Page 38 - GALIET METAPOIESIS AND TRUTH IV+

Galiet & Galiet
On which the Nymphs amazing webs display, Of purple hue, and exquisite array.
The busy bees within the urns secure
Honey delicious, and like nectar pure. Perpetual waters through the grotto glide,
A lofty gate unfolds on either side;
That to the north is pervious to mankind; The sacred south t’immortals is consign’d.”135
As much as Plato tries, Hellenic intellective, visionary luminosity 3⁄4 nous and noesis 3⁄4 cannot abolish the cavernesque, obscure and dark images, reflections of mythoi, its manifold differences and tensions, as the Aristotelian immanent grasp of being in sensible things: this is where Greece’s enigmatic beauty dwells. It is said Plato renounces his poetry for philosophy’s sake, image and imitation for reason, shadow for intelligible Form.136 Thus, he demotes his sensible, subjective aspect of self, of becoming, essential for immanent being or dwelling in the world, in Heidegger’s sense.137 In this sense, he rejects Homer’s poetics as religious invocation of the Muse138 as lofty poetry: poetry as inspiration, as magic, as breath and song of reality139 by demoting it to an image: a twice mimesis of reality.
Plato, in Sophist140 defines mimesis as a species of creation, that is, as a creation of images and not of real things. Hence, imitation is human and not divine creation. In the Republic,141 when an artist paints an object he creates an appearance, an image of the object. In doing so, he does not paint the essence or truth of the object, but its imitation in Nature. Artistic imitation is a double imitation: mimesis of mimesis.142 This is why the art of imitation, for Plato, is no more
135 Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Richard Lattimore. Book XIII. (103-113). The divine dwells in this Grove, in it, the path of immortals and mortals tread.
136 Plato. Republic. Ed. John M. Cooper. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997. .
137 Heidegger. Poetry, Language and Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper Collins, 2001.
138 Graves adds that genuine poetry is the “experience of mixed exaltation and horror that the goddess excites.” The Muse, in his view, demands full allegiance. Graves, Robert. The White Goddess. London: Faber & Faber, 1948. Introduction. xiii-ix 139 Lincoln, Bruce. From Homer through Plato. 19-42
140 Plato. Sophist. 266a onwards. Plato. Complete Works. Sophist. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 1997. 141 Plato. Republic. X. 595c onwards. Plato. Complete Works. Republic. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 1997.
142 In Platonic thought, poetic activity is, unequivocally, associated with mimetic activity, a pure repetition of things, which, in turn, repeats ideas or forms. The argument in Book X becomes the foundation of the poetics of disdain or contempt: since the poet is thrice removed or furthest from the truth, the poet is to be expelled from the city: the poet’s universe, imitation of imitation, is, in the best of cases, vain; in the worst, dangerous since he and his immoral, non-didactic art do not teach virtue. Because poetry’s beginning is founded upon sensible experience, it is a simulacrum: it becomes the image reflected upon the mirror, a vain repetition, pure inconsistency and element of distortion and delusion whose multiplicity becomes a menace to society. Simulacrum is the first figure of the theory of imitation, and we shall retain with it the negative character that Plato attributes to it. It always refers to a devaluated reiteration of the sensible world, of a mere product of the technical ability that is constructed in the margins of truth or of the ideas or forms and furthest from it: it supposes, therefore, the senseless proliferation of error which his theory of Forms is meant to correct and make knowledge infallible. Plato. Complete Works. Republic. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 1997.
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