‘I Forget Myself’ - poem

I Forget Myself

I forget myself like a cloud,

I sing and I sing

and I spin to the future

in mists of white washed wool

when a bird flew past the window, 

making the room seem to blink,

making me remember myself. 

                                   Robert Faeth

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Plato (again) - as seen by Iris Murdoch

Plato (again) - as seen by Iris Murdoch*:

Art, this “fiction-making-process“ has always been, from the very beginning, mankind’s companion. And most of us are grateful for its existence, the solace, inspiration and insights we derive from it.

Which has not prevented some of the world’s finest writers and philosophers to debate the validity and morality of art, to question the principles of this “fiction-making“.

Among the first and perhaps also most vocal critic of art we find, sadly surprising: Plato! He who recommended (The Republic) exiling poets of drama from the “ideal state“ and he who also proposed a thorough program of censorship (The State).

Plato’s views on art and artists in general are one of the subjects of The Fire and the Sun - Why Plato Banished the Artists by Iris Murdoch, the Irish novelist and philosopher (1919 – 1999) best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. The Fire and the Sun - Why Plato Banished the Artists (1978) is an essay that provocatively tries to illuminate the esthetics of Plato and to defend art against his views.

Murdoch introduces us to Plato’s view on life by evoking the famous Allegory of the Cave. In this fable mankind is represented by a group who is held captive in a cave, chained to face the back wall, where all they can see are shadows cast by a fire which is behind them, some sort of laterna magica, and they take these projections for reality.

Eventually the prisoners find out the truth (by turning around) and then even manage to escape the cave and, for the first time, see the daylight in all its glory. Finally they see the sun itself, the form of the Good, in whose light the truth may be devined.

Murdoch explains how Plato saw artists as the creators of illusion, who, willfully or naively, accept the appearances at the walls of the cave for reality instead of questioning them as they should. A writer who portrays a doctor, in Plato's view, does not possess a doctor's skill but simply "imitates doctors' talk." Because of the charm of their work, such artists may be mistaken as authorities, thereby misleading people further. "Surely any serious man would rather produce real things, such as beds or political activity, than unreal things which are mere reflections of reality.“ Plato considers artists to be meddlers, independent and irresponsible critics. 

She further elaborates on Plato’s often shockingly puritanical view on art and ventures the suspicion that his feelings may contain “an element of envy“. "He had been himself a writer of poetry; and when a man with two talents chooses (or at any rate concentrates upon) one, he may look sourly upon the practitioners of the other."

Lastly she concedes that art in itself is not essential to survival, might even be unnecessary. But she argues that, even if we could be saved without having seen all the beauty art has to offer, “great art points in the direction of the good and is at least more valuable to morale than dangerous”. Providing an easy form of escapism is not what art aims for. Art is there to help to communicate and reveal the nature of reality. If art is "jauntily at home with evil and quick to beautify it," it can also "show how we learn from pain."

"The spiritual ambiguity of art," she writes, "its connection with the 'limitless unconscious, its use of irony, its interest in evil, worried Plato. But the very ambiguity and voracious ubiquitousness of art is its characteristic freedom. Art, especially literature, is a great hall of reflection where we can all meet and where everything under the sun can be examined and considered."

*Dame Jean Iris Murdoch (15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. 

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Imperfection and Love - After Reading Plato, Again

Imperfection and Love

Over the holidays I have been reading a bit of Plato again, mainly out of a spontaneous need for clarification of what LOVE might be. Mostly I indulged into the Symposium. And then I moved on to a contemporary academic female voice: Martha Nussbaum, who, in Upheavals of Thought (2001), criticizes Plato’s account for its focus on perfection.

The non-sexual, purely intellectual relationship that we understand as ‘Platonic love’ is quite distinct from the account we get in Plato’s works, which are predominantly focused on a striving for perfection through beauty. Modern everyday understandings of personal love, ranging from motherly, sibling, family to romantic love, are quite different.

Plato seems to regard all information gained through our bodily senses as being potentially corruptive to the soul. And seems to be very much in favour of a life led in abstinence of sensual pleasure. The “true philosopher“ should aspire to higher ideals, as far away as possible from the body. When I first read Plato I was quite surprised to find this (in my view) very puritanical line of thought, anchored in a time 2000 years ago. I thought only Christianity had brought this about.

The negation and avoidance of sensual input seems to me a significant error and even a betrayal on our bodies, the true, grand and only instrument given to us with which we are able to feel, explore, discover and simply live life. 

Sensual input, pleasure, eros, emotion, love  - they all are only possible through and with this body and seem to me to be at the root of every human thought and deed. 

Plato seems to be all for perfection. If one really loves life, though, then one has to incorporate, accept and yes: love, imperfection, too. Simply because it is also part of this life and plays an essential role: the sensitization towards perfection.

I am much in favour of values like reason and logic, pure thought. They help us sometimes to understand the complexities of life. But they should be used together with the emotional, sometimes even, irrational insights our bodies can give us. Just think of how much more insight and the feeling of understanding a simple embrace can give.

Erotic love or eros can be a very good mediator and guide towards the ultimate goal, the perfect being, that connects with the eternal and thus allows us, who are mortal, to somehow become immortal. Eros is the lust for possession and can lead to a more general lust for possession of knowledge, beauty or philosophy and thus aims at transcending mankind’s existence.

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A Book Beginning I Always Adored

A Book Beginning I Always Adored:

THE TRAIN came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. The earth lay white under the night sky. The train pulled up at a signal stop. 

(from Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata)

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‘I Knew’ - poem

I Knew

Peeling off like wet skin 

from a wound you inflicted. 

You had to, didn’t you?

You couldn’t just pass me by,

harming me in not noticing,

harming me in not harming me?

I still feel wet sometimes,

the lost, translucent wetness that I liked 

so much, then,

when you and - was it really me?

put arms and limbs and 

milky threads around our web

of homeless clouds.

I flew then, I knew, how.

I sank then, under the bow

of our boat, so lovely,

so full, so achingly brave,

so far away, so remote now.

I drank then, I gulped then,

I breathed then, I knew.

                      Robert Faeth

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