Language and Literature 1 page

Though the history of Neoplatonism starts, properly speaking, with Plotinus (205-70),^[1] what we have called the Neoplatonic reading of Homer had its sources in habits of thought developed long before the third century and found full expression not in Plotinus himself but in Porphyry and then in the later Neoplatonists. Plotinus never mentions the name of Homer^[2] and is very little concerned with interpretation of texts and myths from the poets. In the relatively sparse echoes of Homer and of other poetry in the Enneads , he does, however, make it clear that his knowledge of literature was substantial and his sensitivity to poetic language and imagery very great.^[3] He likewise shows evidence of many of the attitudes that were to emerge more clearly in Porphyry and in the later Neoplatonists, including a willingness to see in the myths of the

[1] Plotinus himself does not distinguish between his own thought and earlier Platonism, but the absence of major Platonic thinkers in the period immediately preceding his own, combined with his evident originality and the clear differences between Plotinian Platonism and the thought transmitted in the dialogues of Plato, make the term "Neoplatonism" a useful tool. Whatever the debts of the Neoplatonic reading of Homer to the Old Academy and to "Middle Platonism," it would be misleading to qualify simply as "Platonist" a tradition of textual interpretation of which there is scarcely a trace in Plato.

^[2]

[3] See Vincenzo Cilento, "Mito e poesia nelle Enneadi di Plotino," the most important study of this aspect of Plotinus, but also note Jean Pépin, "Plotin et les mythes." To Pépin goes the credit for first systematically calling attention to the extensive, if secondary, role of allegorized myth in the Enneads .

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early poets complex structures of meaning expressing a reality far removed from the superficial sense.^[4]

A summary of Plotinus's thought lies far beyond the scope of this study, and so, a fortiori, does an examination of the sources of that thought.^[5] It should be noted, however, that no internal evidence will lead us to the sources of Plotinus's attitude toward Homer, for the simple reason that Plotinus mentions by name no thinker more recent than Epicurus. Whatever the importance of preclassical and classical commentators in the early development of the idea of the structure and meaning of the poems that we see elaborated among the Neoplatonists, the critical stages of that development are postclassical and fall within the period of over 500 years to which Plotinus does not acknowledge any debts.^[6]

Porphyry supplements our knowledge of the proximal influences on Plotinus, however, mentioning his period of study at Alexandria, along with Erennius and Origen, under the mysterious Ammonius Saccas^[7] and offering a list of some of the authors Plotinus had read aloud for discussion during his lectures: Severus, Cronius, Numenius, Gaius, Atticus, Aspasius, Alexander, and Adrastus.^[8] The last three are designated Peripatetics and the first four names belong to second-century Platonists and Pythagoreans. The striking name is, of course, that of Numenius, and we know further from Porphyry that Plotinus's doctrines, at least to outsiders, seemed so close to those of Numenius that he was accused of plagiarism, with the result that Amelius wrote a treatise defending Plotinus against the charge.^[9]

Finally, Porphyry quotes Longinus's opinion that Plotinus "submitted the Pythagorean and Platonic principles, so it seems, to a clearer explanation than those before him, for not even the writings of Numenius,

[4] On Plotinus remembered as a thinker who understood the myths symbolically, see Paul Henry, Plotin et l'occident , pp. 197-98.

[5] The most useful modern general studies are those of A. H. Armstrong, The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus , and "Plotinus" in CHLGEMP, as well as J. M. Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality . R. T. Wallis provides a valuable concise summary (Neoplatonism , ch. 3).

[6] Epicurus died ca. 270 B.C. All of Plotinus's writings belong to the 250s and 260s of our era.

[7] Porph. Vit. Plot . 3 (and cf. 14); on Ammonius, see Dodds, "Numenius and Ammonius," pp. 24-32.

[8] Porph. Vit. Plot . 14; on these figures, see Dillon, Middle Platonists .

[9] Porph. Vit. Plot . 17.

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Cronius, Moderatus, and Thrasyllus come close in precision to those of Plotinus on the same subjects."^[10] None of these observations guarantees the influence of Numenius and Cronius on Plotinus's understanding of the meaning of the Iliad and Odyssey , but they do serve to establish that he was aware of these second-century interpretive efforts. It is quite possible that, if we knew more about the other second-century Platonists listed by Porphyry as included in the canon read in Plotinus's circle, we would discover that they also shared a tendency to elaborate upon the meanings of the revelations of the

. The fact that we again have good reason to suspect a second-century source for some of the attitudes in question does, however, add to the attractiveness of the theory that that period was crucial for the development of the conception of the meaning of Homer under consideration. The fact that Plotinus was an Egyptian, educated at Alexandria, might also point to a possible influence by Philo, but there is no substantial basis on which to claim such influence.^[11]

In spite of the fact that Plotinus cannot be said to have made a substantial contribution to the history of the interpretation of Homer, an examination of his references to the Iliad and Odyssey , along with some discussion of his understanding of the structures of meaning of linguistic and literary signs, will be useful as background to later developments.

If we examine the language of Plotinus against the background of the language of Plato, the differences between the two thinkers on the level of expression appear so great at first that the profound dependence of Plotinus on Plato is obscured. The peculiar quality of the literary remains of Plato must, of course, be taken into consideration;^[12] what we have is not his teaching, properly speaking, but a collection of formal compositions dramatizing that teaching, or some part thereof, in a manner that cultivates irony and ambiguity to such a degree that few dogmatic statements occur that are not elsewhere contradicted. Vast areas of central concern are passed over in silence or treated mythically rather than dialectically.

^[10][11]

[12] Cf. E. N. Tigerstedt, Interpreting Plato , pp. 96-101.

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The literary remains of Plotinus, on the other hand, appear approximately to reproduce his oral teachings and constitute essays in the modern sense of attempts to grasp and treat a given subject with some thoroughness. The primary difference lies in Plotinus's treatment of the areas Plato passes over in silence or treats mythically. Plotinus is not mythopoeic and thus that colorful possibility is eliminated. Neither does he mistrust language—written language—in the way Plato does, though he is intensely aware of the limitations of all language. His silences are never willed. Rather, he performs repeated assaults upon them. In R. T. Wallis's words, "In contrast to Plato, Plotinus's treatises exhaust the resources of language in endeavoring to attain successively closer approximations to what remains finally inexpressible."^[13] The net effect is a prose so dense, elliptical, and difficult in its sinewy compression that Longinus, with perfect copies before him, was convinced that scribal carelessness had rendered them useless.^[14] At the same time, however, this prose is rich in images of amazing beauty, which attempt to carry the reader over from the day-to-day experience of life to the experience of the essences or "hypostases" that for Plotinus were the true reality beyond the insubstantial and fragmented mask of the material universe.^[15] Some of these images are apparently original, but some are borrowed, quite often from the imaginatively charged world of the epea of Homer and Hesiod.

To this extent, Plotinus's own use of language explains his relationship to the poetry of the past. Beyond this, however, his understanding of the relationship of language to reality can also throw some light on his contribution to later Platonic thought concerning the structures of meaning in language and literature.

The interrogation of the sounds of words for keys to the nature of the things they represent is not a central concern in the Enneads . Nevertheless, Plotinus makes it clear that the sounds of language—the Greek lan-

[13] Wallis, Neoplatonism , p. 41. Cf. Enn . 6.9.3-4.

[14] Porph. Vit. Plot . 19-20.

[15] The procedure often lends to Plotinus's prose a power and beauty that draw him closer to Dante or Milton than to more obviously comparable authors. The magnificent simile of the fisherman's net in the sea (Enn . 4.3.9.38-48) illustrating the relationship of the material universe (the net) to soul (the sea) has perhaps its closest analogy in the similes of Milton, proceeding from the material and familiar to a statement about reality on a level at once abstract and removed from everyday experience. On Plotinus's imagery, see R. Ferwerda, La Signification des images et des métaphores dans la pensée de Plotin , passim, and esp. pp. 70, 75-76, 84, and 101. A comparable development of the simile in an author close to Plotinus's time may be found in Maximus of Tyre.

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guage—are indeed bound up in the very structure of reality (Enn . 5.5.5), and he makes prominent use of several supposed etymologies. The most striking of these is the derivation of the name

from

, "satiety," and

, "mind,"^[16] mentioned or alluded to on at least four occasions,^[17] in support of Plotinus's radical interpretation of Hesiod's genealogical myth, discussed below.^[18] It is striking that there was a Platonic precedent (Crat . 396b), however flippant, for an explanation of this name, but Plotinus appears to ignore that etymology entirely in favor of one that may well have been developed in Latin (Saturnus from satur ) and thence translated into Greek.^[19] Elsewhere, he alludes to etymologies from the Cratylus to explain

,^[20]

,^[21]

,^[22] and

,^[23] and often plays on words and their sounds and meanings, drawing in etymologies from various sources.^[24]

The relationship of the elements of the vocabulary of spoken language, however, constitutes a less suggestive sphere of inquiry for Plotinus than the role of language itself as a mediator between a spiritual and a physical reality. It is axiomatic for Plotinus that the order we observe in the material universe is the expression of a non-spatial, unchanging reality. An image used tentatively to express this relationship is that of the natural world as the mirror, itself devoid of form, of the ordering principles emanating from the higher realities of soul

and mind

, beyond which lies the One

(Enn . 1.1.8). This triadic structure, extending from the ultimate reality of the One to the unreality of matter, is described as a series of essences or hypostases, each in some sense recapitulating the hypostasis previous to it. It is language that provides the metaphor for the transitions, the process by which principles of order—

—pass from mind to soul and beyond soul into matter:

For as the language

spoken by the voice is an imitation

of that in the soul, in the same way that one in the soul is an imitation of the one in the other [hypostasis, mind]; likewise, just as

[16] Cf. Buffière, Mythes d'Homère , pp. 533-44.

[17] Enn . 3.8.11.38-41; 5.1.4.8-10; 5.1.7.33-36; 5.9.8.8.

[18] See pp. 104-6 below.

[19] See Pierre Courcelle, Les Lettres grecques en occident de Macrobe à Cassiodore , pp. 162-63, and Cilento, "Mito e poesia," p. 253.

[20] Enn . 6.7.6.32-33; Crat . 398b.6.

^[21]

[22] Enn . 5.5.5.18-25; 6.2.8.7-8; Crat . 401c.

[23] Enn . 6.4.16.37; Crat . 403a.

^[24]

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the language pronounced by the lips is fragmented [into words and sentences] in contrast to that in the soul, so is the one in the soul (which is the interpreter of that previous language) fragmented by comparison with the one that precedes it.^[25]

This is a central passage for the

doctrine of Plotinus, a doctrine that bears a considerable resemblance to ideas of Philo and is somewhat reminiscent of the

doctrine of John the Evangelist. It provides a model that, by using the metaphor of human language to account for the relationships of the higher realities among themselves and to the world as we know it, establishes human utterance as a central fact within that complex structure and gives it enormous importance as a bridge, a manifestation or expression of a more perfect realm in the context of a more fragmented one. Though this model is not transferred explicitly to the evaluation of the structures of meaning within human utterance—to sentences, poems and the like—it nevertheless enhances the dignity of all human utterance and at least potentially provides a precedent for a view of certain kinds of human utterances as privileged and complex expressions of a higher reality.^[26] The word

in later Platonism can rarely be translated as "word" or "language" and yield satisfactory meaning.^[27] The metaphorical and abstract senses, "reason principle," "principle of order," and so forth, entirely displace the root meaning. The great value of the passage just quoted, however, is its binding of that vast metaphorical structure securely to its basis in the relationship of the whole, entire, inarticulate

of mind, imitated by the soul, with the fragmented, articulated

that soul projects into the sense-world.

It is clear that the

take the form of articulate sounds

only on this level and that reasoning

in the higher spheres will take some other form. "I certainly do not think we are to imagine souls when within the sphere of the intelligible using words," says Plotinus. "They would grasp [communications] from each other by [sponta-

^[25]

[26] See ch. 5B below.

^[27]

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neous, mutual] understanding, since even here in this world we can grasp many unspoken things through the eyes."^[28]

This is exactly the process we see at work in Dante's Paradiso as articulate speech gradually becomes unnecessary and communication is increasingly accomplished by means of spontaneous understanding or telepathy. In this sense, the metaphor of speech is maintained at the higher levels at least to the extent that we imagine them as inhabited by individualized entities. Only the physical trappings of language—the articulated sounds—are excluded. The fact remains, however, that

issuing from mind would not be recognizable as language. Plotinus's demonology anticipates developments in later Neoplatonism when he asserts that in spite of the fact that at higher levels of reality speech becomes superfluous, "it is not illogical that

and souls in the air should make use of speech, for such creatures are living beings."^[29]

Leaving the metaphor of the

to return to the complexities of human speech itself, one more point should be made regarding Plotinus's theoretical consideration of language. At the same time that he assaulted the necessary silences in the description of the higher realities, he also affirmed the inherent incapacity of human language to express truths about ultimate reality. In a magnificent passage—which can be read as an evocation of a scene in the Odyssey^[30] —Plotinus asks first how any experience can be had of a reality beyond mind, and then rejects discursive understanding, which necessarily moves from point to point: "The same is true of discursive description [extended in time]. In that which is totally simple, what discursive description can there be?"^[31] The contact with that reality is therefore ineffable: "One must trust that one

^[28][29]

[30] Cilento, "Mito e poesia," p. 286, sees in Enn . 5.3.17.29-33 a reference to Od . 19.33-40, but this conclusion has apparently been rejected by Henry and Schwyzer, who omit this reference from their index fontium . In Plotinus, someone summons the illuminating deity—and this suggests some sort of theurgy— whereas in the Odyssey we hear only of Odysseus "contriving" the slaughter of the suitors with Athena (Od . 19.2) as preparation for her role as torchbearer. Some readers, though, would doubtless have perceived a Homeric echo here.

^[31]

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has seen it when the soul is suddenly illuminated, for this light is from it and casts illumination just as another deity did when called by a man into his house."^[32]

This is the basis of the so-called "negative theology"—the affirmation of the incapacity of discursive language, because of the fragmentation inherent in its structure, to make any meaningful representation of the ultimate reality. There are, properly speaking, no statements that can be made concerning the One, no predicates that can be applied to it. For Plotinus, this includes even the predicate "exists." There are no

of the One, inasmuch as it is ultimately indifferent to the realities of which it is the source.^[33] Yet there is a relationship (no longer a language because it has neither form nor content) requiring a new metaphor—that of illumination, of visual overload. It is visual experience without content that provides the metaphor for that final, ineffable moment. That metaphor was to have a long future, both among mystics and among poets.^[34]

Homer

By my calculation there are in the works of Plotinus approximately twenty-eight passages, most of them very brief, in which some recognizable allusion is made to the content or language of the Homeric poems.^[35] Four other passages allude to Hesiod^[36] and will be discussed here for the light they can throw on Plotinus's attitude toward early poetry in general.

The decorative use of Homeric phrases and diction, frequent in later Greek prose and already encountered in a colorful form in Numenius, has a part in Plotinus's style as well. Unlike Numenius, Plotinus does not

^[32][33]

[34] Cf. Cilento, "Mito e poesia," p. 263.

[35] This list is based largely on the index fontium in the editio maior of Henry and Schwyzer's Plotinus, vol. 3, p. 446. They, however, exclude many of the passages discussed by Cilento, and I include some of these. One passage in Porphyry's "Life of Plotinus," in which Plotinus is portrayed quoting the Iliad , is also included.

[36] All of these are in Henry and Schwyzer's index fontium .

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make explicit quotations or adaptations of extended passages, but he does add depth and life to his prose through the use of Homeric words and phrases that may or may not evoke a specific episode in the epics. For the most part, these allusions imply no interpretive efforts on Plotinus's part, and neither do they tell us anything about what significance he attached to the passages in question. They do, however, provide cumulative evidence of Plotinus's knowledge of Homer^[37] and of his sensitivity to Homeric thought and diction. Often the reference takes the form of a single word or short phrase inserted into an argument that may or may not make further use of Homer, though there is a tendency for Homeric echoes to be found in clusters, sometimes in the vicinity of a genuinely interpretive allusion.

The seventeen allusions that fall into this non-interpretive group break down roughly into those that evoke a specific passage or event in the Iliad or Odyssey and those that simply impart a Homeric flavor to the narrative, but these categories are extremely difficult to define with precision.^[38]

[37] It is true that most of the passages to which Plotinus alludes could be known to him through secondary sources and particularly through Plato. Cf. Schwyzer's comments on Cilento's "Mito e poesia," (discussion) p. 314. It is the subtlety with which Plotinus is able to weave Homeric echoes into his own thought and expression, rather than any specific citation or citations, that seems the best evidence for his personal knowledge of the Iliad and Odyssey , though Cilento (p. 277) is undoubtedly correct to emphasize that the citation by Plotinus (Porph. Vit. Plot . 15.17) of Il . 8.282, not available to him through Plato, is a proof of "la diretta lettura di Omero, da parte di Plotino." Looking forward, the currency of this "Life" in the fourth century may well explain the citation of the same verse in Gallus's exhortation to his brother Julian the Apostate, where the context suggests Plotinus (or Porphyry) as intermediary (publ. in the Loeb Julian, vol. 2, p. 614, line 2).

^[38]

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The problem, of course, is that we cannot know just how slight an allusion would have been sufficient to evoke an entire passage, but Plotinus's aristocratic Roman audience doubtless had a considerable knowledge of the epics and knew many passages by heart. Some cases seem clear enough. When a Plotinian simile evokes the "elders of the city seated in assembly," (

, Enn . 6.4.15.20) using Iliadic language that points specifically to the well-known passage at the beginning of the teichoscopia in which the Trojan elders are found sitting on the wall (

,
Il . 3.149), the single word

is enough to evoke the entire passage.^[39] It is striking here that the situation to which Plotinus alludes so subtly is one with an obvious relevance to the simile he is developing, where the major thrust is the contrast between the peaceful elders and the rowdy populace, prey to the appetites of the flesh. The assembly of elders in question is, in the Homeric passage, an oasis of peace and reason in the absurd and violent context of the war. Plotinus does not, however, develop the simile along the lines of the Homeric passage, though he does, in evoking the passage, take advantage not only of the richness of the Homeric diction but also of some of the qualities of the specific familiar situation to which he diverts his audience's memory. Allusions of this sort are not uncommon in Plotinus, and the use to which they are put is well illustrated by the case in point. Here, the elders and the populace are compared respectively to the divine element in man—the "soul sprung from the divine" (

, Enn . 6.4.15.18-19)—and to the element more clearly associated with the flesh, and correspondingly closer to the disorderly material world in its behavior.^[40] The Homeric image provides the base for the simile, but the development belongs entirely to Plotinus. The richly evocative quality of the Homeric language, combined with the recalled image, enhances the simile and gives it life.

^[39]

[40] It is suggestive that this Homeric allusion and another at Enn . 4.3.27.7-13 (see pp. 101-2 below) occur in contexts where the doctrine of a divided soul, stated in an extreme form by Numenius, is prominent. It is quite possible that Plotinus was directly dependent on Numenius in some of his use of Homer.

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At the other extreme of the non-interpretive class of allusions are such expressions as

(Enn . 3.8.11.32), which is unmistakeably Homeric, but might allude to any of four passages in the Iliad and one in the Odyssey .^[41] Here, it is the richness of the language, coupled in this instance with the very quality of "wonder" so characteristic of Homer, that is evoked.

These classes of Plotinian allusions to Homer correspond roughly to the first category we distinguished in Numenius's use of Homer; the major considerations are stylistic, and the meaning of the passages evoked does not become an issue. There is also, however, another category of Homeric allusions in the Enneads , nearly as large, where some effort of interpretation is involved,^[42] though in many such passages the interpretation Plotinus gives to the words or to the myth to which he alludes is implicit or incidental to the point he is making.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 550