Interpreting Interpretation

With Socrates and Ion

SOCRATES: I do see, Ion, and now I’m going to show you what I make of it. This fine speaking of yours about Homer, as I was saying a moment ago, is not a skill at all. What moves you is divine power, like the power in the stone which Euripides dubbed the “magnesian,” but which most people call “Heraclean.” This stone, you see, not only attracts iron rings on their own, but also confers on them a power, by which they can in turn reproduce exactly the effect which the stone has, so as to attract other rings. The result is sometimes quite a long chain of rings and scraps of iron suspended from one another, all of them depending on that stone for their power. Similarly, the muse herself makes some men inspired, from whom a chain of other men is strung out who catch their inspiration from theirs. For all good epic poets recite all that splendid poetry not by virtue of a skill, but in a state of inspiration and possession. The same is true of good lyric poets as well: just as corybantic worshippers dance without being in control of their senses, so too it’s when they are not in control of their senses that the lyric poets compose those fine lyric poems. But once launched into their rhythm and musical mode, they catch a Bacchic frenzy: they are possessed, just like Bacchic women, who when possessed and out of their senses draw milk and honey from rivers—exactly what the souls of the lyric poets do, as they say themselves. You see, I understand the poets inform us that they bring their lyric poetry to us from certain gardens and glades of the Muses, by gathering it from honey-springs, like bees, and flying through the air like they do. And they are right. A lyric poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him. No man, as long as he keeps that, can prophesy or compose. Since, therefore, it is by divine dispensation [theia moira] and not in virtue of a skill that they compose and make all those fine observations about the affairs of men, as you do about Homer, the only thing they can compose properly is what the muse impels them to—dithyrambs in one case, poems of praise in another, or dancing-song, or epic, or iambics. Each of them is hopeless at anything else. (Ion 533d-534c)

[…]

So you rhapsodes in turn interpret the words of the poets, don’t you?

ION: You’re right in that, too

SOCRATES: So your role is to be interpreters of interpreters

ION: Surely

David Daiches, in his Critical Approaches to Literature, discusses Ion at length under the heading “The Platonic Dilemma.” He writes:

Plato’s primary objection to poetry might be called an epistemological one—it stems from his theory of knowledge. If true reality consists of ideas of things, of which individual objects are but reflections or imitations, then anyone who imitates those individual objects is imitating an imitation, and so producing something which is still further removed from ultimate reality. […] The artist, then, is but an imitator of an imitation and in addition he is ignorant of the true use and nature of what imitates. Poetry, therefore, according to Plato, is far removed from truth and springs from improper knowledge and lack of understanding of both how to use and how to make what it describes; it is the product of an “inferior part of the soul”, and it harms the nourishing passions, which ought o be controlled and disciplined. (Daiches 20 & 21-22).

Hermeneus (Interpreter)

The Greek word is usually translated as “interpreter,” etc. But it has two meanings: 1) Interpreter, i.e., translator from a foreign tongue or explainer of the obscure; 2) messenger or go-between, simply reporting what he is told. The poet, then, in Plato’s case, is utterly passive, a mere mouthpiece. Plato, we must acknowledge, was out on a limb with this absolute distinction, for nearly every existing Greek text on poetry and poetics allows some active production on the part of the poet.

Nietzsche

“Behold! I am overburdened with my wisdom: like the bee that has gathered too much honey, I need hands outstretched to receive it. “ (From Thus Spoke Zarathustra 9)

The Nietzschean background is obviously important and, if you like, I’ll follow this up next week with one or two choice readings. (jwp)

References

Daiches, D. Critical Approaches to Literature. 2^nd. Ed. London: Longman, 1981.

Nietzsche, F. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Oxford: OUP, 2007.

Plato. “Ion.” Early Socratic Dialogues. Ed. Trevor Saunders. London: Penguin, 1987.