The Ugliness of Socrates As Paradigm for the Understanding of Nature, Human Nature, Literature

The Ugliness of Socrates as Paradigm for the Understanding of Nature, Human Nature, Literature, and Art – Much of Which Conceals an Inner Wisdom and Virtue Beneath a Humble Exterior

Materials gathered in 1987-1992 for a book project on Bruegel and assembled into a single file on July 11, 2015.

Robert Baldwin

Associate Professor of Art History

Connecticut College

posted on my web site

under the page

“Essays Thematic”

Summary

The “Silenus of Alciabiades” is an ancient Greek proverb referring to the comments made by Alcibiades in Plato’s Symposium at the end of a long discussion contrasting the inferior, carnal love grounded in worldly appearance to a higher love rising up to see a more enduring but hidden spiritual reality. The handsome, young aristocrat, Alcibiades, teases Socrates for his love of young, beautiful males while noting his devotion to higher forms of love and to a true wisdom. He then compares Socrates’ famous outward ugliness concealing an inner beauty to that of a Greek jewelry box decorated on the outside with carvings of an old, fat, bald ugly Silenus and opening to show beautiful statues of gods. The expression “Silenus of Alcibiades” became the most important of the thousands of Greek and Roman proverbs discussed in the Adagia of Erasmus and was reprinted as a separate publication many times after 1515. From there it spread widely, appearing in Rabelais, Montaigne, and the Dutch emblem book writer, Jacob Cats, among others.

This proverb's appeal stemmed from its significance as a larger principle for interpreting everything in the natural and human world and in the world of literature and the visual arts. It had particular resonance for texts and images using an outwardly humble language such as the Bible or the lowly naturalism of Northern European artists including Bruegel, Rembrandt and Caravaggio. It also informed specific art works such as Caravaggio’s Inspiration of St Matthew whose ugly face was modeled on classical busts of Socrates. As one key to deciphering artistic images, it became the title of a popular seventeenth-century emblem book and explains the emblem form itself as an image which conceals hidden allegorical values.

The major texts appear below, along with some bibliography.

Bibliography

Cave, Terence, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979, 302ff

Jones, Barbara "Kyd's Silenus Box and the Limits of Perception," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 10, 1, 1980, 41-52

Kinney, Arthur, "Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis: Erasmus, the 'Encomium Moriae', and the Poetics of Wordplay," idem, Continental Humanist Poetics, Amherst: University of Massachussetts, 1989, 46-86;

Kinney, Daniel, “The Adages of Erasmus: Midwife of Leaning,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 11, 1981, 169-192

Lavin, Irving, "Divine Inspiration in Caravaggio's Two 'St. Matthews'", Art Bulletin, LVI, 1974, pp. 59- 81, esp. pp. 72ff, - contents of article summarized below under the heading on Caravaggio.

Masters, G. Mallary, "On Learned Ignorance, or How to Read Rabelais: Part I, Theory," Romance Notes, 19, 1978, 127-132 [on Erasmiansilenus box in prologue to Gargantua; Rabelais describes how the boxes were painted with fantastic images and grotesques to inspire droll fancies yet concealed precious things, and then immediately compares this with his literary language.

Regosin, Richard, The Matter of My Book: Montaigne's Essais as the Book of the Self, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977, ch. 8 [CONN PQ1643.R39];

Scodel, Joshua, "The Affirmation of Paradox: A Reading of Montaigne's 'De la phisionomie' (111:12)," Yale French Studies, 64, 1983, 209-237;

Screech, M. A., Rabelais, London, 1979, 86-96.

Waddington, Raymond, "Socrates in Montaigne's 'Traicté la phisionomie," Modern Language Quarterly, 41, 4, 1980, 328-345;

PLATO SYMPOSIUM

And so, when his prescribed devotion to boyish beauties has carried our candidate so far that the universal beauty dawns upon his inward sight, he is almost within reach of the final revelation. And this is the way, the only way, he must approach, or be led toward, the sanctuary of Love. Starting from individual beauties, the quest for the [563] universal beauty must find him every mounting the heavenly ladder, stepping from rung to rung-that is, from one to two, and from two to every lovely body, from bodily beauty to the beauty of institutions, from institutions to learning, and from learning in general to the special lord that pertains to nothing but the beautiful itself-until at last he comes to know what beauty is.

And if, my dear Socrates, Diotima went on, man’s life is ever worth the living, it is when he has attained this vision of the very soul of beauty. And once you have seen it, you will never be seduced again by the charm of gold, of dress, of comely boys, or lads just ripening to manhood; you will care nothing for the beauties that used to take your breath away and kindle such a longing in you, and many others like you, Socrates, to be always at the side of the beloved and feasting your eyes upon him, so that you would be content, if it were possible, to deny yourself the grosser necessities of meat and drink, so long as you were with him.

But if it were given to man to gaze on beauty’s very self-unsullied, unalloyed, and freed from the mortal taint that haunts the frailer loveliness of flesh and blood-if, I say, it were given to man to see the heavenly beauty face to face, would you call his, she asked me, an unenviable life, whose eyes had been opened to the vision, and who had gazed upon it in true contemplation until it had become his own forever?

. . .

[566, Alcibiades speaking]Well, gentlemen, I propose to begin my eulogy of Socrates with a simile. I expect he’ll think I’m making fun of him, but, as it happens, I’m using this particular simile not because it’s funny, but because it’s true. What he reminds me of more than anything is one of those little sileni that you see on the statuaries’ stalls; you know the ones I mean - they’re modeled with pipes or flutes in their hands, and when you open them down the middle there are little figures of the gods inside. And then again, he reminds me of Marsyas the satyr.

Now I don’t think even you, Socrates, will have the face to deny that you look like them, but the resemblance goes deeper than that, as I’m going to show. You’re quite as impudent as a satyr, aren’t you? If you plead not guilty I can call witnesses to prove it.

ERASMUS

For Erasmus, the ancient Greek proverb “Silenus of Alcibiades” offered a guide to understanding everything in the natural and human world including all literature, especially texts with humble language such as the Bible or the proverb. At first glance, the proverb seemed nothing more than humble, street language. By looking beyond the misleading surface qualities of the proverb, one could understand them as brief summaries of the deepest wisdom and virtue. Like Socrates, the proverb form was ugly on the outside but wise and beautiful within.

ERASMUS, ADAGIA, 1500 (Adages III iii 1 / Complete Works of Erasmus, Toronto, vol. 27)

Erasmus was the most influential and widely read Northern European humanist of the sixteenth century. His Adagia was far more than a vast encyclopedia of thousands of classical proverbs each with a few pages of explanation. Rather it was a summary of all classical wisdom and culture, conveyed in popular speech and interpreted in a Latin encyclopedia for modern humanists and other educated elites. One of the thousands of classical proverbs collected and explained by Erasmus stood out sufficiently to be appear as a separate publication in 1517 with numerous later editions in the sixteenth century. This was the Silenus Alcibiadis. An English edition appeared in 1543 entitled, “A Scornful Image or Monstrus Shape of a Martvelous Strange Fygure Called SileniAlcibiadis Presenting the State and Condicion of this Present World”.

Much of Erasmus’ commentary on this proverb can be found at this link

ERASMUS, ENCHIRIDION (HANDBOOK OF THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT), 1503

Erasmus invites readers of any text to see “both a surface meaning and a hidden one – comparable to body and spirit, so that, indifferent to the merely literal sense, you may examine the most keenly hidden . . . [as do] especially the Holy Scriptures, like the Silenus of Alcibiades, conceal their real divinity beneath a surface that is crude and almost laughable (trans. Himelick, p. 105)

ERASMUS, THE PRAISE OF FOLLY, 1511

“In the first place, it’s well known that all human affairs are like the figure of Silenus described by Alcibiades and have two completely opposite faces, so that what is death at first sight, as they say, is life if you look within, and vice versa, life is death. The same applies to beauty and ugliness, riches and poverty, obscurity and fame . . . you’ll find everything suddenly reversed if you open the Silenus (trans. Betty Radice in Complete Works of Erasmus, 27, 102-103).

ERASMUS, SILENUS ALCIBIADIS, 1515

(not yet typed up)

RABELAIS, GARGANTUS, 1532

In the prologue to Rabelais's Gargantua, the silenus theme prepares the "confused" reader to handle textual episodes interrupted in contradictory ways, mixing high and low. For example, Gargantua reads the concluding riddle as a prophecy of steadfast divine truth while Frère Jean interprets it as an obscure account of tennis. (Compare this to Bruegel’s painting, Children's Games which used seemingly mundane and childish play to allegorize serious social and political issues for adult viewers.)Rabelais even mocked visual signs and gestures as obscure and ambiguous. See the discussion in Masters and Screech as well as the articles on Montaigne.

Rabelais’s preface begins by addressing his readers as "Most noble boozers". This Socratic paradox immediately leads to a meditation on Rabelais's paradoxical imagery and on the Protean confusion of language itself.

"Most noble boozers, and you my very esteemed and poxy friends - for to you and you alone are my writings dedicated - when Alcibiades, in that dialogue of Plato entitled 'The Symposium', praises his master Socrates, beyond all doubt the prince of philosophers, he compares him, amongst other things, to a Silenus. Now a Silenus, in ancient days, was a little box, of the kind we see today in apothecaries' shops, painted on the outside with such gay comical figures as harpies, satyrs, bridled geese, horned hares, saddled ducks, flying goats, stags in harness, and other devices of that sort, light-heartedly invented for the purpose of mirth, as was Silenus himself, the master of good old Bacchus. But inside these boxes were kept rare drugs, such as balm, ambergris, cardamum, musk, civet, mineral essences, and other precious things."

"Just such an object, according to Plato, was Socrates. For to view him from the outside and judge by his external appearance, no one would have given a shred of an onion for him, so ugly was his body and so absurd his appearance, with his pointed nose, his bovine expression, and his idiotic face. Moreover his manners were plain and his clothes boorish; he was blest with little wealth, was unlucky in his wives, and unfit for any public office. What is more, he was always laughing, always drinking glass for glass with everybody, always playing the fool, and always concealing his divine wisdom..."

"Now what do you think is the purpose of this preamble, of this preliminary flourish? It is that you, my good disciples and other leisured fools, in reading the pleasant titles of certain books of our invention, such as Gargantua, ... On the Dignity of Codpieces, Of Peas and Bacon, cum commento, etc., may not too easily conclude that they treat of nothing but mockery, fooling, and pleasant fictions; seeing that their outward signs - their titles, that is - are commonly greeted, without further investigation, with smiles of derision. ..."

"But even suppose that in the literal meanings you find jolly enough nonsense, in perfect keeping with the title, you must still not be deterred, as by the Siren's song, but must interpret in a more sublime sense what you may possibly have thought, at first, was uttered in mere light-heartedness."

MONTAIGNE, ON PHYSIOGNOMY, 1595 EDITION (ESSAYS)

That image of Socrates' discourses, which his friendshave transmitted to us, we approve upon no other account than areverence to public sanction; 'tis not according to our own knowledge;

they are not after our way; if anything of the kind should spring upnow, few men would value them. We discern no graces that are notpointed and puffed out and inflated by art; such as glide on intheir own purity and simplicity easily escape so gross a sight asours; they have a delicate and concealed beauty, such as requires aclear and purified sight to discover its secret light. Is not

simplicity, as we take it, cousin-german to folly, and a quality ofreproach? Socrates makes his soul move a natural and common motion;a peasant said this; a woman said that; he has never anybody in hismouth but carters, joiners, cobblers, and masons; his are inductionsand similitudes drawn from the most common and known actions of men;every one understands him. We should never have recognized thenobility and splendor of his admirable conceptions under so mean aform; we, who think all things low and flat, that are not elevatedby learned doctrine, and who discern no riches but in pomp and show.This world of ours is only formed for ostentation; men are only puffedup with wind, and are bandied to and fro like tennis-balls. He

proposed to himself no vain and idle fancies; his design was tofurnish us with precepts and things that more really and fitly servethe use of life;

. . .

Socrates was a perfect exemplar in all great qualities, and I am vexed that he had so deformed a face and body as is said, and so unsuitable to the beauty of his soul, himself being so amorous and such an admirer of beauty: Nature did him wrong. There is nothing more probable than the conformity and relation of the body to the soul:

"Ipsi animi magnirefert, quali in corporelocatisint:

multaenim e corporeexistunt, quae acuantmentem: multa, quae obtundant;"

this refers to an unnatural ugliness and deformity of limbs; but we call ugliness also an unseemliness at first sight, which is principally lodged in the face, and disgusts us on very slight grounds, by the complexion, a spot, a rugged countenance, for some reasons often wholly inexplicable, in members nevertheless of good symmetry and perfect. The deformity, that clothed a very beautiful soul in La Boetie, was of this predicament; that superficial ugliness, which nevertheless is always the most imperious, is of least prejudice to the state of the mind, and of little certainty in the opinion of men. The other, which by a more proper name, is called deformity, more substantial, strikes deeper in. Not every shoe of smooth shining leather, but every shoe well made, shows the shape of the foot within. As Socrates said of his, it betrayed equal ugliness in his soul, had he not corrected it by education; but in saying so, I believe he did

but scoff, as his custom was; never so excellent a soul made itself.

I cannot often enough repeat how great an esteem I have for beauty, that potent and advantageous quality; he called it "a short tyranny," and Plato, "the privilege of nature." We have nothing that excels it in reputation; it has the first place in the commerce of men; it presents itself in the front; seduces and prepossesses our judgments with great authority and wonderful impression. Phryne had lost her cause in the hands of an excellent advocate, if, opening

her robe, she had not corrupted her judges by the luster of her beauty. And I find that Cyrus, Alexander, and Caesar, the three masters of the world, never neglected beauty in their greatest

affairs; no more did the first Scipio. The same word in Greek signifies both fair and good; and the Holy Word often says good, when it means fair; I should willingly maintain the priority in good things, according to the song that Plato calls an idle thing, taken out of some ancient poet; "health, beauty, riches." Aristotle says that the right of command appertains to the beautiful; and that, when there is a person whose beauty comes near the images of the gods, veneration is equally due to him. To him who asked why people oftener and longer frequent the company of handsome persons: "That question," said he, "is only to be asked by the blind." Most of the

philosophers, and the greatest, paid for their schooling, and acquired wisdom by the favor and mediation of their beauty. Not only in the men that serve me, but also in the beasts, I consider it within two fingers' breadth of goodness.

And yet I fancy that those features and molds of face, and those lineaments, by which men guess at our internal complexions and our fortunes to come, is a thing that does not very directly and simply lie under the chapter of beauty and deformity, no more than every good odor and serenity of air promises health, nor all fog and stink, infection in a time of pestilence. Such as accuse ladies of contradicting their beauty by their manners, do not always hit right; for, in a face which is none of the best, there may dwell some air of probity and trust; as on the contrary I have read, between two beautiful eyes, menaces of a dangerous and malignant nature. There are favorable physiognomies, so that in a crowd. of victorious enemies, you shall presently choose, among men you never saw before, one rather than another, to whom to surrender, and with whom to intrust your life; and yet not properly upon the consideration of beauty.