Steve Watson

L’effondrement de l’âge du bronze : le problème

August 8, 2019 – 11:21 am

Vers l’an 1200 av. J.-C. les terres autour de l’est de la mer Méditerranée avaient été depuis longtemps civilisées et faisaient parties d’un système, apparemment stable, des états civilisés. Au sud, l’Égypte florissait sous les dynasties Ramessides du Nouvel Empire; à l’est, les Kassites régnaient à Babylone, le royaume médio-assyrien était à son apogée, et les Elamites prospéraient sous les Šutrukides; au nord, la civilisation mycénienne dominait la région qui entoure la mer égéenne, et l’empire Hittite régnait sur la plupart de l’Anatolie et la partie du Levant que les égyptiens ne possédaient pas. Entre et à l’intérieure de ces grandes entités politiques se trouvaient des petites cités et royaumes, subordonnés aux unes et aux autres mais dans l’ensemble prospères et pour la plupart heureux. Ainsi étaient les cités amorrites de la Syrie du nord, les cités cananéennes, l’état Alašiya à Chypre, et les états louvites de l’ouest de l’Anatolie. Ces états et cultures utilisaient l’écriture, se concentraient en des cités, et étaient presque tous en contact constant les uns avec les autres par le commerce et les relations diplomatiques. En bref, c’était une ère de paix générale tandis qu’elle voyait une concurrence normale entre les états et souffrait même des guerres épisodiques.

De cinquante à cent années plus tard la situation avait beaucoup changée. La civilisation mycénienne était révolue, ses palais détruits, et un âge sombre avait commencé pour les terres grecques qui allait durer à peu près 400 ans. L’empire Hittite, ayant subi des envahissements et des troubles intérieures, était tombé, et Hattušas, sa capitale, avait été brulée. En Babylonie, la dynastie des Kassites avait été conquise et soumise par les assyriens et enfin exterminée par un envahissement des élamites. En fait, en l’espace d’une période bien courte presque toutes les grandes villes de la Méditerranée entre Pylos et Gaza avaient été détruites. Le royaume d’Ougarit avait disparu. Il y avait de l’agitation au nord de la Syrie et au Levant, incluant notamment un envahissement par quelques tribus barbares et pillardes qu’on appelait les ‘Peuples de la Mer’. L’Egypte a survécu à ce temps des troubles mais fut beaucoup affaibli par ses guerres civiles et par deux envahissements des peuples de la mer. L’Assyrie, parmi toutes ces grandes puissances, était la seule qui était sortie de cette époque sans dommage ou même renforcée, et elle avait saisi l’opportunité d’attaquer et d’écraser les élamites. Le commerce et les affaires étaient sérieusement perturbé, des populations étaient déplacées, et presque partout l’habitude ou la capacité de l’écriture avait disparue.

Alors que ce n’est pas du tout hors du commun qu’une cité, un état, ou une culture entr’autres devient décadent, ou décline, ou s’effondre, c’est quand même bien hors du commun que cela se passent tout en même temps. C’est important donc que nous connaissions les causes d’une catastrophe tellement répandue et complète, mais elles se sont révélées difficile à découvrir. Des savants ont proposés pas mal de théories : des désastres naturelles comme la sècheresse, le tremblement de terre, ou l’éruption d’un volcan avaient mis à l’épreuve les sociétés ; l’introduction du fer avait semé la perturbation dans l’économie, qui était fondée sur le bronze ; l’introduction d’une nouvelle technique militaire, avait rendu désuète l’armée de chars, et avait donné l’avantage aux autres armées ; des grands mouvements de population, pareil aux mouvements qui avaient eu lieu à la fin de l’Empire romain, avaient semé le désordre partout ; une hausse dans la fréquence des raids de pirate, telle que l’Europe avaient souffert des vikings, avait interrompu le commerce et affaibli les états ; un effondrement général du système avait eu lieu, qui n’avait aucune raison particulière, mais qui s’ensuivait de la faiblesse générale des sociétés anciennes qui manquaient de ressort et dans lesquelles un échec dans l’une pouvait propager dans toutes les autres. Il y a deux choses à remarquer à propos de ces théories : d’abord, ces théories ne s’excluent pas l’un l’autre, et c’est bien probable qu’elles font toutes parties d’une théorie plus complexe ; et en second lieu, il resterait encore à découvrir les causes de ces causes.

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Why Do Angels Have Wings?

July 19, 2019 – 12:23 pm

‘Angel’ translates the word mal’akh in Hebrew, which is a particular kind of messenger. The Hebrew word can refer to either spiritual beings or material, but our translations only use ‘angel’ for the spiritual kind. In the Bible they are never said to have wings but are described as being like people. In Mk 16, for example, the angel is said to be ‘a young man, dressed in a white robe.’ Wings are given to cherubim (in Ezekiel’s Merkabah vision, Ez 10:6-9) and to seraphim (Isa 6:2,), and though we tend to think of all the ranks of the Celestial Hierarchy as being populated by ‘angels,’ they are never described as malakhim.

The first images of angels didn’t have wings. The earliest we know of is in a scene of the Annunciation in the Catacomb of Priscilla on the Via Salaria in Rome.

Images of angels in Christian art didn’t commonly feature wings until about the 5^th century, when it became almost universal. The first such image is on the ‘Prince’s Sarcophagus’ found near Istanbul and dating to about the end of the 4^th century.

Why they got wings at all is a bit mysterious. There may have been some confusion with the other celestial beings or it may just be a matter of adopting some elements of the preceding pagan art in which several gods and goddesses were typically shown with wings (like ‘Winged Victory.’) If it is just that, then the specific model for the angels is probably the Roman genius, a spirit that is supposed to be the guardian of a particular person. They were often depicted with wings. Here’s one from the 2^nd century in a column relief depicting the apotheosis of Antoninus Pius:

In many places in the Bible, it is implied that angels are assigned, like genii, as guardian spirits to particular persons (Catholic Encyclopaedia, s.v. ‘Angels’.) The angels on the ‘Prince’s Sarcophagus’ are also looking after the body of a royal person who is being translated to heaven, so perhaps that common theme also helped connect the two types of spirit early on.

The standard post facto justification for their depiction with wings is from John Chrysostom:

They manifest a nature’s sublimity. That is why Gabriel is represented with wings. Not that angels have wings, but that you may know that they leave the heights and the most elevated dwelling to approach human nature. Accordingly, the wings attributed to these powers have no other meaning than to indicate the sublimity of their nature.

This would be more convincing if I could find this passage anywhere in the collected works of that Saint, but a search of The Life and Works of St. John Chrysostom (Schaff, 1886) yields nothing. It is always rather suspicious when the same quote appears everywhere you look but never with a proper reference.

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Beowulf ll 3074 f

July 9, 2019 – 10:14 pm

In continuing the Beowulf translation I came to ll. 3074f which are described as a locus desperatus in Klaeber in a long note (pp. 266 f.) There is no agreed upon solution to the problems of the text – which do not seem to be errors in transcription or copying, but in divining the sense of the poet.

The first problem is the sense of the word goldhwæte which occurs only in this poem. This seems to be largely solved now: other known compounds with –hwæt (see Wrenn’s glossary s.v.) indicate that ‘rich in gold’ or ‘abounding in gold’ is the intended sense. The earlier suggestion of enchantment is apparently now definitively dismissed.

There’s also the question of to whom the adjective applies. It may be referring back to the general hero of the passage, Beowulf, or to se secg on line 3071. If it refers to Beowulf, then the obvious sense of the passage is the implausible claim that Beowulf at this time was not rich in gold – and it takes a fair bit of force to get it to say something else. I think it’s easier to say that the passage continues the description of the curse on the hoard and that the person in question is the hypothetical robber (rather than the actual one.)

My own solution, which I have not seen elsewhere, is to consider the first half of the line 3074 to be grammatically separate from the remainder. I take gearwor to be a comparative in a consecutive phrase and read this as being contrastive with the condition that se secg might be a relatively poor man, and explicative of why he would attempt to take the treasure. As far as I can tell, this is grammatically possible, does not rely upon unattested meanings for goldhwæte or est and makes sense in the context of the poem at that point. So:

Næs he goldhwæte gearwor hæfde
Not gold-gifted was he: the more greedily he had 
Agendes est ær gesceawod.
the goods of the owner earlier gazed on.

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Shakespeare – Othello

April 20, 2019 – 8:05 pm

The central question of the tragedy of Othello is: what is Iago’s motivation? Here is the usual list of possibilities:

1. He resents that Othello has given position to Cassio, for which he, Iago, is better qualified
2. He suspects that Othello has cuckolded him
3. He resents that Othello’s virtues make him, Iago, seem a lesser man
4. He finds Othello’s colour disgusting
5. He resents Othello’s possession of Desdemona, whom he desires

Yet, as presented in the play, these seem not to be at the front of Iago’s mind; they are rather mentioned almost in passing, and not even necessarily taken seriously. Certainly, for example, he never shows the same degree of anger towards his suspect wife as he does towards Othello, and he even says that he doesn’t care enough to establish the suspicion’s certain truth or falsity. For another example, his supposed objection to Othello’s race looks most like a pose to agitate others who do harbour that bias. Most people, I think, conclude that these are not the real reasons for his malice.

The puzzle deepens when we consider that Shakespeare took the story of Othello from Cinthio’s 1563 ‘Story of Disdemona of Venice and the Moorish Captain’ (in Gli Hecatommithi,) in which a perfectly reasonable set of motives is provided to the villain. In this story the motive of the Ensign is clearly described as lust for the lady turning to bitter hate as she ignores his efforts to seduce her. As mentioned above, this is one of the motives proposed for Iago in Shakespeare’s play, and is clearly sufficient to drive the action of the play.

We seem to be left with two options: either there is a motive for Iago’s actions, but it is not one of the expressed ones; or there is no motive at all. The latter option has proven popular. Commenting on one of the justificatory speeches of Iago, Coleridge famously spoke of “the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity” (Foakes, R. A. (ed.) (1987) Lectures 1808-1819 On Literature vol. 2, Princeton:PUP, p. 315) and many have been satisfied with the idea that Iago does what he does as a spirit of malice rather like the character of Vice in the Mediaeval Mystery Plays, or perhaps like Augustine’s evil-doers who do evil just because they can and because they take pleasure in acting according to their own self-governed will (Conf. 2.4.9.)

Despite the ready acceptance, however, of that motiveless malignity, it creates a problem for the play quâ play, for it represents the actions as having arisen without cause, and the plot, as an imitation of an action, is a series of causally connected events – or it is nothing. This was recognised by Aristotle, who wrote in his Poetics that

[T]ragedy represents action and is acted by living persons, who must of necessity have certain qualities of character and thought—for it is these which determine the quality of an action; indeed thought and character are the natural causes of any action … (1449^b f.)

Now, Shakespeare is no great respecter of Aristotelian rules on tragedy, but the intuition that we feel that actions have to be explicable in order to be at all interesting or to form an organic whole in a dramatic representation does not really depend on Aristotle, who merely described the fact first. In this respect then, Shakespeare has nodded.

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Shakespeare – The Tempest

April 9, 2019 – 8:29 am

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises.
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

The Intention

A standard interpretation of the Tempest is that it is Shakespeare’s meditations upon the theatre; that Prospero as magus is Shakespeare’s image of himself, and that Prospero’s renunciation of magic at the end is Shakespeare saying farewell to the stage. Certainly, it is plausible that this is Shakespeare’s last play (except for a couple of collaborations.) The evidence of the supposed sources for the shipwreck scene (which were written or published in 1610) and of the known  performances at court on Hallowmas night of 1611, and also in 1612-13 for the wedding celebrations of Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, support the idea that it was written in about 1610. If Shakespeare had intended that this was to be his final play, it’s not impossible that he should have made it a swansong.

In support of this idea, Prospero’s very fine speech at IV, 1 after the masque, is cited:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Particular note is taken of the mention of the ‘Globe’ here (although interestingly, there is no record of a performance at the Globe;)  but even so, this would be thin evidence in itself, since the image of the world being a stage and all the men and women being players on it is hardly unknown elsewhere. In fact, the strongest argument for this theatrical theme is just that the behaviour of Prospero in determining the fates of others more or less by simply willing it so, has reminded many observers of the powers over the world of the stage exercised by the playwright. In that little realm he is almost omnipotent (through his agents) and Prospero is in a similar case on his island. Perhaps to emphasize the theatrical situation of the island Shakespeare in this play respects the Aristotelian unities in a way that he rarely does elsewhere.

The Plot Source

If that were the intention of Shakespeare in this play, then the choice of a magician as the central figure is explicable, but then the problem would be to find a model of a magician that resonates with the audience and would not condemn the author. (Shakespeare almost always has a basic source text for the fundamentals of the plots and characters of his plays.) Acceptable examples of magicians in fiction are not many. Marlowe had used Faust in 1593, of course, but that would hardly be appropriate. Other possibilities such as Circe, Pythagoras, Merlin, Simon Magus, etc. would all have their own problems.

Amongst these possibilities, however, the magician figure from the Italian Commedia dell’arte is relatively unobjectionable, and so Shakespeare seems to have adapted the plot of his play from several scenarios in that genre. These scenarios are plot outlines within which the actors of the Commedia could improvise their performances – and such performances were plausibly known to Shakespeare. (A representative collection of the scenarios was published in 1611 by Flaminio Scala in Il Teatro Delle Favole Rappresentative (tr. H. F. Salerno (1967) Scenarios of the Commedia dell’arte)) Three in particular were identified by Ferdinando Neri ((1913) Scenarios delle Maschere in Arcadia, Città di Castello, Lapi):

1. Il Mago deals with The Magician who inhabits a remote island where a group of buffoons are shipwrecked. After various tricks, plots and amorous adventures, all is happily resolved.

2. La Nave deals with a shipwreck on a remote island where a magician holds sway over some spirits. After various tricks, plots and amorous adventures, all is happily resolved. 

3. Li Tre Satiri deals with three satyrs who are used by a magician on a remote island to torment a group of shipwrecked buffoons. After various tricks, plots and amorous adventures, all is happily resolved.

An analysis of the plot points by Kathleen M Lea ((1934) Italian Popular Comedy: A Study in the commedia dell’arte 1560-1620 with Special Reference to the English Stage, Oxford:OUP 2 vols) has been summarised by K.Gilvary ((2007) “The Tempest as an Italian Pastoral Comedy,” Shakespeare in Italy Conference, Utrecht, Netherlands) to give the following chart.

Table of Correspondences between Pastoral Scenarios & The Tempest Events in Pastoral Scenarios

	Mago	La Nave	Tre Satiri	Tempest
Unities of time, place and action	X	X	X	X
Scene is in a lost island	1.1	X	X	X
Magician causes a storm and a shipwrecked		3.7		X
Pantalone bemoans the shipwreck & his hunger	1.1	1.1	1.3	X
characters are trapped inside a tree and a rock		3.14	1.2	X
characters dress as / are taken by others as gods	1.5		1.11	X
food magically appears and/or disappears	1.16	1.2	2.15	X
Magician broods and considers marriages of others	1.7	1.6	1.2	X
Magician controls spirits, devils and/or satyrs	2.12	1.6	2.2	X
Magic garlands / Clothes appear		1.7	1.13	X
Attempt to steal magician’s book and / or kill him	1.15	3.13	2.14	X
Lovers are revealed as children of Pantalone and/or Gratiano		3.13 3.15	3.13	X
Magician loses his art		3.14		X

The names of the characters in the Tempest have, of course been changed. They seem to have been inspired by certain passages in William Thomas’s Historie of Italie published in 1549 (ed. G. B. Parks (1963) Folger Library, Cornell University Press:New York.) Gilvary (op. cit. pp. 6 f.) notes the story therein of “a Duke of Genoa, Prospero Adorno, who briefly held power in 1460.” He was expelled, but “returned sixteen years later and ruled as deputy for the Duke of Milan. Prospero then made an alliance with Ferdinando, King of Naples and continued ruling for many years.” Furthermore, “Thomas also describes the rule of Alfonso, King of Naples, who married the daughter of the rightful Duke of Milan, but later (in 1495) renounced his state to his son Ferdinand and sailed into Sicily where he gave himself to ‘study, solitariness, and religion.’”

The Problem of the Plot

It is clear that very many of the plot points of the Tempest are derived from or at least not much changed from the elements suggested by Shakespeare’s sources. The only significant change is that the magician is now at centre stage rather than being merely a device to drive action in the scenario. What seems to be more remarkable here is that Shakespeare has made so little effort to adapt his material so as to create a plot that makes sense of the action. For consider the plot that he gives us:

1. Prospero, exiled by his usurping brother, desires to be revenged and restored
2. By magic he wrecks the ship his brother is on as it happens to sail nearby
3. The crew is set aside asleep until the play ends
4. Ferdinand, son of the King of Naples, is cast up alone. Prospero desires him to marry his daughter Miranda so he causes them to fall in love
5. Stephano and Trinculo are cast up together; they meet Caliban, Prospero’s servant, learn of Prospero’s rule, and plot to usurp him.
6. The King of Naples, the usurper, and two others are cast up together. The others plot to kill the king.
7. Ferdinand and Miranda wed
8. The plot of Caliban’s group collapses into farce
9. Prospero halts the plot against Naples
10. Prospero frees his servants Ariel and Caliban
11. Prospero forgives everyone, and returns to his rightful rule.

It is often remarked (it was remarked above) that in this play Shakespeare respects the unities; but this isn’t really true for the unity of action. If we ignore that Aristotle’s strictures were intended for tragedies, we can compare that complex of actions against Aristotle’s recommendations. In his Poetics he says it ought to be

unified in the same way as a single imitation in any other mimetic field, by having a single object: since the plot is an imitation of an action, the latter ought to be both unified and complete, and the component events ought to be so firmly compacted that if any one of them is shifted to another place, or removed, the whole is loosened up and dislocated; for an element whose addition or subtraction makes no perceptible extra difference is not really a part of the whole. (1451^a30-35)

But in making the comparison we note that:

1. The marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda is irrelevant to Prospero’s restoration.
2. The plotting of Caliban’s group is sterile and contributes nothing to the resolution.
3. The plotting against Naples is sterile and contributes nothing to the resolution.
4. The captivity and liberation of Caliban and Ariel are both irrelevant to the resolution.
5. The restoration of Prospero is achieved by his declaring it so.

In fact, nothing that happens, apart from the shipwreck bringing the usurper before him, seems to be relevant to the resolution of the play. One does not have to be wedded to a particular theory of storytelling to find this completely unsatisfactory. In this respect, the play has to be considered a failure as a play.  

However, it may be a mistake to look at the Tempest as a play like Shakespeare’s other plays. It has been difficult to assign it a genre, and has been classed as a Romance or a Tragi-comedy; but even this uncertainty may underestimate its distinct character. It may be better viewed, in fact, not so much as a play but rather as a framework or scenario into which have been fitted comic or dramatic scenes to taste and theatrical diversions to amuse and astound, beginning with the shipwreck scene that opens the performance. There is a suspicion that it was written for a royal marriage celebration, even if we can’t be sure that it was the one between the Elector Palatine and Elizabeth. The fact that there is a masque interlude in Act IV suggests this, because masques were quite unknown to the common public – they were purely a diversion for the nobility – and thus were not used by Shakespeare anywhere else; moreover, it is explicitly a nuptial masque.

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Botticelli – The Birth of Venus

March 31, 2019 – 12:20 pm

One of several criticisms of the Actual Intentionalist theory of interpretation – even in its weakened or modified forms – is that it requires that each artwork have just one correct interpretation. According to Davies (ed. 2015, The Philosophy of Art, p. 118) for example, such a critic

rejects the idea that artworks have only one meaning, this being the one intended by the author. In Art, we expect great works to invite multiple, even contradictory, interpretations

Unfortunately, the reply offered to this is rather odd.

In reply, the moderate actual intentionalist can allow … that the work has meanings additional to those that are intended. And a more important point is that artists deliberately make their works to be complex, richly layered, and tantalizingly ambiguous or vague, precisely because they intend to produce art allowing for a variety of plausible interpretations. The multiple interpretability of artworks is consistent with the claims of moderate actual intentionalism, so the proposed objection misses its mark.

A more reasonable response is to once again point to the analogy between Art and common speech (an analogy that is appropriate for discussions of the communicative purposes of Art, but not necessarily for much else) and to note the entirely uncontroversial fact that any utterance may have several meanings that are all intended by the utterer. Those different meanings and messages conveyed are conveyed by different aspects of the utterance, and the same may undoubtedly be true of an Artwork. In support of this, let us consider a work where it is acknowledged that there are probably multiple interpretations: the Birth of Venus by Botticelli.

Thought to have been painted 1484-6, the history of the painting is disputed. Sometime before 1550 Vasari saw it and the Primavera in the Villa di Castello outside Florence, which had been bought in 1477 by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and his brother Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, cousins to Lorenzo ‘Il Magnifico.’ It has usually been assumed that the Primavera and Birth of Venus are companion pieces, and were commissioned soon after the Castello had been bought. (On the other hand, a catalogue of 1499 lists the former but not the latter as belonging to Lorenzo’s descendants, which has led to some doubt on the matter.) It is also a common assumption – because it makes sense of some of the iconography and would add to the sense of some of the interpretations – that the paintings were commissioned as wedding presents.

The subject of the painting, however, has never been in dispute: it is the arrival of Venus to shore on Cyprus after her birth full grown in the sea. (The painting’s original name is not known, but it was said to depict the birth of Venus by Vasari, who made a trivial error there. The current name which continues that error is known to have been applied to it in the XIX^th C.) The episode is a common one in the minor classical arts, and Pliny reports (HN 35) that Apelles once painted it for Alexander, but the scene that this painting shows is inspired rather by late literary sources than by any of those early works. Two poems are commonly identified in this context: the first being Angelo Poliziano’s Stanze di messer Angelo Politiano cominciate per la giostra del magnifico Giuliano di Pietro de’ Medici, in which a representation in relief of the episode is described (verses 99-102;) and the second is a translation by Demetrios Chalkokondyles of the second hymn to Aphrodite from the Homeric Hymns.

The elements of the painting are more interesting: the image of Venus herself in particular. Her posture is closely modelled on the Medici Venus which is a Venus pudica. That is not according to the classical tradition, in which this mythological episode is illustrated with a Venus anadyomene. In style, it has long been noted that the image is more reminiscent of the gothic treatment of nudes with their rounded bellies, broad hips, lack of musculature, sloping shoulders, and generally exaggerated length. In the gothic imagination, however, nakedness was typically associated with shame or some sort of moral failure – harlots in Hell, Eve being expelled, fallen women generally. There is no such suggestion here. In fact, her head is just the same as the heads of his Madonnas – the expression is ‘wistful’ (Clark, K. (1956) The Nude Harmondsworth: Pelican, pp. 97 f.) Moreover, though she is shown classically contrapposto, Botticelli’s Venus fails to meet the classical standard of aplomb, for she could not possibly stand at that angle. We are presumably to read her as floating, like the two winds Zephyr and Aura at left, and also, possibly, like the Hora of Spring at right.

A number of interpretations have been proposed.

1. A now standard interpretation of the painting (see Panofsky, E. (1965) Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, London: Paladin pp. 198 f) begins from the observation that the Venus pudica type derives from Praxiteles’ famed Aphrodite of Knidos whose nude form came to be associated with the Venus coelestis representing pure, intellectual love. (This being contrasted with the Venus vulgaris deriving from Praxiteles’ clothed Aphrodite of Kos and representing love of a more worldly and natural kind.) The painting is therefore supposed to reference and recommend this more elevated aspect of the goddess. This interpretation would be especially plausible if the painting had been intended as wedding gift: for it could then be seen as an appropriate moral reminder for the young couple.                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
2. It is possible to enlarge upon this interpretation if it is also accepted (as it usually is) that Botticelli or his patron was familiar with the Neo-platonism that was then popular amongst the Florentine humanists. In that system, Venus coelistis is said to bring forth divine love (Amor divinus) “ad divinam cogitandam pulchritudinem,” i.e. so that we may come to understand divine Beauty (Ficino in Commentary on the Symposium II, 7.) The painting thus celebrates that event and the possibility of this knowledge. Some (e.g. Gombrich, E. (1945) “Botticelli’s Mythologies” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, 8:7-60, p. 55) have seen further support for this interpretation in the way that the attitude of the Hora who bestows the mantle upon Venus echoes John’s attitude in scenes of the baptism of Christ (compare, for example, Verrocchio’s Battesimo di Cristo.) The implication is that the arrival of Venus in the world in this form is an event that brings the possibility of divine love and the knowledge of Beauty, in much the same way that the entrance of Christ into his mission brings the possibility of divine love and the knowledge of God.

3. It may further be noted (as by Wind, E. (1967) Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, Harmondsworth:Peregrine, pp. 131 ff.) that from the left it is a wind of passion that issues from the two entwined and amorous spirits (and especially da’ Zefiri lascivi as Poliziano describes him in Giostra 99) to move Venus. And on the right it is chaste Hora who approaches to wrap her in a decent cloak. The Venus pudica itself is an image of not exactly chaste but elevated love, but here she manages to unify the two forms to one wholesome whole. Again, this is a recommendation appropriate for a wedding present.

4. As a wedding present however, it may have a more than simply admonitory intention. It has been argued that the peculiar flatness of the painting and the space-filling pattern of flowers give it an appearance that would well suit it to the environment of a private chamber, where tapestries and heavy patterns were common. Supposing it then to be intended to be enjoyed privately, we can identify a number of erotic elements that are proper only in that context. The principal element of course is the image of the naked Venus herself; and here it is surely significant that it is amongst the first full length nudes after the classical period. The faces of the two spirits at the left plausibly belong to a couple in coitus. The shell that Venus stands on has since classical times been taken as a symbol of the goddess of love and as representing the female sexual organs. And the loop of hair directly above her pudendum and the fold of fabric into which her hair blows are also clearly depicting the female sex. (In no other place in Botticelli’s works do we see such loops or folds.) In so far as we think that this is intended to have an ‘interpretation,’ it may that sexual desire is not alien to the pure goddess, and this claim presumably implies a recommendation to indulge it in the marriage. However, that is probably not the principal intended function for those elements.

5. Some have also tried to argue that the painting was intended as a piece of flattery to Lorenzo ‘Il Magnifico’ de’ Medici, head of the Medici family. It is claimed that the model for the Venus is Simonetta Catanneo Vespucci, who was a noted beauty of the time and reputed to be the mistress of both Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano. Lorenzo’s allowing the use of Simonetta’s likeness (though she had by then been dead for about 10 years) is compared to Alexander offering his mistress Campaspe to Apelles as a model for the original Aphrodite anadyomene (Pliny, HN 35.) Lorenzo is thus to be compared to Alexander. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Simonetta was taken as the model, nor that she was the mistress of Lorenzo. Indeed, it was Giuliano who took her as the object of his courtly love gestures (which are celebrated in Poliziano’s Giostra) but there is no evidence for her being his mistress either. Consequently, we can dismiss this as a possible interpretation.

All of those interpretations are consistent with each other, and the evidence actually offered for them (or against them) is exactly the evidence that the Actual Intentionalist would admit. Where there is proposed to be conflict between these interpretations – as between the 2^nd and 3^rd listed above – it is reasonable to think that those who are proposing the conflict would say that one of those is correct and the other is incorrect; just as it is possible to interpret a statement in two ways according to the rules of the language and the conventions of the conversation, but for only one of those interpretations to be the intended (correct) one. Does anyone actually claim that the intention of an artist is to assert two contradictory claims?

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Poussin – Et in Arcadia Ego

March 23, 2019 – 9:19 pm

According to Actual Intentionalism, an artwork should be considered as a type of communication by the artist, and the ‘meaning’ of the artwork – which is what is to be understood by an interpretation of the artwork – is just what its author intended when creating it. There is supposedly an analogy to be made to more straightforward communications like common speech; according to which, to understand what someone has said is to interpret it in such a way as to retrieve its meaning, and the meaning of what a person says is just what they wanted to get across to their audience when they spoke. Analogies to the understanding of common speech will prove to be very useful and we shall recur to them often.

In fact, the principal objection to AI can be motivated by observing that the supposed analogy assumes that the speaker has succeeded in their intention, whereas we know from our own experience that sometimes a speaker may fail to say just what they mean. Similarly, where the actual intentionalist makes the same assumption with respect to an artist’s intentions and their artworks, we recognise the possibility that an artist may fail to make good on their intentions in creating an artwork.

We can see that this has happened, for example, in Poussin’s Et in Arcadia Ego.

In this painting (also known as the Bergers d’Arcadie) three shepherds and a woman gather about a sarcophagus to remark upon the inscription they can see on it, which reads as in the title. It is now generally agreed that the painting is a kind of memento mori (“reminder you will die!”) and the inscription should be understood as “Even in Arcadia, there am I” meaning that even in an Earthly paradise, there is Death. This interpretation, however, was not always obvious to all, because the inscription is written upon the sarcophagus and the usual interpretation of such things is that they are being said by the person entombed therein. Thus, the Latin was tortured a little to give the meaning “I too lived in Arcadia” and signified only that others had preceded them in enjoying these delights. Eventually it came to signify no more than a kind of nostalgia for happiness now past. (Panofsky, E. & G. (1968) ‘The “Tomb in Arcady” at the “Fin-de-Siècle”’ Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, 30, pp. 287–304.) Goethe used a German form of it, for example, as the motto for his book of fond recollections of his Italian Journey.

In order to arrive at the now-accepted interpretation it was necessary to trace the history of the painting’s theme through earlier versions. The famous version by Poussin was painted in 1637/8, but he also did a slightly different one in 1627 in which the sarcophagus bearing the inscription also has a barely visible skull on its top.

This painting in turn seems to have been inspired by a much more obvious painting by Guercino dated to somewhere about 1618-22 in which two shepherds ponder a skull atop an ancient masonry pedestal on which is inscribed the famous phrase.

In this context it is clear that the phrase is to be understood as spoken on behalf of the skull, which is the iconographic symbol of Death (it is still called a ‘death’s head,’) and thus makes sense of the more natural reading of the Latin. Poussin, in altering the pedestal to a sarcophagus and then removing the skull altogether, so violated the then-current norms of iconography that the original intention was no longer unambiguously derivable from the image itself.

The critic of AI will now say that the meaning of the painting cannot be the ‘remember death’ that Poussin intended, but, if anything, the ‘nostalgic for Arcadia’ that the painting’s earlier public understood. If the critic nevertheless continues to accept that in cases where the artist is successful in his efforts his intentions should determine the meaning of his artwork, then we might say that the critic is a Moderate Intentionalist.

Returning to our analogy, however, we should note that the moderate intentionalist approach doesn’t actually agree very well with our general attitudes to interpreting common speech. In the case of speech, if someone misspeaks or otherwise fails to say just what they mean, we do not simply write off their intentions as no longer relevant, instead we try to discover what they did mean despite what they said. This is an essential principle of charitable interpretation. It will then be a matter of dispute whether you wish to say that their utterance really had the meaning they intended or had none or had some other meaning that could be discovered using the usual (non-intention-seeking) rules for understanding speech. It’s worth noting, however, that in the case of the Poussin painting, the artist’s intention as newly established has pretty much displaced the earlier alternative interpretation as giving the painting’s meaning, so that the verdict of the art public here seems to favour the stricter AI claim.

At this point we might also note the exchange between Humpty Dumpty and Alice Through the Looking Glass

 

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Titian – Sacred and Profane Love

March 23, 2019 – 8:38 pm

The appreciation of art is usually taken to involve an aesthetic judgement, and this judgement is most often said to be essentially non-cognitive. According to the Hume/Kant model of artistic appreciation, however, an aesthetic judgement of that kind is very often dependent upon a previous cognitive act of ‘understanding’ the artwork. Hume, for example, pointed out ((1751) Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, §1) that

[I]n order to pave the way for [an aesthetic judgement,] and give a proper discernment of its object, it is often necessary, we find, that much reasoning should precede, that nice distinctions be made, just conclusions drawn, distant comparisons formed, complicated relations examined, and general facts fixed and ascertained. Some species of beauty, especially the natural kinds, on their first appearance, command our affection and approbation; and where they fail of this effect, it is impossible for any reasoning to redress their influence, or adapt them better to our taste and sentiment. But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment;

An act of understanding is thus supposed to be required in order to be able to present all the relevant features (whatever they might be) of the artwork to the faculty (whatever it might be) responsible for the aesthetic judgement. But whether or not we think that there is some special faculty or special judgement or special aesthetic quality, it is almost universally believed that a proper appreciation of an artwork can only be gained once the artwork is properly understood. For this reason the critical engagement with artworks has tended (very strongly) to be directed at increasing our understanding of them.

Consider, for example, the painting by Titian now known as Sacred and Profane Love

Certainly, this is a beautiful thing and it can be appreciated at that level alone in admiring the colours, the organization of forms, the images of two pretty girls, and so on; but no one really thinks that leaving the appreciation at that level would be doing justice to the art work, and therefore much scholarly effort has gone into understanding why the artist has disposed the details of the painting in the way that he has. Such enquiries, though they may not all reach the same conclusions, seem to be in general agreement about the sorts of things that would count as contributing to the understanding of the artwork.

Many begin by noticing, for example, that the painting is divided neatly into two with the details on one side being in some sort of correspondence with details on the other, and from that reasonably supposing that the painting has a ‘dialectical’ structure, so that the one half is a commentary upon the other. This was not an unusual way of proceeding at the time. Beyond that it has been proposed (by E. Panofsky in (1962) ‘The Neoplatonic Movement in Florence and North Italy’ pp. 150-4 in Studies in Iconology, New York: Harper & Row, pp. 129-169) that the two figures are two images of Venus – one, the Venere Vulgare at left standing for the generative, fertile, earthly form of love; and the other, the Venere Celeste standing for the pure, intelligible, intellectual and universal form of love. The identification does not come out of nowhere: there are arguments from the nature of Titian’s earlier works, his prior and later use of imagery, the iconography and thematic concerns then current, and references to the contemporary philosophical movements and literature. In any case, it does make some sense of the background details, as on the left there are rabbits (a pretty obvious symbol of fertility) and the turret of a town (where worldly interests are pursued;) while on the right we see the campanile of a church, sheep, and a hunt in progress. In this interpretation, inspired by the Neoplatonism of Marsilio Ficino – as perhaps transmitted to Titian in discussions with his friend and leading humanist Pietro Bembo – the two figures in harmony indicate that an emergent harmony between Earthly and Heavenly Love is possible, that the idealised form of each is compatible with the other. This, it is felt, is an appropriate signification for a painting that was intended as a wedding present to celebrate the marriage of Nicolò Aurelio (whose coat-of-arms is seen on the frieze beside the spigot) and Laura Bagarotto. (The woman on the left is dressed as a bride with myrtle flowers which are symbols of Venus and also signify married fidelity.)

According to that interpretation, then, we should understand the painting as a meditation on the proper form of married love, and an exhortation to its realisation. So, if we were correct above to say that an understanding of the artwork is essential to its proper appreciation, and if the methods of producing the appropriate understanding are such as produced the interpretation at which we have arrived, then it is this sort of understanding that we seem to believe is essential to a just appreciation of Titian’s painting.

But what sort of understanding does this kind of interpretation give us? Well, pretty clearly, it takes the artwork to be the deliberate creation of an artist who had some intention in mind in creating it; and it is assumed that a proper interpretation will depend upon identifying the intentions of the artist. For that reason, we note that the painting is of a genre with which the artist was familiar, that he would therefore be aware of the purposes of that genre and how it was meant to be interpreted. We propose the sort of interpretation that we could imagine the artist feeling was appropriate in the circumstances of the painting’s commission as a wedding present. We present evidence that the artist might well have had the intellectual resources to intend that interpretation by looking at the intellectual milieu in which he existed, and even at the popular ideas of his time. We look at his other works to see whether the use of iconography required for that interpretation is consistent with his other uses of similar elements. And so on.

All of this points toward a theory of interpretation that is called Actual Intentionalism

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Confucians can torture

May 8, 2017 – 11:02 am

I asked Sam Crane at Useless Tree:

Are there, in fact, any arguments against torture in Chinese philosophy that aren’t basically utilitarian? If there aren’t, then could there have been? In Western philosophy our arguments are usually from appeal to various notions of ‘human rights’, but that wouldn’t be possible for the Chinese sages. Other arguments are from the harm done to the character of the torturers: i.e. you don’t want to be the sort of person who does that, so it’s morally impermissible for you to do so. Is it possible to run such an argument in the Chinese context? Has it ever been done?

His reply was to the effect that a Mencian interpretation would require that “The noble-minded, who conscientiously cultivate their appetite for Duty and Humanity, are obviously most repelled at the thought of the suffering of others.  Thus, the noble-minded would not take up torture…” I found this doubtful and sent the following reply, which I think might be interesting.

I think the arguments that you give are likely to be the sort that a Confucian sage would give on this topic if he wanted to argue against torture, and I think you’re right that he would have a preference for not torturing, but I doubt that that preference could be extended to a blanket prohibition against torture – at least, not on the grounds you give. Your proposed argument appeals to the limits placed on a man’s possible behaviours by his ren, and no-one doubts that there are such limits, but I think that even fully-developed ren cannot play the role that you want it to play of erecting impassable barriers against some forms of behaviour.

It’s reasonable enough to suppose that on the Mencian understanding of human nature, torture would offend against the compassionate element of human nature that allows us to feel empathy (for the child in the well, for example.) Also, it is right and proper to nurture this aspect of our human nature, for it is the seed that grows into ren (“The heart of compassion is the germ of benevolence” (2A.6)) and ren is one of the virtues. Now, Mencius wants us to develop this ren as far as we can, to make us noble, from which it follows that the truly noble man is one who is truly compassionate; but your claim would then be that no truly compassionate person could bring themselves to cause pain to another, and that therefore torture would be effectively absolutely prohibited. This, I think, does not follow.

Ren cannot be just free-floating compassion. To be a virtue it has to be expressed according to the li. If there are cases where, according to the li, the appropriate way to show ren involves causing some pain or even killing, then it couldn’t be the Mencian position that causing pain was never the right thing to do; and that opens the door to a possible justification for torture *in some cases*. So the question now is, do the li ever call for such a thing? I think that, given the widespread acceptance of punishment in Chinese society, we’d have to say that the traditions did encompass the inflicting of pain as part of the pattern of behaviours that contributes to a harmonious society. Those traditions are the li.

So I don’t think that “Don’t do what should not be done, and don’t desire what should not be desired” is going to give us the blanket prohibition that you suggest, because it leaves it up to an interpretation of the li what it actually is that should or should not be done, and the li may well allow us (or demand of us) that we inflict pain.

One way (the only way that I can think of offhand) to deny that this mediation of ren through li has the consequence I am suggesting, would be to claim that the only cases in which inflicting pain was according to the li involved it being inflicted by a superior upon an inferior, and that Mencius thought that the noble character aspired to treat all men as social equals. All relations then would be relations like friendship – and in no circumstances is it proper for a friend to cause pain to a friend. But could such a claim be supported? I doubt it; because it would mean that Mencius had taken up the position of the Mohists, and he was pretty clear elsewhere (e.g. 3B.9) that Mohism was wrong on just this point.

There’s one other thing that might be relevant. This conversation started with a consideration of the proper treatment of prisoners of war; but what is their place in the Confucian division of society? Which one of the five fundamental relationships covers the captive enemy soldier and his captor. I would guess that it would be the sovereign-subject relationship, but I don’t know. If the relationship was not covered at all, or not recognised in the li, then the Confucian would have no guidelines at all as to the proper behaviour.

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The Confucian Canon

May 8, 2017 – 10:29 am

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