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Galiet & Galiet
perceiving the wondrous Forms via the senses or the imagination (εικονες). In demoting imagination to the lowest degree of being in the Divided Line and in the Den, Plato demotes all non-didactic, non- philosophical, and non- aiming-solely-at-the Form-of the-Good poetry, or art to an image: a twice mimesis of reality.
Plato, in The Sophist, defines mimesis as the creation of images, and not of real things.11 In the Republic, Plato argues that an artist, in painting an object, creates an appearance, an image of the object.12 In so doing, he does not paint the essence or truth of the object, but its imitation of Nature. In this sense, artistic imitation is a double imitation: a mimesis of mimesis.13 This is why the art of imitation for Plato is no more than a simulacrum or image, or ειδολων, that is, a shadow projected in the Den’s wall. Aristotle, however, elucidates on the problem of mimesis to be a problem of poetics or the creative arts. The poetic arts 3⁄4 epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry 3⁄4 are generally modes of imitation.14
The artist or imitator, above all, represents good or bad actions,15 and there are many types of arts as
modes of imitation of the various classes of objects.16 Thus, in Plato and in Aristotle, poetry is more mimetic than imaginary, and in Shelley, it is more imaginary than mimetic because it can grasp the Forms and also transform.
To Shelley, poetry is the most perfect expression of the imagination upon the mind’s eternal Forms.17 The imagination, says Shelley, can perceive not only the essence of things, but also their similitude.18 In Shelley’s poetics, as in Plato’s lofty philosophy, essence and similitude are inextricably linked to the beautiful Forms. The Forms are the essence of things, the really real things-in-themselves, and hence, the truth, the sameness of the same, and the oneness of the one.19 In Shelley, it is the imagination’s wondrous luminosity, and not reason’s obscurity, that perceives the beautiful essence and the sameness of the Forms. In fact, Shelley fundamentally demotes and negates Plato’s exaltation of noesis’ intellective seeing as the only way to grasp the sublimity of the Forms. To Shelley, the wondrous power of imagination relegates reason to a strict logic of appearances and differences. Particular facts, derived from reason, hypothesis
and empiricism, actually obscure and distort what is beautiful as if a distorting mirror,
11 Plato. Sophist. 266a onwards.
12 Plato.Republic.X.595conwards.
13 To Plato, poetry is mimetic: a pure repetition of things repeating in turn the Ideas or Forms. His poetics of disdain appears in Book X. The poet thrice removed or furthest from the truth, is to be expelled from Plato’s ideal city. His imitations are vain and morally dangerous because they do not teach virtue. As a simulacrum of sensible experience, these mere images are vain inconsistent repetitions. As if reflected by a mirror, they distort and delude, and their multiplicities are a menace to society. It supposes the senseless proliferation of error, which his theory of Forms attempts to correct by making knowledge infallible.
14 Aristotle.Poetics.I1447a14-16
15 Aristotle. Poetics. II 148a 1-2
16 Aristotle. Poetics. III 1448 to 18-20
17 Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973. Shelley. A Defence of Poetry. 975-977
18 Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973. Shelley. A Defence of Poetry. 975-977
19 Plato. Parmenides. 491d-511d. Theaetetus. 532c-533a. Sophist. 566a. Phaedo 228d-230c, 231c-232a. Republic. Book X. 427c-429c. Timaeus 457c-d. See also: Compendia. A Word Index to Plato. Brandwood, Leonardo. Leeds: W.S. Maney & Son, Limited, 1976.
Kirk, G.S. The Presocratic Philosophers. A Critical History with Selection of Texts. Parmenides. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 239
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