Page 9 - GALIET THE TORCH, THE GODDESS: On Poesy Plato IV

It is in both, Plato’s Republic1 and in his earlier dialogue between Socrates and Ion that we witness Plato’s beautiful and complex struggle in trying to define the very essence of what seems to be beyond representation: Himself, Poetry and the Forms.
On one hand, Socrates 3⁄4 who is placed as Plato’s mouthpiece in The Republic and other dialogues perhaps to ensure that he is not represented 3⁄4 sees poets as imitators, liars and corruptors of society and proposes to either banish themi completely from his ideal “Republic” or, in the very least, to heavily censor them unless their poetry conforms to his perfect forms. However, on the other hand, Socrates 3⁄4 in his Ionic dialogue 3⁄4 defines the poet as “an airy thing, winged and holy”2 capable of creating only when he is outside or beyond himself and who, through inspired, divine madness and possession, is elevated beyond the quotidian and earthly into the ecstasy of the infrequent and heavenly which, if we pay close attention, are “the Forms.”
Furthermore, in the very same dialogue with Ion, Socrates enchants us with his metaphor of the magnet 3⁄4 the “Stone of
1 Grube, G.M.A. ed. and trans. Plato Republic. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1992.
2 Benjamin Jowett, trans. The Dialogues of Plato. Great Books of the Western World. Volume 7. Chicago:
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 1952. 142–148
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