Neopoetics by Christopher Collins

Author:Christopher Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

Plato and the Imitative Imagination

Factual misrepresentation poetically disseminated and passively absorbed was, in Plato’s mind, the consequence of another, more insidious, kind of deception. This was the misrepresentation of oneself as another person and the pretense of possessing the knowledge of that person. Thus poets and their proxies, actors and rhapsodes, lie not only when they assert untruths but also whenever they imitate, i.e., impersonate, others. In tragedy, the most popular poetic genre of the time, a poet tells a story by employing mask-wearing performers to imitate personae, but in epic the rhapsodes deployed a combination of narration (diêgêsis) and role-playing enactment (mimêsis). When, for example, a rhapsode stands before an audience and shifts from speaking about Achilles to speaking in the voice of Achilles, he necessarily represents himself falsely (Ion 541c; Republic 3.393–394). Not only does he utter whatever falsehoods Homer has versified, but, as Plato implies, in the very act of role-playing he himself embodies a falsehood. We would probably say, yes, but so what? Can we not pretend for a moment that we in the audience are in the presence of Achilles? Plato’s student, Aristotle, would agree with us, but Plato had a point to make: our vulnerability to deception comes from our tendency to confuse appearance with reality, a moral weakness that verbal art, poiêsis, shamelessly exploits.

In the Ion, a dialogue between Socrates and a professional performer of Homeric epics, the philosopher gradually maneuvers the rhapsode into a corner, forcing him to admit that he cannot claim to possess the expertise of any of the characters he performs, for example, generalship, when he portrays Homer’s military leaders. Like the shape changer Proteus, Ion seems in a state of constant self-transformation (Ion 541e). How does he do it? Socrates proposes two possibilities: either Ion is a fake, or Ion is divinely inspired. The hapless rhapsode, offered a choice, opts for the latter, and on that note Socrates ends the interview.

Ion’s dismissal, preceded by ironical expressions of reverence for his divine gifts, anticipates the dismissal of the similarly protean poet in the Republic (3.398a). But this latter passage is also preceded by a set of reasons why this sort of poet should be sent away. At issue now are not the falsehoods and pretensions to knowledge conveyed in poetry but the style (lexis) in which poems are performed. It was the style, after all, that drew audiences and made false and unethical statements so attractive. By lexis, Plato may have also meant “diction,” in the sense of “word choice,” but what he focused on in book 3 of the Republic were the paralinguistic effects of voice (phônê) and of body language (schêma), as when a performer turns from narration to speak a given character’s words, he might assume a particular tone and timbre, pace his words slowly or trippingly, and choose for them a particular amplitude. He might also visually imitate that character by facial expressions, hand gestures, and posture. In short, a performer of a poem with directly reported speeches might deliver them as would an actor on a stage.

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