The Question that has been Posed: Why are poets so rarely happy?

This question intrigues me. I have come to the conclusion, after thinking about this during the past week, that poets may only appear to be this way (rarely happy) in their poems, when, in fact, they may be personally the most 'together' of those walking about the face of the earth. It is poets who have chosen, or felt compelled to use words to try to express often, 'the condition of man'. Life contains much loss and often much pain and then finally, death, unless another possibility is envisioned. It is the poet who tries to put words to these experiences, thoughts and feelings, if for no other reason than having a need to express their own subjectivity. Most people either have no desire, and/or else fear vulnerability to criticisms or critique by others, and therefore do not write (if they write at all) for public consumption.

Once words have been put to paper and delivered into the hands of another, the possibility then exists that the sometimes carefully or sometimes just painfully constructed personal work will be considered less than 'good'. The world judges all, and the judgements can sometimes destroy the delicate. On the other hand, the possibility exists that these words will touch the lives of many people in ways that the poet will rarely be aware of. Poets do something like scattering seeds along the way of their journey, but do not remain in that spot to see whether there is germination. Not only does the road beckon, but those words, once voiced, are already of the past, and there is still much to learn.

How poets express loss, has of course, been classified by definitions. I have been once again rummaging around in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, in the Norton, and also doing some preliminary reading on the "pastoral". To date, I am not yet prepared to write anything on the pastoral, but since much poetry includes this, and some overflows with the pastoral, it is an important theme and will be given more research by me, and then "blogged".
The Oxford lists at least 9 types of poetry of loss and as well, gives some suggestions as to where to begin reading examples that fall within the definitions.

These are as follows:
Complaint
A kind of Lyric poem common from the Middle Ages to the 17-century. Is is in the form of a Monologue in which the speaker bewails either the cruelty of a faithless lover, or some other misfortune. Poets who wrote "complaint" poems: Chaucer, Villon, Surrey and Spenser. Check out P54 Norton's - "Complaint to His Purse" (Chaucer).

Dirge
A song of lamentation mourning someone's death; a poem in the form of a song of lamentation. This is an ancient genre written by both Greek (Pindar) and Latin (Propertius) poets, although it also occurs in English. The most famous is Aerial's Song from "The Tempest".
Full Fathom Five
Full fathom five thy father lies;
__Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
__Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:
__Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them - Ding-dong, bell.

___________William Shakespeare 1611

Graveyard poetry
Term applied to a minor but influential 18th-century tradition of meditative poems on mortality and immortality, often set in graveyards. The "graveyard school' of poets in England and Scotland was not an organized group. Best known examples: Thomas Parnell (Irish), "A Night-Piece on Death" (1721); Edward Young, "Night Thoughts" (1742-6); Robert Blair (Scottish), "The Grave" (1743) and Thomas Gray (English) "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard" (1751). The only one of these poets I could find in Norton's was Thomas Gray.

I would recommend this poem of Gray's. A few of my favourite verses:
"Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid (line 45)
__Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
__Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
__Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
__And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
__The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
__And waste its sweetness on the desert air." (line 56)

Lament
Any poem expressing profound grief or mournful regret.

Jeremiad
A prolonged lamentation or a prophetic warning aginst the evil habits of a nation, foretelling disaster.
In the first sense, it comes from the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, contained in the Old Testament book, Jeremiah (52 chapters), and a rich book this is to read. The series of laments begin at 11:18. This book contains a wealth of detail concerning the spiritual struggle and various trials endured by this prophet throughout his lifetime.
In the second sense the term has been applied to some literary works that denounce the evils of a civilization: Check out Thomas Carlyle, H.D. Thoreau, or D.H. Lawrence.

Elegy
An elaborately formal Lyric poem lamenting the death of a friend or public figure, or reflecting seriously on a solemn subject.
In Greek and Latin verse, the metre was alternating dactylic hexameters and pentameters in couplets known as "elegiac distichs". The mood or content was not considered part of what denoted the elegy.
Since Milton's "Lycidas" (1637), however, the term in English has usually denoted a Lament, and the adjective "elegiac" has come to reference the mournful mood of these poems.
Milton's "Lycidas" (1637) uses the pastoral and following Milton, both Shelley's "Adonais" (1821) on the death Keats, and Matthew Arnold's "Thyrsis" (1867) made use of the pastoral as well.
Pastoral elegies usually include many mythological figures such as the nymphs who are supposed to have guarded the dead shepherd, and the Muses invoked by the elegist.
In a broader sense, an elegy may be a poem of melancholy reflection upon life's transience or its sorrows. A prose work may be called an elegy if it deals with a vanished way of life or with the passing of youth.

Although I felt pressed with other reading and writing to be done for school, I treated myself to one whole morning this week doing nothing but reading in Norton. At the end of more than three hours, I can say that I felt as though I had been on a mini vacation. I felt energized and accomplished a lot of work for the balance of the day and evening. During this time, I read all three of these English elegies. "Lycidis" is filled with nature. Milton's elegy is referred to as a "Monody" (uttered by a single speaker), and in ancient Greek poetry, it reffered to an ode sung by a single performer as distinct from a choral ode. Milton's "Lycidis" (P354 Norton), he bewails the death of a friend, and he also attacks the clergy for being corrupt.
In line 125 "The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,/But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,/Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread,/Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw/Daily devours apace, and nothing said."
In line 133, the Sicilian Muse is called upon to "call the vales, and bid them hither cast/Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues." Following this, Milton names many kinds of flowers.

Matthew Arnold's "Thyrsis" (1866) is also a Monody and it was written to commemorate the death of a friend. In this, Arnold makes a return trip to Oxford where both he and his friend went to university. Arnold's friend had a fellowship at Oxford in 1848, but resigned this because he refused to subscribe to some Articles of the Anglican Church. There is a wonderful verse that describes his friend's frustration because, while he loved being at Oxford, he exiled himself from it.
Beginning Line 45:
"It irked him to be here, he could not rest.
___He loved each simple joy the country yields,
_____He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep,
___For that a shadow loured on the fields,
_____Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep,
_______Some life of men unblest
___He knew, which made him droop; and filled his head.
_____He went; his piping took a troubled sound
_____Of storms that rage outside our happy ground,
___He could not wait their passing, he is dead."

Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Adonais" (P807 Norton) for me, was one of the best pieces of poetry I have yet read in my lifetime. I'm not sure what this says about my idea of enjoyment - reading poems about people who have died. In any case, "Adonais" is an elegy written on the death of John Keats. This is one powerful piece of work! Although there is much to be enjoyed in this elegy Stanza 39 is one I have to blog.
Line 343:
"Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep -
He hath awakened from the dream of life -
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings. - We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay."

Stanzas 40, 41, 42, 43 and 44 are rich.
Stanza 52 is another one I have marked.
Line 460
"The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly,
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. - Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou does seek!
Follow where all is fled! - Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak."

Ode
The Ode is an elaborately formal lyric poem, often in the form of a lengthy ceremonious address to a person or abstract entity. It is always serious and elevated in tone.

1. Pindaric Ode: Pindar's Greek choral odes devoted to public praise of athletes (5th century BCE). Pindar composed his odes for performance by a Chorus, using lines of varying length in a complex three-part structure of:

Strophe - A Strophe is a stanza or a verse paragraph, and is used in a Pindaric
Ode in the first section, and every succeeding third section.

Antistrophe - The Antistrophe in a Pindaric Ode matches exactly the metre of
the Strophe.

Epode - The Epode differs in length and metre from the Strophe and
Antistrophe.

These three parts corresponding to the chorus' dancing movements. The
dancers would dance in one direction for the Strophe, dance back in the other
direction for the Antistrophe, and remain standing still for the Epode.
Close English imitation of Pindar, such as Thomas Gray's "The Progress of Poesy"
(1754), are rare.

2. Horatian Ode: named after Horace's more privately reflective odes in Latin (c23-13 BCE).
When the stanza is repeated regularly in the same form it is called an Horatian odes: in English, these include the celebrated odes of John Keats,
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale" (both 1820).

3. Irregular Ode (sometimes called the Cowleyan ode): with varying lengths of strophes was introduced by Abraham Cowley's "Pindarique Odes (1656), and followed by John Dryden, William Collins, William Wordsworth (in 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality' (1807)), and S.T. Coleridge, among others.

In Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality", the 9th stanza has some beautiful lines:
Beginning at Line 140:
______"Not for these I raise
______ The song of thanks and praise;
_____But for those obstinate questionings
_____Of sense and outward htings,
_____Blank misgivings of a Creature
__Moving about in worlds not realized,
__High instincts before which our mortal Nature
__Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised;
_______But for those first affections,
_______Those shadowy recollections,
_____Which, be they what they may,
__Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
__Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
_____Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
__Our noisy years seem moments in the being
__Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
__________To perish never;
__Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
__________Nor Man nor Boy,
__Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
__Can utterly abolish or destroy!"

These words are, to me, filled with hope. To think that "listlessness, "mad endeavor", "Man nor Boy", "all that is at enmity with joy" - none of these "Can utterly abolish or destroy" - will "perish never". What a thought this is!

Also, in these lines above, there are 4 different physical settings of the lines within the poem. The emphasis of the spondees seem to drive his point home - that of refusal to buy into anything other than his belief in the imperishable. It's a beautiful piece of work.

Fallings from us, vanishings;

Pondering The Sinister in The Iliad

I have been thinking about Plato's criticism of the dream that Zeus sent to Agamemnon. Plato said this was foolish because Zeus as a god, could not act in a manner that was clandestine. According to Plato, gods could not be other than what they were, which was divine, and the divine acknowledges no responsibility for anything of harm.

Why did this dream happen? Was Zeus going to use this dream to shake Agamemnon from his poor attitude? Afterall, neither a priest's begging, nor Achilles telling him to appease the god (Apollo), made any difference to Agamemnon. He was unwilling to let Khryseis go back to her father except that Apollo's nine days of arrows were plaguing the Achaians.

Agamemnon's answer to the man who stood up to him (Achilles) was to return Khryseis, but to strike a 'low blow' at Achilles by taking Briseis from him. Athena arrived at exactly the right moment to stop the killing rage that Achilles felt toward Agamemnon, and was preparing to follow through on. Agamemnon, no matter how weak his leadership, is still the leader, and there is some honour in not seizing power from the leader. Despite this, Achilles' is broken-hearted and sheds tears over what his leader has done to hurt him, and the loss he feels in having Briseis taken from him.

When Thetis went to Zeus to beg on behalf of her son to have Agamemnon "pay for this" (I - 582), Zeus "said never a word but sat umoving for a long time, silent" (I - 586,587). Zeus is "greatly perturbed" (I593); however, "my word is not revocable nor ineffectual, once I nod upon it" (I - 604,605). The words show disturbance in the highest of the highest realm.

Zeus "thought it best to send to Agamemnon that same night a fatal dream." (II - 7,8). Zeus then calls by name "Sinister Dream" (II - 10) as an entity apart from himself, and commands the "Sinister Dream" to go and visit Agamemnon (II - 11).

I did some reading up on the word "sinister". I post here the definition I found. It is, I think, interesting in its ability to extend thought on this topic.

Noun
sinister
1. On the left hand, or the side of the left hand, left -
__opposed to dexter, or right.
2. Unlucky, inauspicious, disastrous, injurious, evil, -
__the left being usually regarded as the unlucky side,
__ as sinister influences.
3. Wrong, as springing from indirection or obliquity,
__ perverse, dishonest, corrupt, as sinister aims.
4. Indicative of lurking evil or harm;
__ boding covert danger, as a sinister
__countenance, sinister aspect.

(Astrol) an appearance of two planets happening according to the succession of the signs, as Saturn in Aries, and Mars in the same degree of Gemini.

Adj.
1. sinister - threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments; "a baleful look", "forbidding thunderclouds", "his tone became menacing", "ominous rumblings of discontent"; "sinister storm clouds", "a sinister smile", "his threatening behaviour", "ugly black clouds", "the situation became ugly"
Synonyms: menacing, minacious, minatory, ominous, threatening, baleful, forbidding, ugly.
2. sinister - stemming from evil characteristics or forces; wicked or dishonourable; "black deeds", "a black lie", "his black heart has concocted yet another black deed", "Darth Vader of the dark side", "a dark purpose", "dark undercurrents of ethnic hostility",
"the scheme of some sinister intelligence bent on punishing him" - Thomas Hardy
Synonyms: black, dark
3. sinister - on or starting from the wearer's left, "bar sinister" [as seen on shields]

Following the dream's visit to Agamemnon, it "left the man to envision, rapt, all that was not to be" (II 43). And "waking, he heard the dream voice ringing round him still" (II - 48). When speaking to his council of peers alongside Nestor's ship, he declared "A vision in a dream has come to me in the starry night" (II - 65,66), and "when he had said all this, the phantasm [yes, this is the word Homer uses] departed like a bird" (II - 81,82). And finally, when Nestor speaks, his words carry weight with the others because he is revered. "Friends, lord and captains of the Argives, If any other man had told this dream, a fiction, we should call it; we'đ be wary. But he who saw the vision is our king. Up with you, and we'll put the men in arms." (II - 90-95).

My questions:
1. Do the days of the Iliad's story hinge on one sinister dream?
2. Do the days of the Iliad's story hinge on one man's
__ (Agamemnon) inappropriate idea of power in relation
__ with the gods?
3. Since Zeus calls the sinister dream by name,
__could it be then thought that Zeus relinquished all
__of his power over Agamemnon - afterall, Agamemnon
__ had already ignored any idea of there being a
__'right thing to do'?
4. Could this be Zeus' way of teaching Agamemnon
__ a life lesson, i.e. consequences for choices that are
__driven by human will alone?
5. Do the days hinge on an unresolved battle for the
__ 'right way' to treat others and the 'wrong way'
__ to treat others? (both Khryseis with Agamemnon
__ and Achilles with Agamemnon)
6. Did Plato miss the point?

My observations:
Agamemnon awakens with the words of the dream "ringing round him still"(II-48). It is only when he gives this dream voice and has witnesses to these words, that the dream then "departed like a bird "(II - 81/82). I don't know why, but this fascinates me. I think it speaks of the phantoms that can be haunting until they are expressed to another or others - they need to be confirmed or denied somehow for Agamemnon, as being legitimate or not. It is actually Nestor who sells Agamemnon's dream to the Achaians as being legitimate because his claim is that a king could not be wrong.

These days of the Iliad are only a portion of the larger war that was caused by Helen being spirited away to Troy. So, although we read of Helen and what she was doing in Troy with Paris, the Iliad is in medias res and yet, a full story. It 'dives down' into the individual actions of people and gods (the immediate effect of this relationship in a way that we can see) and gives us as readers, a bird's eye view of what humanity looks like from 'hovering distance'. In this way, the characters do not seem to be aeons removed from us in time, but are shown to have all the same characteristics and propensities of action as we ourselves do. This is one way in which Homer's writing is most powerful.

Plato and The Poets - Food For Thought!

Kristyn (in my 'blogging' group), is responsible for what I am writing here. Thank you Kristyn for the comment you wrote on my submission, "The question is: but how did it all begin?" It is clear to me that you put thought and time into what you wrote, and so I wanted to try to respond in kind if possible. I am limited in my knowledge, however, so must give a disclaimer.

Although Kristyn has dragged me in over my head, I hope something of what I am posting here will be of some use for anyone from our class who reads it. It does touch on what we are/have been discussing in our course thus far, and Plato did ask good questions. And today, November 15, 2004, Professor Kuin spoke in our tutorial about learning about the past, not through the lens of "presentism" (using today's values on yesterday's reality), but by cultivating the historical imagination.

Plato had definite ideas about poets and poetry which will give us another angle on the Iliad, because it will allow us to see the historical setting in Plato's time for why Plato thought as he did. We may not 'write Plato off' as someone who didn't like what he saw in his existing community, simply because he did not like it, but because he thought about why he believed what he believed. To begin, we need to know that the Iliad and the Odessey were believed to be written in about 1200 BCE. By the 6th-century BCE they were considered to be great ancient literature. Plato lived between 428 and 328 BCD. In this time from the writing until Plato's time, social changes and values would have occurred.

I had to go back and have a look at the Republic (Plato's ideal city). I had forgotten that some poets were 'banned', or at least, what some poets would write would be banned, in connection with the Republic. Kristyn had reiterated this in her comment. In Homer's Iliad, we find gods and goddesses and heroes, and these are also found in discussions surrounding the Republic with regard to poets and what they wrote. I was specifically looking for connection with poets and poetry in Plato's Republic.

Platonic philsophy has two elements of foundation: belief in a world of intelligible Forms (or 'Ideas' existing independently of the things we see and touch), and the belief in an immortal soul existing in separation from the body, both before birth and after death. It is the philsophy that sets its hopes on things beyond the reach of time and change.

Continued in Part I (a) and (b), Part II and Part III......

Part I Education of the Future Guardians (Children) of society - Poetry On The Hot Seat

In order to begin to shape the Republic properly, it was important for Plato to begin with the young who would become the Republic of the future. Plato adopted this system, that would only remove features which would not help to produce the type of character his Guardians were to have.

The education of Athenian boys, for which the family, not the state, was responsible, was carried on at private day-schools. This education might cease at about the age of 15, and then the youth had two years of military training. There were two branches of education for the young - the mind, and the physical body.

Education of the mind mainly consisted of reading and writing, learning and reciting epic and dramatic poetry, lyre-playing and singing lyric poetry, the rudiments of arithmetic and geometry (music) and athletic exercises. Music included all the arts of which the muses presided: music, art, letters, culture, philosophy. This education included reading and listening to stories.

Stories are of two kinds. Some are true and other fictitious. Both exist, but for children, it was believed it should be fictitious stories that were told (as a whole fiction, although they contained some truth). Young minds are impressionable, thus the importance of telling the 'right' stories to children. In Plato, the words 'fiction', 'fictitious' are used to represent the Greek "pseudos" which has a much wider sense than our "lie". Pseudos covers any statement describing events which never in fact occurred, and so applies to all works of imagination - all fictitious narratives ('stories') in myth or allegory, fable or parable, poetry or romance. (Plato did not confuse fiction with falsehood or identify truth with literal statements of fact). The pattern of the great stories would be used as examples. The great stories were considered to be those of Homer and Hesiod, who composed fictitious tales. If the story was ugly and immoral as well as false - misrepresenting the nature of gods and heroes, then this was to be considered a serious fault.

An example of this was the story which Hesiod repeated of the deeds of Uranus and the vengeance of Cronos, and also the tales of Crono's doing and of his son's treatment of him. (a primitive myth of the forcing apart of the Sky (Uranus) and Earth (Gaia) by their son Cronos, who mutilated his father. Zeus, again, took vengeance on his father Cronos for trying to destroy his children. (These stories were sometimes cited to justify ill-treatment of parents). Even if such tales were true, they should not be lightly told to young people, according to Plato. Jeremy Sharp, in his lecture, if you remember, also spoke about some things just not being the right thing to do - this was in regard to the treatment of Hektor's body being dragged around and mutilated. I could not see that Plato used this as an example of what would not be good for young children to learn, but I am using this reference to what Jeremy said, as an example of the idea of something not being good.

Because young children are greatly influenced and their minds shaped by what they experience, and also because they cannot distinguish the allegorical sense from the literal, Plato believed it was important that the stories children were exposed to were not of battles, but of people who didn't fight. He believed that a poet, whether he was writing epic, lyric, or drama, should always represent the divine nature as it really was, and that the truth was that the divine nature was good and must be described like that.

Plato reasoned that if something were good, it cannot be harmful - it cannot do harm, or do evil. Homer's description of Zeus was the 'dispenser of both good and ill', was therefore, thought to be foolish. It was also decided that a god is perfect as he is, and therefore remains in this form. The poet, therefore, should only be allowed to say that the wicked were miserable because they needed chastisement, and the punishment of heaven did them good.

In Greece, it has to be remembered, there was no sacred book (like the Bible), and the poets were regarded as inspired authorities on religion and morals. Socrates, when he questioned them, found them unable to give any rational account of their teaching (Apology, 22B). The Athenian child took his notions of the gods chiefly from Homer and Hesiod, who attributed every sort of immorality to the gods. Plato wanted to censor the poets.

In the 4th-century, highly educated men had ceased to believe in the existence of supernatural persons called Zeus, Athena, Apollo, with their mythical attributes and adventures. Myths were not dogma, and no one was required to profess a belief in them. Priests had no authority over belief; they were officials whose duty was to carry out the ritual. The state required only that the cult should be maintained and that the existence of gods, as implied by this worship, should not be blatantly denied. Plato did not propose to abolish the "state religion". Therefore, the first law of religion must be that heaven was not responsible for everything, but only that which was good.

The true falsehood - if that is a possible expression - is a thing that all gods and men abominate. No one, if he could help it, would tolerate, and would even fear the presence of untruth in the soul in relation to reality. Falsehood in this area was to be abhorred above everything. This real falsehood, then, is hateful to gods and men equally. In legends, not knowing the facts about the distant past, we can make our fiction as good as an embodiment of truth as possible. We cannot think of a god though, as embodying truth in fiction for lack of information about the past - there is no room in this case for poetical inventions. Would a god need to tell untruths because he had enemies to fear? Gods, then have no motive for lying. There can be no falsehood of any sort in the divine nature.

Plato concluded, then, that a god is a being of entire simplicity and truthfulness in word and deed. In himself he does not change, nor does he delude others, either in dreams (for all Plato's admiration of Homer, he could not approve in his story, the dream that Zeus sent to Agamemnon), or in waking moments, by apparitions or oracles or signs. This, then, was the second principle to guide all that was to be said or written about the gods (the religion): that they do not transform themselves by any magic or mislead us by illusions or lies.

Part II - The Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry

Poetry is like a picture in words, a representation of life. However skilfully executed, it is no evidence that the poet really possessed the knowledge required for the 'right conduct of actual life'. Plato's interest was in 'right conduct'. Socrates' examination of the poets had convinced him that they worked, not with conscious intelligence, but "from inspiration, like seers and oracle-mongers who do not understand the meaning of the fine language they use "(Apology, 22B).

Plato considered the tragic poets and their master, Homer. The society was sometimes told that poets understood not only all technical matters but also about human conduct, good or bad, and about religion. To write well, a good poet, so it was said, must know his subject; otherwise, he would not write about it. Plato's contemplation about the poets' work questioned if people failed to see that it is at the third remove from reality - semblances that are easy to produce with no knowledge of the truth? Or is there something in what they say? Have the good poets a real mastery of the matters on which the public thinks they write so well? The art of representation, then, is a long way from reality, and apparently the reason why there is nothing it cannot reproduce, is that it grasps only a small part of any object, and that only in image. Prof. Kuin discussed this "seeing only a small part" in the lecture on November 15th.

Plato had questions to propose to Homer and other poets. He reasoned that when "Homer undertakes to tell us about matters of the highest importance, such as the conduct of war, statemanship, or education, we have a right to inquire into his competence. 'Dear Homer', we shall say, 'we have defined the artists as one who produces images at the third remove from reality. If your knowledge of all that concerns human excellence was really such as to raise you above him to the second rank, and you could tell what courses of conduct will make men better or worse as individuals or as citizens, can you name any country which was better governed thanks to your efforts?'

There are three arts concerned with any object - the art of using it, the art of making it, and the art of representing it. And the excellence or beauty or rightness of any implement or living creature, or action, has reference to the use for which it is made or designed by nature. It follows then, that the user must know most about the performance of the thing he uses and must report on its good or bad points to the maker.

So what about the artist? Has he either knowledge or correct belief? Does he know from direct experience of the subjects he portrays whether his representations are good and right or not? Has he even gained a correct belief by being obliged to listen to someone who does know and can tell him how something should be represented? If the artist has neither knowledge or even a correct belief about the soundness of his work, what becomes of the poet's wisdom in respect of the subjects of his poetry? It will not amount to much. And yet, he will go on with his work, without knowing in what way any of his representations is sound or unsound. Plato concluded that he must, apparently, be reproducing only what pleases the taste or wins the approval of the ignorant multitude.

If wisdom is to be gained only through knowledge of the real world of Forms disclosed by Dialectic, the claim that the poet could educate mankind to virtue was thought to be as hollow as the pretence that the artists knew all about shoemaking because he could paint a life-like picture of a shoemaker. The artist's picture is three stages removed from Plato's essential Form i.e. it is only a mirror-image of a sensible think, which itself (the mirror image) is only one embodiment (with many accidental features) of the real Form, the object of knowledge. (Prof. Kuin also mentioned this difference between Form and image as it was discussed by Aristotle, in the lecture of November 15th).

We may conclude then, said Plato, that all poetry, from Homer onwards, consists in representing a semblance of its subject, whatever it may be, including any kind of human excellence, with no grasp of the reality. The poet, knowing nothing more than how to represent appearances, can paint in words his picture of any craftsman so as to impress an audience which is equally ignorant and judges only by the form of expression. The inherent charm of metre, rhythm, and musical setting is enough to make the audience think the poet had spoken admirably about a technical subject. Strip what the poet has to say of its poetical colouring, and Plato thought what was seen was what it came to in plain prose.

The main object of attack, however, was the claim, made by sophists and professional reciters of the Homeric poems, that Homer in particular, and to a lesser degree the tragedians, were masters of all technical knowledge, and also moral and religious guides to the 'right conduct' of life. The poet, then, became the rival of the philosopher as conceived by Plato, and the study of poetry an alternative to the severe intellectual training of the Academy.

Part III (a) Dramatic Poetry Appeals to the Emotions, not to the Reason

Drama represents the acts and fortunes of human beings: what they do (voluntarily or against their will), how they 'make out' with the consequences (happy or otherwise), and with their feeling of joy and sorrow in all these experiences. The temperament filled with emotion, gives scope for a great diversity of dramatic representation than does the calm and wise character who is unvarying in constancy, and not easy to represent. Plato believe that even when represented, this character is not understood, especially by a gathering in a theatre (diverse audience with varying experiences of life?). The 'steadfast disposition' does not naturally attract the dramatic poet, and his skill is not designed to work well with it. If he is to have a popular success, he must address himself to the emotional type with its rich variety of material representation.

The appeal of dramatic poetry is not to the reason but to a lower part, and the emotions themselves (like the senses), are subject to illusions. Illusory exaggerations of feeling should be corrected by reflection. (Interestingly, I was listening to the movie Producer, Norman Jewison, being interviewed on CBC Radio on my way home from school on Monday (15th) after our class, and he said "of course, film is illusion".) But the dramatist is concerned about arousing sympathetic emotion rather than to control its excesses. Drama, therefore, is as far removed as visual art from true reality and from wisdom, because the element in our nature that responds to art is equally far from wisdom. This will be true not only of visual art, but of art addressed to the ear - poetry.

The word "mimesis" enters into any discussion of dramatic arts, and has a wider sense than dramatic impersonation: the nearest English word is 'representation', applicable to many forms of fine art. The usual definition 'imitation', is misleading if it is used as the sole definition. On the other hand, mimesis does also mean 'imitation', and this encourages the suggestion that tragic acting is on a level with mimicry and that fine art in general is no more than a copying of external appearances. The view that a work of art is an image of likeness (icon or eikon ) of some original, or holds a mirror up to nature, became prominent towards the end of the 5th-century. Plato's attack adopts this theory. The art which claims to be 'realistic' is, in Plato's view, as far as possible from reality.

Plato said that it was justified in not admitting the dramatic poet into a well-ordered commonwealth (Republic), because he stimulates and strengthens an element which threatens to undermine the reason. "The dramatic poet sets up a vicious form of government in the individual soul: he gratifies that senseless part which cannot distinguish great and small, and he is an image-maker whose images are phantoms far removed from reality. So, even though conflicts are constantly occurring in the mind between feelings and reason, it should be reason that decides on the best moves in the game of life." So says Plato.

Part III (b) The Effect of Dramatic Poetry on Character

A further objection to dramatic poetry, tragic or comic, is that it not only encourages the indulgence of emotions, but it undermines character because we are ashamed to give way to them in our own actual lives. When we listen to some hero in Homer or on the tragic stage moaning over his sorrows in a long tirade, or to a chorus beating their breasts as they chant a lament, as Plato said, the best of us enjoy giving ourselves up to follow the performance with eager sympathy. The more a poet can move our feeling in this way, the better we think him. And yet when the sorrow is our own, we pride ourselves on being able to bear it quietly like a man, condemning the behaviour we admired in the theatre as 'womanish' (Plato's word, not mine). Plato believed there were few capable of reflecting that to enter into another's feelings, this must have an effect on our own, so that the emotions of pity our sympathy has strengthened will not be easy to restrain when we are suffering ourselves. Similar effects are produced by poetic representation of love and anger, and desires and feelings of pleasure or pain. It waters the growth of passions which should be allowed to wither away and sets them up in control, although the goodness and happiness of our lives depend on their being held in subjection to reason.

"Homer may be acknowledged to be the first and greatest of the tragic poets; but you must be quite sure that we can admit into our commonwealth only the poetry which celebrates the praises of the gods and of good men. If you go further and admit the honeyed muse in epic or in lyric verse, then pleasure and pain will usurp the sovereignty of law and of the principles always recognized by common consent as the best."

Plato said that it stood to reason that dramatic poetry should be banished from the Republic, because it had no serious claim to be valued as an apprehension of truth. If dramatic poetry could, however, show good reason why it should exist in a well-governed society, it would be welcomed back, because even the philosophers were conscious of its charm.

In conclusion, Plato himself, after about 40 years realized that there was no way of carrying out his theoretical utopian solution (Republic). Within the Republic itself, the more completely Plato disclosed all that was meant by the pursuit of wisdom, the further away the prospect became that the evils of human life would ever be cured by reason being the ideal representative in any possible form of society.

There is value in thought, because it leads to questions. When we ask questions, we may begin to discover that our own philosophy about life begins to take shape. Some people, interestingly, have a philosophy of 'right conduct', but don't live it, and others live a 'right conduct' philosophy without even knowing this is what it would be called. Every reader will find something to disagree with in Plato's solution, but if seriously asking the "why", and what alternative he or she could propose, Plato's purpose will then be achieved. Plato never forgot the lesson of Socrates, "that wisdom begins when a man finds out that he does not know what he thinks he knows."

Guest Lecturer on November 1, 2004 - Jeremy Sharp

This is a synopsis of Jeremy Sharp's lecture. For me, his style of presentation was most enjoyable. He not only presented interesting and useful information in connection with the epic The Iliad we are reading this year, but also asked questions that required feedback from the class. I learned a lot from this lecture.

Battles are of two types: war and spiritual culture. To see humans going past, or getting over something is to see humans going to battle to defeat their own limitations.

The Iliad is tragic. The romantic overthought in The Iliad is Achilles and Helen, while the tragic underthought is both Hecktor's and Troy's fall. The Iliad is story of 'the journey' to get what you think is yours. There is anger, indignation, staunchness and singlemindedness, while people brace for the worst and allow pride to take over this process. Achilles is a single-minded killing machine, a smoldering force, and an example of what many men wish they could be. He is not alone.

Rules have to be obeyed in life - there is such a thing as 'right' and 'wrong'. The 5-sided star symbolizes truth - representing yourself fairly to the world. If you don't 'play fair', your identity is being violated in a contract. Every man has to be true to his own identity and this is something Achilles has to face when he has run amuck. Single-minded men have to observe gods, and gods are deeply partisan.

The Iliad is also the story of Athena. The Iliad is the story about how the interaction between men and gods becomes history. History is about community, and Troy is a community that contains many people who are engaged in the 'danse macabre'.

The Odyssy is 'the return' home that took 19 years. Restoration is about man being able to see things in a new light.

Humans wonder about what comes after the "now". Because humans do not understand 'birth' and 'death' (which are beginnings and endings), poems about journeying and about understanding human relationships with God began to appear to tell about this. Poems have to both begin and end - to be shaped. We impose poetic/historical order in order to make a shape.

The earliest poetry depends on black and white terms. The 'rhapsodos' was a singer of songs and a weaver of tales. By making contrasts of light and dark in the song/poem, it was easier to memorize. The poet was a possessor of knowledge, a re-teller of knowledge and was considered a semi-sacred person in the community, because that was how the community knew who it was and what had happened in the past that brought people together to be what they were in the now.

In many ways, all literature is born of The Iliad and The Odyssy. Prose comes from the epic.

The Tutorial was also interesting. Jeremy talked about poetry's aural basis, and how gutteral sounds and lilting sounds mix and become the "iam" rhythm. A line of poetry is a unit of logic sound. The original poetry involved the body. It was a verbal play but done artfully. Jeremy's reading of Old English poetry gave the class a wonderful example of the rhythm that works to make poetry "live". In his examples, we heard both poetry that seemed to 'skip along', as well as poetry that was 'heavy and solid' in sound.

There were some word examples we learned which were interesting:
a) "weard" (Guardian (God)), became "wyrd" (that which will be - prophecy), which became "word". The "y" sound in "wyrd" becomes "weird - that which is strange or eerie. To give one's word means to promise. We talked about the logos in John's Gospel at the beginning of Chapter 1...In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

b) ex static - to go outside of oneself
__ecstatic - a purgative process to release something

Poetry speculates that something may be true. Poetry explores. Poetry require patience. A poem is a conduit to something else.

A good lecture and an interesting tutorial. Thank you Jeremy Sharp! (I hope I have done justice to the actuality)