10: PLATO'S AESTHETICS

And equation being duly made of what is merely personal and temporary in Plato's view of the arts, it may be salutary to return from time to time to the Platonic aesthetics, to find ourselves under the more exclusive influence of those qualities in the Hellenic genius he has thus emphasised. What he would promote, then, is the art, the literature, of which among other things it may be said that it solicits a certain effort from the reader or spectator, who is promised a great expressiveness on the part of the writer, the artist, if he for his part will bring with him a great attentiveness. And how satisfying, how reassuring, how flattering to himself after all, such work really is--the work which deals with one as a scholar, formed, mature and manly. Bravery--andreia+ or manliness--manliness and temperance, as we know, were the two characteristic virtues of that old pagan world; and in art certainly they seem to be involved in one another. Manliness in art, what can it be, as distinct from that which in opposition to it [281] must be called the feminine quality there,--what but a full consciousness of what one does, of art itself in the work of art, tenacity of intuition and of consequent purpose, the spirit of construction as opposed to what is literally incoherent or ready to fall to pieces, and, in opposition to what is hysteric or works at random, the maintenance of a standard. Of such art êthos+ rather than pathos+ will be the predominant mood. To use Plato's own expression there will be here no paraleipomena,+ no "negligences," no feminine forgetfulness of one's self, nothing in the work of art unconformed to the leading intention of the artist, who will but increase his power by reserve. An artist of that kind will be apt, of course, to express more than he seems actually to say. He economises. He will not spoil good things by exaggeration. The rough, promiscuous wealth of nature he reduces to grace and order: reduces, it may be, lax verse to staid and temperate prose. With him, the rhythm, the music, the notes, will be felt to follow, or rather literally accompany as ministers, the sense,--akolouthein ton logon.+

We may fairly prefer the broad daylight of Veronese to the contrasted light and shade of Rembrandt even; and a painter will tell you that the former is actually more difficult to attain. Temperance, the temperance of the youthful Charmides, super-induced on a nature originally rich and impassioned,--Plato's own [282] native preference for that is only reinforced by the special needs of his time, and the very conditions of the ideal state. The diamond, we are told, if it be a fine one, may gain in value by what is cut away. It was after such fashion that the manly youth of Lacedaemon had been cut and carved. Lenten or monastic colours, brown and black, white and grey, give their utmost value for the eye (so much is obvious) to the scarlet flower, the lighted candle, the cloth of gold. And Platonic aesthetics, remember! as such, are ever in close connexion with Plato's ethics. It is life itself, action and character, he proposes to colour; to get something of that irrepressible conscience of art, that spirit of control, into the general course of life, above all into its energetic or impassioned acts.

Such Platonic quality you may trace of course not only in work of Doric, or, more largely, of Hellenic lineage, but at all times, as the very conscience of art, its saving salt, even in ages of decadence. You may analyse it, as a condition of literary style, in historic narrative, for instance; and then you have the stringent, shorthand art of Thucydides at his best, his masterly feeling for master-facts, and the half as so much more than the whole. Pindar is in a certain sense his analogue in verse. Think of the amount of attention he must have looked for, in those who were, not to read, but to sing him, or to listen while he was sung, and to understand. [283] With those fine, sharp-cut gems or chasings of his, so sparely set, how much he leaves for a well-drilled intelligence to supply in the way of connecting thought.

And you may look for the correlative of that in Greek clay, in Greek marble, as you walk through the British Museum. But observe it, above all, at work, checking yet reinforcing his naturally fluent and luxuriant genius, in Plato himself. His prose is a practical illustration of the value of that capacity for correction, of the effort, the intellectual astringency, which he demands of the poet also, the musician, of all true citizens of the ideal Republic, enhancing the sense of power in one's self, and its effect upon others, by a certain crafty reserve in its exercise, after the manner of a true expert. Chalepa ta kala+--he is faithful to the old Greek saying. Patience,--"infinite patience," may or may not be, as was said, of the very essence of genius; but is certainly, quite as much as fire, of the mood of all true lovers. Isôs to legomenon alêthes, hoti chalepa ta kala.+ Heraclitus had preferred the "dry soul," or the "dry light" in it, as Bacon after him the siccum lumen. And the dry beauty,--let Plato teach us, to love that also, duly.

1891-1892.

NOTES

267. +Transliteration: Ta terpna en Helladi. Pater's translation: "all the delightful things in Hellas." Pindar, though I have not located the poem to which Pater refers.

267. +Transliteration: to ta hautou prattein. E-text editor's translation: "to do only things proper to oneself." Plato, Republic 369e.

267. +Transliteration: poikilia. Liddell and Scott definition: "metaph: cunning."

268. +Transliteration: Ar' oun kai hekastê tôn technôn esti ti sympheron allo ê hoti malista telean einai. E-text editor's translation: "Does there belong to each of the arts any advantage other than perfection?" Plato, Republic 341d. Pater's reading is perhaps anachronistic in suggesting that Plato anticipated modern thinking about the autonomy of art.

269. +Transliteration: lexis. Liddell and Scott definition: "a speaking, speech . . . a way of speaking, diction, style."

269. +Transliteration: logoi. Pater's contextual translation: "matter."

270. +Transliteration: mousikê. Liddell and Scott definition: "any art over which the Muses presided, esp. music or lyric poetry set and sung to music...."

271. +Transliteration: metabasis eis allo genos. Pater's translation: "a derivation into another kind of matter."

272. +Transliteration: Hina mê ek tês mimêseôs tou einai apolausôsin. E-text editor's translation: "lest they draw the reality only from their imitation of it." Plato, Republic 395c.

274. +Transliteration: Smikrai hai metabolai. E-text editor's translation: "our senses are inapt or untrained." Plato, Republic 397c.

275. +Transliteration: Basilikê phylê. E-text editor's translation: "royal tribe."

275. +Transliteration: oudeni prosechein ton voun. Pater's translation: "[they] would not be permitted even to think of any of those things." Plato, Republic 396b.

275. +Transliteration: Alla mên, ô Adeimante, hêdys ge kai ho kekramenos. E-text editor's translation: "But indeed, Adeimantus, the mixed kind of art also is pleasant." Plato, Republic 397d.

276. +Transliteration: mousikê. Liddell and Scott definition: "any art over which the Muses presided, esp. music or lyric poetry set and sung to music...."

277. +Transliteration: Tô austêroterô kai aêdesterô poiêtê, ôphelias heneka. Pater's translation: "some more austere and less pleasing sort of poet, for his practical uses." Plato, Republic 398a.

278. +Transliteration: tôn paraleipomenôn. Pater's translation: "oversights." The verb paraleipô means, "to leave on one side . . . leave unnoticed." Plato, Republic 401e.

278. +Transliteration: mê kalôs dêmiourgêthentôn ê mê kalôs phyntôn. Pater's translation: "not fairly turned out, whether by art or nature." Plato, Republic 401e.

278. +Transliteration: kalokagathos. Liddell and Scott definition: "beautiful and good, noble and good." Plato, Republic 401e.

280. +Transliteration: andreia. Pater's translation: "manliness."

281. +Transliteration: êthos. Liddell and Scott definition: "an accustomed place . . . custom, usage, habit."

281. +Transliteration: pathos. Liddell and Scott definition "1. anything that befalls one, a suffering, misfortune, calamity; 2. a passive condition: a passion, affection; 3. an incident."

281. +Transliteration: paraleipomena. Pater's translation: "oversights."

281. +Transliteration: akolouthein ton logon. Pater's translation: "follow the sense." Plato, Republic 398d.

283. +Transliteration: Chalepa ta kala. E-text editor's translation: "fine things are hard [to obtain or understand]." Plato, Republic 435c.

283. +Transliteration: Isôs to legomenon alêthes, hoti chalepa ta kala. E-text editor's translation: "Perhaps the saying is true--namely, that fine things are hard [to obtain or understand]." Plato, Republic 435c.

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