Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato 1107184444, 9781107184442

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tragedy by returning to its earliest articulations in archaic Greek poetry and its subsequent emergence as a philosophical problem in Plato’s Republic. Socrates’ claim that tragic poetry satisfies our “hunger for tears” suggest a common source of pleasure in the human appetite for heightened forms of emotional distress. By unearthing a psychosomatic model of aesthetic engagement implicit in archaic poetry and philosophically elaborated by Plato, this volume not only sheds new light on the Republic’s notorious indictment of poetry, but also identifies rationally and ethically disinterested sources of value in our pursuit of aesthetic states. In doing so the book resolves an intractable paradox in aesthetic theory and human psychology: the appeal of painful emotions. Rana Saadi Liebert is a site director and faculty member of the Bard Prison Initiative, and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Bard College. Her research focuses on the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in ancient literature and philosophy, ancient and modern theories of emotion, and the history of conceptualizing fiction.

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Jacket illustration: The Kiss of the Siren by German artist Gustav Wertheimer, 1882. Anonymous Gift. (Photo by Indianapolis Museum of Art/Getty Images)

Tr agic Pleasure from Homer to Plato

hearkens back to archaic conceptions of both poetry and mourning that

Liebert

This book offers a resolution of the paradox posed by the pleasure of

Tr agic Pleasure from Homer to Plato R ana Saadi Liebert

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T R A G I C P L E A S U R E F RO M H O M E R TO   P L ATO

This book offers a resolution to the paradox posed by the pleasure of tragedy by returning to its earliest articulations in archaic Greek poetry and its subsequent emergence as a philosophical problem in Plato’s Republic. Socrates’ claim that tragic poetry satisfies our “hunger for tears” hearkens back to archaic conceptions of both poetry and mourning that suggest a common source of pleasure in the human appetite for heightened forms of emotional distress. By unearthing a psychosomatic model of aesthetic engagement implicit in archaic poetry and philosophically elaborated by Plato, this volume not only sheds new light on the Republic’s notorious indictment of poetry but also identifies rationally and ethically disinterested sources of value in our pursuit of aesthetic states. In doing so the book resolves an intractable paradox in aesthetic theory and human psychology: the appeal of painful emotions. Rana Saadi Liebert is a site director and faculty member of the Bard Prison Initiative, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Bard College.

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T R A G I C P L E A S U R E F RO M H O M E R TO   P L ATO R A N A S A A D I L I E B E RT Bard College, New York

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University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 4843/​24, 2nd Floor, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, Delhi –​110002, India 79 Anson Road, #06-​04/​06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/​9781107184442 DOI: 10.1017/​9781316877036 © Rana Saadi Liebert 2017 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2017 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Liebert, Rana Saadi, author. Title: Tragic pleasure from Homer to Plato / Rana Saadi Liebert, Bard College, New York. Description: Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017004140 | ISBN 9781107184442 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Greek drama (Tragedy) – History and criticism. | Emotions in literature. | Plato. Republic. Classification: LCC PA3131 .L54 2017 | DDC 882/.0109–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017004140 ISBN 978-​1-​107-​18444-​2 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

Acknowledgments page vii Notes on the Text ix

Introduction: The Pleasure of Tragedy

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The Taste of Archaic Poetry

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Emotional Satisfaction in Archaic Poetry

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3

Tragic Pleasure in Plato’s Republic

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Epilogue: Poetry and Privacy –​Toward an Aristotelian Defense of Poetry and a Platonic Alternative

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Bibliography Index

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Acknowledgments

This book emerged from my struggle with the meaning of Plato’s critique of the arts in the Republic, a critique I first encountered as a baffled undergraduate and which I continue to find in equal measure compelling and distressing. Without the guidance, challenges, and feedback of teachers and friends, I would still be wringing my hands. I owe the greatest debt to my dissertation advisor Mark Payne, whose creative and exacting mind consistently inspired and challenged my own, and whose breadth of knowledge beyond the field of classics exposed me to alternative modes of inquiry that crucially informed this book’s development. Whatever philosophical merits it has I  owe to the other two members of my dissertation committee, Elizabeth Asmis and Gabriel Lear, who showed me how to read Plato as a thinker as well as a writer, and how to think as a philosopher as well as a literary critic. I would like to thank Robert von Hallberg for his unfailing confidence in my work and for reading drafts of the dissertation at various stages. Sarah Nooter was a fount of poetic wisdom in the early stages of the project, and continued to be an intellectual and professional guide through the book’s completion. I am grateful to many more faculty members and students than I  can mention for making my time at the University of Chicago incomparably rich and intellectually rewarding. There is no place like it on earth. I would like to thank my colleagues at Bard College and the Bard Prison Initiative for encouraging and supporting my research, in particular Jamie Romm, Bill Mullen, Thomas Bartscherer, Megan Callaghan, and Max Kenner. I am grateful to my BPI students for opening my eyes to new perspectives on the Republic and for rejuvenating my faith in the enduring relevance of ancient texts. I  would also like to thank my editor at Cambridge University Press, Michael Sharp, for his consummate

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Acknowledgments

professionalism, and the two anonymous readers for their invaluable feedback. The book is much better because of it. Last, though far from least, I thank my husband Hugh for helping me see this project through over the course of three children and many more adventures, and my children Ava, Annabel, and Hughie for making me see the world –​and Plato’s assessment of it –​more clearly.

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Notes on the Text

An earlier version of Chapter  1, Section 1.1 and Chapter  3, Section 3.1 appeared as “Apian Imagery and the Critique of Poetic Sweetness in Plato’s Republic,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 140.1 (2010) 97–​115. Parts of Chapter 3, Section 3.3 appeared in “Pity and Disgust in Plato’s Republic: The Case of Leontius,” Classical Philology 108.3 (2013) 179–​201.

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Introduction: The Pleasure of Tragedy

Why do human beings enjoy tragedy? What is the appeal of a tear-​jerker, a thriller, or for that matter any form of distressing entertainment? Is our pursuit of emotional distress in fact limited to traditional forms of entertainment, whose fictional status we never quite forget, or (as gladiators, rubbernecking, gossip, and teenage romance would suggest) do we seek out “drama” in real life? The pleasure of tragic experience remains a mystery. As one German romantic observed two centuries ago, the appeal of tragedy raises a question that “has often been asked, and seldom satisfactorily answered.”1 The same could be said today. This book attempts an answer. It offers a resolution of the paradox posed by the pleasure of tragedy, broadly conceived, by returning to its earliest articulations in archaic Greek poetry and its subsequent emergence as a philosophical problem in Plato’s Republic. Socrates’ provocative claim that tragic poetry satisfies our “hunger for tears” (R. 606a) hearkens back, I argue, to archaic conceptions of both poetry and mourning that suggest a common source of pleasure in the human appetite for heightened forms of emotional distress. This continuity between Plato and the poetic tradition he denounces reveals something essential about the nature of Plato’s case against the arts, and, more importantly, about the appeal of Art in general. By unearthing a psychosomatic model of poetic engagement implicit in archaic poetry and philosophically elaborated by Plato, this book not only aims to shed new light on the Republic’s notorious indictment against poetry but also identifies and explores rationally and ethically disinterested sources of value in our pursuit of aesthetic states. Articulating and understanding these mysterious sources of value will hopefully resolve what has proven to be an intractable paradox in aesthetic theory and human psychology: the appeal of painful emotions. Schlegel (1889) 67.

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Introduction: The Pleasure of Tragedy

I.1  A Case Study: The Veteran and the War Widow After ten years of fighting abroad and ten more of wandering the seas, the Greek veteran Odysseus, utterly destitute, naked, and friendless, washes up on the shores of Scheria, the utopian land of the Phaeacians. This is where we find him in book 6 of Homer’s Odyssey. There the forsaken hero supplicates the princess and is eventually received by the court. During the feast that the king has thrown to welcome his suppliant, a singer begins to sing the story of the Trojan War. Unbeknown to the Phaeacians, this is a story their mysterious guest has lived through, and Odysseus, unprepared perhaps for such a confrontation with his epic persona, can barely conceal his distress.2 Only Alcinous the King, who happens to be sitting beside him, notices the stranger weeping beneath his mantle, and discreetly ends the performance. A  gracious and considerate host, Alcinous does all he can to distract his guest from his troubles with athletic games and comic lays, but Odysseus, bafflingly, returns to the sore topic. He commends the bard Demodocus on his previous performance of the Trojan War, and requests to hear another part of the story. Only this time Odysseus solicits a particularly flattering episode that spotlights his crucial role in clinching the Argive victory. Demodocus faithfully recounts the tale of the Wooden Horse, but when he focuses on a heroic scene starring Odysseus himself, the hero breaks down completely (Od. 8.516–​31): And he sang of how they ravaged the lofty city here and there, then how Odysseus to the house of Deiphobus made his way like Ares, along with godlike Menelaos. There he sang that he [Odysseus] endured the grimmest battle of all, and was victorious there too, through the help of great-​hearted Athena. So sang the famous bard. But Odysseus melted, and from his eyes the tears streamed down, drenching his cheeks. As a woman weeps embracing her dear husband, who has fallen before his city and people after trying to fight off the pitiless day from his home and children; when she sees him dying and gasping for breath she throws herself over him and cries out, while men behind her strike her back and shoulders with their spears and drag her into bondage to suffer labor and hardship, and her cheeks waste with the most pitiful weeping –​ so did Odysseus shed pitiful tears from under his brows.3 As Halliwell (2011a) puts it, “he is caught emotionally off guard” (79). All translations of Greek and Latin are my own unless otherwise noted.

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Many commentators have remarked on the poignancy of this simile, which ironically figures Odysseus as one of the many Trojan women he himself has widowed.4 The widow in the simile –​clinging to the expiring body of her fallen husband as the invaders drag her into a life of servitude –​suffers the horrific fate of those whose city, like Troy, has been besieged.5 The narrator’s Trojan sympathies, then, seem to rupture the objective surface of his narrative and undermine his protagonist’s heroism with an implicit condemnation of war. When the image is focalized through Odysseus, however, who is now comparably bereaved and in a better position to pity his victims just as he pities himself, we find that it is the hero’s sympathies and not the poet’s that are divided. We realize, in other words, that Demodocus’ song is an impartial one; it does not necessarily take sides in the Trojan War. The song is about a calamity –​ a pêma –​that befell “Trojans and Danaans alike” (Od. 8.82) who have an equal claim on the audience’s sympathy, not least of all the widows. Demodocus’ song, then, is a testament to the power of tragic narrative  –​understood, for now, as a story of human suffering (we will expand on this in the next section). Odysseus, a ruthless Greek warrior whom we would expect to relish the thought of widowing and enslaving the wife of his enemy, here as a listener rather than a participant of the story, identifies with one of his victims so completely that he experiences her fate with the same emotional intensity.6 The song is also a See Lord (1954) 422–​3; Mattes (1958) 115–​22; Foley (1978) 7; Nagy (1979) 101; Clay (1983) 102; Macleod (1983) 10–​11; Rutherford (1986) 155; Murnaghan (1987) 101–​2; Heubeck et al. (1988) 381; Dimock (1989) 104; Roisman (1990) 223–​4; Goldhill (1991) 53–​4; Segal (1994) 120–​1; Buxton (2004) 149; Rinon (2006) 219–​20; Halliwell (2011a) 88–​90; and Peponi (2012) 57–​8. Though my interpretation of the widow-​simile focuses on its immediate context, one should note that it also plays a role in a broader poetic agenda; the simile is one of a few prominently placed and interlinked “reverse-​ similes” that, as Foley has argued, form “a larger pattern of social disruption and restoration in the epic” ([1978] 8). 5 The woman in the simile thus evokes the plight of Andromache, as Hector painfully imagines it in Il. 6.450–​65 (noted by Macleod [1983] 11 and Nagy [1979] 101); see Il. 9.590-​4 for a classic depiction of the captured city in ancient literature and Paul (1982) for a history of the urbs capta as a literary topos in ancient literature. On the brutal treatment of conquered people in ancient Greek warfare, see Lanni (2008) 481–​2, who begins her discussion by noting that “[f ]‌or a modern, the most striking lacuna in the Greek law of war is the absence of protection for noncombatants” (481); see Schaps (1982) 202–​6 on the treatment of women in particular, who were customarily raped and enslaved, but rarely killed. 6 Iliadic heroes eagerly anticipate the acquisition of a war bride, in no small part because of the poetic justice this would render on the Trojans, who initiated the conflict with an act of rape; so Nestor:  “Therefore let no one hasten his way homeward /​before he has slept with the wife of a Trojan /​to avenge Helen’s longing and lamentation” (Il. 2.354–​6; cf. 3.301, 4.238–​9, 11.393, 18.121-​5, 20.191–​4). Segal (1994) observes in his discussion of the simile above that “[t]‌he Odysseus of the Iliad never so identifies with the victims of the Trojan side; and … there is little in the heroic code that would encourage him to identify with his conquered enemy, especially one of the opposite sex” (121). Rutherford (1986) goes so far as to suggest that the simile “borders on the improbable or 4

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Introduction: The Pleasure of Tragedy

testament to the irresistible force of grief. Rather than try to run and save herself, the widow in the simile sobs helplessly while suffering the blows of her assailants, and succumbs to her grim fate. Odysseus, too, rather than preserve his dignity and prudently conceal his identity in a strange and potentially hostile land, wails like a hysterical woman in the serene Phaeacian court.7 Most important, for my purposes, is the fact that Odysseus could have anticipated this reaction.8 He had already wept repeatedly, albeit more discreetly, in response to Demodocus’ first account of the Trojan War, and was ashamed of his emotional display, which he attempted to conceal in vain (αἴδετο, Od. 8.86). Why, knowing his vulnerability to this sensitive topic, does Odysseus invite another opportunity to relive his painful past, lose emotional control, incur the shame of his hosts, and betray his identity prematurely? What does he want and what does he expect from hearing his upsetting history recounted in song?9 What Odysseus wants, I suggest, is to indulge his desire to grieve –​for himself in his destitute state as well as the destitution of his victims, for his elusive homecoming as well as the homecoming denied to his lost comrades at sea, for the countless miseries that the Trojan War has brought into the world, in which he was in many cases complicit –​and that is why, when hearing the story of his crowning achievement at Troy, Odysseus does not celebrate his heroic feat, but rather laments the human suffering unbelievable,” given Odysseus’ characteristic self-​control in far more emotionally trying situations, such as maintaining his disguise before his grieving wife (223); Halliwell (2011a) likewise finds it remarkable that “the remorselessly self-​disciplined hero appears practically to lose control over his own emotions” (38). 7 The feminization of Odysseus in this scene is discussed by Rinon (2006) 220–​1. That Odysseus could be reduced to such displays of feminine emotionalism lends credence, we will see, to Plato’s charge in the Republic that tragic poetry emasculates its listeners (605c–​606b). 8 I agree with Halliwell (2011a) that to deny this anticipation, as some scholars do, would be to render Odysseus “grossly self-​ignorant about his own emotions” given his previous reactions to Demodocus’ Trojan song (82). 9 Scholars rarely pose this question directly, with the notable exceptions of Goldhill (1991) 51–​4, who denies the question a definitive answer, and Halliwell (2011a) 79–​92, who sees in Odysseus’ choice the redemptive power of song to clarify and give meaning to human suffering (see esp. 83 and 91). Halliwell’s reading is a sensitive and sophisticated one, but it limits the pleasure of tragic song to extraordinary figures of epic who confront or anticipate their own aesthetic transformation (Achilles, Helen, Odysseus), while I prefer to pose and answer the question in more universal terms –​that is to say, to see in the case of Odysseus’ attraction to his tragic narrative a commentary on the appeal of tragic narratives in general, to us no less than to Odysseus. Halliwell himself suggests this when he takes Odysseus to be “emblematic, in highly peculiar circumstances, of the irresistible longing or desire (ἵμερος) which … song is characteristically thought to arouse” (82), but his explanation of this longing as a desire to contemplate one’s own life objectified in song (83) is only applicable to those in Odysseus’ “highly peculiar circumstances.”

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that surrounds it.10 This is all the more surprising in light of the fact that Odysseus is afforded a rare opportunity for Homeric heroes; whereas most must sacrifice their lives for a glory they will never live to enjoy, Odysseus is in a unique position to hear his own kleos circulated within the human community during his lifetime.11 Surely he should enjoy his celebrity and take pride in his military feats. But such expectations would be naïve. First, epic kleos is always mired in human suffering, always emerges from tragedy –​that is the paradoxical condition of its coveted acquisition. In the zero-​sum game of Homeric warfare (of warfare generally, really), there is no winning glory without robbing the enemy of his, no combat without death, no victory without defeat.12 The human cost of kleos will always shadow its reception, and this is one reason why a hero who gets a taste of his posthumous fame should not be expected to delight in it simply.13 But to say that Odysseus laments the conditions of his glory is not necessarily to say that he has regret, or that he has grown compassionate in his humility, though the impulse to redeem him this way is hard to resist, but that lamentation and sorrow are indeed part of the satisfaction he seeks. For another, more crucial, reason why Odysseus reacts the way he does to the story of Troy’s fall is that he is not only a hero listening to his own epic song, with all the posttraumatic anxiety such an experience is bound to trigger, but also an audience member listening to a tragic narrative, as we, too, listen to the tragic narrative of the Odyssey, or the Iliad.14 And we do not expect or seek to experience unalloyed joy. What we seek is to experience tragedy. What Odysseus seeks is to relive his own, in part, and in part to live another’s. The question I pose in this book is why. I have, admittedly, bracketed some complicating factors in this and related episodes from the Odyssey. For one, the Phaeacians do not react Walsh (1984) more hesitantly remarks that Odysseus “seems almost to welcome the sensation of grief ” (1), but then proceeds to find less paradoxical explanations for his behavior. Redfield (1973) also observes, all too briefly, that “for Odysseus the poem is good in that it revives his sorrows. Poetry is a kind of mourning” (153). 11 On this point, see in particular Murnaghan (1987) 153. 12 For the clearest articulation of this view in Homer, see Sarpedon’s speech in Il. 12.322–​8 and Martin (2011) 19–​20 on this passage. 13 Another, related reason is that, because epic kleos typically signifies a hero’s death, hearing his own in circulation may suggest to Odysseus that the tradition has prematurely killed him off and consigned him to the past; for a compelling version of this argument, see Biles (2003) 199–​206; see also Murnaghan (1987) 150–​5. 14 Segal (1994) similary extends the model of aesthetic involvement represented by Odysseus to a general audience, arguing that “[t]‌he comparison of Odysseus’ tearful response to a weeping captive woman suggests the possibility that this identification with the subject matter of the song applies not just to the memory of an actual participant but also to vicarious, imaginary participation” (121). 10

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to Demodocus’ song as Odysseus does, and are in fact mortified by his excessive emotionalism. Some have taken this to suggest that their composed response to epic narrative is the model one, and that Odysseus, like Penelope in book 1 when she begs the Ithacan bard to stop reminding her of her lost husband with his song (337–​44), is singular for his proximity to the subject of song.15 On this reading, aesthetic distance is required to experience the pleasure of tragic poetry, and neither Penelope nor Odysseus has it. I  contest this view for a number of reasons. To begin with, Odysseus clearly derives some kind of satisfaction from Demodocus’ tragic song, for otherwise he would not praise him and ask for another. Second, as others have argued, the Phaeacians are not exactly typical of a human audience; they are virtually unacquainted with tragedy, blessed and protected as they are by the gods and utterly isolated from other, more vulnerable civilizations and cultures.16 Even insisting on the singularity of Phaeacian spectatorship may skew the matter, moreover, for in the end they too have the same taste for tragedy as Odysseus does, only less experience living it.17 As for Penelope, she is in a state of perpetual mourning, and does not need the space of song to air her grief as a typical audience member might. As Telemachus sharply reminds her, others less consumed by their losses at Troy –​not least of all himself –​still want to hear the latest Trojan song (1.351–​5). These and related arguments against the claim that aesthetic pleasure requires distance are ones I merely suggest here, but will unfold in greater detail in the course of my study.18 I begin with this episode from the Odyssey because it conflates, in the figure of the hero who enjoys weeping over his own aesthetically rendered tragedy, the desire to hear tragic narrative with the desire to grieve, and it suggests a disabling quality to this desire in its stubborn resistance to rational control. This view of tragic pleasure as the satisfaction of a subrational appetite for grief is, I argue, one inherited and See, for example, Nagy (1979) 97–​102; Macleod (1983) 8; Murnaghan (1987) 153–​6; Scodel (1998) 183; and Rinon (2006) 214. For a more nuanced picture of audience response in Homer, see Walsh (1984) 1–​21; Doherty (1995) 90–​1; Halliwell (2011a) 44, 77–​9; and Peponi (2012) 33–​69. 16 See Halliwell (2011a) 44, 77–​8 for a summary of this view. 17 The Phaeacians are captivated by Odysseus’ own tragedy, and insist that he stay on Scheria until he finishes his “tale of woe” (Od. 11.362–​84). 18 See also Peponi (2012), who argues that aesthetic pleasure in the Odyssey “is progressively conceptualized as achievable in spite of one’s lack of psychical distance” (34) and who uses this model of aesthetic engagement to argue against the Kantian condition of disinterestedness in aesthetic judgement (63–​9). I am in many ways sympathetic to Peponi’s reading, but go further in the present study by insisting, along with Plato, that under-​distanced and interested attitudes are indeed necessary conditions –​and consequences –​of the kind of aesthetic pleasure derived from tragic poetry; see my review of her book in Liebert (2013b). 15

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developed by Plato. The particular expression of Odysseus’ response to Demodocus’ Trojan song vividly manifests the symptoms of Plato’s tragic audience in book 10 of the Republic; there, “even the best of us” praise the poet  –​as Odysseus praises Demodocus (Od. 8.487–​91)  –​who most effectively reduces us to tears, and indulge in feminine displays of grief that would normally be shameful and abhorrent to us (R. 605c–​606b). In both scenes of spectatorship, then, the appropriation of a character’s distressed emotional state leads to the emasculation of the spectator, who willingly relinquishes self-​control to experience a form of acute emotional pain. The paradox this poses is the subject of this book, which attempts to explain the appeal of tragedy, both real and poetic, and the reasons why Plato rejects tragic forms of mimesis, the first and greatest of which were the epics of Homer.

I.2  A Problem: The Tragic Paradox This book is a response to Socrates’ provocative claim in Plato’s Republic that tragic poetry satisfies our “hunger for tears” (τὸ … πεπεινηκὸς τοῦ δακρῦσαι, 606a). Socrates’ observation and its striking metaphorical articulation raise a number of fundamental questions lying at the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and aesthetic theory that have yet to be settled. What follows is an attempt, if not to settle them, at least to offer possible answers by returning to the literary and philosophical traditions in which they were first posed. Before proceeding to the questions raised by Socrates’ formulation of the appeal of tragedy, it is worth stating at the outset what I mean –​and what I  take Plato to mean  –​by the terms “tragic” and “tragedy” in the context of such an inquiry. As my usage has already suggested, these terms point beyond the founding literary genre from which they emerged in fifth-​century BCE Athens, and have come to mean –​through a complex history of conceptualization  –​much more than ancient authors could have anticipated or modern authors (and speakers) necessarily intend.19 To complicate matters, tragedy and the tragic are not always simple grammatical variations on the same concept, but in many cases convey distinct concepts:  as a normative category of aesthetic, moral, or metaphysical evaluation grounded in the meaning and value of human suffering, the idea of “the tragic” often bears a tenuous connection to any On the history of conceptualizing tragedy, formed crucially by German Idealism and Romanticism, see in particular Most (2000); Felksi (2008); Leonard (2012); and Billings (2014).

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particular literary “tragedy” it is in principle meant to reflect.20 These literary productions themselves vary in time and place, and do not exhaust the scope of “tragedy” as experienced in the unscripted suffering of real life; events as well as plays, stories as well as poetry can be identified as tragedies. Such events, stories, and artistic productions can qualify as “tragic” –​ especially if one seeks to ennoble them –​but they can also fail to qualify if certain conditions are not met.21 What we mean by the terms “tragic” and “tragedy,” then, is by no means self-​evident. And yet, such polysemy notwithstanding, designations of tragedy and evocations of the tragic reach out across time and place to elicit our sympathy and recognition, suggesting some constant in the historical variability of thinking about tragedy. This essentializing impulse cannot be simply dismissed as naive presentistism, because it can be detected in Greek tragedy’s immediate reception. Plato is arguably the first to abstract “the tragic” from fifth-​century Greek tragedies and isolate the quality of experience they aimed to produce, as well as the first to link this quality to an implicit, pessimistic worldview.22 Plato’s critique of poetry in the Republic, while clearly responding to the performances of tragic drama that flourished in his day, primarily targets Homer as “the first of the tragedians” (πρῶτον τῶν τραγῳδοποιῶν, 607a), and freely abstracts from the genre of Athenian tragedy a property of poetry that can be found in “epic, lyric, or tragic verse” (379a) –​indeed, a property that need not be confined to verse at all, but begins with story-​telling in its most prosaic form (377b), and in principle extends to the visual as well as the aural.23 As Most (2000) puts it, “we expect a ‘tragedy’ to be ‘tragic.’ This expectation may sound self-​ evident, but in fact this ‘tragic’ ethos is a modern construction, one whose links to the ancient genre of Greek ‘tragedy’ are far more tenuous than its connections to philosophical and social developments over the last two centuries” (20). Problematic applications of the tragic to particular tragedies are not only limited to modern anachronistic practices but extend as far back as Aristotle’s Poetics, which notoriously excludes or distorts pervasive features of Greek tragedy (such as the role of the gods, the chorus, and the polis) in developing a notional ideal; see Halliwell (1986) 202–​52; Hall (1996); Goldhill (2008) 49–​55; and Leonard (2012) 151–​3. 21 What qualifies as “tragic” is, unsurprisingly, the subject of much disagreement; for a useful and amusing summary of rival definitions, see Eagelton (2003) 1–​22. 22 Halliwell (1996) makes a compelling case for attributing the first theoretical formulation of the tragic as a metaphysical perspective to Plato. 23 Socrates’ initial censorship of poetry in the context of primary education leads to far more extensive regulation than is often appreciated. The scope of ethical influence goes beyond depictions of character and patterns of behavior to include every aspect of the young guardian’s environment; manners of speech, modes of music and rhythm, forms of movement, works of painting and crafts such as weaving, embroidery, carpentry and architecture, and finally even plants and animals must be carefully contrived with a view to fostering the right disposition of soul –​what Socrates calls “good form” or grace (εὐσχημοσύνη, 400e–​402a). The tragic would here be configured as “bad 20

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It is this abstracted concept of tragic narrative that concerns me here, understood as an account which elicits grief and anguish, satisfies a childish impulse to explore the depths of suffering, while speciously dignifying its emotional expression. Socrates intimates the paradox at the heart of tragedy when he pointedly calls it “beautiful” (595c) and exposes this paradox outright when he identifies the allure of tragedy as the allure of grief. And this brings us back to the formulation with which we began: the “hunger for tears” that tragedy satisfies –​and the questions it raises. Why, in the first place, do human beings desire to experience the pain of grief, and desire it (according to Socrates) proactively as well as reactively –​that is, prior to any occasion for grieving and thus without necessary orientation towards any particular object? Socrates suggests that we have as a permanent feature of our human condition an ache for the tragic; we actively seek out occasions for grieving, and we relish the pain when such occasions eventually arise. When we use somatic terms like “ache” and “relish” to describe an emotional impulse, we echo and affirm Socrates’ appetitive characterization of the desire to grieve as a form of “hunger” that arises from the embodied state of the soul. He configures a psychic drive biologically, and the state of mind that it pursues has, in point of fact, an unmistakable physiological symptom: tears. The appetitive part of the soul remains a part of soul, however, not limited to strictly biological imperatives such as thirst for water and hunger for food –​though these serve as the most “palpable” or conspicuous cases (ἐναργεστάτας, 437d) –​ but extending to emotional desires that involve the body, of which erôs is paradigmatic.24 The psychosomatic nature of the peculiar satisfaction of grieving hearkens back to archaic conceptions of both mourning and form” –​a kind of gracelessness and disorder –​but one that conceals itself with an alluring exterior that must be stripped away. Hence later he refers to the tyrant’s ostentatious display of power as a “vesture of tragedy” that conceals his true wretchedness (τῆς τραγικῆς σκευῆς, 577b), just as mimetic poetry uses the embellishments of language and music to “color” and conceal its false content (ἐπιχρωματίζειν, 601a–​b); see Chapter 3, Section 3.2, notes 43 and 79. The tragic, then, is not just a matter of content but also of form –​a way of dressing up a destructive habit, state of being or worldview. 24 Socrates calls “that with which [the soul] loves [ἐρᾷ], hungers, thirsts, and feels the flutter [ἐπτόηται] of other desires the irrational and appetitive part [τὸ … ἀλόγιστόν τε καὶ ἐπιθυμητικόν], companion of certain replenishments and pleasures” (R. 439d). It should be noted that erôs is a problematic concept for Plato both within the Republic, where it is identified as the characteristic desire of both the tyrant (472e–​573d) and the philosopher (485b, 499c–​d, 501d), and within the larger Platonic corpus, where it is alternately praised and maligned. On Plato’s ambivalent treatment of erôs, with particular emphasis on the Republic, see Rosen (1965), Ludwig (2007), and Scott (2007).

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poetry that similarly conflate body and mind, forming the background, I will argue, to this Platonic picture of the appetite.25 Relishing the pain of grief leads to a subsidiary, though no less central, question about the nature of object-​oriented, reactive grief: Why and how is it satisfying, when it must renew and exacerbate pain in the process? The paradoxical pleasure of grieving is, according to Socrates, a larger genus of pleasure of which the paradoxical pleasure of tragic representations is a species; to examine the nature of one necessarily implicates the other. When we turn to literature and the arts, we must not merely ask why mimetic representations of painful objects manage to give pleasure. Focusing on this question alone only displaces the question of why painful objects themselves can give pleasure in real life, the answer to which entails understanding the origins of the self-​ destructive impulse that Socrates posits in the human soul. We must also ask whether the satisfaction we experience in mimetic contexts differs from that which we experience in real life. The widely accepted answer to the primary question about the relationship between “life” and “art” can be traced back to a passage from Aristotle’s Poetics describing our natural inclination to engage in mimetic activity. In his prefatory remarks, Aristotle briefly identifies and apparently resolves the tragic paradox, which, though central to his topic (tragic poetry), remains otherwise unacknowledged in the rest of the treatise (1448b3–​18):26 Poetry on the whole seems to owe its origin to two particular causes, both of them natural. For it is an instinct of human beings to engage in mimesis from childhood, and in this respect they differ from the other animals; man is by far the most mimetic and learns his first lessons from mimesis. Everyone also enjoys mimetic objects. Proof of this comes from a common occurrence: for we enjoy contemplating the most precise images of objects which are themselves painful to look at: the forms of the basest animals, for instance, and of corpses. The reason is this: learning gives the greatest

The background I will be investigating is primarily conceptual in nature, and focuses on models of tragic pleasure and experiences of mourning in archaic poetry and early classical aesthetic theory; for studies that emphasize the connection between Greek tragic drama as a social institution and actual rituals of mourning, see, for example, Easterling (1993), Segal (1996), and Foley (2001) 19–​ 56. These and related studies are indebted to Alexiou’s groundbreaking work, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (1974), which remains the first and only diachronic survey of Greek literary laments in their sociocultural contexts. 26 On Aristotle’s indifference to the paradox of tragic pleasure, see Munteanu (2012) 118–​31, who suggests a number of solutions along Aristotelian lines, none of which prove satisfactory in the end (131). 25

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pleasure, not only to philosophers, but likewise to all other men, though they have a lesser share of it. The reason why we enjoy looking at images is that, as we contemplate them, we learn and infer what each is, for instance that “this person is so-​and-​so.” If we happened not to have seen the subject before, the image will not give pleasure as a mimetic object, but through its execution, or color, or some other such cause.

In making the case for the pleasing nature of mimesis, Aristotle appeals to the self-​evident fact that we enjoy contemplating images even of sights that are normally painful to look at, such as “the forms of the basest animals and of corpses.”27 While he intends this to prove that the source of mimetic pleasure in images derives from the representational medium rather than the object of representation, he indirectly aligns tragic poetry with images of frightening animals and pitiable corpses, suggesting that the poetic artifice, rather than its fearful and pitiable content, is the source of tragedy’s pleasure, and intelligibility and understanding, rather than emotional excitement, is tragedy’s aim. Throughout the Poetics both cognition and emotion play an essential role in bringing about tragedy’s “proper pleasure” (οἰκεία ἡδονή, 1453b10–​14), but in this particular passage Aristotle leaves the emotions to one side, presenting tragic mimesis instead as a safe space for learning about objects whose actual presence would prove too painful to observe, be they wild animals and mutilated corpses or incest and self-​mutilation.28 Aristotle thus limits the pleasure taken in painful objects to their representation alone; their “most precise images” (τὰς εἰκόνας τὰς μάλιστα ἠκριβωμένας) allow us to recognize, without pain, that “this is that” (οὗτος ἐκεῖνος). Though it depends on previous familiarity with the object, this process of inference is understood to be a species of learning, and learning according to Aristotle is the greatest of pleasures (cf. Metaph. 980a22 and Rh. 1371b23). But is learning the pleasure of tragedy? In the following pages I hope to demonstrate, by returning to a pre-​Aristotelian tradition of aesthetic Aristotle may be alluding here to a significant anecdote in the Republic (439e–​440a), where the exposed bodies of executed criminals attract the appetitive gaze of an onlooker, Leontius. Aristotle’s remark suggests that Plato mistook the psychological origin of Leontius’ attraction to the corpses when he attributed it to appetite, and that the pleasure of looking at such a painful sight is properly intellectual, though more intelligible in a mimetic context (cf. Arist. Rh. 1371b23). On the nature of Leontius’ appetite, see Liebert (2013a). 28 Lear (1992) applies this explanation to the emotional pleasure of tragedy as well: “We imaginatively live life to the full, but we risk nothing. The relief is thus not that of ‘releasing-​pent-​up-​emotions’ per se, it is the relief of ‘releasing’ these emotions in a safe environment” (334); Lear’s explanation does not account, however, for why “living life to the full” is pleasurable when that amounts to experiencing acutely painful emotional states. 27

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theory, that it is not, and to privilege once again the emotional component of tragic pleasure that Aristotle himself posits throughout the Poetics.29 What is being disputed is not Aristotle’s Poetics wholesale, or even its technical account of a tragic plot structure, which consistently aims to maximize the emotional impact of tragedy on the audience; rather, what is being disputed is Aristotle’s cognitive solution to the tragic paradox and its reliance on the special circumstances of mimesis, a position that continues to dominate modern treatments of the problem.30 While recognizing a corpse from the precision of its image clearly provides some cognitive satisfaction, and the pain of the sight is surely mitigated by its mimetic medium, the sight of a corpse –​real or fictional –​remains an essentially painful one. It stands to reason that images of pleasant objects should give the most satisfaction, since the pleasure of learning is compounded by the pleasantness of the object, but this is manifestly not the case when the pleasure in question actually derives from painful emotions such as pity and fear, as in the case of tragic drama.31 According to Aristotle himself, the ultimate goal of tragedy is not simply learning, but experiencing “the pleasure which comes from pity and fear through mimesis” (1453b10–​14), elsewhere glossed as the notoriously obscure “katharsis of such emotions” (1449b24–​28).32 Upon further reflection, then, Aristotle does not resolve so much as contain the tragic paradox within the realm of representation, where it remains the case that an encounter with painful objects gives pleasure because of and not despite their pain. Recognition alone does not

On the neglected role of emotions in Aristotle’s definition of tragic pleasure, see Munteanu (2012) 107–​8; for a recent attempt to reconcile the cognitive and emotional aims of tragedy in the Poetics, see Halliwell (2011a) 208–​65. 30 More on this later. Scholars typically take an Aristotelian approach to the tragic paradox by relying on the mimetic medium to justify the pleasure of pain and by appealing to the cognitive nature of the satisfaction afforded by recognition in the mimetic encounter. See, for example, Feagin (1983), Belfiore (1985), Nuttall (1996), Heath (2001), Halliwell (2011a) 230–​36, and Munteanu (2012) 118–​ 31 for proposals of an Aristotelian solution to the problem. Nussbaum (1986) does not address the paradox explicitly, but her development of Aristotle’s cognitive conception of mimesis into a full-​fledged ethical and philosophical justification for tragedy implies her approval of his solution (378–​94). 31 See Belfiore (1985) 360, Heath (2001) 10–​12, and Munteanu (2012) 119 on this problem. 32 Aristotle does seem to imply in the Rhetoric that learning is the primary goal of any mimesis, tragic or otherwise (1371b4–​10): “Since learning [τὸ μανθάνειν] and admiring [τὸ θαυμάζειν] are pleasant, things associated with them must also be pleasant; for instance, a work of imitation, such as painting, sculpture, poetry, and all that is well imitated, even if the object of imitation is itself not pleasant; for it is not in this that one delights, but the inference [συλλογισμὸς] that this [the imitation] is that [the object imitated], so that the result is that one learns [μανθάνειν] something.” For a recent history of scholarship on the contested meaning of katharsis in the Poetics, see Munteanu (2012) 238–​50. 29

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account for the desire to have this painful encounter, however buffered it may be by mimesis. But Aristotle has departed from a rare consensus among his poetic and philosophic predecessors that is perhaps truer to the phenomenon of tragic pleasure; judging from Homer, the tragedians, Gorgias, and Plato, certain kinds of emotional pain, such as grief, provide a kind of pleasure –​ one that I  designate as psychosomatic  –​in life as well as art. Homeric characters often savor their sorrow, responding to misfortune by satisfying a “longing for lamentation” (ἵμερος γόοιο) that yields a bittersweet sense of fulfillment (τέρψις, κόρος). Gorgias echoes this formulaic expression when he ascribes a certain “longing that loves grief ” (πόθος φιλοπενθής) to listeners of tragic poetry (Hel. §9). When Euripides’ Trojan women exclaim, “how sweet [ἡδύ] are tears to those who have suffered badly, the lamentations of mourning and the song [μοῦσα] of pain” (Tr. 608), they attribute a poetic character to mourning and its paradoxical pleasures.33 Small wonder, then, that Plato takes tragic poetry and real tragedy to appeal to the same psychic impulse: our hunger for tears. I argue that, according both to the Republic’s psychology and to that of its archaic precedents, there is no categorical difference between mimetic (or fictional) and actual experiences of tragic pleasure, and that consequently the tragic paradox cannot be resolved, as Aristotle attempted to do, by recourse to the special circumstances of mimesis. It is important to note that, for the purposes of this study, the terms “mimetic,” “poetic,” and “fictional” are used interchangeably, since Plato’s concern with poetic mimesis centers on the psychologically engaging aspects of narrative and narrative’s ability to generate illusory realms (hence his preoccupation with Homer and the tragedians over lyric, with mimetic over diagetic narrative). Despite the lack of a theoretically developed concept of “fiction” in the ancient world (and a single corresponding term), many have detected such a concept, and I have argued elsewhere that the experience of imaginative involvement targeted by Plato in the Ion, for instance, points toward a rather sophisticated modern understanding of fictional engagement as engagement with an imaginary construct that is non-​ actualized and non-​actualizable.34 Though the Republic develops a concept These and related expressions will be discussed in the following sections. I should note that Greek tragedy, although obviously relevant to this topic, will not be the focus of my study; taking my cue from Plato, I focus primarily on Homer as the “leader of tragedy” and “first of the tragedians” (R. 598e, 607a), and to a lesser extent on other archaic poets, in particular Pindar. 34 See Liebert (2010a); for other arguments in favor of ancient concepts of fiction, see Pratt (1993), Gill and Wiseman (1993), Halliwell (2002), esp. 166–​8, and more recently Halliwell (2011a) 10–​12. 33

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of mimesis that would rob fiction of the autonomy tacitly conceded to it in the Ion, the dialogue remains concerned with the metaphysical status of the imaginary world conjured by poetry and the operations of the listener’s psychological involvement in that world. However much the social, religious, and performative contexts of ancient poetic productions differ from those of modern fiction (broadly conceived), the imaginative pull of their narrative worlds is something we can recognize, as our continuous return to those worlds itself attests. The language I use in discussing Plato’s critique of poetry thus aims to stress affinities between modern “fictional” experience and ancient “mimetic” ones.35 The denial of a categorical distinction between reality and fiction when faced with the tragic paradox is one of Plato’s most original and challenging contributions to aesthetic theory, and similar positions are beginning to emerge in aesthetic debates once again. In analytic philosophy, where our ability to be moved by fictions has long troubled philosophers, the distinction conventionally maintained between fictional and actual emotions is being increasingly challenged by those who recognize the role of imagination in our emotional engagement with the world at large; there is, according to this view, a basic continuity between our emotional engagement with fictions and with objects and events in real life, many of which need not be present and actual to elicit an emotional reaction.36 Out of this tradition the related movements of ethical criticism and (more recently) literary darwinism emerged as forms of literary criticism that present literary engagement as a deeply embedded and psychologically ramifying activity, one to which –​in contrast to Plato and in keeping with Aristotle  –​they ascribe either a morally or a biologically adaptive function.37 In acknowledging the ethical influence of literature and refusing For similar defenses of the use of the term “aesthetic” in an ancient context, see Peponi (2012) 2–​7 and Munteanu (2012) 21–​3. Moran (1994) remains the first and most articulate defense of this position; see also Dadlez (1997), Matravers (1998), Robinson (2005), and Gendler and Kovakovich (2005). 37 Ethical critics attempt to resolve the long-​standing “quarrel” between poetry and philosophy by arguing for the central role of literature in our ethical lives and its unique value as a medium for moral and philosophical investigations; see the foundational texts of Booth (1988) and Nussbaum (1990), and for an opposing view, see their most outspoken critic, Posner (1997, 1998); see also the latest compilation of essays on this topic by Hagberg (2011), which adopts ethical approaches to the arts in general, and addresses some of the critiques of earlier versions of ethical criticism. Literary darwinists aim to situate the humanities within the biological sciences, making the case that literature understood as a form of “story-​telling” developed as an adaptation in the evolutionary history of our species; see Carroll (2004), Gottschall and Wilson (2005), Boyd (2009), Dutton (2009), and Gottschall (2012), and for a lucid critique of this movement, see Kramnick (2011). Gregory (2010) offers a useful history that traces and links the development of both movements in literary criticism. 35 36

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to bracket the aesthetic as an autonomous category outside of moral and practical concerns, ethical and darwinian criticism finds itself in unlikely agreement with Platonic philosophy; ironically, the very elision of art and life that leads such critics to redeem literature philosophically leads Plato to condemn literature on ethical grounds. Central to Plato’s condemnation is the claim that, while ethically formative, aesthetic experience is not ethically orientated, and requires extensive regulation to be “adaptive” in the Platonic sense: to foster a harmonious soul. Ethical and darwinian criticism is the legacy of Aristotle’s optimistic approach to the arts, and the opposition to this criticism often adopts –​ albeit unwittingly  –​a Platonic position on the ethically disinterested nature of aesthetic engagement. The work of Charles Altieri, which I discuss in greater detail later here, is particularly notable in this regard, as it argues against the ethical critic’s edifying view of the arts in order to preserve the transformative power of aesthetic experience, which derives its value precisely from eluding and superseding our cognitive control (as Plato argues extensively in the Republic). A similar argument is made by the critic Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (also discussed later), who rejects the intellectualizing trends of literary hermeneutics in order to recuperate the visceral, unmediated dimension of aesthetic encounters. Altieri and Gumbrecht are among the few literary critics to grapple with painful sources of aesthetic pleasure. Both conceive of an aesthetic dimension to all experience that would prevent the distinction between fiction and reality from bearing the theoretical weight of accounting for the tragic paradox, invoking instead ethically neutral concepts like “intensity” and “presence” to account for the satisfaction derived from painful aesthetic experiences in both art and life.38 While critics who attempt to redeem literature along Aristotelian lines distort (according to authors such as Altieri) the nature of our literary attachments and our emotional lives, aesthetic theorists who attempt to preserve the authenticity of literary experience along Platonic lines distort the nature of our ethical lives, as they fail to acknowledge that aesthetic encounters are, for the very reasons they value them, dangerous. Platonic aesthetics will, I hope, offer a means of addressing this impasse. Reassessing the Republic’s critique of poetry in light of the tragic paradox, then, will not only shed new light on the motivation for Socrates’ condemnation of his poetic tradition, but also inform our current understanding See Altieri (2003) and Gumbrecht (2004), and my treatment of their work in Section I.4.

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of the nature of literary and aesthetic involvement, and its role in our emotional and psychological formation. The paradoxical pleasure of tragedy, which entails the paradoxical pleasure of pain, has long been an unexamined premise in Platonic studies and an unresolved issue in aesthetic studies generally.39 By making the problem central to my interpretation of the Republic and the archaic poetic tradition that informs the dialogue’s psychology, I hope to improve our understanding of Plato, archaic poetry, and aesthetics in general.

I.3  A Solution: An Embodied Poetics When viewed from the perspective of pre-​Platonic poetics rather than subsequent aesthetic philosophy, the level of Plato’s originality as an aesthetic theorist diminishes considerably  –​though in interesting ways largely neglected by the scholarly literature. One of my aims in this book is to establish grounds for Socrates’ critique of poetry in the Republic within the very poetic tradition that he denounces, and to reveal in the process the extent to which the dialogue elaborates a psychosomatic model of poetic engagement already implicit in archaic poetics.40 There has been no shortage of attempts to contextualize Plato’s literary criticism –​a topic that has witnessed a resurgence of interest in recent years41 –​but few of In the scholarship on Plato the paradox is hardly even noted; see, however, Ferrari (1989) who, while offering one of the most sensitive interpretations of Plato’s views on poetry I’ve encountered, superficially resolves the tragic paradox (again along Aristotelian lines) with a therapeutic account of “venting” ones personal sorrows at the theater (137). I don’t deny the plausibility of this reading, but it only displaces the question: Why is it satisfying to “vent?” Moreover, I take it that the audience does not typically (or not only) use the theater as an excuse to grieve over their personal misfortunes, but, like Odysseus in the earlier example, grieves sympathetically over the misfortunes of others –​that is to say, in the course of the performance, the audience acquires new misfortunes altogether. Ferrari does, however, recognize that Plato denies the distinction between mimesis and reality when it comes to “immediate impulses” (139) and makes the case that poetry fosters a self-​ destructive impulse by allowing the audience and poet to “make a fetish” out of pain and sorrow (141). See also Naddaf (2002) 107–​20 for a sensitive reading of the Republic that recognizes in the experience of tragic poetry both the sadistic pleasures of schadenfreude and the self-​destructive pleasures of victimization, as well as Peponi (2012) 51–​8, who incorporates the neglected discussion of “mixed pleasure” in the Philebus to explore the role of pain in Plato’s conception of aesthetic pleasure. 40 See Halliwell (2011a), who suggests the possibility that Greek poets “in a partial, inchoate manner … voice ideas and sentiments which have the potential to be elaborated into independent paradigms of reflective theory” (37), but prefers a model of poetics that does not subordinate poetic expression to theory (37, 43). I think it fairer to recognize that both poetry and theory –​art and criticism –​ contribute something unique to the understanding of aesthetics, and need not be ranked in this way. For recent examinations of Plato’s appropriation of archaic models of aesthetic engagement that also focus on the body, see Peponi (2012) and Kurke (2013). 41 Notably Levin (2001), Ford (2002), Naddaf (2002), Ledbetter (2003), Crotty (2009), Porter (2010), Halliwell (2011a), and Peponi (2012). The oldest and most influential study of the relationship 39

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these attempts have emphasized the remarkable persistence of certain core conceptions about poetic experience between Plato and his poetic predecessors, in particular the appetitive structure of poetic pleasure and its reliance on painful emotions, the essential multiplicity and variation of poetic composition, and the paralyzing force of poetic captivation, all of which will be taken up in the following chapters. When scholars do acknowledge some continuity between Plato and his poetic tradition, they often uncritically rely on Socrates’ rhetorical characterization of the notorious and allegedly ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy to explain the nature of their engagement.42 An example of this latter tendency in Plato scholarship is the insistence that Greek poetry’s traditional and primary function was pedagogical, which left it vulnerable to philosophic charges of falsehood and ethical harm.43 That Homer was “the educator of Greece,” as Socrates claimed he was (R. 606e), has by now become a commonplace. Rarely do scholars of Plato admit the possibility that Socrates ascribes to poetry a pedagogical role that poetry does not itself assume in order to critique it on pedagogical grounds and replace it with philosophic methods.44 Poetry’s traditional purpose, I argue, was first and foremost to provide pleasure, and its failure to meet ethical and philosophical standards is itself testament to the fact that the production of poetry was not governed (at least primarily) by pedagogical concerns.45 The fact that between pre-​Platonic poetics and Platonic philosophy remains Eric Havelock’s Preface to Plato (1963), to which this project is, in a sense, a critical response, offering an alternative “preface” to the one Havelock constructs (see Section I.4). Other important studies include Lanata (1963), Harriot (1969), Tigerstedt (1969), Murray (1981), Rosen (1988), Gould (1990), Nightingale (1995), and Finkelberg (1998). 42 As Havelock does (see Section I.4). For a similar warning (though one that leads to different conclusions than mine), see Ford (2002) 46: “[W]‌e should be wary of Platonic constructions of literary history that make it culminate in his own philosophical positions.” On the invented nature of Plato’s “ancient quarrel,” see Nightengale (1995) 60–​7, and Most (2011). 43 The notion that Greek poetry is essentially didactic is too commonplace for comprehensive citation; it is first established by Jaeger in his monumental work on Greek paideia (1965), maintained by the influential work of Havelock (1963) and Fränkel (1975), and reaffirmed in the most recent commentary to Plato’s dialogues on poetry (Murray [1996] 14–​19). For one of the first challenges to Jaeger’s didactic model of Greek poetics, however, see Verdenius (1970). 44 One notable exception is Munteanu (2011) 59. 45 See Heath (1985) 259–​63 for a critique of the didactic view of Hesiodic and Homeric poetry that recognizes the overriding aim of pleasure in their poetics, and Heath (1987) for an extension of this hedonistic model to classical tragedy. Ford (1992), in a similar vein, recommends “tak[ing] Homer and Hesiod at their words when they describe the purpose of poetry as pleasure” (49). In general, scholars of archaic and classical poetry are more aware of the tradition’s hedonistic aims than scholars of Plato; cf. Havelock (1963) 61, who claims that “[t]‌he warp and woof of Homer is didactic … the tale is made subservient to the task of accommodating the weight of educational materials which lie within it.” For a frank admission of poetry’s hedonistic purpose within a Platonic dialogue, see Callicles’ remark to this effect in the Gorgias (502b).

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poetry played a significant role in Greek cultural education or paideia is no more proof of its pedagogical purpose than the modern inclusion of Jane Eyre and Romeo and Juliet in high school curricula is proof that these texts were written to be taught in the classroom. Insisting too strongly on poetry’s pedagogical function blinds us to the significance of pleasure both in Greek poetry’s conception of itself and in Plato’s assessment of it. It is poetry’s commitment to pleasure and not its (alleged) pedagogical aspirations that provokes philosophical condemnation. Socrates’ most effective rhetorical strategy in his denunciation of poetry is, therefore, to disarm poetry’s proponents and use their own arms against them –​that is, to maintain poetry’s conventional self-​conception and use it to develop a subtle and insightful account of poetic experience that only strengthens, rather than diminishes, his denunciation. Socrates succeeds in this because the aims that he requires poetry to meet –​and not the qualities he attributes to it –​are philosophic rather than aesthetic, allowing him to turn the poetic tradition against itself through a philosophic transvaluation of poetic values, while remaining faithful to a conventional (and, in many respects, still accurate) phenomenology of poetic and fictional experience. The attempt to derive a monolithic literary theory from archaic and classical Greek poetry is fraught with difficulties, the first of which arises from the literary nature of the media. These are poems, after all, not treatises on poetry, and as such their conception of the poetic fundamentally serves the aesthetic aims of art rather than the epistemological aims of theory. Poetic reflections on poetry are, in the end, always implicated in a rhetorical strategy to further aesthetic ends (which, I am arguing in accordance with Greek poetics and Platonic philosophy, are primarily hedonistic). One recent scholar is right, then, to make a distinction between what ancient poetry does and what it says it does.46 This distinction can be refined still further in ways that have methodological implications. The historical audience of Homeric epic, for example, differs from the intratextual audience within Homeric epic, and we as modern readers differ from both. The historical task of reconstructing an original context or horizon of expectations (what culturalists and historicists do)47 is therefore distinct from the literary task of exploring the world of the poems, which contain poems and audiences within them (what philologists and literary Ledbetter (2003) 12–​13. Leslie Kurke’s (1991) work on Pindar, Bruno Gentili’s (1988) work on Homer, and the contributors to Winkler and Zeitlin’s (1989) edited volume on Greek tragedy are paradigmatic of this approach.

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critics do), and the latter is, though to a lesser degree, distinct from the aesthetic theorist’s and philosopher’s task of exploring and constructing theories of aesthetic experience that conform to one’s own  –​that accurately describe a transhistorical phenomenon. My approach falls somewhere between the latter two categories (literary criticism and aesthetic theory), though it necessarily makes use of and have implications for historical studies of Greek poetry. In charting an (admittedly selective) intellectual history of tragic pleasure that contextualizes and illuminates Platonic philosophy while offering what I hope is a compelling aesthetic theory of its own, this project is at once philological and philosophical. Given my theoretical concerns, I  am not terribly daunted by the distinction between rhetoric and practice outlined earlier. Just as the dramatic nature of Platonic dialogues should not deter us from exploring their philosophical concepts (though we should be sensitive to their dramatic context), so the literary nature of archaic and classical poetry should not deter us from mining them for theoretical models of literary experience.48 Moreover, while Plato’s staged attack targets a particular cultural practice, I insist throughout that the terms of the debate remain relevant to modern aesthetic phenomena, and that they can contribute in original ways to the problem of the tragic paradox. I begin by exploring the archaic origins of the problematic concept of poetic pleasure in order to determine the legacy that informs Plato’s aesthetic theory. In a literary context where uniformity and terminological precision are inappropriate standards, such a concept is bound to be inchoate. But among poems, patterns nevertheless emerge that employ the same or similar terms to express the pleasurable experience of poetic engagement:  terpsis (delight/​pleasure) and thelxis (enchantment), for instance, would seem to be paradigmatic expressions of this experience.49 I suggest in Chapter 1 that even more pervasive and essential to archaic poetry’s conception of its own pleasures is the gustatory quality of “sweetness” that poets consistently attribute to their compositions.50 The metaphorical nature of this ascription has had the unfortunate effect For excellent examples of this approach to ancient poetics, see the recent works of Halliwell (2011a) and Peponi (2012). 49 See the discussions of Lanata (1963) 8–​9, Walsh (1984), and Ford (2002) 49–​56. These and related terms fall under the heading of “ecstasy” in contrast to “truth” in Halliwell’s dichotomy of competing poetic paradigms in Greek aesthetics; see Halliwell (2011a) 6. 50 The terms for sweetness are typically forms of glukus or hêdus, or extended analogies with honey and other quintessentially sweet food and drink; these expressions are discussed at length in Chapter 1. 48

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of neutralizing its semantic and theoretical force; scholars have, on the whole, ignored the role of sweetness in ancient aesthetics.51 Yet the appetitive structure implicit in a gustatory poetics will prove to be a powerful heuristic tool for relating a number of archaic poetry’s sensual attributes and for discerning, through this metaphorical complex, a somatic core at the heart of poetic pleasure.52 As a cognitive medium free of physiological restrictions, however, poetry can exceed the limitations of ordinary physical pleasures and lead to potentially harmful overindulgence. Locating the psychological source of this peculiar psychosomatic pleasure will lead me to investigate archaic poetry’s emotional content in Chapter 2, where I discover that the descriptive vocabulary and psychosomatic characterization of emotions bear a striking resemblance to that of the poetic form that depicts them. By configuring emotions as embodied mental states that disable the rational self and lack any ethical orientation, archaic poetry offers us a way of making sense of the satisfactions derived from painful emotional states such as grief and anger, which it portrays as psychosomatic forms of addiction. This model of emotional pleasure can, in turn, be applied to the poetic medium of emotional representation; tragic mimesis becomes a means of creating the conditions for vicariously experiencing tragic emotions. And, as we will find in Chapter 3 when we finally turn to the Republic, this is precisely what Plato argues, albeit with greater theoretical precision and philosophical anxiety. Far from providing a “safe space” to exorcise or purify pathological emotions, as many Aristotelians would have it, tragic poetry is for Plato a socially sanctioned space of lawlessness, a deeply embedded arena where we misguidedly allow ourselves to satisfy appetitive drives that threaten our psychological and social well-​being. This study thus proposes a Platonic solution to the paradox posed by the appeal of tragedy by contextualizing Socrates’ conception of tragic pleasure in the Republic within an archaic tradition of configuring painful A notable exception is Heath (1987) 5–​36, though he does not press gustatory terms for their theoretical implications in Greek poetics. The first of a multivolume series on synaesthesia in ancient poetics unfortunately neglects the role of taste (Butler and Purves [2013]), but a future volume devoted to this sense will hopefully shed light on the gustatory dimension of ancient aesthetic experience. 52 I disagree with LeVen’s (2013) claim that synaesthetic attributes do not operate metaphorically, and that one shouldn’t “[press] the logic of cross-​sensual adjectives” in Greek aesthetics (234). She targets the application of sweetness to poetry in particular: “γλυκύς used for a song does not suggest that the effect produced by the sound is ‘translated’, in the typical way metaphors work, into the effect produced by the cake, and that something of the cake’s qualities can be imagined as found in the song” (233). By contrast, I approach synaesthesia as a fruitful site of correspondence, where the qualities of cake may indeed reveal something essential about song. 51

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emotions and their poetic representations somatically. Archaic poetry’s assertion of the primacy of the body and the alienation of the ethical subject in emotional and poetic experience informs many features of Platonic psychology, a psychology that ironically  –​even tragically  –​rejects the source of this wisdom.53 I argue that the psychosomatic model of poetic engagement developed in the Republic offers a compelling account of aesthetic pleasure by locating its source in our subrational drives, among our physiological and emotional impulses. Plato suggests that aesthetic representations of painful objects are pleasurable not because the mimetic medium transforms the pain of the object into a source of pleasure (as many aesthetic theorists, starting with Aristotle, would have it), but because the pain itself, in art as in life, satisfies an unregulated appetite for affective intensity, the goal of which is to realize the subrational potential of human experience. This solution to the tragic paradox, which presents our engagement with the arts as non-​cognitive and ethically disinterested in nature, poses ethical problems that current aesthetic theorists fail to address; it also denies the distinction conventionally maintained by philosophers of fiction between emotions experienced in actual and fictional contexts, and offers a new perspective on what are typically regarded as pathological emotional habits in clinical psychology by positing a natural origin to the desire for painful emotion states. In the epilogue, I  relate Plato’s concern with the private nature of the poetic imaginary and its resistance to psychological regulation to his civic project of eliminating the private sphere, and I suggest that Aristotle’s defense of poetry is less evident in the Poetics (where many have sought it) than in the Politics, where both privacy and poetry are defended as essential components of a liberal and leisured life. In making this comparison between Plato and Aristotle, I explore the possibility of an alternative aesthetic, one rooted in Plato’s suggestion that a philosophically defensible form of poetry would be public rather than private, and fully integrated into civic life. Only poetry so conceived would be “adaptive” in the Platonic sense, and would harmonize city and soul. This book makes a psychological case about the appeal of tragic narratives, and in doing so avails itself of psychological terms that are well beyond the scope of the author’s scholarly expertise. My use of terms such as “cognitive,” “rational,” and “intellectual” to designate abstract and As Halliwell has recently stressed ([2011a] 188–​207 and [2011b] passim), Socrates still sees himself in the final hour of the Republic as an erotic lover of the poetry he banishes, and approaches his verdict with a great deal of ambivalence.

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voluntary mental activity on the one hand, and terms such as “somatic,” “biological,” and “physical” to designate the involuntary and embodied dimension of experience on the other, will no doubt strike many scientifically oriented readers as reductive and outdated, as it evokes a dualistic model of the human subject that has been supplanted in modern philosophy of mind and cognitive science by more integrated (though fundamentally physicalist) accounts of psychological processes.54 These integrative approaches to human psychology can be traced back, once again, to Aristotle, who never loses sight of the human being’s organismic nature when examining metaphysical questions, and whose hylomorphism seems to deny a substantive separation between body and mind.55 In this arena, too, I hope to offer a Platonic corrective. Reviving a simpler, more naïve, yet arguably more intuitive picture of human psychology –​ one that reaffirms a stark distinction between the rational and irrational origins of human motivation and perception, and that aligns the body with the latter –​better captures (in this author’s view) the felt experience of passivity and conflict in many accounts of emotion states, particularly in archaic poetry. In recognizing nonrational sources of value, moreover, Platonic psychology preserves the power of the tragic arts and the inscrutability of their appeal.

I.4  A Rehabilitation: The Relevance of Platonic Aesthetics The possibility that the mimetic medium is irrelevant to the pleasure of tragedy –​that the source of such pleasure derives from the content rather than the form of our aesthetic engagements, and that the question of tragic pleasure is fundamentally a problem of human psychology –​is rarely considered in scholarship, classical or otherwise. My insistence on the primacy of the emotion and the consequent demotion of aesthetic media, which become vehicles for accessing independently desirable affective states, counters much of the recent scholarship on aesthetic pleasure, particularly within the field of Classics, where Aristotle’s model remains the dominant For a recent survey of the convergence of these fields, known under the heading of “philosophy of cognitive science,” see Margolis, Samuels, and Stich (2012). See also Kim (2006) for a standard introduction to positions in philosophy of mind, where, in the absence of a solution to the problem of consciousness and other mental properties, non-​substantive forms of dualism (or property dualism) persist (see esp. 50–​2 and 273–​308). 55 The immateriality of nous in De Anima poses a problem, however, on which see Sisko (2001), who also denies the compatibility typically ascribed to Aristotle’s hylomorphism with current positions in contemporary philosophy of mind; see also Williams (1986). 54

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one. When, in his most recent book on Greek poetics (Between Ecstasy and Truth: Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus), Stephen Halliwell encounters the appeal of tragic poetry in his sources, he relies on an Aristotelian conception of “aesthetic transmutation” to make sense of them:  painful emotions become sources of aesthetic pleasure through mimetic ordering, which enriches our self-​understanding by imposing intelligibility on otherwise chaotic and inscrutable suffering.56 Halliwell aims throughout his study (as he has in previous work) to reconcile the affective and cognitive components of aesthetic engagement, and this Aristotelian objective often blinds him to a Platonic alternative that conceives of tragic pleasure as fundamentally appetitive in nature and distinct from the cognitive pleasures of the intellect. A classics scholar more alive to the somatic dimension of aesthetic pleasure is Anastasia-​ Erasmia Peponi, whose recent book, Frontiers of Pleasure:  Models of Aesthetic Response in Archaic and Classical Greek Thought, develops an embodied poetics based in part on the appetitive conception of poetic pleasure found in Plato’s Republic.57 The present study shares Peponi’s goal of replacing Kant’ legacy of a disinterested and reflective model of aesthetic contemplation with a deeply interested, psychosomatic model of aesthetic engagement derived from ancient sources. As I  point out in my review of her book, however, Peponi unaccountably refuses to admit tragic emotions into her account of the aesthetic, which allows her to evade the paradox presented by painful sources of aesthetic pleasure even as she acknowledges pain as a component in aesthetic engagement.58 Peponi also misrepresents Plato’s assessment of tragic pleasure in the Republic by using his concept of “musical eros” as a counter-​aesthetic to Kant’s, without addressing the dangers Plato sees in the carnal nature of aesthetic experience. Like Halliwell, Peponi aims to reconcile the cognitive and somatic dimensions of aesthetic pleasure, and this aim prevents her from considering the Platonic possibility that there are rationally and ethically disinterested sources of value in our pursuit of aesthetic states, particularly those that are painful. Dana LaCourse Munteanu has made painful emotions central to her book Tragic Pathos:  Pity and Fear in Greek Philosophy and Tragedy, yet offers only a marginal treatment of the paradox posed by tragic pleasure, and this only in the context of Aristotle’s thought.59 Munteanu justifies See, in particular, Halliwell (2011a) 36–​92 and 208–​60. Peponi (2012) esp. 128–​53. 58 Liebert (2013b). 59 Munteanu (2011). 56

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this neglect with the dubious claim that the pleasure derived from tragedy did not strike Aristotle or Plato as a paradox at all.60 She proposes an Aristotelian solution to the problem all the same, arguing that the pleasure of tragedy is cognitive in nature, involving an “emotional syllogism” whereby we connect our particular experience of painful emotions with the universal images depicted on stage, and recognize a shared mortality that provides us with a sense of “universal connectedness” and comfort.61 Munteanu thus follows in the footsteps of Martha Nussbaum and other ethical critics in using Aristotle to ascribe an edifying force to depictions of suffering that would suppress or deny morally problematic aspects of tragic appeal. Munteanu does promisingly evoke the model of grief to illuminate the experience of tragic pleasure, but her analysis of the analogy falls short, limiting itself to Aristotle’s cursory treatment of the pleasure of mourning in the Rhetoric while ignoring the far more extensive role of grief in Plato’s Republic, where the satisfaction of mourning is explicitly identified with pleasure derived from tragic poetry. Each of these books offers an illuminating contextualization of Plato’s critique of poetry, but each also relies in one way or another on an Aristotelian conception of aesthetic transformation to account for the appeal of tragic representations. None, moreoever, makes the paradox of tragic pleasure a central concern,62 or uses the model of grief that Plato proposes as a means of resolving it. My focus on this problem and solution will lead me (I hope) to make a meaningful contribution not only to studies of archaic poetry and Plato but to contemporary aesthetic theory as well. By engaging the work of two aesthetic theorists in particular  –​ Charles Altieri and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, whose phenomenologies of aesthetic experience bear a striking and unwitting resemblance to Plato’s –​ I hope to rehabilitate Platonic aesthetics and introduce it back into current debates as a provocative and productive challenge to entrenched assumptions about the arts. Before turning to these modern theorists, my project must distinguish itself from the first of its kind, Eric Havelock’s widely influential Preface to Plato (1963). Despite its datedness, I want to review Havelock’s thesis in Munteanu (2011) 118. Munteanu (2011) 131. 62 Although they do discuss the paradox at some length, and with a great deal of sensitivity; see Halliwell’s discussion of Homeric poetics, with a particular emphasis on Odysseus’ mournful response to Demodocus’s song ([2011a] 36–​92), Peponi’s treatment of the same Homeric scene in light of the idea of “mixed pleasure” in Plato’s Philebus ([2012] 33–​69), and Munteanu’s discussion of both Plato and Aristotle’s accounts of pity and fear in aesthetic response ([2011] 52–​138). 60 61

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detail because of the lasting influence it has had on classical scholarship, and because positioning myself against him will clarify my own approach to ancient poetics; for the present study is, in many ways, an alternative “Preface to Plato” to the one Havelock constructs. Havelock argues that Plato’s hostility to poetry is directed at a peculiar cultural condition of orality in archaic and classical Greece that obstructed intellectual progress.63 As an educational institution that psychosomatically controlled the entire population with its public performances, poetry indoctrinated the community with a “tribal encyclopedia” that the community, by virtue of its passive surrender to “the paideutic spell,” lacked the intellectual resources to question or defy.64 On Havelock’s account, the oral poetry of epic had a totalitarian hold on the Greek consciousness (“the Homeric state of mind”) that could only be broken by the technology of writing and the self-​consciousness of the individual subject that literacy facilitated (“the Platonic state of mind”).65 He traces the so-​called revolutionary rise of conceptual thought evidenced in Plato’s philosophic writings from what he takes to be a pathologically inhibited oral culture, and sees the Republic’s psychological characterization of poetic involvement as reflective of a unique historical phenomenon: the oral poetic culture of early Greece. Havelock’s oralist and historicist approach to Greek poetry, coming on the heels of Milman Parry and Albert Lord’s anthropological work on poetic composition and transmission in preliterate societies and their implications for archaic Greek poetry,66 serves to radically alienate the Greek world from our own in ways that preclude any “authentic” experience of Greek poetry and necessarily deny the relevance of Platonic literary criticism to contemporary aesthetics. Havelock claims that “Plato is talking about an over-​all cultural condition which no longer exists … a curious emotionalism on the part of the Greeks which is alien to our experience … he is exposing an intensity of response in Greek students and in Greek audiences which to us is unfamiliar.”67 One must work to reconstruct the nature of this foreign condition in order to understand Plato’s A summary of this thesis can be found toward the end of the book: Havelock (1963) 198–​201. Following Jaeger (1965), Havelock assumes that the role of poetry was primarily didactic; see esp. Havelock (1963) 61 and 125. On the pathology of Greek audiences, see 37, 45, and 145–​60; on the “tribal encyclopedia,” see in particular ­chapter 4, 61–​86; on the “paideutic spell,” see 159; on the impossibility of critical reflection in an oral culture, see esp. 97 and 190. 65 Havelock (1963) 208–​9, 234–​5. 66 See Parry’s collected papers (1971) and Lord (1960). 67 Havelock (1963) 10, 27, and 37; see also 9, 140, and 156–​7. 63 64

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critique of it, but that critique is now obsolete, as it were. Such extreme pronouncements surely take historicism too far,68 and blindly succumb in the process to Socrates’ own rhetorical strategy of defamiliarization, which he often deploys in the dialogues to provoke his interlocutor into reexamining the commonplace.69 While, as I mentioned before, I do not dispute that the oral culture of ancient Greece differs in fundamental ways from our modern literate culture, and that many details of the poetic event that would enrich our historical understanding of Greek poetry are invariably lost to us, I see no reason to exclude the possibility that there are essential features of the poetic experience that transcend cultural particularity. Literature is often defined, after all, by its ability to transcend time and place, and Greek poetry in particular, from Helen’s anticipation of her epic legacy (Hom. Il. 6.354–​8) to Pindar’s repeated assertions of epinician’s immortalizing power (e.g., O. 11.1–​6), explicitly directs itself to a future audience.70 Given that a comparably universalist approach to literature can be traced back to Aristotle (Po. 1451b5-​7), we have, moreover, ancient justification to apply a more formalist and less historicist strategy of interpretation to ancient literary texts. Though published at a time when new discoveries in oral theory were themselves revolutionizing the field of classics, Havelock’s thesis did not meet with unequivocal approval.71 These few reservations were, however, They are also historically inaccurate, according to Halverson (1992). An example of this tactic on the topic of poetry occurs in the Ion, where Socrates attempts to provoke the rhapsode into philosophic reflection on his art by presenting the latter’s emotional response to the fictional events in Homer as irrational (535d). Likewise, Socrates’ reduction of poetry to a technical manual in the dialogue  –​not unlike Havelock’s reduction of Homer to a “tribal encyclopedia” –​intentionally misrepresents poetry to provoke a more thoughtful account (and somewhat successfully, since Ion later attempts to defend his art by offering a sketchy, proto-​ Aristotelian idea of a universalist poetics, in which poetry is expected to convey types rather than particulars [540b]). See Liebert (2010a) for an elaboration of this view of the Ion. 70 In his introduction to literary theory, Jonathan Culler (1997) defines literature as “language decontextualized, cut off from other functions and purposes” while it is “also itself a context, which promotes or elicits special kinds of attention” (25). Eagleton (1996) 7 also offers “non-​pragmatic discourse” as one possible definition. Eagleton’s version of literary transcendence, however, avoids essentializing features of literary works by making the case that works get “rewritten … by the societies which read them,” which explains why they retain their value across the ages (10–​11). In one sense this is trivially true, since the context of reception always informs the interpretation of literary works in unforeseen ways, but I want to retain something essential in the process, rather than the content, of interpretation. 71 In the classics community, critical reviews of Preface immediately followed its publication: see Grimaldi (1963), Gulley (1964), Sparshott (1964), Hoerber (1964), and Solmsen (1966). See more recently Halverson (1992) for a thorough dismissal of Havelock’s entire scholarly oeuvre on the subject of oral theory. Despite these negative responses, Havelock’s influence on new historicists and oralists within classics (see n72 to this chapter) and on studies of rhetoric and of orality and literacy outside classics is remarkable: see Halverson (1992) 148–​50; Enos (1996) 314–​15; Neeley, Magi, and Enos (1998). 68

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eventually silenced by renewed applications of Havelock’s ideas in cultural and historicist methodologies within the field of Classics.72 Classicists still seem prone to alienating Greek culture from our own in the name of historical and cultural sensitivity, even when self-​evident cases of similarity arise. Rather than regard poetry’s retreat from the center of modern public life as an unbreachable cultural chasm between us and the Greeks  –​ a chasm into which Plato’s aesthetic philosophy would seem doomed to fall –​I suggest that we assume a basic continuity between ancient poetry and the artistic media that have replaced poetry’s place as the primary form of modern entertainment, such as theaters, novels, movies, or television.73 The extraordinary ease with which Plato’s account of poetic involvement can be applied to these media attests both to the perennial nature of his subject and the philosophical value of his work.74 In an avowedly presentist spirit, then, I  hope to abstract from my intellectual history of poetic and tragic pleasure an aesthetic theory that can engage current discussions of aesthetic experience. Among these are Charles Altieri’s The Particulars of Rapture:  An Aesthetics of the Affects (2003), which proposes ethically neutral aesthetic values that I make use of in Chapter 2, and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey (2004), which proposes aesthetics as a means of recovering the lost experience of immediacy in the world, an inversion of the Platonic critique of poetic escapism that I discuss in the epilogue. In order to frame my engagement with these authors, a brief discussion of their intellectual projects is in order. Altieri’s book is staged as a polemic against the dominant cognitivist paradigm for emotions in philosophy and clinical psychology that has significant implications for aesthetics. He aims to supplant the cognitivist model of emotion with a more sensitive phenomenology of the “affects” that liberates them from ethical and rational subjugation. In doing so he

Most notably Herington (1985); Bundy (1986 [1962]); Gentili (1988); Winker and Zeitlin (1989); Vernant and Vidal-​Naquet (1990); Kurke (1991); Dougherty and Kurke (1993); and Dougherty (2001). For a critique of cultural and historicist approaches to archaic poetry, see Payne (2006) 162–​4. 73 See, for example, Nehamas’s (1988) application of the Republic’s critique of poetry to television shows, adopted and expanded by Burnyeat ([1997] 249–​55) to include all of mass media and culture; see also Halliwell’s ([1997] 320–​1 and [2002] 53)  comparison of Plato’s poetic target to mass-​media. 74 Despite my differences with Havelock’s method and ultimate conclusions, I am sympathetic to his “strong” reading of the Platonic characterization of poetic influence and the psychosomatic nature of poetic involvement –​with the crucial provision that these are not unique symptoms of oral culture, but symptomatic of poetic and aesthetic experience as such. 72

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isolates an affective dimension of experience that art is dedicated to cultivating as a source of distinctly nonrational satisfaction. According to his account, philosophy has long distorted the nature of our emotional lives and aesthetic commitments, and has consequently failed to account for this affective dimension of experience. Altieri wants to claim that the pursuit of affective states (in art and in life) is a fundamental value separate from and incommensurate with ethical and philosophical values, and that emotions actually modify consciousness and offer their own satisfactions rather than merely reflecting belief and acting instrumentally to attain rationally determined goods. Our investments in affective life are motivated by the desire to extend ourselves through self-​dramatization and to explore new states of mind (which then lead us to adopt new values). Art offers the ideal forum for our performative experiments. We find ourselves invited to try out various attitudes toward valuing what we encounter, and, more important, we find some of those provisional identifications eliciting our own passionate investments and clarifying paths they might take beyond the work of art. That is what brings the aesthetic into the existential.75

Or, one might say, the ethical, since that is what determines value beyond aesthetic considerations. One can already see the ethical implications of Altieri’s project, despite his vigilant distinction between aesthetics and ethics. There runs throughout his work an inherent tension in the attempt to establish an aesthetic sphere of value apart from cognitive, ethical, and pragmatic concerns, while yet endorsing this sphere and thus subjecting it to ethical evaluation based on some rational calculus.76 Though Altieri struggles to find ethically neutral terms to identify particular aesthetic values –​such as “intensity,” “involvedness,” and “plasticity” –​they threaten either to produce an alternative ethical project that asserts its superiority over philosophy’s pursuit of virtue and happiness (along Nietzschean lines) or, in following a dangerously sensualist trajectory free from ethical constraints, to ultimately justify violence.77 Altieri (2003) 24; cf. Payne (2007) for a similar thesis on the appeal of imaginative role-​playing in Theocritus’ bucolic poems. 76 This tension is acutely apparent in the following comment, in which Altieri (2003) is compelled to trivialize the role of the affects by making their influence innocuous in order to absolve them of any ethical accountability: “We have to keep a free space for those affective investments that do not do harm to others or put serious strain on social resources. For these investments we do best to treat arguments about norms simply as ways of giving advice” (31). 77 On the aesthetic value of vividness, for example, Altieri (2003) feels he must make some ethical qualification: “I do not want to say that the vividness of our manner of acting determines its value. That claim might make Hannibal Lector happy, but it will not advance philosophy. However, I do 75

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Altieri appeals to the “incommensurability” of values to evade these theoretical binds and insists, moreover, that the value of affects lies precisely in frustrating the possibility of ranking goods. This is clearest in his approach to identity and character. Altieri implores us to resist the philosophic impulse to unify identity into an ideal vision of “character,” and celebrates the ability of affective identification to multiply our identities, even when they conflict with one another. The richest of these satisfactions turn out to involve second-​order identifications we can make because of who we see ourselves becoming in those states … Can we find a conceptual means of resisting the tendency to see identification as the bringing to our manners of acting cogent and compelling images of ourselves as single coherent characters? Can we speak meaningfully about identification and still focus on multiple identities, divided up among a variety of manners that taken together constitute a life?78

Because the satisfaction of “extending the self ” is the primary goal, rather than comparing states to see which we endorse and which we reject with a view to maintaining a harmonious sense of self, unification and consistency are seen to impoverish our identities. Altieri wants to avoid sacrificing those pleasures of affective identifications that conflict with ethical commitments working to unify a sense of self. But in order to do so he must downplay the possibility of conflict at all. Identification need not depend on classical forms of judgment. We can endorse a state and treat it as continuous with our sense of self simply because of the satisfactions that emerge as we carry out an activity … we are free to cultivate various identities without worrying very much about how they can be integrated (so long as lack of integration does not become debilitating).79

When faced with the psychological implications of his position, he is compelled to make some provision, “so long as lack of integration does not become debilitating.” But it is precisely the debilitating nature of a fragmented self that leads philosophy –​in particular Platonic philosophy –​to want to say that insofar as we concentrate on how an expression establishes value for affective states, vividness does become a primary consideration … Even if the action is evil, its vividness of expression might explain why it satisfies the agent and why an agent might be able to appeal to an audience to honor the identifications that the agent secures” (117). Elsewhere he qualifies the pursuit of a passion with “given the likelihood that no substantial harm will be done to others” (157), and this despite his wish to prevent reason from interfering with the pleasures of affective satisfaction. 78 Altieri (2003) 137–​8. 79 Altieri (2003) 140–​1.

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promote the unity of character and the ultimate commensurability of value. Ironically, then, art’s ability to foster and multiply conflicting identifications can be simultaneously the source of its value to aesthetic theorists such as Altieri and the source of its danger to philosophers such as Plato. It will be productive to investigate Altieri’s complex (and unacknowledged) relationship with Platonic philosophy in order to assess how the two authors reach such radically different conclusions based on virtually identical premises. Both present the same phenomenology of aesthetics: the aesthetic dimension to real experience, the irrational nature of our aesthetic commitments, the creative power of affective states to generate new desires, the desire to extend the self that motivates our pursuit of these states and is maximally satisfied by the arts, the multiplication of identities that results from these pursuits  –​these are the shared tenets of Altieri’s and Plato’s aesthetic theories. How they can furnish grounds for embracing art on the one hand and rejecting it on the other is another question that this project addresses. Much like Altieri, Gumbrecht seeks to liberate aesthetics from philosophical and ethical control, but takes for granted the noncognitive nature of the affects that Altieri takes considerable pains to demonstrate. Gumbrecht focuses, rather, on eliminating –​or at least minimizing –​hermeneutic mediation from the aesthetic encounter, which otherwise would be diminished. Gumbrecht’s book combines an autobiographical account of the theoretical movements in the humanities throughout the late twentieth century with a historical account of different cultural attitudes in philosophy and religion towards the human subject’s orientation in the world. He uses the arts to recuperate a non-​conceptually mediated dimension to experience he terms “presence” that puts us in touch with a material world from which we have become increasingly alienated.80 Because of our current cultural condition, the need to recover a sense of this presence is, for Gumbrecht, particularly urgent. To do so would entail a return, in a sense, to a premodern, quasi-​magical experience of the world exemplified by medieval Christianity (a “presence culture”) and a rejection of the metaphysical worldview of the Enlightenment that reconfigured the human subject as an eccentric observer “interpreting” the world (a “meaning culture”). In philosophical terms, to live fully is, for Gumbrecht, to live in a Heideggerian rather than a Cartesian mode. In privileging interpretation According to Gumbrecht (2004) 49, metaphysics has led us to suffer a “loss of world,” which we intuitively want to recover.

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over experience, the humanities have neglected the role of presence and conspired to further alienate human subjects from their world. Gumbrecht sets himself the task of reforming intellectual practice in order to facilitate aesthetic “events” in the classroom and beyond. Gumbrecht’s book reads in many ways like a handbook, a guide to ensuring a maximal experience of presence.81 The key to fostering a sense of presence lies in facilitating “moments of intensity,” a concept reminiscent of one of Altieri’s central aesthetic values. Like Altieri, Gumbrecht insists that “there is nothing edifying in such moments, no message, nothing we can really learn from them” –​they are, rather, simply gratifying, awakening a sense of being-​in-​the-​world, reminding us of our material existence, and collapsing, for a moment, the distance between our minds and bodies. It is striking that Gumbrecht lists among his examples of such aesthetic moments the experience of tasting good food alongside reading poetry, recalling Plato’s inclusion of the desire for poetry among the biological appetites.82 But the appetitive and hedonistic characterization of aesthetic value renders it vulnerable to ethical objections. What can the unreflective pursuit of “intensity” lead to, and how does one justify it? Gumbrecht himself admits to an element of violence in all aesthetic encounters, and attempts to preempt criticism by distinguishing the aestheticization of violence from recognizing violence as a component of aesthetic experience.83 But such distinctions seem specious, and in the end Gumbrecht resorts to listing examples of aesthetic phenomena we would be reluctant to reject if we were to take issue with the aesthetic role of violence in order to make his case:  “Allowing the association of aesthetic experience with violence, in contrast, helps us understand why certain phenomena and events turn out to be so irresistibly fascinating for us –​although we know that, at least in some of these cases, such ‘beauty’ accompanies the destruction of lives.”84 Both Altieri and Gumbrecht promote an aesthetic way of life that corresponds in striking ways to Socrates’ characterization of the democratic and tyrannical man in the Republic, characters who have subordinated all other values to the pursuit of appetitive pleasure –​and in the case of the One of his chapters sketches “possible … intellectual and institutional ‘futures,’ ” and outlines the following curriculum: “epiphany, presentification, and deixis … would be three tentative concepts in which I try to bring together my predictions, imaginings, and desires about future forms of practice in the humanities and the arts” (Gumbrecht [2004] 91, 95). 82 Gumbrecht (2004) 98. 83 Gumbrecht (2004) 114–​16. 84 Gumbrecht (2004) 115. 81

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tyrant, pleasure of the most destructive and pathological kind. While they acknowledge the necessary role of violence and the destructive potential of aesthetic pursuits, neither critic pays sufficient attention to this danger or recognizes the paradox that lies at the heart of many forms of aesthetic pleasure: that they make a fetish out of pain. Their shared aesthetic project emerges from a culture of individualism that locates value in the private realm of self-​expression and personal discovery, and that seeks to insulate this realm from social interference. Neither considers the possibility that the private may jeopardize the public, that aesthetic pursuits may, in some cases, prove too socially harmful (or, what amounts to the same thing for Plato, too personally harmful) to justify. By considering the merits of Plato’s “greatest charge” against poetry, perhaps we can evaluate the cost of aesthetic pleasure in more realistic terms.

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Introduction God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone; He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrow-​bone.

–​William Butler Yeats, “A Prayer for Old Age”

By many accounts, ancient and modern, there is something irreducibly and perhaps essentially physical in the experience of poetry. It is a wonder that an art of so intellectual a nature, conducted in the least substantive of mediums, and dispensing with nearly all the senses,1 should often be described in the strongest somatic terms. Poetry’s oldest somatic feature (at least in the Western tradition) is its sweetness of taste –​already a well-​ worn metaphor at the dawn of Greek literature that persists in early modern descriptions (such as Sidney’s “sweete delights of poetrie,” “the sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge”) but diminishes thereafter.2 Modern somatic accounts construe the poetic encounter as a less pleasant and more violent ordeal. In Emily Dickinson’s famous pronouncement, If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were The primary sense being that of sound, be it the inner or outer ear. I subsume instrumental music, which often accompanied ancient Greek poetry, under the category of sound along with the voice without differentiating between them for the purposes of this study. See, however, Cavarero (2005) for a study of the human voice that distinguishes it from music because of its embodied uniqueness (esp. 127 and 173–​82). The standard introduction to the topic of Greek music remains Martin West’s Ancient Greek Music (1992). 2 Song is sweet in Homer (μολπῆς … γλυκερῆς, Il. 13.637, Od. 23.145; ἡδεῖαν ἀοιδήν, Od. 8.64). Sidney’s descriptions come from his Defence of Poesie (§§11 and 28), which refers to poetry’s sweetness no less than fifteen times (§§4, 11, 28, 37, 66, 87, 92, 98, 103, 117, 128, 175), of which the most interesting and relevant for this project are the paradoxical expressions “sower sweetnesse of revenge in Medea” (§37) and “sweet violence of tragedie” (§87). 1

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The Taste of Archaic Poetry taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?3

The intensity of physical sensations wrought by poetry leads, for Dickinson, to the impossibility of any further sensation –​no fire can ever warm her; the irreversible frigidity of her body evokes the insensibility of a corpse, just as the removal of the “top” of her head suggests the anaesthetizing procedure of lobotomy. Poetry so construed both overwhelms and exhausts sensation, physical and mental, and its operations are not limited to verse, but extend to any “book” or linguistic expression that so incapacitates us. But why do we desire to be so incapacitated? What satisfaction do we derive from these violent and ultimately disabling encounters? As we have seen, Aristotle and his modern adherents attempt to answer this question by appealing to the transformative power of the representational medium (be it in poetry or the plastic arts), which can render painful objects into sources of pleasure by neutralizing their danger. Art, for neo-​Artistotelians, becomes a means of confronting ugliness and evil in order to understand it –​becomes, in other words, a pedagogical tool, not unlike dissection and other laboratory means of analyzing otherwise repellent organisms of nature for the scientist (a comparison Aristotle himself suggests in Parts of Animals [645a]).4 But this intellectual explanation is a far cry from Dickinson’s description of poetic response as physical and mental incapacitation, which surely captures something authentic about aesthetic experience and its pleasures. Romantics such as A. W. Schlegel turned instead to ideas of the sublime to make sense of the appeal of arts such as tragedy; the divine origin of the human mind manifests in its encounter with adversity, and in the chaos of human suffering “some higher order of things” is mysteriously revealed.5 Recent aesthetic theorists, however, are more skeptical of our divine origins; Charles First quoted by Thomas Wentworth Higginson in an Atlantic article he published in 1891 after interviewing Dickinson; the statement appears in a letter she had written to him as well (see Bianchi [1924] 276). 4 This is, admittedly, a simplification of Aristotle, who famously concedes to art its own domain and standards of “correctness,” insulating it from charges of inaccuracy of representation when inaccuracy serves an aesthetic purpose (Po. 1460a11–​1461a9). That said, representational art and natural science in Parts of Animals are only analogous –​what is being “learned” in each enterprise is different, but the process of uncovering an intelligible structure is the same. In the case of tragic poetry, it is the structure of the plot that must be intelligible, whereas in natural science it is the structure –​or “causes” –​of the organism; on the relationship between biology and poetry in Aristotle’s thought, see Heath (2013) 63–​6. 5 Schlegel (1889) 69. 3

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Altieri and Hans Gumbrecht have posited (and championed) secular and ethically neutral values like “intensity” and “presence” to account for our pursuit of uncomfortable and downright painful aesthetic experiences. For Altieri, such values stem from the desire for self-​extension and psychic exploration, which painful affective states can achieve as well as pleasant ones can  –​and perhaps more effectively.6 For Gumbrecht, strong sensations per se are desirable, driven as we are –​in the absence of religion and at a time when readers and art critics feel increasingly alienated from the world around them –​to experience the world immediately and comprehensively. Thus poetry that overwhelms us allows us to feel something acutely without hermeneutic mediation, jars us back into the world, and gets appropriately figured as a physical encounter whose pleasures are often bound up in pain.7 The role of pain in aesthetic pleasure will be the subject of the following chapters, but it will suggest itself throughout the present exploration of archaic Greek poetry’s somatic pleasures before it asserts itself in the subsequent treatment of epic and invective poetry, and the philosophies that grapple with their appeal. Like some of his less savory ancient predecessors, Mark Strand, in a poem entitled “Eating Poetry,” exploits the metaphoric potential of poetry’s sweetness by replacing the gustatory model of poetic “taste” with the appetitive model of poetic “hunger.” After literally ingesting pages of poetry before an incredulous librarian (“ink runs from the corners of my mouth”), the narrator transforms into a dog. The poem ends: She does not understand. When I get on my knees and lick her hand, she screams. I am a new man. I snarl at her and bark. I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

Far from elevating him to Kantian heights of sublimity or effecting Wordsworthian tranquility, poetry appeals to the narrator’s baser instincts, the indulgence of which results in his bestial devolution. The devolution is not complete, however, since he remains still a man on his knees distinct from the dogs mentioned earlier in the poem whose “blonde legs bum I present a more detailed analysis of Altieri’s aesthetic theory in Chapter 2, Section 2.3. See Gumbrecht (2004), esp. 21–​49. We will find by the end of this study that, far from rectifying the modern sense of alienation, aesthetic experience pursued as a form of escapism actually compounds it, according to Plato.

6 7

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like brush,”8 and he romps “in the bookish dark” of the library rather than the natural dark outside. Even dogs, moreover, are so thoroughly domesticated as to make for problematic symbols of animality, but they remain biologically distant enough to frustrate human identification, making their psychic inhabitation in poetry an imaginative feat all the same. The narrator is indeed a new man –​one who, through poetry, knows the pleasure of dogs. The image conveys poetry’s double nature as an intellectual product whose consumption is physically transformative; poetry, in Yeats’ terms, is “thinking in a marrow-​bone.” Of course, in a trivial sense, all thinking is “in a marrow-​bone,” insofar as cognition includes perception and perception is necessarily embodied.9 To follow Yeats’s lead, though, one can nonetheless distinguish poetic “thinking” from ordinary thinking (“in the mind alone”) by virtue of its unique engagement of the body; the body is not merely a vehicle for thought, but an object of experience accessed through a special use of language, and a special kind of thinking. Poetry and the aesthetic imagination allow us to experience our bodies in a unique and uniquely pleasurable way, and the gustatory and appetitive metaphors for poetic consumption attempt to capture this somatic experience. Ancient poetics anticipates the violent and bestial imagery we have seen here in conceptualizing the effects of certain kinds of poetry, such as invective, but it does so with suspicion and considerable anxiety over such poetry’s influence. Plato will be the first to regard all existing poetry (which he would call “mimetic”) with this suspicion, claiming that poetry itself as it is practiced in his culture –​even the revered poetry of Homer –​ always appeals to our basest instincts and appetitive desires.10 In this chapter, I want to examine the source of this Platonic anxiety by exploring the most common and celebrated somatic conception of poetic pleasure in archaic poetics, that of sweetness. Exploring the ways in which sweetness aptly characterizes poetic pleasure reveals a rich association between poetry and the physical sensations of taste, hunger, erotic pleasure, and arousal The poem leaves open the possibility, however, that these dogs emerging from the basement of the library are also fellow poetry-​eaters. 9 Many thanks to one of the anonymous readers for pointing out the embodied nature of cognition in Aristotle; see also my discussion of Aristotle’s hylomorphic approach to emotions in Chapter 2, subsection 2.2.1. 10 Plato does suggest the possibility of an alternative form of poetry in the hymns and encomia that exist in the ideal city (a possibility I  briefly discuss in the epilogue), but it would no longer be poetry in the traditional sense. 8

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that lends the structure of an appetitive desire to the poetic experience;11 detecting and analyzing this somatic dimension to the archaic conception of poetic pleasure will give us a renewed perspective on poetry’s place in Plato’s tripartite soul –​the appetite (τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν). Moreover, we will find that poetry’s psychosomatic nature allows it to reproduce the effects of physical pleasures without physiological restrictions, thus maximizing the pleasures of the body with the power of the mind (which, for Plato, does not survive the process unscathed). When we discuss the metaphorical tradition that emphasizes the cognitive aspects of poetic production, we will find that such conceptions always subordinate the craft of poetry to the production of sensual pleasure. Because, as I  hope to show, the avowed aim of poetic craft remains to secure and sustain the appetitive pleasure of sweetness, the role of cognition in poetic experience will remain philosophically suspect to Plato’s Socrates. Ultimately he will take the standard value terms of archaic poetry such as “sweet,” “arousing,” and even “subtle” to be the commitments of an appetitive hedonism.12 The dangers of these commitments are clearer in cases where poetry involves straightforward pain, as in Archilochus’ self-​destructive and “fattening” invective,13 but here Socrates is no more critical than his poetic predecessors who, in this respect at least, concur with their arch-​opponent’s criticisms.

1.1  The Honeyed Muse: Sweetness in Archaic Poetry The synaesthetic attribution of sweetness to poetry pervades Greek poetics from its inception. Whether it be Hesiod’s “sweet-​speaking Muses of Olympus” (ἡδυέπειαι, Th. 965–​6) whose voices “flow sweet from their mouths” (ἡδεῖα, 39–​40), or “the gift of sweet song” they bestow on Homeric bards (ἡδεῖαν ἀοιδήν, Od. 8.64), or Alcman’s “honey-​voiced” maidens (μελιγάρυες, fr.26), or the “poured nectar” Pindar offers his athletic victors (νέκταρ χυτόν, O.7.8), the pleasure and satisfaction that Greek Archaic poetry’s somatic self-​presentation fulfills the terms of Susan Sontag’s famous call for “an erotics of art” in place of hermeneutics, both in its erotic characterization of aesthetic experience and in its instantiation of a form of literary criticism indistinguishable from art itself (since in these cases it occurs within the very artwork); see Sontag (2001) 14. 12 The terms for sweetness are typically forms of glukus, hêdus, or melis; for erotic desire, pothos and himeros (particular the latter in adjectival form, himeroeis); for subtlety and craftsmanship, poikilos. An analysis of these terms will follow presently. 13 Pindar describes the invective poet as “fattening himself [πιαινόμενον] on heavy worded hatreds” (P. 54–​6). See my discussion of this passage in Section 1.3 and subsection 2.2.1. 11

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poetry promises to provide is of a strikingly gustatory nature. For those of us familiar with this poetic tradition, poetry’s sweetness has attained the status of a cliché: too commonplace to note, too straightforward to warrant scholarly attention.14 I  would like to refresh our understanding of this metaphor by taking it as literally as possible, with the hope that, by probing its familiar surface, we discover a valuable insight into the nature of poetic pleasure as archaic poetry (and its detractors) conceived it. The taste of poetry is typically (though not exclusively) sweet, conveyed by the adjectives glukus and hêdus or by metaphorical analogy to the food and drink that these words regularly modify.15 The connection between literary and alimentary satisfaction seems to derive from the sympotic context in which poetic performance originates.16 The bard serves up his song along with the meal of the banquet, satisfying the hearts of his listeners as wine and meat satisfy their bellies. Alcinous says as much in the Odyssey, when he aborts Demodocus’ disquieting performance (8.97–​9): Hear me, leaders and lords of the Phaeacians, already we have satisfied our hearts [κεκορήμεθα θυμόν] with the shared feast and with the lyre, which is wedded [συνήορος] to the rich feast. Though a number of studies have examined the relationship between poetry and honey in Greek poetics, none addresses the gustatory dimension of this analogy. A useful overview of the relevant passages (with very little commentary, however) can be found in Nünlist (1998) 60–​3 and 300–​6. Robert-​Tornow (1893) and Waszink (1974) offer the only monographs devoted to the subject of apian imagery in Greco-​Roman literature, but both focus almost exclusively on honey’s mantic associations and consequently interpret it as a symbol of truth primarily; cf. Pucci (1977) 19–​21, 27–​9, who complicates the symbolic significance of honey by demonstrating its ambivalent relationship to truth. Scheinberg (1979) provides an extensive history of the connection between bees and poetry as background to the bee maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, to which Larson (1995) has added. Crane (1987) uses the same data to read a Callimachean innovation in the poet’s Hymn to Apollo, though I  would argue that Callimachus’ substitution of water for honey is less innovative in light of the established connection between poetry and water in Pindar (e.g., O. 1.11, 11.1–​6; N. 4.4, 7.11–​13, 61–​3; I. 6.63-​6, 74–​5; P. 9.104–​6). Poliakoff (1980) acknowledges Callimachus’ debt to Pindar in this regard, and analyzes the role of honey and water in both poets’ critical terminology. Hunter (1999) 70–​1 provides a brief but thoughtful analysis of the loaded metaphor of poetic sweetness in Theocritus’ first Idyll. 15 Such as honey, wine, milk, water, and food generally. To take just a few examples of “sweet” objects of consumption from Homer: wine and honey in Il. 6.258 (μελιηδέα οἶνον), food in Il. 11.89 (σίτου … γλυκεροῖο), milk in Od. 4.88 (γλυκεροῖο γάλακτος), honey and wine in Od. 20.69 (μέλιτι γλυκερῷ καὶ ἡδέϊ οἴνῳ), dinner in Od. 20.391 (δεῖπνον … ἡδὺ). Honey’s essential sweetness makes it a common component of compound epithets for archaic poetry, such as meligêrus, “honey-​voiced” (μελίγηρυν ἀοιδήν, h.Ap. 519); meliphthongos, “honey-​toned” (μελίφθογγοι Μοῖσαι, Pi. O. 6.21); and meligdoupos, “honey-​sounding” (μελιγδούποισι ἀοιδαῖς, Pi. N. 11.18); see Nünlist (1998) for a comprehensive list of such adjectives. The taste of poetry can be bitter as well as sweet, as we will see in the next chapter when we turn to descriptions of Archilochus’ invective poetry. 16 For the most recent study of archaic poetry’s sympotic origins, see Ford (2002) 25–​45. 14

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Alcinous portrays the banquet as poetry’s natural habitat,17 and together food and music (broadly understood) satisfy the biological and emotional needs of thumos in virtually indistinguishable ways.18 Hesiod tells us that “it is sweet, at a feast and flourishing banquet, to delight in tales [τέρπεσθαι μύθοισιν], when men have had enough of feasting” (fr. 274), and that is precisely the time when the Homeric bard typically strikes his lyre.19 The formula that marks this transition from the feast to the performance is one that reinforces the continuity between poetry and other appetitive pleasures:  after the guests “have satisfied the desire [ἔρον] for food and drink,” they go on to satisfy a comparable eros for poetry. Such scenes not only model the pleasure of poetry analogically on the pleasures of consumption, developing in the process a gustatory vocabulary for articulating poetic value; they also attribute a socializing function to the poetic performance comparable to that of communal dining, and present these public forms of “appetitive” satisfaction as in some sense socially productive. We will see that Plato’s Socrates co-​opts the appetitive conception of poetic pleasure only to deny it a productive role in sociality. The practice of listening to poetry after dinner makes sense of Pindar’s metaphorical offering of song for “dessert” at Thrasyboulus’ symposium (μεταδόρπιον, fr.124a)20 and the extraordinary frequency with which the epinician poet attributes sweetness to his odes.21 The traditional place of song at the feast allows Pindar to make the comparison between banquet consumption and literary consumption explicit: “Just as when the men’s symposium is flourishing, we mix a second bowl of the Muses’ songs Elsewhere the lyre is described as the feast’s “companion” (δαιτὶ … ἑταίρην, Od. 17.271), and song and dance are “ornaments” of the feast (ἀναθήματα δαιτός, Od.1.152); cf. Alc. fr.70.3, where the kithara is described as “sharing in the symposium” (πεδέχων συμποσίω). See Segal (1992) 6–​7 for a brief discussion of the relation between song and feasting in the Odyssey, and Burnyeat (1997) 234–​6 on the sympotic context of archaic Greek poetry generally. 18 This is particularly striking in the case of wine, which has both psychological and physiological effects on thumos and other psychic entities in archaic poetry, as Sullivan (1997) has shown. In conflating body and mind, wine thus provides a good parallel to archaic accounts of poetic pleasure. Wine also shares poetry’s therapeutic function (espoused by Hesiod in Th. 55 and 96–​103) in its ability to alleviate pain and attenuate grief; Athenaeus offers a host of archaic and classical citations to this effect (2.37a and 40a-​c; cf. Pi. Pae. 4.26, where wine is described as a “life-​giving remedy for helplessness” and Pae. 6.10, where poetry is described as “warding off helplessness”). We will discuss the therapeutic function of poetry briefly at the end of this section. 19 Phemius and Demodocus begin performing only after the banqueters have finished their meal (Od. 1.150–​2, 8.72–​3, 8.485–​500). Likewise on Olympus, divine “feasting” (whatever that amounts to for beings who need no nourishment) is followed by the musical performance of Apollo and the Muses (Il. 1.601–​4). On the problematic notion of divine nourishment in Homer, see Neals (2006) 27–​30. 20 Elsewhere Pindar equates song with dinner (δόρπον) instead of dessert (μεταδόρπιον): “we shall not put you to bed without a supper of paeans [παιηόνων ἄδορπον]” (Pae. 6.127–​8). 21 E.g., O. 10.3; P. 8.71, 10.56; N. 2.25, 3.32, 5.2, 9.3; I. 2.7, 8.8. 17

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[κρητῆρα Μοισαίων μελέων] for Lampon’s triumphant family” (I. 6.1–​3). From this gustatory-​poetic nexus of associations more strikingly hybrid metaphors emerge:  in addition to “poured nectar,” poetry is also “sweet fruit of the mind” (γλυκὺν καρπὸν φρενός, O. 7.8) and “this mixture of honey and white milk … a draught of song [πόμ‘ ἀοίδιμον]” (N. 3.76–​ 9).22 Pindar thus invigorates the deadened metaphor of poetic sweetness by forging increasingly literal expressions to convey the appetitive nature of poetic satisfaction. In many cases, such as Demodocus’ performance at the Phaeacian banquet or Pindar’s offering of song at Thrasyboulus’ symposium, poetry’s gustatory characterization is due in part to a metonymic association with a performative context of consumption. But the feast is merely one of poetry’s venues, while alimentary metaphors for poetic pleasure persist throughout the Greek poetic corpus. The fact that the “taste” of poetry is emphasized in a variety of contexts –​public and private, sympotic and otherwise  –​suggests that the metaphor reveals something inherent to poetry itself and its peculiar satisfaction rather than the external circumstances of its performance alone. When we turn to one of the oldest mythic paradigms for poetic pleasure –​the myth of the Sirens –​we find that, even in a context radically alienated from a culture of consumption, poetry is celebrated for its sweet taste. The Sirens are staged, ironically, at a kind of anti-​banquet located at the edge of nature (the sea) rather than the heart of culture (the city), before an audience of languishing sailors and cadavers in lieu of sated banqueters (Hom. Od. 12.39–​58, 158–​200).23 The voice of the Sirens, in striking contrast to their gruesome landscape, is described as “honeyed” (μελίγηρυν … ὄπ’, 12.187), luring men to their death despite the foreboding heap of bones on which the singers perch (12.45–​46).24 Likewise the Sirens’ sisters in myth, the golden Charmers (κηληδόνες) on the pediment of an ancient Delphic temple, drove the gods to bury the structure The image of “honey and milk” is one poetry shares with the mythology of Bacchic revelry, an association that Plato fully exploits in the Ion (534a), where he characterizes poetic inspiration as an ecstatic and mindless form of possession akin to maenadic frenzy; see Usener (1902) 177–​81; Waszink (1974) 17–​19; Murray (1996) 116. 23 Segal (1992) 23 notes that the effects of the Sirens’ song “are entirely detached from a human community … the remoteness of their voice from any human society and the solitariness of Odysseus’ listening are the negation of the communal context where life-​giving memory has a place.” The Sirens’ distance from both human and divine civilizations distinguishes them sharply from the Muses, to whom they are in other respects so akin; see Doherty (1995) 82–​5. 24 Margaret Atwood conveys this point nicely in her poem “Siren Song”: “the song that forces men /​ to leap overboard in squadrons /​even though they see the beached skulls.” 22

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because the power of their “sweet voice” (γλυκείας ὀπός) paralyzed and eventually killed the temple visitors, “who hung their souls on the honey-​ minded sound [μελίφρονι αὐδᾷ]” (Pi. Pae. 8.68–​79).25 The sweetness of song in both myths has nothing to do with its connection to the feast or its social context; stripped of all sympotic accoutrements and festive associations, song entices by means of its sweetness alone –​a pleasure worth dying for. So what does it mean for poetry to be sweet in this perversely unappetizing setting? By ascribing sweetness to fatally captivating songs, both poets apply the structure of appetitive desire to poetic desire. Sweetness is the most desirable quality of food, and honey a precious commodity that nevertheless stimulates, when available, an excessive indulgence.26 In the culinary realm, sweetness has an irresistible and addictive nature that stimulates the appetite to indulge itself to its own detriment. Insofar as song’s pleasure and desirability can eclipse other more essential wants and needs, the power of sweetness over the body is in some respects a fitting analogue for the power of song over the soul. As early as Homer then, the pleasure of poetry bears a structural resemblance to the pleasure of sweet foods. But there is potentially another source for poetic sweetness in these myths. Both the Charmers and the Sirens are depicted as nearly omniscient,27 and the Sirens advertise their knowledge as part of a rhetorical strategy to entrap their victims. They call Odysseus by his Iliadic epithet28 and promise to tell him everything that happened at Troy, as well as “everything that happens on the fruitful earth” (Od. 12.184–​91). We must doubt whether the Sirens actually know what they claim to know, since they also promise Odysseus that he will go on his merry way after having his pleasure (a promise surely once made to The verb for hanging (ἀνακρεμάννυμι) has both a ritual sense of “hanging up for dedication” (e.g., Hdt. 5.77) and a psychological sense of hypnotic dependence (e.g., Pi. I. 2.43; Pl. Ion 536a); the listener’s soul is both an offering to the Charmers’ song and hypnotized by it, as Rutherford (2001) 220 notes in his commentary. His recent edition of Pindar’s fragmentary Paeans is extremely useful, complete with text, translation, commentary, and a history of the genre; see pp. 210–​32 on Paean 8 (B2). See also a more recent and extensive treatment of Paean 8 by Powers (2011) 53–​100. 26 See New Pauly, s.v. “honey,” where honey is described as one of the most valuable foods in antiquity as well as an essential ingredient in most Greek and Roman dishes. 27 I say “nearly” because they seem to lack knowledge of the future. The Sirens are said to know “everything that happens on the fruitful earth” (ὅσσα γένηται ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ, Hom. Od. 12.191) and the Charmers know “all the things that are and that have happened before” (τά τ’ ἐόντα τε καὶ πρόσθεν γεγενημένα, Pi. Pae. 8.83-​4). Surprisingly, prediction and foreknowledge are not what’s being sought after in these cases, but knowledge of the present and past. 28 A detail first noted by Pucci (1979) in an article that makes a compelling case for the Iliadic characterization of the whole of the Siren song, which, in a gesture of “intertextual debate,” the Odyssey poet presents as a negative foil to his own epic (see Dougherty [2001] 72–​3 for this expression). 25

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the beached corpses as well).29 And while the knowledge of the Charmers seems to be vouched for by the poet, who tells us objectively (as far as we can tell) that “Memory [or Pallas?] declared to them all the things that are and that have happened before” (Pi. Pae. 8.82-​6),30 the singers (or their song, or the temple of which they are part) are called a “man-​unraveling artifact” (λυσίμβροτον … δαίδαλμα, 80–​1) just before their knowledge is professed, as well a “trick” (δόλον, 87) just after.31 Thus, on the one hand, the emphasis on the knowledge contained in song in the dramatization of its “sweet” vocal attraction suggests that poetry’s sweetness derives from its content –​that knowledge itself is somehow “sweet” to acquire.32 But at the same time the texts undermine any sound basis for determining the singer’s knowledge and even suggest that the wisdom of poetry is an illusion, a case of false advertising. If we know that the singer lies and the song is a trick, what is the attraction? What is “sweet” about the possibility of deception? It may well be that sweetness conceals deception and makes the trick successful,33 and that the promise of knowledge rather than knowledge itself lures the listener. It may also be that we are intrigued by the possibility of being tricked despite our preemptive awareness of deception, that we want to submit to the power of something that exceeds our rational control; for the strange fact remains that Odysseus is aware of his own deception and has braced himself for a false promise, yet the promise seduces him all the same: “They spoke emitting a beautiful voice, and my This duplicity in the Sirens’ promise is also noted by Doherty (1995) 83, who compares it to the potentially deceptive speech of Hesiod’s Muses, who often tell “lies like truths” (Th. 27). 30 The corrupt state of the text makes it unclear whether Athena or Memory is responsible for the Charmers’ knowledge; see Rutherford (2001) 221. 31 Rutherford (2001) 221 takes the hapax lusimbroton positively to mean “man-​redeeming” because of the positive sense of lusis in personal names like Lusidamos (“redeemer of the people”), Lusipolis (“redeemer of the city”), etc., but I find Förstel’s argument (1972) that it means “destroying mortals” equivalent to the Homeric adjective phthisimbrotos much more convincing in light of the negative valence of lusis in epithets like lusimelês (“limb-​loosener”) and Homeric expressions of death that use luein to mean “releasing” strength or “unstringing” limbs (LSJ, s.v. λύω). Because of the state of Pindar’s text, the referents of “man-​unraveling artifact” and “trick” are not perfectly clear, but any of the alternatives supports my point that knowledge, deceit, and the sensual attraction of song are all linked in the experience of poetic pleasure and poetic “sweetness.” 32 A reading first propounded by Cicero in de Finibus: “It seems that it was not through the sweetness of their voices [vocum suavitate] nor any novelty and diversity in their singing [novitate … varietate cantanti] that [the Sirens] used to attract passing voyagers, but because they professed to know many things, so that men clung to their rocky shores out of a passion for learning [discendi cupiditate]” (5.49). Waszink (1974) 6, 9–​13 likewise takes the sweetness of song to derive from the truth it conveys. 33 As we know from Pandora, whom Hesiod describes as a “beautiful evil” and a “hopeless trick” (καλὸν κακόν, Th. 585; δόλον … ἀμήχανον, Op. 83). 29

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heart /​longed to listen, and I commanded my companions to set me free /​with nodding brows …” (Od. 12.192–​4). Should we, then, attribute the sweetness of the Siren song to the tonality of the voice that articulates this illusory wisdom? What, after all, is the relationship between the corporeal medium of song and its cognitive content? Whether knowledge is the source of the Sirens’ and Charmers’ appeal, or incidental to the noncognitive allure of the pleasant sound of their voice is something of a puzzle. The Sirens’ promise to Odysseus that he will go away “having had the pleasure and knowing more” (τερψάμενος … καὶ πλείονα εἰδώς, 12.188) provocatively juxtaposes distinct aspects of song: sound and meaning, sensation and cognition.34 Likewise the “sound” of the Charmers’ voice that suspends souls is described as “honey-​minded.”35 Audê is, moreover, one of the Greek terms for voice that defines it as articulate human speech, an “instrument of expression” as opposed to its sheer musical quality.36 The tone and timbre of the voice are conveyed by words such as opa and phthongos, which also occur in both the Siren and the Charmer episodes (Od. 12.41, 52, 159, 160, 185, 187, 198; Pae. 8.75). Thus mind and body are confounded in the mythical representations of poetic ecstasy, which thereby embody the ambiguity of poetry’s somatic and cognitive origins. Though they prevent us from locating conclusively the essence of poetic sweetness, these myths suggest that it emerges from the convergence of mental and physical pleasure unique to poetic experience.37 Aristophanes parodies traditional somatic conceptions of poetic pleasure in the Frogs, where he also portrays an alternative venue for poetic consumption to that of the feast. Poetic desire motivates the entire plot, in the form of Dionysus’ “hunger” for Euripidean poetry. This hunger –​ which strikes Dionysus during the private act of reading –​instigates his Finkelberg (1985–​8) and (1998) 94–​9 takes this juxtaposition to indicate discreet components to the experience of song, whereby pleasure is derived from its aural reception and enchantment from the acquisition of knowledge. This reading is far too schematic, as it ignores the fact that enchantment is explicitly linked with the sound of the Sirens’ voice in the episode (12.40–​4), and that much of the content of their song deals with a subject with which Odysseus is already intimately familiar: the Trojan War (12.189–​90). 35 Power (2008), however, translates this expression as “honey to the mind,” in line with his argument that the allure of the Chamers’ performance is “a dangerous abundance of pure, sensual vocality” (92). Recall, however, a similar conflation of the cognitive and somatic origins of poetry in Pindar’s description of song as “sweet fruit of the mind” (O. 7.8), where the intellectual component of song is undeniable. 36 The phrase is from Ford (1992) 175, who provides a very useful taxonomy of Greek vocal vocabulary (174–​9). See also the lexical study of Fournier (1946), on which Ford bases many of his conclusions. 37 Though, as we have mentioned in n18 to this chapter, wine offers similarly holistic pleasures, as does sleep and sex (which we will discuss in the following section). 34

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mission to retrieve the dead poet from Hades. The god had been reading the Andromeda to himself (ἀναγιγνώσκοντί μοι … πρὸς ἐμαυτόν) on the deck of a warship (instead of warring) when a “sudden longing [πόθος]” for Euripides overwhelmed him (48–​59).38 In an attempt to convey the magnitude of this longing to a bemused Heracles, Dionysus compares it to a sudden craving for soup that “gnaws” at him (60–​7): D: I can’t explain it, but all the same I’ll try to tell you in riddles. Have you ever had a sudden craving [ἐπεθύμησας ἐξαίφνης] for soup [ἔτνους]? H: Soup? My goodness, only about ten thousand times in my life. D: Have I made it clear or should I explain it another way? H: Not about the soup, I understand that completely. D: Well, such a craving [πόθος] gnaws [δαρδάπτει]39 at me now for Euripides.

Here too the structure of an appetitive craving offers a compelling model for poetic desire and clarifies its addictive nature. Clearly Dionysus’ description humorously tweaks and literalizes the conventional gustatory conception of poetry as sweet, and he appeals to Heracles’ notorious gluttony by evoking a substance heartier than honey.40 All the same, the scene does not question the applicability of an alimentary model to poetic satisfaction; it only exploits the comic possibilities of less “poetic” classes of food. As some of the preceding examples have already illustrated, the standard metaphorical vehicle for poetic sweetness, from which Aristophanes self-​consciously and humorously departs, is the quintessentially sweet As Dover (1993) 196 notes in his commentary, this is one of our earliest references to solitary reading in the ancient world, and arguably a case of silent reading as well (a possibility Dover does not mention). Euripides refers to books in Alc. 962–​9, Hipp. 954 and Erec. fr. 369, and depicts characters reading silently in IA 34–​41, Hipp. 856–​85, and IT 759–​65; see Ar. Eq. 110–​45, Nub. 18–​24 and Av. 960–​1 for more Aristophanic evidence of silent reading, a recently contested topic in scholarship. Though for a long time scholars have followed Balogh’s (1927) influential study in denying the practice of silent reading in a predominantly oral and aural culture, and ignored Knox’s (1968) compelling reassessment of the evidence, a renewed defense of Knox’s position by Gavrilov (1997) has led to a new consensus that admits silent reading as an ordinary practice in the ancient world. 39 The verb dardaptô has a much stronger sense of “devour” in epic, where it describes wild animals feeding on prey (e.g., Il. 11.479), but its meaning can be humorously deflated in comedy, as when Strepsiades complains of bed bugs “devouring” his sides (Ar. Nub. 711). Since the verb does not occur in tragedy, Dover (1993) 196 suggests that its use in comedy signifies a colloquial register rather than a paratragic one, but a “para-​epic” register is just as likely, given the melodramatic nature of these descriptions. 40 Athenaeus gives a brief history of the literary testimony to Heracles’ proverbial appetite in 10.411a–​b; Aristophanes plays on it elsewhere (fr.11 K–​A; Ran. 549–​60; Av. 1583–​1604, 1689–​92; see especially Vesp. 60, where Xanthias promises the audience something more original than “Heracles robbed of his dinner”). On comic representations of Heracles, see Hosek (1963) and Galinsky (1972). 38

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food  –​ honey.41 Pindar longs to sing “the sweet perfection [ἄωτον] of honey” (Pae. 6.58–​9) and repeatedly attributes the gustatory, tactile, and medicinal characteristics of honey to his odes.42 Honey prominently figures in archaic epithets for poetry:  “honey-​voiced” (μελίγηρυν ἀοιδήν, h.Ap. 519), “honey-​toned” (μελίφθογγοι Μοῖσαι, Pi. O. 6.21), “honey-​ sounding” (μελιγδούποισι ἀοιδαῖς, Pi. N. 11.18), “honey-​ tongued” (μελιγλώσσων ἐπέων, Ar. Av. 908), to name but a few. Such descriptions, which already synaesthetically conflate sound and taste, combine with verbs of slow, streaming motion to configure poetry as a gentle balm that overwhelms the senses: sweet to taste and to hear, warm and soothing to feel. Pindar comes to “bathe [καταβρέχω] the city in honey” (O. 10.98–​99) when he performs his patron’s ode, as one bathes a weary athlete’s limbs after his physical exertions.43 Because of both its healing properties as well as its pleasing taste, honey may in fact be the original figure for eloquent speech in general, of which poetry offers but one variety.44 The blandishments of lovers and the eloquence of orators and kings are expressed in the same metaphorical terms.45 Agamemnon’s elderly advisor Nestor is famously “sweet-​ speaking … from whose lips the streams of words flowed sweeter than honey” (Hom. Il. 1.248–​9). One scholiast suggests that Nestor’s sweetness of speech derives from his wise and conciliatory council, not (just) the quality of his voice:  “[The poet] praises the form of his words because it is gentle [προσηνές] and capable of restraining anger; for a bitter word [αὐστηρὸς λόγος] riles up the spirit.”46 Hesiod relies on the same In the absence of cane and beet sugar, honey was the primary sweetener in the ancient world; see New Pauly, s.v. “honey.” 42 Many of the gustatory metaphors for poetic sweetness in Pindar have already been mentioned; they are often attended by images of liquidity (O. 7.7, 10.93–​9; P. 10.55–​7; N. 7.11–​12) and soothing relief (P. 3.63–​7; N. 5.47–​8; I. 8.8–​9). 43 A comparison Pindar makes explicitly in his opening to Nemean 4. 44 Honey appears in many a Hippocratic prescription, for the following reasons: “Wine and honey are held to be the best things for human beings, so long as they are administered appropriately and with moderation to both the well and the sick in accordance with their constitution; they are beneficial both alone and mixed, as indeed anything else is that has a value worth mentioning” (Hipp. Aff. 61). See also New Pauly, s.v. “honey” for additional citations of its medicinal uses. 45 Persuasion seems to be the common denominator, as we will see in the following section. Calypso tries to “charm” Odysseus into forgetting about Ithaca “with soft and crafty words” (Od. 1.56–​7), and Penelope “charms” gifts out of the suitors “with honeyed words” (Od. 18.281–​3). Parry (1992) 272 rightly suggests that “persuasion is the crossing point between words, love, and magic.” 46 Schol. T to Il. 247–​8: προσυνίστησι τὸ εἶδος τῶν λόγων ὡς προσηνὲς καὶ καταστέλλειν ὀργὴν δυνάμενον· ὁ γὰρ αὐστηρὸς λόγος θυμὸν ἀναζωπυρεῖ. Elsewhere, however, anger itself is thought to be “sweet” to indulge, as Achilles remorsefully admits after Patroclus’ death, when he describes his previous anger as “far sweeter than dripping honey” (Il. 18.108; see Chapter 2, subsection 2.1.3). 41

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mellifluous imagery to characterize the just king’s pacifying influence over his subjects (Th. 81–​93): Whomever the daughters of great Zeus honor and behold at his birth, among god-​nourished kings, they pour [χείουσιν] sweet dew [γλυκερὴν … ἐέρσην] upon his tongue, and honeyed words [ἔπε’… μείλιχα] flow [ῥεῖ] from his mouth. All the people look to him to settle cases with straight judgments: and he, speaking firmly, would skillfully put an end to even a great quarrel; for this reason there are prudent kings, because when the people are injured in the assembly, they set things right easily, advising them with soft words [μαλακοῖσι παραιφάμενοι ἐπέεσσιν]. And when he passes through a gathering, they greet him as a god with gentle dignity [αἰδοῖ μειλιχίῃ], and he is conspicuous among those assembled: such is the holy gift of the Muses to men.

Through a common figurative conception of pleasant and palliative speech, characterized in overtly sensual terms of sweetness and softness, Hesiod is able to extend the Muses’ divine patronage to kings as well as poets.47 The king’s persuasive eloquence is an elixir for litigious injuries; his words heal civic wounds just as honey was thought to heal mortal ones. Similarly the poet, just a few lines later, is said to soothe the troubled hearts of his listeners with the sweet balm of his song (Th. 96–​103): Blessed is he whom the Muses love; sweet [γλυκερή] flows [ῥέει] the voice from his mouth. For if a man has sorrow in his newly-​stricken soul [νεοκηδέι θυμῷ], and cries with a grieving heart, yet, when a singer, the servant of the Muses, chants the glorious deeds of men of old and the blessed gods who inhabit Olympus, at once he forgets his cares [δυσφροσυνέων ἐπιλήθεται] and of his troubles remembers nothing, but the gifts of the goddesses soon distract [παρέτραπε] him. Battle is also said to be “sweeter” than returning home to warriors inspired by gods with renewed courage (Il. 2.453, 11.13–​14). 47 Though Hesiod stresses that “Kings are from Zeus” (96), they can derive their eloquence from the Muses because the latter are intermediaries via their filial relation to Zeus; see Stoddard (2003). Compare Hesiod’s description of the king to Odysseus’ description of an eloquent speaker in Od. 8.170–​3: “[T]‌he gods crown his words with shapeliness [μορφὴν], and they who look toward him /​ are filled with joy at the sight, and he speaks to them firmly /​with gentle dignity [αἰδοῖ μειλιχίῃ], and he is conspicuous among those assembled, /​and people look on him as on a god when he walks in the city.” On the relationship between these two passages, which has been much debated, see Martin (1984).

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Though sweetness of speech in the cases of both king and poet works to soothe and ameliorate the troubles of men, the effect of their eloquence differs markedly in one respect: forgetfulness, rather than true healing, is the poet’s business. Poetry offers us a “forgetfulness of ills” (λησμοσύνην … κακῶν, 55), but not their elimination. Whereas people look to the king to resolve their conflicts, they look to the bard merely to ignore them, to be “diverted” (παρέτραπε). Thus the poet’s honey acts as a placebo or a band-​aid rather than true medicine. The poet’s “diversion” (παρατρέπω) is, however, analogous to the king’s righteous “persuasion” (παράφημι) in that both use seductive speech to lure minds away or “aside” (para) from their original concerns toward a new horizon; from litigious quarrels to the straight paths of justice, from personal sorrows to the escapist world of poetry. Though both figures use this power to good ends, the text nonetheless suggests the possibility of its abuse (an anxiety voiced in the Muses’ taunt that they tell “lies like truths,” 27). Hesiod thus evokes a concept of persuasion (and hence poetry) as inherently devious, and shadows the sweetness and softness of eloquent speech with the suspicion of a concealed deception, a sugar-​ coated lie. In Homer, paraphêmi is typically used of deceptive speech, and for Pindar parphasis will become “slander,” providing a negative foil to the positive speech of praise.48 In Homer and beyond, the amnesia induced by poetic enchantment can lead to a fatal oblivion, and mimics the pernicious amnesia characteristic of magical enchantment. We will explore some of these anxieties about seductive speech and poetic attraction in the following section. Let us conclude this section by reiterating that archaic poetics attribute a sweetness to song that derives in part from its alimentary association with the feast, but more importantly from the appetitive and addictive nature of poetic satisfaction; poetry’s sweetness has both cognitive and somatic origins, emerging from the convergence of sheer musicality (the song) with the promise of forbidden knowledge (the meaning); but though poetry enlists the physical senses and has the structure of an appetitive craving, it ultimately abstracts the mind from the body in an act of mental “diversion”; endowed with the (apparently) therapeutic and soothing properties of honey, poetry is in the end an extremely seductive Parphasis is said to “steal the shrewd senses even of the wise” at Il. 14.216; cf. Il. 12.248–​50, Od. 2.189, 18.178. In Pindar parphasis is associated with slander, flattery, and envy, making it the “antitype of Pindar’s poetry,” as Walsh (1984) 43 puts it (see 39–​43).

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form of persuasion that magically –​and dangerously –​controls the entire person.

1.2  The Erotic Muse: Arousal in Archaic Poetry Though sweetness may be the most celebrated quality of song, making taste the primary sensation to which it appeals (however metaphorically), many of the descriptive terms for archaic poetry cast it as markedly erotic, in light of which sweetness itself, along with its mellifluous imagery, acquires additional erotic overtones. For the carnal pleasures of Aphrodite are also synaesthetically “sweet”49 and exist, as song and music do, to “delight” and to “enchant” men and gods.50 When Aphrodite enters the Olympian pantheon, Hesiod gives her the following attributes (Th. 201–​6): Love [Ἔρος] attended her and beautiful desire [Ἵμερος … καλός] followed her as soon as she was born and when she went to the tribes of gods; since the beginning she possessed honor and has received as her lot this portion among human beings and immortal gods: maidenly whispers and smiles and deceits [ἐξαπάτας], sweet delight [τέρψιν … γλυκερήν] and love [φιλότητα] and gentleness [μειλιχίην].

Love, beauty, desire, deceit, delight, sweetness, and gentleness (or, more literally, “honey-​ness”) feature prominently in the Muses’ world as well. We have already noted the sweetness of the taste and sound of poetic speech, a sweetness that configures poetry as an object of appetitive desire and confers upon it (as on all eloquent speech) the gentle and soothing qualities of honey as well as its sweet taste. We have also glimpsed the possibility of deceit in the intoxicating nature of poetry’s allure and the disarming effect of poetic “diversion,” topics that we will examine more closely in “The sweets of Aphrodite” can be a euphemism for sex (γλυκείας … Ἀφροδίτας, Pi. O. 6.39; cf. Hom. Od. 22.444–​5, where Aphrodite herself is a metonym for sex), and the qualities of honey are often attributed to the physical sensations of erotic desire, as in “sweet Eros pouring down warms my heart” (Ἔρως … γλυκύς κατείβων καρδίαν ἰαίνει, Alcm. fr.59) and “Eros, Eros, dripping desire upon the eyes, bringing sweet charm to the soul” (ὁ κατ’ ὀμμάτων στάζων πόθον, εἰσάγων γλυκεῖαν ψυχᾷ χάριν, E.  Hipp. 525–​7). Aphrodite is the goddess “who rouses sweet longing” (γλυκὺν ἵμερον ὦρσε, h.Aph.2; cf. Il. 3.446 and 14.328, where “sweet desire seizes me” describes the sudden onset of sexual arousal). Aphrodite is called “sweetly-​soothing” (γλυκυμείλιχε, h.Aph.6.19) and Eros is “sweet-​hearted” (γλυκύθυμος, Ar. Lys. 551). In the case of archaic love poetry, the sweetness of erotic love is compounded by the sweetness of its poetic medium, as Calame (1992) 14–​15 notes. 50 As well as to deceive; deception, delight, and enchantment are discussed later in this chapter.

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this section. We will now consider the erotic nature of song, beginning with the hedonistic function that the Muses share with Aphrodite (to provide τέρψις), followed by the erotic attributes they acquire through their association with pleasure, the resemblance (and often identity) between poetic enchantment and erotic seduction, and ending with the dangers posed by a medium that exercises a quasi-​sexual power without the limits inherent to physical sexual activity. After establishing an erotic conception of poetry in archaic poetics, we will turn once again to Aristophanes’ Frogs for the comic exploitation of this conception. Homer is the first to tell us, in no uncertain terms, that the purpose of song is to provide pleasure or terpsis.51 The bard is classified with prophets and doctors as an itinerant public worker (δημιοεργός), who provides the service of “giving pleasure [τέρπῃσιν] with song” (Od. 17.385), and is identified elsewhere as “one to whom the god gave the gift of song in order to please [τέρπειν]” (Od. 8.44–​5).52 The perceived failure to render this distinctly hedonistic service triggers the audience’s disapproval and intervention. When Odysseus responds to a song about the Trojan War by weeping, his host puts an end to the bard’s performance on the grounds that “we are not all equally pleased [τερπώμεθα]” (Od. 8.542). The pleasure of song is coterminous with the experience of enchantment;53 so when a bard brings Penelope to tears with his rendition of the “The Grim Return of the Achaeans,” she begs him to “stop singing this sad tale” and take up something more “charming” (θελκτήρια, Od. 1.337–​44). Telemachus responds by denying his mother’s judgment as representative of the audience’s and insists that the bard “give pleasure [τέρπειν] in whatever way his mind moves him” (Od. 1.347–​8). The purpose of archaic poetry was long thought to be strictly educational, a thesis originally advanced by Jaegar (1965) and maintained by the influential work of Havelock (1963), but scholars such as Heath (1985) 259–​63 and (1987) 5–​7, Ford (1992) 49–​52 and (2002) 197–​201, and Dover (1993) 10–​16 have corrected this tendency by taking seriously the hedonistic nature of archaic poetry’s professed aims. Cf. Harriot (1969) 120–​5 for an older testament to this view. Poetry’s objective remains primarily hedonistic in the classical period, if the author of Dissoi Logoi is any indication: “Poets compose poems not for truth [ἀλάθειαν] but for the pleasure [τὰς ἁδονὰς] of men” (3.17). 52 It is worth noting that the late antique lexicographer Hesychius glosses damiourgoi as “prostitutes” (πόρναι), whose profession is not unlike the bard’s in providing the service of pleasure. Heubeck et al. (1988) 349 state in their commentary to a related passage that “the occasion of ἀοιδή is the banquet and its purpose is frankly entertainment.” Walsh (1984) 15–​16 argues that the itinerant nature of the bard’s profession creates a distance between him and his audience that facilitates the latter’s enchantment during performance (though see Finely [2002] 50–​2 and 68–​70 for a more complicated picture of the status of Homeric craftsmen in their communities). 53 Pace Finkelberg (1985–​1988) and (1998), who distinguishes pleasure from enchantment in the experience of song; see n34 to this chapter. 51

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Similarly in Hesiod, the Muses’ province is the “pleasure of song” (τέρψις ἀοιδῆς, Th. 917) and their purpose is to “please” the mind of Zeus and the other immortals by celebrating divine achievements (τέρπουσι, Th. 37, 51), which bards use in turn to divert and soothe men’s troubled hearts (Th. 96–​103). As feminine deities who are divine incarnations of terpsis, the Muses easily lend themselves to sexualized portrayal. Hesiod begins his Theogony with an erotically charged description of their Olympian performance (Th. 1–​10): Let us begin our song with the Heliconian Muses, who possess the great and holy mountain of Helicon and dance on their soft feet [πόσσ’ ἁπαλοῖσιν] around the violet-​dark fountain and the altar of Cronos’ mighty son. And after they have washed their tender skin [τέρενα χρόα] in Permessus or Hippocrene or holy Olmeius, they perform choral dances on highest Helicon, beautiful ones [καλούς] that arouse desire [ἱμερόεντας], and move nimbly     on their feet [ἐπερρώσαντο δὲ ποσσίν]. Starting from there, shrouded in thick mist, they walk by night, sending forth [ἱεῖσαι] their exceedingly beautiful voice [περικαλλέα ὄσσαν] …

Hesiod invites us to imagine the Muses vividly as alluring female bodies, directing us immediately to the physical softness of their feet and the tenderness of their skin well before he mentions the beautiful sound of their voice. They dance around Zeus’ fountain like a band of woodland nymphs, whose sex appeal traditionally provokes rape and ravishment from nearby satyrs and gods.54 We catch a forbidden glimpse of the goddesses bathing in one of their springs,55 after which they perform more choral dances described as “beautiful” and  –​what’s more  –​“arousing desire.” The image begins to blur as they “move nimbly” into invisibility, concealed by night and mist; the Muses dissolve into a disembodied In vase painting, scenes of satyrs spying on bathing nymphs or abducting them abound; see Larson (2001) 299n56 for examples. As Larson (2001) 42–​3 notes, the wild and liberated status of nymphs makes them particularly vulnerable to sexual predators, among whom the rustic deity Pan is the most proverbial culprit: “she was wailing, just as some naiad nymph /​caught fleeing on the hills /​ voices with shrieks beneath the rocky hollows her mournful song, /​crying out on Pan’s nuptials” (E. Hel. 187–​90). The Muses’ association with the springs of Helicon strengthens their identification with nymphs, who are primarily water deities tied to particular geographical water sources; see Larson (2001) 7–​11 on this and other similarities between nymphs and Muses. 55 As men never fare well after glimpsing naked goddesses (or even clothed goddesses in undisguised form, as we know from Anchises’ reaction to Aphrodite’s epiphany in h.Aph. 180–​90), our voyeurism should trigger some anxiety, especially given that the Hippocrene is the site of Teresias’ blinding by Athena for unwittingly happening upon her and his mother (a nymph) bathing (Call. Dian. 57–​130). This vision of the bathing Muses, then, is somewhat unholy. 54

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voice that distills the beauty and allure of their bodies into pure sound, an “exceedingly beautiful voice” that extends beyond them into the night.56 Unlike the unimaginable Sirens, whose lack of physical description confronts us with a black hole of irresistibly fatal attraction,57 the Muses are more conventionally erotic, imaginatively endowed with a physical beauty to match the beauty of their song. They are beneficent Sirens whose beauty can be admired and whose song can be enjoyed without fatal consequences.58 This (apparently) harmless pleasure is the Muses’ promise. In serving a hedonistic purpose and evoking the language of sensual pleasure, the Muses inevitably encroach upon Aphrodite’s territory. They live, after all, beside the Graces and Desire (Χάριτες,Ἵμερος, Hes. Th. 64), regular attendants of the Sex Goddess; they are called by erotic names like Delight and Loveliness (Εὐτέρπη,Ἐρατώ, 77–​ 8); their voices are described as “beautiful” (περικαλλέα, 10; καλῇ, 68) and “lovely” (ἐρατὴν, 65; ἐπήρατον, 67); their gifts are “graceful” (κεχαρισμένα δῶρα, Thgn. 1055; χαρίεσσαν, Hom. Od. 24.197–​8), “desirable” (ἱμερόεσσαν, Hes. Th. 104; ἱμερόεσσαν, Hom. Od. 18.304), and, of course, “sweet” (ἡδεῖαν, Hom. Hesiod’s erotic characterization of the Muses has been acknowledged by Heath (1987) 5 and Halliwell (2011a) 18. 57 The physical appearance of Homer’s Sirens has long been a disputed matter (see Gresseth [1970] 210–​11), since the poet offers us no physical description, nor does any such description occur in Greek literature before Euripides refers to them as “winged” in the late fifth century BCE (Hel. 137). Euripides’ description is no innovation, however, but reflects the conventions of the plastic arts, in which Sirens had been depicted as birds with human faces as early as the late eighth century BCE. The history of the Sirens’ visual representation shows a growing tendency toward feminine anthropomorphism, as the bearded faces of Protocorinthian vases give way to a fair and ornamented female countenance in Corinthian and Attic black-​figure vases in the sixth century, followed by the appearance of breasts and torsos in South Italian red-​figure vases of the fourth century, and finally an almost complete human transformation in Etruscan funerary urns, where Sirens are depicted as wingless female figures draped in finery and playing instruments on the rocks, hardly distinct from the Muses (especially as the number of Sirens increased from Homer’s dual to a trinity already by the late sixth century); for a less schematic history of the representation of Sirens in Ancient plastic art, see Hofstetter (1990).Relative to other Homeric episodes (such as the blinding of Cyclops), the episode of the Sirens is a rare subject in early Greek vase painting (see Neils [1995] 177–​8), and I  propose that this has something to do with their invisibility in Homer. Though scholars have taken Homer’s reticence to be characteristic of his usual elliptical style (Vivante [1970] 25,109; Gresseth [1970] 211; though cf. Schein [1995] 17–​18), I think the detail (or rather, the absence of detail) is significant in light of the very rich description of the monster Scylla (Od. 12.86–​92), or the allusions to Calypso’s beauty and stature (5.215–​18), or Circe’s sexual appeal and dressing scene (10.345–​7, 543–​5). That Homer refrains from depicting his Sirens either as monstrous creatures on the order of a Scylla or a Cyclops, or attractive female figures like Calypso or Circe, is significant; it could be that the Sirens are unimaginable because any conception of their physicality would only diminish their aural beauty, or possibly because they were conceived as having no physical bodies at all. 58 Alcman calls the Muse a “clear voiced Siren” in fr.30, and the comparison is frequently made (or contested) in scholarship; see in particular Doherty (1995). 56

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Od. 8.64; cf. αὐδὴ … ἡδεῖα, Hes. Th. 40). This aesthetic terminology is identical to the language of erotic attraction.59 Just as the Muses, by virtue of being sources of aesthetic pleasure, assume the physical features and sensual attributes of Aphrodite, so too does Aphrodite –​patroness of pleasure itself –​appropriate the verbal art of the Muses. “Enchanting Persuasion“ (θέλκτωρ Πειθώ) walks in her entourage, and she uses sweet and soothing words to seduce her victims much as the Muses do to enchant their human audience.60 Sweetness and attraction thus link musical and erotic spheres of experience in their common pursuit of pleasure. The bard’s songs and aphrodisiacs are called by the same name: “charms” (θελκτήρια, Od. 1.337–​44 and Il. 14.215). As this term indicates, the language of erotic seduction and poetic diversion are rooted in the same magical concept of enchantment, a concept strong enough to convey the powerful effects of erotic and poetic pleasure. Thelxis and the somewhat less common kêlêsis are originally magical terms that extend metaphorically to the mind-​altering (and in some cases body-​ altering) effects of persuasive speech and captivating beauty.61 Because the power structure of enchantment entails the subjugation of one party to another (victim to magician, listener to singer, lover to beloved), who robs the former of autonomy, these are fundamentally ambivalent concepts in any context: magical, persuasive, poetic, or erotic. The ability to alter physical or mental states –​for better or for worse –​ is the basis of the power to enchant, though enchantment usually implies a disconnect from reality as well. Circe transforms men into beasts by “enchanting” them with “evil drugs” (κατέθελξεν … κακὰ φάρμακ’, Od. 10.213), while Hermes gives Odysseus an antidote to her witchcraft that See Calame (1992) 36–​8 on the erotic power and characterization of song in archaic poetics, and Halliwell (2011a) 45–​47 on archaic poetry’s “quasi-​physical” connotations (45). 60 “Enchanting Persuasion” is from Aeschylus’ Suppliants:  “And in the train of their mother [Aphrodite] are /​Desire [Πόθος] and she to whom nothing /​is denied, enchanting Persuasion [θέλκτορι Πειθοῖ], /​and to Harmonia has been given a share of Aphrodite, /​and to the whispering touchings of the Loves [Ἐρώτων]” (1038–​42). Persuasion as the personified goddess Peitho is represented with Aphrodite in art and cult as well; see Rozenzweig (2004) 13–​44, esp. 19. The two are also conjoined in Ibycus (fr.7), Sappho (fr.1) and Pindar (P. 4.213–​19, 9.39–​41; fr.123). Examples of soft and sweet speech in contexts of erotic seduction/​enchantment can be found in the Odyssey, where Calypso attempts to persuade (θέλγει) her mortal lover Odysseus to stay by means of “soft and wiley words” (μαλακοῖσι καὶ αἱμυλίοισι λόγοισιν, 156) and Penelope charms (θέλγε) gifts out of the suitors “with honeyed words” (μειλιχίοις ἐπέεσσι, 283). 61 See Entralgo (1970) 61–​7 on the metaphorical extension of magical vocabulary to the efficacy of speech, including erotic and poetic forms of verbal seduction. He includes an extensive discussion of epôidê or “incantation,” which I  largely ignore because of potential confusion between actual magic practice (such as love charms and magical uses of Homeric verses) and the metaphorical attribution of magical effects to powerful speech practices. 59

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makes the hero “immune to enchantment” (ἀκήλητος, 10.329). Less magical and more mundane is medicine for the ailing body, the “charms” for physical pain that Aesclepius provides through the art of healing (κακῶν θελκτῆρ’ ὀδυνάων, h.Aesc. 161). Mental enchantment always involves deception or the alteration of consciousness. In Homer it is usually a god’s dirty trick on the battlefield; when he disorients a hero to aid the enemy, spirits away his opponent, or diverts him from his post with a mirage, this is evidence of divine thelxis at work.62 But there are beneficent forms of mental enchantment, such as hope that uplifts the heart and “charms” the mind (ἐλπὶς ἔθελγε μέγαν νόον, h.Cer. 37), or the welcome relief of sleep, when Hermes “charms men’s eyes” with his magical wand.63 This very expression, however, can have the more sinister meaning of blinding a hero in combat, and sleep itself is not always welcome; it can leave one as powerful as Zeus vulnerable to harm and deception.64 Not only does sleep embody in a single phenomenon the ambivalence of enchantment; it also straddles both physical and mental forms. In altering the state of the body as well as the mind to good or bad effect, sleep is an ideal representative of enchantment’s multi-​valences (E. Or. 211–​14): Dear charm [θέλγητρον] of sleep, savior in sickness [ἐπίκουρον νόσου], how sweetly [ἡδύ] you came to me, how needed! Oh Lady, forgetfulness of troubles [Λήθη τῶν κακῶν], how wise a goddess you are, and invoked by every wretch!

Because Orestes suffers a mental illness with physical symptoms –​a feverish madness induced by his matricide that keeps him bedridden and harrowed by hallucinations –​sleep offers the only real comfort by combining both physical and psychic relief. Orestes’ characterization of sleep as a “sweet” form of amnesia is reminiscent of the Hesiodic function of poetry: a “forgetfulness of ills” that derives from the bard’s sweetness of speech. Like poetic diversion, sleep offers only a temporary respite from the pain of A few examples: Il. 12.255 (θέλγε νόον); Il. 13.434–​40 (θέλξας ὄσσε); Il. 15.320-​2 (θυμὸν … ἔθελξε), 592–​5 (θέλγε δὲ θυμὸν); Il. 21.595–​605 (δόλῳ δ’ ἄρ’ ἔθελγεν); Od. 16.295–​8 (τοὺς … θέλξει). The last passage from the Iliad depicts Apollo enchanting Achilles with a “trick” (δόλῳ); after whisking away Achilles’ opponent Agenor (μιν ἐξήρπαξε), whom he conceals in thick mist (κάλυψε δ’ ἄρ’ ἠέρι πολλῇ), Apollo assumes his appearance and diverts Achilles from the Trojan host with this disguise. 63 This is the power of Hermes’ rhabdos “with which he charms men’s eyes in sleep, /​or wakes them as he pleases” (Il. 24.343-​4; Od. 5.47–​8, 24.1-​4). Circe also wields a rhabdos to transform her victims into animals (Od. 10.238, 319), as does Athena when she enhances Odysseus’ appearance (Od. 16.172). The rhabdos itself, then, is a neutral instrument of power. 64 As in the famous dios apatê scene from the Iliad, where Sleep conspires with Hera to distract Zeus from the war and allow the other camp to gain the upper hand (14.242–​351). 62

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stricken consciousness, a nap from which he must eventually wake; the proximity of sleep to death alerts us to the strangely self-​destructive trajectory that the pursuit of self-​forgetfulness follows –​a kind of death drive lurking behind the search for escapism, poetic or hypnotic.65 Persuasion is thought to be “enchanting” because of its ability to change people’s minds, again to their betterment or detriment; though words can lead one astray, “one speech can be the healer [θελκτήριος] of another” (A. Supp. 448) and put things right again. Persuasion is a “deadly overmastering child of calculating destruction” when its objective is corrupt and consequences destructive, as when Paris seduces Helen into leaving her country and triggers a bloody international war as a result (A. Agam. 385–​419). But Persuasion is “holy” when it serves a just cause; Athena placates the Furies by advising them to “give holy reverence to Persuasion, the honey-​ balm and charm of my tongue,” as she argues that they can secure a place of honor in the city’s worship if they end their cyclical pursuit of vengeance. The Furies gradually relent to the power of her logic and the appeal of her promise: “It seems you will charm [θέλξειν] me, and I am letting go of my anger“ (A. Eum. 885–​900). As we have seen from Hesiod’s account of the just king’s arbitration, persuasion can play a crucial role in facilitating civic harmony. It is at home in the assembly and the law court, where its charms can be put to judicial use. Apollo reassures Orestes that “with judges and charming speeches [θελκτηρίους μύθους] we will find means to release you completely from your labors” (A. Eum. 81–​83). But as a form of enchantment, persuasion has an innate tendency to deceive, to “charm by means of lies” (ψεύδεσσιν ἔθελγεν, Il. 21.276; cf. Od. 14.387), which makes its detection grounds for suspicion. The pernicious influence of deceptive speech is usually concealed by the sweetness of words, which either distracts the mind from its purpose or coaxes it into submission. It is a sign that the speaker hides an ulterior motive, as when Odysseus uses a speech “both honeyed and gain-​seeking” (μειλίχιον καὶ κερδαλέον, Od. 6.148) to win over Nausicaa, or when Penelope “charms” Orestes’ sleep hovers on the verge of death; just before he wakes and utters these words, the Chorus leader tells Electra to “see whether your brother has died without your knowing it; /​for I do not like how utterly slack he is” (E. Or. 209–​10). Compare Penelope in Od. 20.83: “Yet evil is endurable when one /​cries throughout the day, yet still /​is taken by sleep in the night. For sleep is the oblivion /​of all things, good and evil, when it has shrouded the eyelids.” As the twin sons of Night (Hes. Th. 211–​12), Sleep and Death form a common iconographical pair in Greek art; see Vermeule (1979) 145–​54; von Bothmer (1981); and Mainoldi (1987). Cf. also Il. 11.241 where Iphidamas, cut down in battle, “slept the sleep of bronze” (κοιμήσατο χάλκεον ὕπνον) and Od. 13.79–​80, where Odysseus falls into a sleep that is “deep, sweet, and closely resembling death” (νήγρετος, ἥδιστος, θανάτῳ ἄγχιστα ἐοικώς).

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gifts out of the suitors using “honeyed words [μειλιχίοις ἐπέεσσι], though her mind had other intentions” (Od. 18.281-​3). Telemachus preempts the danger of verbal manipulation when he begs his host to refrain from “sweetening” the truth about his father (μηδέ … μειλίσσεο, Od. 3.96), however well-​intentioned such delicacy may be. Prometheus braces himself for verbal seduction when he proclaims defiantly that “not by persuasion’s honey-​tongued enchantments [μελιγλώσσοις ἐπαοιδαῖσιν] will he charm [θέλξει] me!” (A. PV 172–​3). Failed persuasion rings out as hollow flattery, a sweetness that sickens and repulses rather than charms and attracts.66 Persuasion qua persuasion, however, is an irresistible force, aptly characterized by Gorgias as a “great master” that “shapes the soul at will” (§8, §13). As a verbal form of enchantment, it too bears a striking resemblance to poetry. The sweetness of speech and the enchanting effects attributed to poetry thus make it an essentially ambivalent power as early as Homer, whose Sirens “enchant” men to death with the sweetness of their song and whose cunning protagonist “enchants” like a bard with outright lies.67 Ideally, however, poetry provides harmless pleasure and therapeutic relief, either by diverting us from our troubles, as Hesiod promises, or compensating for them with poetic commemoration, as Pindar does for his athletic victors (N. 4.1–​3). When toils have been resolved, festivity is the best physician; and songs, the skillful daughters of the Muses, soothe [θέλξαν] with their touch. And warm water does not wet the limbs so gently as praise that accompanies the lyre.

Enchantment in this case is a medicinal “charm” like a warm bath or a salve. The weary athlete submits himself to the poet’s touch that heals all wounds. For those of us who have not won an athletic contest or fought nobly on the battlefield, poetry offers a pleasurable escapism, the thelktêria that Penelope demands from her bard or the diversion that Hesiod promises his suffering audience. But though the bard, in principle, makes us forget our troubles, we run the risk of forgetting ourselves completely, and Cf. Electra in Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers: “To what could we more fittingly appeal /​than to those miseries we have endured from the woman herself who bore us? /​She may fawn [σαίνειν] upon us, but we won’t be charmed [θέλγεται]” (418–​20). 67 Odysseus’ tall tales have the effect of enchanting Eumaeus (Od. 17.515–​21), as does his narrative to the Phaeacians (Od. 11.333–​5, 13.2-​3; while the veracity of the Phaeacian tales is generally assumed, much of the narrative is not verified by the Homeric narrator and is therefore potentially deceptive). 66

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losing sight of our needs and interests when caught up in the consuming pleasure of poetry. The Sirens and the Golden Charmers are mythic expressions of this anxiety, enchanting men into forgetting their families and their destinations –​into forgetting, ultimately, to live.68 Nor does poetry only pose this threat in its divine instantiation; human poets are shown to victimize their unsuspecting audience as well. The stories of Odysseus, who is explicitly compared to a bard throughout the Odyssey, captivate the innocent Phaeacians and hold them in rapt kêlêthmos,69 for which they repay their guest with safe conveyance home and a treasure far exceeding his lost booty from Troy.70 Wealth of this magnitude is easily replenished and may be worth the novel entertainment for this blessed but isolated people –​but their hospitality to Odysseus fulfills the terms of a well-​known prophecy that portends the destruction of their utopian civilization. Before Odysseus begins his bardic performance, Alcinous relates his father’s prediction that Poseidon will one day punish the Phaeacian people “for offering safe convoy to all” by wrecking a ship upon its return from one such convoy and concealing their island, Scheria, under a mountain (8.564–​9). After Odysseus charms the court with stories of his misfortunes, however –​misfortunes largely contrived by Poseidon, which Odysseus makes no attempt to conceal –​Alcinous seems to have forgotten the prophecy entirely, too charmed to recognize the god-​forsaken hero’s uncanny relation to it. On the contrary, in his eagerness to hear more, Alcinous bribes Odysseus with an abundance of gifts in addition to a safe journey home under the condition that the hero spend the rest of the night telling stories (11.350–​2, 373–​6): Let our guest, much though he longs for the homeward journey, still endure to wait till tomorrow, until I have raised all the contribution … Whoever approaches the Sirens and hears their song “will never return home to be greeted /​by his wife and children and make them happy; /​but the Sirens enchant [θέλγουσιν] him with their clear song …” (Od. 12.42–​4); when hearing the Golden Charmers “foreigners wasted away /​apart from their children /​and wives, hanging their souls /​on the honey-​minded sound” (Pi. Pae. 8.76–​9). Storytelling can induce a similar oblivion, which Telemachus worries will happen after listening to Menelaus’ tale of Proteus: “Son of Atreus, do not keep me with you here for a long time, /​since I’d be content to sit beside you for a year’s time, /​without any longing for home or parents, /​such strange pleasure do I take [αἰνῶς … τέρπομαι] /​in listening to your stories and sayings …” (Od. 4.594–​8). 69 “Thus he spoke, and they all were stricken to silence, /​spellbound [κηληθμῷ δ’ ἔσχοντο] in the shadowy halls” (Od. 11.333–​4; 13.2–​3). 70 We know from Zeus’ message to Calypso that the Phaeacians give Odysseus “bronze and gold in abundance and clothing, /​much more than Odysseus could ever have taken away from Troy, /​even if he had returned unharmed with his share of the spoils” (Od. 5.38–​40). 68

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Now the night is endless. It is not time yet to sleep in the palace. But go on telling your wonderful story. I myself could hold out until the bright dawn, if only you could bear to tell me, here in the palace, of your sufferings.

And so Odysseus continues his tale. When we leave the Phaeacians, Poseidon has petrified the ship that has returned from conveying Odysseus to Ithaca, a sight to which the Phaecian court responds with desperate prayers and sacrifices. We are left to wonder over the fate of Scheria and its people. The Phaeacians, then, have lost sight of their best interests in succumbing to the charms of storytelling.71 One fares no better before the charms of Aphrodite, “which overpower all mortals and immortals” (Il. 14.199), no matter how imprudent, undesirable, or outright harmful the consequences are known to be. Even Aphrodite herself cannot resist her own powers when Zeus finally turns them against her in retaliation for the shameful interspecial couplings she has indiscriminately inspired between mortals and immortals. To humble her, the king of men and gods co-​opts the goddess’ power to arouse “sweet longing” and drives her to seduce a mortal shepherd, Anchises. After intercourse, Aphrodite recovers her senses (h. Aph. 247–​55): I shall suffer great reproach among the immortal gods continuously for all my days on your account. Formerly they used to be afraid of my whisperings and wiles, with which at one time or another I have coupled all the immortals with mortal women, for my will would overcome them all. But now my mouth will no longer open wide enough to mention this among the immortals, since I have been very much deceived, awfully and unutterably gone out of my mind, and got a child under my girdle after going to bed with a mortal.

Such is the strength of erotic power that ultimately it can be controlled by no god or goddess completely,72 though Aphrodite as goddess of sexual love and mother of Eros manages, for the most part, to monopolize it. It is with Aphrodite’s charms that Hera is able to seduce Zeus into neglecting his otherwise vigilant protection of the Trojan army. After dolling herself up she obtains Aphrodite’s magic girdle, in which there is “love,” “desire,” and “persuasion that steals the shrewd senses even of the wise” (Il. 14.216–​17). Hera supplements this potent magic with the power of On Alcinous’ blindness to the threat posed by Odysseus, see Murnaghan (1987) 101–​3. On the power and danger of erotic love in the hymn, see Cyrino (1993).

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Sleep, whose aid she secures only after promising him one of the Graces, his long-​time crush Pasithea (267–​76). When Hera finally approaches Zeus, his senses are indeed no match for Aphrodite’s charms:  “when he saw her, erôs engulfed his shrewd mind” (14.294), and he insists on bedding his wife then and there, conjuring up a golden cloud to conceal their act of lovemaking. Afterwards, as Zeus slumbers in postcoital bliss, the rest of the gods seize the opportunity to come to the Achaeans’ aid, much to his chagrin upon waking and finding himself duped and the tide of the war turned. Like the Sirens, Aphrodite is known for being “enchantress of men” (Bacch. fr.175), as are her attendants Eros, Longing, and Charm. Despite the fact that erotic seduction is almost always portrayed negatively as a destructive force in the Greek lyric tradition, lyric poets could not envision a life without it (Mim. fr.1): What life is there, what delight [τερπνόν], without golden Aphrodite? May I die when I no longer care for such things, illicit love [κρυπταδίη φιλότης], honeyed gifts [μείλιχα δῶρα], and the bed, those blossoms of youth that men and women find consuming [ἁρπαλέα]73

These celebrated gifts are elsewhere configured, paradoxically, as traps (Ibyc. fr.287): Again Eros, looking at me meltingly from under his dark eyelids, hurls me with his manifold enchantments [κηλήμασι παντοδαποῖς] into the boundless nets [ἄπειρα δίκτυα] of the Cyprian.

The victims of erotic enchantment suffer considerably for their pleasure, as the expressions of melting, hurling, and entrapment so prevalent in lyric poetry attempt to convey.74 In addition to the poetic connotations of kêlêma, which shares the same root as the spell cast by Odysseus’ narrative, their “manifold” nature also has poetic associations; a synonym of pantodapos –​ poikilos –​is a common epithet for song.75 Erotic desire and its objects trap and paralyze lovers much as the Sirens transfix passing sailors. The connection is not difficult to see. Both song and sex can make us Cf. Sim. fr. 79 and Pindar’s comparable characterization of the Graces in O.14.5–​6: “For with your help all delightful and sweet things are accomplished for mortals.” 74 See Calame (1999) 14–​23, 36 and n81 to this chapter. 75 E.g., Ibyc. fr.27; Pi. O. 1.30, 3.8, 4.3, 6.87; P. 9.76; N. 4.14, 5.42, 8.15; fr.194. See Section 1.3 on the aesthetic principle of poikilia in Pindar. The terms pantodapos and poikilos are used synonymously by Isocrates (Pan. 246.7) and Plato (e.g., Prt. 334b; R. 559d). 73

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forget ourselves, our immediate surroundings, and our responsibilities in the face of an overwhelming pleasure.76 So far we have seen how the disarming power of enchantment links poetic diversion and erotic seduction to a common derivative of magic, but there is often something distinctly sexual even in the “magical” effects of poetic pleasure that shows it to mimic the structure of physical arousal. The most overtly erotic quality ascribed to the Muses and their activities is one we have already seen with reference to their choral dances: himeroeis or “arousing desire.” It is another common epithet for song,77 and one shared by Aphrodite’s breasts, pederastic arousal, and conjugal sex (Il. 3.398, 5.429; Theog. 1319, 1365). This adjective rarely gets the translation it deserves, usually rendered more benignly as “lovely” rather than “arousing” in musical contexts.78 However, when a poet expresses the same idea with regard to song using the noun himeros and a verb form, the sense of arousal is unmistakable (Alcm. fr.27; Hom. Od. 23.144–​5): Come, Muse, Calliope, daughter of Zeus, begin the lovely verses [ἐρατῶν Ϝεπέων]; set desire [ἐπὶ ἵμερον … τίθη] upon the song and make the choral dance graceful [χαρίεντα]. The divine bard took the hollow lyre and aroused in them the desire [ἵμερον ὦρσε] for sweet song and the blameless dance.

Dance and song are conjoined in both of these verses just as they are in Hesiod’s proem, connecting the aural appeal of song with the erotic appeal of watching a choral dance.79 But just as a context of consumption was not sufficient to explain poetry’s pervasive and persistent sweetness, so too the actual performance of song and dance, in which attractive, nubile women and agile young men typically participated, does not entirely account for the erotic characterization of poetry in all contexts. Though the desire with which the Muse imbues Alcman’s song could be triggered by the physically attractive nature of the choral dance, what should we make of other descriptions of song as “arousing desire” with no chorus in sight? The Homeric scene clarifies the otherwise ambiguous object of desire in Alcman’s verse, suggesting an inherently erotic dimension to See n68 to this chapter, and cf. Sappho fr.16, where the power of erotic love leads Helen to neglect her family: “For she who overcame /​everyone in beauty, Helen, /​left her fine husband behind /​ and went sailing to Troy. /​Not for her children nor her dear parents /​had she a thought …” 77 Hom. Od. 1.422, 17.519, 23.144; Hes. Th.64, 104; h.Herm. 422. 78 A notable exception is Halliwell (2011a), who recognizes that “lovely” as a translation for himeroeis “tends to bleach out the more vivid colour of ‘desire-​arousing’ ” (46). 79 The choral dance was presumably the site of considerable erotic attraction, as Il. 16.181–​6 indicates, where Hermes is said to have raped a girl who aroused him during a choral performance. 76

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poetic experience: it is a desire for music (in the Greek sense of mousikê, which includes poetry, song, and dance) that music arouses; more specifically, it is a desire to continue inhabiting the affective and imaginative world that mousikê conjures for its listeners.80 In arousing the very desire it satisfies, poetry thus acquires the structure of Eros the “limb-​loosener,” who, by making desire itself part of the experience of erotic pleasure, protracts the state of desire into a state of paralysis. This paralysis is conveyed by images (some of which we have already seen) of unraveling, melting, entrapment, transfixion, and mental aporia, images consistent with most forms of enchantment.81 “And with limb-​loosening desire she looks … more meltingly than sleep or death” (Alcm. fr.3.61–​62). Limb-​loosening, sleep, and death have an old association. In epic, the loosening of limbs describes the physical effects of sleep, the weakening of a man’s strength, and the release of his shade when he dies on the battlefield.82 In erotic love it is the physical symptom of paralysis due to unfulfilled desire, and in song it is equivalent to the state of enchantment, for which the Charmers’ are called “a man-​releasing artifact.” As we saw in Orestes’ poetic characterization of sleep as the sweet pleasure of self-​obliteration, death stands at the end of erotic as well as poetic and hypnotic trajectories.83 As an irresistibly powerful, overwhelmingly pleasurable, and inherently deceptive art, poetry should trigger the same anxiety in archaic poetics as erotic desire does, and not only in the fantastic regions of myth but in the mundane world of human experience. Just as Eros is “bittersweet” for the pain of deferred pleasure, as well as the self-​destructive pleasure taken in such deferral, so too does poetry resist satisfying our desire for it, while simultaneously paining and pleasuring us in the process. Far from healing troubled souls as Hesiod would have us believe, poetry can actually agitate them, by inducing a pathological condition of insatiable desire that holds

See also Halliwell (2011a) on the idea that himeros for song consists of “a longing to be drawn imaginatively into the world conjured up within the song” (47). 81 E.g., Hom. Od. 18.212; Hes. Th. 121, 911; Ibyc. frgs.27, 286; Alcm. fr.3; Sapp. frgs. 31 38, 47, 48, 51, 130; Arch. fr.196; Pi. fr.123. On the destructive effects of erotic love in Greek poetry, see Thornton (1997) 1–​47; Carson (1986) 3–​9, 111–​22; Calame (1999[1992]) 14–​23, 36. 82 A common formulaic expression for dying is “his soul and strength were released” (λύθη ψυχή τε μένος τε, Il. 5.296, 8.123, 8.315, et al.); the loosening of limbs can express death or weariness (e.g., λύντο δὲ γυῖα, Il. 7.116; γυῖα λέλυνται, Od. 8.233); lusimelês is often an epithet for sleep (e.g., Od. 20.57; 23.343). 83 See Calame (1999) 36 for a similar point. See also Od. 14.68–​9, where Eumaeus’ curse of Helen conflates the fatal and erotic meanings of limb-​loosening: “would that Helen’s tribe had perished, /​ since she loosened the knees of many men.” 80

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its victims “spellbound,” like the audience of an enigmatic stranger no less than that of the Sirens, or like the netted prey of Eros. The spell is effected in part by deferral of the fulfillment of desire, along the lines of the pleasure of sexual arousal. A sexual model of pleasure is one whereby the fostering of desire itself constitutes (or at least enhances) the pleasure. Poetic pleasure is tantamount in this way to the pleasure of arousal, only the dissipation of pleasure that follows the satisfaction of sexual desire does not necessarily apply to the experience of poetic pleasure. Because the source of poetic arousal originates with the mind while its pleasure-​effects involve the body, poetic pleasure offers a more perfect form of sexual pleasure, unrestrained by the limits of the body and therefore potentially indefinite. Since poetry need not satiate the desire that it arouses and (partly) fulfills, there need not be an end to its pleasures. Poetic pleasure on this account consists of prolonged desire only intensified through its continual fulfillment –​more of the story (or of the music and dance) only strengthens its psychic and physical hold on the audience. The poet arouses a longing to hear his poetry even as he satisfies it, such that he can hold his audience, as Odysseus held the Phaeacian court, transfixed by its desire to hear more. When Eumaeus compares the disguised Odysseus to a bard, he commends his guest to Penelope for having precisely this effect on him. Eumaeus describes Odysseus’ words as himeroenta and inspiring a desire to listen to them “without end” (Od. 17.515–​21): Three nights I had him by me, and three days I kept him in my hut, for he first came to me when he fled by stealth from a ship, but he had not yet ended the tale of his sufferings. Just as when a man gazes upon a bard who, having learned from the gods, sings songs to mortals that arouse desire [ἀείδει … ἔπε’ ἱμερόεντα], and their desire to hear more has no end [ἄμοτον μεμάασιν ἀκουέμεν], whenever he sings, even so he charmed [ἔθελγε] me as he sat in my hall.

Three days and three nights the swineherd detained his guest in order to hear his story, which nonetheless remained unfinished. An ending would not, in any case, satisfy the charmed listener. This self-​perpetuating arousal and insatiable desire explains why the “sweet himeros” and erôs that seizes Apollo upon hearing Hermes sing to the newly invented lyre is amêchanos –​unconquerable, helpless (h.Herm. 4.422, 434).84 It is an erôs that is only renewed rather than resolved when it is satisfied, rendering its See Peponi (2012) 102–​7 on Apollo’s intractable desire for Hermes’ song, and on the hymn as a whole, which provides “an exemplary description of the pathology of intense aesthetic engagement” (102).

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victim helplessly insatiable. The “himerotic” nature of poetry and music appropriates the erotic pleasure of arousal while mimicking it more perfectly in sustaining it. This feature of poetic pleasure helps explain why it is traditionally understood to enchant its audience in magical terms, and why myths like those of the Sirens and the Charmers gain so much currency. We will return to this theme when we discuss the role of pain in poetic pleasure in the following chapters. Aristophanes comically exploits this sexual model of poetic pleasure in the same scene from the Frogs mentioned earlier. The appetitive characterization of the desire for poetry that we previously defined as gustatory (a craving for soup) is equally erotic, as a slight variation in our translation of key terms should convey (53–​66): D: … while I was on board, reading the Andromeda to myself, suddenly a yearning [πόθος] struck my heart, you’ll never guess how strong. H: A yearning? How big? D: Small, about the size of Molon. H: For a woman? D: Oh no. H: A boy? D: Not at all! H: A man? D: Argh! H: You did it with Cleisthenes? D: Don’t make fun, brother, I’ve really got it bad, such passionate desire [ἵμερος] torments me … so great a yearning [πόθος] consumes [δαρδάπτει] me now for Euripides.

The language Dionysus uses to express his desire for Euripides’ poetry is rife with unintended sexual innuendo. Pothos and himeros are both erotically charged terms that lend themselves easily to Heracles’ perversion of the god’s otherwise wholesome and rather noble intentions (to bring edifying poetry back to city); moreover, Dionysus invites homoerotic charges by ambiguously referring to Euripides as the object of his desire, instead of specifying his poetry. The humor of the passage lies, once again, in the literal construal of a figurative expression: poetry is often thought to inspire yearning of almost sexual intensity –​but for what, exactly? As we have seen, poetry arouses a desire for its own continuation. Notice that Dionysus speaks not of a craving that poetry satisfies, but one that poetry stimulates. What he wants is not Euripides himself nor any particular play of his, but for the poet to continually produce poetry of the sort that “strikes” him with desire: he wants Euripides alive and composing.

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In the course of examining the explicitly somatic features of poetic pleasure in archaic poetry, we have found the role of cognition to be inescapable. Poetry is, after all, “sweet fruit of the mind” and, as a linguistic construction, must be apprehended by the intellect. The affective sensations that result from this cognitive process are what evoke somatic conceptions of poetic pleasure. The sensations of taste, hunger, erotic pleasure, and sexual arousal that are attributed to poetry are, on the one hand, metonymic associations with song’s performative context (the feast and the dance) that have come to characterize song itself; but these somatic sensations are also analogical applications of the structure of the appetite (whether hunger or lust) to the structure of poetic desire, which both craves its object and provides pleasure in the craving. In some cases the somatic characterization of poetic pleasure is a literal one, and poetry manifests actual physical symptoms, as in the case of love poetry that sexually arouses its addressee or reader, and tragic poetry that makes its audience weep and shudder.85 What remains to be explored is an alternative archaic conception of the poetic experience, which, while still committed to a somatic understanding of its pleasures, emphasizes the cognitive means of attaining and sustaining them. This conception employs another set of value terms in archaic poetics that revolves around the skill of the poetic artisan, the craftsmanship of the poetic artifact, and the connoisseurship required to assess it. Though recent scholarship has argued for a development in the characterization of Greek poetry from an archaic notion of poetic “song” as a divinely inspired, truth-​bearing discourse to a fifth-​century concept of poetic “craft” as a human innovation of fictional discourse, evidenced by the emergence of the terms poiêtês (maker) and poiêma (made thing) The pornographic Cologne epode of Archilochus (fr. 196), for example, surely aims to titillate its readers and listeners voyeuristically, as does the subtler narrator of Anacreon fr. 72, who wants to break his “Thracian filly.” The narrator of Thgn. 1365–​6, though not pornographic, expects his poetic words to arouse his addressee: “Most handsome and desirable of all boys, /​stay where you are and listen to a few words from me …” (cf. Thgn. 1235–​8); so too does the narrator of Anacr. fr. 402c put much faith in the erotic effects of his poetry: “Boys would love me for my words; /​ for I sing charming songs [χαρίεντα] /​and I know how to speak charming words.” We have also suggested that Apollo in the Hymn to Hermes is sexually aroused by Hermes’ musical performance (418–​62). As for the physical symptoms of listening to tragic poetry, examples of weeping audiences abound, the oldest of which may be Odysseus sobbing in response to Demodocus’ song in the Odyssey (8.83–​92, 521–​35). The physiological effects of “pity and fear” generally (weeping and quaking or phrikê) were noted by Gorgias (Hel. §9) and picked up by both Plato (R. 606a-​b) and, most famously, Aristotle (Po. 1453b).

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that eclipse aoidos (singer) and aoidê (song),86 others have long argued for an older association between poetry and the crafts that complicates this picture.87 Let us not forget that Homer calls the bard a dêmioergos, a common designation for a craftsman (Od. 17.383-​5), and that Hesiod likewise puts the aoidos in the same category as the tektôn or builder (Op. 25–​6). In Pindar, at any rate, craft-​analogies for poetry abound and coexist with the purportedly “older” conception of the divinely inspired aoidos.88 Pindar regularly reflects on his own poetic creation as the product of building or weaving, frequently appealing to poikilia –​whose meaning we will discuss presently –​as a ruling aesthetic principle.89 The principle of poikilia that orients Pindar’s self-​conscious poetic activity contains the germs of both somatic and cognitive accounts of poetry, situating it within the realm of well-​wrought crafts, to which this notion originally applies, as well as the realm of physical pleasure (visual, erotic, culinary), which the qualities of richness, variety, and novelty that fall within poikilia’s semantic purview were increasingly thought to enhance, partly due, no doubt, to Pindar’s innovative use of the concept.90 The meaning of poikilia originates in visual descriptions of multicolored entities, both natural and artificial, and the artisanal appraisal of such objects that are man-​made. The visual sense of “multicolored” and the artisanal sense of “finely wrought” develop into a general concept of variety that covers everything from cosmetic decoration and diversifying embellishment, inherent complexity and variegation, to psychological subtlety and finally duplicity.91 Like so many of poetry’s epithets, The most systematic defense of this view is made by Finkelberg (1998); for a cogent critique of her book, see the review of Pratt (2000) 301–​2. 87 Durante (1960), Schmitt (1967) 296–​301, Snyder (1981), Nagy (1989) 18–​24 and (1996) 59–​86, and most recently Halliwell (2011a) 4n8 for additional references. See Murray (1981) for an analysis that accommodates both inspiration and craft in archaic poetics. 88 As even Finkelberg (1998) 165 has to concede. Ford (2002) 113–​30 offers a more subtle analysis of the craft metaphors for song in Pindar, but ultimately supports Finkelberg’s thesis. 89 Poikilia characterizes song in O. 1.30, 3.8, 4.3, 6.87; P. 9.76; N. 4.14, 5.42, 8.15; fr.194; cf. also P. 1.81–​4, 11.38–​44, and N. 4. 33–​46 for a compositional strategy that adheres to the principle of poikilia without using the term explicitly. 90 See Chantraine (1968–​77) s.v. poikilos. Though novelty is not explicitly mentioned as one of its definitions, it will become clear that novelty shares with variety the element of surprise so critical to both aesthetic and somatic pleasure. Heath (1989) 28 describes the aesthetic principle of poikilia as a form of “diversifying embellishment” in keeping with the ancient emphasis on diversity rather than unity in literary criticism and production, which he takes to be a distinctive feature of a “centrifugal” poetics in sharp contrast to modern “centripetal” tendencies (1–​11). Pindar’s innovative use of poikilia, which I discuss later here, coordinates it with koros or satiety in such a way as to make it a condition for somatic and poetic satisfaction. 91 On the archaic and classical semantics of poikilia and its association with the cunning intelligence of mêtis, see Detienne and Vernant (1991) 18–​20. For a general overview of the semantic range of poikilia, see Berardi, Lisi, and Micalella (2009). 86

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poikilos has a double-​edged meaning. On the one hand it conveys the beautiful richness of the natural world:  the dappled hide of a leopard and the colorful neck of a bird;92 or the dazzling impressions of man-​ made objects: an embroidered robe and the hammered bronze of a chariot.93 But bedazzling effects can disorient and entrap, like a labyrinth, or distract from the truth, like the embellishment of a tall tale.94 With its combination of beauty, artfulness, and multiplicity, poikilos suggests the possibility of deception from its origins; both Homer and Hesiod use a compound form of the adjective to describe the proverbial tricksters, Odysseus and Prometheus.95 Even in the natural world, poikilia is the mark of deceitfulness, characteristic of the chameleon-​like octopus or the cunning fox.96 Cosmetic decoration can act as a disguise, variety can disorient, and subtlety can deceive. Poikilia is as complex a concept as the complexity it signifies. We will return to the potentially negative valence of this concept in due course; for now I want to emphasize its combination of aesthetic and intellectual properties. The sense of vision through which poikilia is recognized offers us a model of embodied cognition that can illuminate the operations of poetic engagement, for the visual apprehension of poikilia facilitates erotic seduction through cognitive appraisal, as the Homeric description of Aphrodite’s magic girdle as poikilon already indicates (Il. 14.214–​15): She loosed from her bosom the girdle embroidered elaborately [κεστὸν … ποικίλον], in which all of her charms     were fashioned [τέτυκτο]; in it was love, desire, flirtation and persuasion that steals the shrewd senses even of the wise.

E.g., παρδαλέῃ … ποικίλῃ (Hom. Il. 10.30); ἀηδόνα ποικιλόδειρον (Hes. Op. 203). E.g., πέπλον … ποικίλον (Hom. Il. 5.735); ἅρματα ποικίλα χαλκῷ (Hom. Il. 4.226). 94 Herodotus describes the passages of an Egyptian labyrinth as poikilôtatoi (2.148) and Pindar characterizes false stories about the gods as “tales adorned with elaborate [ποικίλοις] lies” (O. 1.30). 95 Odysseus is described as “full of various wiles” (ποικιλομήτης, Hom. Il. 11.482; Od. 3.163, 13.293) and Prometheus as “of changeful counsel” (ποικιλόβουλος, Hes. Th. 521). 96 “My heart, keep turning a versatile character [ποικίλον ἦθος] in accordance with all, /​mingling with the mood that each man has. /​Adopt the mood of the cunning octopus [πουλύπου … πολυπλόκου], /​which seems to resemble the rock on which it clings. /​Now follow in this direction, now take on a different hue. /​Cleverness is far stronger than inflexibility” (Thgn. 213–​18). Socrates describes the fox, whose cunning was made proverbial by Archilochus (fr. 201), as “gain-​seeking and shifty” (κερδαλέαν καὶ ποικίλην, R. 365c); cf. Alc. fr. 69, where the fox is described as poikilophrôn and Aes. Fab. 191 (Gibbs), where the fox boasts his superiority over the leopard for being poikilos in mind rather than body (οὐ τὸ σῶμα, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν πεποίκιλμαι). 92 93

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In modifying a divinely crafted object with unique erotic properties  –​ aphrodisiacs that are literally “built into” the garment itself –​poikilia doubles as a characteristic of both craft and the forces of erotic seduction. Judging from the later appearance of poikilia in a culinary context, where it refers to the bounty of a rich feast, the idea of alluring and pleasing variety once rooted in vision was also extended to the gustatory senses and could be straightforwardly physical (Astyd. TGF 779): Like the varied bounty [ποικίλην εὐωχίαν] of an elegant dinner, such must be what the clever poet offers his spectators, so that each departs having eaten and drunk and taken whatever he likes, and that there not be only one dish of entertainment [σκευασία … μί’… τῆς μουσικῆς].

In this fourth-​century tragic fragment, preserved for us by Athenaeus, we find as we did in Aristophanes a literal expansion of the gustatory metaphor for poetic pleasure, with the significant addition of poikilia as a principle of both literary and culinary skill. We owe this renewed conception of the “poetic feast” to Pindaric imagery, where the complexity of poikilia is first coordinated with the concept of poetic satiation in a self-​conscious poetic program. Poikilia is distinctly suited for this task. In encompassing both somatic and intellectual spheres, it simultaneously lays bare the process of poetic “making” in a manner that objectifies the poetic object and abstracts poetic pleasure from the body, while paradoxically introducing the somatic possibility of poetic “satiation” that all this technical artistry works to prevent. The culinary application of poikilia derives from Pindar’s use of the concept as a means of evading aesthetic “satiety” or koros. For in Pindar koros is the death of poetic pleasure, and the birth, potentially, of poetic disgust; the epinician poet runs the risk of repulsing his audience by exceeding their needs, be it through thematic monotony, effusive praise, or sheer length of time.97 Poikilia is an aesthetic tactic that guards against the potential transformation of the object of pleasure into an object of disgust: “even honey may cloy [literally, “bring koros”], /​and the delightful flowers of Aphrodite“ (N. 7.52-​5).98 Though we have seen that poetry can See, in particular, P. 1.81–​4, 8.29–​34; N. 7.52–​3, 10.19–​20. For a discussion of the core meaning of koros as excessive food consumption, see Michelini (1978) 36; for a discussion of its acquired meaning of insatiability, see Anhalt (1993) 82–​93. Mackie (2003) 9–​37 also makes the case that Pindar’s “break-​offs” are a means of avoiding koros, which he translates as “excess.” 98 I use the excellent translation of Nisetich (1980) 265. The idea of “cloying” is one that signifies surfeit-​induced disgust, as opposed to preventative or prohibitory disgust. On this dichotomy 97

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surpass physical pleasures precisely in deferring ultimate satisfaction –​and with it the termination of desire –​by mimicking the structure of physical arousal free from physiological constraints, satiation is not, it turns out, impossible, but rather a threatening possibility that the skillful poet can and must evade. The means of evasion, however, is a form of linguistic artistry, and invokes an intellectual and artifactual conception of poetic ability modeled on the crafts. Such a conception is not a Pindaric innovation, but appears as early as Homer in such descriptions as “fashioning a charming song” (τεύξουσι, Od. 24.197–​8), “fabricating stories” (παρατεκτήναιο, Od. 14.131), and “weaving tales” (ὕφαινον, Il. 3.212).99 The material construction of poetry and narrative generally is further implied in the prevalent concepts of “shapeliness” (μορφή) and “order” (κόσμος) that determine aesthetic judgments of speech in Homeric poetics.100 Pindar combines these older expressions of verbal craftsmanship with the newer principle of poikilia, whose textile affiliations contributes to an overall picture of song as an handcrafted object (fr.194): κεκρότηται χρυσέα κρηπὶς ἱεραῖσιν ἀοιδαῖς· εἶα τειχίζωμεν ἤδη ποικίλον κόσμον αὐδάεντα λόγων A golden foundation has been wrought for holy songs. Come, let us now construct an elaborate adornment that speaks words …

The image recalls another Pindaric comparison of poetry to artifacts, but one where the poet contrasts rather than conflates the two. In the opening of disgust, originally proposed by Kolnai (1929) 545, see Miller (1997) 109–​42 and Menninghaus (2003) 7, 18–​19. On cloying in particular, see Miller (1997) 121–​2: “We believe our system not to be particularly efficient as a self-​purifier with things that cloy, the very word attracted by alliteration to sister concepts of ‘clinging’ and ‘cleaving unto’ that make things hard to get rid of.” 99 Those who argue that a craft conception of poetic composition develops later in the classical period explain these occurrences as cases where either a divine artisan is the creator of song or where the falsity of the narrative is emphasized; see Durante (1971–​74) 170–​1 and Svenbro (1976). But cf. the Hesiodic fragment 265 that follows here, where singers “stitch together” song, and the frequent use of craft analogies for poetry in the lyric poetry of Simonides as well as Pindar (examined by Ford [2002] 93–​130 who, however, aims to maintain the developmental narrative of an artisanal conception of poetry by explaining these images in lyric as foils rather than models for poetry). For an argument in favor of a much older connection between poetry and the crafts with a venerable Indo-​European ancestry, see Nagy (1989) 18–​24 and (1996) 59–​86. 100 Noted by Verdenius (1983) 16 and developed by Walsh (1984) 6–​11.

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of Nemean 5, Pindar boasts a superior art to that of the sculptor, whose statues are constrained by their fixity, whereas the mobility of the poet’s song extends its influence far beyond any geographical and temporal point of origin (1–​3). In the preceding fragment, however, Pindar combines the endurance and monumentality of a built structure with the mobility of speech; his construction “speaks words” that can travel beyond that structure. As in the case of gustatory and erotic metaphors for poetic pleasure, poetry surpasses the crafts to which it is compared because it is free from material limitations.101 The translation of poikilon in this passage as “elaborate” rather than “various” is in keeping with the artifactual tenor of the metaphorical context, which draws on poikilia’s roots in weaving and handiwork rather than its association with changefulness. In Homer the adjective almost always refers to the hammered surface of a chariot or the embroidery of a garment.102 This latter meaning is paramount in the history of Greek poetry’s self-​expression. Though poikilos never modifies poetry in Homer, a relationship between song and weaving is at least implied in the images of women singing at their looms, literally manifest in the narrative content of Helen’s tapestry (which metatextually depicts the story of the Iliad), and, as we have already mentioned, explicitly asserted in the expression “weaving words” as a description of oratorical speech.103 Moreover, the derivation of rhapsode from the verb raptô and the noun aoidê, meaning “to stich together song,” seems to have an ancient Indo-​ European history.104 The etymology can be traced back at least to the descriptions of poetic recitation in Hesiod and Pindar (Hes. fr.265; Pi. N. 2.1–​3): ἐν Δήλωι τότε πρῶτον ἐγὼ καὶ Ὄμηρος ἀοιδοὶ μέλπομεν, ἐν νεαροῖς ὕμνοις ῥάψαντες ἀοιδήν, Φοῖβον Ἄπόλλωνα χρυσάορον, ὃν τέκε Λητώ

A similar point is made by Ford (2002) 113: “[T]‌he two Simonidean charges against works of art –​ silence and fixity –​generated in Pindar and Bacchylides the complementary trope that well-​made texts of celebration have a unique sort of voice and motion of their own.” Ford, however, argues that the relationship between crafts and poetry is one of rivalry, whereas I want to stress their affinity. Poetry combines the enduring qualities of made objects with its unique ability to transcend place as well as time; it is a “dynamic and mobile artifact,” as Ford himself puts it (28). 102 See n93 to this chapter. 103 Calypso sings at the loom at Od. 5.61–​2, as well as Circe at Od. 10.220–​8 and 254–​5; Helen is shown “weaving a great web, /​a purple folding robe, and working into it the numerous struggles /​ of Trojans, breakers of horses, and the bronze-​clad Achaeans, /​which they endured for her sake at the hands of Ares” (Il. 3.125–​8). 104 Schmitt (1967) 300–​1; Nagy (1996) 61–​74; Snyder (1981). 101

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Then it was in Delos that Homer and I first sang as singers sewing together a song in new hymns, of Phoebus Apollo, whom Leto bore. ὅθεν περ καὶ Ὁμηρίδαι ῥαπτῶν ἐπέων τὰ πόλλ’ ἀοιδοὶ ἄρχονται, Διὸς ἐκ προοιμίου … Just as the Homeridae, the singers of sewn-​together verses, most often begin with Zeus as their prelude …

As Gregory Nagy argues in his analysis of these two passages, the poetic creation is imaged as a textile, and poetic composition as the process of stitching it together through the novel combination of either words or preexisting traditions.105 The Homeric commentator Eustathius analyzes Pindar’s image of the Homeridae’s performance as a periphrastic gloss for Homeric rhapsodes, though the word rhapsôidos does not appear until after the poet’s time.106 The Hesiod fragment is cited by the scholia to Nemean 2 as another illustration of rhapsodic performances that were conceived as “unifying” or “sewing together” disparate Homeric songs (N. 2, 1d). For later commentators at least, the idea of weaving and sewing as an integration of themes into an elaborate whole seemed essential to the process of poetic composition and re-​composition in performance. In Pindar’s lyrics, this ancient and distinct metaphoric tradition of poetic craftsmanship converges with the equally venerable tradition of poetic sweetness, often within the same imagistic expression: “Now weave out [ἐξύφαινε], sweet [γλυκεῖα] lyre, /​the beloved song with Lydian harmony …” (Pi. N. 4.44–​5). The new poetics that emerges from this confluence of metaphors is one in which poetry as a craft utilizes cognitive resources both for its composition and appreciation, but in order to attain the somatic quality of sweetness rather than utility or cognitive appraisal. The result is what I call an “apian” poetic program. From the sweetness of honey and the artistry of poikilia Pindar constructs a model for skillful poetic composition based on the bee’s productive activity, often extending

Nagy (1996) 61–​ 74 distinguishes weaving (ἐξυφαίνω) from sewing or stitching (ῥάπτω) as metaphors for song-​making, arguing that the former designates an original composition while the latter designates rhapsodic re-​composition; he explains the depiction of original poets “sewing together” song in the Hesiodic fragment as a case of casting poets as rhapsodes to be models for performance (73–​4). 106 The word first appears in Herodotus (5.67). For Eustathius’s commentary, noted also by Nagy (1996) 66–​7, see his Commentary to the Iliad, vol.1 p.10, where he quotes Pindar’s poem. 105

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the figurative sense of honey to suggest a sickening excess that results from the poet’s failure to master the compositional techniques of variation, selection, and integration.107 Thus the figurative use of honey for poetic speech not only indicates the pleasing (though potentially distasteful) effects of rhetorical eloquence, but evokes the bee’s craft and labor of which honey is the final product; Pindar asserts not only that his voice is sweet but “sweeter than bee-​fashioned honeycomb” (fr.152). The sweetness of song is the result of a comparable “fashioning” of themes gathered and worked into something enduringly and indefinitely pleasing. Elsewhere Pindar tells us that “the choicest hymn of praise /​flits from one theme to another, like a bee,” a pronouncement followed immediately by an image of the chorus “pouring forth” the poet’s “sweet voice” along the banks of Peneius (P. 10.53–​6). To produce his “honeyed hymns” the poet must cultivate an overwhelmingly fertile tradition through a deft process of selection: “With destined skill I  cultivate [νέμομαι] the choice garden of the Graces” (O. 9.26-​7). In keeping with one of his signature rhetorical moves, whereby the poet readjusts his poetic curriculum and abruptly streamlines his digressions with the encomiastic theme of the poem, Pindar grapples with the burden of tradition and the limitless possibilities of poetic themes under the constraints of performance by championing the skill of selection and integration (P. 9.76–​9):108 ἀρεταὶ δ’ αἰεὶ μεγάλαι πολύμυθοι· βαιὰ δ’ ἐν μακροῖσι ποικίλλειν, ἀκοὰ σοφοῖς· ὁ δὲ καιρὸς ὁμοίως παντὸς ἔχει κορυφάν. Great excellence can always inspire many stories; but to embroider a short account from a lengthy theme is for the wise to hear. Right proportion in the same way contains the gist of the whole

Here “the wise” are projected as an ideal audience, knowing connoisseurs who have the “taste” to appreciate the craftsmanship of Pindar’s poetry See Menninghaus (2003) 26–​33 on the means of evading disgust in eighteenth-​century aesthetics by subscribing to a “law of an ‘aesthetic’ infinity that thwarts any closure” (29). 108 “The law of song and the pressing hours prevent me from telling a long story” he says in N. 4.33–​4. Time and convention check Pindar’s wayward ways constantly (P. 1.81–​4, 8.29–​34, 9.76-​9; I. 1.60–​ 3, 6.56–​9). He often presents himself as buffeted by his own digressions (P. 11.38–​44, N. 4.13–​15), or paralyzed by the number of directions his song could go (N. 6.45–​7), as well as the innumerable themes it could cover (O. 2.95–​100), and the limits of his ability to cover them (N. 10.19–​20). 107

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and enjoy the fruits of his labor. Though the textile force of poikillein as a form of weaving is salient in this particular passage, in light of other Pindaric descriptions of poetic composition as a form of “culling” or “cultivating” poetic gardens, the image acquires additional apian resonance. An apian conception of poetic activity characterizes the whole process of poetic composition in terms of the bee’s art and the sweetness of poetic pleasure as the product of this labor. The bee’s activity is one of discriminating selection that results in the choicest product: “the perfection of honey” (Pae. 6.58–​9). Such figurative posturing lies behind Socrates’ rather diminishing parody of poetic composition in Plato’s Ion (534b): For surely the poets tell us that they bring us songs [τὰ μέλη] culled from springs flowing with honey [κρηνῶν μελιρρύτων … δρεπόμενοι] in certain gardens and groves of the Muses, just like bees [μέλιτται], flying about as they do.

Socrates puns on the lexical similarity between “honey” (μέλι) and “songs” (μέλη), and pokes fun at the traditional image of the apian poet by portraying him comically in flight.109 Aristophanes had already taken such clichés for granted when his chorus of birds disparages the poet Phrynicus for feeding on their songs “like a bee” that must feed on flowers to produce its honey (Av. 748–​50). When we come to Isocrates, the bee’s harvest offers a model not only for poetic composition but for a form of refined dilettantism in liberal education, which the young would do well to cultivate.110 For Isocrates, as for Plato, poêtikos and poikilos become synonymous terms (15.47). The shift in emphasis in the characterization of poetry from honey and sweetness to the bee and its activity reconstitutes poetic value terms relating to craftsmanship as instrumental means to poetic sweetness, developing in the process a more complex idea of poetic pleasure than the simple assertion of sweetness can express (Pi. N. 7.50–​3): … θρασύ μοι τόδ’ εἰπεῖν φαενναῖς ἀρεταῖς ὁδὸν κυρίαν λόγων οἴκοθεν· ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἀνάπαυσις ἐν παντὶ    γλυκεῖα ἔργῳ· κόρον δ’ ἔχει καὶ μέλι καὶ τὰ τέρπν’ ἄνθε’ Ἀφροδίσια. As Murray (1996) 117–​18 notes, “P[lato], like Aristophanes, mischievously takes poetic metaphor literally.” 110 “For just as we see the bee settling on all the flowers, and sipping the best from each, so also those who aspire to culture ought not to leave anything untasted, but should gather useful knowledge from every source” (1.52). 109

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The Taste of Archaic Poetry … I have something bold to say, for shining excellence, a lordly path of words from home. But respite is sweet in every deed. Even honey may cloy, and the delightful flowers of Aphrodite.

Pindar here paradoxically revalues sweetness as the absence of sweetness; honey is no longer sweet, but sickening when it “brings koros,” whereas occasional rest from its sweetness can itself be sweet. The assurance of poetic pleasure, then, depends on a number of factors that prevent poetry from “cloying”:  the poet’s discriminating selection of material, the novelty and complexity of his subject matter, and its skillful arrangement (P. 1.81–​6): καιρὸν εἰ φθέγξαιο, πολλῶν πείρατα συντανύσαις ἐν βραχεῖ, μείων ἕπεται μῶμος ἀνθρώπων.      ἀπὸ γὰρ κόρος ἀμβλύνει αἰανὴς ταχείας ἐλπίδας· ἀστῶν δ’ ἀκοὰ κρύφιον θυμὸν βαρύνει      μάλιστ’ ἐσλοῖσιν ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις. ἀλλ’ ὅμως, κρέσσων γὰρ οἰκτιρμοῦ φθόνος, μὴ παρίει καλά. If you speak in due proportion, twisting the strands of many themes into a brief compass, less blame follows from men. For wearying satiety blunts the edge of short-​lived expectations, and what the citizens hear secretly weighs heavy on their spirits, especially concerning the merits of others. Nevertheless, since envy is better than pity, do not abandon fine deeds!

In this case Pindar’s primary concern is to avoid fueling the resentment of others by excessively praising his patron, but that resentment is configured as a painful satiation –​the state of being overfull –​further elaborated as a heavy burden. One man’s praise is another man’s pain, but only after a certain point, the kairos that Pindar knows well to heed. While the fear of resentment may seem particular to the epinician context, the remarkable persistence of poikilia as an aesthetic principle in classical and post-​ classical rhetoric suggests that the threat of literary tedium could apply in cases where resentment was not an issue.111 Pindar himself worries elsewhere about boring his audience rather than making them jealous,112 and his preference for brevity, while certainly responding to the constraints of On the persistence of poikilia as a literary principle in post-​classical criticism, see Heath (1989). P. 8.29–​34; N. 10.19–​20; I. 1.60–​3, 6.56–​9.

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performance, also suggests a proto-​hellenistic aesthetic of lyric refinement over epic grandeur. This is not to suggest, however, that Homer was thought to violate Pindar’s new aesthetic principles. After all, one scholiast calls him a “lover of poikilia” (Schol. B to Il. 13.219–​329) and Plutarch praises him for being the only poet to consistently evade “the satiety [κόρον] that lies in ambush in every text” (Mor. 504d).113 In the tradition of literary criticism running from archaic poetry to the byzantine scholiasts –​from which Plato conspicuously dissents –​poikilia is championed as a stylistic virtue. But even among the earliest ascriptions of poikilia to music and poetry, the negative valence of the concept remains immanent, especially as a traditional feature of deceptive speech. Pindar himself criticizes the very quality of speech that he otherwise endorses and practices (O. 1.28–​32): ἦ θαυματὰ πολλά, καί πού τι καὶ βροτῶν φάτιν ὑπὲρ τὸν ἀλαθῆ λόγον δεδαιδαλμένοι ψεύδεσι ποικίλοις ἐξαπατῶντι μῦθοι Χάρις δ’, ἅπερ ἅπαντα τεύχει τὰ μείλιχα θνατοῖς, ἐπιφέροισα τιμὰν καὶ ἄπιστον ἐμήσατο πιστὸν ἔμμεναι τὸ πολλάκις· Indeed, marvels are many, and yet somehow the speech of mortals beyond the true account, stories adorned with embroidered lies, can deceive. And Grace, who fashions all gentle things for men, confers honor and often contrives to make the incredible credible.

Though the sentiment runs counter to his own self-​proclaimed artistic virtues, here Pindar condemns all forms of artistry because of their potential to dissemble, either by constructing the appearance of truth, or concealing the appearance of falsehood. Yet the very terms he uses to characterize the nature of deception, not least of all poikilia, are those he elsewhere uses to characterize his own poetic activity. The verb daidallein, for instance, typically refers to the crowning role of his song, as it does, astonishingly, at the end of this very ode: “let us adorn [δαιδαλωσέμεν] him with the glorious folds of song” (105; cf. N. 11.18 and Parth. 2.32). “Fashioning” or teuchein, as we have already seen, is the verb Pindar uses when he wants to emphasize the enduring and monumental nature of his poetry (N. 4.84; fr.194). He even casts aspersions on his patronesses the Graces –​to whom he has devoted an entire ode (O. 14) –​accusing them See also Heath (1989) 102 on the role of poikilia in Homer’s literary reputation.

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of conspiring to deceive mankind by adorning the bad rather than the good, the false rather than the true. Among the “gentle/​honeyed things” (τὰ μείλιχα) they fashion is, of course, poetry. Thus, once again, poetry’s deceptive potential asserts itself even in the verses of a poet who most commonly celebrates poetry’s virtues. The artisanal metaphoric tradition is, in the end, as ambivalent a characterization of poetic pleasure as the gustatory, erotic, and magical imagery we have examined, and potentially worse for subordinating the cognitive powers of poetry to its somatic effects. Though the apian features of poetic composition might seem at first to elevate poetic pleasure from the baser somatic desires of taste and erotic sensation, we can begin to see how the principles of variety and complexity actually conspire to assure the satisfaction of such desires, and for sweetness in particular. If the desire that poetry satisfies is ultimately the desire for “something sweet,” as Pindar puts it,114 what does this formulation reveal about its nature? Is our “hunger” for poetry a biological (or evolutionary) necessity (a “need,” as for food and water), or a gratuitous craving (a “want,” as for sweets)? Though at one point Pindar takes his poetic performance to be literally “quenching” his “thirst for song,” on the model of biological restoration (ἀοιδᾶν δίψαν ἀκειόμενον, P. 9.104–​6), elsewhere he accuses another poet of poetic gluttony; he describes the invective poet Archilochus as “fattening himself [πιαινόμενον] on heavy worded hatreds” (P. 54–​6).115 Leaving aside the distinction between the consumer and producer of poetry for the time being, it appears that certain kinds of poetry deliberately exceed the limits of koros and make overindulgence itself a pleasure. Satiety gives way to insatiability. But even typical gustatory metaphors align such poetry with luxuries like honey and wine rather than necessities like water –​align it, that is, with a kind of relish, which will be one of the many reasons why Plato rejects it.

N. 3.32 (γλυκύ τι γαρυέμεν), I. 8.8 (γλυκύ τι δαμωσόμεθα). It is worth noting that the term himeros can also be used in an appetitive context, such as the Homeric expression:  “the desire [ἵμερος] for sweet food” (Il. 11.89). 115 The term piainein refers to the force-​feeding process in animal husbandry (e.g., fattening pigs in Arist. HA 603b and sheep in Pl. R. 345c) as well as to general sloth and gluttony (e.g., Sem. fr.7.6 and Pl. Leg. 807a–​b); for the significance of the term in Pindar’s critique of Archilochus, see Steiner (2002) 300 and Payne (2010) 28–​9. See also my treatment of this passaging in Chapter 2, subsection 2.2.1. 114

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Introduction The question of the Greek’s relation to pain, his degree of sensitivity, is basic: did this relation remain constant? Or did it change radically? The question is whether his ever stronger craving for beauty, for pleasure, festivals, new cults was rooted in some deficiency, privation, melancholy, pain? Supposing that this were true … how should we then have to explain the origin of the opposite craving, which developed earlier in time, the craving for the ugly; the good, severe will of the older Greeks to pessimism, to the tragic myth, to the image of everything underlying existence that is frightful, evil, a riddle, destructive, fatal? What, then, would be the origin of tragedy?1

The first extant work of Western literature begins with anger and ends with grief. A hero’s catastrophic rage –​the first word of Homer’s Iliad –​ finally, though grudgingly, yields to pity, and the poem closes with the threnodic cries of a bereaved community foretelling its destruction. If the Iliad’s ancient pedigree is any indication, the first poetic impulse was born of pain, and the first poetic expression of pain spawned a rich and proliferating tradition of tragic literature.2 Not without good reason, then, does Socrates call Homer “the first of the tragedians” and tragedy’s “leader” (R. 607a, 598e).3 And yet, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, archaic Nietzsche (1967) 21. The escapist function of poetry in Hesiodic epic –​where song is said to offer human audiences a “forgetfulness of ills and a rest from sorrows” (Th. 55; cf. 98–​103) –​would seem to suggest a therapeutic, anti-​tragic origin to the institution of poetry, but as the violent conflicts of the Theogony itself suggest, our sorrows are merely eclipsed by another’s; pain and conflict remain central to this tradition of poetry as well, and are all the more problematic for Plato for involving the gods (see n8 to this chapter). 3 Nietzsche, however, would insist on tragedy’s fundamental break with epic. He denies Homer the “Dionysian” essence of tragedy, the source of which he traces to Archilochus instead ([1967] §5, pp. 48–​52): “The Homeric ‘naivete’ can be understood only as the complete victory of the Apollinian illusion” (44). We will see in this chapter that the Dionysian impulse toward self-​annihilation (“the 1

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poets (including Homer) profess the “sweetness” of their songs. The fact that this sweetness emerges from representations of human misery should give us pause. What is so sweet about sorrow? In reassessing an inveterate cliché in archaic poetry’s self-​presentation –​ its celebrated quality of sweetness first and foremost, and the sensual attributes that metonymically accrue to it –​I hope to have unearthed a somatic core to poetic pleasure and discerned an appetitive structure to the desire for poetry that implicates pain in the economy of pleasure (as all bodily pleasures do4). What has emerged from the previous chapter is that poetry, according to archaic conceptions, must have a hunger to satisfy, a wound to heal, and –​as we will see with greater clarity –​an ordeal to enact. The threat of poetic satiety (Pindar’s koros) obliges the poet to sustain our interest by eluding our satisfaction, perpetuating a painful state of arousal that is, like erôs, dangerously incorporated into the experience of pleasure itself. Poetry can consequently seduce us, as the Sirens seduced Odysseus, into a self-​oblivion that can result in self-​destruction; finally, as a cognitive medium with somatic effects, poetry can maximize the pleasures of the body without physiological restrictions, relying on the ambivalent force of mental poikilia to maintain its pleasure and thereby produce a sweetness that never cloys, but may well paralyze. Archaic poetics not only reveals that the experience of poetry is deeply rooted in the embodiment of its human auditors; it also suggests that poetry arises from a condition of pain, and can further disable its auditors in the face of its overwhelming and potentially indefinite pleasure. The implications of poetic sweetness in the archaic tradition are thus far more sinister than the context of its invocation (the feast, the celebration, the symposium, the site of seduction) suggests. But pain as a necessary precondition of pleasure or its side effect is altogether different from pain that is itself a source of pleasure and an object of desire. Pursuing states of pain is a more extraordinary form of self-​harm than pursuing states of pleasure that entail pain accidentally. Yet this, too, is another facet of poetic pleasure, and one far harder to explain. The present chapter focuses on this facet of archaic (primarily Homeric) shattering of the individual and his fusion with primal being” [§8, p.65]) is no less a feature of epic than of lyric poetry. 4 With the possible exception of smells, as Plato notes in a number of places (R. 584b; Ti. 65a; Phlb. 51b,e). As the only somatic pleasures not preceded by the pain of lack, olfactory pleasures uncomfortably straddle the categories of “true” intellectual and “false” physical pleasures in Plato’s scheme. Pleasant smells thus pose a challenge to his revisionist theory of pleasure, as Socrates tacitly admits when he relegates them to a “less divine class of pleasure” (Phlb. 51e).

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poetry and attempts to explain it in Platonic terms. When we turn from the salutary aspects of epic and lyric, where sweetness is correlated, however problematically, to the positive poetry of praise and seduction, and focus on more straightforwardly painful moments in these same genres –​ be they invective, obscene, violent, or, more broadly, tragic –​we confront a true paradox. We enjoy witnessing Achilles’ consuming and destructive rage, Thersites’ and Archilochus’ humiliating abjection, Hector’s paralyzing fear, and the alternately harrowing and numbing grief of Priam, Andromache, and Penelope. “What is this but wretched madness?” wondered Augustine as he recalled his youthful captivation with tragic drama (C.D. 3.2.2). He interprets the “love of grief ”5 that led him to the theater as a form of vanity disguised as compassion; fictional tragedies, Augustine argues, allow us to exercise our pity without requiring us to act on it, affording us the cheap self-​satisfaction of feeling “merciful” for a generosity of spirit that is ultimately fruitless.6 A  secular version of this theory occurs in Lucretius, who explains the schadenfreude of feeling pleasure at the sight of a shipwreck as the pleasure of immunity from another’s pain; tragic poetry on this account exposes us to the evils we are spared, and in making us keenly aware of our safe position as spectators, affords us the “sweetness” (Lucretius’ own term) of relief.7 Do we, then, simply enjoy ourselves at the characters’ expense, who become little more than objects of pity and foils for our good fortune? Or do we not rather enjoy the alien and extreme states of mind that tragic figures allow us to inhabit? Such states would seem to compromise our safety, at least psychologically. Perhaps we want our fictional protagonists to suffer and inflict harm not so that we can experience our emphatic immunity, but so that we, too, may  –​at least imaginatively  –​suffer harm in ever growing magnitudes “In my wretchedness, I loved to grieve [dolere amabam]” (C.D. 3.2.4). “ … what kind of compassion is it that arises from viewing fictitious and unreal sufferings? The spectator is not expected to aid the sufferer but merely to grieve for him. And the more he grieves the more he applauds the actor of these fictions … Tears and sorrow, then, are loved. Surely every man desires to be joyful. And, though no one is willingly miserable, one may, nevertheless, be pleased to be merciful so that we love their sorrows because without them we should have nothing to pity” (C.D. 3.2.2-​3 [trans. Albert Outler]). Crotty (2009), in focusing on the fictional status of the tragic performance, interprets the Republic’s final critique of poetry along similar lines:  “The supposed ‘hero’ is nothing but a projection or figment of the spectator’s emotions. Eleos is supposed to be a ‘transitive’ emotion: one has another person for its object. But the theater-​goer’s spurious compassion has in fact no other object than himself. It is self-​indulgence masquerading as moral sentiment” (110). 7 “How sweet [suave], when whirlwinds roll the surface of the mighty sea, to watch, from land, the great labor of another. Not that seeing someone else suffer is a great pleasure, but that it is sweet [suavest] to see what evils you’ve been spared” (R.N. 2.1–​4). The “sweetness” of painful poetry results, by extension, from the audience’s experience of immunity. 5

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and ever changing circumstances. This, I argue, is Plato’s view. As heirs to the Greek legacy of tragic literature, we are likely to find in their conception of poetic pleasure both an illumination of this fundamental problem and firmer ground for the Platonic critique of poetry, which targets, precisely, the most painful passages of epic and tragedy for fostering a debilitating addiction to painful emotion states.8 Resolving what I call the “tragic paradox” requires an analysis of affective engagement outside of the mimetic context in order to isolate the source of pleasure within the mimetic context. To this end, I focus on the depictions of grief and anger in Homeric poetry to make the case that these emotions were conceived as psychosomatic addictions; lacking the self-​regulating feature of biological drives, they offer physical satisfactions without physical limits, thus risking self-​destructive overindulgence by using the body to transport the mind and overpowering reason in the process.9 Once this view of the emotions is established, I turn to ancient evaluations of invective poetry and Gorgias’ characterization of poetic identification to show that the appetitive pleasures derived from inhabiting painful emotion states are not transformed or attenuated through aesthetic representation, but rather vicariously transferred to the poet and the audience via a process of what psychologists now call “emotional contagion.” Finally, I  draw on the conceptual resources of Charles Altieri’s theory of affective pleasure to elaborate the particular appeal of the painful emotions of anger and grief, both as subjectively felt in the world and vicariously experienced in poetry. Altieri’s sensitive phenomenology of the affects allows us to see with greater clarity why the Greek poetic tradition conceived the pain of imaginative involvement, in art as in life, as real and Among the scenes targeted by Socrates in the Republic are the violent theomachies in Hesiod (377e–​378a) and Homer (378d), terrifying depictions of Hades, death, and the afterlife (386b–​387c), and pitiful depictions of heroes and gods in conspicuous mourning (387d–​388e; cf. 605c–​606d); note also the adverse yet “thrilling” scenes Socrates targets in the Ion in his critique of imaginative involvement with poetry: Odysseus’ revenge against the suitors, Achilles’ pursuit of Hector, and the “pitiable stories” (τῶν ἐλεινῶν) of Andromache, Hecuba, and Priam (535b–​c). 9 To be clear: I am attempting to articulate an archaic conception of affective pleasure before turning to the matter of poetic pleasure, but the sources I rely on are, of course, poetic, and their subjects in some sense extraordinary (as they must be to merit poetic commemoration). The representational status of the emotions under examination should not compromise my goal; not only is there no more “authentic” source available (something equivalent to an archaic psychological manual); I presume that the objective nature of subjective states are in any case inaccessible without some kind of interpretative mediation. In the case of archaic poetry, the medium of literary language will prove to be particularly revealing in its use of metaphor to communicate the felt experience of emotions. On the extraordinary nature of poetic subjects, I presume throughout that extreme manifestations of emotion states, far from misrepresenting your run-​of-​the-​mill emotions, clarify their structure and trajectories. 8

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self-​compromising, and yet unquestionably a source of pleasure; it is a pleasure derived principally (as Plato realized) from a basic human desire to transcend the limitations of individual subjectivity and maximally realize one’s affective potential, at whatever cost.

2.1  Emotion Addiction: Grief and Anger in the Iliad 2.1.1  Emotions: A Somatic Perspective In reaction to the reigning opposition between reason and passion inherited from ancient philosophical thought and uncritically maintained in popular psychology throughout the ages, modern theorists of emotion have developed increasingly sophisticated accounts of the “cognitive” dimension of emotional experience that have all but effaced any distinction between emotions and judgments.10 In such accounts, the body plays an incidental role in emotion states, presented as either a vehicle of expression (the body as symptom) or a precipitating factor (the body as cause).11 The noncognitive component of emotion states is thus typically assimilated into the category of sensation and excluded from the domain of the emotion proper, which comes to be identified with the subject’s mental evaluation or “appraisal.” What strikes us as a middle term between cognition and sensation (or reason and appetite, to use ancient concepts), incorporating features of both while remaining essentially distinct, has had its constituent parts divided and distributed between our highest and lowest psychic faculties. Ancient psychologies often dissected emotions in a similar fashion but inclined to align them The philosopher Robert Solomon (1993) goes so far as to say that “emotions are judgments” (viii, italics in the original), and it is primarily within philosophy that one encounters the purest strains of cognitivism in emotion research (e.g., Bedford [1957]; Pitcher [1965]; Gordon [1987]; Neu [2000]; Nussbaum [2001]). Ancient philosophers –​in particular the Stoics, who first equated emotions with judgments –​are often cited as the forerunners to modern cognitivism, a position that currently dominates emotion research within classics (see in particular the work of Fortenbaugh [2003 (1975)]; Nussbaum [1994] and [2001]; Sokolon [2006]; and Konstan [2006]; though Graver’s recent study of emotion in Stoicism [2007] is more nuanced in its approach. For a recent overview of classical scholarship on emotions, see Fitzgerald [2008]). Psychology offers more diverse approaches to the subject that include physiological and neurological studies of emotion states (first pioneered by William James [1884] and Carl Lange [1885], and recently revived by neuroscientists such as Damasio [1994] and LeDoux [1996]), but even in a field committed to a materialist view of the soul, the prevailing theory of emotions –​that of “appraisal theory” (elaborated most fully by Lazarus [1991]) –​remains essentially cognitive; see Prinz (2004) 16–​17 on this point, and 22–​33 on the difference between cognitive theories in psychology and philosophy. 11 The former would fall under “cognitive cause” theories, the latter under “cognitive labeling” theories, according to Prinz’ taxonomy of emotion theories (Prinz [2004] 12–​14). 10

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more with physical appetites and sensations than conscious thought.12 And while such a view was briefly revived by no less a figure than William James on the heels of Darwin’s scientific study of the emotions in the late nineteenth century,13 and has even had a lasting impact in the minority “somatic” positions on the emotions in recent scholarship,14 the physiological basis of emotional experience has not been seriously considered outside scientific fields such as neurobiology and evolutionary psychology, nor has its significance been brought directly to bear on the philosophical problem posed by the tragic paradox –​that is, the question of why and how painful emotions can offer distinct satisfactions that have little to do with reason and cognition.15 One can attribute the neglect of the body in modern philosophical theories of emotion to a disciplinary focus on the immaterial.16 As Aristotle astutely notes in his treatise on the soul, a scientist and a philosopher will not approach a given topic in the same way, since very different questions and concerns orient their inquiries, and they will consequently arrive at divergent definitions of the same phenomenon. In the case of anger, for example, “[the dialectician] would define it as a desire for retaliation … while [the physicist] would define it as a surging of the blood and heat around the heart … The one gives an account of the matter [ὕλην], the other of the form [εἶδος] and the principle [λόγον]” (de An. 403a–​b).17 Neither definition is sufficient on its own to provide a With the notable exception of Stoicism, which defines emotions as false judgments by locating the emotion in the act of assent to a sensory impression or “pre-​emotion”; see Graver (2007) 61–​108. 13 James refers to Darwin’s The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) twice in his seminal article, “What Is an Emotion?” (James [1884] 190–​1). 14 See, in particular, Damasio (1994); LeDoux (1996); Prinz (2004); Robinson (2005); Laird (2007). 15 For the purposes of this study I retain the historical division between cognitive and affective psychology that assimilates rational and cognitive processes, though the recent trend in both philosophy and cognitive psychology has been to expand the notion of cognition to designate any form of information processing, which need not be rational or even conscious (see in particular Lazarus [1982] for a critique of rationalist accounts of cognition). I share Altieri’s ([2003] 163–​4) reservations that a concept so minimally defined is too general to be of theoretical use. 16 Cavarero (2005) makes a similar critique of Western philosophy for its neglect of the materiality and unique embodiment of the human voice. 17 Socrates makes a similar point in Plato’s Phaedo when he expresses his frustration with the materialist account of causes put forth by the Presocratic philosophers (96a–​99d); in Aristotelian terms, they neglect the form for the matter. Aristotle and Socrates both seem to –​and actively seek to –​ overcome these disciplinary boundaries, and Aristotle in particular offers the very hylomorphic picture of the human soul he takes to be lacking in other disciplinary approaches. The point that disciplinary bias limits our understanding remains valid even if it does not always hold to be true, and is particularly valid in the increasingly specialized tracks of the modern university, as the growing push for interdisiplinarity attests (though see Jacobs [2013] for a provocative critique of the promise of interdisciplinarity and a robust defense of established disciplines in higher education). 12

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holistic understanding of the phenomenon, but together they complete the hylomorphic picture of the emotion as Aristotle understood it.18 Aristotle is right to suggest that one cannot simply bracket the physiological aspects of emotion states without missing something essential about the emotions themselves –​that is to say, without failing to understand human psychology in its totality.19 Human beings are, after all, embodied creatures. And while I  do not advocate the kind of scientific materialism that would reduce the spiritual complexity of psychic life to a series of neurological synapses or autonomic processes (as many current psychological theories seem to do), I  want to suggest that the “matter” of emotions and the metaphors they generate in the language used to described them go further toward explaining the force of emotional drives than any of the cognitive accounts currently on offer.20 Plato understood this when he located the source of emotional impulses such as lust, greed, and grief in the appetitive part of the soul along with the biological imperatives of hunger and thirst,21 as did the more scientifically minded Aristotle (the supposed forerunner of modern cognitivism, according to many emotion theorists) when he observes that “all affections of the soul involve the body –​anger, gentleness, fear, pity, courage, and further, joy, and both loving and hating; for together with these the body is affected in some way” (de An. 403a17–​20). A look at archaic expressions of two adverse emotions in particular –​grief and anger –​will reveal the extent to which not only philosophers, but poets and the folk psychology they reflect understood emotions as physiological forces with a peculiar ability to eclipse all other desires and distort judgment in pursuit of their partial ends. Once we see that emotional behavior responds to desires akin to physical urges and seeks a comparable form of satisfaction, the paradoxical “… clearly the affections [τὰ πάθη] are principles [λόγοι] involved in matter [ἔνυλοί]. Hence their definitions are such as ‘being angry is a certain movement in such and such a body (or a part or faculty of it) as a result of this or for the sake of that’ ” (de An. 403a25–​7). According to Aristotle, a true “physicist” or natural philosopher neither “ignores the principle and is only concerned with matter” nor ignores the matter and “is only concerned with the principle,” but “rather [derives his definitions] from both” (de An. 403b7–​9). 19 Griffiths (1997) levels a similar criticism against modern philosophical approaches to emotions for neglecting scientific and sociological developments in the field. 20 The essential role of the body in emotion states is borne out by recent cross-​cultural studies of emotion terms, which show that every culture uses bodily metaphors to describe emotional experience; see, for example, Heelas (1986) and Wierzbicka (1999). See also West (2007) 87–​9 for a Greek-​ oriented approach to the Indo-​European idiom of emotions, which centers on the body; West notes that “similar phraseology sometimes appears in Near Eastern literatures,” suggesting that the idiom may be universal (87). 21 Lust: R. 439d, 580e; greed: R. 442a, 580e–​81a; grief: R. 604d, 606a–​b. 18

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nature of the self-​destructive pursuit of painful emotion states begins to take on the familiar logic of addiction. Unlike modern somatic positions, then, which regard emotions as evolutionary adaptations that serve human survival and flourishing,22 archaic conceptions of emotion present them more often than not as disabling and maladaptive, as internal forces that seem to come from outside to hijack and jeopardize the self.23 Anger and grief are, to judge from their pride of place as the framing events of the Iliad and their general coincidence in psychological responses to adversity, closely related emotions.24 Clinical psychologists have long identified anger as a distinct phase of the mourning process, “a basic response to loss” that attempts to attack, mitigate, or block the emotional pain of bereavement with aggression;25 the most basic response to loss is, of course, grief itself, which unsurprisingly attends anger at slights and provocations that involve loss of some kind (usually “loss of face”).26 A  “grievance” is, after all, a source of both anger and sorrow, and the heaviness implied in the word’s etymological root suggests that both emotions are experienced as burdens on the human heart, which desperately attempts to relieve itself in various, usually unsuccessful, ways.27 This heaviness is often expressed in archaic Greek (as in English) as a welling up of feeling that needs to be physically discharged,28 be it through See, in particular, Lazarus (1991) and Damasio (1994). Externalized conceptions of emotion occur in Greek tragedy; see Padel (1992) 114–​37. 24 The anthropological study of cultural variation in emotion terms reveals the absence of any terminological distinction between grief and anger in other languages; see Russell (1991) 430, 432, and 441 for examples and bibliography. 25 For this definition of anger and a brief discussion of anger in mourning, see Archer (1999) 70–​2. 26 Loss of face is equivalent to Greek oligôria (slight or belittling) and lies at the core of Aristotle’s definition of anger: “Let anger [ὀργὴ] be defined as a desire, accompanied by pain, for perceived retribution [τιμωρίας] because of a perceived slight [ὀλιγωρίαν] upon oneself or those close to one, the slight being unjustified” (Rh. 1378a). Because of my focus on loss rather than offense in the event of anger, I will not make much use of Aristotle’s account –​which, though insightful and true of prototypical cases of anger, importantly fails to apply to all cases (as Cairns [2004] 27 notes). As many ancient and modern examples will show, pace Aristotle (Rh. 1378a–​1380a), anger need not be a justified slight, it can be self-​directed, and it often desires impossible objectives despite their impossibility. This last point is emphasized by Seneca in his discussion of anger: “It’s the desire for exacting payback, not the capacity to do so; people desire even things they cannot achieve” (de Ira 1.3.2). 27 According to the OED, the root of “grievance” and “grief ” can be traced back to Latin gravis (“heavy”) via Old French grever (“afflict, burden, oppress”). Studies in cognitive linguistics of English also show that both anger and grief (or sadness) share the metaphorical source domain of “burden” and “fluid in a container” that threatens to overflow (Kövecses [2000] 21–​3, 25, 37–​8). 28 On this metaphorical conceptualization of anger in English, see Lakoff and Kövecses (1987) 197–​ 202 and 209–​10, and Kövecses (2000) 21–​3; on grief, see Kövecses (2000) 25–​6. The hydraulic model of grieving, where crying functions as a “safety valve” for the excessive buildup of emotion, is familiar from psychoanalytic theory and has long dominated critical approaches to mourning; see Breuer and Freud (1968) and Freud (1957) for its first articulation. 22

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the release of tears in lamentation or the “bile” (χόλος) of aggressive energy expended in fits of rage.29 The need to discharge the organic matter of the emotion is thus experienced as a biological imperative whose satisfaction offers a temporarily restorative pleasure.30 Alternatively, the heart is just as often diminished by its preoccupation with anger and grief, “worn away” (τείρω), “wasted” (τήκω), and “withered” (φθίω) by the inward contraction of the sufferer.31 Such expressions focus on the adverse side effects of indulging the painful emotion, conceptualizing it either as a foreign parasite that feeds on the victim or as an internal organ that has become itself an object of consumption and so results in a pathological case of the victim’s self-​consumption. While the conceptualization of grief and anger is not uniform in Greek expressions, one finds that it is uniformly physiological.32 The emotions are described as hungers or satisfactions, as agents or objects of consumption, as physically diminishing or augmenting forces, and as external blows to the self and the vital organs.33 In all cases they are –​initially at least –​physically and passively undergone (in accordance with the etymology of “passion”), though they can certainly motivate action.34 They can also be actively pursued for their own sake, as the emotion state begins to provide an alternative form of satisfaction that On the organic nature of cholos in epic and its anticipation of medical theories of madness, see Smith (1966) 555–​6; see also Langholf (1990) 37–​40 and Clarke (1999) 92–​7. 30 Noted by Baumgarten (2009) 102. 31 These metaphors apply less to anger than to grief in English, which tends to conceptualize anger predominantly as a physical augmentation of the victim (Lakoff and Kövecses [1987]; Kövecses [2000] 21–​3, 25, and 37–​8). In Greek, however, such metaphors abound for both emotions (to be discussed later here). 32 Homeric psychology is in general a materialist one, where intellectual and volitional as well as affective and appetitive activities are physically localized, though often loosely, in particular “organs”; but a stark contrast remains between emotional and rational activity based on the absence or presence of the individual’s agency. So the phrenes, for instance, are mainly considered to comprise an intellectual organ despite their occasional involvement in irrational activity because “the relationship that a person has to phrenes is one in which phrenes are subordinate to him or co-​operate with him … Rarely do they function as an independent agent within him” (Sullivan [1988] 195). 33 Grief satisfies a physical desire (ἵμερος) and results in satiety (τέρπωομαι, κορέννῡμαι, κόρος): e.g., Il. 23.10, 108; Od. 4.103, 454. Anger figures as a literal hunger for the enemy: e.g., Il. 4.34–​6; 22.346–​7; 24.212–​14. Sorrows can be “digested” or “stewed” (πέσσω): e.g., Il. 24.617, 639. Anger is more commonly “stewed” (πέσσω) and also leads to the subject’s self-​consumption in the expression “eating [one’s] heart out” (θυμὸν ἔδων): e.g., Il. 4.513; 9.565; 6.202; Od. 9.75; 10.379; cf. Il. 24.129. Grief and anger both consume the subject by “diminishing” or “wasting” him (τείρω, τήκω, φθίω): e.g., Il. 1.491; 18.446; Od. 2.71; 19.136; cf. Il. 20.253. They “magnify” or “fill” the subject as well (ἀέξω, πίμπλημι, οἰδάνω), especially anger:  e.g., Il. 1.104; 9.646; 18.110; Od. 11.195. Both emotions are experienced as external forces: e.g., Il. 4.23; 8.316; 18.22; 19.16; Od. 10.247; 24.315; 8.304. 34 As West (2007) notes in his discussion of the Indo-​European (and, in some cases, Near Eastern) idiom of emotions, “[e]‌motions tend to be represented as external forces that come to one, enter one, or seize one” (87). 29

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replaces the victim’s sense of loss with an emotionally defined sense of self (reflecting what Charles Altieri, in his aesthetic appropriation of Spinoza, would call a “conative model of value”35). How are these various and often contradictory images for grief and anger related, and how can they illuminate the kinds of satisfaction derived from inhabiting painful emotion states? I approach the problem by examining the literal and metaphorical significance of Homeric expressions for these emotions in order to arrive at a psychosomatic understanding of the pleasures they offer. Grief and anger evoke the language of biological appetites and addictions because they are, in some essential sense, physiological experiences to which the victim becomes pathologically attached; but the cravings they induce extend beyond the desire for physical relief to include the spiritual reparation that is truly, though vainly, being sought. The bereaved and aggrieved state is characterized as one of self-​consumption and self-​expansion simultaneously due to the fact that the victim’s emotions flourish at the expense of his or her psychic well-​being. As the emotion spreads and strengthens its hold on the victim’s consciousness, it “fills” him with organic matter, reorients his action, and redefines his identity; yet the subject is himself diminished by the expenditure of mental and physical energy involved in dwelling on the source of injury in search for elusive compensation. Homeric heroes crave emotional satisfaction, eat their hearts out, stew over their anger and their hurt, and reject nourishment in favor of emotional sustenance. This subsistence is described as filling them by swelling their hearts with the bile of rage and the tears of sorrow until it finds some outlet in the sphere of action. Here the emotion theoretically subsides, but in practice persists or even escalates, and in doing so provides an alternative satisfaction in the revitalized state that results from giving intense emotions free reign. 2.1.2  The Homeric Impulse to Grieve I want to begin with archaic depictions of grief because of their undeniably appetitive character and the importance of this early articulation of grief to the genealogy of the tragic paradox in ancient psychology.36 Homeric Altieri (2003) 109–​52, esp. 141–​46. Studies of archaic grief terms have focused on lament as a speech genre (e.g., Reiner [1938]; Petersmann [1973]; Holst-​Warhaft [1992]; Pucci [1993]; Murnaghan [1999]; Derderian [2001]; Alexiou [2002]; Tsagalis [2004]; Perkell [2008]), on gender-​differentiation (or lack thereof ) in styles of grieving (e.g., Monsacré [1984]; Easterling [1991]; Neuberger-​Donath [1996]; van Wees [1998]; Föllinger [2009]), and, most recently, on occasions for grieving (Föllinger [2009]). Few studies focus on grief ’s biological configuration in archaic (in particular Homeric) poetry, though

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grieving is always described as a physical impulse (ἵμερος) that seeks gratification (τέρψις or κόρος) primarily through the act of shedding tears, but also through lamenting, groaning, wailing, tearing one’s hair, lacerating one’s cheeks, and other forms of physical self-​abasement.37 The act of gratifying this impulse yields a restorative pleasure akin to pleasures of the body such as eating, sleeping, and sexual intercourse, all of which share with grief key lexical terms in their formulaic expression.38 Himeros, as we have seen in the previous chapter, is a standard term for erotic desire: it is what Aphrodite casts in the hearts of men and gods to initiate sexual encounters and is appropriately coupled with philotês or sex as one of the venereal charms wrought in her magic girdle.39 In such contexts, himeros is often described as “sweet” because the experience of arousal is itself a source of pleasure, and also because it bears a synaesthetic relationship with the experience of hunger and taste. For himeros occurs in alimentary contexts as well:  “himeros for sweet food” overcomes the laborer after a long day’s work (Il. 11.89), or famished mariners on a lengthy sea voyage (h. Apoll. 459–​61).40 The pleasure of grieving is, however, a peculiar form of satiation that results from a discharge of fluids and a release of mounting physical energies rather than a filling up of some lack, and in this sense it is more Clarke (1999) touches on this in his organic account of mental life in Homer (esp. 90–​1); see also Halliwell (2011a) 64–​6 for a recognition of an “instinctive” and “primitive” form of grief in Homer that song ultimately transforms into an object of beauty and desire. The argument of the present study, however, takes issue with the notion of aesthetic “transformation,” suggesting instead that the raw emotions themselves are the source of poetic appeal. 37 Priam even smears himself with dung (Il. 24.163–​5), a detail Socrates finds particularly deplorable in his critique of poetic depictions of mourning (R. 388b). On Homeric mourning customs, see Holst-​Warhaft (1992) 103–​14 and Alexiou (2002) 4–​14. It is striking that extravagant displays of grief are characteristic of men in the Iliad (most notably Achilles), while other evidence suggests that in Greek practice women played the most prominent role in public mourning (see Holst-​Warhaft [1992] 98–​126 for a survey of the evidence). Solon’s funeral legislation in the sixth century, for example, targets its restrictions at female mourners, in particular for their “disorderly and wild” conduct (ἄτακτον καὶ ἀκόλαστον, Plut. Solon 21.5). Holst-​Warhaft (1992) 105–​14 and Murnaghan (1999) 210 plausibly suggest that the special circumstances of the martial community, where women are mostly absent, lead men to assume the role of female mourners in the poem. 38 See also Halliwell (2011a) 45–​6 for a similar point. 39 The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite begins by announcing the goddess’s characteristic power to inspire erotic himeros in all living creatures (“she who arouses sweet himeros in the gods and subdues the tribes of mortal men, and birds of the sky as well, and all the many creatures that the land rears, and those of the sea,” 2–​5), a power that Zeus then retributively co-​opts and directs against the goddess. Cf. Il. 3.446 and 14.328, where “sweet himeros” overcomes Paris and Zeus respectively at the sight of their sexually appealing wives, and see Il. 14.216 for the inclusion of himeros among the other aphrodisiacs in the description of Aphrodite’s kestos. 40 The same formula occurs in both verses (σίτου τε γλυκεροῖο περὶ φρένας ἵμερος αἱρεῖ).

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analogous to the pleasures of sex than those of hunger.41 Consider the description of grief in the Iliad’s crowning moment of compassion, where the bereaved warrior and the suppliant king whom he has bereaved in turn weep together over their private misfortunes (24.507–​16): So spoke Priam, and in Achilles roused the desire to weep [ἵμερον ὦρσε γόοιο] for his father. He took the old man by the hand, and gently moved him away. The two then remembered and wept, the one for man-​slaying Hector sobbing heavily, all the while groveling at Achilles’ feet, while Achilles wept for his own father, and once again for Patroclus. The sound of their wails rose through the house. But when godlike Achilles was satisfied with lamentation [γόοιο τετάρπετο], and the passion [ἵμερος] for it departed from his heart and limbs, at once he sprang from his seat, and raised the old man by the hand, pitying his hoary head and hoary beard.42

The unlikely sympathy that emerges between Priam and Achilles in this highly charged setting is continually threatened by the eruption of enmity that rightly defines their relationship (here we glimpse Priam’s resentment at having to “grovel” before his son’s killer, and later we see Achilles’ temper flaring at his suppliant’s indecorous insistence [24.559–​70]).43 Though unnatural and even perverse under the circumstances, sympathy in this instance is made possible by their mutual surrender to the irresistible force of grief. Grief’s irresistibility stems, in part, from its corporeal character. The impulse to weep departs from Achilles’ “heart and limbs” as suddenly as it overtook him, much like the gratification of any bodily desire. He experiences it quite Though an idiom from Aeschylus’ Choephore (“my heart feeds [βόσκεται] on lamentation” 26) presents grieving as a form of consumption too, a model more closely akin to images for anger discussed later here. 42 This passage presents an inarticulate, physiologically expressive version of goos that is altogether ignored in the scholarly literature, especially studies that focus exclusively on lament as a discursive practice (the most comprehensive study of Homeric goos to date defines it as a “personal lament speech” [Tsagalis (2004)  21]). Such an approach inevitably ignores the somatic valence of grief terms, and unduly narrows their scope. It is clear in the passage above, which uses standard grief terminology, including goos, that Achilles and Priam are weeping together –​not performing lament speeches before one another (cf. also Od. 4.102–​3, discussed later). 43 Achilles prudently responds to the volatility of the situation by keeping Hector’s corpse out of sight: “Achilles summoned the servants and ordered them to wash and anoint [Hector], /​carrying him out of the way so that Priam might not see his son, /​for fear that out of anguish he not restrain his wrath, /​upon seeing his child, and Achilles’ own spirit be angered, /​and he kill him, and so defy the commands of Zeus” (Il. 24.582–​6). Achilles’ foresight and self-​knowledge in this instance were greatly admired by Plutarch, who recommends this passage as suitable poetry for the young (Mor. 31a–​b). 41

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literally as an arousal (ὦρσε), an unmediated physical response to an external stimulus that is beyond his control: he is struck by Priam’s resemblance to his own father (a resemblance Priam took advantage of in the rhetoric of his supplication), and the memories triggered by his image reduces the hero to tears. The poet implies that Achilles’ resemblance to Hector strikes Priam in turn, who succumbs to the same impulse and joins Achilles in lament. The impulse to grieve, then, while activated by an Aristotelian moment of recognition,44 remains reflexively somatic, and it should come as no surprise to find its satisfaction expressed in physiological terms: the verbs korennumai and terpomai, which convey to greater or lesser degrees the pleasant state of physical satiety, are typically used to describe the outcome of grief indulged,45 and the latter term in particular has caused some scholars anxiety over the paradoxical ring of the Homeric formula “take pleasure in [destructive] lamentation.”46 When we recognize this pleasure as a physical urge, the expression loses some of its perversity. Thus Menelaus, in communicating his regret over his fallen comrades to Telemachus, describes his experience of grief as follows: “At one moment I satisfy my heart [φρένα τέρπομαι] with weeping [γόῳ], and then again /​I cease: for soon I have my fill [κόρος] of chill lament [κρυεροῖο γόοιο]” (Od. 4.102–​3). Though terpomai can often designate delight and pleasure generically, it originally characterizes the pleasures of physical fulfillment in particular, and this sense of the verb is reinforced by Menelaus’ use of koros (a nominal derivative of korennumi, “I fill”) as a synonym.47 Lamenting, however cold a comfort, fulfills the mourner’s recurring physical need to release his tears and drain the well-​spring of his grief, thus restoring him, temporarily, to a more manageable state. As one fragment of Aeschylus puts it, “Laments are the medicine [ἰάματα] for ills” (fr.385). But Menelaus For a sophisticated application of Arisotle’s theory of mimetic recognition to this passage, see Munteanu (2012) 122–​4. 45 A few examples will suffice of terpomai and korennumai (as well as the derivative noun koros) occurring in Homeric expressions for the satisfaction of hunger, sleep, sex, and mourning. Hunger and thirst: Il. 9.705, 19.167; Od. 14.28; sleep: Il. 13.636, 24.3; Od. 4.295, 23.346; sex: Il. 3.441; Od. 23.300; mourning: Il. 23.10, 24.513; Od. 4.102–​3, 4.454, 20.59. 46 The adjective oloios (“destructive”) often modifies goos in this expression, making the paradox more emphatic and producing what Tsagalis (2004) calls an “oxymoronic effect” (176). In glossing a particular instance of the formula without oloios at Od. 4.102 (γόῳ φρένα τέρπομαι), Heubeck et. al. (1988) 199 argue obscurely that “Homeric heroes do not take positive pleasure in lamentation, but they may satisfy a desire to weep.” It is difficult to see what distinguishes a “positive pleasure” from the satisfaction of a desire –​the commentators seem to be denying biological restoration the status of pleasure in order to evade paradox, but such a position becomes untenable in the face of other forms of biological restorations that are clearly pleasures, such as the satisfaction of hunger. 47 On the relationship between these two verbs, see Latacz (1966) 180–​4. 44

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reminds us through the iterative nature of his mourning that laments have merely a palliative effect. They are no cure. Much like other biological desires whose satisfaction must be continuously renewed (such as eating, drinking, and sleeping), the desire to grieve can never be finally satisfied, as long as the object of grief is irrecoverable (as it almost always is). In contrast to bodily necessities, however, our preservation does not depend on our satisfaction of the impulse to mourn, and heeding this impulse often has the counterproductive effect of compounding rather than satisfying it (making the desire to grieve once again akin to sexual desire).48 Our psychic preservation in such instances requires emotional restraint or abstinence rather than indulgence, and it is this consideration that leads Homeric society (indeed, any society) to impose what are ultimately arbitrary limits on mourning. Grief, it would seem, has no natural limits, and heeding its dictates can result in a form of emotional incontinence, as we will see when we turn to the Iliad’s most poignant and psychologically astute portrayal of grief:  that of Achilles over Patroclus. Before we do, however, we must analyze the phenomenology of anger as it appears in the poem, since it bears an inextricable relationship to grief. 2.1.3  Anger and Anguish: The Aggrieved State in the Iliad “There is nothing more unjust than anger,” says Theognis, “which harms the one who feels it, /​gratifying all that is base in his heart [θυμῶι δειλὰ χαριζομένη]” (1223–​4).49 Achilles’ mênis is not only destructive, as the In a similar vein, a growing body of empirical research in psychology suggests that the outward expression of grief exacerbates rather than mitigates the suffering of the bereaved, and this view of grieving as maladaptive has challenged the reigning cathartic model of “grief work” derived from psychoanalytic theory, according to which venting grief is considered essential for its resolution, while suppression of grief leads to a pathological condition; see Archer (1999) 119–​25 for a reassessment of the concept of grief work and a survey of recent evidence. 49 The word Theognis uses for anger  –​orgê  –​does not appear in Homer but becomes a standard term for anger (along with θύμος) in classical Greek; see Aristotle’s canonical discussion of the emotion cited earlier (Rh.1378a–​1380a; n26 to this chapter). In the discussion that follows I focus on Homeric terminology for anger, though without as much concern for the subtle differences in meaning among anger terms as for the overall effect of anger states on the individual that emerges from the range of Homeric expressions. For a more technical treatment of anger terminology in the Iliad that engages contemporary psychological studies of the emotions, see Cairns (2004) 11–​49. The relevant terms are: cholos (mainly occurrent), kotos (mainly long-​term and dispositional), and mênis (similar to χόλος but of greater intensity); other terms that are not unique to anger but often occur in the context of anger are menos (elemental force, vitality), thumos (general psychic force and seat of the affects), and achos (mental distress that refers to grief as well as anger). Likewise, in the case of grief, whose terminology overlaps with that of anger, I am concerned with the general effect of grieving and aggrieved states on the individual rather than with differentiating individual terms. 48

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second line of the Iliad emphatically asserts,50 but self-​destructive, and for this reason tragic. One of the greatest ironies in the experience of anger is that the aggrieved party usually exacerbates his or her pain in the attempt to alleviate it, and often cannot retaliate without suffering the very harm (or comparable harm) he or she seeks to inflict.51 An extreme case of such self-​defeating revenge is that of Medea, who must bereave herself of her own children in order to bereave her enemy –​in this case, her estranged husband  –​of his. So Achilles cannot harm Agamemnon (by withholding his military aid) without harming himself (first by denying himself the glory and rewards of military exploits, then by denying his closest friend protection in battle), though he hopes in vain that their roles will be simply reversed: “You will tear your heart within you /​in anger [ἔνδοθι θυμὸν ἀμύξεις χωόμενος] that you in no way honored the best of the Achaeans” (Il. 1.243–​4). Though Agamemnon will indeed regret his actions, as Achilles predicts, his heartache will pale in comparison to Achilles’ after the death of Patroclus. It is Achilles, moreover, who will spend the majority of the poem in impotent rage, eating his own heart out in bitter isolation, far from the arena where honor is won (1.488–​92; 4.509–​13; 18.444-​6): He raged [μήνιε] as he sat beside his swift-​faring ships, the godborn son of Peleus, swift-​footed Achilles. Never did he go to the assembly that brings renown, never to war, but wasted away his dear heart [φθινύθεσκε φίλον κῆρ] in waiting there, though he longed for the war cry and the battle. Rouse yourselves, horse-​taming Trojans … Achilles is not fighting, the son of fair-​haired Thetis, but among the ships he stews his heartaching anger [χόλον θυμαλγέα πέσσει]. The girl whom the sons of the Achaeans chose as a prize for [Achilles], the lord Agamemnon has taken away again out of his hands. For her has he been grieving [ἀχέων], wasting away his heart [φρένας ἔφθιεν]. Oulomenên is emphasized through enjambment and its symmetrical position as first word of the second line to that of mênis in the first line: μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος /​ οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί’ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκε (Il. 1.1–​2); the middle-​passive form can be attributed to the abusive force of the adjective (often translated as “accursed” to capture the implicit condemnation of its modified object), discussed in Most (2003) 50n1. 51 As Seneca puts it in de Ira, “… [anger] cares nothing for itself provided it can harm the other: it throws itself upon every weapon raised against it, hungry for a vengeance that will bring down the avenger too” (1.1.1). The self-​destructive nature of anger is central to Seneca’s stoic critique of emotion throughout the treatise (cf. 1.11.8; 3.1.5, 3.2; 3.4.4, 5.6). Aristotle likewise observes that anger makes people “reckless [ἀφειδῶς] of themselves,” citing Heraclitus on the difficulty of combating anger “because it barters with the soul” (Pol. 1315a29–​31). 50

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Note how anger slides into grief in the final example, where Achilles’ sorrow over the loss of Briseis is inextricably linked to his anger at Agamemnon and the self-​imposed exile that enacts his revenge. The two emotions are also elided right after her removal, when Achilles becomes “angry in his heart [χωόμενον κατὰ θυμὸν] over the well-​girdled woman, whom they were taking away by force against his will” (1.429), and again when the poet recounts the cause of Achilles’ withdrawal, describing the hero as both “angered” (χωόμενος) and “grieving” (ἀχέων) over the loss of Briseis (2.688–​94). Achilles’ wrath is directed at the one who has robbed him of a token of honor, but that token is itself a beloved object, whose loss is acutely lamented as a genuine bereavement.52 Anger and grief, then, are often responses to the same stimulus and collectively comprise one and the same affective experience, while differing importantly in their objects.53 Retaliation, however painful (Achilles “longs for war” as he will long for Patroclus [19.321]), irresistibly attracts the victim and contracts his world to accommodate its objectives alone. We can see from the preceding examples that both anger and grief are quite literally conceived as consuming emotions that can diminish a person’s heart, mind, and spirit (all seats of emotion conveyed with minor differences by Homeric κῆρ, κραδίη, ἦτορ, στῆθος, φρένες, and θύμος),54 be they portrayed as parasites feeding on their host (“wasting the heart”), or as insubstantial forms of subsistence that take the place of real nourishment and productive activity (“stewing anger”). Strife or eris –​in which anger and grief are often entangled –​is conventionally described as “heart-​ consuming” (θυμοβόρος) and those who are miserable and alienated by their misery are described as “eating [their] heart out” [θυμὸν κατέδων].55 The aggrieved hero does not feast and fight with the rest of his community, I do not regard Achilles’ counterfactual wish that Briseis had been killed the day he captured her (Il. 19.59–​62) as a serious diminishment of her importance to him, only as an expression of his desire to undo the course of events that led to the death of one even dearer to him (Patroclus). 53 See Most (2003) 56–​7, 61–​2 for a comparable account of the relationship between Homeric pity and anger. 54 On “systems” of psychological entities in Homer that consist of virtual synonyms, see Clarke (1999) 31n72 and 63–​4. 55 Eris is thumoboros in Il. 7.210, 301; 16.476; 19.58; 20.253. Bellerophon is a paradigmatically alienated figure, whose enigmatic story ends with his exile from human society for unknown reasons: “But when he incurred the hatred /​of all the gods, he wandered alone along /​the Wanderer’s Plain, eating his heart out [θυμὸν κατέδων], /​shunning the trodden track of men” (6.200–​2). Achilles compares himself to such an outcast for being mistreated by Agamemnon, and ironically fulfills the terms himself by withdrawing from the military community: “My heart swells with anger /​when I recall this, how the son of Atreus has degraded me /​among the Argives, as though I were some refugee [μετανάστην] with no rights” (9.646–​8). On the “metanastic” status of Achilles, see Arieti (1986) and Hammer (1997). 52

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but fasts and retreats, passively “stewing” over the painful emotion in isolation –​mulling it over, bringing it to maturation, cooking it, digesting it, nursing it (all meanings of the verb πέσσω) –​with a singular focus that demands all of his physical and psychological resources.56 Clinical psychologists refer to this debilitating preoccupation with the source of injury as “rumination,” a term with particularly apt digestive connotations.57 Rumination refers to an unproductively circuitous thought process that dwells obsessively on a given problem without progressing toward a healing solution and eventual recovery.58 This circular and repetitive thinking leads the victim to neglect any activity (especially tending to bodily needs) that would redirect attention away from the painful emotion, even though such redirection would, at least temporarily, mitigate it. The ruminative response to injury is thus paradoxical as well as unproductive because it seeks to relive rather than relieve the painful event and to rehearse the circumstances of the calamity rather than finding ways to progress beyond it. It is Achilles’ response to Agamemnon’s insult, and to Patroclus’ death as well.59 The appeal of reliving a traumatic event is a paradox psychologists rarely address and have failed to resolve.60 Rumination is typically regarded as a This is how Meleager, Achilles’ double in Phoenix’ cautionary tale (Il. 9.529–​99), as well Achilles himself experience anger. I disagree with Redfield’s interpretation of pessô as a process of consumption that eliminates anger: “In the course of time the body will consume the cholos and the man will be calm again … By book sixteen –​the following day in the narrative but a long time later in the life of the poem –​Achilles’ cholos is gone; it has been ‘digested’ ” (Redfield [1994] 14, 17). Achilles’ anger is far from gone by book 16, and it will only be redirected once he is officially reconciled with Agamemnon. Redfield interprets pessô this way because of its lexical proximity to the compound verb katapessô, which does designate the process of eliminative consumption and is used to refer to the temporary control of anger in Il. 1.80–​3 (though even this case is debatable, since anger is only restrained and continues to stew until revenge can be exacted). Clarke (1999) 93n84 offers a more accurate survey of the semantic range of pesso and its compounds in Homer based on the idea of “ripening.” 57 Rumination also refers to the ruminant’s regurgitant process of digestion, known more colloquially as “chewing the cud.” Nolen-​Hoeksema exploits the pun in her article “Chewing the Cud and Other Ruminations” (1996), where she appeals to this form of digestion to illuminate the psychological concept of rumination (136). 58 See Nolen-​Hoeksema (1996) 135–​44. 59 Achilles’ ruminative thinking is particularly clear in his speeches to the embassy, where his repeated return to the subject of Agamemnon’s insult has the effect of refreshing his anger (9.344–​5, 367–​9, 375–​7, 646–​8); cf. Redfield (1994) 7: “He leaves each topic only to return to it, as though his mind were prowling within the closed circle of his rage.” The ruminative nature of Achilles’ grief over Patroclus’ death will be discussed in greater detail later here. 60 The recurring traumatic dreams of war veterans was one of the self-​destructive scenarios that led Freud to develop his controversial notion of a death drive in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, but the idea continues to meet with much resistance; for a recent critique, see Lear (2005), who develops an alternative notion of “break” as a defensive strategy that the mind uses to disrupt its own 56

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pathological response to injury,61 but given the frequency of its occurrence it is likely to be an innate emotional tendency that promises to reveal the psychological foundation of our attraction to painful aesthetic representations as well as to actual traumas and their recollection. The fact of rumination raises the central question of this study with respect to life rather than art: What satisfaction does a victim gain from dwelling on memories of an injury (a process that reinvigorates the pain)? Both Aristotle and Freud recognized that, in the case of bereavement, survivors are often comforted by thoughts of the deceased because of the illusion of their presence.62 But when the content of a survivor’s thoughts focuses on the particular circumstances of his or her loss and not on happy memories of a time prior to the loss –​that is, when he or she ruminates rather than reminisces –​how can the desire to recall such memories and the pleasure of their recollection be explained?63 Likewise in the case of anger, Aristotle recognized the pleasure of anticipating revenge64 but failed to acknowledge (much less explain) the pleasure of reviewing the provocation itself, a process that can only exacerbate the pain of the initial injury. Exploring Homeric depictions of this self-​destructive response to emotional trauma may help us locate the source of its appeal. We have seen that grieving fulfills a felt physical need to discharge the organic matter of sorrow and provides temporary relief in doing so. Anger is likewise biologically figured as (among other things) a “thirst” for revenge that is slaked by retributive action. In addition to offering the satisfaction of restoration, both emotions are also conceived by Homeric poetry as parasitical: grief and anger are foreign entities that attack from within and eclipse the victim’s other desires by fueling their own. And what the emotions truly desire, beyond their particular objectives (which are usually unattainable, or else endlessly recurrent), is to subsist at any cost, and they succeed in this because their subsistence offers the victim a new orientation in their imperfect world and a heightened self-​perception that becomes functioning when overwhelmed. Neither account, however, seems to recognize the possibility of self-​destructive forms of pleasure, which is the phenomenon under consideration here. 61 Dysphoric and depressive subjects are thought to be more prone to rumination than average subjects (Lyubomirsky and Nolen-​ Hoeksema [1993]; Nolen-​Hoeksema [1996] 139–​42; Archer [1999] 133). 62 Arist. Rh. 1370b22–​8; Freud (1957) 244–​5. 63 Munteanu (2011) 117–​31 offers the most extensive discussion to date connecting Aristotle’s discussion of the pleasures of mourning to the pleasure of tragic poetry, but in the end she fails to explain the discontinuity between the pleasurable content of a mourner’s recollections and the painful content of tragic mimesis, leaving the tragic paradox unresolved. 64 Arist. Rh. 1370b28–​31.

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preferable to their previously mundane, non-​traumatized state. It is in the grip of his smoldering rage that Achilles can recognize and articulate the contradictions inherent to the heroic code,65 as well as win glory by it, and it is in the throes of grief that he becomes acutely aware of his own irrevocable destiny, and can finally embrace it.66 It may be this revitalized sense of self made possible by extreme emotional trauma that justifies the desire to maintain and protract one’s pain. The heightened self-​perception that attends extreme emotion states should not be confused with self-​ knowledge or revelation, however, but should be understood to be a narrowing as well as a sharpening of focus (to be, in other words, a form of intensity), in keeping with the partiality of the emotion’s objective; the periphery that would be included in the purview of a rational assessment of one’s overall good fades in such moments, which is why a rationalist like Plato, as we will see in the following chapter, subjects even adaptive experiences of emotion (such as genuinely righteous anger, or philosophical erôs) to the authority of reason.67 While anger and grief tend to drain their patient with a cathectic concentration on pain and to disable him through a paralyzing obsession with his internal state, they can also energize him with the drive to retaliate and enable him to act with newfound purpose. These emotions are thus often depicted as an augmentation of the hero, filling him up with something that must be discharged rather than diminishing him or metaphorically starving him.68 Achilles’ heart “swells with rage” at the slightest reminder Achilles’ impassioned speech to the embassy has been interpreted along these lines by Parry in his classic and influential essay, “The Language of Achilles” (1956) 5–​7, though see Gill (1996) 124–​48 for a compelling critique of the view that Achilles adopts the stance of a social outsider who rejects his society’s ethical values. Gill is right to insist that Achilles’ speech manifests a commitment to the very ethical values it interrogates, but he downplays the force of the challenge it poses to a system of values that is vulnerable to the abuse of the likes of Agamemnon, whom Achilles and other characters repeatedly criticize for being unworthy of his office (e.g., Achilles: Il. 1.148–​71, 223–​44; Thersites: 2.225–​42; Diomedes: 9.29–​49; Nestor: 9.108–​13; Odysseus: 14.82–​102). 66 Upon hearing the news of Patroclus’ death, Achilles recognizes the course of his inexorable fate: “I must die soon, since I  was not to defend my friend when he was killed … Now I  will go and overtake that killer of a dear life, Hector. Then I will accept my own death, whenever Zeus and the other immortals wish to accomplish it” (Il. 18.98–​99, 114–​16). On Achilles’ willing embrace of death, and his consequent alienation from human society, see Clarke (1995) 153–​5. 67 On Achilles’ ability to see situations clearly but only partially, see Redfield (1994) 13, 17, 27–​8. Gill’s instistence on the rationality of Achilles’ anger does not differentiate between intelligibility and rationality ([1996] 203–​4); Achilles’ anger is indeed justified –​and to that extent reasonable –​but his concession to and prioritization of the demands of his anger jeopardize other goods (namely the friendship and life of Patroclus) that are ultimately revealed to be more important to him, and more constituitive of his happiness. 68 Seneca exploits this particular conception of anger in his critique: “Nor should we even suppose that anger adds something to greatness of spirit. For that’s not greatness (magnitudo); it’s a swelling 65

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of Agamemnon’s insult (οἰδάνεται … χόλῳ, 9.646–​8), foiling all attempts to placate him or amend the quarrel by renewing the pain of the initial injury; his proverbial counterpart Meleager experiences a similar sort of anger, “which wells up [οἰδάνει] in the breasts of others, though their minds are careful” (9.553–​6), and prevents him from accepting the ransom of reconciliation. What does this formulation of anger contribute to its phenomenology? Like spirit (μένος) and courage (θάρσος), which gods breathe into fighting warriors to renew and enhance their strength,69 anger fills the agent with an energetic hostility that inspires him to attack the perceived source of his pain. The problem with Achilles and Meleager is that attacking is tantamount to a deliberate passivity, and once it is active (in Achilles’ case at least), it fails to eradicate the source of pain. As Agamemnon’s subordinate, Achilles can only express his anger at the Greek commander-​in-​chief passively through withdrawal, but his anger at an enemy combatant for slaying his closest companion launches the languishing hero back into the sphere of action.70 Achilles’ new rage is fueled by a more profound grief than that over his slighted honor and captured concubine, a grief that finds, moreover, an active outlet denied him in his quarrel with Agamemnon:  unmediated, murderous revenge. Achilles will return to battle to kill Patroclus’ killer and fulfill his epic destiny; the death of Hector will wrack Priam with a grief that moves him, with a god’s aid, to brave the enemy camp and retrieve his son’s body. The goal in either case is, however, illusory, because no act of vengeance or mourning can fully repair the harm. Achilles comes to regret his vindictive withdrawal from battle for making him “a useless burden on the earth” (ἐτώσιον ἄχθος ἀρούρης, 18.104), a deadweight that failed to defend his friends in need. Though he’s able to avenge Patroclus, he finds no solace in killing Hector, no matter how many times he drags the body around his friend’s tomb (it does him “no good,” as Apollo puts it, 24.52), because Patroclus remains irrevocably dead. Achilles’ hardened response to Priam’s grief expresses his grim realization of the futility of mourning (and anger, as his compassionate reception of the enemy demonstrates): “For no profit [πρῆξις] comes from chill lament … you will gain nothing (tumor), just as when bodies are stretched taught by an abundance of unhealthy fluid. The disease is not an example of growth, but of destructive excess” (de Ira 1.20.1). 69 E.g., Il. 5.2; 10.482; 15.60, 212; 17.570; 19.159; 20.110; 21.544. See Redfield (1994) 171–​4 for a biological account of divinely inspired menos in the Iliad and Clarke (1995) 148–​52 for an account of menos that links it to mania and self-​destructive recklessness in the poem. 70 There are, then, two “wraths” of Achilles, as others have noted (e.g., Lossau [1979] 125; Most [2003] 50–​1): his wrath at Agamemnon, and his wrath at Hector.

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[οὐ … τι πρήξεις] from grieving for your noble son –​you will never bring him back” (24.524–​51). Though Theognis would have us believe that “a man’s heart diminishes [μινύθει] when he has suffered a great calamity … but increases [αὔξεται] after he gets revenge” (361–​2), most typical cases of grief and anger prove the latter part of this neat formulation far too optimistic. Revenge is at best insufficient, at worst self-​defeating. No amount of mourning can bring back the deceased, no act of retribution can undo the initial injury. The illusion of perfect compensation nonetheless makes action possible, saving the aggrieved person from despair by directing his energy toward a goal, however unattainable, that promises to repair the harm done to him.71 Just as Homeric grief desires the biological satisfaction of lamentation, Homeric anger desires revenge as an appetitive need  –​a thirst or a hunger.72 Ares, the divine personification of battle fury, must be “sated with blood” (αἵματος ἆσαι Ἄρηα, Il. 20.78). Sometimes merely imagining eventual fulfillment, as when a starving man anticipates his next meal, gives the victim a great deal of pleasure.73 Anger hungers for blood and flesh rather than water and food, which are typically rejected by the aggrieved and bereaved in favor of this more gruesome sustenance. When Agamemnon insists on throwing a feast to celebrate his reconciliation with Achilles –​a reconciliation grudgingly conceded by Achilles only to facilitate his revenge against another  –​the grief-​stricken hero responds incredulously (19.199–​214): Son of Atreus, most lordly king of men, Agamemnon, you should make these preparations at some other time, when there is some pause in the fighting, and there is not so much fury inside my chest [μένος … ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν ἐμοῖσι]. But now, as things stand, those men lie torn asunder whom he has beaten down, Hector the son of Priam, while Zeus was giving him glory.

Of course, temporary relief is always a possibility; after killing a Trojan in the fight over Patroclus’ corpse, one Greek hero asserts: “Now I have relieved my heart of sorrow [κῆρ ἄχεος μεθέηκα] for the son of Menoitius, though the man I killed is inferior” (Il. 17.538–​9). In a similar vein the Trojan Euphorus, whose brother Menelaus had killed, imagines that delivering the body of Menelaus to his brother’s wife and parents would be a source of comfort to them (Il.17.34–​42). 72 See Neal (2006) on the appetite for blood in the Iliad. On the English conceptualization of emotional desires as hungers, see Kövecses (2000) 45. 73 A point made by Aristotle (Rh. 1378b1–​9), but with the needless provision that fulfillment be possible for anticipation to be pleasurable. Seneca rightly notes that “people desire even things they cannot achieve” (de Ira 1.3.2). 71

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Emotional Satisfaction in Archaic Poetry And yet you urge me to eat [ἐς βρωτὺν ὀτρύνετον]. But I for one would now urge the sons of the Achaeans to fight starving and unfed [νήστιας ἀκμήνους], and once the sun has set to prepare a great dinner, when we have paid the price of this outrage. But before this, for me at least, let no drink or food go down my own throat, since my friend is dead and lies in my shelter torn up by sharp bronze, turned against the forecourt while my companions around him weep. [Food and drink] mean nothing to my heart, but slaughter does [φόνος], and blood [αἷμα],      and the grievous groans of men [ἀργαλέος στόνος ἀνδρῶν].

There are many reasons one can give for Achilles’ determination to fast, a determination so strong that eventually the gods themselves must surreptitiously nourish him to stave off starvation (19.342–​8). Fasting is a ubiquitous mourning custom, a ritual that serves, along with the practice of self-​defilement and self-​mutilation, a clear social purpose: “In mourning, people hurt themselves in order to prove that they are in the grip of suffering.”74 Fasting is thus part of the self-​abnegating display that communicates a mourner’s internal anguish to the rest of his or her community. To this extent, fasting is a matter of convention. But to reduce mourning customs such as this to convention simply, with no emotional and subjective authenticity (as Emile Durkheim and other anthropologists of religion would have it),75 would be to drastically diminish the psychological trauma of bereavement as well as deny whole categories of people (foreign, primitive) psychological depth. Such customs are likely to be anchored in an emotional reality, and in prototypical cases reflect and objectify a mourner’s internal state. Under the special circumstances of war, Achilles is, in fact, the only one who fasts, and to this extent he shirks custom and responds spontaneously Durkheim (1995) 400; cf. Lambert (2003) 479. With regard to the funerary customs of Australian tribes (which are strikingly similar to those of the Greeks), Durkheim (1995) 400–​1 writes: “Mourning is not the spontaneous expression of individual emotions. If the relatives cry, lament, and beat themselves black and blue, the reason is not that they feel personally affected by their kinsman. In particular cases, to be sure, the sadness expressed may happen to be truly felt. But generally there is no relationship between the feelings felt and the actions done by those who take part in the rite … Mourning is not the natural response of a private sensibility hurt by a cruel loss. One laments not simply because one is sad but because one is obligated to lament. It is a ritual façade that must be adopted out of respect for custom, but one that is largely independent of the individuals’ emotional states.” Burkert (1985) 79 maintains the same position with respect to the Greek custom of self-​defilement in mourning: “not spontaneous reaction, but action prescribed.”

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and subjectively to his friend’s death.76 What, then, are other possible explanations for his fast? Fasting mimics death, thereby closing the distance between the deceased and the survivor while also atoning for the survivor’s guilt in making him suffer something akin to the deceased’s fate. Achilles sees himself as “paying the price” for the outrage of Patroclus’ murder by denying himself sustenance for an extended period of time; just as Patroclus’ body lies mangled and wasting in his forecourt, so Achilles will waste his own body in the dining hall as reparation. He remembers how Patroclus used to prepare his meal, how his friend stood by him during his withdrawal and tended to his needs: “Now you lie here before me, and my heart goes starved [ἄκμηνον] for meat and drink, though they are near, because of longing for you” (19.320–​1). Fasting, then, attempts to communicate one’s sorrow to the departed as well as to the living community. These accounts remain focused, however, on the social aspects of mourning. Fasting also allows the mourner to mourn without distraction, and this private, asocial explanation rarely makes its way to anthropological studies, but nonetheless pertains most of all, I  would argue, to the pathology of anger and grief. Achilles takes no joy in the feast not (or not only) because it would be improper for him to do so while Patroclus lies unburied, but because feasting threatens to diminish his emotional experience of the loss of Patroclus.77 Achilles’ grief has filled him with strength and rage (μένος) that now orient his every action, a force that eating threatens to extinguish. He will need this force to avenge his friend and “feed” the anger and grief that now consume him. Thus Achilles presently sustains himself on the painful emotions that in turn “feed” on him by co-​opting all of his desires and directing them at substitute nourishment: blood and gore.78 Agamemnon, Odysseus, and the other Greek commanders repeatedly attempt to break Achilles’ fast, to no avail (Il. 19.154–​237, 303–​8). On the social isolation signified by Achilles’ abstention from the feast, see Neal (2006) 32. 77 Plutarch, in a touching consolation to his wife over the death of their baby daughter, notes that prolonged mourning “leads to neglect of the body and an aversion to ointment, the bath, and the business of daily life. But the soul in its suffering should, on the contrary, derive support from a vigorous body. For the pain loses much of its keenness and intensity when, like a gentle wave, it disperses through the calm sea of the body; whereas if the body is allowed to become squalid and unkempt from a base way of life, sending up nothing beneficial or wholesome to the soul, but only labors and pains like acrid and offensive exhalations, it is no longer easy even for those who wish it to recover. Such are the sufferings that take possession of a soul so abused.” (Mor. 610a–​b). 78 As Pucci (1998) 104–​5 observes, “a different gruesome sort of nurture satiates [Achilles’] heart –​the blood of his enemy.” 76

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The cannibalism implicit in this affective logic will be fully articulated when Achilles finally exacts his revenge, yet tragically fails to find satisfaction. As we have seen, the thirst for vengeance and the demand for satisfaction can never truly be slaked or met, yet they compel one all the same to act urgently as if they could. The hopeless insatiability of anger and grief can explain a number of shockingly cannibalistic fantasies articulated by the angry and bereaved figure in archaic poetry. The moment Achilles slays Hector he immediately recognizes the limitations of revenge, and he expresses his frustration to his dying enemy by threatening to literally consume him: “I wish that somehow might and fury [μένος καὶ θυμός] would drive me /​to hack up your flesh and eat it raw [ὤμ’ ἀποταμνόμενον κρέα ἔδμεναι], such things have you done” (22.346–​7). Killing Hector is not enough to glut Achilles’ rage, which seeks satisfaction in more perverse forms of punishment that more closely approximate biological consumption –​eating him, then, might be.79 Achilles’ emotional indulgence leads him to the brink of inhumanity; he risks devolving into a beast that devours its prey raw.80 Hecuba calls him a “raw-​meat eater” for savagely desecrating her son’s body (ὠμηστής, 24.207), while expressing, in ironically similar terms, the same cannibalistic impulse: “If only I could sink my teeth into his liver and eat it! Then might my child be avenged” (24.212–​14); eating her son’s murderer is the only imaginable form of satisfaction, an infliction most commensurate with her loss and most fulfilling of her physically felt need for revenge. The angered gods express similarly macabre desires: Hera’s wrath will not be assuaged until she “devours raw” every last Trojan (4.34–​6). Theognis’ vampiric response to his robbers succinctly captures this sentiment:  “May I  drink their dark blood!” (349). What are we to make of such barbaric fantasies? They are metonymic extensions of the biological conception of the desire for revenge: the victim’s “hunger” for retribution transforms the culprit into an object of consumption. They are also consonant with the consumptive expressions for emotional pain we have encountered so far, and capture the insatiability of the desires fueled by anger and grief, self-​destructive emotions that lead us to reject wholesome and productive living in pursuit of impossibly elusive nourishment. On the singularity of Achilles’ cannibalistic expression of bloodlust among heroes, see Neals (2006) 32–​3. 80 It is clear that Achilles momentarily identifies with such beasts when he ends his cannibalistic threat by resolving to leave Hector’s body to the “dogs and birds” instead, through which he can vicariously fulfill his desire. See Redfield (1994) 199 on the idea of “vicarious cannibalism” in the poem. 79

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Since anger and grief generate goal-​directed desires whose fulfillment is ultimately impossible, they can both orient action and disorient completely, depending on whether the emotion’s desires or their futility are salient to the victim. Achilles’ emotional pain does not abate after avenging Patroclus, but continues to consume him. Once Hector is slain and Patroclus ritually mourned, Achilles finds himself still trapped in the painful state of longing from which revenge and mourning had (falsely) promised relief, still subject to the desires of his emotions, but without any remaining hope of fulfilling them (24.1–​22). The games broke up, and the people, each to his swift ship, scattered to leave. They thought of dinner and the pleasure of sweet sleep; only Achilles remained weeping [κλαῖε] as he remembered his dear friend, nor did sleep, who subdues all, take hold of him, but he tossed back and forth in longing for Patroclus, for his manhood and his great strength, and all the works he had accomplished with him, and the hardships they endured: the wars of men, hard trials by sea. Remembering all these things, he shed swollen tears [θαλερὸν κατὰ δάκρυον εἶβεν], lying sometimes on his side, sometimes on his back, and now again prone on his face. Then standing up he would pace, listless, along the seashore, nor did he miss the dawn shining across the sea and the beach. Then he would yoke his swift horses under the chariot and fasten Hector behind the chariot to drag him, and after dragging him three times around the tomb of Menoitios’ fallen son, he would rest again in his shelter, and leave the dead man sprawled face down in the dust. But Apollo protected the body from every defilement, in pity for the man, though he was dead, and concealed it completely with the golden aegis, so that Achilles couldn’t tear it as he dragged it about. So Achilles in his fury [μενεαίνων] outraged godlike Hector.

This touching and pathetic scene, strikingly modern among Homeric scenes for its psychological realism and interior perspective, provides a glimpse into Achilles’ subjective suffering.81 He cannot sleep, his thoughts keep returning to the friend he lost and their times together, and these memories renew his grief as well as his rage, leading him to reenact his revenge despite its previous failure to provide respite and satisfaction. The This scene is specifically targeted for censorship in Plato’s Republic because of its sympathetic portrayal of grief (388a).

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purposeful trajectory of anger now gives way to a desperate and aimless expenditure of energy that does not ultimately dissipate the emotion, but merely expresses it in cyclical, iterative fashion: the imperfects, optatives, and iterative verb forms, coupled with Achilles’ circular routine, convey a looped dimension to his grief.82 Achilles’ useless attempt to disfigure Hector’s divinely preserved corpse by repeatedly dragging it around Patroclus’ tomb thus becomes emblematic of the futility of mourning and revenge, the circularity of anger and grief ’s affective logic, and the insatiability of their desires. Indulging them as Achilles continues to do is, in the end, an act of desperation. Achilles has kept Hector’s corpse as a therapeutic proxy for Hector himself, only the result is a pathological obsession rather than relief and healing progression. He has gone beyond the bounds of custom in prolonging his revenge and is chastised by the gods for “defiling the dumb earth” with the dead man’s body (24.54). Mourning of this intensity cannot be sustained, and cannot sustain the mourner. Achilles desires to dwell on his pain as long as possible –​indeed, his godlike stature has allowed him to exceed the other men in the intensity of his mourning and rage –​but he must, in the end, relent.83 Zeus commands his mother to intervene, and Achilles dutifully obeys. Achilles gives up the body and his rage, and is urged to break his fast and rejoin the world of the living. Thetis implores him (24.128–​32): My child, how long will you go on lamenting and sorrowing    [ὀδυρόμενος καὶ ἀχεύων], eating your heart out [σὴν ἔδεαι κραδίην], remembering neither your food nor going to bed? It is a good thing even to lie with a woman in love. For you will not be with me long, but already death and powerful destiny stand closely above you.

Eating his heart instead of food, as Odysseus does when his men are killed (Od. 9.75; 10.143, 379), has been both an ascetic form of atonement and a metaphorical exchange of one form of subsistence for another. The exchange was false, however, like trading gold for bronze. The painful emotions have become themselves objects of consumption that fail to nourish, and so must be “extinguished” by resuming the daily habits Achilles kept tossing and turning (ἐστρέφετ’ ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα), remembering (μεμνημένος [imperfective present participle]), weeping (κατὰ δάκρυον εἶβεν); repeatedly paced and wandered (δινεύεσκ’ ἀλύων); would periodically harness his chariot (ἐπεὶ ζεύξειεν), bind Hector (δησάσκετο) to drag him about the tomb, pause (παυέσκετο) and leave him in the dust (ἔασκεν). 83 Koziak (2000) puts this point nicely: “With his frenzy of revenge spent, but with its sputtering continuing even after Patroclus’ funeral, Achilles is impelled to achieve reconciliation” (59). 82

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of living. Once the victim ceases to indulge the emotion, he can satisfy his other, truer needs. “Even Niobe remembered to eat,” Achilles reminds Priam, who finally breaks his fast with the enemy (Il. 24.602). But Niobe importantly fails to resume life among the living, and remains instead petrified in her grief on a remote cliff, “stewing [πέσσει] the sorrow that the gods gave her” (24.617). The strange locution for what has become an inanimate object suggests that sorrows of a certain magnitude cannot be overcome, and do indeed consume us, despite our best efforts. Achilles, we are reminded, will only experience this temporary respite before dying in battle. He has already, as his mother recognizes, exchanged his life for his rage. As Charles Altieri says of Othello’s jealousy, “some ways of experiencing the world just might be worth dying for.”84 Perhaps the most revealing statement made about anger in the Iliad (which Aristotle cites in his discussion of ὀργή in the Rhetoric) is one Achilles, with characteristic eloquence, makes to his mother shortly after discovering the death of Patroclus.85 Recall that Patroclus was driven to fight in Achilles’ stead by the latter’s obstinate refusal to defend Agamemnon’s army. Realizing his own hand in Patroclus’ fate, Achilles curses the anger that indirectly brought his greatest misfortune to pass (18.107–​10): ὡς ἔρις ἔκ τε θεῶν ἔκ τ’ ἀνθρώπων ἀπόλοιτο καὶ χόλος, ὅς τ’ ἐφέηκε πολύφρονά περ χαλεπῆναι, ὅς τε πολὺ γλυκίων μέλιτος καταλειβομένοιο ἀνδρῶν ἐν στήθεσσιν ἀέξεται ἠΰτε καπνός· May strife perish from the ranks of gods and men! And anger, that drives a man to savagery, however sensible, and that, far sweeter than dripping honey, billows in the breasts of men like smoke.

In an innovative elaboration of conventional metaphors for anger, Achilles portrays the emotion as an addictive form of subsistence that is paradoxically insubstantial, as well as an invading force that dehumanizes its victim by literally clouding judgment. The sweet taste of honey expresses the pleasure of savoring or “stewing” the emotion, a refined variation on the Homeric conception of anger as an object of consumption. Anger’s sweetness conceals its lack of substance, the smoke that only seems to fill what Altieri (2003) 22. Recall Heraclitus’ observation, cited by Aristotle, that anger “barters with the soul” (see n51 to this chapter). On the distinct –​and distinctly poetic –​language of Achilles, see Friedrich and Redfield (1978) 263–​88; Griffin (1986) 50–​7; Martin (1989) 146–​230.

84 85

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it in fact diminishes, or “wastes”; such an image is another variation on the Homeric conception of anger as a state of self-​consumption.86 Finally, anger overtakes the victim’s agency and drives him to acts of savagery that are more characteristic of beasts and natural forces than human beings,87 acts that one would not condone in a sound state. The victim of anger is thus incapacitated by the emotion he nourishes, and this irony will figure in many subsequent critiques of anger. Achilles’ appeal to the sweetness of honey in his description of anger evokes the language of poetic pleasure in a surprisingly aversive context, and this evocation should alert us to the possibility that the pleasure of tragic poetry derives from its painful emotional content rather than its mimetic medium, that the “sweetness” of inhabiting tragic emotion states is itself the source of the sweetness of poetry that depicts them. We will return to this point in our analysis of Gorgias’ incipient literary theory, which traces the source of poetic pleasure to our “longing” (πόθος) for painful emotions. In light of this possibility, which potentially explains the persistent appeal of distinctly unpleasant poetic modes and genres, archaic poetry’s self-​conception must be reconsidered.

2.2  Emotion Transmission: Poetic Emotions in Pindar and Gorgias 2.2.1  Pindar on Emotional Incontinence Though archaic poetry often presents itself as conducive to sociality, one can judge from the mythic paradigms of the Sirens and the Golden Charmers, as well as the practice of markedly adversarial poetry, such as invective, that poetry’s allure persists in radically asocial contexts or contexts where social cohesion is being deliberately frustrated.88 Even in cases where poetry serves an evidently communal purpose, such as Pindar’s The Stoic Chrysippus will echo Achilles’ image of smoke in his description of anger as “rising in a vapor [ἀναθυμιωμένου] from the heart, being forced outward, and blowing upon the face and hands” (SVF 2.886). 87 Chalepainein, which means to be chalepos or “harsh,” is characteristic of the stormy north wind (Il. 14.399) and winter (Od. 5.485); Socrates uses it to describe dogs prone to senseless violence, foolishly attacking rocks that have been thrown at them (Pl. R. 469e). 88 See Section 1.1 in Chapter 1 on the asocial contexts of the Sirens and Golden Charmers. The sociality of invective seems to be more debatable; scholars typically present the genre as essentially socially productive, arguing that the poet creates an “in” group from which the target of blame is excluded, and reinforces social values by marginalizing those who threaten them (e.g., Nagy [1979] 243–​5; Brown [1997] 41–​2; Rosen [2007] 71, 111–​13; Carey [2009] 159), but as we shall see, ancient testimony focuses overwhelmingly on the aversive nature of invective poetry and the invective 86

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epinician odes,89 one can discover, as we have done in the previous chapter, the undeniably hedonistic value of poetic “sweetness” and its appeal to an appetite for private entertainment rather than communal solidarity. Perhaps it is this essential appetitive core to the experience of poetic pleasure that compels a more refined poet like Pindar to staunchly defend the purity of his poetic practice and distinguish himself from lesser poets. Poetry that simply caters to base desires falls into another category, one that Pindar regards as in some sense counterfeit.90 This is the poetry of invective, which, in expressing pernicious slander that fails to apportion praise and blame appropriately, undermines not only social cohesion but also the poet’s own moral authority by exposing his emotional incontinence (Pi. P. 2.52–​6):    ἐμὲ δὲ χρεών φεύγειν δάκος ἀδινὸν κακαγοριᾶν. εἶδον γὰρ ἑκὰς ἐὼν τὰ πόλλ’ ἐν ἀμαχανίᾳ ψογερὸν Ἀρχίλοχον βαρυλόγοις ἔχθεσιν πιαινόμενον·    But I must shun the sharp bite of slander. For I have seen, from a distance, the blamer Archilochus, many times in his helplessness, fattening himself on heavy words of hatred.

The delicate sweetness that Pindar takes great pains to maintain throughout his intricately wrought odes is counterproductively indulged by Archilochus, a blame poet repeatedly incapacitated by the hatred that generates his unregulated poetic speech (his hatred is βαρύλογος, “heavy-​ worded”).91 In allowing himself to be governed by aversive emotions and gratifying the impulse to slander, Archilochus self-​destructively “fattens” himself on his own poetic production.92 Pindar’s abject portrayal of the impotent blame poet is an epinician indictment of epic anger as well as poet’s own alienation (see Rankin [1977] 95 and Miralles and Pórtulas [1983] 11–​50 on the “outsider” status of the iambist, a view now fallen out of fashion). 89 See Kurke (1991) for a canonical discussion of epinician poetry’s performance context and the strategies by which it reintegrates the athletic victory into his community. 90 See most recently Payne (2010) 28–​30. 91 See Miller (1981) 140, Steiner (2001) 155–​6, and Morgan (2008) 43–​4 on the significance of amachania in this passage, as an indication of both the material and poetic resourcelessness that afflicts the calumnist. 92 The term piainô refers to the process of force-​feeding in animal husbandry, but its link to incapacitation seems to be a Pindaric innovation; see Payne (2010) 28–​30. On the connection between poetic and food consumption across Greek poetic genres, see Steiner (2002).

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iambic poetry, for Pindar’s Aricholochus is a parodic version of Achilles, whose appetitive addiction to an anger “sweeter than dripping honey” also rendered him useless, a “profitless burden on the earth” (Il. 18.104, 109). Moreover, the obesity that results from the iambist’s emotional gluttony deflates the Homeric image of anger as a magnification of the hero, while simultaneously inverting an alternative Homeric image of the effects of anger:  that of emaciation and self-​consumption. Although, as we have seen, even traditional Homeric metaphors for anger reveal it to be an overwhelmingly destructive force, and epic thus arguably contains an implicit critique of the emotion that governs its universe,93 heroic anger’s relation to military prowess and epic glory invariably ennobles it.94 Pindar’s parody, which focuses on angry speech rather than angry action, suppresses all that might redeem the emotion of anger. It is striking that Pindar insists on the adverse effects of slander on the speaker, who must evade its “sharp bite,” rather than the target, who is traditionally conceived as the victim of blame poetry.95 Here the blame poet harms no one but himself. His poetry merely exposes his lack of emotional control, and the spectacle of this poetic gluttony repulses his audience. For fear of contamination, the praise poet maintains a cautious distance that sets his verse apart. Archilochus’ emotional indulgence results in an exhibitionism that offends Pindar’s sense of decorum, which adheres to a poetics of approbation that would deny sympathy to improper expressions of passions.96 But what is disgusting to Pindar is, from another point of view, the source of Archilochus’ poetic power: for pseudo-​Longinus, This case is made by Harris (2001) 131–​56, who detects a didactic purpose behind archaic poetry’s negative portrayal of unrestrained rage, and interprets the Iliad as a social critique of anger. See Rabieh (2006) 112 for a similar point. 94 A point also made by Lossau (1992) 60. 95 The debate surrounding the force of dakos kakagoriân –​which may be active or passive depending on whether Archilochus is taken to be the subject or object of slander –​seems to miss the essential point of the passage, which is to present the slanderer as, ironically, a victim of his own poetic abuse (recognized by Brown [1996] 37 and Payne [2010] 28–​30); see Miller (1981) 137n8 for the details of the debate. 96 Approbation also plays a foundational role in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, which faults anger for tending towards an indecorous excess that must be mitigated to elicit sympathy and win approval: “The insolence and brutality of anger … when we indulge its fury without check or restraint, is, of all objects, the most detestable. But we admire that noble and generous resentment which governs its pursuit of the greatest injuries, not by the rage which they are apt to excite in the breast of the sufferer, but by the indignation which they naturally call forth in that of the impartial spectator; which allows no word, no gesture, to escape it beyond what this more equitable sentiment would dictate; which never, even in thought, attempts any greater vengeance, nor desires to inflict any greater punishment, than what every indifferent person would rejoice to see executed” (I.i.4.5 in Raphael and Macfie’s edition [Smith 1984]). 93

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“that torrent of divine spirit which is difficult to subordinate to the rule of law” is a mark of the poet’s sublimity (33.5); Quintilian, likewise, finds in him “the greatest force of expression” and “an abundance of vitality” that are the hallmarks of poetic genius (Inst. 10.1.60). Archilochus is frequently paired with Homer as one of the greatest poets of all time (Di Chr. 33.11–​12), and his emulators sought to assimilate the force of his invective merely by invoking his persona (Hor. Epod. 6.11–​14; Ov. Ibis 53–​4; Mart. 7.12.5–​8). Pindar’s charge of helplessness runs counter to the proverbial violence ascribed to Archilochus’ verses, which allegedly drove an entire family to suicide,97 and continued to inflict physical harm even after the poet’s death. One literary epithet ends with the injunction: “Traveler, pass by quietly, lest you stir the wasps that settle on his tomb” (AP 7.71), and another warns the guard dog of the underworld to beware of Archilochus’ vituperative shade (AP 7.69): Cerberus, whose terrible bark assails the shades, now even you must fear a terrifying shade: Archilochus is dead. Beware of the pungent wrath [θυμὸν … δριμύν] of his iambs, born of the bitter anger [πικροχόλου] of his tongue. You know the mighty force [μέγα σθένος] of his outbursts, since a single boat brought you the two daughters of Lycambes.

This is not the Pindaric picture of helpless abjection we witnessed earlier. Though traditionally regarded as a powerful weapon, Archilochus’ invective was also thought to be double-​edged and tragically self-​directed. His self-​exposure leads Critias to criticize him for failing to be “a good witness on his own behalf ” (Ael. VH 10.13) and may lie behind Ovid’s claim that the poet was ultimately destroyed by his own verse (Ibis 521–​524). Pindar is right, then, to detect something distinctly masochistic in the unrestrained expression of such emotions as anger, despite its potential to empower the poet and facilitate his verse. Archilochus’ gluttony for hatred, though self-​satisfying from an emotional and aesthetic point of view, is self-​destructive from a psychological and ethical point of view, and this impasse, which generated a marked ambivalence surrounding his poetry in ancient testimony,98 reveals a disjunction between poetic The tragic results of Archilochus’ invective campaign against Lycambes and his daughters are well documented (though not, unfortunately, by the poet’s own poetry, with the notable exception of fr.196a): see AP 7.69, 71, 351–​2; Eust. ad Hom. Od. 11.277; Hor. Epist. 1.19.23-​31, Epod. 6.11–​14 and schol. ad. loc.; Ov. Ibis 53–​4 and schol. C. ad. loc, 521–​4 and schol. ad. loc.; Mart. 7.12.5–​8. For a recent discussion of the feud and its relation to the extant fragments, see Brown (1997) 50–​9. 98 Ancient authors found it difficult to reconcile Archilochus’ canonical status and divine sanction (he was favored by the Pythia and honored in cult) with the disreputable subject matter of his poetry. 97

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pleasure and moral approbation that would seem to suggest the ultimate incommensurability of aesthetic and ethical values (an argument we will encounter in Altieri’s aesthetic theory). As we will see, Platonic philosophy denies this incommensurability by upholding the good of the whole human being, determined by the rational part of the soul, as the ultimate value to which conflicting values pursued by subrational drives must ultimately capitulate. The difficulty of harmonizing one’s soul with a view toward holistic flourishing lies precisely in the strength of our appetitive demands in cases where meeting them would compromise our overall happiness. If emotional pleasures are indeed irrational and ethically disinterested, then pursuing them unreflectively always risks self-​destruction. Yet ethical concerns are typically bracketed by poets who seek to gratify rather than edify their audiences, and the threat of this association seems to motivate Pindar’s condemnation of Archilochus. So far we have focused exclusively on the effects of anger on the angry individual. What of the spectator? How does the spectacle of the aggrieved hero and the blame poet affect their audiences? It is possible (as many have argued) that the emotion undergoes some kind of aesthetic transformation in the course of being poetically represented –​that art attenuates such emotions or enlists them in the service of some higher purpose that would justify the inclusion of such pernicious and debilitating states. This possibility is denied by Gorgias, however, who suggests a model of poetic engagement that is vicarious rather than objective or disinterested, a model that assumes the infectious nature of poetry’s pathological emotions. 2.2.2  Gorgias on Emotional Contagion The Encomium of Helen, a defense speech composed by the fifth-​century orator Gorgias, is an exercise in rhetorical virtuosity.99 In attempting to exculpate one of the most notorious figures in Greek mythological history  –​Helen of Troy  –​Gorgias manages to “construct a defence of the Some praise his poetic talent while condemning the illicit content of his poetry (Ael. fr.80; Quint. Inst. 10.1.60); another finds ways to defend his subject matter rather awkwardly by appealing to the righteousness of his indignation and the social utility of censure (Di Chr. 33.11–​12; Aristid. Or. 46); still others simply accept the sacrosanctity of “servants of the Muses” and give up attempts to justify Archilochus’ famed piety on other grounds (Gal. Protr. 9.22; Eus. PE 5.32.2–​33.9; Orig. Cels. 3.25). 99 The Encomium apparently belonged to a genre of rhetorical display pieces intended to advertise the skill of their authors to potential students; see MacDowell (2005) 10 and Cole (1991) 75–​6 for this generic reconstruction.

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indefensible.”100 Though avowedly playful and consciously overwrought,101 in the course of making Helen’s case, the Encomium develops ideas about language and poetry that have had a lasting impact on the history of literary criticism.102 Its longest and most conceptually elaborate argument is an account of the power of persuasion that puts forth an original substantive theory of language, one that explains the psychological effects of communication in physiological terms.103 Because pleasure and pain are the twin pillars of both physical and psychic experience, language can be understood to exert physical force in its ability to transform the soul’s state. Logos, that “powerful lord” whose “invisible body” penetrates one’s own (§8), acts as a double-​edged pharmakon:  either a benevolent physician curing a diseased soul, or a wicked sorcerer drugging it with evil and misleading persuasion (§14). The soul’s relation to language is, in either case, one of total enslavement,104 and this enslavement is understood to be physical as well as mental. There is, then, according to Gorgias, a coercive, disabling, and literally intoxicating force inherent to all forms of persuasion, of which poetry is but one (albeit particularly powerful) variety (§9):105 See MacDowell (2005) 16. Gorgias is not the first or the last to defend Helen (also noted by MacDowell [2005] 12); Priam absolves her in the Iliad (3.164–​5), and the lyric poet Steisichorus, who was supposedly struck blind after slandering Helen in a poem, recanted by composing a palinode that denied her presence at Troy, for which he later regained his sight (Pl. Phdr. 243a–​b; Isoc. 10). The tradition of Helen’s absence and detainment in Egypt is then rationalized by Herodotus (2.112–​20) and manipulated by Euripides (Hel.), who elsewhere, however (Tr. 860–​1059, Or. 71–​131), propagates her culpability; see Graziosi and Haubold (2009) 108–​9 for a brief discussion of Steisichorus’ legacy and relevant bibliography. Isocrates follows Gorgias in producing an encomium of his own (10), which praises Helen for her beauty and divinity. Our earliest depiction of Helen in Homer’s Iliad is also extraordinarily sympathetic, though she is acutely conscious of her shame (see esp. 6.342–​58). We can surmise from Homer’s exceptional decorum and from the recantatory tradition that developed, however, that Helen was typically regarded as culpable (see, for example, Alcaeus’ condemnation of Helen in frs. 42 and 283, and Sappho’s subversive praise of her in fr.16, which casts Helen’s willful adultery as commendable for its pursuit of beauty). She is at best an ambivalent figure; see Maguire (2009) 109–​41 for the most recent scholarly treatment of the ambivalence surrounding Helen’s culpability. 101 Gorgias famously deflates his argument by referring to it in the end as his “plaything” (παίγνιον, §21); see Ford (2002) 185–​6 for the scholarly debates surrounding this ludic close. On Gorgias’ artificial prose style, see MacDowell (2005) 18–​19 and Denniston (1952) 10–​12. 102 See Murray and Dorsch (2004) xxi–​xxii on Gorgias’ contribution to literary criticism. 103 Segal (1962) 115 notes that Gorgias “arrive[s]‌, without full consciousness or intent, at a kind of psychology of literature,” which, he suggests, anticipates Aristotle’s cathartic theory of tragedy (120, 132) (argued also by Murray and Dorsch [2004] xxi, though see Russell [1981] 23 and Janaway [1995] 42–​4 for a critique of this view). 104 It is worth noting that Gorgias seems to contradict this position when he suggests elsewhere that poetic illusion requires the voluntary consent of the audience; according to Plutarch, Gorgias claimed that in the deception (ἀπάτην) of tragedy, “the deceiver is more just than the non-​ deceiver, and the deceived wiser than the undeceived” (Mor. 348c; Gorg. fr. 23, DK). 105 Other forms of persuasion discussed by Gorgias include magical incantations, astronomy, rhetoric, and philosophy (§§8–​14). 100

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Emotional Satisfaction in Archaic Poetry τὴν ποίησιν ἅπασαν καὶ νομίζω καὶ ὀνομάζω λόγον ἔχοντα μέτρον· ἧς τοὺς ἀκούοντας εἰσῆλθε καὶ φρίκη περίφοβος καὶ ἔλεος πολύδακρυς καὶ πόθος φιλοπενθής, ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίων τε πραγμάτων καὶ σωμάτων εὐτυχίαις καὶ δυσπραγίαις ἴδιόν τι πάθημα διὰ τῶν λόγων ἔπαθεν ἡ ψυχή. I deem and define all poetry as speech with meter. Fearful shuddering and tearful pity and longing that loves grief come upon those who hear it, and through the agency of words the soul experiences a private feeling at the good and bad fortunes of other people’s affairs and bodies.

Though brief and tangential, Gorgias’ discussion of poetry within the context of linguistic power manages to break new ground in literary criticism. For the first time in prose reflections on Greek poetics, Gorgias acknowledges the paradoxical appeal of tragic experience, articulates the role of sympathetic identification in poetic pleasure, and identifies a strange convergence of emotional and physical states engendered by poetic involvement. The master logos not only manipulates our minds, but our bodies as well, by inducing emotional states with physical symptoms such as shuddering and weeping.106 The “private feeling” (ἴδιον … πάθημα) that poetry produces through pity and fear will be one of Arisotle’s premises in his Poetics.107 What distinguishes Gorgias’ compressed discussion here is the implicit generalization of these poetic effects to all linguistically mediated sympathy (and, later on in the speech, visually and imaginatively mediated sympathy as well), whereby we experience the emotional lives of others. Poetry is merely “logos with meter,”108 and in the previous sentence it is to logos itself that Gorgias ascribes the function of, among other things, “augmenting pity” (ἔλεον ἐπαυξῆσαι). The psychosomatic emotional engagement elicited by narrative is a sympathy effected “through words” in general and need not be limited to their poetic configuration.109 See Segal (1962) 104–​6 on the materialism of the psyche in Gorgias’ account. See Po. 1452b30–​3, where fearful and pitiable events are said to be the “peculiar feature” (ἴδιον) of tragic mimesis, and 1453b9–​13, where the pleasure “appropriate” (οἰκείαν) to tragedy is said to be “the pleasure which comes from pity and fear through mimesis.” Gorgias also anticipates Aristotle in discussing the effects of ekplêxis (“amazement,” “being struck”) on the imagination (§§16–​17; cf. Arist. Po. 1454a3–​4, 1455a15–​17, and 1460b23–​5). On the prefiguration of Aristotelian poetic theory in the Encomium to Helen, see, in addition to n103 to this chapter, Barnes (1979) 463–​6, Kennedy (1989) 84, and Munteanu 2011 (37). 108 See Murray and Dorsch (2004 [1965]) xxii on Gorgias’ implicit demotion of poetry in this phrase, and the following comments of Russell (1981) 23: “Logos in general must then be seen to have the same force [as poetry]. The special characteristics of poetry and its difference from prose have therefore to be minimized. If this is best done, as it would seem, by treating metron as an external ornament, not affecting the intrinsic qualities of the whole, then this is how we should conclude Gorgias wished his statement to be taken.” 109 Munteanu (2011) denies a meaningful distinction between fiction and reality in Gorgias’ account of the proper emotional response to the story of Helen (38), yet asserts that Gorgias presents poetry as a unique type of speech that produces a unique emotional and sympathetic response 106

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Finally, the emotions Gorgias mentions are all painful:  fearful shuddering, tearful pity, and –​a most provocative locution –​“longing that loves grief” (πόθος φιλοπενθής).110 The origins of this idea, which Socrates will powerfully restate in his case against poetry, go all the way back to the Homeric “longing for lamentation” (ἵμερος γόοιο) and the biological model of emotional pleasure it reflects.111 It is this longing that lies at the source of all sympathetic pleasures whose objects are themselves painful, and challenges modern assumptions of sympathy’s allegedly philanthropic origins by emphasizing the hedonistic attraction of sympathetic engagement.112 Gorgias’ expression pothos philopenthês thus fleetingly suggests a hedonistic conception of both sympathy and poetry that locates a desire for painful emotions rather than altruism or fellow-​feeling at the core of sympathetic pleasure, and presents such pleasure as both natural and –​what’s more –​inherently pathological. The pathology of sympathetic identification is apparent not only in the self-​destructive desire it satisfies, however, but also in the nature of its transmission, since it operates along the lines of an infectious disease. Gorgias anticipates Plato in presenting sympathy as a reflexive response to the emotions of others that occurs without the mediation of judgment or appraisal, but involuntarily and instinctually, its effects analogous to those of magic or contagion.113 One recent strain of psychological research develops a comparable account of sympathy in the concept of “emotional contagion,” defined as “the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person and, consequently, to converge emotionally.”114 Modern proponents of this theory argue that the unconscious process of emotional convergence plays a crucial role in facilitating social interactions that would be otherwise jeopardized by self-​consciousness.115 Their view (40–​2). Munteanu is at pains to account for the seemingly anomalous pairing of pity and fear as responses to poetry, whereas elsewhere in the Encomium they seem to be mutually exclusive emotions, but her attempt to ascribe to poetry a special status that Gorgias himself never asserts –​and, in fact, implicitly denies –​remains unconvincing. 110 As MacDowell (2005) 33 notes in his commentary, the adjective philopenthês occurs nowhere else before Plutarch, and may well be Gorgias’ coinage. 111 Places where this phrase occurs:  Il. 23.14, 108, 153; 24.507; Od. 4.113, 183; 10.398; 16.215; 19.249; 23.231. See Pohlenz (1920) 168, Segal (1962) 142n42, Paduano (2004) 64, and Halliwell (2011a) 88n103 on the Homeric origins of Gorgias’ expression. 112 Plato will make a similar critique of sympathy in the Republic, as we will see in the next chapter; see also Liebert (2013a). 113 See Plato’s portrayal of rhapsodes and their audiences in the Ion for the most explicit articulation of sympathetic contagion (535b–​536d). 114 Hatfield et. al. (1992) 153–​4 and (1993) 5. 115 Hatfield et. al. (1993) 1–​47 (esp. 5 and 37–​45), 203–​4.

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of emotional contagion is, then, adaptive, in contrast to what we find in Gorgias and Plato. A telling contrast to this contagious view of sympathy occurs in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. For Smith, sympathetic identification is an active and always vulnerable achievement that requires the cognitive efforts of both parties to sustain.116 “Sympathy,” he says, “does not arise so much from the view of the passion, as from that of the situation which excites it” (I.i.1.10). Smith presents both spectator and participant as consciously assuming the other’s perspective in an attempt to defend and extend their own. We determine the propriety or impropriety of another’s sentiments –​as well as the merit or demerit of the actions those sentiments motivate –​by measuring their correspondence to ours (i.e., by observing how much we sympathize); seeing our own passions reflected in the other affirms their moral defensibility, and this affirmation is, for Smith, the source of the spectator’s sympathetic pleasure and the ultimate appeal of what he calls “the correspondence of affection.”117 In the case of literary involvement, the exchange is obviously not reciprocal, but Smith would still maintain the morally oriented and self-​conscious nature of the spectator’s sympathy. For Gorgias, however, the goal of sympathy is to satisfy our longing for heightened emotional states rather than experiencing a shared moral affinity. Nor is sympathetic identification with another subject primarily a means of inhabiting an alternative subjectivity, with its equivalent limitations, but a means of accessing the emotions themselves in the raw, as it were. Gorgias minimizes the particularity of “other people’s affairs and bodies” because they are, in the end, mere vessels for the “private feeling“ –​importantly particularized –​that the audience undergoes and that satisfies their emotional longings. We can assume from Plato’s echo of Gorgias in the Ion, where the rhapsode is described as magnetically transferring the experience of fearful shuddering and pitiable weeping to his audience (535c–​536d), as well as Gorgias’ own insistence on the irresistible nature of logistic power and the involuntary nature of sympathetic TMS Part I, esp. I.i.3–​4. This is an admittedly reductive account of Smith’s extremely subtle analysis of sympathy, but when Smith is compelled by Hume’s objection to the agreeableness of sympathetic pain (i.e., the tragic paradox) to identify precisely the source of sympathetic pleasure, he (Smith) locates it in the sentiment of approbation rather than the sympathetic emotion (and he does this in a footnote; see I.iii.1.9n.b*). There is, on the whole, a general ambivalence running throughout Smith’s argument surrounding the status of the very emotions we have been discussing –​anger and grief –​that is rightly identified by Hume’s criticism.

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response, that poetic involvement was conceived by both thinkers to be the result of a form of emotional contagion, which produced in the event of poetic performance a collective hysteria at once somatic, private, and transcendent. If we understand literature to stage a sympathetic encounter between the audience and a fictional or imaginary subject, as both Smith and Gorgias suggest that we do, our focus shifts from the literary medium to the event of sympathy it facilitates. The dynamics of imaginary involvement in literature, however one-​sided this involvement may be and however unreal the contents of literature, are fundamentally analogous to those of an actual sympathetic encounter, an event no less dependent on the imagination for being grounded in actuality. For, in either case, the spectator only has access to the subjectivity of the participant via the imagination, which alone can transcend the limitations of the individual’s physical and mental autonomy in order to facilitate identification.118 Though Smith’s cognitive conception of sympathy is at odds with the ancient ones we’ve been developing, the central role he assigns to the imagination in sympathetic exchange and his frequent appeal to aesthetic experiences to elucidate actual sympathetic events implicitly deny the specious distinction between mimetic and actual contexts when determining the source of sympathetic pleasure,119 just as the generalization of logos’ psychosomatic power denies poetry any uniquely persuasive properties in Gorgias’ account. Given the imaginative nature of sympathetic identification, the distinction between fiction and reality, at least from the perspective of the spectator, is irrelevant to the pleasures of sympathy. Gorgias may have been the first theorist to recognize a continuum between art and life when it comes to sympathetic pleasure, a continuum Plato and many subsequent philosophers transpose onto the overlapping fields of aesthetics and ethics. None, however (with the notable exception of Plato), maintain this premise when faced with the tragic paradox, and they consequently fail to resolve the paradox adequately. Only by focusing on the painful emotions themselves regardless of ontological context can we hope to understand both their original and vicarious appeal. This insight is one of Smith’s most original contributions to the study of sympathy; see in particular TMS I.i.1.2. 119 Passages where Smith appeals to tragedies and dramatic performances to illustrate his claims about sympathy include I.ii.1.11; I.iii.1.9; I.ii.2.2–​3. 118

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2.3  The Pleasures of Affects: Charles Altieri on Affective Values The contagious nature of sympathetic identification runs counter to theories of sympathy such as that of Smith that would insist on a cognitive appraisal of situations before the event of sympathy can transpire. The original proponent of this reflective (vs. reflexive) view of sympathy is most likely Aristotle, whose prescriptions in the Poetics for eliciting the proper emotional response to tragedy rely on the viewer’s self-​conscious awareness and intellectual assessment.120 In contrast to the Aristotelian tradition stand not only Gorgias and Plato but a robust modern tradition of thinking about the emotions running from Spinoza and Nietzsche to Artaud and Deleuze.121 This tradition posits the desire to transcend the limitations of our bounded subjectivity at the heart of emotional pleasure, and presents such pleasures as the source of aesthetic attraction. Deleuze portrays the Spinozistic world as one in which “there is no longer a subject, but only individuating affective states of anonymous force,”122 similar to Nietzsche’s “art-​states of Nature,” which absorb the individual into “primordial being” and which tragedy dedicates itself to recreating.123 Charles Altieri makes a decisive contribution to this aesthetic project in his work on the affects, which offers a promising contemporary approach to the problem of the tragic paradox. The Particulars of Rapture:  An Aesthetics of the Affects is a phenomenology of the emotions (or what Altieri terms more capaciously as “affects”) that does justice to our complex investments in them by focusing in particular on our affective engagements with works of art.124 Altieri focuses on art not because of its special status as a fictional object capable of eliciting unique responses, but because of art’s unique dedication to developing an otherwise obscured dimension of general experience –​what he calls an aesthetic or fictional On the cognitive psychology underlying the Poetics, see Haliwell (1986) 168–​201 and Konstan (2006). 121 The relevant works are Spinoza’s Ethics:  Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (1992), Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1967), Artaud’s The Theater and its Double (1958), and Deleuze’s Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (1988). My point in evoking these works is not to make a definitive claim about Spinoza’s philosophy, which I am not qualified to do, but to trace the theme of affective pleasure in modern appropriations of Spinoza. 122 Deleuze (1988) 128. 123 Tragedy temporarily breaks what Nietzsche ([1967] §9, p.71) calls “the curse of individuation.” See §2, p. 38 on the “art-​states” and “art-​impulses” of nature; on “primordial being” and tragedy (a theme that runs throughout the work), see §1, p. 37; §4, p. 45; §5, p. 51; §7, pp. 59–​60; §8, pp. 64–​ 65; §9, pp. 71–​72; §10, pp. 73–​74; §16, p. 104; §17, p. 105. 124 Altieri (2003); see 2 and 47–​8 for his use of “affect” as an umbrella term to designate a range of states that consists of feelings, moods, emotions, and passions. 120

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dimension, manifest in our affective engagement with the world.125 Like Pindar, Gorgias, Plato, and Smith, Altieri denies the relevance of a distinction between fiction and reality to our pursuit of affective pleasure; art engages our “real” emotions just as the real world does, but it does so without real-​worldly distractions and obligations, allowing us to develop with greater freedom affective states that we consider valuable in themselves.126 Unlike Smith, however, Altieri insists on maintaining a strict separation between aesthetics and ethics when determining the source of affective pleasure and evaluating affective experiences. The (aesthetic) desire to enrich our affective lives is not, for Altieri, ethically motivated (as the desire for a “correspondence of affection” is for Smith); we do not seek to become better people, to affirm our moral principles, or to “flourish” in the philosophical sense of the term when we pursue affective states, in life or in art.127 We seek instead to expand our mode of participation in the world by exploring potential states of being, simply because this extension of consciousness offers unique satisfactions. Altieri makes this crucial point in various ways. To take a few examples: An aesthetic orientation will focus on how we actually have interests in qualities basic to emotions and how we find satisfaction within the very modes of participation that consciousness allows and extends. There are substantial satisfactions simply in recognizing how our usual sense of ourselves can change when we are intensely engaged in developing emotional attitudes. … when we make identifications we are usually not involved in pursuing particular ideas about the self but seek satisfactions available in realizing what we can develop from a particular state or practice. … what is normative or exemplary in these … states is not their eudaimonic reasoning but their ability to invite possible identifications with the states of mind they make present.128 Altieri (2003) makes it clear from the outset that his project aims to clarify the nature of our affective investments generally through a study of particular works of art that reveals, in the end, “an aesthetic dimension to our concern with the affects in all areas of our lives” (3). He consequently rejects theories of fiction that would locate fictionality in the object rather than the disposition of the subject (as Walton [1990] does), and insists instead on a fictional dimension to the real world that works of fiction often thematize as well as instantiate (126–​7). 126 See Altieri (2003) 112–​16 and 126–​7 on the “reality” of our emotions in fictional contexts (a discussion much indebted to Moran [1994], though Altieri modifies the former’s claims); on the value of affective experience, see in particular 4, 16–​20, 24–​6, 129, 137–​41, 153–​8, and especially the discussion of the values of “intensity,” “involvedness,” and “plasticity” in 181–​207, to be treated in greater detail later here. 127 Altieri (2003) makes this point with particular force in 153–​80, where he argues against Martha Nussbaum’s eudaimonic theory of the emotions in Upheavels of Thought (2001). 128 Altieri (2003) 25, 129, 145, and 190–​1, respectively. 125

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Because of the distinctly hedonistic nature of our pursuit of “affective satisfaction,” an aim that can often conflict with our ethical commitments and cognitive judgments, aesthetic and ethical values are, according to Altieri, ultimately incommensurable, a possibility critics are reluctant to consider.129 Aesthetic theorists dominated by interpretative frameworks external to the work of art are no less guilty than philosophers dominated by a cognitive model of the emotions for subjecting the aesthetic dimension of experience to the authority of reason, and both misconstrue the nature of our affective investments as a result (or, what’s worse, ignore them altogether).130 A rational orientation toward the affects invariably fails to acknowledge their role in actually constituting values, rather than merely reflecting or refining the beliefs that underlie ethical values. The irreducible tension between feelings and beliefs that has generated the perennial divide between passion and reason can only be explained by ascribing to feelings their own, often inchoate and unreasonable, intentionality (which Altieri compares to Kant’s “purposivenes without purpose” and Spinoza’s “conativity”131). The goal of this intentionality is not action, interpretation, or human flourishing, but the pleasures of self-​expansion. Though emotions may often be good and motivate good action, Altieri soberly reminds us of the ancient philosophical point, now fallen out of fashion, that emotions are not themselves structured to pursue goods.132 Affects (be they feelings, moods, emotions, or passions) are structured, rather, to persist in their own being –​not to facilitate the subject’s flourishing, but to flourish themselves, whatever the cognitive and ethical aims of the subject.133 We often indulge our affective impulses because allowing the affects to flourish offers unique pleasures unavailable to reason, pleasures we value despite their potential to conflict with other, rationally determined goods. Altieri traces the source of these pleasures to the desire On the incommensurability of values, see Altieri (2003) 5, 25–​6, 155, and 281n2. I  discuss the Platonic challenge to this position in the following chapter. 130 See Altieri’s opening “confession” on the reactionary origins of his project ([2003] 1–​6). He targets ethical critics in particular for producing “abstract substitutes for the text” that ignore the particularity of its affective modes (2); the unsatisfying state of affairs in literary criticism drives him to search for more fruitful discussions of the affects in philosophical discourses, where he confronts the same cognitive bias (3–​6). 131 See Altieri (2003) 141–​6 and 183–​6 for respective discussions of Spinoza and Kant. 132 Altieri (2003) 167–​9; note especially Altieri’s critique of Nussbaum for not considering “the possibility of a significant difference between recognizing what is good in and for our emotions and concluding that the emotions themselves are structured so as to pursue that good” (169). 133 Altieri (2003) 167: “[W]‌hen a person has a sense of flourishing in relation to an emotion, or in relation to the values it makes present, all one can confidently say is that the emotion flourishes or that the emotion is accompanied by a sense of flourishing. If my anger seems to fit its object, then 129

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for extended consciousness and an expanded mode of participation in the world that goes beyond the epistemic. A desire so conceived is admittedly abstract and vague, as it must be given the nonrational and largely ineffable nature of its processes; nevertheless, this desire for extended consciousness has the capacity to accommodate painful as well as pleasant affects as its object. The explanatory force of Altieri’s conception of affective pleasure becomes clearer once he aligns more specific values with the desire for self-​expansion. He discusses three values in particular  –​ intensity, involvedness, and plasticity –​that illuminate the basic appeal of all affective states. I will turn to the analysis of three basic subjective states that I think afford significant affective satisfactions in relation to the manners by which we pursue investments even though the values involved are very difficult to fix or assess in the terms provided by the practical understanding. These states are the experience of how intensity modifies subjectivity, the experience of involvedness within which we feel our personal boundaries expanding to engage other lives on the most intimate possible levels, and the experience of the psyche’s plasticity as it adapts itself to various competing imaginative demands.134

Altieri has deliberately chosen ethically neutral concepts to forestall any recourse to ethics when ascribing value to a given state. He has also isolated the most basic features of affective experience, which together form a solid conceptual foundation on which to base any analysis of particular affective engagements. Each concept highlights a different aspect of an affective state that contributes to the state’s overall power and desirability:  intensity, the concentration of energies that awakens our sense of vitality; involvedness, the transcendence beyond the limits of our otherwise bounded subjectivity; and plasticity, the infinite capaciousness of subjectivity itself. This anatomy of an affect reveals the extent to which the subject’s participation rather than understanding determines affective value. As Altieri puts it in another context, “the question of right or wrong becomes much less important than the question whether the subject is indifferent or engaged.”135 Among the three, intensity is perhaps the most provocative value, since it is generated predominantly by painful states while retaining (or anger takes on an intensity and even a dignity that ennoble it. Or my love flourishes when my beloved shines in a particular way or when my attentions are reciprocated.” 134 Altieri (2003) 186. 135 The context is an analysis of “mood” in painting and poetry (Altieri [2003] 57).

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even increasing) its own attraction. Altieri recognizes the emergence of a paradox that has by now become familiar to us, and tentatively offers a resolution. Given how often intense experiences are painful and resistant to reason, why do they produce such deep satisfactions? I  do not have a very good answer, but I hope I can point in the direction of what might eventually be a good answer. In my view, we take satisfaction because it makes available a sense of our own vitality in relation to the present tense that we rarely experience any other way. At one pole, there emerges a vivid awareness of particulars; at the other, the will is called into some kind of decisive action, if only to persist in what is extraordinary or to turn from that to the comfort of more habitual behaviors. Usually this act of will has very little to do with choosing or refusing to act. The will involved has to do with affirming or escaping the version of the self emerging in this distinctive present. Intensity may be the most compelling conative value.136

The examples of satisfying intensity that prompted Altieri’s defense were taken from tragedy; the acute sufferings of a Lear or an Oedipus are made somehow “sublime“ by the seamless compression of intense forces at play. Audiences thrive at such moments because they can vicariously experience the same extraordinary sense of vitality, heightened sensitivity, and suspension of time as the suffering hero, and can inhabit a state of mind that only the most acutely tragic circumstances can bring about. In both cases, the magnitude of the totality of events is brought to bear on a particular moment that the agent experiences as sharply distinct from every other moment. Abiding in this moment of “concentrative centering”137 affirms the potential self that can only be realized at the margins of experience. This is not to deny the painful nature of the intense affect –​the self-​ blinding of Oedipus and the spiritual crisis that compels it cannot and must not be attenuated –​but to affirm the appeal of painful affects, which can powerfully modify our consciousness and grant us access to extraordinary ways of being in the world. The values of involvedness and plasticity can motivate the desire to inhabit painful states as well, but they are not predisposed to do so as

Altieri (2003) 187–​8. Altieri laments that “intensity has not elicited much theoretical discourse” (187), but a year after his book was published, Hans Gumbrecht made the concept of intensity central to his aesthetic theory in Production of Presence:  What Meaning Cannot Convey (2004), esp. 96–​118. Gumbrecht defines intensity loosely as the experience of “a specifically high level in the functioning of some of our general cognitive, emotional, and perhaps even physical faculties” (98) and, like Altieri, denies an ethical dimension to its aesthetic value. 137 Altieri (2003) 188. 136

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intensity is. They are more neutral, and also position the subject differently with respect to its environment. While intensity directs the subject inward, by absorbing the external context into the ego’s concentrated experience of itself in the present moment, involvedness directs the subject outward, by expanding the ego’s boundaries in the course of attuning itself to other existences.138 Altieri is careful, however, to maintain the subject’s self-​consciousness of its own position in the event of identification, and to distinguish his concept of involvedness from notions of sympathy that would hastily elide the distance between subjects.139 In this respect, Altieri’s concept resembles Smith’s Aristotelian account of sympathy, which continually asserts the impossibility of perfect identification, and explores complicated scenarios of sympathetic engagement where the spectator’s awareness of the participant’s condition differs significantly from the latter’s own (as in the case of madness or death).140 For Altieri, however, the subject’s awareness of difference figures crucially in constituting its pleasure; the goal is to establish relationships with others rather than attempting, futilely, to become them, and self-​awareness becomes a means to the end of appreciating the particular dispositions of other lives as well as the overall structure of seeing and identifying that we share with them. Altieri does not privilege the lives of those who suffer for their capacity to elicit identification, but his lyric examples suggest that we are attracted to the tensions that arise in such cases, if only because we must extend ourselves further in our efforts to overcome the alienation of suffering agents.141 Plasticity is an affective value that seems to combine aspects of intensity and involvedness, while remaining essentially distinct for characterizing the very imaginative processes that make affective engagement possible.142 Where intensity concentrates the subject inward and involvedness expands the subject outward, plasticity holds these opposing forces in balance; the psyche’s capacity to sustain and develop tensions that arise from diverse On this distinction between intensity and involvedness, see Altieri (2003) 194 and 205. Altieri (2003) 195. 140 TMS I.i.1.11–​13. 141 Altieri does a marvelous job of tracking the fruitful tensions that arise from reading two poems in particular, C.K. Williams “Reading: The Cop” and George Oppen’s “Street.” Both poems succeed in getting the reader to recognize the inwardness of others who suffer by preserving some measure of their alienation, and the process of negotiating our differences leads in the end to a more satisfying participation in their lives (Altieri [2003] 195–​7 and 200–​2). 142 Altieri does not discuss this distinction explicitly. He unfortunately spends very little time on the concept of plasticity, and fails to develop it as fully as the other two affective values; I thus take some theoretical liberties here in ascribing a meaning to plasticity that Altieri might not endorse, though I believe it to be consistent with his argument (Altieri [2003] 205–​7). 138

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aspects of experience allows the subject to dwell in satisfying modes of consciousness without adjudicating between them (which would require forfeiting possible affective satisfactions). Though it is not always the case that we experience competing affective claims, the ability to sustain them is symptomatic of the imagination’s infinite capaciousness –​a capaciousness that makes the full range of human affections available to us in the first place. Clearly, painful experiences must play an essential role in the exercise of our subjectivity’s limitless adaptability, since they so often produce tensions that resist resolution; if Altieri is right to claim that the exercise is itself a source of pleasure, then the value of plasticity offers another approach to understanding the appeal of indulging painful affects. Altieri’s commitment to phenomenological accuracy in depicting the complex nature of our affective investments allows him to develop a modern theory of affective pleasure that can account for the evident yet elusive satisfaction we take in experiencing painful emotions. The goal of extending consciousness, which we can state in Platonic terms as the desire to realize the subrational potential of human experience, can orient the pursuit of painful as well as pleasant affective states, because pain has just as strong a capacity (and in many cases stronger) to modify subjectivity. The attraction of painful literary representations can be traced to the same psychic drive, which Plato would locate, unsurprisingly (and in ironic agreement with Altieri), in the appetitive part of soul. The source of poetic pleasure, then, lies not (or not only) in the special medium of poetry, but in its affective content. Sympathetic engagement with real and fictional subjects is a means to satisfying this fundamentally self-​serving and appetitive desire for intensity of experience, rather than the rational desire for moral affirmation or social solidarity that Smith, in contrast to Altieri, presents as the goal of sympathy. The absence of a rational and ethical orientation to affective drives does not, however, prevent their satisfaction from having ethical consequences, or necessarily absolve them from ethical accountability. On the contrary, the potential for self-​destruction inheres in the pursuit of affective satisfaction precisely because of its ethical disinterest, and this danger is explored in archaic poetry’s appetitive conception of painful emotions and their poetic representations. The destructive effects of anger and grief, which we have explored in archaic poetics, bear out Altieri’s point that emotions are not structured to pursue our ultimate good, but to flourish themselves, often at our expense. Because they overtake consciousness and co-​opt rational desires, one is no longer capable of distinguishing one’s own “good” from the emotion’s objective. Inhabiting the emotion state, moreover, modifies consciousness in ways

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that are satisfying in the short term. When we engage in representations of such indulgence, we typically experience the same satisfactions vicariously, and come to value them above rationally determined goods. Tragic poetry thus satisfies a nonrational desire to maximally realize our affective potential and subjects us to psychological harm in the absence of any ethical orientation. This understanding of tragic pleasure lies at the core of Socrates’ critique of poetry in Plato’s Republic, to which we now turn.

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Introduction Theatre, like the plague, … unravels conflicts, liberates powers, releases potential, and if these and the powers are dark, this is not the fault of the plague or theatre, but life.1

What has begun to emerge from our inquiry into the origins of poetic pleasure is that certain kinds of poetry –​what one might call tragic in the broadest sense, and what Plato would call mimetic –​promote a psychosomatic addiction to painful emotion states that is not particular to the poetic encounter, but discernible in –​and continuous with –​our affective engagement with the world. The ethical implications of this embodied and embedded model of poetic engagement, a model first conceived in the literary tradition to which Plato was heir, are systematically explored in his Republic, a work of political philosophy that concludes with the expulsion of “the sweetened Muse” (τὴν ἡδυσμένην Μοῦσαν) from the ideal society on the grounds that such poetry establishes a “vicious constitution” (κακὴ πολιτεία) in city and soul (607a, 605b). Many have attempted to mitigate the uncompromising nature of this assertion,2 which, in targeting not only the Greek poetic tradition narrowly conceived but in principle all of the imaginative arts, would impoverish the world of its greatest cultural Artaud (1970) 21. Scholars typically resort to one of the following tactics: (1) historicize the phenomenon that Plato objects to (the civic performance of poetry) in order to insulate the role of fine art in modern life from his charge (e.g., Havelock [1963] 9–​15; Murray [1996] 14–​19); (2)  limit the charge to “bad” poetry to allow for the possibility of a philosophically defensible poetry, intimated in the religious hymns and encomia that survive Socrates’ censorship (e.g., Tate [1928] and [1932]; Atkins [1934] 60–​2; Belfiore [1984]; Heath [2013] 46–​52; I  will ultimately endorse this position, though with a very different vision of what “philosophical poetry” amounts to than what these scholars suggest); (3) adopt an ironic approach to the text, which distances Plato the literary author from the overt claims of Socrates the philosophical character (e.g., Elias [1984]; Halliwell [2002] 72–​97 and [2011a] 155–​207; Naddaf [2002] 121–​34). The third tactic is adopted by most of the recent scholarship on Plato and poetry.

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artifacts in the service of an impersonal and authoritarian philosophy, and which occurs, moreover, in one of the most artistic works of philosophy.3 Such attempts are usually misguided, and inadvertently trivialize the very objects whose value they seek to redeem. For Plato’s criticism of poetry is not that of a philistine –​the literary merits of his dialogues are proof enough of that –​but develops from an acute sensitivity to poetry’s transformational power, a power that cannot be defended on aesthetic grounds without incurring ethical charges, and cannot be ethically reformed without being thereby diminished. Plato thus leaves those of us committed to both ethical and aesthetic flourshing in a double bind. This double bind reveals a value conflict that the Republic claims to resolve, and the manner of its resolution is the subject of this chapter. Socrates begins his critique of poetry by drawing his interlocutors’ attention to a discrepancy between ethical and poetic value in order to subject the latter to closer scrutiny. That the success of poetry depends not on its ethical utility, but on some independent and unexamined quality of worth –​what the archaic poets called “sweetness” –​should make us wary of poetry’s potential to do us ethical harm. The harmful side effects of poetic pleasure align it with certain self-​destructive pleasures of the body, and Socrates uses this analogy in his discussion of the guardians’ elementary education as a means of exposing the appetitive structure implicit in archaic poetry’s gustatory self-​conception. In marked contrast to a poet such as Pindar, who attributes the quality of sweetness to the palliative effects of his odes,4 Socrates consistently applies this traditionally positive metaphor to particularly painful and aversive passages of poetry –​passages one would expect to disgust (to maintain the gustatory analogy, which Socrates himself will do) rather than delight. Socrates thus establishes a correlation between poetry’s sweetness and the painful nature of its emotional content that recasts the aesthetic principle of variety in representation known as poikilia as a principle of conflict, one that calls for the incorporation of pain in the economy of pleasure. By the end of the dialogue, poikilia comes to be identified as appetite’s predominant feature, and thus characterizes the appetitive structure of every vice, from the chaotic multiplicity of the sensible world to the proliferating desires of the The paradox has long baffled scholars; for recent attempts to reconcile Plato’s hostility to poetry with his poetic approach to writing philosophy, see Ferrari (1989) 141–​8, Murray (1996) 12–​14, and Halliwell (2002) 83–​5 and (2011a) 155–​207. 4 Song is a “sweet reward [γλυκεῖάν … ἀμοιβὰν] for toil” (N. 5.47–​8; cf. N. 41–​8, I. 8.8–​9). Poetic sweetness in such contexts evokes the medicinal properties of honey; see Chapter 1, Section 1.1 for relevant citations. 3

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tyrannical soul. From the psychological origins of poikilia we discover that mimetic poetry requires pain not only as a contrastive element to maintain a pleasing variety but as an essential experience of intensity pursued for its own sake by the lawless desires that lurk in every soul and find expression in tragic poetic themes. Among these desires, the impulse to grieve is singled out for special attention, because by both expressing and deepening an excessive attachment to transient things, it poses the greatest threat to human happiness. Socrates configures the desire to grieve as a nearly irresistible impulse to dwell on one’s pain, which knows no natural bounds and must be countered by the external force of law and custom as well as the internal force of rational control. Tragic poetry in effect suspends the laws and habits that jointly regulate the expression of the most debilitating human emotion. In doing so, tragic poetry threatens the well-​being of both the individual and the community of which he or she is part. If happiness, understood as the highest attainable degree of self-​sufficiency and psychological harmony,5 is the ultimate objective of human life, then the aesthetic value of tragic pleasure is not worth the ethical cost.

3.1  The Poisonous Muse: The Transvaluation of Sweetness I want to begin by reexamining the archaic ascription of “sweetness” to poetry and the somatic model of pleasure implied by this quality in the context of the Republic, where Socrates uses variations of the metaphor to expose the appetitive origins of poetic pleasure. We have seen the archaic poet adopt the persona of the bee, culling his songs from the Muses’ gardens to produce poetry that is, as Pindar puts it, “sweeter than bee-​ fashioned honeycomb” (fr.152).6 Socrates subverts this apian conception of the poet’s activity by conflating the image of the productive bee-​poet with that of the parasitic drone-​citizen, whose addiction to the sweetness of appetitive pleasure compromises both his health and the health of his society. By reconfiguring sweetness in all forms as a toxin inimical to a healthy constitution and incompatible with the philosophical values of purity and moderation, Socrates uses poetry’s own value terms to critique it on ethical and political grounds. Under philosophical scrutiny, poetry’s This conception of happiness, shared by most ancient philosophies, is of course debatable; for a critique of the Platonic aspiration to self-​sufficiency, and a conception of human happiness that regards the vulnerability of human goods as constituent of their goodness, see Nussbaum (1986), who derives the latter view from Greek tragedy and an appropriation of Aristotelian philosophy. 6 See also Pi. O. 9.26–​7, P. 10.53–​6, and Chapter 1, Section 1.3 for a discussion of the archaic poet’s apian self-​conception. 5

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sweetness is revealed to be delicious, to be sure, but ultimately toxic. By establishing the addictive nature of sweetness and its corrosive effect on body and soul, Socrates thus builds a case against poetry that ironically emerges from the archaic tradition’s most celebrated self-​conception. I concluded Chapter 1 by observing that archaic poetry presents itself as a kind of relish equivalent to honey and sweets. It is hardly surprising, then, to find poetry absent from Socrates’ “city of pigs” (ὑῶν πόλιν, 372d),7 a vegetarian community whose wholesome and rustic simplicity Glaucon objects to on the grounds that it is “without relish” (ἄνευ ὄψου, 372c). Relishes are culinary delicacies,8 and as such they symbolically represent the finer things in life to which an aristocrat like Glaucon is accustomed: the sorts of luxuries whose very gratuitousness makes living leisurely, pleasant, and civilized, and which distinguish and elevate human society from that of animals who merely subsist (or from the lower class of humans who live like animals). Poetry cannot arise in a city of pigs; its rightful place is in the “luxurious” and “feverish” city, where men “recline on couches … and dine from tables, and have relishes and desserts [καὶ ὄψα … καὶ τραγήματα], as people do nowadays” (372d–​e).9 The poets appear in a long list of artists, entertainers, beauticians, furniture makers, butchers, and cooks who emerge in the expanding marketplace of the new city. The swineherd is introduced because of the newfound “need” for meat (373c). The city becomes bloated with vanities, “gorged with a swollen mass of things [ὄγκου ἐμπληστέα καὶ πλήθους] which are not in cities out of necessity” (373b). In its noxious state the city requires more doctors to treat its maladies as well as more land to accommodate its excesses. Territorial expansion encroaches on the property of neighboring Though Socrates does admit a kind of purified poetry into the city of pigs, and ultimately Callipolis itself  –​namely, religious hymns and encomia (ὑμνοῦντες τοὺς θεούς, 372b; ὕμνους θεοῖς καὶ ἐγκώμια τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς, 607a) –​such poetry is no longer “sweet” in the traditional sense, nor, judging from the difficulty Adeimantus has imagining the sort of poetry that would survive Socrates’ censorship (378e–​379a), even recognizable as poetry (though I will suggest in the conclusion that Socrates believes such a form of poetry to be possible, if unprecedented). Pigs, it should be noted, are not associated with gluttony so much as sloth in an ancient Greek context (e.g., Semon. fr.7.2–​ 6; Pl. Lg. 807a–​b), unlike our derogatory use of the slur “pig.” The pigs of Glaucon’s metaphor are not gluttonous; on the contrary, they live in what he sees to be an impoverished state of nature. 8 An opson is any kind of prepared dish served as a condiment with bread and wine, and comes to designate any delicacy or treat (e.g., fish in Athens –​this is why Socrates commends Homer for not feasting his heroes on fish, “even though they are by the sea,” 404b–​c). On the luxury status of fish opsa, and this category of food in general, see Davidson (1997). Pindar uses the term metaphorically to express how the envious “feed” on rumors (“words are an opson to the envious,” N. 8.21). Opson is eventually conceded as a necessity near the end of the Republic, but only “insofar as it benefits health” (559b). 9 Also noted by Heath (2013) 15–​16. 7

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cities, leading to war.10 The desire for “relishes” is, in the end, the root of all evil, “private and public” (373e). The imagined history of Socrates’ first utopian city is intended to show that, however superficially pleasant, the luxuries humankind has the potential to produce for itself are not, in the end, beneficial because they create artificial desires without natural limits, and consequently foster insatiability. A life of enduring pleasure (in the form of peace and contentment) is ironically offered by the very “bestial“ city that Glaucon rejects: a city in which unnecessary desires never emerge in the first place.11 Such a vision is indeed utopian –​more so than Callipolis itself, whose fragility is conspicuous in the elaborate social structure engineered for its preservation –​and the corrupt state of affairs that results from the introduction of relishes into the city of pigs is a far more realistic starting point for Socrates’ philosophic project (since it represents, as Glaucon put it, what “people do nowadays”). The rest of the Republic is, in a sense, an extended attempt to purify the degenerated city of pigs and return it to its initial state,12 but that return is inescapably postlapsarian, and the final polity that is founded must vigilantly guard against the relishes that have corrupted it in the past.13 Hence the need for a guardian class, and the caste system that follows.14 Thus, in the Republic, the very idea of sweetness as both a pleasant gratuity and a toxic superfluity renders any of its manifestations inimical to a healthy state, from honey and cakes to “sweet” forms of music and poetry. Socrates takes this danger quite literally when he bans sweets (ἡδύσματα) See Frank (2007) 443, 449 on the imperial consequences of pleonexia in this passage, and passim on the general opposition between war and philosophy in the Republic. 11 The history of the uncorrupted city of pigs ends happily: “and so, living a life of peace and health, they will probably die in their old age and hand down a similar life to their children” (372d). 12 After the censorship of poetry and music, Socrates exclaims:  “By the dog! We have unwittingly purified [διακαθαίροντες] the city which we were just calling luxurious” (399e). The purification continues until the philosopher-​kings assume control of the city at the end of book 8, at which point we recognize a new ideal in the class structure of Callipolis that diverges from the idyllic city of pigs. 13 Pace Frank (2007) 450, who stresses the similarity between the city of pigs and the ideal city. For an alternative view of the development of Callipolis to mine, see Reeve (1988) 170–​234, who argues that the dialogue develops an “ordered series” of three distinct ideal cities, “each of which, when modified, is a component of its successor, only the third and final member of the series being by itself a real possibility” (171). While Reeve’s account of the incremental unveiling of Callipolis is compelling in many respects, he downplays the utopian character of the city of pigs when he represents it as the class of producers living in the final ideal city. 14 The guardians are first introduced to fight the luxurious city’s wars (374d–​e), and from their ranks the philosopher-​kings are chosen to be groomed for ruling the city by learning, in the course of their rigorous education, the ideal constitution to which their city must conform (497c–​d, 540a–​b). 10

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from the guardians’ diet, which he does not only to preserve the physical condition of their bodies but because eating sweet food implies a way of life that is devoted to “sweetness” understood as variegated and immoderate pleasure (404c–​e). He likens this way of life –​and the corresponding way of eating –​to the panharmonic mode of music (404e): I think that by comparing such food [σίτησιν] and such a way of life [δίαιταν] on the whole to music and songs composed in the panharmonic mode and in all rhythms, we would make a correct comparison … Just as variety [ποικιλία] there produced incontinence, doesn’t it produce illness here? And just as simplicity [ἁπλότης] in music produced moderation in souls, doesn’t it in gymnastics produce health in bodies?

As the city of pigs’ rapid dissolution after the admittance of relishes already suggested, somatic habits and ethical habits are not merely analogically but symbiotically related. Socrates makes this point explicit when he insists on striking the right balance between music and gymnastics to produce a suitable nature in the guardians; too much gymnastics turns a man into a “wild beast” (θηρίον) unfit for civilized culture, whereas too much music, described as “sweet” (γλυκείας) and “soft” (μαλακάς), “liquefies his spirit, until he dissolves it completely and cuts out, as it were, the very sinews of his soul, and makes of himself a ‘feeble warrior’ [μαλθακὸν αἰχμητήν15]” (411a–​e). The shift in poetry’s somatic effects from the gustatory to the erotic is quick and subtle. Poetry’s sweetness can, like that of erôs, emasculate and incapacitate its victim by enslaving him to an appetitive desire.16 Yet poetry is governed, we soon learn, by the same Muse that attracts the soul to the discourse of philosophy (499d, 548b-​c). Socrates’ surprising anxiety that boorish austerity could deaden our intellectual passions and inoculate us to the charms of philosophy leads him to concede a cautious need for music and to appropriate the language of poetry for philosophy:  one becomes an uncultured “misologist” (a hater of philosophic discourse) as a consequence of being “unmusical” (ἄμουσος) (411d). Whether this is another of philosophy’s bald attempts to usurp its arch rival, or whether a real proximity between philosophy and poetry compels Socrates to relax his aesthetic strictures, is another question. Suffice it to

A Homeric taunt from the Iliad (17.577). The cost of erotic pleasure is what makes erôs paradoxically “bittersweet” in lyric poetry (see, for example, Sapph. fr.130 and Thgn. 1353–​6, and Carson [1986] on this theme). The verb têkei, which occurs in the Republic passage on music, also has a lyric pedigree with distinctly erotic overtones, as melting and liquefaction are common symptoms of erotic longing (e.g., Ibyc. fr.287; Alcm. fr.3; Pi. fr.123.11; see Chapter 1, Section 1.2).

15 16

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say for now that, in order to become suitably philosophical, the spirited and musical parts of the guardian’s soul must strike a very delicate balance, moderating one another through the rigorous training that Socrates proceeds to articulate until the introduction of philosopher-​kings, who require an even more specialized curriculum (502e). Without regulation, the sweetness of music, like the sweetness of food, corrupts body and soul, and the variety of poikilia –​a concept we will return to in the following section –​is the means by which sweetness leads to immoderation. Throughout the narrative of regime change in books 8 and 9, Socrates expresses a more marked disdain for sweetness in his use of apian metaphors –​a use that subtly subverts poetry’s traditional self-​presentation by conflating the image of the bee-​poet producing “honeyed hymns” with that of the drone-​citizen draining society’s resources.17 Like honey and the honeybee, the drone has a venerable pedigree in archaic literary imagery, where it appears in civically rather than poetically oriented metaphors. This civic tradition of apian figures begins with Hesiod, who compares lazy and unproductive members of society to “stingless drones, who waste the labor of bees by eating without working” (Op. 302–​6). In the economy of the hive, the drones are perceived to be social parasites, consuming the goods of productive members of their community without producing anything themselves. According to this civic conception of the hive, worker-​bees function as ideal citizens who, though burdened with the dregs of society, continue to work for the good of the whole. Elsewhere in Hesiod the dichotomy is gendered, with men cast as productive bees laboring all day long while their women stay at home like parasitic drones, “reaping the toil of others in their own bellies” (Theog. 594–​602)18 Hesiod’s blatant misogyny is echoed and subtly altered by the lyric poet Semonides half a century later in his notorious catalog of women (fr.7). The catalog offers a humorous taxonomy of wives arranged predominantly according to the often unflattering animal types to which they conform: the sow, the vixen, the bitch, the ass, the weasel, the mare, the monkey, etc.19 The litany of vices ascribed to these animal-​women (such as sloth, fickleness, ill temper, gluttony, thievery, fastidiousness, cunning) Socrates has been known to subvert poetry’s conventional self-​conception elsewhere; in the Ion he reconfigures the divine inspiration traditionally ascribed to poets as a mindless state of possession tantamount to madness, and renders mutually exclusive the previously compatible categories of craft and inspiration in order to divest poets of any knowledge or authority (see Tigerstedt [1970] and Murray [1981]). 18 On the role of gender in Hesiod’s political hive, see Sussman (1978). 19 I leave out two non-​animal types: the inert earth-​woman and the fickle sea-​woman (21–​42). Payne (2010) 115 suggests that such women provide a foil for the other animal types: “Semonides’ excursus 17

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remits momentarily at the end with the appearance of the “blameless” bee-​woman, who, unlike the others, increases her husband’s property, rears reputable children, and maintains a harmonious and loving household (83–​93). Though Semonides appears at first to invert the metaphorical correspondences established by Hesiod by imagining the good wife as a productive bee rather than a parasitic drone, he also suggests a certain asociality to the bee-​women that isolates her from feminine society (“she takes no pleasure in sitting among women where they tell erotic stories,” 90–​1), thereby undercutting the social virtue of the bee and implicitly elevating the vices of the other wives into forms of sociability.20 The bee-​ woman fails to conform to the bee in one crucial respect:  she does not leave the home to engage in communal labor. The feminine associations of the drone thus hover in the background even in cases where they are explicitly denied. Despite these variations, the polarity between the bee and drone remains one which, on the surface at least, separates the social from the asocial, the productive member of society from the consumptive one. In light of this traditional understanding, the ideal aspect of the hive’s economy represented by the productive bee is conspicuously absent from Plato’s Republic, eclipsed by the prominence of the vicious drone, who, as we shall see, contaminates the entire apian metaphoric complex.21 In Socrates’ narrative of constitutional decline, the drone figures predictably as a quintessential parasite, “a disease of the hive” that consumes among the elements points to continuities of appetitive and affective behavior between human beings and other animals by imagining forms of life that do not share them.” Many thanks to Mark Payne for this insight; see his recent book The Animal Part (2010) 112–​ 20 for an unorthodox reading of the Semonides poem that contests its alleged misogyny with renewed attention to its erotic dimension. Payne suggests that the “bad” wives actually enable male forms of sociality by participating in a gendered division of the larger community, and that their “erotic stories” (ἀφροδισίους λόγους) should not be dismissed as mere gossip, which is traditionally maligned as a threatening form of discourse in Greek literature, but can be seen as functionally equivalent to the erotic poem in which they appear (117, 119). The poem suggests a complimentary narrative in which women imagine the animal in their husbands, and this perceived animality on either side works to maintain the sexual attraction between them: “Despite appearances to the contrary, the female difference the poem imagines as nonhumanness must be understood to involve some ongoing reenchantment of the appetitive bond between the married couple” (119). 21 Socrates does briefly evoke the hive as a positive political model at 520b, where he describes the philosopher-​kings as “leaders and kings of the hive” in order to convey the city’s acceptance of their natural superiority and remind them of their duties to the city (it should come as no surprise that the Greeks presumed the sex of the “leader of the hive” to be male, with the notable exception of Xenophon in his Oeconomicus [7.17, 33, 38], where the sex of the queen bee is most likely a metaphorical extension of the wife to which she is being compared). But given how applicable the structure of the hive is to the social organization of Callipolis, it remains noteworthy that positive apian metaphors are mostly absent from Socrates’ language, especially in light of the fact that Plato employs such metaphors positively elsewhere (e.g., Phd. 82b; Pol. 301e). 20

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its resources without contributing to its economy (552c).22 He first evokes the drone to characterize the destitute spendthrifts who crop up in oligarchic societies as victims of predatory lending (552a–​b). The metaphor persists throughout the remainder of the narrative. Beggars are “stingless” drones whereas outright criminals, such as thieves and muggers, “have terrible stings” (552c–​e); thus “drone-​like desires” (κηφηνώδεις ἐπιθυμίας) come in “beggarly” (πτωχικάς) and “criminal” (κακούργους) varieties (554b–​c). The stinging drone and his characteristic desire are a Platonic innovation, intended to capture the manner in which human vice (as well as virtue) can exceed that of animals; some human “drones” are more actively malignant than the relatively innocuous consumer represented by the stingless, winged drone found in nature (552c–​d).23 The criminal drones of oligarchy grow up to be democratic revolutionaries (555d–​556a). The oligarch’s son turns into a democratic man once he “tastes the drones’ honey,” which, Socrates explains, is the sweet pleasure of satisfying gratuitous appetites (559d–​e): When a youth, raised in the way we were just describing, without education and stingily, gets a taste of the drones’ honey [γεύσηται κηφήνων μέλιτος] and associates with fiery and clever beasts who know how to purvey mani­fold [παντοδαπάς] and subtle [ποικίλας] pleasures of every variety, then you must suppose that this is the beginning of his transformation … from the oligarchic regime within him to a democratic one.

Here Socrates’ revaluation of sweetness as a toxin has the effect of transforming the apian symbol of economic productivity –​honey –​into one of excess and corruption. Honey is now equated with a variety of gratuitous and pernicious pleasures that act like a poisonous drug on the soul of the oligarch’s son. The drones of democratic society are hedonists trafficking pleasure, “a class of idle and extravagant men” who blight the city and ought to be “cut out as quickly as possible, cells and all” (564b–​c). Rich men are called “the drones’ pasture” (κηφήνων βοτάνη) because of the “honey” that the masses manage to “extract” from them (564e). Finally, the malcontents of democracy implant erôs, “a great winged drone” (ὑπόπτερον καὶ μέγαν κηφῆνα), in the soul of the tyrant, thereafter Petraki (2011) briefly discusses the drone as a figure for appetitive degeneration in this narrative, focusing in particular on the drone’s link to oligarchy (191, 237–​9). 23 The innovation is also noted by Pelletier (1948) 145. Actual drones have no need of stings because they remain predominantly in the hive, fulfilling their function by mating with the queen and ensuring the hive’s propagation. Aristotle knew this (H.A. 553b5–​6), as presumably did Hesiod (Op. 304) and Aristophanes (V. 1115), both of whom explicitly characterize drones as stingless. 22

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controlled and consumed by this most insatiable of parasites (573a).24 In the acme of his power, the detested tyrant can only survive by hiring an armed guard of “drones” made up of thugs and former slaves to protect him (567d–​e). Such imagery usurps the authority of the traditionally “apian” poet, whose production, insofar as it is sweet, is toxic to the city and must be subject to the scrutiny of the city’s lawgiver, designated by Socrates as a “wise bee-​keeper” (σοφὸν μελιττουργόν, 564c). Socrates’ imagery also condemns “apian” strategies of poetic composition for relying on variety or poikilia to sustain an unstable and addictive form of pleasure. It is by adhering to this principle in composition that Pindar ensured the sweetness of his poetry, selectively integrating complex and varied themes to evade the saccharine effects of unalloyed praise: “But respite is sweet in every deed. /​Even honey may cloy, and the delightful flowers of Aphrodite” (N. 7.50–​3).25 Pindar recognized that sweetness in excess is sickening rather than pleasant, and that the controlled absence of sweetness can paradoxically maximize its effects. The target of Socrates’ critical revaluation of sweetness, then, is not simply sensual pleasure, but pleasure that assimilates the intensity of the body while using variety to exceed the body’s limitations. Variety can prolong states of pleasure by staving off tedium, while also introducing novel experiences that become themselves objects of new, artificial desires. Lacking the self-​regulating feature of natural physical appetites, the desire for such “sweet” pleasures is inherently insatiable. The sweetness (ἡδύς) that lies at the heart of pleasure (ἡδονή),26 traditionally understood, extends beyond the saccharine to denote desirability as such, including the variety that sustains it. The gustatory origins of hêdonai reveal the extent to which the Greek concept of pleasure is anchored in the body, even in cases where the It is surprising that Socrates represents the tyrant’s erotic passion as a winged drone, since only wingless drones have stings according to his novel apian taxonomy (552c), and one would expect the tyrant to have the “criminal” desires associated with stinging drones rather than the merely “beggarly” ones characteristic of the stingless drone (552c–​d). It is also strange that the erôs within the tyrant is depicted as suffering the “sting of longing” rather than actively inflicting it upon his host (573a). It may be the Socrates wants to retain something of the traditional imagery surrounding the god Eros, who is typically winged (as Adam [1963] ad. loc. has noted), but I suggest in my discussion of tyranny later here that Socrates intends to emphasize the tyrant’s passivity in making the dominant feature of his soul suffer rather than inflict stings. 25 See Chapter 1, Section 1.3. 26 On the etymological relationship between these two words, see Chantraine (1968–​80) s.v. hêdomai and Frisk (1960–​72) s.v. hêdus. Greek hêdus is cognate with Latin suavis and English sweet, all derived from the IE root *swãd-​/​swad-​. Its basic meaning is “pleasant to the taste.” 24

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origin of pleasure seems patently cerebral, as in the case of poetry.27 This explains, in part, why poetic pleasure is so often expressed in somatic terms. Poetry’s adherence to poikilia further aligns it with gratuitous and extravagant culinary delicacies that exceed the biological needs of appetite. Recall the description of poetry in the fragment of the fourth century poet Astydamas (TGF 779): Like the varied bounty [ποικίλην εὐωχίαν] of an elegant dinner, such must be what the clever poet offers his spectators, so that each departs having eaten and drunk and taken whatever he likes, and that there not be only one dish of entertainment.

I argued in Chapter 1 that we owe this renewed conception of the “poetic feast” to Pindaric imagery, where the complexity of poikilia is first coordinated with the concept of poetic satiation (κόρος) in a self-​conscious poetic program that aims to sustain the pleasure of poetry.28 Whatever the context, variety’s ability to elude satiety endows pleasures that rely on it with a particularly dangerous appetitive structure, and it is this distinct form of pleasure that Socrates persistently condemns in the Republic. The lavish description of the feast in Philoxenus’ Deipnon, where the tables are described as “luxuriating in every kind of novelty [παντοδαποῖσι] of the cook’s art directed at good living, the soul’s bait [ψυχᾶς δελεασματίοισι],” lends some credence to the philosopher’s anxiety that indulgent eating will lead to indulgent living and a corrupted soul.29 The luxury food that Socrates bans from the guardians’ diet is thought to be dangerous precisely because of its “soul-​baiting” variety. He therefore denies them the pleasures of “the Syracusan table, and the Sicilian variety of relishes [Σικελικὴν ποικιλίαν ὄψου]” (404d). Sweetness, Plato suggests, is a gateway drug to hedonism. Because it is both a corrosive ingredient in pleasure’s mixture as well as what makes the mixture appetizing as a whole, the seductive power of sweetness poses a permanent threat even in its most benign manifestations. As we will see with greater clarity in the following section, a consistent contention throughout the Republic is that all forms of poikilia threaten to corrode our souls with an inherent sweetness that seems to issue from the nature of variety itself and conceals its pernicious effects. Socrates in no way breaks from tradition, then, in his conception of poetic pleasure, but Pindar’s description of poetry as “sweet fruit of the mind” (O. 7.8) nicely captures the somatic nature of a cognitively mediated pleasure. 28 See Chapter 1, Section 1.3. 29 PMG 836; for a translation of the fragment with commentary, see Dalby (1987). See also Wilkins (2000) 304–​6. 27

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rather turns the tradition against itself by upholding purity, simplicity, and truth as the ultimate values with which sweetness and subtlety (traditionally understood as hallmarks of poetic achievement) are incompatible.30 When Socrates begins purifying Homeric poetry in book 3 by excising all frightening depictions of death, he implores Homer and the rest of the poets (387b): not to get angry if we strike these and all similar passages, not that they aren’t poetic and sweet [ποιητικὰ καὶ ἡδέα] for many to hear, but because the more poetic they are the less they should be heard by boys and men who have to be free and more fearful of slavery than of death.

The very essence of poetry –​its “poeticity,” to use Jakobson’s term31 –​ turns out to be a kind of sweetness that corrodes and weakens a person’s “spiritual” (in the sense of thumoeidic) constitution. But whereas Jakobson identifies poeticity with a linguistic mode that draws attention to the “word as word” apart from its referents,32 Plato identifies poeticity with a psychological mode that has less to do with poetic language than the private, imaginary world such language makes accessible. As one scholar puts it, “Plato’s argument is not interested in technicalities.”33 Though the importance Socrates attributes to modes of diction or style (λέξις), which he famously divides into narrative, mimetic, and mixed categories (392c–​ 398b), would seem, at first, to align him with a structural linguist like Jakobson, what orients Socrates’ linguistic analysis is not grammar and syntax or a phonological interest in the sonority of language, but a psychological concern with the speaking subject’s level of imaginative participation in different grammatical registers (the focus of the first critique of poetry), and with the capacity of language to form semiotic channels that Though not incommensurate, since Socrates subjects all values to the same, rationally determined standards. I  discuss the commensurability of distinct psychic goods in greater detail later here. For a contemporary argument for the incommensurability of aesthetic and philosophic values, see Altieri (2003), esp. 154–​5, and the end of the previous chapter. Altieri encourages us to accept this conflict and resist imposing reason’s arbitration over the passions, with the significant (and undeveloped) qualifier “given the likelihood that no substantial harm will be done to others” (157). But, as I briefly discussed in the introduction, it is precisely the potential for harm –​to oneself as well as to others –​that leads Socrates to subordinate aesthetic values to philosophical ones in the Republic. 31 Alternately called “the poetic function” (Jakobson [1981] 750; [1987] 69–​70). 32 “Poeticity is present when the word is felt as a word and not a mere representation of the object being named or an outburst of emotion, when words and their composition, their meaning, their external and inner form acquire weight and value of their own instead of referring indifferently to reality” (Jakobson [1981] 750). Elsewhere Jakobson describes the poetic function as “promoting the palpability of signs” and “deepen[ing] the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects” ([1987] 70). 33 Halliwell (1997) 323. 30

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transport socialized individuals into private fictional worlds (the focus of the second critique of poetry).34 The “sweetness” and pleasure of mimetic poetry, according to Socrates, is the pleasure of fictional involvement, and this involvement exacts an emotional toll that is not necessarily conducive to psychological health. Terrifying depictions of Hades, for example (387c): καὶ ἴσως εὖ ἔχει πρὸς ἄλλο τι· ἡμεῖς δὲ ὑπὲρ τῶν φυλάκων φοβούμεθα μὴ ἐκ τῆς τοιαύτης φρίκης θερμότεροι καὶ μαλακώτεροι τοῦ δέοντος γένωνται ἡμῖν. They may serve some other purpose well, but we fear for our guardians, lest from such chills they become more feverish and softer than they ought to be.

Or depictions of immoderation (390a): οὐ γὰρ οἶμαι εἴς γε σωφροσύνην νέοις ἐπιτήδεια ἀκούειν· εἰ δέ τινα ἄλλην ἡδονὴν παρέχεται, θαυμαστὸν οὐδέν. I don’t think they are fit for the young to hear for the purpose of moderation. But if they offer some other pleasure, it is no wonder.

Socrates thus concedes a certain value to poetry, but it is valuable only from a limited perspective, while either worthless or downright harmful from a global, philosophical perspective. Though poetry serves a purpose and serves it well, that purpose is hedonistic and incompatible with the courage and self-​control required for justice, both because poetry so often puts us in an affective state of fear that infects our real lives but also because such “chills” are experienced as pleasurable, leading us to seek out the very states that incapacitate us. Socrates leads us to recognize an emerging paradox in poetic pleasure, and to question how intensely painful affects such as fear contribute to poetry’s sweetness. They are regular features of poetry’s “mixed” or “complex” nature, which Socrates must reform in order to accept it on justice’s terms. When he and Adeimantus agree on allowing what they call “the unmixed imitator of the decent” into their ideal city, Socrates warns: “but surely, Adeimantus, the mixed type [ὁ κεκραμένος] is also sweet [ἡδύς], and by far the sweetest to boys and their teachers and to the great mob is the opposite man to the one you prefer.” Adeimantus echoes him with some trace of regret:  “He is most sweet” (397d). Near the end of the dialogue, Socrates himself is poignantly shamed by his abuse of Homer On the concept of fictional constructions as semiotic channels, see Dolezel (1998) 20–​2.

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(595b–​c) and portrays himself rather tragically as ending a destructive love affair with someone to whom he is still attached (607e–​608a).35 Socrates welcomes any case on poetry’s behalf, since he renounces her despite his affection for her, and invites future defenders of poetry to show “that it is not only sweet [ἡδεῖα] but beneficial [ὠφελίμη] to regimes and human life” (607e), a challenge that Aristotle and Plutarch later take up, though arguably fail to meet.36 The Republic’s concluding thoughts on poetic sweetness recall the toxic effect of relishes on the city of pigs: “If you admit the sweetened Muse [τὴν ἡδυσμένην Μοῦσαν] in lyric or epic, pleasure and pain will be joint kings of your city, instead of law [νόμου] and that argument [λόγου] which is always commonly thought to be best” (607a). The dialogue has arrived at this conclusion largely through Socrates’ manipulation of traditional apian imagery. By reconfiguring sweetness, in both literal and figurative manifestations, as a spiritual and physical poison, and by opposing the dangerous principle of variety to which sweetness is inextricably linked, Socrates negatively revalues poetry’s traditional value terms. He thereby undermines the ideal of the hive as a political model, since it is organized, on his account, to maximize the production of a toxin, the “honey” of gratuitous pleasure. Socrates also compounds the corruption conventionally ascribed to drones, since they not only drain the city of its resources but stimulate the traffic of honey as a drug. The “bee-​like” poet is revealed to be a hedonistic dilettante that thrives in democracies, and the honey of his poetry is the opiate of the “drone-​like” masses. This blithely corrupt state of affairs allows the tyrant to emerge unchecked, goaded by the great drone within him to pursue every kind of destructive pleasure. Once sweetness and benefit are understood to be mutually exclusive, poetry’s apian “virtues” become political liabilities, and the sweetened Muse is revealed to be a poisonous one.37 See Halliwell (2011a) 179–​207 on the authenticity of this attachment, which Halliwell regards as symptomatic of Plato’s own ambivalence toward the status and value of poetry. 36 Aristotle’s Poetics is widely regarded to be his response to Plato’s call for a defense of poetry, though I  will suggest in the epilogue that the Politics is a more likely candidate. Plutarch awkwardly attempts to reconcile Platonic, Arisotelian, and Stoic positions on the philosophical status of poetry in his How To Study Poetry; for a recent introduction and commentary to this neglected text, see Hunter and Russell (2011). 37 This is not the last word on sweetness and the gustatory model of pleasure it instantiates in the Republic. Just as Socrates, both in the Republic and elsewhere, redefines music by identifying it with philosophy rather poetry (R. 411c–​12b; cf. Phdr. 248d–​e, 259b–​d; Phd. 60e–​61b), he similarly replaces the traditional model of complex and appetitive sweetness with the true, purified sweetness of philosophy, exposing the rest as mere counterfeit pleasures (R. 582c–​586c). Socrates even appropriates the appetitive language of gustatory pleasure to describe philosophical satisfaction: he 35

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3.2  The Variegated Muse: The Transvaluation of poikilia Throughout the Republic the seductive quality of poikilia and its affiliates links seemingly harmless indulgences like condiments and multi-​stringed instruments to the more consequential content of mimetic poetry, and connects all of musical culture and entertainment to the disturbing political realities of democratic and tyrannical regimes.38 Socrates is hardly the first to view poikilia with suspicion. We saw in Chapter  1 that archaic poetry associated this quality with deception ranging from optical illusions to mental cunning39; even Pindar, the first poet to adopt the principle of poikilia as a compositional strategy, recognized that poikilos speech can generate false impressions (O. 1.28–​32; cf. N. 7.20–​7). But Socrates departs from traditional suspicions of poikilia by shifting attention away from its potential duplicity (though this remains a condemnable quality) to its essential plurality, which compromises the philosophical aspiration to purity, simplicity, and truth.40 This objection to poikilia, which we have seen Socrates make in culinary and aesthetic contexts, persists in his analysis of political and psychological constitutions, where poikilia is linked to the worst forms of appetitive rule and ultimately emerges as an essential characteristic of appetite itself. In this section, I use the concept of poikilia to track the relationship between poetry, politics, and psychology in the Republic in order to identify some of the aspects of poetic pleasure that render it a constitutional threat.41 When we discover that the poetic has not “dined well” on Thrasymachus’ argument about justice, but like a glutton tasted everything without savoring any one thing (354a–​b); in a similar vein, he later laments that those who are devoted to carnal pleasures “have never tasted the stable and pure pleasure” of wisdom (586a; cf. 496c). This appetitive conception of philosophic pleasure has not attracted much scholarly attention, though it is the subject of a recent dissertation (Hintze [2009]). 38 Condiments and disease: 373a, 404d–​e, 426a; instruments, music, and metrics: 399e, 404e; cosmetics, poetry, and mimesis: 373a, 378c, 401a, 529b–​d, 557c, 604e–​605a; democracy: 557c, 558c, 559d–​e, 561e; tyranny: 568d. See also 568a–​d, where the concept of poikilia underlies Socrates’ description of “subtle” poets (κομψοί), whose poetry attracts “crowds” (ὄχλους) and “draw[s]‌regimes towards tyranny and democracy.” On poikilia as a characteristic of “New Music” in Athens –​which Plato consistently opposes –​see Wallace (2009). 39 See Chapter 1, Section 1.3 for a discussion of relevant passages. 40 Moss (2007) makes a similar point when she links poikilia to the world of appearance in contrast to the uniform stability of the world of Forms (see esp. 426–​8, 434–​7, 443), as does Petraki (2011), who further argues that Socrates philosophically appropriates the principle of poikilia in his own use of poetic diction when discussing baseness (15–​26). 41 Despite the frequent appearance of poikilia and synonymous terms at key moments in the Republic, there have been surprisingly few sustained treatments of this concept in the scholarly literature. Yet the variety of contexts in which poikilia arouses philosophical suspicion offers an opportunity to unify many of the dialogue’s disparate arguments; Moss (2007), for instance, is able to connect Socrates’ metaphysical and ethical charges against poetry via the common property of poikilia in

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quality of poikilia is also the salient feature of the most seductive constitution  –​that of democracy  –​we are in a better position to understand the nature of poetic attraction and the philosophical problems posed by mimetic poetry’s reliance on diversity. This comparison is complicated, however, by the very different attitudes toward pleasure that poetry and democracy foster in the human soul. Where the democratic relation to pleasure is relatively elective and controlled, the pleasure of mimetic poetry enslaves its listeners by disabling the “best” (i.e., rational) part of their soul. Thus while such poetry’s features are democratic, its effects are tyrannical. And these tyrannical effects will reveal the nature of the desires satisfied by mimetic poetry to be tyrannical as well. The life of pleasure and sweetness, which we glimpse both in the “luxurious” city of relishes before its purification and in the festive context of our Platonic characters’ dinner party, finds its political expression in the democratic regime (557c):42 κινδυνεύει … καλλίστη αὕτη τῶν πολιτειῶν εἶναι· ὥσπερ ἱμάτιον ποικίλον πᾶσιν ἄνθεσι πεποικιλμένον, οὕτω καὶ αὕτη πᾶσιν ἤθεσιν πεποικιλμένη καλλίστη ἂν φαίνοιτο. καὶ ἴσως μέν … καὶ ταύτην, ὥσπερ οἱ παῖδές τε καὶ αἱ γυναῖκες τὰ ποικίλα θεώμενοι, καλλίστην ἂν πολλοὶ κρίνειαν. [Democracy] is probably … the most beautiful of regimes. Just like an intricate cloak decorated with every hue, this regime, decorated with every disposition, would look the most beautiful, and many, perhaps, … like children and women looking at intricate things, would judge this to be the most beautiful regime.

Socrates compares democracy to a multicolored cloak that dazzles women and children in order to convey the superficial nature of the regime’s appeal. Women and children do not judge beyond the mesmerizing surface to see, for instance, whether the cloak is well-​made and will keep them both visual and ethical representations; while Rosenstock (1994) uses the feminine associations of poikilia to argue that Socrates views both democracy and poetry as sites of emasculation. 42 The Republic takes place during the festival of an exotic goddess, at a dinner party that will be followed by a torch race on horseback (328a), and this dramatic setting evokes the luxuries and entertainment available to the citizens of the corrupted city of pigs (372d–​373d), as well as the democrat’s hedonistic lifestyle (561–​562a). The characters’ philosophical conversation, moreover, which attempts to outline the ideal constitution by considering all constitutional alternatives, is itself symptomatic of the Republic’s democratic context; for, as Socrates notes in a particularly metatextual moment, democracy “is a suitable place in which to look for a constitution … Because, owing to its license, it contains all kinds of constitutions, and if someone wants to organize a state, as we were now just doing, he should probably find his way to a democratic city and select the model that pleases him, just as if he’d arrived at a bazaar of constitutions, and after making his choice establish his own” (557d).

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warm; they are too distracted by the aesthetic beauty of its patterns.43 The cloak is “intricate” (ποικίλον) and “embroidered” (πεποικιλμένον) with colors, just as democracy is “embroidered” (πεποικιλμένη) with diverse human types.44 Women and children admire it as they admire all trinkets and “intricate things” (τὰ ποικίλα). Later Socrates calls the democratic regime “sweet [ἡδεῖα], anarchic and diverse [ποικίλη], distributing a certain equality to equals and unequals alike” (558c). Bracketing, for the moment, the threat to natural hierarchy posed by democratic leveling (a topic we will come to shortly), I want to focus now on democracy’s strikingly poetic characterization. For, as we have seen, poetry is also characteristically sweet, and Socrates traces the origins of this sweetness to the variety and complexity of poetic subjects. As with poetry, which is sweetest to the masses when it is “mixed,” the diversity of poikilia makes the democratic city “sweet” as well as beautiful. But the beauty of variation is not the beauty of purity; Socrates regards the one as false and ephemeral and the other as true and abiding:  “Everything that is in a beautiful [καλῶς] condition, whether by nature or art or both, admits least transformation by anything else” (381b).45 Given that this austere conception of beauty motivates Socrates’ radical rejection of the most canonical accounts of Greek theology (where gods routinely metamorphosize), it is unlikely to be shared by the average Athenian (or the average person for that matter –​one could certainly In a similar vein, Socrates warns his interlocutors not to be “dazzled” (μὴ ἐκπληττώμεθα) by the ruling tyrant’s display of power in their analysis of the tyrannical regime, in which the majority of citizens are enslaved and miserable (576d), and he compares such superficial judgment to a child’s naïve admiration for the trappings of tyranny (577a); the true nature of the tyrant, who is himself enslaved and miserable, can only be seen when he is “stripped of his tragic attire” (577b). Socrates thus contrasts good judgment, which must be able to penetrate appearances and grasp the invisible intellectually, to a childish assent to appearance; Frank (2007) 455–​9 discusses this point at length. 44 Rosenstock (1994) plausibly suggests that the metaphor of the cloak obliquely refers to the embroidered peplos of Athena, a garment ritually prepared by select Athenian women for the Panathenaian procession. Socrates’ critical application of the metaphor thus amounts to a countercultural reading of a powerful symbol of Athenian civic identity (368, 376–​8). 45 The unalterability of true beauty applies both to the Form of Beauty, relative to which all beautiful particulars are in some sense ugly, since they are relative and subject to change (479a–​b), as well as to beautiful particulars that adhere to the aesthetic principles of purity and simplicity, such as the geometric shapes and pure colors that qualify as beautiful in the Philebus (51c–​d); see Moss (2007) 420–​1, 426–​7 and Rosen (2013) 97–​9 on this distinction. Though all instances of beauty are imperfect insofar as they are removed from the Form, Socrates believes that some particulars more closely approximate the perfection of Beauty itself than others, and takes the attraction of allegedly beautiful particulars, which are characterized by variation, to originate in the impaired psychological condition of the beholder –​that is why he so often condemns popular taste (as well as the taste of pseudo-​philosophers, whom he calls “lovers of spectacle” and “lovers of opinion” [479a, 480a]) as being a false measure of beauty. 43

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argue that this is an impoverished conception of beauty46). Just as the mixed type of poetry was seen to attract the majority of people through a sweetness that conceals its own pernicious effects, the democratic regime is an optical illusion that hides its corrupting influence through the smoke and mirrors of a shifting variety of pleasures. It is the “bazaar of regimes” (παντοπώλιον … πολιτειῶν) from which you can take your pick of types (557d). Democracy’s ideological commitment to equality (ἰσότης) and freedom (ἐλευθερία) makes it naturally pluralistic; it cannot discriminate among alternative ways of life in the manner of a more homogenous community without infringing upon these fundamental rights.47 Such a society looks very similar to our own liberal democracies,48 and it is not immediately obvious (especially to a modern reader) why the democratic constitution should be dismissed as corrupt. Socrates’ democratic citizens, like our own, defend the personal liberties that allow individuals to pursue their personal goals with minimal intervention and to “color” the city with the diversity of lifestyles that results; indeed, Socrates admits that the liberality of life in a democratic city is “a way of passing the time divinely sweet for the moment” (558a). But in Socrates’ political genealogy, democracy is father to the most vicious and oppressive form of government: “tyranny arises from no other constitution than that of democracy –​from the height of liberty, I take it, the greatest and most savage slavery” (564a). This surprising political development occurs when the wealth inequality that results from a free market economy leads to a populist uprising ripe for tyrannical exploitation;49 the tyrant begins his career as a leader of a redistributive revolution and a champion of the people (προστάτης), only to become, through Though see Notes on a Cinematographer by French director Robert Bresson (1977) for a modern representative of a purist aesthetic that is opposed to the variegation and spectacle of drama. 47 The value of equality is the impetus behind the democratic revolution of the oligarchic city, where the subjugation of the poor to the rich leads to a populist uprising; once the surviving community establishes “an equal share in both rites of citizenship and political offices” to all, the value of freedom becomes the prevailing ideology of the newly democratic city, where “each man attends to the private arrangement of his own life in whatever way pleases him” (556e–​557b). 48 As Annas (1981) 300–​1 notes, Plato’s account of democracy describes in theory a political culture that has only recently developed in practice, in the form of modern liberal states. Annas goes so far as to deny that Athens is implicated in Socrates’ critique of democracy because Athens was not sufficiently pluralist to fit his description: “since Athenian democracy was so far from any kind of pluralism, Plato is pouring scorn on the idea without ever having experienced it, or anything remotely like it” (301). It would be absurd, however, to deny the relevance of existing democracies to Plato’s theoretical account of democratic constitutions, or to expect a perfect correspondence between them, since his goal is to develop a theoretical category rather than to provide a faithful historical description. 49 I use the modern notion of a free-​market economy despite its anachronism, for Socrates, as I mentioned in the previous note, is not wedded to an existing democracy in his characterization of the 46

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the corruption of power, their worst oppressor (564a–​566d). Inversely, the democratic psyche undergoes a tyrannical revolution when the equal distribution of pleasure is experienced as a constraint on the freedom to indulge more demanding desires; “complete freedom” (ἐλευθερίαν ἅπασαν) in satisfying these cravings masks a “complete lawlessness” (πᾶσαν παρανομίαν) that ultimately enslaves the previously democratic soul to the tyranny of insatiable desire (572d–​573a). The rosy picture of liberal tolerance, then, belies a fundamental incompatibility between the core democratic values of liberty and equality that facilitates the emergence of tyranny. Be that as it may, the source of the materialism that breeds popular discontent in the city and the hedonism that breeds psychic discontent in the individual is neither liberty nor equality, but privacy, the excesses of which create a state of disequilibrium that renders city and soul susceptible to revolution.50 In democracy, where “the spirit of anarchy seeps into private homes [τὰς ἰδίας οἰκίας]” (562e), “each man attends to the private arrangement [ἰδίαν … κατασκευήν] of his own life, in whatever way pleases him” (557b). Privacy gives corruption an opportunity to flourish without detection and its introduction into previously public arenas is one of the first signs of a constitution’s degeneration. The privatization of property in the formerly communal class of guardians is responsible for the corruption of the philosophical aristocracy (547b–​548b); the emergence of personal treasuries, or “private nests” (νεοττιὰς ἰδίας) as Socrates calls them, leads the ruling class of timocracy to hoard and pursue wealth instead of honor (548a, 550d–​e); and in private we glimpse the oligarch indulging his repressed desires by abusing helpless orphans (554c), a practice that betrays the weakness of his psychic control and paves the way for his son’s democratic revolution. Yet even in oligarchy a principle of discrimination persists and prevents extreme forms of criminality from taking shape that would jeopardize the oligarchic objective of acquiring wealth. In democracy the public is ruled by a principle of nondiscrimination that privileges the autonomy of the individual at the expense of the society as a whole, for such a principle disables the critical faculty that would condemn morally questionable and potentially subversive activities. In the rare cases where judgments are made, they are not enforced. The democratic constitution, but a potential one, and the circumstances of its degeneration evoke the same problems with wealth distribution that plague modern free-​market economies. 50 Saxenhouse (1998) 278 also recognizes the centrality of privacy to the democratic regime, which she rightly links to an epistemological disability (the inability to “unify multiplicity into eidê”) that leads to democracy’s undoing.

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convicted criminal continues to participate in the life of the democratic city in flagrant disregard of his punishment, wandering the streets “like a shade,” without a second glance (558a).51 It is in this atomistic environment that a tyrant can develop undetected.52 The private and unregulated domestic space that emerges in the city with the institution of property ownership eventually overtakes the public domain, until there remains no arena in which the citizen is subject to critical supervision, and the collective citizenry consists of isolated individuals.53 This political trajectory has a psychic analogue in the influence of poetry over the soul; for poetry fosters an autonomous domain in the individual’s imagination that inevitably affects his actual life while alienating him from public life. Poetry’s fictional world, though often collectively inhabited, unleashes the private fantasies of its individual auditors, who become less capable of containing them outside of the poetic context. In making this point, Socrates evokes Gorgias’ concept of emotional contagion: mimesis “infects” reality by forming habits and dispositions (ἀπολαύσωσιν, 395d)54; the experience of other people’s emotions in tragic poetry irresistibly “infects” our own (ἀπολαύειν, 606b); poetry “feeds” emotions we would prefer to starve, leading them to become even more demanding and ungovernable in our personal lives (θρέψαντα, 606a–​c). Socrates reaffirms Gorgias’ point that poetry derives its power from its ability to spontaneously engender a “private feeling” in the auditor by exposing him to the feelings of others (ἴδιον … πάθημα, Hel. §9; cf. Pl. R. 604e, 606b), but goes further in insisting that the exercise of such feelings weakens the auditor’s ability to control them in other, extra-​ mimetic circumstances. The precise term is “hero” [ἥρως], but it is clear from the context that Socrates intends to compare criminals to the shades of hero cults rather than the heroes themselves, as Adam (1963) ad. loc. assumes in his commentary when he translates the passage thus: “And is not the perfect good temper of some who have been tried exquisite? or have you never seen in such a State, when people have been condemned to death or exile, how none the less they remain and roam about in public, and the culprit saunters round as though unheeded and unseen like some spirit from another world [ὥσπερ ἥρως]?” (emphasis added). In failing to recognize this ghostly dimension to hêrôs, scholars such as Rosenstock ([1994] 369) mistakenly attribute a kind of glorified “heroism” to the criminal in democracy that contradicts Socrates’ main point, which is that criminals are invisible and criminality overlooked in an overly tolerant society. 52 Saxenhouse (1998) 281 makes a similar point. 53 See Arendt (1958) on the phenomenon of mass privacy, which is a state where “all [are] imprisoned in the subjectivity of their own singular experience, which does not cease to be singular if the same experience is multiplied innumerable times” (58; cf. 52). 54 Cf. Pl. Phdr. 255d for the use of apolauein in the context of a literal infection, noted also by Halliwell (1988) 149 and Murray (1996) 175–​6 in their commentaries on the use of this term in the Republic. 51

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What are these private fantasies that find an outlet in poetry, and where do they figure in Socrates’ tripartite psychology? I argue that they are generated by the lawless desires of appetite, and are characterized by poikilia. We can trace the thread of such desires by analyzing the mechanism of repression in Socrates’ degenerate characters and their corresponding political regimes. The oligarch is the first to “enthrone” appetite in the citadel of his soul, subjugating spirit and reason to his appetitive pursuit of financial security (553b–​d). Though twice removed from the ideal psychic composition, the oligarch remains a prudent character. He exercises self-​control in limiting his indulgence of appetite to what Socrates calls “necessary” desires while enslaving those that threaten their satisfaction by draining his resources (554a). Because the oligarch relies on coercion rather than persuasion to moderate his gratuitous appetites, his prudence is only apparent virtue and his soul remains essentially conflicted and consequently unstable (554b–​e).55 The necessary desires that rule the oligarchic constitution are ones we cannot “turn aside” and whose satisfaction “benefits” us (558d–​e); these are the biological demands for survival and utilitarian conditions for flourishing (in Socrates’ modest sense). Though even the philosopher must satisfy these desires, the oligarch mistakenly makes their satisfaction his life’s goal.56 The oligarch’s maximization of wealth aims, however misguidedly, to ensure that his basic appetitive needs will always be met.57 Socrates identifies unnecessary desires as those we can live without and that can potentially harm us; ideally they are exorcised at any The oligarch’s internal dissension makes him a “double” man (διπλοῦς, 554d), just as the class wars between rich and poor divide the oligarchic city into two cities (551d); in both cases this inherent constitutional tension leads to a democratic revolution (555b–​557a; 559d–​561a). See Reeve (1988) 142 on coercion as a characteristic of improper psychic rule and the possibility of persuading the nonrational psychic parts; see also Parry (2007) 403–​13 on this theme. 56 Though money is only instrumental in this case, it is specified as the central object of oligarchic pursuits because it unifies the various appetitive needs and assumes a “derivative” pleasure from meeting them (580e–​581a). As Reeve (1988) puts it, “Making money is not intrinsically pleasant … But because money is a means to the pleasures of food, drink, and sex, making it takes on an aura of derivative pleasantness, which may in the end make it seem intrinsically pleasant. When the pleasure of making money is said to be a distinct pleasure, I think something like this is meant” (138). One should further note that there is nothing inherently appetitive about the pursuit of money, since the acquisition of wealth as a status symbol would be timocratically motivated; see Kamtekar (1998) 333 on the timocratic approach to wealth. 57 Recall that the oligarch rebels from his timocratic upbringing when he sees his father dispossessed:  “And the son … after seeing and suffering this, and losing his property, is frightened [δείσας], I suppose, and at once thrusts the love of honor and that spirited element headlong from the throne in his soul, and, humbled by poverty, he turns greedily to money-​making, and little by little, through thrift and hard work, he collects money” (553b–​c). The oligarch’s pursuit of wealth is thus motivated by the fear of dispossession –​that is to say, the fear of being incapable of meeting his basic needs. 55

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early age, but in practice some portion of them remains in all of us and requires coercive restraint (559a, 571b, 572b). Democracy loosens oligarchy’s grip on these desires and clears a path to a new kind of pleasure –​ one that is not utilitarian or biologically imperative, but “spendthrift” and “wasteful” (ἀναλωτικός; 558d, 559c), because, unlike the self-​ regulating necessary desires, unnecessary desires have no natural limit. Variety and complexity are emphatically featured as the hallmarks of this gratuitous appetitive pleasure, and it is here in the psychological narrative that poikilia makes its first appearance. The oligarch’s son becomes democratic when he “tastes the drones’ honey and associates with fiery and clever beasts who know how to purvey manifold [παντοδαπὰς] and subtle [ποικίλας] pleasures of every variety [παντοίως ἐχούσας]” (559d). This exotic group of hedonists succeeds in corrupting the boy because he shares some inherent dispositional affiliation with them that the better part of his oligarchic upbringing managed to repress (559d–​ 561a). Though he struggles to hold on to his oligarchic “virtues,” due to the lack of persuasion in his moral education, the honey sticks in his soul, attracting new desires that “in secret intercourse bre[e]‌d a multitude” (560b). Note, once again, the role of privacy in facilitating corruption –​new desires breed in secret, beyond surveillance. The budding democrat finally returns to the hedonists in order to satisfy his most private desires in public (560c), and they instigate a complete moral revaluation in him in order to justify his self-​indulgence: shame becomes simplicity, moderation becomes cowardliness, prudent spending appears uncultured and slavish, insolence is recast as sophistication, anarchy as freedom, wastefulness as magnificence, and shamelessness as courage (560d–​e).58 The moral inversion that occurs in the democratic psyche is reflected in the topsy-​turvy world of the democratic city, where fathers fear their sons, students teach their teachers, and the old act like children (562e–​563a). The only values that continue to operate in such a world are those of freedom and equality, whose fundamental incompatibility eventually leads to See Parry (2007) 392–​3, 399–​400 on the importance of belief in Socrates’ account of character formation and the need for an ideology to justify any way of life (including one that appears to lack coherence, such as the democrat’s). As Saxenhouse (1998) 279 notes, Plato’s description of the democrat’s ideological conversion evokes Thucydides’ description of the Corcyrean revolution, where a similar revaluation of moral terms takes place: “Words had to change their meaning and to take that which was now given to them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal supporter; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question incapacity to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting a justifiable means of self-​defense … [etc.]” (3.82).

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their usurpation.59 Freedom and equality fail to secure their own authority individually as well, because each in its own way works to undermine the natural hierarchies that would anchor any stable system of value: freedom by creating false hierarchies (e.g., those that emerge from the assertion of power or wealth), equality by eradicating hierarchy altogether.60 Socrates’ greatest charge against the democratic constitution is not hypocrisy, though hypocrisy reveals a confusion about moral commitments that is one of democracy’s constitutional weaknesses, but a self-​defeating relativism; where there is no “order” (τάξις) or “compulsion” (ἀνάγκη) (561c-​d), not only is it impossible to rank goods and thereby orient a life or govern a city effectively, but even the core democratic values that created this condition of anarchy are liable to be overturned, as indeed they are once the tyrant comes to power and enslaves his native city, or, analogously, the democratic youth enslaves himself to a tyrannical passion. Democracy is “the fine and vigorous root from which tyranny grows” (563e) because, in divesting itself along with any other governing principle of moral authority, it lacks the resources to defend its own conception of the good against tyrannical aspirations.61 The moral relativism of democratic “tolerance,” which prevents the constitution from recognizing tyranny even as it finally asserts its will against inequality or coercion, is the root of democracy’s demise. As long as both principles of freedom and equality command moral authority, however, the tension between them actually stabilizes the democratic constitution, for the only distinction between democracy and tyranny, both of which are said to pursue freedom,62 is that the democratic pursuit is moderated by a countervailing commitment to equality. This is clearest in the case of the democratic character, who tempers his youthful rebellion in For discussions of the contested relationship between the values of freedom and equality in contemporary democratic theory, see Sartori (1987) 357–​62, Holden (1988) 34–​43, and Kant (2009). Alexis de Tocqueville (2006) 503–​6 made many of the arguments both for and against the compatibility of these values with admirable concision, and ultimately came down on equality as the fundamental principle of American democracy. 60 In a similar vein, Saxenhouse (1998) argues that the denial of natural hierarchy forms the basis of Socrates’ “epistemological critique” of democracy. 61 Democracy is primed for tyrannical revolution when its citizenry no longer brooks any kind of authority: “They finally cease to respect the laws, written or unwritten, so that truly they may have no master [δεσπότης] in any way” (563d–​e). 62 Democracy is said to define the good as freedom at 562b, and the tyrannical character is described as pursuing “complete lawlessness” in the belief that it is “complete freedom” at 572e. But whereas democracy manifests its commitment to freedom in each of its classes, with the global effect of anarchy, tyranny manifests its commitment to freedom by empowering a single member of its lowest class (the ruling tyrant in the city, the ruling appetite erôs in the soul), with the global effect of monarchy. 59

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old age and welcomes back some of his banished virtues63; the elder democrat is a dilettante and a relativist, but not a sociopath like the tyrant (561a–​b): If he is lucky and his frenzy doesn’t last too long, but when he’s grown older the great storm passes and he re-​admits a portion of the banished elements, and does not wholly surrender himself to new intruders, then he establishes his pleasures on equal footing [εἰς ἴσον] and lives his life, handing over the rule within himself to whichever one happens along, as though it were chosen by lot, until it is satisfied; and then again to another, dishonouring none but fostering them all on the basis of equality [ἐξ ἴσου].

The indiscriminate pursuit of pleasure leads the elder democrat to include spirited and even pseudo-​philosophical activities in his hedonistic lifestyle, which has now assumed the dazzling appearance of the intricate cloak with which Socrates first compared the democratic regime.64 The democrat is alternately a drunkard and an ascetic, an athlete and a sloven, as well as an intellectual, a politician, a soldier, a businessman (561c–​d), and none of them very well or for very long. What makes him so appealing is the diversity of his experiences, talents, and abilities. He lives what some of us might call a “rich” life, but what Socrates dismisses as a “varied” and ultimately shallow one (561e): … this man is all-​various [παντοδαπόν] and full of the greatest number of dispositions [ἠθῶν], the fair and complex [ποικίλον] man, like the city. Many men and women would admire his life because it contains the most patterns of regimes and qualities.

Like the democratic city, the democratic character is a “bazaar” of constitutions. He closely resembles the poet whom Socrates banns from his incipient ideal city, “a man who seems able by wisdom to become every sort of thing [παντοδαπὸν] and to imitate all things [πάντα χρήματα] … sacred, wondrous [θαυμαστὸν], and sweet” (398a). This poet is later implicitly compared to a “clever” (δεινόν) and “wondrous” (θαυμαστόν) craftsman who “makes all things” (πάντα ποιεῖ) by holding up a mirror to the world and producing, in the crudest sense, its image (596b–​d).65 The two stages of the democrat’s character development are well-​noted; Scott (2000) refers to the “junior” and “senior” democrat, and Parry (2007) 391 to a “revolutionary” and “postrevolutionary” era when discussing the democratic psyche. 64 The detail of choosing pleasures “by lot” [λαχούσῃ] also keeps the civic analogy in view by evoking the democratic process of election (mentioned at 557a). 65 In one of many moments where mimesis is portrayed as a medium of deception, Socrates refers to the imitator (be it painter, poet, or a man with a mirror) as a “magician” (γόης) who deceives the foolish into thinking him wise (598d). 63

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These cases violate Socrates’ political principle of specialization, according to which each class commits itself to the mastery of one occupation naturally suited for it, and they exemplify, on an individual level, the kind of shallowness that results from overextension.66 The diversity of the democratic character that the masses find so attractive is thus the most conspicuous sign of his psychic disorder. There is, however, an important psychic gain to the shallowness of the democratic soul. Its approach to pleasure is elective and in some sense moderate. It is possible for the democrat to experience limited satisfaction (“to whichever pleasure happens along … he hands over the rule within himself until it is satisfied”). Though his decadence is hardly moderate overall, since his life is still appetitively ruled, he is moderate in the extent to which he limits the indulgence of any single appetite. The principle of equality thus proves to be a psychic anchor in the democratic soul that prevents it from becoming obsessed with any single source of pleasure in its pursuit of a comprehensive variety of pleasures. The generic nature of this commitment to pleasure results in a dazzling lifestyle; the democrat maximizes pleasure (at least quantitatively) as the oligarch maximizes wealth, and this mastery of pleasure is a source of admiration. But though he appears to be free in his pursuits (561d), the democrat’s concern for breadth rather than depth of experience actually constrains him, betraying the secondary status of the principle of freedom that Socrates elsewhere identifies as the primary good motivating democratic constitutions (562b–​c). Freedom unqualified turns out to be the tyrant’s aspiration, and it is precisely the limitation on pleasure imposed by equality that the democrat’s son (that is, the developing tyrant) bucks in his pursuit of more intense pleasures (572d–​e). In refusing to distinguish destructive from beneficial desires, the democrat thus exposes himself to tyrannical passions that may prove irresistible (561b–​c). His psychic equanimity is always in jeopardy. The variety of dispositions that makes the democratic way of life appealing is also what makes poetry appealing. For poetry satisfies a kindred, “varied” part of soul (604e–​605a): The element in us that affords much and varied [ποικίλην] imitation is the excitable element [τὸ ἀγανακτητικόν], while the prudent and tranquil disposition, which is always nearly equal to itself, is neither easily imitated nor, when imitated, easily understood, especially by a motley crew [παντοδαποῖς ἀνθρώποις] gathered at the theater. For the imitation is For a lucid treatment of this controversial principle, see Reeve (1988) 172–​6. The dangers of overextension are discussed at 370a–​b, 374a–​c, 394e, 395b, and 423c–​d.

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of a condition that is surely alien [ἀλλοτρίου] to them … then clearly the imitative poet isn’t naturally directed toward any such part of soul, and his wisdom isn’t framed for satisfying it –​if he’s going to be popular with the many –​but rather toward the excitable and various disposition [τὸ ἀγανακτητικόν τε καὶ ποικίλον ἦθος], because it is easily imitated.

The tranquil soul, like the true, unalterable divinity belied by the warring gods of traditional poetry, makes for a poor poetic subject.67 Because such a soul lacks the dynamic conflict narrative requires, it is difficult –​if not impossible –​to represent poetically68; because its condition is “alien” (ἀλλοτρίου) to most people, it frustrates identification and alienates those seeking emotional engagement.69 In catering to a mass audience, moreover, poetry must not only depict a conflicted disposition that the masses can relate to; it must also accommodate a variety of dispositions, both to ensure that different members can identify with different characters, but more crucially because the part of each individual soul that responds to poetry is itself various, poikilon. The quality of poikilia reveals the identity of the “excitable” part to be appetite, which is elsewhere described as “intricate” (ποικίλου, 588c), “manifold” (παντοδαπόν, 588e), “multi-​ formed” (πολυειδές, 590a) and “moblike” (ὀχλώδει, 590b).70 It is the negative example set by poetry’s implicit theology, which admits of a multiplicity of gods in constant conflict, that first motivates Socrates’ censorship (377b–​383c), and the incoherence of this theology that leads to the formulation of two theological “guidelines” (τύποι) that poetry must meet: (1) god is the cause of good but not evil (380c); (2) god never changes or lies (383a) (the move from polytheism to monotheism is assumed but never justified). Socrates articulates these guidelines at the behest of Adeimantus, who has difficulty imagining the kind of poetry that could survive their censorship:  “but if someone should ask about these [well-​composed poems], what they are and what their stories [μῦθοι] are, what would we say? … this very thing, the models for theology [οἱ τύποι περὶ θεολογίας], what would they be?” (378e–​379a). Gould (1992) 19 ignores these probing questions when he ascribes to Adeimantus an “uncritical acceptance” of Socrates’ unorthodox theology. 68 Socrates does, however, suggest the possibility of imitating the stable character when he imagines the failure of such an imitation to move the masses. Many view Plato’s portrayal of Socrates in the dialogues as an attempt to realize this possibility, especially in the tragic circumstances of the Apology or Phaedo; see in particular Halliwell (2006) 124–​8, who argues that Plato’s attempt in the Phaedo is not wholly successful. 69 Both here and at 606b, where Socrates refers to the “sufferings of others” (ἀλλότρια πάθη) that attract the tragic audience, Plato is surely evoking Gorgias’ characterization of poetic engagement, in which the auditor experiences a feeling of his own (ἴδιον πάθημα) in response to “other people’s affairs and bodies” (ἀλλοτρίων … πραγμάτων καὶ σωμάτων ) (Hel. §9). Contrast this with Socrates’ account of the “alien condition” [ἀλλοτρίου … πάθους] of the tranquil soul, which, in failing to suffer, also fails to arouse an observer. The allusions are also noted by Belfiore (1983) 59n32 and Halliwell (2002) 77. 70 See also 493c–​e, where Socrates compares the crowd to whom the sophists, politicians, and poets must pander to a volatile beast in much the same manner as he later figures appetite in the plastic image of the soul (588c–​592b). 67

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Yet for all of its appetitive characteristics, the part of soul that poetry is said to target remains ambiguous. Rather than calling it the “appetitive part” (τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν), Socrates refers to it as “excitable and varied” (ἀγανακτητικόν τε καὶ ποικίλον), using terms that evoke spirit as well as appetite,71 and deliberately avoiding the technical vocabulary he established for psychic parts in book 4 (435b–​443b). I propose that this apparent imprecision is intended to capture a psychic condition in which spirit no longer operates independently, but furnishes appetite with an additional source of affective satisfaction.72 As others have noted, aganakteô typically expresses anger and vexation, and is correlated to thumos elsewhere in the Republic.73 But, true to a more traditional psychology that locates anger and anguish in the same affective complex,74 aganakteô expresses grief as well, and it occurred in precisely this sense only lines before this passage to describe an appetitive response to bereavement (604b).75 Aganaktêtikon thus offers a fitting description of the desire to experience both anger and grief at the tragic theater, and poikilon explains this desire as a desire for a variety of emotional experiences. In a move that will characterize the whole of book 10’s discussion of mimesis, Socrates elides his previous distinction between appetite and spirit, while nevertheless privileging appetite as the dominant class into which spirit is subsumed. In his concluding image of the tripartite soul, Socrates portrays appetite as “an intricate [ποικίλου], multi-​headed beast” with “savage” (ἄγριοι) as well as tame heads (588c). Like the multicolored cloak of democracy and the manifold democrat himself, poetry appeals to an appetitive desire for sheer variety, but as we saw in the case of the democrat, this desire transforms all parts of soul –​ including thumos and its inclination to savagery76 –​into potential sources of appetitive pleasure. The variety of emotions that poetry aims to engender in its audience reveals a commitment to depicting an unstable world of heterogeneous and Also noted by Murray (1996) 220–​1. I argue this point at greater length in my discussion of book 10 in Section 3.3. 73 See esp. 536c, where Socrates is irritated (ἀγανακτήσας μοι) and angered (θυμωθεὶς) by the abuse of philosophy; see additionally 535e, 563d, and 568e for uses of aganakteô that manifest spirit. The suggestion of spirit in to aganaktêtikon is also noted by Adam (1963) ad. loc.; Nehamas (1982) 67; Rubidge (1993) 261–​3; Naddaf (2002) 165n32; and Moss (2008) 43. 74 So I hope to have shown in Chapter 2, Section 2.1. 75 I discuss this occurrence in Section 3.3. See Rosenstock (1994) 373–​4 for an emphasis on aggrievement in interpreting to aganaktêtikon. 76 A persistent concern in the early discussion of guardian education is the potential savagery (ἀγριότης) of an uncultivated spirit (375b, 410d, 411d–​e, 416b). 71 72

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conflicting values analogous to the contradictory world of the senses depicted by visual mimesis. Both forms of mimesis are shown to appeal to that part of soul which is incapable of questioning appearances,77 and in either case poikilia emerges as a sign of the mimetic medium’s metaphysical limitations as well an index of its “phenomenal” nature, for the quality of poikilia derives from the heterogeneity of the phenomenal world that poetry and painting are bound, in their own ways, to represent. The object of poetic representation is, as Socrates first put it, “people in action”78 –​that is to say, people embedded in complex scenarios that generate and spotlight their psychic divisions (603c–​d): The mimetic art of poetry, we say, imitates people in action [πράττοντας], acting either by force or voluntarily, and as a result of their action supposing themselves to have faired well or badly, and in all this to be feeling grief or joy … is a person in all this of one mind [ὁμονοητικῶς], or just as in the case of vision he was divided [ἐστασίαζεν] and held within himself contrary opinions [ἐναντίας δόξας] at the same time about the same things, so in the case of action the same man is divided [στασιάζει] and fights [μάχεται] with himself?

Socrates’ crude and colorless account of poetic subjects is meant to be just that:  earlier he had observed that poetry stripped bare of stylistic adornments and colorful details shows its true face to be unattractive.79

See Moss (2008) 57: “The non-​rational part of soul is the part that fails to question appearances, with respect to value just as with respect to shape or size.” Moss thus offers a compelling corrective to the strange yet prevalent view that takes the two examples of psychic conflict in book 10 –​the cognitive dissonance involved in optical illusions and the struggle against grief in response to bereavement –​to refer to a different division within the soul. I agree with Moss that the analogy between perceptual appearances and what she calls “value appearances” is clearly intended to illuminate the same part of soul, that which unreflectively assents to appearance and is specifically targeted by mimetic poetry. Following Plato’s lead, Moss inclusively refers to this part as “non-​ rational” and consisting of both appetite and spirit. While I concede that the emotions of spirit are included in poetry’s target, I argue in Section 3.3 that spirit itself as a psychic agent is, like reason, disarmed and subordinated to appetite in Socrates’ description of tragic pleasure. 78 A Platonic formulation that Aristotle will famously reuse: “Since imitators imitate people in action (πράττοντας), they must be either superior or inferior (for characters nearly always conform to these alone, since all characters differ according to badness or excellence), that is to say they are either better or worse than we are, or such as we are” (Po. 1448a1–​5). On the relationship between these two passages, see Murray (1996) 217. 79 The metaphor is Socrates’:  “Do they [i.e., shorn poetic statements] not resemble the faces of adolescents, young but not really beautiful, when the bloom of youth abandons them?” (601b); cf. Grg. 502c for a similar point. Of course, this is not to suggest that poikilia is an accidental, removable feature of poetry –​it is clear that Socrates takes it to be essential to poetry’s structure, just as poikilia is essential to the structure of the visible world. The metaphor is intended to suggest that the dazzling effects of poikilia in poetry distracts us from poetry’s impoverished epistemic content, where we ought to locate the source of beauty. 77

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The ugly underbelly of poikilia that is concealed by the exterior beauty of meter and pretty turns of phrase reveals itself when we scratch the surface, where we find that the cost of alluring variety is painful conflict. This is also the cost of being an embodied human being, whose complex soul at any one moment “teems with ten thousand oppositions” (603d) from which the death of the body finally frees it (611b–​612a). The analogy with vision reveals that the psychological struggles depicted by poetry are, to some degree, a permanent feature of human life –​they are in this sense “realistic.”80 It is not, then, the reality of psychic conflict that Socrates denies when he accuses poetry of being “three times removed from the truth,”81 for his tripartite psychology is developed to explain just this fact. Rather, it is that poetry represents the competing values of psychic conflict as incommensurable, just as vision represents the visible world as contradictory, when reason, because of its accessibility to forms and its ability to “calculate,” is uniquely qualified to adjudicate among values and resolve conflicts that arise between them.82 Socrates objects to poetry for sustaining the illusion of incommensurability in the service of a base and destructive pleasure that is not only indifferent to the authority of reason and psychic well-​being, but, what’s more, actively relishes conflict. Like democracy, poetry speciously levels the hierarchical structure of the soul; it does so not through the equitable distribution of satisfaction to all desires, however, but by presenting psychological division as an irremediable conflict between equal parts, while simultaneously inverting the psychic hierarchy of its audience members by catering to their basest part: an appetite that has hijacked spirit. It is this emphasis on conflict in representation, coupled with a “savage” appetitive orientation, that lends the poikilia of poetry a distinctly tyrannical cast, for the tyrannical character’s enslavement to a single, lawless See Moss (2007) 421, 433, 435 on this Platonic sense of realism, which entails a commitment to appearance rather than reality; a faithful representation of reality would ironically appear unrealistic –​as Moss puts it, “it will not look like what it represents” (421, emphasis in the original). See also Asmis (1992) 353, who points out that “a photographic type of realism is what Plato most descries, as the most perfect illusionism” because “hanging on sensible reality, without independent guidelines, can only produce further distortions of reality.” Petraki (2011) puts the point succinctly: “poetry produces an unfaithful verisimilitude of the Real” (22). 81 Socrates makes this accusation repeatedly: 597e, 598e–​599a, 599d, and 602c. 82 Reeves (1988) 151 makes the same point when comparing Socrates’ theory of pleasure to Bentham’s:  “Although Plato recognizes irreducibly distinct pleasures … he thinks they are commensurable … This is not because there is a single experience the extent or intensity of which provides a common measure of their pleasantness, but because assessing things as pleasures involves judging them by a single set of standards. Included in this set, on Plato’s view, are purity and truth” (emphasis in the original). 80

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appetite produces a chronic condition of both psychic and social conflict characterized by poikilia. Like the young democrat, the young tyrant had fallen in with the wrong crowd, “the dread enchanters [μάγοι] and tyrant-​ makers” who have their sights set on power and so foster the restless lust of erôs in the boy’s soul (572e).83 The object of erôs is never clearly stated, but in the course of our analysis it will come to light as the unqualified pursuit of appetitive freedom.84 In keeping with his negative use of apian imagery, Socrates portrays erôs as “a great winged drone” (ὑπόπτερον καὶ μέγαν κηφῆνα) surrounded by a swarm of “buzzing appetites” (βομβοῦσαι … ἐπιθυμίαι) that subject it to the “sting” of insatiable longing (πόθου κέντρον) (573a). The analogy between city and soul assumes a Chinese box effect as we realize that the ruling “tyrant” within the tyrannical soul is itself tyrannized by desire, and that the external source of erôs’ inner tyranny is a multifarious group of seducers much like the bodyguard of the tyrannical ruler. This regression of power is meant to show that, in remaining subject to the demands of alien forces, the ruling element of tyrannical constitutions (erôs) is ultimately passive. In the tyrannical regime, the political counterpart to the “buzzing appetites” of the soul is a motley crew of “drones” consisting of former slaves and aliens hired by the tyrant for his protection. They are described as “foreigners of every variety [ξενικούς τε καὶ παντοδαπούς] … a legion that is fair, numerous, diverse [ποικίλον], and never the same” (567e; 568d). Just as in the regime, poikilia is identified with the dregs of society empowered by the tyrant, a lowly “rabble” (ξύγκλυδες) of “troublemakers” (ὀχληρῶν) whose maintenance eventually bankrupts the city (569a), so in the psyche poikilia is identified with the insatiable appetites that drive the inner tyrant erôs to expel any lingering virtues that would obstruct them. These appetites continue to proliferate until they have bankrupted the individual’s soul, his family’s estate, and eventually his city as well (573a–​575d). In the context

Parry (2007) makes much of the fact that erôs is said to be “implanted” (ἐμποιῆσαι) by outsiders in the tyrant’s soul (396n9; cf. 386, 395), arguing that the foreign origins of erôs make it categorically distinct from the innate lawless appetites developed earlier in book 9 (571b–​d). But this strict reading of empoiêsai, which can just as well mean “develop” or “foster,” ignores the clear parallels between the content of tyrannical erôs and that of the lawless desires that Socrates introduced precisely in order to illuminate the tyrannical soul. 84 Many thanks to Nathan Rothschild for suggesting this possibility in comments to an earlier draft of this section. Commentators typically assume the tyrant’s erôs to be sexual in nature, but this limits what Socrates describes as a far more capacious desire (as we will see). On the contrast between tyrannical erôs and philosophical erôs, see Ludwig (2007) 222–​30, Parry (2007) 396n9, and the particularly insightful analysis of Scott (2007); cf. Santas (1982) on a similar polarity within erôs in the Phaedrus. 83

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of tyranny, then, poikilia is divested of any surface attraction, its latent corruption now blatantly exposed. Poikilia loses its allure through its association with the socially harmful character of tyrannical pleasure, which cannot, on Socrates’ account, conceal its naked injustice. Because the tyrant’s appetite brooks no constraint, he inevitably transgresses the city’s laws in attempting to satisfy it. Socrates emphasizes the proximity between freedom and transgression in his description of the tyrant’s generation; the democrat’s son becomes tyrannical when “he is drawn to complete transgression/​ lawlessness [πᾶσαν παρανομίαν], which is called by his seducers complete freedom [ἐλευθερίαν ἅπασαν]” (572e). The oligarch’s son had fallen for a similar rationalization of vice when his seducers recast “anarchy” (ἀναρχίαν) as “liberty” (ἐλευθερίαν) to justify their way of life (560e). But what was a passing moral rebellion for the democrat is the tyrant’s permanent state of mind. The tyrannical character’s moral revaluation is irrevocable once his lust and obsession are fortified by a “madness” (μανία) that drives out any remaining virtues inherited from his more moderate father, and that expresses itself as a will “to rule not only men but even gods” (573a–​c). This formulation suggests that the aspiration for complete autonomy has a transgressive trajectory that manifests in acts of inhumanity and impiety. As with every other degenerate character, the tyrant believes himself to be pursuing a good that is, in actuality, an evil.85 What distinguishes the tyrant’s “good” from the other mistaken goods is that his is patently socially destructive.86 That a tyrant asserts his will over others is commonplace, even tautological. What Socrates must demonstrate is that he harms himself in the process, thereby proving that “he who is most evil and most unjust is most unhappy” (580c).87 The tyrant’s aspiration to rule men and gods is not only transgressive but impossible to realize (that is why it is “mad”), and this source of chronic frustration is the greatest indictment against the tyrannical soul. While a case could be made for the painless hedonism of the elder democrat, there is no redeeming aspect to Socrates’ re-​description of Pace Parry (2007) 398, who takes the madness of the tyrant to preclude the possibility of a belief system and to dispense with the need for normative justification of his way of life. Note, also, Socrates’ remark in the Gorgias that “orators and tyrants have the least power in their cities … For they do nothing that they wish to do, practically speaking, though they do whatever they think is best [ὅτι ἂν αὐτοῖς δόξῃ βέλτιστον]” (466e, italics mine). 86 On the socially destructive nature of the tyrant’s satisfaction of erôs, see Scott (2007), esp. 140–​1. 87 This in partial fulfillment of Glaucon and Adeimantus’ joint request that justice be shown to be intrinsically valuable, and injustice intrinsically harmful (357b, 358a, 360c, 361d, 367d, 368c); for a lucid account of Socrates’ defense of justice in the dialogue, see Kraut (1992). 85

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the tyrannical life. Socrates’ tyrant is pitied and feared, but never admired, because his pleasure is eclipsed by the pain of addiction and, in the event of actually ruling over a city, the paranoia of power.88 His ruling desire is portrayed as a parasite that cripples its host completely. The obsessive character of erôs’ attachments drives the tyrant to extreme measures for their attainment, but since this only generates newer and more intense desires –​Socrates uses an avian image of appetites “hatching nests” in the soul (ἐπιθυμίας … ἐννενεοττευμένας, 573e) –​ erôs acquires the structure of addiction.89 Because his desires are insatiable, the tyrant must continually expend himself and those around him in his futile pursuit of erotic satisfaction:  “it is necessary to take from every source or be caught in the grip of great travail and pain” (574a). The tyrannical character is thus properly understood to be passively tyrannized as well as actively tyrannizing: “The tyrannized soul [ἡ τυραννουμένη … ψυχὴ], speaking of the soul as a whole, will least of all do what it wants; being always violently driven [ἑλκομένη βίᾳ] by a gadfly, it will be full of confusion [ταραχῆς] and regret [μεταμελείας]” (577e).90 The tyrant’s regret betrays an awareness of his own pathological condition that also distinguishes him from the other degenerate characters, whose relative success at securing their respective objects (be it honor, wealth, or pleasure) blinds them to their psychic disorder.91 Only the tyrannical character utterly fails to acquire his perceived good, and so fails to live happily on his own terms as well as the objective terms of reason. Far from achieving his goal, the tyrant’s pursuit of unqualified freedom ironically leads to his psychic enslavement (577c–​e). He registers this failure in feeling the pain of insatiability and the alien force of the gadfly in his soul –​“a small part, most wicked [μοχθηρότατον] and mad See Parry (2007) on the “unhappy tyrant.” Ferrari (1989) 123–​4, 141 also discusses the tyrant’s desires in terms of addiction. 90 The “gadfly” (οἶστρος) introduces a new image into the rich description of the tyrant’s psychology that is difficult to place: on the one hand oistros is identifiable with erôs insofar as they both are said to control the psyche; on the other hand oistros is distinct from erôs in inflicting stings which erôs is elsewhere said to suffer (573a). Add to that the strange semantic parallel between the tyrant’s “gadfly” in the Republic and philosophical “gadfly” (μύωψ) in the Apology, where Socrates describes himself thus for subjecting the city to ceaseless interrogations (30e). 91 Parry (2007) takes the opposite view when he distinguishes the democrat’s mistaken beliefs, which can still conflict with true ones, with the tyrant’s madness: “The difference is crucial; the intensity of the erotic passion is matched by its failure to grasp what is really happening” (398). This is contradicted, however, by Parry’s own sensitive treatment of the tyrant’s regret later in the essay (400–​1), which he links to the episodic nature of ancient madness. If the tyrant were meant to be distinguished among the degenerate characters for his lack of self-​awareness, it is surprising that he is the only one to whom any self-​awareness is attributed in the form of regret. 88 89

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[μανικώτατον]” –​puppeteering his actions (577d).92 This psychic despot makes demands that eventually exhaust the sources of ordinary appetitive pleasures, compelling the tyrant to seek out increasingly perverse ones. He is driven to commit crimes because the force of law is experienced as a restriction on his appetitive freedom. His actions become lawless (574e–​575a): … once he has been tyrannized by erôs, what he rarely was in dreams, he becomes continuously while awake. He will refrain from no terrible murder, nor any food or deed, but erôs lives as a tyrant within him in all anarchy and lawlessness [ἀναρχίᾳ καὶ ἀνομίᾳ]; and, being itself a monarch, will lead the man who contains it, as though he were a city, to every kind of daring that will nourish both itself and the crowd around it.

The criminality of the tyrant’s life makes it tempting to interpret his erôs as an appetite for lawlessness as such –​a perverse will to transgress that calls to mind the Christian notion of sin.93 But Socrates conspicuously avoids characterizing the tyrant’s actions as deliberate transgressions, emphasizing instead the indiscriminate nature of his erotic objectives and his lack of self-​restraint in pursuing them. The tyrant does not “hold himself back” (ἀφέξεται) and as a result he will kill anything, eat anything, do anything. The lack of specification is deliberate, because erôs is not defined by specific content so much as by the quality of insatiable desire. What appeals to the tyrant is not the allure of the forbidden and taboo, but the exercise of his appetitive freedom, which cannot discriminate the illicit from This ratio is another surprising parallel between the tyrant and the philosopher, who is also ruled by the smallest part of soul (reason). The other parallel, as we have mentioned, is the erotic nature of the passion motivating philosophical as well as tyrannical pursuits (475b–​c; 485d–​e). 93 See in particular the childhood episode recounted by Augustine in his Confessions, in which he steals from a neighbor’s pear tree “compelled by neither hunger nor poverty, but through a contempt for well-​doing [fastidio iustitiae] and a strong impulse to iniquity [sagina iniquitatis] … I did not desire to enjoy what I stole, but only the theft and the sin itself ” (2.4 [trans. Albert Outler]). It is the sheer pointlessness of the crime that impresses this conclusion upon him –​he and his friends throw the stolen pears to the hogs without even tasting them: “Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden [non liceret]. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart –​which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error –​not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself ” (2.4). It is possible, however, to suggest a more Platonic alternative that would explain Augustine’s boyhood sin as a paradigmatically childish will to assert one’s autonomy before the law (as a form of pride, in Christian terms); such an alternative also explains the founding myth of original sin, in which Eve is tempted not by transgression, but by autonomy in the serpent’s promise that she will become godlike (Gen. 3.1–​6); this is Milton’s interpretation in Paradise Lost, on which see Lewis (1942) 66–​72, 125–​8. 92

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the licit without subjecting appetite to external restrictions that would diminish its autonomy. Tyrannical erôs, then, is the desire to liberate every appetite without scruple, and the recklessness of this project, which leads to “every kind of daring [τόλμαν],” eventually results in infractions against the law. Understanding the lawlessness of the tyrant as a disregard for the law in pursuit of freedom rather than a will to break the law in pursuit of transgression94 also preserves one of the central tenets of the Republic’s psychology. For to interpret tyrannical erôs as an appetite for transgression would be to concede that evil or wrongdoing can be desirable for its own sake, and this is incompatible with Socrates’ unequivocal claim that everyone pursues the good (however conceived).95 This problematic contradiction is avoided when we take the tyrant’s lawlessness to be the collateral damage of his pursuit of freedom. In light of this possibility, let us now review the general category of lawless desire that Socrates had introduced to set the stage for the tyrannical character (571b–​d): Of our unnecessary pleasures and appetites there are some lawless ones [παράνομοι], I think, which are probably found in us all, but which, when curbed [κολαζόμεναι] by laws and the better desires along with reason, can be altogether removed from some people, or only a few weak ones remain, while in others they are stronger and more numerous … Those [desires] that awaken during sleep, when the rest of the soul, so much of it that is rational, gentle, and ruling, slumbers, while the beastly and savage part [τὸ δὲ θηριῶδές τε καὶ ἄγριον], gorged with food or wine, leaps up and, thrusting sleep aside, seeks to go and satisfy its own dispositions [τὰ αὑτοῦ ἤθη]. You know that in such a context it will dare to do anything [πάντα … τολμᾷ ποιεῖν], since it is unfettered Pace Ludwig (2007) 229–​30, who insists that “that tyrant is not merely anomian but antinomian. He wishes to flout convention” (230). Scott (2007) seems to approach my view when he speaks of the “blindness” of lawless desires, which “involve” –​but do not, presumably, seek out –​transgression (139), though he does not explicitly distinguish anomian from antinomian motivation. 95 Socrates makes this point explicitly in the course of justifying the need for philosopher-​kings by appealing to their knowledge of the Good, which, though only dimly intuited by the vast majority of people, remains the object of everyone’s desire: “when it comes to good things [ἀγαθὰ] nobody is content to possess those that appear to be so but everyone seeks those that really are so, and in this case everyone scorns appearance … That, then, which every soul pursues [ὃ … διώκει … ἅπασα ψυχὴ] and for the sake of which does everything [τούτου ἕνεκα πάνταπράττει], divining its existence, yet baffled by it and unable to sufficiently grasp what it is, or to acquire a stable belief about it as it has about other things, and for this reason fails to derive any benefit there might have been in other things –​concerning a matter of such importance, will we say that the best men in the city must also be in the dark, in whose hands we entrust everything?” (505d–​e). In light of this and other Platonic passages outside of the Republic, I follow Moss (2008) 60–​4 in rejecting Terence Irwin’s claim that the desires of the nonrational parts of soul (and, by implication, the characters who are dominated by them) are “good-​independent” (Irwin [1977] 78, 117, 192 and [1995] 208–​9). 94

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Tragic Pleasure in Plato’s Republic [λελυμένον] and released [ἀπηλλαγμένον] from every sense of shame and prudence [ὡς ἀπὸ πάσης … αἰσχύνης καὶ φρονήσεως]. It does not shrink [ὀκνεῖ] from attempting to lie with a mother if it wants, or with anyone else [ἄλλῳ … ὁτῳοῦν] –​man, god, or beast. It is ready for any act [ὁτιοῦν] of murder; it abstains from no food, and, in a word, falls short of no senselessness [ἀνοίας] or shamelessness [ἀναισχυντίας].

Lawless desires emerge with the greatest force when we no longer consciously regulate our psychic activity –​they “wake up” when we sleep.96 What is normally “curbed” in our waking life by the force of law, the power of reason, and the habits of healthy desires runs rampant in the absence of these constraints, with the result that “the beastly and the savage” part of soul has access to every imaginable form of pleasure, including the most criminal. The primitive origins of lawless desire, which cannot be educated, but must be extirpated or repressed, already preclude the more cognitively sophisticated will to transgress, which must be able to recognize its object as specifically transgressive. Lawless desire on Socrates’ account seems to have no particular object at all, except to “satisfy its dispositions” –​whatever they happen to be –​without obstruction. Once the seat of such desires is completely unimpeded (“unfettered” and “set free”), it will undertake anything. The objects of lawless desire are characterized by indiscrimination and a lack of specificity: sex with a mother, “or anyone else”; murder “of any kind”; abstention from “no food.” The language is repeated almost verbatim in the description of the tyrannized soul of the tyrant, who, as Socrates puts it, lives in a kind of waking nightmare.97 Rather than focus on incest as an alluring taboo, or specifically mention the criminal acts of patricide or cannibalism, which are nevertheless implied,98 Socrates describes an indiscriminate force of desire that chances upon illicit sources of satisfaction in the absence of any kind of inhibition. Though Socrates develops the category of lawless desire in order to illuminate the tyrant’s appetitive constitution, he is careful not to limit lawlessness to appetitive desires alone. The psychic element that thrives in our dreams is not only “beastly” but “savage”  –​a term consistently The Freudian parallels are, on the surface at least, striking, and Freud himself alludes to this passage a number of times in his Interpretation of Dreams; see Price (1990) 262 and Lear (2006) 90–​3. For a general comparison of Platonic and Freudian psychology, see Santas (1988), Price (1990), and Ferrari (2007). 97 “… what [the tyrant] rarely was in dreams, he becomes continuously while awake” (574e); cf. 576b: “Let us sum up … the most evil man. I suppose he is the man who, in a waking state, has the qualities we encountered in a dream state.” 98 See Adam (1963) ad. loc. on the specific crimes of parricide and cannibalism implied by miaiphonein and brôma. 96

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applied to the spirited part of soul,99 here suggesting the possibility of spirit generating lawless desires of its own.100 The possibility is confirmed lines later, when the general seat of lawlessness is parsed into appetite and spirit in Socrates’ prescription for sound sleep and enlightened dreaming (571d–​572b). As we saw in the case of poetry, whose influence on the soul reduces spirit to a source of appetitive pleasure, the quality of lawlessness in desire tends to elide the distinction between the two nonrational parts of the soul in a manner that inverts the ideal psychic composition, in which spirit is allied with reason against appetite. A lawless soul allies spirit with appetite against reason, which is why “the beastly and the savage” can characterize a single entity: the lawless part of the soul. Socrates’ description of our subconscious fantasies intentionally evokes the paradigmatic themes of tragic poetry (incest, cannibalism, etc.)101 so as to alert us to the fact that the desires to which such poetry routinely appeals are manifestly pathological. What consciousness normally represses is given free reign not only in the private realm of sleep but, what’s worse, in the public realm of the theater, where the dazzling variety and apparent banality of the poetic context conspire to mask the illicit nature of our pleasure from reason. It is no coincidence that Socrates describes our attachment to mimetic poetry as a form of erôs, whose irresistible charm we must counter with philosophical argument (607e–​608b). Otherwise we risk enslaving our souls to the tyrannical erôs that such poetry vicariously satisfies.102 Socrates suggests that the surface attraction of poetic poikilia derives its power from a far more sinister source than we realize. It is time to subject this source to closer scrutiny.

3.3  The Hunger for Tears: The Origins of Tragic Pleasure We have established that mimetic poetry, according to the Republic, satisfies both the desire to experience a wide range of emotions and the desire for complete freedom in exploring them. By developing a private, imaginary domain as an unregulated alternative to the public domain, poetry offers us unmitigated access to dangerous forms of experience that See n73 to this chapter. No one to my knowledge has recognized that the category of lawless desire applies to spirit as well as appetite. Reeve’s division of desires, which applies the distinction between necessary and unnecessary desires to each part of soul, theoretically allows for this possibility, though he fails to recognize it ([1988] 43–​7; cf. 162–​3). 101 Noted also by Gould (1990) xviii, 30 and Crotty (2009) 113. 102 On the tyrannical nature of the tragic spectator’s desires, see Crotty (2009) 113–​14. 99 100

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originate in something alien –​the “other” of poetic subjects –​yet become, through a process of psychological assimilation, our own. It is the process of assimilation that makes these foreign-​born experiences dangerous, because we satisfy and strengthen desires we would otherwise disavow. Desires we normally recognize as destructive and attempt to patrol in our day-​to-​day lives are given free reign in the theater, and this suspension of psychosocial surveillance weakens our ability to resist them outside of the poetic context. Socrates classifies the pathological impulses satisfied by poetry as lawless appetites, and singles out the impulse to grieve as the most irresistible among them. The desire to grieve derives its force from the persistence of human attachment to vulnerable and ephemeral objects, and this force threatens the philosophical project of redirecting our attachments to stable and worthy objects (or Forms) in pursuit of enduring happiness. Tragedy compounds the threat by targeting, precisely, the “threnodic” part of soul and grounding its pleasure in the experience of grief; the pathological pleasure of grieving thus forms the basis of Socrates’ “greatest charge” against poetry.103 Before turning to the details of this charge, it is worth reviewing the culminating image of Socrates’ tripartite soul in order to understand how the desire for grief and its poetic expression can be conceived as a lawless appetite. Socrates develops his complex psychology from the widely attested experience of self-​ alienation, which indicates that there is some part of us that we identify with and some part of us that can defect from our self-​ conception.104 Socrates claims the essential self as 105 reason. In his concluding image of the tripartite soul, reason is conceived as the human within the human, while the other selves that emerge As Halliwell (1996) puts it, “philosophy perceives tragedy as inescapably committed to the affirmation of certain values, precisely in virtue of what it mourns and grieves” (334; cf. 343–​4). 104 The “better” and worse” elements in a person implied by Greek proverbial expressions for self-​ mastery (“stronger than oneself,” κρείττω αὑτοῦ) provides Socrates with an intuitive basis for psychic partition (430e–​431b). His dramatic rendering of self-​alienation at the end of book 9 (588c–​589b) is also anticipated in book 1 by the traditional figure of Cephalus, who expresses relief for being freed from the many “savage … and mad despots” of physical desire in old age (329c–​d). See also 586d–​587a, where Socrates discusses the alienating effects of succumbing to the rule of a nonrational part of soul in more technical terms: “whenever one of the other two [nonrational parts] dominates the result is that it does not discover its own pleasure and compels the others to pursue an alien [ἀλλοτρίαν] and untrue pleasure” (587a); only reason can guarantee that each part of soul as well as the soul as a whole pursues a pleasure truly “its own” (οἰκειότατον, 586d). 105 Reason is ultimately identified with the soul, as it alone survives the death of the body and the soul’s decomposition (611d–​612a). By the end of the Republic it becomes clear that the tripartite psychology was developed to account not for the soul itself but for its “sufferings and forms/​parts [εἴδη] in human life” (612a). See Reeve (1988) 159–​62 and Lorenz (2006) 37–​8 on the essential simplicity of a composite soul. 103

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as a consequence of our mortal embodiment are figured as animals within the human: appetite is “a manifold, multi-​headed beast [θηρίου] that has a ring of heads of tame and savage beasts”; spirit is a lion under ideal circumstances, a snake or an ape when corrupted; and reason is a human being who enlists the aid of spirit to prune the wild appetites and cultivate the tames ones, like a farmer (γεωργός), but in a degenerate soul he is starved and helplessly dragged about by the two warring animals (588c–​589b; 590b). This image of the soul is intended to dramatize the interior world of the human subject in order to expose the hidden effects of justice and injustice on the individual free of environmental factors. But it also recognizes the continuities between human beings and animals in such a way as to debase the majority of human experience, for only the smallest part of the embodied human soul is actually human (and, we soon learn, immortal),106 while the great subrational remainder is animal. Every human motivation that does not arise from the rational faculty is, in effect, subhuman, but the existence of reason in the human soul extends the range of possibilities for the animal faculties, allowing them to transcend their animal origins and develop distinctly human pathologies and virtues. This is how poetry, a distinctly human achievement, can yet appeal to our animality, thereby corrupting our souls in a distinctly human manner. Socrates’ agricultural image of the just man’s inner “farmer” tending to his psychic garden is not as harmonious  –​or as agricultural  –​as it first appears, for this maintenance is a military operation, in which reason directs the belligerent force of spirit (its “military ally” [σύμμαχον]) against the ever-​growing savage heads of appetite, while yet having to contain the volatility of this force, which threatens to strike out on its own. Even as he continues to promote the harmony of a justly organized soul, Socrates characterizes the rule of reason in terms of subjugation and enslavement of the inferior psychic parts (589c–​d; 590c–​d). Eventually he admits that psychic harmony is an aspiration that can never be fully achieved in this Socrates already intimates the immortality of reason in the course of developing the plastic image of the soul, when he defines the noble as that which “subjugates the beastly elements of our nature to the human –​or rather the divine [τῷ θείῳ]” (589c–​d), and again when he claims that “it is better for everyone to be ruled by the divine and the intelligent [ὑπὸ θείου καὶ φρονίμου]” (590d). It is not until the end of the dialogue that we are given an argument for the immortality of reason and its identity with the soul (608d–​612a). This final analysis, which divides the embodied human soul into divine and animal elements, has the unsettling affect of eliminating the human from the ontological spectrum. Socrates never explicitly addresses the ontological instability of the human category, but this instability nevertheless informs his articulation of a psychology in which human beings, unlike animals or gods, can fail to conform to their nature.

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world.107 The sheer fact of embodiment means that appetitive drives and thumoeidic aggression always pose a potential threat even to moderate souls: “surely some terrible, savage, and lawless form of desires is in every man, even in some of us who seem to be ever so measured [μετρίοις]” (572b). This is evidenced in dreams, in which reason loses its grip over the rest of the soul, allowing illicit desires to rear their ugly heads (571c). Mimetic poetry similarly affects “the very best of us” by disabling the rational faculty in a manner analogous to dreams. This passage, in which Socrates levels his “greatest accusation” against poetry, is worth quoting at length, as it makes a number of remarkable observations about the source of poetic pleasure that have been orienting our investigation (605c–​606d): We have not yet made our greatest accusation against [mimetic poetry]. The fact that it is capable of damaging even the decent, with few exceptions, is altogether terrifying … Listen and consider this. When the very best of us listen to Homer or some other maker of tragedy imitating a hero who is in mourning and drawing out a long speech with laments, or men chanting and beating their chests, you know that we enjoy it, and that, surrendering ourselves, we follow them with sympathy, and in all seriousness we praise as excellent the poet who most of all succeeds in this … But when a personal misfortune befalls one of us, you are aware that, on the contrary, we pride ourselves if we are able to remain calm and persevere, believing that this is the manner of a man, and that which we were then praising the manner of a woman … Is this fine praise, then, when one who sees the sort of man he would not esteem but would be ashamed to be, instead of being disgusted, enjoys and commends it? … [It makes sense] if you look at it this way … If you consider that what was forcibly restrained in our own misfortunes, and has hungered for tears [πεπεινηκὸς τοῦ δακρῦσαι] and sufficient lament and satisfaction, because it is its nature to desire [ἐπιθυμεῖν] these things, is that which now gets fulfillment and enjoyment from the poets, and what is by nature best in us, since it has not been sufficiently educated by reason or habit, then relaxes its guard over this mourning part [τοῦ θρηνώδους], seeing that it observes the sufferings of others and has no shame in praising and pitying another who, claiming to be a good man, laments inappropriately; but it thinks that it gains the pleasure, and would not accept depriving itself of it by disdaining the whole poem. That is, I think, because few At least in any permanent or stable sense; see esp.  472b–​d, 612a, and 613a–​b. In light of these admissions, the goal of truly “persuading” the irrational parts –​and appetite in particular –​seems impossible. As Naddaf (2002) 97 puts it, “Socrates never ceases taking into account how recalcitrant to reason this [irrational and appetitive] part of soul really is, how easy it would be, without constant self-​surveillance, mastery, and exercise, to slip into the life ruled by pleasure and pain.” For a more optimistic view on the possibility of psychic harmony, see Reeve (1988) 14–​44 and Parry (2007) 409–​13, who nonetheless concedes that “the appetitive part is not totally docile or malleable” (413).

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are capable of reckoning that the pleasure we take in others’ experiences necessarily infects our own. For the pitying part [τὸ ἐλεινὸν] that is fed strong [θρέψαντα … ἰσχυρόν] in these cases is not easily restrained in one’s own sufferings … Does not the same argument apply to the laughable …? And so in the cases of sex and spirit, and all the appetites, pains, and pleasures in the soul which we say follow all our actions, poetic imitation has the same effect on us. For it fosters and waters them [τρέφει … ταῦτα ἄρδουσα] when they ought to be dried up, and it establishes them as our rulers when they ought to be ruled, so that we may be better and happier men instead of worse and more miserable.108

The greatest threat poetry poses to the philosophical pursuit of happiness is, according to Socrates, the irresistibility of poetry’s destructive influence; not even the best of us are immune to poetry’s charms and the psychic damage that results from succumbing to them.109 Throughout book 10 Socrates describes the effects of poetry in magical terms,110 and in doing so subscribes to the traditional view of poetry as a medium of enchantment –​ only he does not conceive of enchantment as a form of psychic healing, as the poets do, but as a form of psychic damage and enslavement, a sinister conception that Gorgias first articulated, but which we have seen surface in earlier evaluations of poetic power.111 What is the source of this irresistible power? Socrates begins to answer this question by drawing Glaucon’s attention to the tragic paradox  –​how remarkable that we enjoy vicarious misery and commend poets for making us feel miserable  –​which generates an ethical paradox –​how remarkable that we sympathize with characters we would be ashamed of (indeed, disgusted by)112 in any other For sensitive treatments of this passage, see Belfiore (1983); Halliwell (1988) 143–​51; Ferrari (1989) 135–​ 41; Rubidge (1993) 264–​ 7; Naddaf (2002) 114–​ 19; Crotty (2009) 107–​ 37; Peponi (2012) 55–​9, 138–​9. 109 “The very best of us” (βέλτιστοι ἡμῶν) excludes the absolute best in the ideal society (excludes, in other words, the philosopher-​kings, who would presumably be immune to poetry’s charms), designating rather the best people in existing societies (those among “us”). That is why Socrates refers to them first as “the decent” (τοὺς ἐπιεικεῖς), an adjective reserved only for cases of qualified goodness and never attributed to the philosopher-​king or the ideally just person. See Belfiore (1983) 57 on the imperfect psychological condition of the epieikeis in this passage. 110 The poet is like a “magician” (γόητι, 598d); poetic language casts a “spell” (κήλησιν, 601b); poetic mimesis is a kind of “sorcery” (γοητείας, 602d); we should be aware that we are being “enchanted” (κηλουμένοις) when we feel the “spell” (κηλῇ) of Homer (607c-​d); we must “chant” (ἐπᾴδοντες) philosophical argument as a “countercharm” (ἐπῳδήν) to poetry’s spell (608a); this magical imagery is closely related to the medical metaphors Socrates uses to describe the proper “treatment” of poetry’s poison (389b, 382c, 595b). See Murray (1996) 188. 111 On the ambivalence surrounding poetry’s traditional self-​conception as a form of enchantment, see Chapter 1, Section 1.2; on Gorgias’ articulation of the psychic dangers posed by the enchanting force of speech in general, see Chapter 2, subsection 2.2.2. 112 Halliwell (2002) notes that “Plato envisages a psychological experience in which the force of reason is animated by a strong evaluative feeling” (82). Judging from the role of disgust elsewhere in 108

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context. Both paradoxes are resolved by appealing to the composite nature of the soul on the one hand, which consists of motivational sources that are indifferent to the individual’s rational judgment and overall good, and that are specifically targeted and strengthened by poetry, and the apparent banality of sympathetic engagement on the other hand, in which the distance of spectatorship appears to insulate us from the effects of emotional incontinence we are witness to, while in fact implicating us in the very same psychic experience.113 I use the expression “motivational sources” because they do not appear under their technical names in this passage; Socrates makes no mention of the “epithumetic” or “thumoeidic” parts of soul established in book 4’s argument for psychic tripartition, but refers instead to the previously unmentioned “threnodic” and “pitying” element in us that seeks an opportunity to grieve and finds that opportunity in the tragic theater. Though he takes poetry to satisfy the full range of subrational desires, including, almost as an afterthought, more primitive appetites like lust (ἀφροδισίων) and the more sophisticated drives of spirit (θυμοῦ), it is clear from Socrates’ preoccupation with depictions of mourning that what poses the greatest threat to human happiness in his view is not mimetic poetry per se so much as the excessive indulgence of the human appetite for grief enabled by mimetic poetry (and tragedy in particular).114 But while his psychological terms are deliberately imprecise (for reasons that will become clear), Socrates means to indicate that the desire to grieve is appetitive in nature. Not only does he use emphatically physiological language to describe the desire’s origins –​the psychic part that “hungers the dialogue, where it expresses thumoeidic aversion (e.g., 401d–​e, 439e–​440a), this “strong evaluative feeling” would presumably arise from a functioning thumos, which ideally reinforces reason by internalizing norms; Socrates thus means to indicate the malfunctioning of thumos here, in the context of poetic engagement. See also Liebert (2013a) 97. 113 Though Socrates argues that the poetic context makes us psychologically vulnerable, I prefer to refer to the situation of spectatorship more broadly in discussing his charge against poetry, since it is the phenomenon of sympathy that enables the transference of emotion rather than the special circumstances of mimesis, and Socrates suggests that the danger of letting down one’s emotional guard exists in any sympathetic encounter, where we think ourselves immune to the effects of foreign-​born emotions (I discuss this in greater detail later here); see also Kamtekar (2008) 351 on the “real-​life attitude” adopted by the spectator in this passage, and the diminished relevance of the fictional context. 114 See also Ferrari (1989) for an emphasis on the role of grief in Socrates’ final critique of poetry. While in general I find Ferrari’s analysis compelling and beautifully articulated, I disagree with one significant detail, namely his insistence that it is not grief but the “expression” of grief that Socrates objects to (and that not grief but its expression is a source of pleasure) (136–​7). This would suggest that Socrates would be content with an enkratic disposition (to use Aristotelian terminology), when he clearly aspires for the elimination of pathological desires.

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for tears” and is “fed fat” by tragic representations –​he also uses technical language –​the part that naturally “has an appetite” (ἐπιθυμεῖν) to grieve, prior to any occasion for grieving.115 Socrates had introduced such an appetite in the story of Leontius, whose struggle between attraction and repulsion over the sight of executed criminals was used to illustrate a psychic division within the nonrational part of the soul (439e–​440a).116 Socrates now invites us to apply the psychological categories established in the case of Leontius to the experience of tragic poetry by aligning the spectator’s impulse to pity characters who ought to elicit disgust and shame with Leontius’ appetitive impulse to pity the corpses of criminals, which does, in his case, elicit disgust and shame.117 A significant difference between the two scenarios is that, while Leontius’ thumos put up a fight before surrendering to his epithumia, the tragic spectator experiences no inner conflict at all –​the mimetic context seems to disarm not only reason but spirit as well, which fails to recognize the threat of appetitive emotions when they originate in another person, especially one “claiming to be good.”118 That Socrates goes on to characterize all the subrational desires satisfied by poetry physiologically (poetry “fosters and waters” them) does not call into question the appetitive identity of the desire to grieve; on the contrary, this metaphorical extension suggests that poetry can transform the affective drives of thumos into sources of appetitive satisfaction. As we have seen, this suggestion is already at work in book 9, where the lawless desires orienting the worst appetitive constitution are attributed to a See also Peponi (2012) 135–​40, who recognizes that “an underlying relationship between the appetitive part of the soul and the type of poetry Plato denounces is indirectly conveyed throughout the tenth book of the Republic,” and rightly observes that this relationship is forged “on the level of diction and rhetoric rather than through systematic argumentation” (136). See also Moss (2008) 43 on allusions to both appetite and spirit in this passage, though as I presently argue, I take spirit to be ultimately disabled by tragic poetry, while spirit’s characteristic emotions (in particular, anger) are isolated as sources of affective satisfaction and targeted as appetitive goals. 116 Scholars typically take Leontius’ attraction to the corpses to be motivated by sexual fetishism (e.g., Adam [1963] ad loc.; Annas [1981] 129; Reeve [1988] 129; Lorenz [2006] 260) or righteous exultation (e.g., Benardete [1989] 99; Allen [2000]; Ferrari [2007] 180–​4), but elsewhere I  propose a more plausible and textually grounded alternative that explains Leontius’ appetite as a desire to mourn those whom the state has denied the right to mourning (Liebert [2013a]). 117 Leontius is “disgusted” (δυσχεραίνοι) by the sight that attracts him, and when he is eventually “mastered by appetite” (κρατούμενος … ὑπὸ τῆς ἐπιθυμίας), he redirects his disgust against himself with the following exclamation: “Look, you wicked devils, feast yourselves on the beautiful sight!” (439e-​440a). This ironic command expresses shame and self-​loathing in its futile attempt to separate the person from his desire. For a more detailed treatment of the role of disgust in this episode, see Liebert (2013a). 118 Naddaf (2002) 95, 109, 118 also contrasts the spirited struggle of Leontius with the complacency of the tragic spectator; Rubidge (1993) 264–​7 provides textual support for the claim that poetry disables spirit in the passage from book 10. 115

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single psychic entity that has the features of both spirit and appetite: “the beastly and savage element” (τὸ δὲ θηριῶδές τε καὶ ἄγριον) that can motivate murder as well as incest and cannibalism (571c–​d; cf.574e–​575a). Spirit and appetite converge again in the book’s culminating image of the soul, when Socrates defines the noble as that which “subjugates the beastly elements [τὰ θηριώδη] of our nature to the human” and the base as that which “enslaves the gentle to the savage [τῷ ἀγρίῳ]” (589d). There are circumstances, then, when the thumoeidic part of soul either loses its formal autonomy, or its distinction from the epithumetic ceases to be a relevant one.119 One such circumstance is the case of lawlessness in the soul, when thumos is no longer bound by a sense of justice to curb its worse impulses or those of appetite; it would be difficult to distinguish blind aggression and savagery from other physical drives, or imagine a scenario in which their respective desires come into divisive conflict. Another circumstance is the case of a thumos whose poor cultivation transforms a man into a beast (θηρίον), an anxiety that called for the incorporation of music to mitigate the effects of gymnastics in Socrates’ discussion of the guardian’s primary education (411c–​e).120 We now discover yet another circumstance in which thumos loses its autonomy in the experience of mimetic poetry, where anger becomes a source of affective intensity and emotional excitement (recall the thumoeidic dimension to to aganaktêtikon, the excitable part of soul that such poetry appeals to) rather than a means of policing appetite and defending a conception of justice.121 Some scholars go so far as to deny the thumoeidic part any ontological status at all, on the dubious grounds that the category was developed for rhetorical purposes alone (i.e., to sustain the analogy between city and soul) and does not conform to the remainder of the Republic’s psychology; Penner (1971) 111–​13 makes this case with particular force. See Hobbs (2000) 3–​6 on the skeptical treatment of thumos in scholarship, and 1–​37 for a defense of its legitimacy. 120 Moss (2008), with whom I am otherwise very sympathetic, misleadingly refers to poetry’s “influence” on both spirit and appetite in the earlier discussion of guardian education as decisive evidence for spirit’s inclusion in the nonrational part of soul targeted by mimetic poetry in book 10, but without distinguishing the manner of influence (43–​4); that poetry appeals to appetite exclusively is clear from the fact that it is employed in education to mollify rather than satisfy spirit –​recall that too much music “liquefies” and “dissolves” spirit, making its bearer a “feeble warrior (411a–​e; see section 3.1 of this chapter). The same criticism applies to Destrée (2011), who argues against the view the spirit is disarmed in the book 10 passage on poetry (esp. 273–​81), but seems to approach my conclusion when he acknowledges, in reference to a comparable case from the Phaedrus, that “appetites have managed to use a typical thumoeidetic tendency for their own purposes” (280). 121 Pace Rubidge (1993) 262–​63, 267, who argues that poetry’s enfeeblement of thumos reduces its affective drives to mere “peevishness” and “irritability,” and would deny the intense affects of thumos such as savagery and aggression a role in the poetic experience; see also Murray (1996) 219–​20, who takes a similar view. 119

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The occasional conflation of spirit and appetite in book 9 thus anticipates their persistent identification in book 10, where Socrates dispenses, for the most part, with the psychic terminology for tripartition developed in book 4 in favor of a more schematic psychology that divides the better from the worse, the rational from the irrational, etc., and replaces specialized vocabulary that had distinguished two nonrational parts of soul with metaphorical descriptions that muddle this distinction.122 Socrates’ reversion to bipartition has struck many as a troubling inconsistency,123 but it is consistent with his tendency to deny the relevance of the thumoeidic category under conditions when the two nonrational parts of soul are in alliance. When this happens, it does not seem to be the case that appetite and spirit join to form a third category, but that appetite takes over, weakening the policing force of spirit and co-​opting its affective drives, which become so many more “savage” heads sprouted by the beast within. The bipartite characterization of the soul in book 10, which is devoted to the subject of mimesis and its psychic influence, reflects the power of mimesis to reduce spirit to another source of appetitive satisfaction. This power is not limited to mimesis, but inheres in the appetitive potential of any emotion, which poetic mimesis is, however, designed to maximally realize. As we saw in the case of Achilles’ consuming rage, an emotion that begins as a thumoeidic motivation can quickly transform into an appetitive object if reason (or its cultural expression in custom) fails to intervene. Though anger originates in thumos as a means of pursuing a thumoeidic good such as honor or reparation, anger can also be pursued by appetite as an end in itself, because appetite seeks all embodied forms of intensity as its proper object, including affective states. Socrates Socrates alludes to the tripartition of the soul in the beginning of book 10 (ἕκαστα … τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς εἴδη, 595b), but speaks about psychic elements in a new register from that point on. The calculating part of the soul does appear twice by its technical name (τὸ λογιστικόν, 602e, 605b; cf. ὁ λόγος, 604b, 606c), but otherwise appears as the “best” and “serious” part of soul (βέλτιστον, 603a, 605b, 606a; σπουδαῖον, 603c); to this is contrasted the “base” and “senseless” part/​s (φαῦλον/​φαῦλα, 603a–​c [cf. 605a]; ἀνόητον, 605b) that is richly described in a number of ways: “the apparently greater, or more or less heavier” (τὸ φαινόμενον μεῖζον ἢ ἔλαττον ἢ πλέον ἢ βαρύτερον, 602d); “the part of soul that opines contrary to measurement” (τὸ παρὰ τὰ μέτρα ἄρα δοξάζον τῆς ψυχῆ, 603a); “the element in us that is remote from intelligence” (πόρρω … φρονήσεως ὄντι τῷ ἐν ἡμῖν, 603a); the part that is “irrational, idle, and a friend to cowardice” (ἀλόγιστόν τε … καὶ ἀργὸν καὶ δειλίας φίλον, 604d); “the irritable part” and the “irritable and varied disposition” (τὸ ἀγανακτητικόν, 604e; τὸ ἀγανακτητικόν τε καὶ ποικίλον ἦθος, 605a); “not the best part” (μὴ … τὸ βέλτιστον, 605b); “the part that hungers for tears” (τὸ … πεπεινηκὸς τοῦ δακρῦσαί, 606a); the “threnodic” and “pitying” part (θρηνώδους, ἐλεινὸν, 606b). 123 Attempts to grapple with this problem can be found in Else (1972) 46; Annas (1981) 338–​40; Penner (1971) 96, 111–​13; Nehamas (1982) 64–​7; Belfiore (1983) 52–​6; Halliwell (1997) 329–​30; Naddaf (2002) 92–​120; Destrée (2011) 278–​81.

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identifies the pleasures characteristic of appetite as those “of the body [περὶ τὸ σῶμα]” (442a), but when he attempts to unify appetite as a class of desires he focuses on intensity rather than physicality as the common denominator: “we called that part appetitive because of the intensity [σφοδρότητα] of its appetites, for food, drink, sex, and their accompaniments [ὅσα ἄλλα τούτοις ἀκόλουθα]” (580e; cf.586b–​c). These “accompaniments” allude to the sophisticated possibilities of the human appetite, which generates not only biological drives but the pursuit of erotic love, money, grief, variety, and all manner of “dispositions” (ἤθη, 571c). The somatic effects of inhabiting these states seem to be appetite’s ultimate goal, but because the means of attaining it are often nonphysical, “intensity” seems to be a better description of appetite’s object than physical pleasure. This, then, explains why Socrates all but ignores the most canonical epic emotion in his final critique of poetry, where Homeric epic otherwise looms so large. The thumoeidic origins of anger potentially distract us from its appetitive manifestations, which, in appealing to the “excitable” part of soul (to aganaktêtikon), are the true source of this aversive emotion’s poetic power. The appetitive dimension of anger realigns it with the emotion of grief, which Socrates considers to be more dangerous to the psyche and more fundamental to the pleasure derived from tragic poetry. Socrates’ preoccupation with grief began early in the dialogue, when he condemned representations of heroes in mourning for setting a negative example to the guardians of an excessive attachment to earthly things, and for creating a negative impression of death that would compromise their willingness to risk it (387c–​388d). Socrates’ attitude toward bereavement appears shockingly callous at first; a “decent man” (ὁ ἐπιεικὴς ἀνήρ) does not think it “terrible to lose a son, or a brother, or his belongings, or anything else of the kind,” since he aspires to be as “self-​sufficient” (αὐτάρκης) as possible (387d–​e). Socrates means to trivialize all attachments by suggesting an equivalence between the loss of a loved one and the loss of property as similar “kinds” of physical loss.124 If living well means living with minimal need, as Socrates insists, then the appropriate response to It is worth noting, however, that the same equivalence operates in the archaic economy of timê in the Iliad, where Agamemnon makes a legitimate attempt to compensate Achilles’ loss of Briseis with material goods. Ajax reminds Achilles of this equivalence when the latter rejects Agamemnon’s offer: “Yet a man accepts the blood-​price [ποινὴν] from his brother’s murderer, or for a child that has been killed, /​and when the culprit has paid back in full he still remains among the people, /​while the injured one curbs his heart and proud spirit /​once he’s accepted the price; but the gods have put an implacable and terrible spirit /​in your chest, for the sake of a single girl” (9.632–​8).

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death is the response to loss of any kind of material object we can survive without: indifference. Anything more exposes a psychic weakness that one must attempt to overcome if one is to live happily. This chilling reduction of human relationships is later explained in more humane terms. Socrates revisits the topic in book 10 in order to justify his apparent callousness with a more nuanced psychology that has emerged in the intervening books.125 Now he concedes that it is impossible for the decent man to feel no pain when misfortune strikes, but maintains that “he will be moderate [μετριάσει] in his pain” (603e). And he will be the most moderate in public, where he holds himself to a higher standard than he does in private (604a): “Do you think he will fight the pain [τῇ λύπῃ μαχεῖσθαι] and resist more when he is observed by his equals or when he is alone by himself in solitude?” “He will be bear it more,” [Glaucon] said, “when he is observed.” “But when left alone, I suppose, he will dare to utter many things, which he would be ashamed of [αἰσχύνοιτ᾽] if someone heard him, and will do many things which he would not allow someone to see him doing.” “So it is,” he said.

Socrates characterizes the decent man’s struggle to maintain composure in public in terms reminiscent of Leontius’ struggle, which  –​judging from its visibility and subsequent notoriety –​also took place in public.126 In both cases the capitulation to grief incurs social censure, but in the case of bereavement this censure is, as we will see, unambiguously identified with reason (604a–​b, d).127 Socrates uses the disjunction between public and private behavior to illuminate the psychic division involved in reactions to loss: the public domain is reason writ large, expressed in the cultural attitude toward death that recognizes the futility of mourning and its socially disruptive nature, and so imposes limits on its expression; the private domain is appetite writ large, in which the individual is free to exceed those limits without suffering the social consequences. Ferrari (2007) 183 sees the softening of Socrates’ position to reflect a shift in register from the ideal to the real. Socrates “introduces a note of realism” to the ideal of freedom from grief that was originally presented to the young guardians for pedagogical purposes: “Perhaps, then, we are to suppose that by dint of continual exposure to the most austere of fictional models the young guardian will get as close to immunity from grief as is humanly possible and so escape the pressure experienced by the decent man who is raised in a less exceptional society.” 126 Given that not only Socrates but Glaucon claims to have heard the story of Leontius before (440a), it is unlikely to be “a narrative of Socrates’ own construction” as Allen ([2000a] 135) assumes. 127 Reason does not play an explicit role in the story of Leontius’ inner conflict, though see Liebert (2013a) 194n61 for an argument in favor of seeing thumos as the ally of reason in this episode. 125

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Socrates thus conceives of the desire to grieve as a lawless appetite:  “Isn’t it reason [λόγος] and law [νόμος] that orders him to resist, while that which draws him [τὸ … ἕλκον] to the pain is the feeling itself [αὐτὸ τὸ πάθος]?” (604a–​b). Recall that in the preliminary description of appetite Socrates presented the impulse to drink something harmful as among those that “drag and draw [ἕλκοντα]” the soul, and that “arise from affections [παθημάτων] and diseases [νοσημάτων]” (439d).128 The impulse to grieve is not a self-​regulating desire like the necessary appetites, nor fickle and ephemeral like the non-​lawless unnecessary appetites, but, like tyrannical erôs, inherently pathological and insatiable –​in other words, lawless. Socrates explains the lawlessness of grief in the following terms (604b–​d): “The law presumably says that it is best to remain as calm as possible in misfortunes and not get excited [μὴ ἀγανακτεῖν], since what is good and evil is not clear in such matters, nor is taking it hard any help going forward, or any human matter worthy of great seriousness, and grieving [τὸ λυπεῖσθαι] is an impediment [ἐμποδὼν] to the very thing we need in these cases to support us as quickly as possible.” “What are you referring to?” [Glaucon] said. “Deliberation [τῷ βουλεύεσθαι]” I  said, “about what has happened, and, as with the fall of the dice, the arrangement of one’s affairs according to the outcome, in whatever way reason [ὁ λόγος] deems best –​not acting like children who have stumbled and hold on to their stricken spot and spend their time crying, but rather always habituating the soul to turn itself as quickly as possible to healing [τὸ ἰᾶσθαί] and setting right what is stricken and sick, banishing threnody [θρηνῳδίαν] with the art of healing [ἰατρικῇ].” “That would be the most correct [ὀρθότατα] way, at least, for someone to deal with misfortune,” he said. “Then we say that the best part of us [τὸ … βέλτιστον] is willing to conform to this principle of reason [τούτῳ τῷ λογισμῷ].”

Law, as the collective expression of a society’s rational determinations,129 plays an analogous role to reason in the soul: it aims to maintain the harmonious coexistence of members in a community, just as reason aims to One can only speculate about the nature of this harmful drink, which Socrates refuses to identify, concerned as he is with establishing the unqualified nature of appetite’s object in this case (437d–​439a). But in light of his emphasis on the pathological origins of this thirst, it is likely that he has something like alcoholism in mind, rather than a self-​regulating biological desire like thirst for water. 129 The Athenian stranger in Plato’s Laws defines law (νόμος) in such terms as “calculation [λογισμός] … that has become the common opinion of the city” (644d). 128

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maintain the harmonious coexistence of parts in the soul.130 A community’s laws also reinforce the power of reason in the lives of its individual members by providing an insurance policy for cases where a person’s reason is particularly vulnerable to other psychic forces (or for members whose reason is not up to the task of ordering the soul); in such cases, law dictates rational behavior that is conducive to the citizen’s well-​being, and ultimately the community’s holistic flourishing.131 In the event of personal misfortune, the appetitive impulse to grieve threatens to debilitate the individual by reducing him to a childish narcissism that sabotages the healing process.132 A  rational assessment of the situation would recognize that, in light of the trivial nature of all transient, earthly matters, nothing “serious” has happened, and would arrange for the best possible way to proceed from there with a view to the person’s long-​term happiness. While such an assessment is certainly the “most correct” response to misfortune, as Glaucon somewhat skeptically concedes, such rational calculation is usually powerless to check the stubborn persistence of our nonrational attachments, which are rooted in “the part of us that leads to reminiscences of the suffering [τὰς ἀναμνήσεις … τοῦ πάθους] and to lamentations, and can’t get enough of these … the irrational and idle [part], a friend of cowardice” (604d). The role of memory and recollection introduces a human dimension to the experience of grief that distinguishes it from what might be an equivalent appetite in animals; for anamnêsis is a distinctly rational activity, one that Plato develops outside of the Republic to explain our epistemic access to the Forms.133 Though Socrates does not pursue this line of inquiry here, his See esp. 519e–​520b, where Socrates says that “law [νόμῳ] is not concerned with making any one class in the city fare exceptionally well, but contrives to bring this about in the city as a whole, harmonizing [συναρμόττων] the citizens with one another by both persuasion and compulsion, and making them share with one another the benefit which each is able to bring to the community.” This vision of the law as is reinforced later in 590c–​591a, where law is called the “ally [σύμμαχος] of all in the city” (590e) and compared to reason in the well-​governed soul for making all “alike and friendly” (590d). Of course, the suggestion of compulsion in both the earlier and the latter passage, where Socrates compares the rule of law to the rule of a master over a slave (590c–​d), concedes a minimal level of coercion behind the law. 131 See esp. 590d: “[I]‌t is better for everyone to be ruled by the divine and the intelligent, preferably when one has it as his own within himself, but if not, imposed from without [ἔξωθεν ἐφεστῶτος], so that we may all so far as possible be alike and friendly, because we are governed by the same thing … it is clear … that the law [ὁ νόμος] aims for this.” On the paternalistic implications of this view of governance, and Aristotle’s contrasting emphasis on individual autonomy and choice as central to the good life, see Nussbaum (1980), esp. 410–​22. 132 On the childish nature of appetite, see Ferrari (1989) 114, 123. 133 Mainly in the Meno, the Phaedo, and the Phaedrus; for a comprehensive treatment of anamnêsis in the Platonic corpus, see Huber (1964) and Scott (1987). 130

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evocation of anamnêsis to explain the pathological response to bereavement suggests that the existence of reason in the human soul is partially or even wholly responsible for the lawless nature of the appetite for grief. Memory prolongs the grieving process, and the possibility of reinvigorating the painful pathos without end is what makes the impulse to grieve an insatiable one. A child, whom Socrates aligns with animals because of his underdeveloped psyche (441a–​b), will soon enough forget his pain and move on. But an adult human being with long-​term memory and the ability to recollect is uniquely capable of regressing into a child repeatedly; in the absence of law, which Socrates explicitly compares to a parent (590e–​591a), the grieving adult would cease to be a functioning citizen. It is this “infantile regression”134 spurred by grief that leads Socrates to disparage grief’s psychic origins for being “idle and a friend of cowardice.” Idle because grief paralyzes. Cowardly because resisting its power takes strength and courage. Failing to resist is thus a source of shame, which we all recognize in our attempts to remain composed in public when we have suffered some misfortune. The human context of the appetite for grief, then, ironically makes this desire “savage” –​the quality of being without custom, culture, or law. The longing for grief, insofar as it has no natural limits and threatens to be socially as well as psychologically disruptive, is among the savage heads of appetite that we would do better to prune, a destructive human impulse to protract a debilitating emotion state because of the satisfying intensity that results. Under normal conditions, and especially with respect to our own lives, we recognize the danger of this impulse and do what we can to regulate it. But when we are in a position to sympathize with someone succumbing to grief, we can seize the opportunity to feed our “hunger for tears.” The alien source of the emotional experience lulls us into a false sense of security, and we fail to realize that the pathos of the other becomes our very own. Tragic poetry stages a sympathetic encounter with figures we regard as exemplary and “good,” and trust in their goodness colludes with the apparent distance of spectatorship to disarm our psychic police force. Socrates insists, however, that this trust is misguided, and that sympathy always elides distance, vicariously implicating us in the psychological state of its object, no matter how shameful or even (as in the case of Leontius or the tyrannical character) criminal. It is important to remember at this point that Plato’s concept of lawlessness is not equivalent to criminality, but denotes a quality of desire that leads to criminality. The persistence and insatiability of certain The phrase is from Naddaf (2002) 109.

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emotional impulses render them inherently difficult to regulate, and it is this resistance to regulation that Socrates identifies with lawlessness (571b–​d). Normally the force of law or custom (both conveyed by νόμος), the authority of reason, and the reinforcement of spirit cooperate to curb these impulses, but in some instances the system fails, and the “beastly and savage” part of soul is left unobstructed:  “in such a context it will dare to do anything, since it is unfettered [λελυμένον] and released [ἀπηλλαγμένον] from every sense of shame and prudence” (571c). One such context, as we saw, is dreaming, when we are no longer capable of consciously regulating our psychological activity. Another is the theater, where we vicariously indulge emotions we would be otherwise ashamed to display, and where the habit of indulging them persists after the show. In providing a socially sanctioned means of accessing dangerous emotion states, pity is the prime culprit:  “few are capable of reckoning that the pleasure we take in others’ experiences necessarily infects our own. For the pitying part that is fed fat in these cases is not easily restrained in one’s own sufferings” (606b). The fictional context is, in the end, secondary to the sympathetic encounter it stages, for extending pity to an actual victim in a real-​life scenario fosters the same, ungovernable appetites, and satisfying them cripples our ability to evaluate situations impartially. This explains why Socrates reveals the hypocrisy of the spectator not by contrasting the fictional scenario to an actual scenario, but by contrasting the character in the fiction to the spectator’s sense of self:  “Is this fine praise, then, when one who sees the sort of man he would not esteem but would be ashamed to be [εἶναι … αἰσχύνοιτο], instead of being disgusted, enjoys and commends it?” (605e). Recall, too, that Socrates’ condemnation of mourning turned less on its socially disruptive nature than on its warped evaluation. Self-​pity deludes the bereaved into overvaluing the worth of ultimately trivial “human matters,” and, by prolonging their despair when they should be deliberating about the future, interferes with the process of recovery. Indulging our inclination to pity in the tragic theater, then, is not merely the satisfaction of “venting” our personal misfortunes  –​though it is that too –​but of adopting another’s misfortunes as our own.135 We acquire the habits of self-​pity from the pleasure of sympathetic pity, which leads us to adopt the indulgent attitude of a sympathetic spectator vis-​a-​ vis our real lives; this indulgence feeds a pathological craving –​our “hunger for tears” –​and thereby fosters a self-​destructive addiction to painful The case for venting is made by Ferrari (1989) 137.

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emotion states. Though we may never approach the stature of an Achilles or an Oedipus, a stature that obscures failings of character we would otherwise recognize, having accessed the depths of their suffering tempts us to explore the depths of our own, depths from which we may never fully emerge again.

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Epilogue

Poetry and Privacy –​Toward an Aristotelian Defense of Poetry and a Platonic Alternative

According to Socrates, the “sweetness” of mimetic poetry derives principally from a pathological appetitive drive –​what he calls a “lawless appetite” –​to experience the intensity of affective states, most notably (in the case of epic and tragedy) the state of grief. This drive exists prior to the mimetic encounter and explains pathological behavior that we attempt to regulate under normal conditions in our everyday lives. Social and self-​imposed restrictions on mourning illustrate Socrates’ point that affective states we allow ourselves to inhabit in the tragic theater are otherwise recognized as dangerous and self-​ destructive, precisely because of their addictive appeal. Because grieving is a debilitating expression of ephemeral human attachment, it poses a singular threat to both the individual’s and the community’s holistic flourishing; in fueling this impulse, tragic poetry establishes a “vicious constitution” in soul and city, and so cannot be accommodated in Socrates’ utopian polity. Socrates does, however, end his critique of mimetic poetry in the Republic with a conciliatory gesture. Offering a sympathetic ear to any case made on such poetry’s behalf, he vows to return “the sweetened Muse” to his ideal city if she can prove her civic and ethical utility (607c–​d): Let it be declared that, if poetry directed at pleasure and mimesis can make any case for her existence in a well-​governed city, we would gladly take her back, since we are well aware of the spell she casts over us … Isn’t it just, then, to let her return from exile, provided she has defended herself, be it in lyric or any other meter? … And we would also give her protectors –​those who aren’t poets but lovers of poetry –​a chance to plead her case without meter, showing that she is not only pleasant [ἡδεῖα] but beneficial [ὠφελίμη] to regimes and human life. And we shall listen graciously, for clearly it would be our gain if she turned out to be not only pleasant but beneficial.

It is customary to regard the Poetics of Aristotle as the prose defense desiderated by Socrates in this passage,1 and to regard Aristotle himself Halliwell (1986), esp. 1–​2 continues to be the most authoritative spokesman for this view; see also the earlier arguments of Butcher (1951) 115, and Else (1967) 3 and (1972).

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as a proponent of the arts.2 The Poetics is, understandably, thought to represent Aristotle’s most sustained defense of poetry as a legitimate medium capable of contributing to the good life. And yet the account of tragedy the Poetics offers is essentially formalist, bracketing the very ethical concerns that forced Socrates’ hand in the Republic.3 Aristotle’s most developed philosophic redemption of poetry from Socrates’ charges occurs, I suggest, in the Politics rather than the Poetics.4 It is in the Politics that Aristotle defends poetry, under the rubric of mousikê,5 along ethical lines, and it is here that he assumes a polemical stance against the Republic.6 Like the Republic, the Politics ends with a discussion of the value of mimesis.7 This account of the role of mousikê in education unfortunately fails, in the condition we have it, to address the most damning charges Plato See esp. Lord (1982); Halliwell (1986) and (2002) 152–​259; Nussbaum (1986) 378–​94; Janko (1987) xvi–​xx; Belfiore (1992); Heath (2001) and (2014). 3 See Ferrari (1999) for a formalist interpretation of the Poetics that challenges the moral agenda typically attributed to it, and also Munteanu (2011) 70–​2 on the absence of a moral psychology in the treatise; as Heath (2014) notes, “The Poetics examines how poetry’s value may be realized most effectively, but does not provide fully articulated answers to questions about the nature of that value” (111). 4 So, too, Heath (2014). Heath’s article came out after the bulk of this book was written, and some of its core insights overlap with the conclusions reached in this epilogue (in particular, its turn to the Politics for an ethical defense of poetry, and its emphasis on Aristotle’s understanding of poetry and music as intrinsically valuable leisure activities essential to a liberal and happy life). 5 As many have noted, Aristotle includes poetry as well as music in the category of mousikê, which he regards as a form of mimesis (Pol. 1340a12–​39), though see Ford (2010) 320–​1 for an emendation of this passage that supports his case for a narrow understanding of mousikê as strictly instrumental in book 8 of the Politics. While I appreciate Ford’s corrective to the general negligence in scholarship of the instrumental component of mousikê that clearly preoccupies Arsitotle in this part of the Politics, the slippage in Aristotle’s own use of the term in places such as 1338a25–​30, where the performance of an epic bard is adduced as a paradigmatic example of mousikê as a cultured pastime, and 1340a16–​19, where representations of characters and actions and our emotional reactions to them strongly imply narrative structure, suggests that poetry is implicitly included in Aristotle’s discussion of mousikê. 6 Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato’s Laws (Pol. 1264b26–​1266a30), which offers on his view a poorly conceived practical alternative to the ideal regime of the Republic, will not be discussed here, since it is Aristotle’s negative reaction to communism –​a proposal unique to the Republic –​that I find most revealing of his ethical commitment to poetry. Aristotle’ reaction is symptomatic of his general distaste for the eccentricity of Plato’s (or more precisely, Socrates’) political proposals (see in particular 1265a11–​13 and 1266a31–​33). 7 The end of the Politics as we have it is admittedly incomplete and the organization of its books has been a matter of some dispute in the past, but the general consensus accepts the structure of the work as it stands (see Rowe [1977] and Everson [1996] xxxii–​xxxvii for summaries of the textual debate); the formal correspondence between the Politics’ treatment of mousikê and the Republic’s treatment of poetic mimesis may not, then, be entirely accidental. The allusions in Politics 7 and 8 to the Republic’s early treatment of music and poetry in the elementary education of the guardians may reflect Aristotle’s attempt to treat mimesis and mousike holistically at the end of his work, rather than divide the discussion as Plato had done in the Republic. 2

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levels against poetry at the end of the Republic. When read in the context of the Politics’ political polemic, however, and supplemented with ideas drawn from Aristotle’s ethical and rhetorical works, an Aristotelian alternative to Plato’s aesthetic theory emerges that is grounded in the positive evaluation of privacy in human life and the centrality of leisure to human happiness.8 Developing a systematic account of an Aristotelian defense of poetry lies beyond the scope of this study, but I  would like to conclude by laying some of the groundwork, and recovering, in the process, a counter-​aesthetic in Plato that may salvage some recognizable form of poetry after all. We discovered at the heart of Socrates’ anxiety over mimetic poetry’s influence a conception of the poetic imaginary as a private realm of experience resistant to psychological regulation and social assimilation. The bulk of this book has concerned itself with the first form of resistance: poetry’s subversive effects on our psychic organization. Aristotle in general has frustratingly little to say on poetry’s potential to corrupt the soul, making it somewhat difficult to articulate with any certainty an Aristotelian version of poetic psychology that meets Plato’s challenge.9 The role of privacy in political organizations is, on the other hand, a topic Aristotle examines at length in his Politics.10 Approaching the Republic’s critique of poetry from a political perspective  –​seeing, in other words, how the privacy of imaginative experience identified by Socrates advances the dialogue’s social critique of the private sphere –​may yield a more fruitful comparison between the two philosophers that will shed new light, I  hope, on their divergent positions on the value of poetry. Socrates’ utopian desire to prevent an alternative and unregulated aesthetic domain from emerging in his ideal city is consistent with his larger civic project of unifying a human community, which only qualifies as a city, on his view, when its individual members share a common As I noted in n4 to this chapter, Heath (2014) makes a comparable case for the intrinsic value of poetry in the Politics, but without emphasis on the role of privacy in poetic engagement. 9 Aristotle does make what appears to be a Platonic concession to the danger of mimesis in parts of books 7 and 8 of the Politics (1336a29–​b36; 1340b20–​1341b27), where he argues for insulating the young from the negative influence of “illiberal” representations and limits the types of musical performance they are allowed to practice to those that do not “vulgarize” the body or soul; in these passages Aristotle is exclusively concerned with the patently obscene (comedy, lampoons, pornography, flutes), and does not apply his censorship to adults, whom he regards as immune to such influence. That he ultimately characterizes the pleasure of mousikê as “harmless” (ἀβλαβής, 1339b25–​26) rather pointedly suggests a far more tolerant attitude toward the arts than his predecessor, who had made much of the psychic damage that results from poetic engagement (R. 595b; 605d). 10 See Swanson (1992) for a comprehensive study of privacy in Aristotle’s political philosophy. 8

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experience of civic life (462a–​465c). To achieve this unity in his guardian class, Socrates eliminates, to whatever extent possible, the conditions for divergent spheres of experience that would set individuals at odds, and the sources of attachment that would conflict with attachment to the community at large –​a strategy that amounts, in short, to the elimination of privacy itself (464d–​e):11 [W]‌ill [these proposals] not make [the guardians] share one conviction about their own, tend to the same goal, and as far as possible have the same experience of pleasure and pain? … Then will not law-​suits and accusations against one another vanish, so to speak, from among them, because they posses nothing in private but their bodies, but everything else is common? On this basis then they will be free from faction, insofar as factions arise among men from the possession of property, children, and kin.

In our analysis of poetry and its relation to constitutional psychology we have seen that the private sphere constitutes a hidden site for corruption to flourish undetected, but in the context of the dialogue’s civic goals privacy is also shown to obstruct the unity of the community by preserving the autonomy of its individual members, whose individuation Socrates intends to limit to the physical embodiment that irreducibly separates them from one another. By disintegrating the single, shared experience of the community into a plurality of discrete, particular experiences, privacy beyond the body literally “dissolves” the city (ἰδίωσις … διαλύει, 462b). The abolition of private property and the nuclear family works to bind the civic community by eliminating competing attachments and alternative domains, promoting an extreme form of communism that encompasses relationships as well as goods, and thereby creating a collective experience of civic life:  a “community of pleasure and pain” that approximates as much as possible the experience of a single individual with respect to the different parts of his or her body (462b–​d). The concept of privacy that implicitly operates here, and that Socrates subsequently develops in his psychological and political accounts of degenerate constitutions, is that of an unsupervised space in which lawlessness thrives.12 Such a space emerges in the individual soul when reason sleeps or is otherwise disarmed; for that is when lawless desires “wake up … and See Nussbaum (1980) 404–​10 for a sensitive treatment of Plato’s case for political unity and his denial of individual autonomy in the Republic. 12 See Chapter 3, Section 3.2 for my discussion of privacy in the Republic’s constitutional narrative; cf. Socrates’ description of the well-​ordered soul in terms of lawfulness and cosmic alignment in the Gorgias, where rhetoric is criticized for aiming at pleasure rather than at securing psychic order (504d–​e). 11

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seek to satisfy [their] dispositions” (571c; cf. 605c–​606d). “What is farthest away [πλεῖστον … ἀφίσταται] from reason,” Socrates remarks in his assessment of the tyrannical soul, “is farthest from law and order” (587a). In the city, the private sphere emerges with the domestic household, a locus of activity hidden from public view and prone, for that reason, to vice and corruption. Recall that the best regime begins its descent with the introduction of private property, and that it is within the “enclosed homes” (περιβόλους οἰκήσεων) and “private nests” (νεοττιὰς ἰδίας) of the ruling class that vicious passions flourish and eventually infect the society at large (548a). Desires that elude the arbitration of reason in the soul and the judgmental gaze of fellow-​citizens in the city will, in the absence of such regulating forces, thrive and compromise the whole of which they are a much inferior part. Socrates thus maps the distinction between lawlessness and lawfulness onto the private and public realms, and envisions a state of justice as a state of psychosocial transparency, where no impulse in the soul lies beyond the reach of reason and no individual citizen lies beyond the reach of law. Thus, in addition to homogenizing civic experience by limiting rival experiences, the elimination of privacy serves to integrate the community by minimizing the conditions for transgressing the community’s laws. The tragic theater poses such a dire threat to this project because it suspends the laws of the city that normally govern emotional behavior, creating, in effect, a publicly sanctioned space of lawlessness in which to experience and satisfy desires that undermine the public’s values (605c–​606d). The social alienation that results from poetic engagement is not only the effect of retreating from one’s political community into an imaginary one but of abdicating one’s ethical commitments and social identity in the process.13 Thus the Republic’s psychological and political arguments against mimetic poetry converge with its critique of privacy. Aristotle agrees with Plato that in the ideal community the individual is completely informed by the community’s laws. But whereas Plato achieves this by eliminating any meaningful distinction between public and private  –​for the aim of communizing private goods is privatizing the experience of civic community, such that the city is felt to be one large, domestic household, or one super-​individual –​Aristotle The suspension of all practical concerns is precisely the source of aesthetic value for a thinker like Charles Altieri, for whom the cultivation of affective dispositions is as legitimate a manner of realizing human potential as the cultivation of the rational and ethical self, however incompatible these projects may often be; see Altieri (2003), esp. 5–​6.

13

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insists on differentiating forms of association (κοινωνία) that make up the final association of the city (πόλις), which is their teleological objective:  “Hence every city exists naturally, just as the first partnerships [κοινωνίαι] so exist; for [the city] is their end [τέλος], and nature is an end” (Pol. 1252b30–​32; cf. 1252a24–​1253a39; 1280b31–​35; EN 1160a8–​9; 1162a17–​19). For Aristotle, the household is neither a model for the city nor a threatening site of autonomy within it, but its most essential association; it is the formation of domestic partnership that stimulates the process of the city’s formation, and the self-​sufficient community that results is a complex structure of associations differing in kind. The unity of the civic community must not efface the differences among its distinct components if it is to preserve its natural form (Pol. 1263b31–​37): Both the household and the city should, in certain sense, be a unit [μίαν], but not in every way. For in one way the city, in proceeding [towards unity], will no longer be a city, and in another way, though it continues to be a city, yet by coming near to not being one it will be a worse city, just as if one turned harmony into unison, or rhythm into a single foot. But the city should, while remaining a multitude … be made a partnership [κοινὴν] and a unity [μίαν] by means of education.

Aristotle trusts in the power of education to overcome potential conflicts of interest between the household and the city by instilling a common conception of what it means to live well, which requires the voluntary cooperation of all the members of a civic community. It is in the very act of negotiating different levels of attachment that Aristotle’s citizens develop the virtues that facilitate living well. Thus, while Plato regards any autonomy within the city –​including the household, to which one can retreat from the city’s laws –​as a potential threat to it, Aristotle regards the formation of smaller communities within the city (in addition to households, tribes, and demes, these include friendships, study groups, and social clubs, etc.) and the autonomy exercised within them as essential to the city’s thriving. Not only are such subcommunities naturally constitutive of the city; they are also sites for developing and exercising virtues that promote the city’s welfare.14 The Republic’s project of civic unity is taken to task by Aristotle in the second book of his Politics, where he examines various proposals for ideal 14

For Aristotle’s defense of the household and other forms of association within the city, see Swanson (1992) 9–​27, 165–​87. For Aristotle’s defense of individual autonomy, see Nussbaum (1980) 415–​22.

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constitutions and their historical approximations.15 He begins his critique of Socrates’ communist vision by questioning whether the city ought to be “as unified as possible” (1261a15–​16). This goal is misguided, Aristotle argues, because it applies an inappropriate model of unity to the city that would reduce the city to one of its constituents, thereby destroying its nature. In making this point Aristotle inverts the Platonic image of the individual as an analogue for the city’s “community of pleasure of pain” by insisting on numerical plurality and difference as essential to the city’s identity, revealing Socrates’ analogy to be a false case of metonymy (1261a18–​24): It is clear that, if it tends too far to unity, the city will cease to exist. For a city is a multitude [πλῆθος] by nature, and in tending to greater unity, it goes from being a city to a household, and from a household to an individual. For we consider the household to be more unified than the city, and the individual more unified than the household. So that even if one could do this [unify the city], one should not, for he will destroy the city. And not only does a city consist of a plurality [πλειόνων] of human beings, it consists of human beings differing in kind [εἴδει διαφερόντων].

A city is not a simple entity or a collection of homogenous entities (such as a league or alliance), but a complex structure consisting of qualitatively distinct entities. These distinctions must be maintained for the city to organize its governance effectively, and such organization represents true civic unity  –​the unity of harmony and “reciprocal equality“ (τὸ ἴσον τὸ ἀντιπεπονθός) as opposed to the unity of uniformity (1261a30–​31).16 Aristotle simplifies Platonic unity here by ignoring the complex structure of the Republic’s class system, which is put in place precisely to preserve essential differences among human kinds, and aims above all at their harmonious integration rather than their assimilation. On the other hand, Aristotle rightly identifies an inconsistency in Socrates’ project of civic unification in pointing out the exclusion of the producer class from the more extreme form of social homogenization undertaken in the guardian class, and the rift this exclusion might cause in the city (1264a11–​b4).17 Mayhew (1997) offers the most detailed treatment of Aristotle’s criticisms of the Republic in book 2 of the Politics; see also Bornemann (1923); Saxenhouse (1982); Dobbs (1985); Simpson (1991); Stalley (1991); Irwin (1995); Mayhew (1996). 16 Aristotle adds that it is inexpedient to unify the city excessively in kind because greater self-​ sufficiency comes from numerical strength (1261b10–​15), but it is unclear why a homogenous plurality (such as a league) does not suffice for the purposes of self-​defense. 17 See Stalley (1991) 185–​6 and Irwin (1995) 207–​8 for the merits of Aristotle’s objection, though it is worth recalling that Aristotle’s own ideal city suffers from a similar inconsistency, relying as it does on a class of laborers who are excluded from the city’s membership (1330a25–​33). This feature of the 15

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But even granted the goal of civic unity in the simplified Platonic sense (that is to say, within a particular class), Aristotle objects to the communism of the family as an effective means of achieving it. And here we find a plausible and sympathetic critique of what has appeared to many –​as it first did to Adeimantus (R. 449c–​50a) –​as the most abhorrent aspect of the Republic’s civic reform (rivaled, perhaps, by Socrates’ eugenics project18). Aristotle justifies this intuitive aversion by arguing for the civic importance of human attachment, which, in addition to being natural and ineliminable, actually strengthens the bonds of the city and makes of it a unity in the proper sense –​a unity of households, interconnected by varying degrees of kinship and proximity that reinforce their common vision of the good life: “for a city is a partnership of households and of clans in living well, and its object is a complete and self-​sufficient life” (1280b33–​35). In the Republic Socrates attempts to bind the citizens to one another by eradicating private attachments that would otherwise jeopardize their attachment to the city, and by extending their thumoeidic desire for ownership and exclusivity to span the collective, but Aristotle sees in this attempt the eradication of the conditions for attachment itself. Thinking that the abolition of the private family will create a civic family in which “all say ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ ” at the same time and with respect to the same object, as Socrates imagines, is, for Aristotle, either an impracticable fantasy, or in practice a civic nightmare (1261b16–​1262b35). For not only is it impossible for individuals to regard as theirs what equally belongs to others; if they did, the result would be a general dilution of the community’s capacity to feel any attachment all. Aristotle compares these weakening ties to a bit of sugar dissolved in water; just as the sweetness would be imperceptible there, so love spread too thin would cease to be felt in any meaningful sense: “for there are two things that most cause men to care for objects and love them: ownership [τό … ἴδιον] and desirability [τὸ ἀγαπητόν]” (1262b22–​23). Privacy in the form of exclusive ownership Politics’ civic ideal is what one scholar calls a “dark spot in Aristotle’s political theory” (Nussbaum [1980] 420); because Aristotle nowhere indicates that these laborers are all “natural slaves,” their subjugation is unjustified. Plato’s caste system, on the other hand, is far more defensible from an Aristotelian perspective, since the individuals that make up the producer class are limited by their own capacities, which they fully realize only when ruled by the naturally superior philosopher-​ kings: the producers are thus akin to Aristotle’s natural slaves, and their lack of autonomy serves their own as well as the community’s benefit. 18 The support of eugenic practice persists today, however, under the defensive banner of “liberal eugenics,” conceived as the reproductive freedom to minimize congenital disorders as well as use enhancement technologies in the service of a personal conception of human excellence; see Agar (2004) for a recent articulation of this position, which the author locates between the more extreme poles of transhumanism and conservatism in the bioethical debate.

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is one of the twin conditions of value; eliminating it thus severely debilitates the human capacity to love. The kind of city that would develop from such privation would, for Aristotle, be full of strife and discord. In making what appears to many as a self-​evident criticism of the attempt to communize human relationships,19 Aristotle has underestimated the extent to which the Republic challenges conventional attitudes toward human attachment and care. The psychological order the dialogue envisions is just as radical as the city upon which that order is modeled –​an order in which the bulk of human passion has been extirpated, diminished, or thoroughly conditioned with a view to facilitating the full flowering of human reason. From the Republic’s perspective, human attachment does not contribute to human happiness but threatens it; far from sowing dissension and strife, the effects of emotional dilution on the human community would be a contented apathy that would maximize conditions for communal flourishing. Though the thumoeidic desire to patrol the borders of the self cannot be eliminated, when pushed to their limits, those borders can expand the self to comprise an entire community, and thumos can thus be directed toward more impersonal goals, such as the preservation of an abstract entity like the city rather than the physical self (and this not through gradations of nearness, such as Stoicism’s concentric circles of attachment, anticipated by Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s dilution of care20). By imagining his ideal city as an exclusive community rather than a universal state, Plato concedes the impossibility of overcoming individuation and the desire to define the self against an other, but that does not make individuation and its expressions of desire a positive feature of humanity, merely a necessary one. Individuation is, Socrates makes clear, a curse to be overcome, a human limitation on divine possibilities. The abstract universality of rational activity is mired by its emotional embodiment.21 The pull of grief must be resisted, the orientation See in particular Benardete (1989) 117–​20, who reads Socrates’ prescriptions ironically in light of the obvious impossibility of total communism. 20 Aristotle argues in favor of the bonds of extended kinship and their contiguous attachments (through marriage, clans, and tribes) at Pol. 1262a6–​14. 21 The pathological condition of the embodied soul is vividly captured by the image of the debased sea-​god Glaucus, whose immersion in the sea has so thoroughly obscured his divine nature “that he looks more like a wild beast than what he is by nature” (611d). Socrates argues that the divine nature of the human soul is likewise marred by its mortal embodiment, and implores us to consider “what it might be if it pursued [the love of wisdom] entirely, and were raised by this impulse out of the of the sea in which it is now immersed, and were scraped free of the rocks and shells which, because it now feasts on earth, have overgrown it with earthy and stony accretions as a result of these so-​called happy feastings. Then we’d see its true nature, whether it is manifold [πολυειδὴς] or single [μονοειδής], and in what manner and how it is composed” (611d–​12a). The soul’s true nature 19

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of anger, love, and other expressions of the emotional self must be both attenuated and redirected; to “rejoice and grieve” at the same things does not necessarily mean that these emotions must be strongly felt to bind the community, only that the members of the community –​who will feel them one way or another –​must feel them uniformly. Socrates indicates this when he faults existing cities for consisting of individuals who “grieve excessively” (περιαλγεῖς) and “rejoice excessively” (περιχαρεῖς) at different times –​what is being criticized is not only variance but also intensity in emotional response (462b–​c). The ideal of apathy is clearest in the case of the just individual, who will experience the least amount of grief over bereavement (387d–​e; 603e–​604d). Though Socrates admits the extraordinary difficulty of such emotional moderation, he nonetheless raises this as a model to aspire to. On a global scale, the institution of communism is intended to counter the human inclination to develop exclusive and immoderate forms of attachment, because these are seen to pose a social as well as a psychological threat. It is in perfect accord with the Republic’s general psychology, then, to envision a community bound by cheerful agreement, whose emotional concord reveals an extraordinary degree of unity among its members without thereby requiring the concord to be of an intensely emotional nature. Aristotle does not consider the possibility that diminishing the strength of emotional attachments might benefit human beings.22 Based on his discussion of such attachments in the Nicomachean Ethics, this is no doubt because under the right circumstances Aristotle takes intensity of affection  –​ philia and even erôs  –​to be natural, adaptive, and constitutive of human happiness.23 The instinctive nature of a mother’s love for her child, on which all other consanguinous relationships are based, is universally apparent (1155a16–​21; 1161b18–​19), as is the mutual attraction between man and woman that leads to domestic partnership: “for man is by nature a pairing creature [συνδυαστικὸν] even more than he is a political creature” (1162a17–​18). A similar strength of affection is characteristic is reason, which alone survives the death of the body and the decomposition of the soul. The tripartite psychology, then, was developed to account not for the soul itself but for its “sufferings and forms/​parts [εἴδη] in human life” (612a). 22 Though Aristotle does allow for pathological cases of extreme emotionalism that can be treated through the katharsis effected by religious music (and, he suggests analogously, other forms of music as well), these are not cases of extreme attachment to other human beings, but of what we might call “hysterical” or pathological inclinations (Pol. 1342a16). 23 See Cooper (1980) and Pangle (2003) on Aristotle’s complex philosophy of friendship, and Stalley (1991) 198 on the essential role of human attachment in Aristotle’s conception of an ideal civic community.

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of close friendship, which often leads to praiseworthy acts of self-​sacrifice (1169a18–​1169b2).24 The universality of the human inclination to love intensely and exclusively is alone a testament to the goodness of these kinds of relationships, as nature, according to Aristotle, does nothing in vain (Pol. 1253a9). Their utility, at least from the recipient’s perspective, is obvious. What the giver of such affection stands to gain in the case of unequal relationships is, however, less clear. Aristotle explains the motive for loving in this unreciprocated manner by appealing to the principle of activity central to his conception of human happiness, “the active exercise [ἐνέργεια] of the soul in accordance with virtue” (EN 1098a16–​17; cf. Pol. 1328a37–​38; 1332a8–​10; also glossed as “acting well” [εὐπραγία] in Pol. 1325b14–​15).25 It is often wondered, Aristotle says, why benefactors love their beneficiaries, or artists love their artworks as parents love their children, when reciprocity is impossible (EN 1168a5–​9): The reason for this is that existence is chosen and loved by all; but we exist in activity [ἐνεργείᾳ], since we exist by living and doing; and in a sense one who has made something exists in activity; he loves his work because he loves existence. This is a natural fact: what a thing is potentially [δυνάμει], its work reveals in actuality [ἐνεργείᾳ].

In contrast to Plato, who regards all emotions as essentially passive states in which the rational self is subject to irrational psychic forces, Aristotle recognizes the exercise of activity in many forms of emotional experience. The “utility” of loving the product of one’s labor is the happiness that comes from existing actively and virtuously; the nobility of the good works produced by such love is, moreover, a source of great pleasure to the lover, whose object of affection stands as testament to his or her virtuous activity (1168a9–​20). Reflectivity relates the pleasure of unreciprocated, productive love to the pleasure of reciprocal friendship between the virtuous, who stand in the least need of friendship, yet alone have access to its most perfect form (1156b7–​24). Aristotle compares this kind of affection to erôs because of its rarity, exclusivity, and intensity (1158a10–​15; 1171a8–​13). But unlike erôs, which is other-​directed and self-​effacing, perfect friendship most closely approximates self-​ love, which serves, somewhat paradoxically, as the model and basis for the love of others (1166a1–​2, b1–​2; 1168b1–​6). In acting as a “second self,” the virtuous friend reflects one’s own virtuous activity, This self-​sacrifice is only apparent, however, as the friend in such cases “takes the greater share of nobility for himself [ἑαυτῷ τοῦ καλοῦ πλέον νέμων]” (1169a35–​b1). 25 On the activity of happiness in Aristotle’s ethical philosophy, see most recently Gurtler (2003). 24

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which is otherwise obscure, and contemplation of this joint enterprise is a source of goodness and pleasure (1169b30–​1170b19). The conditions for sustaining perfect friendship, based as it is on close intercourse over time between the rarest types of individuals, are difficult to meet, making this the most precious human relationship. Its proximity to self-​love is also a sign of its distinctly private nature. In fact, all of the most valuable human attachments are, for Aristotle, the least public or “common,” which he otherwise takes to be the essence of friendship (“all friendship involves community [κοινωνίᾳ]”26 1161b11; cf. 1159b31–​32), and that is because he regards self-​love in the truest sense as the greatest source of virtue, both private and public (1168b25–​1169a11): For if a man were always striving to outdo everyone else in acts of justice, or temperance, or in any of the other acts of virtue, and in general he were always trying to secure for himself nobility, no one would call him selfish [φίλαυτον] or blame him. Yet such a man would seem to be the most selfish of all [μᾶλλον … φίλαυτος]. At all events he takes for himself the finest and best things of all … Therefore all approve and commend those who are exceptionally zealous in pursuit of noble actions; and if all men competed for nobility and strove to perform the noblest acts, all public needs would be met, and each private individual would have the greatest of goods, if indeed virtue is such a good.

Aristotle here presents us with the invisible hand theory according to virtue ethics:  the self-​interested pursuit of nobility ultimately promotes communal welfare, and this by means of true agonistic rivalry that pits ambitious individuals against one another. His virtuous citizen is a private individual who stakes a claim of nobility for himself in the public sphere, where he wins approval for it. Far from jeopardizing the community, then, the desire for ownership can promote public welfare when directed at the proper object: nobility or “fineness” (τὸ καλόν).27 In this case, the private serves both the individual and the public. There are other reasons that Aristotle gives in the Nicomachean Ethics for the civic utility of private attachments. Civic concord (ὁμόνοια) aspires to the intensity of intimate affection, because the presence of See Stalley (1991) 196 and Nielson (2013) 75–​84 on Aristotle and Plato’s divergent interpretations of this proverb, which both philosophers cite repeatedly. 27 To some extent, the difference between Plato and Aristotle on this point is only a matter of emphasis. Plato certainly aims to direct the thumoeidic desire for honor toward the fine and noble in his guardians, and in this manner harnesses the power of private motivations to serve the public good (though only as a matter of necessity), but unlike Aristotle, Plato attempts to minimize the role of agonism in thumoeidic pursuits and the exclusivity of their objects (see esp. R. 466b–​d, 521a–​b). 26

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such affection would preclude the need for justice; in the face of the limiting conditions of philia, the filtering of affection through degrees of proximity retains an element of genuine friendship among citizens, and this extended network consolidates the city (1155a22–​31). Private friendships additionally afford opportunities for developing and exercising virtues that will ultimately serve the public, most notably beneficence (εὐεργεσία), “which is displayed in its fullest and most praiseworthy form towards friends” (1155a8–​9; cf. 1169b10–​13). Aristotle makes a similar point in the Politics in his defense of private property; whereas the communism of goods creates conditions for neglect, inequality, and disagreement, private property creates conditions for attendance and voluntary sharing, the basis for the practice of ethical virtues such as liberality and temperance (1263a8–​1263b29).28 Contrary to Socrates’ expectation in the Republic, private property facilitates civic friendship and harmony, while communism destroys the conditions for these virtues to develop and, what’s worse, creates conditions for vice by denying the natural human desire for ownership a proper outlet. This, then, seems to be Aristotle’s general position on the proper relationship between public and private: in the right political order, they are mutually beneficial and fully compatible spheres of human activity.29 The relationships forged in the private domain form the core association from which the political association arises, and which it exists, in part, to protect; the private serves the public in turn by providing a training ground for civic virtue,30 for the virtuous habits that make for virtuous citizens are first developed in private. Though he is not unaware of the dangers posed by the absence of supervision and regulation,31 Aristotle nevertheless insists on such absence as a condition for the autonomy that qualifies action as ethical:  “virtue concerns emotions and actions, and it is only voluntary actions for which praise and blame are given” (EN 1109b30–​31). There is, in other words, an art to living privately as there is to living On the dependence of the virtues of liberality and temperance on the existence of private property in Aristotle’s Politics, see Stalley (1991) 195–​6; on liberality or “generosity” in particular, see Irwin (1995) and Nielson (2013) 77–​87, both of whom ultimately find Aristotle’s arguments unconvincing. 29 Stalley (1991) 198 and Swanson (1992) 207–​8 reach similar conclusions, but both neglect to consider the possibility of corruption in the private sphere under deviant political conditions. 30 Aristotle uses this image in describing the benefits of friendship for the virtuous: “the society of good men may provide a kind of training [ἄσκησίς] in virtue” (EN 1170a11–​12). 31 Men can cause revolutions through their private lives (1308b20–​24), fail to deliberate well because of private interest (1330a20–​23), fail to live well in private (1277a23–​25), or develop virtues imperfectly in private such that they are unable to transfer them to the public sphere (EN 1129b33–​1130a1). 28

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publicly,32 and both arts are required for living well. The legislator must therefore cultivate private virtue in his citizens, and this through education rather than legislation, for legislating private activity, which would in any case be ineffective, robs the individual of autonomy (Pol. 1263a37–​40; 1263b35–​1264a1; 1267b5–​9). Privacy, then, far from posing a threat to Aristotle’s conception of the ideal city, actually facilitates its realization. How does this positive evaluation of privacy relate to the positive evaluation of music and poetry that ends our edition of the Politics? Though he never explicitly links these phenomena  –​in the Politics, or elsewhere  –​we can nevertheless trace a connection via the concept of leisure (σχολή) that Aristotle invokes in his defense of music in education. Although leisure, understood roughly as freedom from necessity,33 both public and private, is a conceptual category distinct from privacy in Aristotle’s ethical system, the two notions overlap insofar as they both divide human activity into separate spheres and provide in their particular arenas opportunities for exercising virtue. Leisure is distinct from privacy, however, in partly constituting the final end of human life,34 and demanding for that reason far more concerted efforts to secure it. The teleological status of leisure invests its occupation with a significance and urgency that states ignore at their peril; for to occupy leisure in the right way is nothing less than “the first principle of all things” (Pol. 1337b32). These occupations can be public or private, but the autonomy of the private sphere suggests a superior status for those leisurely activities that take place in them. Aristotle offers a ringing endorsement of poetry when he includes among such activities the proper engagement with music (broadly understood to include poetry). From what remains of his description of this engagement we can infer that music qualifies as An art that Jason the tyrant of Pherae apparently failed to learn: “for the virtue of a ruler is not the same as the virtue of as a citizen, and no doubt that is why Jason said that whenever he was not tyrant he felt hungry, meaning that he did not how to be a private person [οὐκ ἐπιστάμενος ἰδιώτης εἶναι]” (Pol. 1277a23–​25). 33 Though Aristotle nowhere explicitly defines leisure, the basic (and popular) sense of “spare time” without pressing obligations is always presumed in his use of the term; see Stocks (1936) 199–​205; de Grazia (1962) 12–​14; Solmsen (1964) 180–​2; Swanson (1992) 155; Anastasiadis (2004) 67–​73. As these and other scholars have noted, Aristotle develops a more sophisticated notion of how that time ought to be spent in order to qualify as leisure (as opposed to mere amusement [παιδιά] and recreation [ἀνάπαυσις], which are not pursued for their own sake, but for the continuation of work). 34 Happiness “exists in leisure,” (EN 1177b4); leisure “contains pleasure, happiness, and blessedness in living,” (Pol. 1338a1–​3). On the relationship between leisure and happiness in Aristotle’s ethical and political thought, see de Grazia (1962) 15–​17; Solmsen (1964) 210–​20; Lord (1982) 40–​1, 53–​9, 196–​202. 32

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a “noble occupation of leisure” when we engage in it as an end in itself, and our appreciation of it results from a discerning taste, cultivated ethical disposition, and emotional awareness inaccessible to the illiberal. Mousikê, though appealing to all –​including children, slaves, and even some animals (1341a15–​17) –​has the potential to exercise the intellectual and ethical virtues of only those human beings who have had the benefit of a truly liberal education, an education Aristotle hopes to confer on all the citizens of his ideal polis.35 Though anticipated in earlier books of the Politics, the centrality of leisure to Aristotle’s political program does not come to light until his discussion of the ideal constitution in book 7, where it is presented as the aim of politics, and, insofar as it consists of virtuous activity, the aim of man. The lawgiver must recognize this aim and its psychological foundation when designing the city’s educational curriculum. In making this point, Aristotle extends the hierarchical division between the rational and irrational parts of soul to their characteristic activities, which are classed accordingly as either intrinsically or instrumentally valuable. Leisure is counted among the intrinsically valuable activities characteristic of the rational part of the soul (Pol. 1333a31–​b5): Life as a whole is divided into business [ἀσχολίαν] and leisure [σχολὴν], and into war and peace, and some of our actions are for things necessary [ἀναγκαῖα] and useful [χρήσιμα], others for things noble [καλά]. In these matters the same principle of preference that applies to the parts of soul must also apply to their activities: war is for the sake of peace, business for the sake of leisure, things necessary and useful for the purpose of things noble. Therefore the statesman must legislate with all these considerations in view, concerning both the parts of the soul and their activities, aiming more at the superior goods and the ends. And the same principle applies to ways of life and choices of conduct: one should be capable of engaging in business and war, but still more capable of living in peace and being at leisure; and one should do what is necessary and useful, but still more should one do what is noble. So it is with these aims in view that the people should be taught, both while still children and at later ages that require education. Music appreciation thus becomes, for Aristotle, a status marker, a form of cultural capital that stratifies taste in a manner familiar to moderns but rather alien to Greek institutions of mousikê, which, as Peponi (2012) has recently shown, were fundamentally inclusive and populist in nature (2–​6). In a similar vein, Ford (2004) argues persuasively that Aristotle’s treatment of musical education in the Politics aims to cultivate “a specially trained sensibility that will distinguish citizens from slaves on the one hand and from virtuoso performers on the other” (311), though it is worth stressing that marking this distinction is not music’s primary function or the source of its ultimate value for Aristotle.

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Like Plato, Aristotle regards education as a civic responsibility, the purpose of which is to organize the structure of the citizen’s soul for the sake of realizing its virtuous potential. But where Plato responds to psychic divisions by analogously dividing his citizenry and tailoring the education of each class to the psychic part it represents, Aristotle admits of a single class of equals, who must be educated in every type of psychic activity (with the exception of the most menial) in order to share the responsibility of governance.36 The Aristotelian citizen will participate in war as well as peace, engage in business as well as leisure, and perform useful as well as noble actions.37 The danger of ignoring the hierarchical relationship between these types of activity exists precisely because the individual is responsible for a plurality of occupations, and cannot rely, as Plato’s citizen does, on a strict division of labor to focus his energies on a single occupation naturally suited to his capacity. Dividing spheres of activity in this manner maintains a diversified model of human activity that Plato had sought to overturn in the Republic, on the grounds that a plurality of occupations –​which he took to overextend the individual, dilute human productivity, and confuse formal categories –​is as pernicious as it is inefficient in human communities. Aristotle, by contrast, regards diversification as a means of realizing human excellence and thereby strengthening human communities.38 Thus, while Plato’s principle of specialization collapses the distinction between business and leisure (as his principle of unity had collapsed the distinction between public and private),39 Aristotle goes to great lengths The citizens of Aristotle’s ideal state are equals ruling in turn (1332b25–​27; cf. 1287a16–​18, 1325b7–​ 8); though they are technically divided into military and deliberative classes, this division is based on the superficial distinction of age (the military class consists of the young who will grow up to join the deliberative class, leaving their children to take their place) and reflects no categorical difference between the two (1329a2–​b40; 1332b35–​1333a16). 37 There are limits, however, to the forms of practical activity that Aristotle’s citizens will engage in; they will not do any menial labor, for instance (1328b37–​1329a2). Aristotle adopts a mixed approach to the distribution of functions, whereby the citizen class is responsible for the more liberal forms of “necessary” work (namely governing, military training, overseeing religious practices, and conducting business), while the laboring class is responsible for physical provisions (1328b2–​1330a33). 38 Aristotle’s promotion of diversity is argued by Swanson (1992) esp.  18–​19 and 144–​7; she bases her case on the fact that homogeneity is said to destroy the city in the Politics and that Aristotle generally encourages human beings to cultivate their natural differences in order to actualize their particular potential. See also Stalley (1991) 187–​91. 39 Socrates repeatedly characterizes the specialized function of individuals (which is determined by their natural capacity and the class to which they are accordingly assigned [374b; 421b–​c; 433a]) as the proper occupation of their leisure: producers produce “more things of better quality and with more ease when one man performs one task according to his nature and at the right time, being at leisure from other occupations” (370c; 374b–​c); the “work” (ἔργον) of the guardians requires “more leisure than any other” (374e); the philosophers’ task of contemplating reality leaves them “no leisure to look upon the affairs of men” (500b–​c). The distinction between work and leisure 36

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to maintain the clarity of the categorical distinction between them in his civic proposals, going so far as to designate a separate agora for the conduct of each, thereby assigning leisure a distinct and inviolable spatial domain visible to the public (1331a30–​1331b13). This measure reveals the extent to which leisure is vulnerable to the encroaching demands of necessity, and the importance Aristotle sees in insulating it from such encroachment. Additional proposals are made with a view to securing leisure: the size of the territory must enable its inhabitants “to live a life of leisure [ζῆν σχολάζοντας] liberally [ἐλευθερίως] yet at the same time temperately [σωφρόνως]” (1326b30–​32); citizens must likewise possess sufficient means to live as liberally as possible without jeopardizing their temperance (1265a28–​38; 1328b37–​1329a2, 17–​21), and this requires the support of a disenfranchised artisan class, ideally consisting of slaves, but otherwise made up of resident aliens (1330a25–​33). To live liberally  –​to live quite literally as a free person (ἐλεύθερος) should live –​means to live without external constraints, with the autonomy to direct one’s own activity, and with the education to direct it well.40 That is why slaves proverbially have no leisure (1334a20–​21). Thus the lawgiver must “see to it from the outset that the best citizens are able to have leisure [σχολάζειν] and do not engage in unseemly occupations [ἀσχημονεῖν], not only when in office but also when living in private life” (1273a32–​35). Leisure is not just a neutral state of freedom (of “having free time”)41 but a liberal approach to the activities pursued in freedom, whether they occur in public or private arenas. Unlike privacy, which naturally assumes a spatial domain in the household, and which the political community appropriates as an existential fact, leisure is an elusive goal whose attainment the political community all too often obstructs and must take measures to secure.42 For the business of running a city is inherently unleisured (EN 1177b10–​18), and though the orientation of political rule ought to be the security of the citizenry’s leisure, the pursuit of this goal is easily offset by the rulers’ abuse does resurface in the case of the philosopher-​kings, however, who must be coerced to rule and whose activity is thus divided between philosophizing and ruling (519e–​521b). Yet, pace Nightingale (2001), who largely assimilates Plato and Aristotle’s liberal conception of leisure as something distinct from the banausic, Socrates aims rather to eliminate leisure as a relevant concept, claiming in a very un-​Aristotelian fashion that the pursuits of his citizens will be “the same in war and peace” (543a). See O’Leary (1973), who argues along similar lines that leisure is the condition for work in Plato’s Republic. 40 See Swanson (1992) 155 on Aristotle’s conditions for leisure. 41 Though this seems to have been its original meaning; on scholê as the possession of time and its etymological derivation from echein, see Anastasiadis (2004) 60–​1. 42 Though, on Aristotle’s account, the political community ceases to be a polis in the strict sense when it does not afford its citizens enough leisure to participate in politics and live liberal lives.

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of power (when power is mistaken for the goal [Pol. 1324a35–​1325a14]), or by their concern for material enrichment (when wealth is mistaken for the goal [1273a31–​1273b7]). Although desirable, these goods remain instrumental, degraded by their very necessity. The superiority of leisure, which is by definition unnecessary for living (though necessary for living well), is evident from its finality: “for we do business to be at leisure, and carry on war to live in peace” (EN 1177b4–​7). The failure to live according to this principle is a failure in education. As with the art of living privately, the legislator must teach the citizens how to occupy their leisure well (Pol. 1333a37–​39, b21–​29; 1334a8–​10). It is for the sake of meeting this pedagogical demand that Aristotle turns to the subject of education in the final book of the Politics, where mousikê is revealed to be a paradigmatically leisured activity that lays the foundation of a liberal education.43 Of the four customary subjects  –​ grammar, gymnastics, music, and drawing  –​music alone appears to serve no instrumental purpose beyond the pleasure of its engagement. Gymnastics is practiced for the sake of physical health, reading and writing are necessary skills for domestic, commercial, and civil management, and drawing improves perspicuity; music, on the other hand, is practiced and enjoyed for its own sake (1338a9–​21). What, then, does music educate for (1338a21–​37)? It remains therefore that [music] serves as a pastime in leisure [τήν ἐν τῇ σχολῇ διαγωγήν], which is in fact the reason people introduce it, for they consider it a pastime characteristic of the free [διαγωγὴν … τῶν ἐλευθέρων] … It is therefore clear that there is a form of education in which the young should be trained not because it is useful or necessary but because it is liberal and noble; though whether there is one form only or several, and what these are and how they are conducted, must be discussed later, but so much we are now in a position to see, since we even have testimony from the ancients based on the courses of education which they established –​for music is proof of it.

Aristotle never fulfills his promise to discuss other potential forms of liberal occupation in what remains of the Politics,44 nor is there even a complete analysis in book 8 (which abruptly cuts off) of what it means to engage in music as a liberal pastime, since what concerns Aristotle is See also Heath (2014) 113–​14 on music education as preparation for proper use of leisure in adulthood. On Aristotle’s conception of a liberal education, see Lord (1982); Swanson (1992) 133–​60; Nightingale (2001) 154–​71; Ford (2004) 311–​15. 44 Though we do know from the Nicomachean Ethics that Aristotle considers contemplation to be the supreme occupation of leisure (1177b4–​26). See also n47 to this chapter. 43

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the training and development of immature persons to whom the truly leisured and intellectual activities are not yet accessible: “it is not suitable to assign cultured pastime [διαγωγήν]45 to boys and to the young; for a thing that is an end does not belong to anything incomplete” (1339a29–​ 31). Thus the bulk of his discussion focuses not on liberal engagement with music, which he describes at one point as “contributing to prudence” (συμβάλλεται … πρὸς φρόνησιν, 1339a25–​26), but rather on its ethical influence and, to a lesser degree, its recreational benefits, both instrumental functions of music that Aristotle eventually concedes (1339b10–​15).46 Nonetheless, Aristotle suggests throughout book 8 that there is a form of musical engagement more honorable, liberal, and intellectual than these, which is the true source of music’s value. Developing a clearer picture of the kind of activity Aristotle has in mind is largely a matter of speculation, but it is possible to deduce it in part from his remarks on the ethical function of music in education, which fosters habits of appreciation in the young citizen that will lay the groundwork for liberal engagement with music in his adulthood. The ethical function of music thus appears to approximate music’s noblest function.47 For if it is impossible to engage the young in the noblest occupations of leisure, yet they can and must be trained to do so as adults; just as children’s games should imitate the serious occupations of later life (1336a32–​34), so their liberal education should involve imitations of what will be liberal activity in time. The second “most honorable” function of music serves this purpose (1339b42–​1340a6). How, then, do the ethical effects of music achieve this aim? Aristotle observes that music “reaches the character and the soul” when it engages the emotions, and that this psychic penetration endows music with the capacity to alter the soul’s structure by cultivating emotional dispositions (1339b42–​1340b13; cf. 1339a21–​26). He insists on harnessing this capacity for the development of ethical virtue, which, as we know from the Ethics (EN 1105b25–​1106a4; 1106b16–​28), consists precisely in the proper disposition toward emotions (Pol. 1340a12–​b13): On the specialized use of the term diagôgê, which outside of this discussion of music in the Politics (and even, at one point, within it: 1341b40–​41), refers to a wide range of pastimes, see Lord (1982) 56–​57. 46 By contrast, ethical utility is the only value Plato is willing to ascribe to music in the Republic, where he limits the role of music to serving the needs of the guardians’ primary education; Depew (1991) 367 also makes this point. 47 On “teleological approximation” as a means of acting for the sake of an end in Aristotle’s ethical thought, see Lear (2004) 72–​92. See also Nightingale (2001) 168–​70 for an application of this principle to liberal engagement with music, which she argues acts as an approximation of philosophic contemplation. 45

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The Platonic resonance of this passage, where poetry surfaces in the shift from instrumental to representational forms of mousikê, is difficult to reconcile with its decidedly anti-​Platonic message, as it is with Aristotle’s own conception of mimetic engagement elsewhere, for here Aristotle seems to recognize a continuity of experience between art and life that he calls into question, at least in the case of painful mimesis, in the Poetics (1448b4–​17).48 More importantly, what furnished the grounds for the indictment against mimetic poetry and its consequent exile from society in Plato’s Republic  –​namely such poetry’s ability to foster emotions and shape the soul before the maturation of reason –​is, for Aristotle, the source of poetry and music’s pedagogical utility in a liberal education. While certain forms of mousikê are permitted in Plato’s educational curriculum for the same reasons, Plato remains fundamentally suspicious of music’s intractable and subrational power, which is why his regulations are so extensive. It is not clear why Aristotle fails to detect any serious danger See my discussion of the Poetics passage in the Introduction, Section I.2. See also de An. 427b14–​24, where imagination is distinguished from the formation of opinion in the case of emotional stimuli because: “whenever we form an opinion that something is terrible or frightful, we are immediately affected [συμπάσχομεν] by it, and likewise [when we form an opinion] that something inspires confidence; but in imagination we conduct ourselves as if we were spectators [οἱ θεώμενοι] looking at something terrible or inspiring in a picture.” Aristotle suggests that the distance of spectatorship, be it in an imaginative or mimetic context, alters our experience of emotions. For a discussion of the potential incompatibility between this mimetic principle of aesthetic mediation and the principle of mimetic congruity with the world espoused in the Politics passage above, see Halliwell (2002) 184–​5, 203, who somewhat awkwardly reconciles these positions by arguing for a “duality … [that] acknowledges the ‘artificial’ status of mimetic fictions and yet keeps intact their capacity to explore possibilities of reality” (203).

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or potential for psychological corruption in what he recognizes to be a powerful medium of psychological transformation, or how he can regard the pleasure of music as essentially benign (“harmless”) while investing it with such potency.49 What is clear, however, is that he ascribes value to emotional training, and a cognitive dimension to the process of emotional and mimetic response. To “feel” rightly is in some sense to “judge” rightly, and this intellectual component may clue us into the nature of the contribution to phronêsis allegedly made by music. One can locate the operation of judgment during mimetic engagement in the emotion itself. Aristotle’s cognitive conception of the emotions is widely recognized (though perhaps overemphasized) by a growing body of scholarly literature that regards him as the founder of modern cognitivism.50 In the Rhetoric, where his most systematic treatment of emotions occurs, as well as both ethical treatises, where emotions figure centrally in discussions of ethical virtue, Aristotle consistently defines particular emotions by the evaluations they contain (as well as by the desires they generate and their physiological manifestations, which is why labeling Aristotle a cognitivist simply is, at the very least, reductive). Anger understands a personal injury to be unjustified, and “reasons [συλλογισάμενος] in a manner of speaking” that retaliation is warranted (EN 1149a25–​b1; Rh. 1378a30–​1380a5); pity judges another’s misfortune to be undeserved and possible for oneself, and occurs only under certain conditions that must be registered by the pitier (this is not, in other words, Plato’s reflexive and unreflective sympathy) (Rh. 1385b11–​1386b7).51 The art of rhetoric appeals to emotions through persuasion, which applies reason to alter the beliefs that underlie emotional response (Rh. 1356a14–​16; 1370a17–​27; 1377b28–​1378a5, 1378a19–​22). The Poetics relies on the same cognitive psychology when it prescribes elaborate conditions for tragedy to meet in order to arouse the emotions of pity and fear proper to it and achieve their notoriously obscure katharsis (1449b24–​8; cf. 1452b32–​3; 1453b11–​14). The See n9 to this chapter on the limited dangers posed by mimesis in the Politics and Aristotle’s characterization of music as among the “harmless pleasures” of life (ὅσα … ἀβλαβῆ τῶν ἡδέων, 1339b25–​26). As Heath (2014) notes, Aristotle “[has] more confidence than Plato in the stability of adult character … and that is sufficient defense” (22). 50 See Konstan (2006) 21–​2 for a sampling of emotion research that takes its cognitive bearings from Aristotle. 51 The object of pity must resemble the pitier without being too closely identified with him or her; for one cannot pity oneself or one’s own, according to Aristotle (one feels dread and fear instead, which potentially eclipses pity: 1386a18–​24). Yet the distance between them cannot be so great as to alienate the pitier; proximity, moreover, is required for the prospect of misfortune to make a significant impact and “appear before the eyes” (1386a33–​1386b7). 49

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protagonist must be elevated but not beyond our identification, morally decent but not infallible, and must suffer through an error for which he is responsible but which does not justify his suffering (1453a7–​12). Maintaining the intelligibility of suffering without diminishing its pathos imposes restrictions on the plot, which must conform to a complex structure of reversals and recognitions or risk devolving from the tragic to sheer horror on the one hand, and benign comedy on the other (1452b28–​ 1453a39).52 Aristotle clearly does not subscribe to an infectious view of emotional transmission, as his predecessors did (not least of all Plato), but places the spectator at a reflective distance, in full possession of his autonomy, which he exercises by gauging the emotional propriety of a situation before assenting to a sympathetic response. But the intelligibility of a represented scenario is, for Aristotle, as much a feature of the representational medium as it is of the content, emotional or otherwise: “the reason why we enjoy looking at images is that, as we contemplate [θεωροῦντας] them, we learn [μανθάνειν] and infer [συλλογίζεσθαι] what each is, for instance that “this person is so-​and-​ so” (Po. 1448b15–​17). It may be that in the Politics passage above Aristotle intends to limit judgment to the recognition of emotional content under conditions that clarify the nature of particular emotions and the situations that elicit them.53 “Feeling and judging rightly” may mean feeling emotions in a context where the distance of spectatorship allows for an objective assessment of appropriate emotional response that is otherwise obscure to a first-​order experience of the emotion. Though it is admittedly difficult to apply this principle of intelligibility to instrumental music, it may be applicable all the same, as Aristotle, like Plato, regards instrumental as well as narrative mousikê as representational media. If this is the case, music broadly speaking is a liberal activity contributing to phronêsis when we use the objectifying effects of the mimetic context to contemplate the proper form of emotional expression; this reflective stance allows us to take pleasure in our consciousness of feeling emotions appropriately, which is why emotions that are inherently painful can become a source of pleasure “through mimesis.”54 So also Heath (2001) 10: “In Aristotle’s theory of tragedy, a proper grasp of the plot involves recognition of its conformity to certain relatively sophisticated structural and ethical criteria.” 53 This would support Nussbaum’s ([1986] 388–​91) interpretation of tragic katharsis as a “clarification” of pity and fear, which develops the work of Leon Golden, the original proponent of a clarification theory of katharsis. For his most sustained defense of this view, see Golden (1992). 54 This is essentially Malcolm Heath’s argument is Heath (2001), where he proposes an Aristotelian resolution of the paradox of tragic pleasure based on the premise that proper emotional response constitutes an exercise of virtue:  “the characteristic pleasure of tragedy, which comes from pity 52

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This Aristotelian version of aesthetic judgment is by no means universal, but the product of a distinctly liberal education and a source of refined pleasure far removed from the pleasure in music experienced by commoners or professional performers; aesthetic taste is, in this sense, part of a Bourdieuian habitus that defines a social class,55 or in Aristotle’s case an entire citizenry. The liberally educated citizen not only enjoys the “common pleasure derived from [music], which everyone experiences,” but “can judge what is beautiful and enjoy it rightly because of the study [he] engaged in youth” (Pol. 1340a2–​5; 1340b38–​40). And this brings us to a concern more central to the Politics’ educational curriculum than the cultivation of emotional habits and awareness, and that is the cultivation of taste as a pre-​rational foundation for what will be an adult form of leisurely activity and pleasure that contributes to happiness. Music as a form of acculturation becomes a status marker that distinguishes the free citizen from the slave and the professional, neither of whom has the education or autonomy to engage in music in a liberal manner.56 Over the course of Aristotle’s discussion of mousikê there emerges the figure of the virtuous connoisseur, whose discerning judgment of musical performance is at once aesthetic and ethical, and whose pleasure derives from a consummate understanding of music’s beauty, rather than its relaxing effects, its ethical instruction, or –​in the case of the professional –​its successful appeal to a lesser audience. This social concern is evident throughout Aristotle’s general approach to civic education, which exclusively serves the free citizen and defines him against the servile members of his society. Yet the task proves to be an extremely delicate one, as education, which is neither an end in itself nor serves those who have reached their end, is inherently utilitarian, and and fear by means of imitation, is the pleasure which the virtuous take in this exercise of their virtue” (16). Heath later distances himself from this claim in (2014) 121n17, but his current position that “the virtuous activity is, to the extent that it impinges on the person’s awareness, itself experienced as pleasurable” or that “the affective experience evoked by tragedy, as a proper expression of virtuous character, is properly pleasurable to the virtuous person” (121) is not a clear modification on his former stance. In the end, Heath seems to endorse a version of the cognitive solutions to the tragic paradox discussed in the Introduction, Section  I.2 (including his earlier position in Heath [2001]), but he also ascribes a distinctly Platonic position to Aristotle that seems incompatible with this view, as it acknowledges the “perversity” of human nature, which “artificially induces distress for the pleasure of relief ” and “demands contrasting, intense, and varied pleasure” (120, 122). 55 Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is, in fact, an appropriation of Aristotle’s concept of hexis or disposition, of which habitus is the Latin translation; for Bourdieu’s treatment of the history of this concept, see Bourdieu (1985). 56 See Ford (2004) for a similar argument, though Ford is more reluctant than I am to ascribe intellectual value to music in the Politics, which he narrowly defines as instrumental.

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thus risks devolving into the “banausic” or vulgar (1337b4–​14). A liberal curriculum must therefore consist of those “useful” arts that are preconditions for liberal activity (reading and writing, for instance, are both instrumental for conducting business and intrinsically valuable when they are practiced in intellectual pursuits [1338a39–​40]), and that do not jeopardize the student’s capacity for virtue in the course of their acquisition (menial labor, for instance, “deteriorates the body,” while wage-​earning “preoccupies and degrades the mind,” [1337b11–​14]). Even liberal studies, moreover, can vulgarize the student when they are pursued too assiduously (1337b15–​ 17). What determines the liberality of a subject is not, after all, its content, but the spirit with which one studies it (1337b17–​21): It makes a great difference what object one has in a pursuit or study; what is done for the sake of oneself, or one’s friends, or because of virtue, is not illiberal, but the man who does the same thing because of other people would often appear to be acting in a menial [θητικὸν] and servile [δουλικὸν] manner.

The orientation of one’s pursuits must be directed toward oneself to be liberal (friends, remember, are second selves), and this is because serving oneself in the true sense  –​the sense of acting virtuously  –​is the fullest expression of one’s autonomy, a precondition for leisure and happiness. Aristotle uses the orientation of activity to control the effects mousikê, which proves to be not only practically but intellectually intractable: “For it is not easy to determine what power [δύναμιν] it possesses, nor the reasons why one should partake in it” (1339a14–​16). No other practice displays such versatility in its application. Music can be a vulgarizing profession, an amusement for the common laborer, child, or slave, an ethical tool in education, or a cultured and liberal pastime befitting the free. Its appeal is not even limited to a human audience –​animals respond to music (1341a15–​16), as do the most intellectual and virtuous adult human beings. A practice that ranges from satisfying the most banausic and inhuman impulses to fulfilling the noblest and most characteristically human aspirations poses a special problem to the educator, who must harness the liberalizing potential of music while keeping its vulgarizing effects at bay. Aristotle’s solution to this problem is to strike a delicate balance: develop the student’s technical proficiency in music while orienting his objective toward his future liberal engagement with music, which will consist solely of appreciation and contemplation. Aristotle achieves this by limiting and regulating the actual performance of music –​that is, playing instruments, and

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presumably singing poetry –​to the minimum needed to lay a foundation for informed aesthetic judgment later in life. This limitation is, relative to contemporary cultural practices, actually progressive. Judging from Aristotle’s discussion of Spartan and Persian education, an aristocratic curriculum typically prohibited training in musical performance, focusing instead from the very beginning on appreciation and spectatorship of musicians whose abilities surpass those of the amateur; teaching the young noble to play an instrument would be tantamount to teaching him to cook, and such a prospect, Aristotle concedes, is absurd (1339a33–​b10). Yet learning to play music is not, after all, the same as learning to cook; Aristotle insists that the most discerning taste in the case of mousikê only arises from actual practice, which instills a basic technical proficiency necessary for judging and enjoying musical performance correctly: “for it is something impossible, or at any rate difficult, to become a serious judge [κριτὰς … σπουδαίους] of performances if one has not taken part in them” (1340b23–​25). Aristotle goes on to counter the common objection that performance vulgarizes by regulating the types of musical instruments and modes permitted in education, limiting the curriculum to a terminal period of time and orienting it toward appreciation and connoisseurship rather than vocational training and professionalization. Not all forms of musical performance, he argues, hinder the body and mind, and those that do –​such as the flute, which prevents speech and excites the passions –​would be banned (1340b40–​1341b8). Nor will the student participate in professional competitions, for that would orient his activity toward an audience other than himself, making him as servile and pandering as a hired performer (1341b10–​18; cf. 1341a9–​16): And we define education for competitions as vocational [τεχνικὴν], for the performer does not take part in it for his own virtue, but for the pleasure of his listeners, and this a crude [φορτικῆς] pleasure; for this reason we do not consider performing to be characteristic of the free, but more suitable to the menial [θητικωτέραν]. And indeed performers do become vulgar [βαναύσους], since the object which they make their end [τὸ τέλος] is a base [πονηρὸς] one; for the spectator, being himself crude, usually affects the music, so that he makes the artists who direct their performance at him of such a quality themselves, and also their bodies because of the movements involved.

Aristotle’s young citizen will suffer none of these ill-​effects, as he performs music solely for his self-​improvement; once he achieves technical proficiency, he forgoes the performance and production of music and

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appreciates it as an educated and cultivated consumer, equipped with the refined taste of a connoisseur and the emotional habits of a virtuous citizen to engage in music in a truly liberal manner. Aristotle’s approach to musical education, though less censorious than Plato’s, may still strike us as insufferably elitist, but his elitism does not serve to maintain class distinctions for their own sake, so much as to facilitate the realization of the greatest human potential in a community, which must nevertheless rely on the labor of a disenfranchised class that lacks (ideally) such potential.57 This is the potential to engage in intrinsically valuable activity, among which Aristotle counts the proper appreciation of mousikê. The exercise of aesthetic judgment in musical engagement qualifies as a liberal occupation because of the autonomy, education, and leisure it requires, and the self-​sufficient end it serves. The satisfaction of engaging in musical activity is further augmented by the pleasure that inheres in the musical medium (1340a3–​5). Pleasure of the appropriate kind is not suspect to Aristotle, but is taken to perfect activity (EN 1174b23–​26), which suggests, pace Socrates’ insistence that poetry be proven “beneficial” rather than merely “pleasant,” that pleasure may be a better index of poetry’s value than anything utilitarian.58 Denying citizens one of the most pleasant forms of leisurely activity strikes Aristotle as cruel as it is silly, for he regards the pleasure of music even in banausic cases to be “harmless” (Pol. 1339b25–​31) and, what’s more, natural (1340a4). Though he does not criticize Plato openly for such a proposal –​at least in what has been transmitted to us –​the criticism is not difficult to detect. It is worth recalling at this point that music does, in fact, play a central role in the education of Plato’s citizens, and, more importantly, that the world of Callipolis is not after all a world without music and poetry, but a world without mimetic music and poetry. The possibility of a philosophically defensible mousikê hovers behind this qualification and asserts itself in the encomia and religious hymns that remain after the mimetic poets are banished (R. 327b; 459e–​460a; 607a).59 If Socrates fails to dwell on the aesthetic possibilities of this new civic poetry, it is not because he does not

In this sense, Aristotle and Plato’s political projects are very much aligned. As Aristotle says in a memorable sentence, “to seek utility everywhere is most unsuitable for the great-​souled and free” (Pol. 1338b2–​3). See also Heath (2014) 122–​3 on this point. 59 See Heath (2013) 46–​52 for a serious and stimulating consideration of the poetry retained in Socrates’ well-​ordered city. 57

58

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197

think they exist, but because he has the far more urgent task of discrediting the aesthetic values that dominate poetic production in his world (as in ours). The fully integrated society of Callipolis is intended to show us an alternative to this world, which, by virtue of the admittance of “poetry directed at pleasure and mimesis,” is not one but a plurality of worlds, none of which we fully belong to, and all of which on some level conflict with one another. By generating illusory realms that captivate –​quite literally  –​our imagination and divert us from our actual lives, mimetic poetry uses our psychological resources without reciprocation.60 The effect of this ontological asymmetry is the fragmentation of the human personality and the alienation of what is properly a social being. The Republic’s critique of such poetry is not, in the end, only a matter of psychological corruption –​though it is fundamentally that –​but a matter of social isolation, which amounts to a form of privatization. This feature of the critique is rarely addressed in subsequent literary criticism, which tends to focus on the problematic ethical content of poetry rather than its socially alienating effects. Yet the potential for social alienation explains why narrative poetry (as well as narrative prose) is almost exclusively the focus of Socrates’ criticisms –​ narrative generates compelling stories whose worlds are not continuous with our own. However culturally significant Homeric epic or tragedy may be, they derive their force from the pleasure of imaginative engagement in thrilling and moving plots that bear little resemblance to the auditors’ actual lives and have, more importantly, no practical bearing on their lives. Encomiastic poetry, marriage hymns, and hymns to the gods, on the other hand, are distinct for being forms of civic engagement that hook up to the life of the audience; such poetry is not “mimetic” in Socrates’ sense because it does not transport the audience into an illusory world, but rather engages them in their own (it is a legitimate activity, a speech act rather than an imitation of one). This is not to say that Greek lyric as we know it would necessarily be permitted in Socrates’ ideal city, only that it more closely resembles a nonnarrative and nonfictional form of poetry that he in principle allows, and asks us, however cursorily, to imagine. This poetry would look more like “song” in many small face-​to-​face communities –​public rather than private, and seamlessly integrated into the Mimetic poetry is parasitical in this sense, sustaining itself on the human imagination while starving the better part of the human soul, much as the beasts within a disordered soul starve the inner man (588e–​589a).

60

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culture that produces it.61 It is a poetry that we would live and breath in the “wholesome meadows” of the perfect city (401b–​d), a place we would be content to inhabit, and from which we would have no desire to escape.

For a modern example of such a culture, see Keith Basso’s treatment of the Western Apache and their use of poetry and song to animate their landscape and orient their lives in his ethnographic study, Wisdom Sits in Places (1996).

61

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215

Index

Achilles and anger/​grief, 86–​104, 163 addictive pleasure, 20, 41, 44, 47, 78, 81–​84, 88, 101–​2, 120, 122–​33, 171 structure, 151 aesthetic distance, 6, 23, 106, 159–​60, 168, 192 vs. ethical, 13–​16, 20–​21, 23, 27–​30, 105–​6, 113–​14, 115, 118–​19, 121–​22, 130–​32, 171, 174–​75 pleasure, 15, 20–​21, 22–​23, 27–​30, 34–​35, 36, 42, 75–​79, 105–​6, 112–​13, 121–​22, 155, 171, 192, 196 transference, 78, 106–​11, 118, 139–​40, 155–​56, 159–​60, 168, 192 transformation, 23, 24, 34, 106, 191–​92 values, 1, 13–​16, 20–​23, 27–​30, 34–​35, 39, 84, 104–​6, 112–​13, 121–​22, 130–​32, 146–​48, 172–​73, 188–​96, 197 affects. See also emotions and art, 112–​13, 155, 171 and self-​expansion, 27–​30, 35, 114–​15, 117 structure of, 30, 114–​15 value of, 22–​23, 27–​30, 34–​35, 78–​79, 105–​6, 110–​11, 112, 146 Alcman, 37 alienation, 30, 35, 39, 40–​41, 89, 90–​91, 117, 139, 156, 175, 197 Altieri, Charles, 15, 24, 27–​30, 31, 34–​35, 78–​79, 84, 101, 106, 112 anger appetite for, 95–​98, 100, 103–​4, 162–​64 and cannibalism, 95–​98 and grief. See grief and insatiability of, 98–​100 and persuasion, 45, 54 physiology of, 80, 95–​98, 163–​64 purposefulness of, 92, 93–​95, 97, 100 and revenge, 80, 88–​90, 92, 94–​98, 100, 191 and self-​destruction, 88–​90, 94–​95, 98, 100–​2, 103–​4, 105–​6

animality, 22, 35–​36, 98, 102, 124, 126–​27, 156–​57, 162, 163, 168 Aphrodite, 48–​49, 51, 52, 57–​58, 59, 65, 66, 85 apian imagery in Hesiod, 126 in Pindar, 69, 122–​23 in Plato, 122–​33 in Semonides, 126–​27 appetite, 1, 9–​10, 81, 118–​19, 121–​22, 134–​55, 171 appetitive pleasure, 9–​10, 17, 19–​20, 23, 31, 36–​37, 39, 40, 41, 44, 59–​62, 75–​76, 78, 81–​88, 92, 95, 102–​4, 118–​19, 121–​33, 134–​55, 171 structure, 63 archaic poetics and craftsmanship, 63–​64, 66–​74 and Plato, 1, 6–​7, 16–​17, 18, 19–​20, 122–​33 and pleasure, 13, 17–​18, 19–​20, 38, 49–​50, 63–​64, 66–​67, 69, 75–​79, 102–​6, 120, 122–​23, 130–​32 and sociality, 39, 40–​41, 102–​6, 127 and theory, 18–​20 Archilochus, 37, 74, 102–​6 Aristophanes Birds, 71 Frogs, 43–​44, 49, 62, 66 Aristotle, 13, 22, 23–​24, 87, 117 in aesthetic theory, 12, 15, 20, 21, 22–​23, 24, 34 Nicomachean Ethics, 180–​84, 189 On the Soul, 80–​81 Parts of Animals, 34 Poetics, 10–​13, 21, 26, 112, 171–​73, 190, 191–​92 Politics, 21, 171–​73, 175–​79, 183–​96 Rhetoric, 24, 92, 101, 191 arousal, 50, 57, 59–​62, 63, 67, 75–​76, 85, 87 Artaud, Antonin, 112, 120 Astydamas, 66 Augustine Confessions, 77 autonomy, 52, 111, 138, 174, 175–​76, 183–​84, 193–​94, 196

215

216

216

Index

Charmers, 40–​43, 56, 60, 62, 102 City of Pigs, 123–​24 cognitive vs. affective, 23, 27–​30, 63–​64, 112–​13, 158–​61 pleasure, 11–​13, 23–​24, 191–​92 vs. somatic, 20–​22, 23, 36, 37, 47, 63–​64, 65–​74, 76, 79–​82 value, 11, 191–​92 view of emotions, 23–​24, 27–​30, 79–​82, 112, 191–​92 connoisseurship, 63, 70, 193, 194–​96 Darwin, Charles, 80 darwinian criticism. See literary darwinism Deleuze, Gille, 112 democratic city, 128–​29, 133, 134–​39, 141–​42 soul, 31, 128–​29, 138, 140–​41, 142–​44, 150 Dickinson, Emily, 33–​34 disgust, 66–​67, 70, 71–​73, 104, 121, 159, 169 Durkheim, Emile, 96 emotions addiction to, 77–​78, 79–​102, 103–​4, 120, 170, 171 in archaic poetry, 81–​102 vs. cognition, 11–​13, 20–​21, 23, 27–​30, 63–​64, 79–​102, 105–​6, 112–​13, 158–​61, 168 danger of, 20, 77–​78, 82, 83–​84, 88, 90–​93, 98, 100–​1, 102–​6, 118–​19, 146–​48, 155, 171 as embodied states, 20–​22, 23, 78, 79–​102, 163–​64 and human attachment, 122, 155–​56, 164–​68, 171, 173–​74, 178–​83 metaphors for, 79–​102 painful, 1, 6–​7, 11–​13, 17, 20, 23–​24, 34–​35, 75–​106, 111, 115, 120–​22, 132–​33, 146, 155, 171, 191–​92 pleasure of, 1, 6–​7, 13, 20–​21, 22–​23, 27–​30, 34–​35, 75–​106, 110–​11, 112–​13, 146, 155, 171 and poetry, 1, 11–​13, 17, 20–​21, 22–​24, 34–​35, 63–​64, 75–​79, 102, 110–​11, 139–​40, 155, 171, 189–​92 and revitalization, 84, 93–​95, 97, 105 and the self, 82, 83–​84, 90–​93, 102–​6, 156–​58, 168, 181 theories of, 79–​82, 191–​92 transmission of, 20, 78, 106–​11, 118, 139–​40, 155–​56, 159–​60, 168, 192 enchantment, 17, 19, 46–​47, 48, 49, 52–​59, 60–​62, 159, 197 equality, 137–​38, 141–​42, 144, 177 eros, 9 in Aristotle, 180, 181 philosophical, 93, 125

poetic, 48–​52 and poetry, 36–​37, 39, 59–​62, 65–​66, 68, 75–​76, 125, 155 tyrannical, 148–​55, 166 escapism, 27, 47, 48, 53–​54, 55–​56, 197 ethical criticism, 14–​15, 24 fiction in analytic philosophy, 14, 20–​21 and Greek poetry, 63 and mimesis, 13–​14, 130–​32 in Plato, 13–​14, 130–​32, 197 and reality, 14–​15, 20–​21, 111, 112–​13, 118, 120, 139–​40, 155–​56, 159–​60, 171, 189–​91, 197 freedom, 137–​38, 141–​42, 144, 149, 150, 151–​54, 155–​56, 184 Freud, Sigmund, 92 friendship, 180–​83 Gorgias, 13, 55, 78, 102, 112, 113, 139–​40, 159 Encomium of Helen, 106–​11 grief and anger, 20, 75, 77–​78, 81–​84, 89–​101, 146 appetite for, 1, 4–​7, 9–​10, 13, 77–​78, 84–​88, 92, 100, 122, 158–​61, 166–​68, 171 debilitating nature of, 98, 100–​1, 122, 164, 171 and emasculation/​infantilization, 6–​7, 8–​9, 167–​68 insatiability of, 88, 98–​100, 166–​68 irresistible force of, 3–​4, 84–​88, 122 and mourning customs, 85, 96–​97, 165–​67, 171 physiology of, 9–​10, 13, 84–​88, 92, 158–​61 Plato’s critique of, 6–​7, 9–​10, 122, 155–​56, 158–​61, 164, 171 and tragic mimesis, 1, 4–​7, 8–​9, 10, 13, 24, 75, 77–​78, 84, 122, 155–​56, 158–​61, 164, 171 Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich, 15, 24, 27, 30, 34–​35 Halliwell, Stephen, 23 Havelock, Eric, 24–​27 Hesiod, 37, 39, 55, 60, 64, 65 fr.265, 68–​69 Theogony, 45–​47, 48, 50–​52, 54, 126 historicism, 24–​27 Homer, 13, 36, 37, 47, 53, 64, 65, 67, 68, 76, 78, 84 as educator, 17 Iliad, 45, 57–​58, 65–​66, 75, 82, 86–​87, 88–​102, 104 Odyssey, 2–​7, 38–​39, 40–​43, 49, 52–​53, 54–​55, 56–​57, 59, 61, 87 in Plato, 8, 75, 130–​32, 158, 164, 197 as tragedian, 8, 75, 158

217

Index Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 57 to Hermes, 61–​62 insatiability, 60, 61–​62, 74, 88, 98–​100, 124, 129, 148–​55, 166–​69 intensity, 15, 28, 31, 34, 35, 93, 100, 115–​16, 117, 122, 163–​64, 168, 171, 180 involvedness, 28, 115, 116–​17 Isocrates, 71 Jacobson, Roman, 130–​32 James, William, 80 Kant, Immanuel, 23, 35, 114 katharsis, 12, 191 lawlessness, 20, 122, 140, 149, 150, 152–​56, 161–​62, 165–​69, 171, 174–​75 leisure in Aristotle, 21, 172–​73, 184–​89, 193–​94, 196 in Plato, 186 and poetry, 21, 184–​85, 188–​89 Leontius, 161, 165, 168 literary darwinism, 14–​15 Lucretius, 77 mimesis, 10, 13–​14 and aesthetic pleasure, 10–​13, 21, 23–​24, 34–​35, 78–​79, 102, 111, 112–​13, 118, 120–​22, 130–​32, 135, 139–​40, 146–​48, 155, 171, 192 in Aristotle, 10–​13, 23–​24, 189–​91, 192 and fiction. See fiction and in Plato, 7, 20–​21, 36, 139–​40, 146–​48, 155, 196 Munteanu, Dana LaCourse, 23–​24 Muses, 37, 45–​47, 48, 49, 50–​52, 59, 122, 125, 133, 171 narrative, 3, 5, 9, 13–​14, 21, 192, 198 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 75, 112 Niobe, 101 Nussbaum, Martha, 24 Odysseus as bard, 56–​57, 58, 61 among the Phaeacians, 2–​7, 49, 54, 56–​57, 58, 61 and the Sirens, 40–​43, 76 as trickster, 65 oligarchic city, 128 soul, 140, 144 oral culture, 24–​27

217

Peponi, Anastasia-​Erasmia, 23 persuasion, 46–​47, 48, 52, 54–​55, 107–​9, 140, 191 Persuasion, 52 Pindar, 26, 37, 39–​40, 45, 47, 64, 66–​67, 69–​70, 74, 76, 113, 121, 122 fr.194, 67–​68 Nemean 2, 68–​69 Nemean 4, 55 Nemean 5, 67–​68 Nemean 7, 71–​72 Olympian 1, 73–​74 Paean 8, 40–​43 Pythian 1, 72–​73 Pythian 2, 102–​6 Pythian 9, 70–​71 plasticity, 28, 115, 116, 117–​18 Plato, 13, 29–​30, 36–​37, 74, 77, 78, 79, 93, 109, 110, 112, 113, 118–​19, 191 Ion, 13–​14, 71, 110–​11 Republic, 1, 6–​7, 8–​9, 13–​16, 20–​21, 23, 24–​27, 31, 39, 119, 120, 171–​80, 183, 186–​87, 190–​91, 196 poeticity, 130–​32 poikilia archaic meaning of, 64–​66, 134 and the city, 134, 135–​36, 143–​44, 149–​50 in Pindar, 64, 66–​74, 76, 129, 130, 134 in Plato, 121–​22, 126, 129–​31, 134–​55 and poetry, 58, 64, 66–​74, 76, 129, 130, 132–​33, 134, 135–​36, 137, 143–​48, 155 and the soul, 121–​22, 129–​31, 134, 141, 143–​50, 155 presence, 15, 30, 35 privacy in Aristotle, 21, 172–​73, 175–​85 and individualism, 31 in Plato, 21, 39, 138–​40, 141, 155–​56, 173–​75, 197 and the poetic imaginary, 21, 110–​11, 139–​40, 155–​56, 173, 175 psychological, 21, 110, 138–​40, 141, 155–​56, 165, 173, 174–​75 social, 21, 138–​40, 141, 165, 173–​85 psychology, 22 archaic, 1, 6–​7, 10, 13, 20–​21, 81–​102 Aristotelian, 21–​22, 80–​81, 181, 185–​86, 189–​92 and hylomorphism, 22, 81 modern, 20–​22, 27, 78, 79–​82, 91–​92, 109–​10 platonic, 1, 6–​7, 9–​10, 13, 20–​22, 36, 78–​79, 81, 106, 118–​19, 121–​22, 134–​55, 171–​80 and rumination, 91–​92

218

218

Index

psychosomatic nature of emotion, 10, 13, 20–​21, 23, 78, 79–​102, 108–​9, 120, 163–​64 nature of poetry, 1, 10, 13, 19–​21, 23, 35–​37, 40, 41–​43, 47, 61–​62, 63–​64, 65, 69, 75–​79, 108–​9, 120, 122–​23 relishes, 74, 123–​24, 135 satiety, 66–​67, 70, 71–​73, 76, 87 schadenfreude, 77 Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 34 Semonides, 126–​27 Sidney, Philip, 33 Sirens, 40–​43, 51, 55, 56, 58, 61, 62, 76, 102 Smith, Adam Theory of Moral Sentiments, 110–​11, 113, 117, 118 Spinoza, 84, 112 spirit, 125–​26, 131, 140, 146, 148, 154–​55, 157–​58, 160–​64, 169, 179–​80 Strand, Mark, 35–​36 sublimity, 34, 35, 104–​5, 116 sweetness, 37 of anger, 101–​2 appetitive/​addictive, 19–​20, 35, 36–​37, 38–​40, 41, 47, 48, 101–​4, 122–​33, 171 auditory, 40–​43, 45, 48, 54–​55, 61, 124–​25, 126 of democratic life, 135–​36

erotic, 48, 125 gustatory, 19–​20, 36, 38, 40, 44, 48, 66, 85, 121 of knowledge, 41–​43, 47 of mourning, 13, 75–​76 Plato’s critique of, 122–​33, 171 poetic, 13, 19–​20, 33, 35, 37–​49, 53–​54, 55, 59, 61, 66, 68, 69, 75–​76, 77, 102–​4, 120–​23, 125, 135–​36, 171 of sleep/​death, 53–​54, 60 sympathy, 108–​11, 112, 116–​17, 118, 159–​60, 168, 191–​92 Theognis, 88, 95, 98 tragedy Athenian, 8 conceptualization of, 3, 7–​9 and the tragic, 7–​9, 192 tragic paradox, 1, 5, 6–​7, 10–​16, 20–​21, 23–​24, 31, 34–​35, 75–​79, 80, 84, 91–​92, 102, 108–​09, 111, 112, 121–​22, 132–​33, 155, 171, 191–​92 tripartite soul, 37, 140, 146, 148, 156–​63, 168 tyrannical city, 128–​29, 133, 134, 142 soul, 31, 122, 128–​29, 133, 135, 138, 144, 148–​55, 168, 175 Yeats, William Butler, 33, 36