we can say, on the one hand, that being as presence depends upon 49 �road of is not present . Here, we enter upon the absence -- i . e . , on What . b d b · ng is what upholds firm that absence --or what is eyon ei -neo - platonism . We af · f this school of is the most famous modern representative .? being . Heidegger embrace Augustine's solution . We can assert thought.8 On the other hand, we can . Thus for the present, dependent moment that being can only be dependent on being~· h 't 'depends must also be. Being means to be' bo:-h the past aTnh~ the .fut~~=t o:o~ lt~e ~ast and the fut~must be co - present presence in the now. is means in the now. can be understood on two levels . In both of these, time a~ This solution . h ·n amon the things "outside" of us --but, in pears --not as an obJect, or. as .~ t .1 g. "g This does not mean that it is merely Augustine's words' as something sub] ecti ve. t d . th a notion of a subject which subjective. on the contrary, we . are prese.n e . "'!1 transforms our ordinar¥ understandin~ of s~bJe~~~v~t{~ments of the solution which we To begin to see this, we must first gifve h t and the future " it is only by / t d When Augustine asserts o t e pas just sugges e . " e have three components of presence : "a being present that they are, he means that: thins and a present of future things . " present o f past things~ a pres~nt of P,;esen n~ exists as "direct perception" and The .first' he says' exists as memo.ry.' ~he seco. these three e x ist "only in t he the third as "expectation" or anticipation. Since . . red and has its mind'" it is in the mind, according to Augustine, t~at tifme is meatu the time of a · · th t I measure elapsed time, or examp e, proper being. This means a . . . or the moments of its sounding. note that has sound~d, by re:a1n1ng in ~y ~~m / a short one and then a long one , Similarly, if I hear in succession two s~un s, ilrs sound "retain the sound of the Augustine wri te.s that I must, while he~~gtw~eforont~e purp~se of measurement." Thi s short one in order that I may compare t · d pth we do not · th going now gives the now a cer ain e · retention o f moments in e on ~ sion always involves a retained apprehend it as an isolated instant. Its appre en 1 . . th regard to the d d A ustine makes the same c aim wi stretch of time that prece ~ . ug 11 - resent in the now and are apprehended in future. Future moment s ~f time are a co p t ting from the present moment of the the attitude of expectation . Thus, we can, s ar. . . ant . i·ew the future as definite stretches h of h i cipated time. now, v lls the "faculties" of expectation Augustine illustrates the workings of w at e ca . ' ing a P salm one knows . He writes: and memory by the example of reci t' "Before I begin, my faculty of expectation is engaged by the whole of it . But once I have begun , as .much of the psalm as I have removed from the province of expectation and relegated to the past now engages my memory, and the scope of the action which. I am performing is divided be t ween the t~o f acu t es of memory and expectation, the one looking back to "?-he part which r have already recited,. the othe~ looking f o rward to the part which I have still to recite . But my faculty of attention is present all the while, and through it passes what was the future in t~e process of becoming the past. As the process continues, the province of memory is extended i~ proportion as that of expectation is reduced, until the whole of my expectation is absorbed. This happens when. I have finished my recitation and it has all passed. into the province of memory . " 50 Edmund Husserl, a German philosopher, has provided us with a diagram which we can adapt so as to spatially represent this process :.9 p PAST FUTURE The horizontal line represents successively given time. Reading from left to right, each of the points of the line represent later moments. The 0 point represents the present now. Thus, to its left, OP stands for the past, while to its right, OF stands for the future. Now the reason why the line PF is drawn dotted is that neither the past nor the future exists except as present. As present, the past and the future are given by P'O and OF' respectively. In other words, the vertical line passing through the O point of the now gives us in its bottom half, the "province of . memory," whose content is the retained past moments. In its top half, it gives us the province of expectation which consists of the anticipated future moments. The diagonal lines pointing away from the vertical towards the horizontal indicate the t emporal references of what we retain or anticipate . Thus, the retained stretch of time P'A' has a reference to PA, a successively experienced stretch of past time. Similarly, the anticipated stretch, F'U', refers to FU, a duration in the future we shall experience. As the arrows indicate, the reference of what we retain is to greater and greater pastness as we descent along the vertical. P' is a retention of an earlier moment than A'. The same thing holds in a reverse fashion when we ascend the vertical. F' is the anticipation of a later moment than that anticipated by U'. To make this diagram represent what happens when we recite a psalm, we must imagine the diagonal lines as remaining fixed while the vertical line · s displaced , parallel to itself, from left to right. Since the intersection of the vertical and the horizontal line continues to designate the present now, this motion represents the advance of this now into successively later moments. Let us note that F', U', A', P' are determined as points of intersection between moving vertical and the fixed diagonal lines. Therefore, as the vertical is displaced to the right, the points of intersection will be seen to move downward. This means that the anticipated duration, represented by F'U', will sink on the vertical, gradually passing through the O point, the point representing the moment of the present. As it does so, the arrows denoting the temporal reference of F'U' will be reversed. When they pointed to future moments to the right of the vertical, they were directed to the right . and downward. Pointing to the same moments that the moving vertical has placed to the left of the 0 point, the arrows will point upward and to the left. The reverse of the direction of the temporal reference means that the temporal stretch that was anticipated is now retained. The present of future things, F'U', has now become the 51 �present · of past things , P ' A' . We, thus, have achieved a r epresentation of a proc e ss in which, as Augustine says, "the province of memory is e x tended in proportion as that of expectation is reduced . " Here we may observe that insofar as the past and future exist only as present, our diagram could have been reduced to the single vertical line with it o point . The movement of the . line downward through the O point would, then, represent what is anticipated successively becoming a c tual and then passing into the retained past. As we said, Augustine's solution is capable of being interpreted on two different levels. It can be looked upon as making time merely subjective . So understood, it reduces the reality of time to the memory and expectation of an individual subject . That this is not Augustine's meaning can be gathered from what he writes immediately following his description of the reciting of the psalm. He states : "What is true of the whole psalm is also true of all its parts and of each syllable . It is true of any longer action in which I may be engaged and of which the recitation of the psalm may only be a small pa r t. It is t r ue of a man's whole lif e , o f which a ll his act ions are parts . It is true of the whole history of mankind, of which each man's life is a part." The claim that Augustine is making here is that memory and e xpectation pass far beyond the faculties of an individual subject . The vertical line which represents the two must, in fact, be drawn as infinite . This claim should not surprise us once we recall the dependence of the moments of time . The being- in- time of the present moment demands, in its dependence, the being of the past and the futu r e . This implies that we cannot grant time's existence without also granting its indefinite continuance . Indefinite cont i nuance must be assumed since the temporal being of the present moment demands the e x istence of the mo~ent that replaces it as it slips into pastness. In other wo r ds, the p r esent , in its dependence, is never without its anticipated future . This means that the vertical line, which represents on its upper half the series of anticipated moments , must be taken as indefinitely extended . Only by so conceiving it, can we make it represent the inexhaustibility of time . Since, by what we have just said, it follows that time can have no temporal beginning, we must also make the bottom half of the vertical indefinitely long . From that which has no beginning, an indefinite amount of time can be safely assumed to have elapsed. Let us, for a moment, focus on the conception of time that we have reached. We have asserted that the indefinite continuance of time springs from the fact that every moment, in order to be in time, requires the being of the moments that surround it. It is easy to see that any finite stretch of time is also in the same condition of dependence . Its first and last moments, as existing in time , demand respectively the being of what precedes and what follows this finite stretch of time . Granting this, the dependence manifested by the moments and the finite extents of time is ultimately on nothing less than the whole of time . If this dependence is to be real, if it is to be anchored in being, then we h a ve to say 't h at t h e whole o f time h as an independent being . Otherwise put: If we grant the existence of the present moment, the moment at the o point of our diagram, then the chain of dependencies that links this with the whole of time demands that this whole be given an independent being . What precisely is this temporally independent being which we are pointing to? Its thought is the thought of its not being dependent on another time in order to be. It is, thus, by def ini ti on, thethought of the whole of time -- i . e . , time as the abiding totality of its moments . That such a whole (or totality) does not itself move in time , i . e . , p r og r e ss l i ke a n individual thing that has a beginning and end - follows from the way we have defined it. There is no "time," i . e . , a time outside of the wholeness of time -- into which it could be said to progress . There is, we may observe, a name for this type of whole. It can be designated as a unique singular . Such a singular is defined as that which necessarily exists simply as one, and not as one among many individual singulars, each having the same nature. Given the dependence of the moment on the wholeness of time, we have to say that if time exists -- that is, e x ists as . a present, actual moment -- then it must also have the being of a unique singular . It must, in other words'· have the quality of wholeness that excludes any time beyond itself . All this has a reference to Augustine's argument that it was not in time that God created time . Time as a unique singular must be created all at once . It must, for any moment of it to appear, be entirely present as an inexhaustible whole . Our representation of this whole is the indefinitely extended vertical line . The fact that this line is drawn vertically signifies the co-presence of every instant of time with the present now . Here, of course, we simply follow the necessity that has guided us before . This is that if being means presence in the now, both the future and the past, in order to be, must be present in the now. The line, then, represents the co - presence in the now of every moment of time; it represents the now in which "all is present." This last is Augustine's definition of eternity. With this, the now appears with an aspect opposite to that which we began with. Before, the now appeared as a pure example of the notion of becoming . Here, the now appears under the aspect of eternity. Eternity is usually regarded as an unthinkable concept. Upon hearing the word, the mind generally stops and declares that the concept is beyond all experience. This, however, is not the case with Augustine's concept of eternity, which signifies the co-presence of distinct moments. Fragments of eternity are experienced by us at every instant of our lives. They are experienced every time we apprehend something in motion. A motion, for example, the falling of a pencil, is a temporally extended event. To apprehend it as such, I must grasp its moments as successive, i.e. , ·as occupying distinct temporal positions. The successively grasped moments cannot, however, disappear from my consciousness the instant after their apprehension. To grasp as a whole the falling of a pencil, I must retain such moments in the present, that is, in the present of my act of apprehension. In other words, they must, as distinct moments, be co-present with my ongoing now. Thus, admitting that such co- presence is the characteristic of eternity, it is by virtue of a little fragment of eternity that I grasp my pencil's falling. That the now actually embraces more than this fragment, that, in fact, it must embrace the co-presence of the totality of time's moments, follows from what we said above: Given the dependence of the moments of time, no part of time can exist separately. In other words, time must exist as a whole or not at all. We have reached a point where we can begin to understand the assertions of Augustine that we first quoted. He writes that "both the past and the future have their beginning and their end in the eternal present." He also claims that "eternity ... determines both past and future time." This eternity is the co-presence with the now of all the moments of time. It is by virtue of this co-presence that the individual moment can exist as present. The moment, as dependent, can only exist-- i.e., be present at the 0 point--by virtue of the co- presenc e o f t e whole of time, the whole upon which it ultimately depends. Now, the relation of the future and the past to the present moment can be looked upon in two ways. We can think of them as standing outside of the present moment. Here, time appears as the horizontal line of our diagram .. The 0 point, indicating the present, is both the beginning of the segment representing the future and the end of the segment representing the past. This beginning and end of the future and the past is, however, not just the present regarded as a single moment. Through it is drawn the vertical which represents the eternal present-- i . e . , the co-presence in the now of all that it depends upon. It is this eternal present which is, thus, always the beginning of the future and the end of the past when the latter are horizontally represented. To see this eternal present as determining both past and future time, we have to change our point of view and say that the past and the future do not exist outside of the present moment. In Augustine's words, "it is · only by being present that they are." If we do this, we are left with what is signified by the vertical line of0ur diagram. The line 52 53 �signifies eternity. The downward movement of the segments of the line represent the passage from anticipated to retained time . It also signifies eternity's determination of future and past time. The essential point illustrated by this spatial representation is simply this: If, in fact, past and future can be only as present, then this determination must be in terms of such presence. The co-presence of the past and future moments of time is, however, precisely what Augustine means by eternity. With these thoughts, we can catch a glimpse of et~rnity's relation to existence. Let us make a distinction between being and existence. Being, we shall say, is co-presence in the now. It is the co-presence that is shared by the anticipated fu ture, the actual present, and the retained past. Existence, according to its etymology, means standing out. Accordingly, we shall define it as the outstanding or exemplary condition of being present. It shall signify being at the 0 point of the now. With these definitions, eternity can be said to determine existence. For its determination of the passage of time is also a determination of the moments of time successively occupying the O point or actual present. It is a determination of the welling up of moments that successively take their place at the 0 point of the now . Each of these present moments is also supported by eternity. This follows insofar as each is dependent on the whole of time, on the co - presence of moments which we have called eternity. From these reflections, two thoughts can arise . The first is that God, through . his eternal word, i.e. , through his eternity, both grants existence and supports existence from moment to moment. It is, we can say, through his "grace" that a thing exists and continues to exist. God is, in the eternal co -p resence of moments, the being which supports the existing thing. This thought will be refined by us later, when we come to speak of the eternal ideas . The second thought which arises is that the notion of time as something subjective leads us, through the notion of eternity, to posit God as the ultimate subject. Put rather simply, it only is in God that the notions of anticipated and retained time can be indefinitely extended. It is only in him that they can be extended-- as they must-- to embrace the necessary wholeness of time. III. Let us now return to the problem from Parmenides which we discussed at the beginning of this lecture. As we recall the elements of this problem are two necessary, but apparently ,incompatible demands: On the one hand, the idea must be like the thing . This follows insofar as it is from our perceptions of the thing that we rise to the thought of its idea. On the other hand, if we are to avoid an infinite regress, the idea must not be like the thing. In particular, it cannot, as the thing is, be a material , spatial- temporal object . A material thing cannot have the being that defines the idea. As we saw, a material entity cannot be one thing and also be present in many. How, then can the idea both be like and unlike the thing? Our answer involves first of all our defining the idea in terms of our discussion of time. The idea is, we affirm, the shining through of eternity in each of the present, fleeting moments. It is, in terms of our diagram, the result of the vertical line passing through the ongoing now point. This definition does not make the idea into something material, i.e., a spatial-temporal entity. It does, however, allow us to say that the idea is the very presence of a thing. In fact, insofar as being and presence continue to be the same for us, the definition allows us to say that the idea is the very being of a thing. At first our definition may seem mysterious. It is, however, composed of common notions. Thus, when we say that the idea is the very presence or being of a thing, we are affirming that we grasp the thing as there, as present before us in the very 54 same process by which we grasp its idea. The idea is one thing in many . Thus, our claim is that it is through our recognition of fdentical elements in a multipliciiy t hat we grasp both a thing and its idea. Where are we to locate this multiplicity? Let us recall our assertion that it i~ from the perceptions of a thing that we rise to the thought of its idea . It is also from these same perceptions that we apprehend the thing as present , as being there before our eyes. Now, if we take the multiplicity in question to refer to our perceptions of some object, we can begin to see the type of entity required to solve the Parmenidean problem. 10 Let us consider, in abstraction, an individual perception. We say "in abstraction" because, like the moment that contains it, such a perception is never actua lly discrete or separable from those that preceded and follow it . When we do consider the individual percept ion, it shows us a remarkable characteristic . It is both like and unlike t he thing perceived . It is like it insofar as the content of the perception becomes for us the content of the thing perceived . Thus , the redness I see can, under certain conditions, become for me the redness of an obj ect present to me . We shall mention these conditions later ~ First, howeve r, let us observe how unlike this perception is to its object . The perception, as contained in a moment of time , does not endure. It exists, in t he "outstanding" sense of the term, existen ce, only for an ins tant. The object, however , continues to e x ist, and hence to endure moment after moment as it affords us continually new perceptions . The object, moreover, is a spatial thing. We can measure it and predicate of it , in relation to ourselves , largeness or sma llness . None of this is possible with regard to an individual perception. Let us say that I see a tower in the distance . Can I tell from my single perception if the tower is large or small? Can I put a tape measure to my mind and measure my perception as so many inches or feet across? The obvious answer is that I cannot. In fact, as a slight reflection will show, it is only through the temporal ordering and arrangement of my perceptions that I have any notion of the size of the tower . I predicate largeness of the tower because, as I approach it, my perception of it takes up more and more of my visual field . Similarly, I take the tower to be a three - dimensional spatial object because, as I walk around it, my perceptions arrange themselves as a series of perspectual views . All of this is , of course, very elementary . It does, however, show us that it is not through a single perception that we arrive at the predicates appropriate to spatial - temporal, material things. Let us repeat the qu est ion we raised: Where are we to locate the multiplicity through which we perceive both the thing and its idea? Taking the multiplicity as referring to our perceptions, the answer is obvious . All of our perceptions, along with the moments which contain them, are retained in the ongoing now . Their proper place is in that eternity which is the co - presence of the totality of retained and anticipated moments . Now, when we regard what we have called the shining through of this eternity, we see the conditions that allow us to grasp an object . We opserve first of all, that although the retained perceptions are distinct in their temporal references, showing themselves as more or less past, this does not mean that we apprehend them one by one . On th~ contrary, we view them all together. This follows from the non - independence of the moments that contain them . This non - independence means that we cannot think of something as past without also thinking of the moments and contents that follow this in time . What we retain is, therefore, apprehended as a unified perceptual e x perience . It is not apprehended as discrete moments and discrete perceptions. What is the result of our apprehending our retained perceptions " all together"? Such perceptions, when viewed as a whole, are placed for us in a unity of coincidence. By this, I mean that they have a presence that is analogous to that of a series of overlapping transparencies. Now, in this coincidence, contents that are identical and, to a lesser extent, contents that are similar in quality, act to reinforce the presence of their qualities . The result of this, I believe, is the shining through of a one in many that allows us to grasp both 55 �the thing and its idea. Let me illustrate this by an example. I take my pencil and continually turn it in my hand. As I do so, the contents that I perceptually experience constantly enter into the retention of my memory. The pencil has only a finite number of features and, thus, the contents that I do retain, as I constantly view it from one side and then another, will recur. In the unity of coincidence in which all these contents are placed, the recurrent contents will reinforce one another. They will, as we put, "shine through." This shining through has, we say, two specific effects. In the first place, it allows me to affirm that my present, momentary perception is not an isolated experience, but is rather a perception of some object. The content of this perception is re-enforced by the identical, recurring contents that I have previously experienced. It, thus, attains a reference to what I have previously experienced. It becomes a perception of a feature of an enduring, object. With this I pass from a judgment of perception, for example, the judgment that I see yellowness, to a judgment of experience. The latter consists in the affirmation that there is something there, enduring before me, of which I am presently having perceptions . It is a claim concerning being. The second effect of this shining through is the apprehension, in a primitive form, of the idea of the object. The similar elements which recur and which allow me to unify my perceptions as perceptions of definite features of one and the same object, also allow me to predicate definite qualities ·of the object. They give me the definite qualities which form the elements of the idea of the object, for example, the yellowness, length, and shape of a pencil. Several things can be said about this solution. The first is that the idea that arises in this process is both like and unlike the object. Its likeness consists in the fact that its content is identical to that of the object. Its unlikeness consists in the fact that it itself is not a spatial-temporal object. A spatial-temporal object appears perspectively. It changes its appearance from moment to moment as we view it from different sides. What we retain, however, is fixed in eternity. We cannot take a remembered perceptual experience and examine it like a physical object, turning it around so as to view it from a side which we have not yet seen. Because of this, the idea which results from the shining through of what we retain is not like and can never be like the thing in the sense of itself being something spatial- temporal. The second point is that the process, which we described as giving us the ide~ of a single object, can be repeated again and again to give us the idea of a number of objects. Thus, I can view in succession a number of pencils . The same process of retention, unification and reinforcement of similar contents will occur. Here, however, the resultant idea will apply not to one but to many pencils. When we ask how far we can continue this process, two alternative answers appear . We may take our description as purely psychological in the modern sense. It will then be taken as applying only to the individual subject with his limited abilities. Al t e r na:tely, we may t a ke i t as applying to the one subject who is adequate to the necessary wholeness of time. Here, anticipation and retention extend to the totality of moments and possible contents contained in these moments. The shining through that occurs through the coincidence of these contents will then be a shining through of ideas that are truly eternal. In this case, the "place" of the ideas will be in that eternity which Augustine calls the Word of God. We mentioned earlier that God, in the eternal co-presence of moments, is the being which supports the existing thing. We may now refine this thought by saying that the ideas that have their place in this co-presence support not just the existence but also the definite qualities of the thing. Why should we, in fact, follow Augustine into this second interpretation? The answer, I believe, is contained in the notion of time. Time, as we said, is a unique singular. If it does exist, it must exist as a whole that has no beyond. The same can be said for the idea. Each idea, if it does exist, exists as an all embracing whole. _ hus, the idea of man properly einbraces all men. ·rt is not added to by the T ~ultiplicatio~ of e x amples falling under in the same sense as ti . ~ its copcept . It is' thus' a unique . d. . me is . It is one thing and has singular in i v~dual~ of a similar type . Grantin thi no beyond in terms of to arise , it must do so th r ough the g s, we have to say that if such an idea is insofar as its notion invol v es the : f the wholeness of time . This follows an example of its notion Does such 'd o ~11 that has been and all that will be 't · · an i ea exist? G' th i exists as certainly as the wholeness f t ' ·. iven e above, we can say that the moment, we can also say that it exist~ a ime ex~sts . Adm~tting the dependence of Let me end this lecture with a uest' s certai~ly as this present moment does . been preserved in bei'ng by you ? q ion. Has this moment really ended , or has it . p:::::c:ce Footnotes : 1· 2. 3. 4. Parm . ' 132 d - 3,· trans . my own . See Ibid ., 131 a ff . See Ibid . , 133 b ff . All dir.ect quotation s from Augustine Augus t ine - -Confessions, trans . R. S are taken from "Book XI ' " Sain t . . London, 1964 . ' . Pine - Coffine, Penguin Classics, LIII4, 5. See Au~ustine, "Concerning Eighty Three Essential August' t Different Questions, Question 46," The 6 T' ine, rans . Vernon J . Bourke New k ' Yor ' 1964, p . 62 . imaeus, 52 a, trans . Jowett 7. Ibid . . 8. See M. Heidegger "W · ' as ist Metaphysik " Weg k 6, pp. 16- 17 . , mar en, Frankfurt am Main, 1967, p. 9. Fo~ the original diagram, see E . Husserl z . . Zeitbewusstseins ed R B h ' ur Phaenomenologie des inneren --;:;:;:;-----::-::--~=-=-::::.::::~, • • oe m, Haag 1966 28 10 . The Platcfoic word for "ide " . ·a' ' p. . a is ei os It is de . d f second aorist of eido h' h --·-· rive rom eidon the . - - w ic means "to perceive " O . , is, thus, an attempt to get at th . . ur analysis of perception e root meaning of eidos. 56 57 �Emma's Reconciliation Of Manners· And Honesty Lenore Brown party in Mrs. Elton and Mr. Knightley are discussing the strawberry picking Chapter 42 of Emma. Mrs. Elton says: Nothing can be more simple, you see .... There is to be no form or parade--a sort of gypsy party. We are to walk about your gardens, and gather the strawberries ourselves, and sit under trees; - -and whatever else you may like to provide, it is all to be out of do?rs--a table spread in the shade, you know. Everything as natural and simple as possible . Is not that your idea? Mr. Knightley replies: Not quite. My idea of the simple and the natural will be to have the table spread in the dining - room. The nature and the simplicity of ladies and gentlemen, with their servants and furniture, I think is best observed by meals within doors. . Mr. Knightley firmly believes that form and regularity are necessary for ladies and gentlemen. By contrast , gypsies, no matter how gay. Mrs. El~on may i~~gine th~ir formless wandering live without any regulations in their behavior or actions, which Harriet unfortunat,ely discovers when they attack her. The ~ypsies' lack of . f~rm threatens her mental and physical well-being. All the contrivances of the din~ng room, on the other hand, are expressly for the mental and physical comfort .of its occupants. Drafts are stopped and polite conversa~ion is served so that ladies and gentlemen can continue being ladies and gentlemen wi:h th: least amount of effort. The dining room is the paradigm of manners in Highbury society. "Rational society"--so called because it is considering or considerate, not necessarily logical--holds forth in contrived settings such as dining rooms or balls, with manners equally contrived. In Hartfield with Mr. KnightleX E~a may speak as candidly as she chooses, but in the Weston's drawing room, even . with the pe~p e she is familiar with she must listen politely to Mr. Elton as he monopolizes her attention, thoug~ she would rather hear about the expected arrival of Frank Churchill. Such sacrifices make for others' comfort in Highbury . Although some of these manners may seem insincere to us (instead of buying . a screen to keep the drafts away from Mr. Woodhouse, we. wou.ld ~robably rather ask him to stay home), they are necessary in making everyday life in High~ury more agreeable, just as not bumping into one another when dancing makes dancing more agreeable. Since the dance in the small room (Chapter 29) must continue, the fewer toes stepped on, the better. The reason for providing one another with the comfort of manners is comfort itself. Another element necessary for polite society, besides the ameniti~s of the din~ng room, is mannerly language. Indeed, it is one of the most useful vehicles for making others comfortable. While talking to Miss Bates, Emma hears of another letter from Jane Fairfax, and though she detests hearing the contents of it, she replies, "Have you heard f r om Miss . Fairfax so lately? I am extremely happy . I hope she is well?"(19) On the other hand , it is only when she is in the completely artless environment of the Box Hill party that she asks Miss Bates to limit herself to uttering no more than three dull things at one time--a clever, yet viciously honest request . She asks this afte r the group has split up and w,pndered formlessly, like gypsies. When she is severely chastized by Mr. Knightley, we realize that language in Highbury must be as artificial as its manners. It must be conscious of and caring for its listeners . Yet good language is described as being more than mannerly in Emma. Austen praises Mr . Knightley for speaking in "plain, unaffected, gentleman- like En glish" (51) . The language of society should· be plain and unaffected in addition to polite and caring. But how can gentlemanly language be plain and unaffected when gentlemanly manners are not - -that is, when the way to make other people feel comfortable is to be artificially concerned or to hide some of the truth? The book answers this question while creating a new one. The manners of Highbury, though gentlemanly, are supposed to be plain and unaffected also, so that whatever permits two seemingly contradictory qualities in Highbury's manners also makes those qualities possible in its language . A man should have "truth and principle ... in every transaction of his life," Emma says(46) . Mr. Knightley also tells Emma to value "the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other" (51). Have we seen truth and sincerity in the dining room? Is Emma plain and unaffected when she tells Miss Bates that she is very happy about the news of Jane's letter? Does her caring for Miss Bates mitigate the insincerity of her speech and manners? Honesty is the norm between Enuna and Mr. Knightley, but can it be so easily maintained throughout Highbury? Mr . Knightley actually upbraids Enuna for speaking with too much truth at the Box Hill party . Surely the principle he praises does not consist of applying truth and sincerity to others only when it is flattering to do so . That is no principle. A. similar paradox arises when Mrs. Weston, in planning her Box Hill party, wants to have it in some "quiet, unpretending, elegant way, infinitely superior to the bustle and preparation, the regular eating and drinking, and pic - nic parade of the Eltons and the Sucklings" (46). "Unpretending and elegant" echoes "unaffected and gentleman- like," and will help to explain the paradox. Mrs . Weston wants an elegant party, not a picnic, which is not only a way of eating but is any carefree experience, like the carefree strolling of Mrs. Elton . She wants form, not a spontaneous, carefree, and careless troup of gypsies. Elegance for her is not synonymous with Mrs . Elton's pearl- studded dress; her notion of an elegant party is a well - chosen or well - selected one, like an elegant proof. She has thought everything through carefully. (In contrast, Mrs Elton presents her ideas for a strawberry party in a sloppy, inelegant way . ) The connection between elegant and gentleman- like is n ow c l e a r. Well- chosen, well - thought- out elegance is appropriate for a caring, considerate lady or gentleman . All the pains and contrivances of Highbury manners are thought out and well- chosen for the comfort of all. With that explanation society's manners lose some of their stain of unnaturalness in our eyes, and the paradox of "unaffected and elegant" weakens. Emma is not pretending when she diplomatically tries to divert her father from the controversy over Mr . Perry versus Mr . Wingfield; she is considering the feelings of the others, and elegantly choosing a way to avoid more pain when she asks Mr. John Knightley "about your friend Mr. Grahm' s intending to have a bailiff from Scotland" (12) . An elegant proof is not insincere, even though it is made with thought, care, and no guesswork, just as politeness is not insincere, even though it arises from thought, care and nothing left to chance. Sincerity has nothing to do with spontaneity. One may at first be tempted to laugh at Miss Bates but it is not pretense that one wants her to have some dignity. • 59 58 �Often, however, among Highbury's well- bred we see truth and elegance forgotten, and forgotten at some of the most dramatic parts of the book. For example, Emma loses sight of curtesy or elegance when Harriet confesses her love for Mr . Knightley. She "hastily" replies, "Have you any idea of Mr . Knightley' s returning your affection?"(42). Elegance is never hasty in Highbury, especially in Hartfield, where every change is accomplished slowly for Mr . Woodhouse's benefit . Harriet, exposed to many traumas thus far, usually handles them well, at least in public, and so when Mr. Woodhouse's footsteps are heard in the hall, it is significant that "Harriet was much too agitated to encounter him. 'She could not compose herself,'" (47) and flees the room through another door. Emma's attack has discomposed her as much as the gypsy attack did . Harriet must flee from both. Composure, consideration, and society all crumble in this scene, because of Emma's thoughtlessness . When Emma examines her heart after blurting out her question, she discovers the cause of her agitation: she loves Mr. Knightley and is jealous of Harriet . Although she is usually elegant and sincere with others, she has not until now been sincere or elegant with herself. Having honesty and manners with other people presupposes sincerity and elegance within oneself . The very thing--her quickness of mind--that causes her to deceive herself, oddly enough is also responsible for her cleverness and her poor matchmaking abilities . Emma can cleve rly decipher a puzzle: she can scramble letters around in her mind quickly, and when they form a recognizable group (a word), she knows that her solution is correct. She also quickly guesses words at charades, and when two of them court and ship combine to make a third--courtship--she knows that she must have the right word . Later, when guessing who has whose affections, she quickly scrambles people around in her mind. But life presents no way for her to check her answers to show her whether she is correct. She can guess with one clue that Jane Fairfax and Mr . Dixon are in love, but she can not compare her answer to any pattern; nothing "clicks." The idea of Jane and Mr. Dixon has no second half of a charade to match the first clue with, even if it were true . Mental thoroughness does not necessarily develop from cleverness or mental quickness; just because "a mind lively and at ease ... can see nothing that does not answer" (27), it does not necessarily answer correctly. Emma has tried to guess why Mr . Knightley must never marry, but she is content with her first answer of wanting to preserve little Henry's inheritance. It is not until she has the second clue- - her own jealousy--to check her first answer against, that she knows that she is in love. Emma then learns the whole truth "with the speed of an arrow" ( 4 7) . She was not sincere with herself about her feelings of jealousy or of love. We see Mr. Knightley also forgetting the rules of polite society because he fails to apply them within himself. He is insincere with Emma. When he asks her whether she has noticed any love between Frank and Jane, she replies firmly but playfully, "no" . Although he feels obligated to protect Emma's reputation, feeling, and safety from the affections of "a young man who seemed to love without feeling" ( 42) , and although he is willing "to risk everything that might be involved in an unwelcome interference" (42), he leaves Hartfield irritated and without pursuing the subject further. He leaves not precisely lying to Emma, but not telling her what he sincerely feels. Sometimes it is simply polite to neglect to mention certain opinions in Highbury, especially when they are careless and hurtful. But here, his omission is not tactful, but improper, because he wants to "preserve her" and does ~not. He flees Hartfield "that he might not be irritated into an absolute fever, by the fire which Mr. Woodhouse's tender habits required almost every evening throughout the year" (42). But he runs away from more than Hartfield's fires, he runs away from his own. It is ironic that he has told Emma earlier that if she "were as much guided by nature in her estimate of men and women [as she is concerning children] , we might always think alike" (12). Mr. Knightley himself needs to be guided more by the spontaneity of nature and less by judgement. It is a new feeling for him to want 60 Emma all for himself. He has always loved her but her affection for him has never before been .threatened; now that she flirts .with Frank he must accept h_is new · , feelings of Jealousy. But he is so far from being a creature of impulse that he cannot acknowledge his own impulsive feelings. Even when he finds out that Frank has supposedly deserted Emma, he wants only to make his affection for her a little more felt. Only once does he succumb . to impulse; his proposal "had been t he work of the moment, the immediate effect of what he had heard, on his fee lings .... in the momentar~ conquest of eagerness over judgement" (49). So Mr. Kniqhtley, in denying the feelings that appear in a moment, is not truthful with Emma; he breaks his own code of truth and sincerity within himself; consequently, he fail s to b~ a q entleman with Emma. Is it simply impossible to be as honest and thoughtful within o neself as it is to be so with others? Or must we first be honest and thoughtful within ourselves before we ca~ b~ 1~0 with. others? In a house that is "just what it ought to be, and ... looks what it is (42) it seems that its company must be that way too; that is, they must know who they are before they can look like what they are. Or must the appearances be doomed never to correspond with the self? How would one prepare for the dining room if outward and inward thoughts did correspond? In other words, how can one be sincere and thoughtful, or unpretendinq and elegant, to oneself as well as to others? Must a gentleman periodically excus~ himself from the table for a few years in order to understand his true feelings and t~oughts? Or do his true feelings and thoughts become apparent in society and to himself gradually, so that he may simultaneously pass the peas and act on his own true feelings? How can Highbury prevent double standards between its public and its private lives? . Mr. Knightley retreats from society to understand himself; for after Emma tells him that Frank does not love Jane, he takes "a hasty leave, and walks home to the ~oolness and solitude of Donwell Abbey" (42) . The Abbey's coolness and solitude make it out to be the very monastery its name implies. An abbey is a place for co~templation and reflection, and Donwell itself is a pun on done well. Mr. Knightley does everything well there; he examines his soul carefully, thoroughly, and elegantly . ~lone he has no sudden surprises of love or jealousy to examine at a moment's no~ice. He ~an accept Frank Churchill's presence in Highbury and think it through. His heated Jealousy is cooled now that he is away from Hartfield that is, now that he is away from those who kindle his fires. ' But does this retreat, a retreat to monkish living, prepare him for society? Donwell has "all the old neglect of prospect" (42) both of its stream as well as of Highbury's lively society. It is all very well to contemplate one's love but how is that possible in the atmosphere of a monastery, the very atmosphere tha~ cools his love? How can he understand or feel there the sort of thing that happens at a dinner or a ball? He may anticipate another man cutting in on his partner but he will not fee~ it until it happens to him. Mr. Knightley had years to a~ticipate Frank 1 s arrival and Emma's r~action to him, but he could fully feel its effects only when Frank actually arrived. The . intensity of some feelings are due to their un~xpectedn~ss. Accustomed to planning the locations of his paths and fences, Mr. Knig~tley ~inds the very rapidity of feelings that are generated in public to be new to him. His elegant mind has much exercise at Donwell Abbey, but not so his sincere mind. . Alt~ough the residents of Highbury need to be sincere and thoughtful in their own ~inds in order to be unpretending and caring with one another in the dining room, it is now cle~r that they need to be in the dining room itself to be aware of some of those_ f:elings and thoughts . And in fact, members of Highbury society are put into t~e ~ining room from a very young age. While they fill their plates, they are also f ~l~ing themselves; they become the people they are because they are put into the dining room. In this sense society is rather artificial, because it is imposed on 61 �one by other people. Insincerity exists at least temporarily --as when a child fi r st taught to say "thank you" may not necessarily mean it . Although this polite society is somewhat artificial, it is nevertheless firmly a part of everyone except the gypsies in Emma . In fact, it is unnatural to leave Highbury society once there . Mr. Knightley is away from Donwell Abbey (seclusion) "five hours where [Emma] is absent [from Hartfield (society)] one," according to Emma in chapter 36. Emma can certainly never pull away from Highbury, and Mr . Knightly runs to it. Even Donwell Abbey is partly "comfortable," that is, ready to serve others. In addition to its being Mr. Knightley's retreat, it is what it ought to be--the home of a "family untainted in understanding or gentility . " If solitude is not natural for the people of Highbury, neither is being alone in a crowd or estranged from one's group. At the Box Hill party, there was a "want of union" among the picnickers because "they separated too much into parties" (43) . Being alone in a group is as wrong for them as wandering like gypsies . Solitude and society are both slightly unnatural for gentlemen and ladies. What is most natural to them are the most striking parts of the book, where someone has a strong feeling for another person, knows it, and expresses it . Sincerity and caring truly merge here; neither quality belongs exclusively to their personal lives or exclusively to their social world . When Emma visits Jane to wish her well on her engagement and to apologize for having hurt her, Mrs . Elton's presence makes it "expedient to compress all her friendly and all her cong r atulatory sensations into a very, very earnest shake of the hand" (53) . The true joy caused by their sincerity of feeling and caring gives us a hint as to what members of society are meant to be . In contrast, we feel the effect of its members acting merely as they ought when Emma and Jane follow "the other ladies out of the room, arm in arm, with an appearance of good will highly becoming to the beauty and grace of each" (34) . Emma has felt and contemplated both care and joy in private before she shakes Jane's hand, and both care and joy are heightened when she is with Jane. She has no such contemplation or feeling before walking arm in arm with Jane; indeed she has only come to a hurried conclusion about Jane's "affair" with Mr. Dixon. We witness the same thing happening after Frank writes his reflective letter to Mrs. Weston. He, Jane, and Emma are at the Westons' when Frank asks Erruna if a certain ornament will be beautiful in Jane's dark hair. "'Very beautiful, indeed, ' replied Erruna: and she spoke so kindly, that he gratefully burst out, 'How delighted I am to see you again!'" (54) Frank and Emma are finally honest with and caring for each other. A little earlier, they had both sincerely reflected on their feelings for one another - -Frank in his letter and Emma upon hearing the news of their engagement. Nothing is contradictory. The spontaneous feelings generated at the Westons', the sincerity with the self, the deep reflections and the expressed kindnesses all match up in this happy moment. The public and private selves do not have to disagr ee. The most striking scene, and the one that unites unaffectness and gentility, is the proposal chapter. Both Emma and Mr. Kinghtley have realized their love, yet feel it more when faced with each other; both have reflected thoughtfully on their love, yet care more for each other in person. They are sincere and spontaneous in their love. No hypocrisy exists here between truth and caring, as it might exist between Emma's true feelings for Mrs. Elton and her politeness to her. Do Erruna and Mr. Knightley need Highbury (polite society) for such a meshing of truth and elegance? Love would unite these two qualities anyway, but in Highbury they unite often. At a dinner party at Hartfield Mrs. Weston's "looks and words had nothing to restrain them. She was happy, she knew she was happy, and knew she ought to be happy" (35). Like Emma, who had English to check her scrambled letters against to discover whether they "clicked," MlllS. Weston has a model of living to check her actions and feeling against: that ever-present "ought" throughout Erruna. Emma learns about this model during the merging of her spontaneous mind and Mr. . Knightley' s elegant mind, when she says "just what she ought, of course" ( 49 ) Weston knows that sh~ "must love Frank." That is one precept in the model whi~hM~~~ can check her feelings and actions against Privately she has f · 1 h · ' care ully and caring Y t ought about an~ worried about Frank with all her elegance of mind. She can exp~ess that love to him and feel it more when she sees him. She does not love Fra~k simply because she is supposed to; but that pre-established code of sincerel caring for others strengthens the love which she privately feels for him Sh k y she love h . h . e nows . s er new son wit out any "oughts," but those "oughts" help her she is meant to love him. realize that Just as Mrs. Weston feels that she is meant to love Frank, because she does and because she ought to, so do the people at the ball (that is, in society itself ) feel they were meant to be there, because they do find it "delightful" and because it should be delightful. The shrubbery around Hartfield like polite societ · those who are in it the feeling that they are meant 'to be there Li' ke by,. giv~s · t h bb · . · eing in socie y, s ru ery is a combination of what really is--the plants--and what should be--formal paths and shaped hedges. It is a visible combination of truth and el~ga~ce, and undoubtedly helps to combine Emma's spontaneity with Mr Knightley's principles. · Never had the exquisite sight, smell, sensation of nature, tranquil, warm, and brilliant after a storm been more attractive to her. She longed for th~ serenity they might gradually introduce; and ... she lost no time in hurrying into the shrubbery.- - There with spirits freshened, and thoughts a li ttl~ relieved, she had taken a few turns, when she saw Mr. Knightley passing through the garden door, and coming towards her. (49) is The garden cleanses ~nd restores and brings together the two characters. Society needed in the marriage of sincerity and elegance of mind, as its image, the garden~ mak~s clear· In nature, one may enjoy its "brilliance after a storm, 11 but one e~J 0 Y~ it a~ a visitor. In the garden, however, Emma's spirits are freshened and her mind is reliev~d because she belongs there. She knows where the paths turn and what the ~lowers will lo?k like; this is not an adventurous walk, it is a comforting one. It is also ~omforting because one is aware that everyone in it knows where the paths turn· A Highbury resident knows that the principles of honesty and manners belong to everyone. The beauty of the garden transcends nature because one feels he belongs there. The beauty of living in society transcends truth d elegance because, rather than simply enjoying that beauty, one is at home in it. an 62 63 �Edgar's Growth In King Lear Christian Holland Edmund begins his plo t again st father a n d bro ther first by writing a l etter which sets out his. own villainous designs upon Gloucester's title and estate, next by forging the letter with Edgar's signature, and last by directing his father to read it and make of it what he will. Having just witnessed the breach of the bond between Lear and Cordelia, "there's father against child" (I, ii, 121: , Gloucest.er persuade~ himself o f the likelihood of the letter's contents, "there s s.on. against f~:~~d (120) . He blindly exchanges Edgar f o r Edmund -- a would-be parri~ide -- and . for Edgar __ a dutiful son -- just as Lear earlier exchanged Cordelia for ~oneril and Regan, and Regan and Goneril for Cordelia. That's how Edmund's plo~ beg~ns to take shape. But if he is to fashion a fully formed drama, he must practice his craft on Edg ar. 1 · h· When Edgar first enters King Lear Edmund announces his brother's r o e in is drama: "Pat! he comes, like thecaiastro phe of the o l~ comedy" ( 145 ) . In early c omedy the plot was made t o seem all of a pi e::e until suddenly, throug.h some u nexpected and timely event, the parts fell t o gether to form a whole and bring the la t o a clo se. similarly, Edmun d• s plo t is fully worked . out only through ~he ~ne!pected and timely e n trance o f his brother. Edgar's role is t o be the conc~usion o f Edmun d• s drama __ in more ways than Edmund knows. But Edmund's drama is an imitation i n min iature of Shakespeare's g reater drama. Possibly Edgar plays the same r ole in the play as a whole. . Edmund's wo rds have a s p e c i a l sign ific a nc e intended by the greate.r ~ramatist. catastrophe a n d c omedy app ear just this once i n King ~· They ~pp ly fi tt i ngly on l y Edgar is the c onc l u sion o f Shakesp eare's drama literal l y bec a u se t~: t o Edgar. de livers the f inal . quatrain, but mo re importantl y b ;cause ~e alo ne amon g 1 ( IV~ vi~ 136 ) , he a lon e at s u rvivo rs of King Lear is n o t a "ru in'd piece o f nature t h e play's c l~i s ripe t o take Lear's r ole as kin g . Edg ar is like a ~erson out ~~ a c omedy bec ause h is characteristic mo vemen t i s upward. He starts out in a s t ateh ign orance a n d s h allowness, "con temned a n d flat t ere d" (I V , i, 2 ) ; he passes t h r oug ~ eriod o f awesome s u fferin g requ irin g g r eat p atien 7e w.ith Lear . o n t h e heath a n ~loucester on the cliff; and the outcome of his travails is an en ightened, deepened, e nnobled , a nd continued li fe. I shal l f ollow Edg ar I n t h e most p e destr ian way , s c e n e by s c e ne , act by act, t thr ough t h e p l a y p a y i ng p arti cular atten tion to his dress, speech ~ a n d acts. I : a: s t o l earn s omething about what i t mean s t o g r ow up, u p t o t h e p oin t whe re a ma 'd ready t o be k i ng a nd r ule over o t h ers. Along the way Edg ar may serve a s a g~ i e through t h e t hor n s and thicket s o f Lear's a n d Glouceste r's c h arac t ers. Edgar a side , try i ng to ma k e thi s passage is the g reates t c h a lle nge a n d the g rea tes t reward o f any reading of King ~· i . Hi s Father 's Son At the outset Glouce s ter i s joc o s e and well- meaning , f r ee a nd e a s y, ~ut shor t s ighte d, c a reles s , gullible , i rrespon s ible , and supers titio~ s. In. the ope ning scene , betraying his lack o f in s ight into hi s own wr ongdoing, he Je s t s with Kent a bout what "good sport " was had at his bastard son's "making" (I, i, 23). He tells Kent in the very presence of Edmund that he has "so often b-lushed to acknowledge [the whoreson]" that now he is "brazed to't" (10). Gloucester's lack of care for the feelings and the dignity of his son is the fi r st showing of that cruelty which is characteristic of King Lear, the cruelty which arises from an inability or an unwillingness to recognize and respect a fellow person . With such words and deeds Gloucester harden s the unfeeling and indignant por tion of Edmund's heart ; other more considerate wo r ds and deeds might have encour aged Edmund to respond to his father with gratitude rathe r than treachery . App r opriately , Edgar later refers to the place where Gloucester begat Edmund as "dark and vicious" (V, iii, 175) . Gloucester's dealings with others are shrouded in dar kness . He takes note of the people and the actions which surround him, but he does not look beneath the shadowy surface to see them as they are . He is easily gulled by Edmund's forged letter . Showing no grasp of either Edmun d 's o r Edgar's character , he accepts the whole story even though, or perhaps because, i t po r tends his own death a t hi s elder son ' s hands . Right away he takes it upon himse lf to "appr ehend" the "abomi nable villain" (I, ii, 83) as if this were the responsible thing to do rathe r than goi ng deepe r into the matter . Gloucester finally att r ibute s Edgar 's supposed " unnatu r a l d ea ling " (III , iii, 1) to the "late eclipses o f the s un and moon " (I , i i , 111) . Par odying hi s fathe r's superstition , Edmund promises Edgar that a p r ediction based upon an ast r olog i cal s t udy ha s p r oved correct : . . • • • • as o f unnatur alness between the child and t he paren t, death, dear th , dissolution of ancient amities , d i v i sions in state, menaces and maledictions against King and nobles, needless diffidences, banishment o f f r iends, dissipation of cohorts , nuptial breac he s . . . • (142 - 152) . As a noble Edga r is thr eatened with harm; what is more, so are his fathe r and hi s k ing . But since Edmund puts his true account of past, present, and future happening s i n the context of a study o f the star s , Edgar pays him no heed . Edgar~s duty is to ask his b r othe r what evidence besides the stars he has to demonstr ate . that the predicti on is cor rect . Instead Edgar questions Edmund in jest : "How long have you been a sectary astr onomical? " ( 163) . "Come , come ," says Edmund , gratified to discove r that his b r o the r wil l be as easily gulled as his fathe r, " when saw you my fathe r last?" (164) . Edgar does not rema r k upon Edmund ' s patronizing my fathe r and informs his b r other, " Why, t he night gone by " (165) . It makes sense that Gloucester and Edga r see one anothe r in the da r k . Neither unde r stands the other . Ther e is no trust between them . Edgar says almost nothing in this scene . What we learn f rom his silence is tha t he i s without expe r ience and prudence. He is passive, untried , untested . Nine times he speaks: five are questio ns; thr e e a r e simple answe r s to Edmun d' s care f u lly crafted questions ; and the last is a dumb r ecognition of fact : "Some villain hath done me wrong" (177) . Edmund's e x change with his brother is full of irony, all at Edga r .' s e xpense . Edgar is shown to be an innocent fool . When Edmund advises his older brother to "go armed" (124), and Edgar, in weakness and dismay and fear, responds , "Armed, brother?" (125) , Edmund says , "Br othe r, I advise you to the best . Go armed . I am no honest man if there be any good meaning toward you" (186) . It is noteworthy that Edgar is not armed, that he is even taken aback at the thought of being armed . A true nobleman, like the great knight of La Mancha, ought to be clothed with a sword . Gloucester being a poor father it comes as no surprise that Edgar is idle and asleep, smugly secur e and protected, and that he fails to recognize that his position is a privileged one which carries with it weighty responsibilities. Edgar does not feel the p r esence of others who are less fortunate than he is and who rely on men 65 64 �with native abilities such as he has. Edmund sums up Gloucester and Edgar with his Kent, in disguise and in the stocks, asserts that "nothing almost sees miracles / But misery" (II, ii, 163). Just then Edgar appears, in misery. He has fled from his father's castle, his own home, and is now in a wood, and out of breath as the aspirants in his speech show: "I heard myself proclaimed,/And by the happy hollow of a tree / Escaped the hunt • • • (III, i, 1-3). Gloucester has ordered that Edgar be sought out, captured, and punished for his crime. He h.a~ sent ~dgar' s picture "far and near, that all the kingdom may have due note of him. . (II, i, 84 ) • The stage directions demand that Gloucester be surrounded by torchlig~t when he utters these words. He is a cave-dweller. He is certain that he knows his s o n when all he has to go o n is hearsay, and he seeks t o make o thers kn ow Edgar as he kn ows him -- wi t h the aid o f an i mage. on ce thrown back upon himself and challenged to fe n d f o r himself, Edgar pro ves to be extremely res o urceful. He strips himself o f his fine and dandy clo thes and takes on the disguise of a Bedlam beggar: " • the basest and most poorest shape/ That even penury, in c o ntempt o f man, / Brought near t o beast. • . " ( II, · iii, 6 - 9) . Edgar echoes Gloucester, when, in fear o f Lear's rag e and fury, he warns Cornwall not to put Kent in the stocks, not t o inflict upon the king's servant the punishment reserved f o r "basest and contemned' st wretches" (II, ii, 140) . Later Lear echoes Gloucester and Edgar, when, in response t o Go neril' s and Regan's "Monster Ingratitude!" (I, v, 2), he says: " . . • our basest beggars/ Are in the poorest thing superfluous./A1low not nature mo re than nature needs. / Man's life is cheap as beast's. • • "(II, iv, 260-263 ) . This similarity in their speech suggests that there is some special intimate bond between Gloucester, Edgar, and Lear, that there is something they share in conunon. Edgar and Kent are also joined in partnership. They are both outcasts, idiotai. The stage set reveals their common plight. Edgar enters. the wood while Kent is in the stocks outside Gloucester's castle. In effect Edgar delivers his first soliloquy silhouetted against the figure of Kent in the stocks. Edgar's new outward appearance aptly reflects his inner wretched condition. His nakedness serves to unite and to harmonize what he seems to be and what he is. His former dress as a nobleman was a cover for something else, something, if not contrary to the nature of nobility, at least falling far short of it. It was not fit.ting for Edgar to be dressed as a nobleman, and now, as a pariah, his nakedness suits him: "Poor Turlygod, Poor Tom/ That's something yet: Edgar I nothing am" (II, iii, 20-21). Again, through his words, Edgar joins in fellowship with Lear and Kent. Edgar's "I nothing am" echoes the Fool's words to Lear: "Thou art nothing" (I, iv, 200). And his "something yet" is the positive formulation of Kent's "nothing almost." That clear vision can belong to the wretched, that the grief-stricken and downtrodden have the eyes to see the miracles which are at work in the world is a truth which penetrates the darkness and doom of King Lear. In King Lear those -- Gloucester, Edg~Lear -- who are secure and protected in their high estate, those who define themselves strictly in terms of their positions of birth and neglect the responsibilities their positions demand, are each one confronted by some unexpected .event which throws_ into question what lean understanding they have of themselves and their role in the world. From this wayless, wandering state, a state which takes physical shape in the heaths and fields that have no paths to guide wayfarers and pilgrims, they can begin to search for the truth about themselves and their roles. That Edgar is now engaged in such a search, that he is gaining insight and that his imagination is coming to life, is suggested by his speaking in blank verse for the first time. Edgar is young and eager to learn. His Poor Tom disguise -- his lostness and his aporia -- allows him to find the courage and strength required to make his search fruitful. Edgar will "with presented nakedness outface/ The wlnds and persecutions of the sky" (11-12 ) . Edgar's private undressing to take on the disguise of a Bedlam beggar brings to memory Lear's public undressing to "divest [himself] of rule" (I, i, 51 ) . Lear's growing awareness that when he invested his daughters with his "Pre-eminence, and all the large effects/ That troop with majesty" (134 ) , he "gave [ them] all" (II, iv, 248), works hand in hand with Goneril's and Regan's gradual disquantitying of his hundred knights. Lear's herculean imaginatio n leaps fr om the c o ncrete t o the symbo lic witho ut hesitation. When his train, strength and regality and r o yalty, is reduced to n o thing, he begins to see that he t oo , "his little world o f man" ( III, i, 1 0) , is reduced to nothing. He is without p ower, without wealth, and without a place at the center of the large world of man. Lear is naked; but he c o ntinues to wear the splendid robes of his office. He has not come so far as Edgar. He has many more 66 67 special flair: A credulous father! and a brother noble, Whose nature is so far from doing harms That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty My practices ride easy! (182-185) . Childlike, honest foolishness is endearing and beautiful to behold. From it shines forth the goodness of simplicity, and we are reminded that the world abou~ds in good things. Be that as it may, Edgar is unknowingly aiding wrongdoing by being foolish and by not doing. It does not seem possible to be ~ ch~ld and a. fool and still act responsibly in a world which must withstand the fiendish exploits of an Edmund, or a Goneril or a Regan. Edmund is clever, colorful, passionate, and determined; he is a great reader of others' weaknesses, but a poor reader of their strengths. In compa~is~n, Edgar is dull, pale, and close to lifeless; he is unripe; he has no convic~ions and no thoughts about what might be the right thing to do. If Edg~r,. like Lear ~nd Gloucester, "hath ever but slenderly known himself" (I, i, 290) , it is because.' like them he has not opened his heart to the sorrows of his fellows, or to his own resp~nsibility for their sorrows, or to the role he ought to play in bringing . reli~f to those who are in sorrow. Edmund laughingly uses the word "noble" to describe his brother; he scoffs at nobility as if it had everything to do with what is le?i~imate and what is not. Edgar will begin to seek out what he presently lacks, a nob ill. ~y of heart, not of name or of fortune, a nobility which he will find only by a.ctively feeling and caring for others, by graciously accepting others' griefs as his own· But to feel and to care and to accept, he must suffer. Upon hearing that Cornwall is due to arrive ~t . Glo~cester's castle, Edmund insinuates that Edgar has "spoken 'gainst" the duke (II, i, 25). Edgar's response is a surprised and frightened, "I am sure on' t, not a ~ord" ~29) •. These are Edgar's only words in this his second scene . He is unchange~ since his f~rst a~pear~nce as a . simple and gentle, but blind, vulnerable, stupidl.y innocent, spoi.led rich kid. Whe~ Edmund senses Gloucester's approach he quick-wi ttedly draws his sword on Edgar · "Draw, seem to defend yourself; now quit you well" (33) . Edgar has taken his younger brother• s earlier advice and armed himself, but Edgar with a sword cuts a more idiotic figure than Edgar without a sword.· He has the weapon with which to act, ~he weapon of his station.; when he does not act his will is shown to be weak and flaccid. As soon as Edgar draws, if he draws, he flees to avoid being seen by his fath:r· He cannot stand up for the right of his case; he cannot use his sword to defe~d himsel~; still less can he use his sword to conquer his foe. Edga~ will begin. to gain readiness for his next and last encounter with Edmund by growing, by learning ab~ut what vileness and harshness can live in the world of men's words and deeds, by seeing the need for noblemen to take up arms against the powers of ingratitude and selfrighteousness. But to grow and to learn and to see, he must endure the storm's 1 thunder and rainfall. ii. Poor Naked Wretch 1 �years and seasoned self-deceits to overcome. Edgar's heart has never been opened because of a lack of experience, but Lear's heart has been closed and hard~ned ~ver time. Lear will teach Edgar what sorts of dangers await the simple human things in a king's life. Childlike foolishness sets Lear running fr om his daughters, as it set Edgar The Fool tells Lear the truth: " . thou mad' st thy running from hl.s father. • • thou gav' st them the r od and putt' st down thine o~n daughters thy mothers • breeches" (I, iv, 178). Lear threatens his daughters as a child would his mothe r if she were to do fiendish things: • • • • • • No, you unnatural hags I will have such revenges on you both That all the world shall - I will do such things What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be The terrors of the earth! You think I'll weep; No, I'll not weep; (~~T empest) I have full cause of weeping, but this heart Shall break into a thousand flaws or ere I' 11 weep. (II, iv, 280). . It is, The storm is on the · heath; the tempest is in Lear' s mind (II.I , iv, 10) · besides the deluge in Genesis, the fiercest downpour that ever hit the earth. Nea rly I shall heartbroken, Lear seeks comfort from his beloved and devoted Fool : " O Fool, go mad" (280) . So ends Lear's tirade. . . . Lear is not accustomed to speaking as a child, issuing threats, but as a king, issuing commands. A king need only say the word, and the deed is done . The imperative mood dominates Lear's speech when he enters the storm: Blow, winds, crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! You sulpherous and thought-executing fires, vaunt- courier s of oak- cleaving thunderbolts, singe my white head! And thou, all -shaking thunder, strike f lat the thick rotundity o' th' world, crack Nature's molds, all germains spill at once That make ingrateful man t (III, ii, 1-9) . . Lear commands the elements as if they were subjects quaking before his maJesty;. he addresses them with huge compounds to establish the grandness of the occasion. Lear's fury in the face of "ingrateful man" comes closer than any m~n' s fu.ry has ever come to God's wrath, the wrath that smote Sodom and Go~orrah with br~mstone but failed to triumph over the ungrateful bearing of human beings toward their Creator . The roundness of the earth, so like the shape of a pregna~t wom~n's belly, .Lear.~~~:: smashed crushed so that never again will a father who gives his all to his chi have to' endure their ungracious sinfulness. But only God the Creator of all and the Father of all can accomplish such works. In the storm Lear comes to see that the sense he has of his own role in the world is grandiose and overblown, that he is not the leading player on the . reat stage · g The change which takes place in his speech is a key to Lear's deepening sens~ of himself as a being in relation to others. His tone changes. fro~ rage ~o co~passi?n, and his mood from imperative to interrogative . The same tit~nic . pas~ion with which Lear commanded the wind, the rain and the thunder is present in his kind, gentle and tender words to his Fool: Come on, my boy. How dost my boy? Art cold? (III, ii, 68) I am cold myself . he has never known it was within him to speak Lear has never spoken this way before; to care for the suffering of those around him, this way. He is beginning to feel and not only his own . When Lear and the Fool reach the hovel on the heath which houses Poor Tom, Lear urges the Fool to go in while he.stays outside to pray: Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, You looped and windowed raggedness, defend you From season's such as these? O' I have ta'en Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou may' st shake the superflux to them And show the heavens more just. (III, iv, 36) The gorgeous clothes of kingship, the pomp and pageantry, buried Lear's inner sympathy for others' sorrows . Lear prays that he will be able to find in his human being what he could not find in his being king. Entering the storm is Lear's return to his original humanity . But what was it about being king that prevented Lear from tapping his rich wellspring of feeling? For Lear, kingship did not permit the separation of the private and the public and this thwarted his person, this led to his downfall. A king who knows his r ole is able to place the private alongside the public lest he abuse the private as Lear abused Cordelia's love by trying to exhibit it to the public . But is it right and fitting for a political man to feel with, to show compassion for castaways and idiots? Can a king feel what wretches feel and still retai n the lofty dignity which he needs in order to preserve order in his kingdom? Maybe the more detached feeling of pity, a feeling for others, is what a king ought to possess to meet the requirements of his office . If this is the case, Lear's greatness is not political . His mighty heart cannot remain detached . The storm is the outward manifestation of Lear's suffering, the rain of his inner tears. Despite all his talk to his daughters, Lear weeps . After the prayer Poor Tom enters yelling, "Fathom and half, fathom and half" ( 32) , as if to measure the outpouring of Lear's sorrow and compassion. Lear's prayer is Edgar's cue to enter . He is the person -- outcast, wretched, fooled, and Lear's heir to the throne -- for whom Lear needs to feel. One of the greatest deeds Lear is able to perform at this crucial time in his life is the passing on of what he knows about kingship to the future ruler. Edgar hides himself in the presence of his familiars -- Lear, the Fool, and Kent -- by disguising his way of speaking and acting, by taking on the role of Poor Tom. Unlike solid and steadfast Kent, whose physical change is not accompanied by any character change, Edgar shows himself capable of being a new person while play-acting . Kent knows who he is, and he .is, in his own words, "too old to learn" (II , ii, 129). Edgar does not know what he is about but he is about to learn. These four fools gathered together in fellowship on the heath in the storm are "wanderers of the dark" (III, ii, 44). Yet "though it be night, yet the moon shines" (II, ii, 29) . Lunacy shines her terrible beams on Lear and Edgar bringing them into a special companionship which lightens their grief. Edgar feigns madness, his words and actions represent the words and actions of Poor Tom ; he is an artificial person (cf. Hobbes' Leviathan, chp. 16). Lear's words and actions are his own; he is a natural person. Poor Tom comes on the scene at the ripe moment to set Lear's imagination soaring The Fool labored "to outjest [Lear's] and to sweep him fully into madness. heart- struck injuries" (III, ii, 67). He tried to make the king laugh at himself with the hope of saving him from madness. The Fool was bold to the point of cruelty 68 69 �in his attempt to make Lear face the truth of his r ole , his s peeches and deeds. But Lear did not have the ears to hear the Fool's wisdom. With his mighty heart -"Hysterica passio ! " -- about to burst, Lear could not look upon himself and laugh. Now Lear pays close attention to Poor Tom's lunatic remarks. As a result he begins to acknowledge truths about himself and others which he had formerly avoided . Edga r takes charg e of Lear once the Foo l has l o st his influence . In the mock trial which follows the stonn scene Edgar sings songs in folk rhythms in the style o f the Fo ol . The Foo l sadly leaves the c ompany of his fellows at that time, going off to die alo ne. Like the Foo l, Poor Tom has n o thi n g keeping him from putting his u nderstanding of what is taking plac e aro und him and in him into bold words, mad wo rds. Lear was the first to use the wo rd "fiend" wh e n he accused Goneril of being a "marble- hearted fiend" (I, iv, 266 ) . Poor Tom exploits that image in his speech with Lear . He also explo its the animal imagery b e gun by Lear in his curses and insults directP.d at his elder daughters . (Lear uses the word "wretch" when he is angry at Cordelia·) Animal imagery enliven s the fact that men can under some circumstances, like extreme poverty, be f o rced into bestiality, a n d under others arrive there on their own p owe r s. Imagining that Poor Tom could o nly be in his present condition if he gave his serpentine daughters all, in other words, imagining that Poor Tom is n o ne other than himself i n some way, Lear asks the beggar about his past . Edgar answers him with a shrewd ad j ustment of the seven deadly sins: False o f heart, light o f ear, bloody of hand; h o g in slo th, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness,dog i n madn ess, lion in prey • • • ( 96 ) Poor Tom responds by telling Lear abo ut his own past: false of heart in regard to his love for Cordelia and Cordelia's love for him; light of ear in accepting Goneri l 's and Regan's pledges; bloody of hand in being implicated in the death of his dearly beloved daughter -- "I might have saved her; now she's g o ne forever!" (V , iii, 270 ) . Lear has been a bea st himself . When next he speaks, Lea r s hows that he has assimilated Poor Tom's wo rds: Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou ow'st the worm no silk; the beast no hide ; the sheep no wool; the cat no perfume. Ha! Here's three o n's are sophisticated. Thou art the thing i t self; unacconunodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou a r t (III, iv , 110 ) . Compare the order of Edgar's animals with Lear's : hog-worm , fox-beast, wolf-sheep, dog - cat . Lear compliments Poor Tom, and even imitates him by speaking in pro se fo r the first time . Lear's formal, conventional, poetic speech has given way to a more natural manner of speaking which more nearly identifies him with Poor Tom. The more Lear makes himself like Poor Tom, the closer he comes to feeling what the wretch feels. The word "expose" in Lear's prayer-- "Expo se thyself to feel what wretches feel" -prepares the way for his actual undressing. Like Edgar before him, with this act he makes his outward appearance hannonious with his inward conditio n . But while Edgar undresses out of fear and cunning, feeling the need to take on the role o f an artificial person, Lear freely chooses to undress, needin g to feel what Poor Tom feels. Returning to his original being as a natural person while striving t o join in communion with Po or Tom, Lear conunan ds: " Off, Off, you len dings. Come! Unbutto n here!" (111 ) . Presumably this conunand is issued to the person closest to Lear in blood and in heart, t o Edgar himself . The full significance of this momen t, this deed at the very cen ter of the play, will show itself later. For the t ime being what is mo s t remarkable abo ut this happening is Lear's recognitio n o f himself as a human being amon g o ther human beings through the agency o f Edgar's feigned person . Edga r speaks to Lear about r ight ana wr ong, what is lawful and what is not ab t the foul fiend who anxiously works on ever y human soul to destroy lawfulness . Edgar p r esents Lear with an alte r ed ve r sion of God's commandments t 0 th s ons of Ab r aham in the wilderness : e Take heed of the foul f iend . Obey thy parents, keep thy word justl y , swear not , conuni t not with man's swor n spouse , s e t not thy sweet heart on proud array . . • (III , iv , 83 ) . Thanks to Edgar's wor d s Lear p r obes more deeply into human being and what is jus t . When they t a ke r e f uge together in Gloucester ' s farmhouse 1 Lear begins cour t proceedin~s aga i nst his mon s t r ous and f iendish daughte r s . He makes Edgar pla the r ole of his "robed man of justice " (III , vi , 36) , after seeing in him the souly o f a "noble. phi~oso~he r" (III , iv , 125) . The t r ial is a t r avesty . But Edgar' s compa~ion s hip wi th Lear, a nd hi s fathe ring of Lear, gives him new insight, new depth , n ew l ife . Edgar shows pity fo r Lear: " My tears begin to take his par t so much t hey mar my counte r feit i ng" (III , VI , 60) • When Edgar finally finishes with hi s counter feiting , he will f ully take Lear' s par t . Edga r ha~ been a s.much in need o f the en r iching power o f tears as Lear ha s bee n i n need of.the ir cl ~ ansing powers. With new str ength of will and pur pose Edga r deliv e rs the s ol iloquy wh i ch con c ludes the who le d r ama beg i nning with t he s torm an d pass ing on to t h e mock t r ial : he W n we our bette rs see bear ing our woe s, We s ca rce l y t hin k our enemi es our f oe s. Who a lon e s u f fe rs, s u ff e rs most in the mind Leav i ng fre e th i ngs and happy shows behind . But then the mind much suffe r ance doth o ' e r s k ip When grief h a th mat e s , and bear ing f ellows h i p . How light and por table my pain seems now , When t hat which made me bend made the king bow . He childed as I f athe r ed! (III, vi , 109) . Edga r is . speak ing i .n r hymi ng couplet s fo r the f i rst time , the only time a side fr om ~is conclud1n.g quatr ain . ~he only other s peech in the play which is compar able in its lon~ ch~in of r hymes is France's p r oc l amation of t r ust in Co r delia . Stanley C ~ve~l 1 ~ ri ght whe n he s~y~ ~hat if Fran ce's wo r ds a r e s poke n with a u t ho rity and 1 d~stinction '. ~ r anee s s en s1~1vity a nd manlines s show f o r th the char acte r o f fully n.p~ n e d"" nobili ty. . ~o r sol i d reas on s o f hi s own he refuses to admit that Edga r ach i e ve "' t he. same k ingly statu re i n the cour se o f King Lear. I r athe r think that Edgar's r hyming couplets are an i nd i cation o f his likeness~F r ance Edgar ~s re so~ving the d isson a nce s of the stonn scene and the mo~k t r ial wi th hi s cadence - like . so ~ iloquy . He is clinching f or the audience a t r uth so simp l e and s o ~onunon tha~ it i~ o fte n o~e ~ looked , o r, what i s worse , despised . Edga r' s tru e s peech is s ~ntentious in the o ri g i nal and old- fashioned sense of the wo r d; it is full of mean ~ ng , not . ponder ?usly t r ite o r . ithy . P Imaginatively feeling fo r other s who a r e i n angu ish, ~ak i ng t hei r par t , whether in p r ayer or in being fully p r esent for them , not a s a~ adviso r o r as a couns e l o r, but just a s a fellow presence , is a g r eat ac t o f g r aciou ~ h~an g~odness . When a father and a child feel for one another in such a way, thi s is a s ign of the ir ri ght r elation in blood and in heart . So it is wi th Lear and Ed~a r. They a r e with one anothe r and for one anothe r in the stonn and in th~ mock tria~ as father a nd s on , as k i ng a nd p r inc e , as f e llows who share human being . Lea r i s Edgar's godfather, his spiritual father . Lear named Edga r (II · 1 righteousn~ss ~~d 90) • , Edgar opens the fou r th act with a hopeful speech on worstness : Yet bette r t hus, and known to be contemned, Than still contemned and flattered . To be worst, The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune, 70 71 , �stands still in esperance, lives not in fear ; The worst returns to laughter. Welcome then, Thou insubstantial air that I embrace! The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst Owes nothing to thy blasts •.•• ( IV, i, 8) Edgar's speech harks back to Lear's words to th e " unacco mmodated man" on the heath, "the thing itself": "Thou ow' st the worm no silk • • ·" (III,iv) • ~ile .playing the r o le of Poo r Tom Edgar patiently ob served Lear's actions and heard his wisdom. What trustworthy, goo~, and right words emerged fr om Lear's sufferi~g, Edgar absorbed. Lear has unknowingly done Edgar some charity in the form of teachings. Edgar's speech also looks f o rward to Lear's knowing statement about his daughters Exclamatory and horrible cries abound in King ~ear: "Darkness and devils!" (I' · 259 ) "All dark and c omfortless!" ( III, iv, 86 ) , "Pluck out his eyes!" (6) , "Hang iv, ' '11 · h 1 m i nstantly!" (7) · "Most s e r pent- like!" (II , iv , 1 60) , "O vi ain, villain'" . (I ' . · 76) ( 22) , "Abominable villain!" ( 79) , "Then kill, kill, 11 Abhorred ' villain!" ii, ' ·· k'll kill kill kill!" (IV, vi, 182), "Murder, mur d er! " (II ' ii, 44) , "No , no ' no , i ' ' iii, 307) , "Never, never, never, never , neve~ •" (309) ' "How 1 ' howl , howl ' ' life!" (V , · . . howl" ( 2 59), "Heaven and earth" (I, iv, 302) . Seeing his bl~ody father being guided by an old man Edgar cries out: "World, world , O world. /But that thy strange mutations make ~s hate thee, / Life would not yield to age" (IV, i, 10 ) • Wh n the faithful loveable old man leads Gloucester toward Poor Tom, Edgar learns that ~is father, in ~eing blinded, has come to see who is his truly devoted son. • • • Oh, dear son Edgar, The f ood o f thy abused father's wrath! Might I but live to see thee in my touch I'd say I had eyes again! (23 ) Gloucester's newfound awareness o f his own guilt and Edgar's inn o cence, his recognition, occurs at the same time as his peripety (c f. Aristo tle's Poetics ) . ·A fte r hearing his n ame called out by his fathe r, Edgar acknowledges that he was wrong about h is own worstness: "Who is' t can ~ay "I am at the worst?" I am worse than e'er I was" (2 5 ) . Why isn't Edgar full of joy to discover that he can be united in t r ust with his father? My imagination tells me that the sight of the bloody-eyed, · pitiable old Gloucester is t oo woeful for words. Says Edga r: " • the worst is not so long a s we can say "Thi s is the worst!"" (27) . So long as we have the clar ity of vision to see that we are in a bad way, so long as reason is still a part of our madness , the worst is not . Edgar confesses that his suffering is surpassed by what Lear and Gloucester , his elders and betters, are enduring . Edgar is p repared to pass through what more may come his way . Corde lia later echoes Edgar in saying to Lear: "We are not the first/Who with best meaning have incurred the worst" (V , ii, 4 ) . Whatever the worst is -- the suffering of innocents? The unlawful death of the righteous? -- Cordelia and Lear are at the worst . She knows that . And yet, like Edgar, she rema i ns calm and patient . Unlike Edga r, she refuses to accuse he r ac cuse rs, to condemn her condemners . Gloucester's trust in the gods has been weakened by the hardship, the injustice , and the cruelty of his overwhelming suffering: "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods/They kill us f o r their sport" (IV, i, 32) . Edga r grieves to hear his father speak this way and plays the f ool : "Bad is the trade, that must play fool to sorrow,/Argu ing itself and others" (39) . Edgar e x pects those who hear the story of his life to b e up set and put o ff by his foolish role with his father. For s ome reason he see s no other way to act. Why doesn't he simply reveal himself to his father? Wouldn't that resto re Gloucester's belief in the "kind gods" (III , vii, 72)? (When he is blinded , Glouce ster cries, "O cruel! O you gods!" (71) , but a moment later he learns of Edgar's innocence, and p rays, "Kind gods! forgive me that , and prosper him" (72).) But no . Edgar has yet to come to a sure knowledge of who he is and " how this world goes" (IV, vi , 156) . He cannot utter his name until he is most fully at work being who he ought t o be . Edgar has already established the condition of his self-revelation : "When false opinion • • in thy just proof repeals and reconciles thee" (III, vi, 113) . Only when he is prepar ed to overthrow the present rule of ingratitude and injustice, the new Earl of Gloucester , his own brother Edmund, only then will Edga r have accomplished full nobility and only then will he be reconciled with his father and the gods. Being aware that false opinion is directed at the gods more severely than at him, and . trusting to thei r graces, Edgar undertakes as his mission to prove the gods just . By offering the proof in deed, Edgar will have it proved to him that the gods are just . Trust yields knowledge. Gloucester, like Edgar and Lear, is a man "more sinned against than sinning" (II, iv ) . The pain he is forced to undergo hardly seems deserved . Remembering the mystery of the suffering of the fully righteo us Job, however, who can judge what suffering would be a fit measure for Gloucester's sins? Gloucester's agony in blindness allows him to see in company with Lear and Edgar that to trust and to know, he must feel . Gloucester prays : . • • . • • Heavens deal so still! Let the superfluous and lust- dieted man, That slaves your ordinance, that will not see Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly; So distribution should undo excess, And each man have enough. (IV, ii, 74) Gloucester and Lear, in their prayers, both use the word "feel" twice in the same line. But while Lear prays to feel what wretches feel, t o be the wretch in feeling, Gloucester calls on the heavens to make the man who does not feel in Lear's sense, feel the power of the gods. For Lear, justice will be accomplished through his own action, his own wretched and charitable feelings. For Gloucester, justice will be accomplished through the god's action. Lear will show the gods just. Gloucester 72 73 and his courtiers, and himself: • • • . They flattered me like a dog . • • . When the rain came to wet me once and the wind to make me chatter· when the thunder would not peace at my , bidding; there I found 'em, there I smelt ' em ou t • They were not men o' their wo rds; they told me I was everything; 'tis a lie. I am not ague-proof. (IV, vi, 1 0 2 ) • . . . . Lear calls to memory the time of his newfound awareness, his recognition of his daughters' double-dealings and his own faultiness. In the storm Lear h~ard Foo: Tom preach __ "keep thy word's justice" -- and received the charity of Edgar s teachi~gs. Both Lear and Edgar are better off knowing that they are what they are, human beings with faults. They see into their own faults and acknowledge .them as all other persons must acknowledge theirs, difficult as it may be to do. Ki~gs are tempted to a greater degree than most other human beings, because of their flattere.rs, to consider themselves faultless, hence guiltless, hence ~naware ~f . their own sinfulness, which means that they are likely to become self- righteous citize~s of the 1 fiend's state. Lear did believe that he was everything at the pl~y s opening . How else could he have done what he did? Believing that he was eve~y~hing, he t~ought he needed nothing. Lear thought that he could do without Cordelia s love being fully present for him. But he cannot. He cannot live without he r love . Edgar keeps Lear alive during Cordelia's absence. iv. Being With Gloucester �will be shown the justice of the gods. Edgar, in showing the gods just and thereby being shown their justice, in being both active and passive, is a blend of Lear, his spiritual father, and Gloucester, his natural father. Lear sees what Gloucester does not: a person must act freely and compassionately in order to be righteous. But Gloucester sees what Lear does not: to act freely and compassionately a person must be filled with the grace of the gods. No human being can be self-justifying without falling into the hands of the fiend. Human beings can · only be made just through God's work. God is active in the world. He goes about doing good things. If it were not for Him, Lear could not fully feel what Poor Tom feels. What person has the right to make himself a wretch unless God graciously informs and supports his action? Lear exposes himself to feel what Poor Tom feels, and in so doing gives a gift of charity which brings relief to Poor Tom's burdened sorrow. Gloucester feels the power of the heavens, and in so doing gives a purse to Poor Tom. Lear's and Gloucester's prayers are answered. Lear begins to feel with Poor Tom, he tears off his kingly garments and reveals a kingly soul, just after hearing Edgar's adjustment of the seven deadly sins accompanied by animal imagery. Gloucester begins to feel the power of the heavens, he begins to be saved from the power of the fiend tempting him to suicide, just after hearing Edgar's adjustment of the seven deadly sins accompanied by devil imagery. Five fiends have been in Poor Tom at once; of lust as Obidicut; Hobbididance, prince of darkness, Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of mocking and mowing, who since possesses chamber-maids and waiting-women. So, bless thee, masterl (IV , i, 60) Lear and Gloucester, whose broad characters encompass something of what is in everyone, have been prone to bestiality and devilishness. This they must face in order to become aware of their own sinfulness . Only then can they know and trust themselves and the gods. In acknowledging their sins, and not merely shoving them aside by moping over their being more sinned against than sinning, Lear and Gloucester feel their dependence on others and the gods. Edgar's disguise, in speech and in act, makes it possible for Lear and Gloucester to hear just words of the divine law and act· upon them. Edgar would be despised as self-righteous and all knowing if he presented his mad words to Lear and his father in blunt, Kent-like speech and in the dress of a young nobleman. Edgar must play out his role as fool before he can be fully who he is. Gloucester commands his old servant to do a favor on Poor Tom's behalf: " • • • bring some covering for this naked soul" (48). On their way to the cliffs of Dover, where Gloucester has resolved to leap off the edge, Edgar is dressed in the "best 'parel" (49) of his father's ancient and devoted servant. Edgar's new found awareness of his father's love, and his taking on a new role suited to his new clothes, happen hand in hand. Edgar grows in stature being loved and being dres~ed. Edgar is leading Gloucester on a pilgrimage. In his view they are wayfarers Journeying to a sacred place as an act of religious devotion. It is a pilgrimage which is "above all strangeness" (IV, vi, 66). Edgar makes a world in speech for Gloucester's imagination so that he may picture the place appointed for his suicide. And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so lowl And crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles, Half-way down Hangs one that gathers samphire -- dreadful tradel Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice: and yond tall anchoring bark Diminished to her cock; her cock a buoy Almost too small for sight, the murmuring surge, 74 That on unnumbered idle pebble chafes, Cannot be heard . so high. I'll look no more Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight Topple down headlong. (23) Edgar's poem is highly descriptive. He uses an active voice and an indicative mood; and his meter is a strict iambic pentameter. The details are carefully chosen; first the birds halfway down the cliff; next the fishermen on the shore; last the ship at sea. His vocabulary is particular and technical with names of birds, insects, animals, and boats. He looks low: the ship becomes like· its cock.boat, its cock.boat like a buoy, the buoy vanishes: nothing left to see. He listens high: nothing can be heard. At last he delivers a run of monosyllables imitating the quickening heartbeat of someone creeping and peering over the edge; "deficient" and "sight" halt the pitter-patter; and the long o-sounds of the final three words shift the motion to a gradual, slow, arching fall. Gloucester is ready to leap. Delightful as it may be to inspect Edgar's craft and imagination, there remains the danger of losing sight of what is in his heart. Without looking into Edgar's heart, he becomes a strangely confused son playing a cruel act on his vulnerable and downcast father. His picturesque speech becomes a mockery of his father's blindness. His appeal to Gloucester's hearing only to announce that nothing can be heard makes him cold and marble-hearted. The whole pilgrimage becomes grotesque. A blind old man in despair is made a fool by his only beloved son. Gloucester's leap becomes one of the most ugly, hideous deeds in all of drama. By looking into Edgar's heart, we see what it is that is truly happening. A caring son, full of concern for his father's grief, is doing his utmost to save him from death and lead him to a firm and enlightened trust in the gods. Edgar seeks to drive the fiend away from Gloucester as he drove the dogs away from Lear in the mock trial . The seeming duality of Edgar's action, cruel and kind, is articulated by the servants at the close of the third act. Their discussion prepares the audience for Edgar's role in the pilgrimage. The second servant, mockingly considering that Poor Tom will lead the "old Earl" to Dover, says of Edgar: "his roguish madness allows itself to anything" (III, vii, 105) . The third servant, wishing the best for Gloucester, as is Edgar, says, as if to predict what is upcoming, "Now Heaven help him!" (107). If the two servants could watch the scene at the imagined cliff, the second would see only the horror of the action, but the third would be relieved and thankful to see that heaven does help Gloucester by means of Edgar's madness and foolery. Prayers are answered in King Lear . Edgar himself sees the need to give some cause for his action: "Why I do trifle thus with his despair/Is done to cure it" (IV, vi, 33). Hamlet saw the same need in the bedroom scene with his mother: "I must be cruel only to be kind" (Hamlet III, iv, 174). Edgar and Hamlet are both play-actors and play-makers on the great stage o f fools. Gloucester is tormented by the prospect of a longer life full of "affliction" in the midst of the "opposeless wills" of the "mighty gods" (IV, vi, 38). He does not accept out of trust that the gods will only good things. Instead he leaps. He falls. And yet he lives. "Thy life's a miracle" (956 ) , says Edgar. Having received the gift of the power of the "clearest gods" which makes possible what is impossible for a man alone to do, Edgar works a miracle. He brings Gloucester to new life. Edgar informs Gloucester "what thing" it was that led him to "th'extreme verge": • • . • methought his eyes Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses, Horns whelked and waved like th' enridged sea: It was some fiend. (73 ) Now that the fiend has been driven away, Edgar can speak to Gloucester as a son, he can see in Gloucester a father: " . • • Thou happy father . . . bear free and patient thoughts" (80 ) . 75 �~he iv. Edgar's Readiness Edgar's sane wo rds are punctuated by the entrance of King Lear at the height o f his madness. The scene which f ollows is climactic with respect to Lear's raving thoughts o n human being, o n justice, and on the presence of evil in the world. The t ab l es hav e tur ned somewhat since Edga r a nd Lear were last together. Then Edgar was " the thing itself" (III, iv, 1 0 7 ) . Now Lear is "the Ki ng himself" (I V, vi, 85 ) . Lear s howe d c omp assion for Poo r Tom on the he a t h , and now, in anothe r wild erness, Edg ar l ooks upon Lear with pity : " O thou side-piercing sight" (85 ) • Edgar is wou nde d fr om a distan ce by the sight o f Lear; he does no t get up close a nd touch him as he was t ouched by h im in the sto rm. Edgar does not have the mightin ess o f spirit t o feel wh at Lear feels. He is a n o nlooker, a spectator, detached. Edg ar's r ole in this scen e is t o attend t o Le a r's king ly words with the circumspectness o f a ma n wh o mu st himself s omeday sit on the t hron e. Lear has been o ff stage for a whole act. He last appeared in the mock trial bringing ch a r ges a gains t Gon eri l a nd Regan for t h eir ingratitude. His k in gly madness was bent on seeing j ustice don e. But Lear saw into the foul jud i c ial pro cess: " Corruption in t he place l " (III, vi, 55 ) . He reli nquished h i s effo rts t o take r e ven ge o n his daughters under the c over of the court, and he sought out the o rigin o f their bestiality a nd d evilry: "Is there any cause in nature that make these hard hear t s ?" (7 2 ) . In h is ab s ence Le a r has go ne over this question and p assed on to c o nseque n t q u estion s. If there is a c ause i n natu re f o r beasts a n d dev i ls in human shape, are human being s by nature lustful animals and fiendish creatures? If so, can t here b e s uch a thing a s n a t ura l j ustice ? Can on e perso n rightly judge ano ther? With Edga r p r e sen t, Lear o ffers h is mad reas onings, the fruits of his experienc e as a f al len r u ler. Lear s p eaks a s a k i n g , " Ay , eve r y i nch a king " (I V, vi, 109) , on matters o f g r eates t c oncer n to a r u ler. He asse rts with irony t h at human be i ng s a re by natu re animals , a nd that they must be fr ee t o ac t i n accor d a n ce wi th their nature. Therefo r e , a king can no t justly p r os e cute men a nd women fo r t he ir lust f ul deeds. Lear speaks with Glouceste r present : I pardon t hat ma n' s l i f e , W a t was thy cau s e ? h Adul t ery? Th ou sha l t not di e. Die f o r adultery ? No l Le t copulation thrive: f o r Glou cester's bastard son W kinder t o his father than my daughters as Got 'tween lawful sheets. . . • ( 115) • Lear suppo rts his assessment of human being by recalling that Edmund showed filial devotion to his father while his own lawful daughters showed ingratitude. His speec h echoes Edmund's earlier address to his goddess, "Nature" (I, ii). Edmund's sayings about marriage present a husband and wife who "Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops / Got 'tween sleep and wake" ( I, ii, 14 ) . Edmund claims that he outshines Edgar in strength, wit, beauty, because he was conceived in a fit of "riotous appetite" (IV, vi, 166 ) , which accords with nature, while Edgar was conceived in a du ll, stale, marital act, which accords with convention. In Lear's view, the bond between the child and parent is stronger when the child is conceived, in Edmund's wo rds, "in the lusty stealth of nature" (I, ii, 11 ) . Not k n owing Edmun d, Lear's vision is clo uded. Lear is aghast at the way human beings abuse justice, and at the weakness o f j ustice i n the fa c e o f such abu se: Throu gh tattered r obes small vices do app ear; Robes and furre d gown s hid e all. Plate sin with gold The stro ng lan ce o f j usti c e h u rtless b reak s; Arm it i n rag s, a pygmy 's straw does pierce it. (168) 76 rich and powerful i n t heir role a s judges p er secut e the poo r and unp r o tected: The userer h angs the c o z en er" . (16 4 ) • Wha t is .to be made of J. ustice when i· t s on 1 y . . . f unc t i o? is t o c om~o r t the priv ileged and to tur n the i mpover ished into s capegoats? ~ear s wo rds b~i ng. t o memo r y E~ga ~' s tatte r ed r ags in the storm and Edga r• s r ole as robed man o f J ust ice 11 (I I .I, vi ) in the mock tri al. Edgar has t aken the p art o f t he c ondemned wretch and the Judge . Having seen both sides, he can stand silently by a n d detec t wh a t awf ul t r uth is in Lear ' s r ema r ks : all human beings Lear c laims the opposite : "None does offend, none, I say, ~~~:~~xically, no~!~,; Why do s t thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back ; Thou ho t ly lusts to see her in that kind For which thou whip' st her . (164 ) In Joh~'s Gospel Jesus is con fr onted by a group of Scribes and Phar isees who wish to te s t him as ~atan tes~ed him in the wilderness . These men are preparing to act upon the law wh ~ ch p r e s c r ibes the death by stoning of an adulteress . Eage r t o find s ome weakn~ss in. Jesus , a f a ulty o r heretical teaching, and eager to b r ing s ome cha r ge ~ gainst h i m, they ask J esus what ought to be done with the woman they hav e caught i n the act o f adulte r y . Jesus is seated on the ground r unning hi s finge r thr o u gh. the s and . "Whicheve r o f you is with out sin, let him cast the fi r st stone 11 The Scr ibes a nd Phar i s ees i n o r de r of age take thei r leave . • Je s u s a nd Lear know the p raye r of King Solomon to God : " Give to thy se r van t under st anding~ t o judge thy pe?ple , and to discern between good and evil " (I Kings III:9 ) . As k i ngs and human beings , t hey a r e judging beings. Among the ma ny thing s Hobbes says about the sove r eign in the Leviathan, some a r e t hese : : . . he i s jud ge of what is necessary for peace ; and ~udge of doctr ine s; he is sole legislato r ; and supreme Judge of contr oversies; and of the times, and occasions of war, and peace; to him it belongeth to choose magistrates , counsellors, c ommanders, and all other offices, and ministers; and to determine of rewards , and punishments, honor, and order . (Chapter 20) In the story of the stoning of the adulteress Jesus shows that he knows that no man is without s in . He the r efor e urges all of us to t a k e our own sinfulness to hear t · when we judge the wr ongdoings of our fellows . Jesus pardons, forgives the adulte r ess, and commands her to go and sin no more . Lear enables the adulteress to go on sinning . Since human beings are no more than beasts , . and beasts cannot be said to be sinners, Lear refuses to acknowledge any w r ongdo~n~ on her part . Sin is nothing . But truly this is Lear' s way of par doning, o~ forgiv i ng . The path Lear travels in seeking to understand the origin of evil in his.daughters , l~ads him fi r st to an awarene ss of his own sin f u l ness, and last to a ~e sir e to ~how his daughters mercy . Showing that he feels deeply that every person is responsible for the sins of every other person, he, after Co rdelia's death sorrowfully c r ies : "A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!" (V, iii, 272 ) . ' . In .response t o Lear's outrageous speeches, Edgar c omments : " O, matter and i~perti~ency m~xed( Reason in madness!" (IV,' vi, 176 ) . Edgar lets nothing of the wisdo~ in Lear s kingly words pass him by. With Jesus Edgar knows that all men sin and with. Lear he. sees a manifestation of this truth in the corrupt j udgements 0 ~ human beings and in the abuse o f justice by human beings . Edga ~ knows that just acts are needed t o fight evil and defend good . with S~lomon s p~a~er,. and the teachings he has learned from Lear, Edgar is being filled w~th the spir.it fit fo r the right discernment of good and evil and for the deed which will ~cc ompl~s~ the triumph of justice over wro ngdo ing. Edgar is the Almighty Sovereign's minister and general . 77 �Edgar alone is present with Lear throughout the whole of his maddest suffering, on the heath, at the trial, and in the field at Dover. And he alone is present with Gloucester throughout the final days of his broken life. Edgar, perhaps unwittingly, does well in being that presen ce which serves to bring Lear and Gloucester together again. That moment when Lear reco gnizes Glo ucester -- "I know thee well enough; t~y name is Gloucester" (17 9) -- c o uld only be brought about through the agency of their c ommon son. The b o nd between child and parent shows itself in hidden way~. The l on ger 'E dgar has heard Lear's wisdom, the longer he has experienced as a pat ient and sen sitive presence the weight of Lear's a~d Gloucester's s o rrows, the better prepared h e has become t o judge and to act righteously. Now Shakespeare allows Edgar b o th to learn of a battle about to be fought between Goneril' s a?d Regan's army, and Cordelia's army, and to emerge from his c ompanionship with his fathers into the larger world o f the play, a world in which he has the role of a noble knight and the heir t o the throne. Recognizing the change which has come over Ed gar, Gl ouces t er asks : "Now, good sir, what art thou?" ( 223) • Edgar's response reveals that he has been filled with the spirit of a righteous human being and a just king, the spirit of poverty: A most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows; who by the art of known and feeling sorrows Am pregnant t o good pity •.. ( 224) Edgar won't be fully ready to enter the wor~d of sophisti~~ted ev~l until ~e c~n: fro nts and vanquishes the unsophisticated evil of Oswald, a serviceable villain ( 256 ) • Goneril, Regan, and Edmund have put a price on Gloucester's life. Os~ald h o pes t o "raise [his ] fortune" ( 232) by killing, murdering him •. But Edgar, t~e Jack of all roles, ever ready to adapt himself to whatever occasion .presents i tsel~, ado pts the rustic dialect t o match his peasant dress and stands up in defense o f his fath er. Oswald is all puffed up. He is c o nvin ced that he can o vercome the l owly Edg ar. They fight . Oswald f a lls. Edgar upho lds the integrity o f " goo~ f o lk" by slay in g Oswald just as Co rnwall's servant did earlier when he slew his master. Edgar's words 'tel l us what he must feel also after he fights his sophisticated bro ther: "I am on ly sorry he had no other deathsman" ( 262 ) . With his dying breath Oswald c ommands the bold peasant to give certain letters to " Edmu nd Earl o f Glo ucester" ( 25 3) . Ed g ar can make his next step into the larger wo rld. ' He learn s fr om the le t ters that Goneril and Edmund, "mu~derous lechers:: ( 280) , are plo ttin g to kill Albany when "time and place . are fruitfully offered (264 ) . They do not anticipate an encounter with the newly ripened Edgar. v. The Champion Pretending t o be a p oo r man, Edgar gives Albany the letter, and begs a favor: Before you fight the battle, ope this letter, If y ou have victo ry, let the trumpet s o und Fo r him that brough t it: wretch though I s e em I can pro duce a champion that will prove What is avo uched there. (V, i, 4 0 ) Edgar displays enormous patience and a mastery over time in this wh?le sequence of events. He brings the letter t o Albany "in the matu.re time" . (IV , vi, 27: ) ; and . he will appear to deliver proof o f Edmund's guilt and his own righteousness 1 wh~n time h 11 s~rve" (V i 47 ) . At the beginning of the play Edgar showed no capac ity f o r S a f I • h• f th I pat ience; he reacted rashly to warnings given by Edmund c o ncern i n g is a er s wrath. Thanks t o the time spen t with Lear and Gloucester, Edgar has been a~le to develop calmness and readiness and mo ral alertness;. he has. l~arned h ow to wait for the ripe momen t t o act and how to measure his acts with precisio n. Patience is n o t passivity. Neither is it sto ical, unmoved endurance. Patience (derived from the Latin patientia, a participle f o rm o f patior, which itself is derived f r om the Greek pascho) is, first, an experiencing, or enduring, or suf f e r ing , of turmoil and sor row, with kindness , and gentfeness, and hope in a coming time of rest and joy ; and next, an active, attentive viewing of this experience so that what is offe r ed as a teaching is learned . Edgar's patience allows him to suffer f r uitfully alongs i de Lear and Gloucester. After recognizing Gloucester , Lear tende r ly r eprimanded him with a fathe r ly tone : "Thou must be patient . /We came crying hither . . . When we are bor n, we c r y that we a r e come/To this great stage of fools" (IV, vi, 180) . Edgar has attended to Lear' s words; for when Gloucester shows a loss of patience, he says : "Men must endure/Their going hence, ever as thei r coming hither : /Ripeness is all" (V , ii , 10) • Edga r witnesses Lear's and Gloucester ' s trials with some detachment -- he pit i es them -- so that he may come to know a better way . "Ripeness is all . " These a r e Edgar' s last wo r ds be f o r e appearing as champion . He is finally ready to r eveal his f ully-formed nobility afte r having lived t h r ough wretchedness and peasantry and servitude . "Thou a r t armed , Gl ouce s te r," say s Albany to Edmund (Shake s pear e would wish u s to hear these wo r ds as a call to Edga r ) , ·"let the trumpet sound" (91) . At the thi r d sound of the trumpet , in memo r y o f Jesus a n d the angels , as if to s ignal the advent of t he f inal judgeme nt , Edga r enter s a rmed . He i s not feigning . At last we a r e given Edgar's natural per son . The question s o o f ten put to Edga r -- a s i f t o mark t he steady stages of his g r owth -- is a ske d again : "What a r e you?" (V , i ii, 1 21 ) . Edgar: "Know my name is lost: /By t r eas on 's tooth bar e - gnawn and canke r-bit : /Yet I am noble • . . " (122) . That name whi ch Ed g ar r eceived fr om King Lear, t h at n ame wh i ch he had been un able t o utt e r i n his disgu is es , a s i f di s gu ised from hims el f, he can utter now (we lear n i n a moment t ha t he has already r evealed hims el f t o Glouc e ste r ) , but not in this company , not un t il h e has p r o v en his b r other 's gui lt, h is own str ength and wi t, and t he gods ' justi ce . Edga r r eveals hi s newfound nobility first in d r ess , then in speech, and last in deed . He challenges Edmund : " Draw thy sword" (125) . When last they were together Edmund mockingly made the s ame challenge to Edgar . Edga r speaks of the entitleme n ts of his knighthood which make such a challenge just and demand that i t be accepted : "Behold , it is my p r ivilege , /The p r ivilege of mine honor s , /My oath, and my p r o f e s s i on • . . " (13 1 ) . In a ct i ng upon the r e s ponsibil ities which go hand in hand with his privileges , Edgar is no longe r a stray layman , an i diotes . With knight- l i ke words and passions Edga r accuse s Edmund of t re ason : • • . • • . • • • • • . • I protest , Maug r e thy s trength , place , youth , and eminence , Despite thy victo r-sword and fire - new for t une , Thy valor and thy hea r t , thou a r t a t r aito r, False to thy gods , thy b r othe r, and thy fathe r, Conspirant 'gainst this high illustrious p r ince , And , f r om th ' e x t r emest upward o f thy head To the descent and dust below thy foot A most toad- spotted traitor • . • (137) Edgar ' s "fair and warlike" presence, along with his heart p r egnant with good p i ty , likens his natural person to Machiavelli's prince (see chapte r s XIV- XXIII , The Prince) . His noble heart, his fighting on the side of truth against falsi t y , pity against t r eachery , righteousness against serpent- likeness, faith against unbelief , thankfulness against ingr atitude, all his good doings make Edmund see the unnamed and unrecognized Edgar -- so much has he changed -- as a p r ince . Edmund accepts Edgar ' s c hallenge . They f ight . Edmund falls . Edmund quite suddenly takes on a gentle tone . He admits to being a traito r, "and much, much more" (163) . He wishes to fo r give his slayer and his better, provided he is noble ( 164) • Again the question is asked: "but what art thou/that hast this fortune on me?" (167) . Edgar r eveals himself . 79 78 �Let's exchange charity .· . I am no less in blood than thou art, · Edmund·: If more, the more th' hast wronged me. My name is Edgar, and thy father's son • •• (169) . Edmund earlier scoffed at the usage of "legitimate" when applied to Edgar while he was called a "bastard": "Why brand they us/With base? With baseness? Bastardy? Base? Base?" (I, ii, 40). Certainly he had due cause to be outraged by the cheap remarks of his father and others. As a child born out of wedlock he went unrecognized and unloved. Consequently he knows nothing of the family bond which yields to, and is a requirement of, political and social order. Edmund saw himself in a condition of war against everyone, believing his legitimacy to be what growth and prosperity his native talents could accomplish at Edgar's and Gloucester's expense. The stronger takes all. That he takes all from his kinsman is not an issue. He owes them no allegiance. He is self- sufficient; he needs no companions . Such a man, says Aristotle, is either a god or a beast , in other words , such a man is no politikon zoon. By ·- iooking upon himself as a man engaged in a selfish struggle for wealth and power and glory against every other man, Edmund looks upon everyone else as hateful and comes to see himself as hateful, and . This fate awaits all those who think t~ey can act alone apart from God and other men -- the fate of the self- righteous . Only to the extent that others could further his private interests did Edmund find them useful. The "love" triangle among Goneril, Edmund, and Regan demonstrates his incapacity to hold any firm commitments of a longlasting and wholesome kind . Without any regard for his immediate family, his father and his brother, or a future family of his own, Edmund is a traitor to community life. Edgar shows Edmund what misguided thoughts he had about sonship. He acknowledged that he is not more "in blood" because he had a lawful mother and Edmund did not, but because he acts in accordance with the political fact of human life, a being with others for the good of all. Edgar's filial gratitude shows that he recognizes with thankfulness his ultimate dependence on others: his parents, and their parents, and so on through the generations, back to the primary and first source of being, whom we call God. After defeating Edmund, Edgar is fully reconciled with the gods. With trust he can confidently proclaim: The gods are just; and of our- pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us: The dark and vicious place where thee he got Cost him his eyes • • • (172) • · k b lb Wh h learned that• Cornwall had been Edgar echoes an earlier remar y A any. en e slain by his virtuous servant while in the act of stamping out Gloucester's eyes, Albany proclaimed: This shows you are above You justicers, that these our nether crimes So speedily can venge. But, O poor Gloucester! (IV, ii, 72) seen in the light of Edgar's words, Albany's betray a naive optimism. At the same time Cornwall was getting his recompense, Gloucester, according to Edgar, w~s also being dealt a just blow. Albany is named a "moral fool" by Goneril. Goneri.l does not know in what way her words are t r ue , but it does seem to be the case that to. see feelingly how this world goes requires moral foolishness of a sort. E~gar too is a fool to be sure his words about his father are hard to take. But he is no Albany. Edga~ • s strength' and prudence are unmatched by any other character in the play, except France. Albany challenged Edmund to a duel, "If none appear to prove upon thy person/Thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons" (V, iii, 93) • But Edgar appears; he is the 80 person who becomes fully manifest, the trait of heroes · (andres ~iphaneis). Edgar makes good the . challenge of the moral fool, just as earlier he made good Kent• 5 challenge to Oswald. At the close of the play Albany hands over the power of rule to E~gar. This is a wise move on his part; so doing, he acknowledges Edgar's greater fitness for the task. After Edgar reveals himself and conunents, somewhat prudishly, upon the cause of Gloucester's suffering, Albany wonders where he has "hid" and how he has "known" th "miseries" of his father (V, iii, 182 ) • Edgar tells "a brief tale" ( 183) • It is on: of.only th~ee narratives in the play. First Kent recounted the events which led to being put in the stocks; next a Gentleman described Cordelia's tears; and now that Edgar has a clear view of his experiences, he tells how he was hunted and changed "into a madman's rags": • • • . . . and in this habit Met I my father with his bleeding rings, Their precious stones new lost; became his guide; Never -- O fault -- revealed myself unto him, Until some half hour past, when I was armed. Not sure, though hoping of this good success, I asked his blessing, and from first to last, Told him our pilgrimage. But his flawed heart Alack, too weak the conflict to support 'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, Burst smilingly. (202) Now is the time to observe why Edgar reveals himself to his father when he does. Accomplished nobility requires the fulfillment of certain conditions Responsibilities and. duties accompany the privilege of owning wealth and holdin; p~wer: noblesse oblige. A nobleman must be prepared at all times to arm himself and fight for the order of the conununi ty. He must possess the judgement to determine under what circumstances he ought to fight and the prudence to know how to win the day for the sake of the common good. He must possess the courage to face injustice and the strength to conquer it. Edgar was not noble in the true sense at the beginning of . Ki_n5!_ Le~r. He did not own the judgement, prudence, courage, and strength required to discern and overcome Edmund's injustice. But he suffered and he learned. Edgar's patience allowed him to fulfill the conditions of his birth. By joining company with the griefs of his fathers, and by accepting the teachings of the rel~g~ous traditions which are passed on generation after generation, Edgar rises to nobility. Edgar's full-fledged natural presence is revealed when he appears dressed as a knight, accompanied by trumpet calls, armed. But he cannot escape failure: He recognizes that he is what he was meant to be from the start only when he is armed. "Never -- 0 fault -- revealed myself unto him/ Until some half hour past, when I was armed" ( 19 5) • Is the fault that Edgar could not humble himself and allow others to see him and to know him, if not at his worst, not at his best? This is common enough. Again it is the simple thing that hi ts the mark. Everyone knows what it' s like not to recognize a fellow, not to meet his or her eyes for longer than the time it takes to blow out a candle, for fear of being seen by the other, for fear of having to be revealed to the other. But the consequences are tragic. At least Edgar should be praised for looking squarely upon his wrongdoing and confessing it to all the world. Not the least of us would fail to do that. · As is so often the case with failings, Edgar's fault arises from his good~ess. His desire to bring to completion his noble nature, his wishing the best for his father, his capacity for playing the fool for others, his devotion, these are good thin~s. But .his . confidence in his own knowing -- knowing when he is full grown, knowing what is right and best for his father, knowing that he must play the fool in such and such a circumstance, knowing that Gloucester is ,justly punished by the gods 81 �is his fault. I n s o far as Edgar acts knowi ngly, instead of feelingly, that portion of self-righteousness i n h is heart is at work. Still it is praisewo rthy that Edgar acknowledges the p art he has p l a y ed in his father's death , j ust as Lear a c k nowledges his part i n Co rde l ia's death. v i. The King Th i s would h ave seemed a p e rio d To s u ch a s l ove not s o rrow; but a not h er, To amplify too much, would make much mo re, And top extremity • . • . (V , iii, 20 5 ) with these wo rds Edgar prepares his audience -- those listening to his adventures for the tragic tale of Kent. selfless Kent, who did Lear "service/ Improper for a slave" (222) , was so stricken with grief to hear of the sufferings of Lear and Gloucester, "The strings of life/Began to crack" ( 218) . Edgar's words also have a significance outside the context of his narrative. Through them Shakespeare prepares his audience for a scene more sorrowful than just about any ever told. After Edgar's story, Lear enters with Cordelia, dead, in·his arms. A horror and a mystery, I can say no more. Cordelia's death is an unforeseen effect of Lear's love test. Testing love, trying to love without trust , can only lead to death, as Anselmo also knows. Lear is aware of his own responsibility for, guilt in, the death of Cordelia: "I might have saved her; and now she's gone forever!" (220). Strangely, Lear's last words before his own death are these: "Do you see this? Look on her! Look, her lips! Look there, look there!" (310). Does Lear ."burst smilingl~" like Glouceste~? Does Lear's misery turn to joy at the sight of a miracle when he dies? Does Cordelia rise again in Lear's imagination? I pray that is what happens. I wish t o o ffer another view of the last moment in Lear's life, one which by.no means excludes o r runs contrary to Lear's bursting smilingly. A key to understanding Lear's c on dition at the time of his death can be found in the words he speaks just pr ior t o his l ast. "Pray you, undo this butto n. Thank you,. sir" (311 ) • I n the storm Lear spoke words just like these: "Off, off, you lendings. Come, unbutton h e re!" (II I , i v) . Aside from t h e no table c h ange in t o ne, Lear has the same request a t t h e cen ter a nd at the e nd o f the play. What can this mean? I h a ve a l r eady sugges ted that Edgar, the closest t o Lear in b l ood and i n heart, was the p erso n to heed Lear's command in the storm. Lear always turns t o Edgar f~r rel i ef when he is in need o f a fellow. On the heath Lear made Poor Tom . his philo s opher a nd questioned him on causes: "What is the cause o f thunder?" (III, iv ) . I n other words what is the cause of suffering and o f madnes 3? No answer. Lear i n sists on kee~ing the c ompany of his philoso pher for comfo rt, compan i on ship, and relief. In Gloucester's farmhouse Lear asks another cause question : "Is there ~ny c a use in nature that make these hard hearts?" (III, vi, 78 ) . No answer. Being reminded of his disquantitied train at the mention ? f h~s daughter~, Lea: turns . to Edgar his noble man o f justice, for comfort, companionship, and relief: You, sir, I en~ertain f o r one of my hundred" (74 ) . At the end Lear asks a third cause question, the kind that wrench the heart: "Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all?" (V, iii, 307) • No answer. Again Lear turns for relief· "Pray you 1 undo this button." To whom does he turn? Only Edgar's knightly presen~e can bring Lear a final rest. Edgar undoes Lear's button. "Thank you, sir." Edgar is the only person to whom Lear owes some thanks. It would not be fitting for Lear t o t hank Kent, his own shadow. Lear's last words to Kent are, "You a~e we~co~e hither" ( 291 ) . Lear embraces Kent; he hopes that Kent will join company with him in a nd beyo nd de a th. But why do es Lear owe Edgar thanks? Why is Edgar the only person who can bring Lear a fi n a l rest? 82 Kin_ Lear begins with a grand event, which, for the full effect, Edgar must g attend . The great King Lear is providing for th€ perpetuation of his peaceful reign. Foremost among his concerns is who will succeed to his throne, who will take on his "cares and business" (I, ii, 38) • He has designed a plan so that Cordelia , his favorite, will rule the physically largest and politically central portion of his kingdom . The plan fails because Cordelia is silent -- like Budd before Claggart and Chr ist before the Gr and Inqu_ tor -- because she says "nothing" when her fathe r isi commands her to profess publicly her love for him. She cannot comply with a test or make a game of her love . Lear enraged disclaims Cordelia and hastily gives all to Goneril and Regan, dividing his kingdom in two (the number for strife) rather than three (the number for unity) . Lear can only hope that either Goneril or Regan will bear a son to carry on his name . But no . He curses Goneril's womb, a curse which might equally condemn Regan's : Hear, Nature, hear; dear Goddess, hear : Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend To make this creature fruitful. Into her womb convey sterility. Dry up in her the organs of increase . And from her derogate body never spring A babe to honor her • • • (I, iv, 288) With these wo r ds Lear ensu r es that he will have no p r ogeny, no g r andson to name . But there is Edgar, Lear ' s s pi r itual son, whom he named . Unknowingly, throughout the play , in words and i n d eed s, Lear has taught Edgar c r ucial t hing s he needs to know about kingship -- the danger of flatte r ers , the corruption of courts, etc . Lear has just about ful fi lled his duty a s a fathe r and a king, and Edgar will, once he lear ns the most crucial thing about kingship, fulfill his duty as a son and a prince . So , Lear owes Edgar thanks, and Edgar i s t he only person who can b r ing Lea r a final rest . But what sense can be made of Lear 's last words -- "Do you see this? Look on her! Look, her lips! Look ther e, look there!" -- in this context? Why should Lear command Edgar to look on Cordelia's lips? If Lear sees Cordelia's lips breathe new life, that is a miracle . Pray, let it be so . But those lips have another significance . Possibly Lear is commanding Edgar to look on those lips which he t r ied to make utter wo r ds they could never utte r. Lear is r eminding and teaching Edgar what was his greates t fault as a king, hoping that Edgar will lear n this most cruc ia l thing and never fall from the same fault. Lear's fin al gesture is at once an acknowledgement of his wr ongdoing, an acknowledgement that his wrongdoing is a hidden cause of Cor del.ia ' s deat h , and an effort to ensure that the future king be free f r om such wrongdoing . Lear's last gestur e is his greatest. Edgar and Cordelia , Lear 's g r acious children, always remain faithful to the truth, the one to the truth of his natural person, the othe r to the truth of her love . Because o f this stead fast loyalty Edg ar cannot r eveal himself to his f ather i n speech until hi~ natural person is perfected, and Co r delia cannot profess her love for her father . The tragedies of Lear and Glouc.e ster are in part the consequences of Edgar's and Cor delia's goodness . I cannot rebuke them for being proud, uncompromising, unscrupulous, or what have you . I cannot say that they should have said this or that at such and such a time. This, after all, was Lear's original fault. Edgar's penultimate couplet shows that he has understood Lear's last gesture : The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel not what we ought to say . (V , ii i, 324) Finally, Edgar is king. According to Machiavelli, he will show great competence in his office. His gift for making the most of whatever accidents happen to befall him entitles him to the name "natural prince." He has firsthand knowledge of the actions of great men, which is so important for a ruler. He has been offered what is perhaps the best possible education for kingship in living the lives of his subjects: the madman, the begg~z- #;~ the poor man, the servant, the cormnon man, the nobleman, the 83 �judge, the philosoph.e r, and last, the champion knight . Knowi ng that Edgar wil l r ule , I believe that the line which best captures the mood at the end of King ~ is Kent's: " • • • though it be night, yet the moon shines . " NOTES I wish to acknowledge four works of interpretation to which I am indebted: Stanley Cavell' s The Avoidance of Love; Robert Heilman' s The Great Stage; Lawrence Berns' Gratitude:-"Nature, and Pie~in King Lear; William O'Grady' s On Almost Seeing Miracles. - - Also, I wish to thank Mrs. Flaumenhaft for her encouragement and guidance. 84 �Non-Profit Org . BULK RATE U. S. POSTAGE . PAID St. John's College·· Annapolis, MD 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. 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. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. ii, 84 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper 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/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Holland, Christian (Editor) Title A name given to the resource Energeia, Winter 1984 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Description An account of the resource Issue of the Energeia, published in Winter 1984. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Energeia Winter 1984 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kalkavage, Peter Energeia Student publication