Class 4 Reflections

September 29, 2010

LS800 Class 4

Sappho Poetry - c. 600 BCE
Marcus Aurelius, Mediations - c. 170 CE

Based on our readings, some from Ancient Greece, many class discussions have centered on the nature of the world: What are its building blocks? How does it work and where do humans fit into it? Given the Ancient Greeks’ interest in the world around them, it came as no surprise that much of their poetry focuses on the senses of hearing and sight. It’s as if the reasoned and logical investigation of matter merged with the sensual arena of thought in poetry. It will remain unknown whether the world’s make-up ever played the role of Muse for Sappho, but just as the philosophers of the day took to explaining the natural world, Sappho applied her bodily senses to poetry.

Sappho’s poetry is saturated with physical reactions to love. The passion expressed is not lessened by the fact that only fragments of her poems remain. Her gorgeous coalescing of the celestial and telluric (LP34)

As the stars surrounding the lovely moon will
hide away the splendour of their appearance
when in all her fullness she shines the brightest over the whole earth

has a corporal effect on the reader as do her juxtapositions of sensual sentiments with the inanimate earth (LP46,47): “I will let my body flow like water over the gentle cushions” and “Then love shook my heart like the wind that falls on oaks in the mountains”. The former fragment, to me, is post-coital in character and insinuates the end of some frenzied activity while the latter stems from something more purely emotional. In these snippets, Sappho’s poetry takes root in the human heart and mind and contrasts their subjective reality to our senses’ subjective reality. For example, in the same way one admires the beauty of the moon surrounded by stars, (the true scope of which the intellect can scarcely grasp), so too is the profound impression that love gives, taking one beyond this earth and into the breathless ether, where the stars spin only because we, on earth, turn. (Excuse me, I’ve never waxed poetic before … humour me). Essentially, the incommunicable feeling of love is well-expressed when set side-by-side our awe of nature. It's as if that feeling of wonderment and disbelief has permeated our being and we're in touch with the cosmos at some deeper level.

But how fortunate we are to read this Ancient Greek woman’s gems! Just as in ancient China, there was little passion in love between men and women in Athens. It is thought that Sappho was an instructor at a thiasoi, an all-girls’ school, where she introduced sensual awareness and self-esteem to girls, girls who were about to enter a sexually divided society. Knowing of the oppression Athenian women lived under, perhaps Sappho longed for her ideas to be immortalized and remembered; she longed for her knowledge of the beauty of sisterly-love to survive her days and extend beyond her sorority on Lesbos; (LP147): “I think that someone will remember us in another time”.

On Lesbos, women lived in a world wholly different from Athens. At times I felt bits of her poetry express the freedom of life on Lesbos, describing it as a sanctuary from domineering men (LP154) while others bits express utter loneliness and a longing for something else (Voigt, 168B). How sad to think of these women’s lives post-Lesbos, after being married off, and of all the unread female writing made invisible within purdah. Indeed, most of the Ancient Greek writings that remains today are male in origin. What makes the writings more exclusive is that they were produced by a select few men.

(LP31):
Sweetness of your laughter…
sets the shaking inside my breast, since
once I look at you for a moment, I can’t speak any longer
but my tongue breaks down, and then all at once a
subtle fire races inside my skin, my
eyes can’t see a thing and a whirring whistle thrums at my hearing
cold sweat covers me and a trembling takes
ahold of me all over: I’m greener than the
grass is and appear to myself to be little short of dying.

This is Sappho’s reaction to a man interacting with one of her loves. Is she about to have a seizure or go into a jealous rage? Some take this lengthy fragment to be an anxiety attack of the type that a homosexual in our day might experience. I wonder how lesbians were viewed in Greece at that time, at a time when pederasty was common. As if it matters, the debate continues as to whether Sappho was a lesbian or not. Stories about her have undoubtedly been twisted through the ages and who’d be surprised if she’d been slandered to keep people from admiring her brilliance? She was, after all, a woman!

Interestingly, the true sense of her poetry must be, to some extent, misconstrued by English readers today. As Robert Frost said, “Poetry is what is lost in translation”, and this rings very true with Sappho. Surely some nuance and meaning are lost, but my guess is that in decent translations the general feeling remains the same. To me, poetry is a form bridging music and prose. It can convey a sentiment using imagery that cannot otherwise be expressed in prose. To use a quote to describe poetry’s ability to communicate the ineffable: “The great function of poetry is to give the situation of our dreams” (Gaston Bachelard). I would venture to say that an interpretive dance would better express the situation of our dreams than would prose!

Have you ever listened to soft jazz or Classical music while slipping into sleep? There are moments in that state between wakefulness and slumber when you feel you can perceive exaclty what the artist is saying within his tonal conversation. It might be so beautiful and revealing that it pulls you back into consciousness but for the life of you, you cannot express it in words. The feeling remains, though; intangible. Emotions are not hard and fast; they are fickle things, sensitive by nature. From the Sapphic translations I’ve read, they all amount to expressing the same general feeling but that is not to say that nothing was lost in the translation. To me, one can liken such translations to different musicians’ interpretations of a musical piece.

The most celebrated violinists and pianists, for example, are not distinguished by their technical abilities but by their interpretations. When Glenn Gould took the piano world by storm, critics believed that he played Baroque music as it was intended (as if they could really know. I often ponder how Mozart’s music was played in the 18th Century). Much like the translators of Sappho’s poems, musicians express something beyond words, something profound and universal. Different musicians change the feeling of the message by using different phrasing, different dynamics, tempo, rhtyhm and so on. These are the musician’s tools (what words are to the poet), and they translate what was written on paper by the composer. Just as today’s poetry has come a long way since the time of Shakespeare, for example, so has music. These two forms do travel the same path, albeit in different realms.

I wonder at how big a figure Sappho would be today had her complete output survived. I also marvel at how luck played a role in preserving what few fragments we do have. Some of humanity’s most precious achievements were rescued from the bin, so to speak. It’s almost certain that Bach (J. Sebastian; this one, not this one) produced more music than what’s been preserved, prolific as he was. Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, 6 complete multi-movement works that fill two audio CDs, are praised by violinists and music fans for their depth, complexity and utter genius. Legend has it that these works’ original manuscripts were rescued from a pile of meat-warpping paper at a butcher shop! More shocking is what the full title of these works implicates: “Sei Solo Violino Senza accompagnato. Libro Primo”, as if to say that what was recovered was only the first book!

When did we (humanity) start to value our history? I was surprised to learn that in the 1800s many of Rome’s structures were still being quarried for building materials and that the Colloseum was overgrown with trees. How many treasures were destroyed for scrap materials and how many works of genius were discarded in a Spring cleaning and used for kindling?

In stark contrast to Sappho’s sensual poetry, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations speak very little of love and suggest that anything overly emotional or sensual should be avoided. He’d agree with Sappho’s maxim, (LP158) “When anger spreads inside your breast keep watch against an idly barking tongue”, that one should be aware of passions and emotions. Sappho’s poetry deals with hurt and wounded feelings and leave the impression that nothing is constant but change. Aurelius would drink to this too, but might otherwise avoid her poetry; it would have been too passionate and emotional for his liking.

Aurelius, like Sappho, applies images of nature in his writings. His intention in doing so was, in some instances, to meditate on how minuscule and insignificant he is so as not to let his human desires make his whole world a whole world. (II.10) - “throw all else aside, and hold fast only these few things; further calling to mind at the same time that each of us lives only in the present, this brief moment”, (XII.19) “Perceive at last that you have within yourself something stronger and more divine that the things which create your passions and make a downright puppet out of you. What is my consciousness at this instant?” (VII.48) “When discoursing about mankind, look upon earthly things below as if from some place above them”. By looking at life from a far, focus on the smallness and triviality of your life. Gain this perspective.

Like past posts, I could comment on the many similarities and connections between Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and the recurrent themes that infuse this course (for example his appeal for mankind to live in more in accordance with Nature's rules) but I’ll try not to too too much. It is evident that questions surrounding how one should live have endured throughout human history and this idea has already been commented on. (I have to keep this blog's vast and growing readership in mind, after all). Today, I’d like to take a slightly different approach and try to explore how Roman culture around 150 CE influenced this particular text and why Stoicism remained popular for over 500 years since its beginnings around 300 BCE.

The Roman Empire was not a Garden of Eden. Far from it. Its boundaries were under constant threat of invasion by barbarians and therefore Rome had to maintain legions of men ready to wage war. Aurelius lived his final years amidst the nightmare of battle which makes his writings all the more meaningful and a true testament to his humanity. To me, among much else, his writings amount to a campaign against laziness and anything that can keep a man from behaving well and in-line with nature.

The remarkable thing about Stoicism is that it uses the idea of death without afterlife to motivate one to live well… (II.12) “death is not only nature’s handiwork but also her well-being”. I thought this line very interesting. Would we be motivated without death? If we did live forever, would we be motivated to search as we do? I wonder. My contention is that we deny our mortality and make believe that there’s an afterlife which causes us anxiety because deep within us we’re aware of the delirium of such a claim. Aurelius lived well for the moment, not for the afterlife, in contrast to many religions that promise compensation for acting well and thinking properly. The art of living for Aurelius centered on not acting well for the sake of recompense and not to rely on gods for comfort.

Man denies his own mortality in living in the past and building castles in his future. What is is in the present. (X.16, V. 17) “Don’t any more discuss at large what the good man is like, but be good.” “To pursue the impossible is madness: but it is impossible for evil men not to do things of these sorts”. What are past and future are, in a real sense, impossible and one would live well focusing on good actions in the present rather than philosophizing over how a good person should (theoretically) behave.

In comparing Meditations with Timaeus, I felt that Aurelius sets Plato’s ideas in motion. In some of his descriptions, I could see the flux, the Becoming, the slow dissolution of what exists, the streaming and morphing through the passage of time as well as the revolutions of the universe in the distant, infinite background. There are plenty of parallels that can be drawn from Mencius, Plato, the Bhagavad Gita and the Stoics. In reading Meditations I was often reminded of what I happen to know about Buddhist philosophy. It struck me as meaningful that such similar ideas were thought of independently by different cultures at about the same time; this is sometimes referred to as the Axial Age. Sure, Plato influenced Aurelius and the Stoics, but the idea of the “sage” or of a wise man - whether from Asia or Europe - appears to have had the same qualities that spoke to the people of the day and continues to speak to us. The idea struck a chord, one that was articulated then and resonates to this day. Karl Jaspers claimed that the “Axial Age,” was a shift from the Mythic Age, into an age when “man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his limitations… Consciousness became conscious of itself.” Some contend that Jesus represents the greatest example of this consciousness and that the New Testament was the first expression of it after the Axial Age. Could it be that man, globally, struggled with his consciousness long enough that he reached a plateau of understanding? Somehow the world was ready for this revelation much like it was ready for Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Surely if Darwin (and Wallace) had not postulated "Natural Selection" someone else would have. The ideas were out there, at the forefront, and only had to be integrated.

Man reached a stage of maturity at this time and realized that the gods were not helping their cause; their fate was controlled by them more than by spirits. Stoicism, as described by Aurelius, is all about self-control, self-criticism and reliance on the self to attain something good. It requires constant vigilance and is hard work. Aurelius rehashes the same ideas over and over but in different shades, as if a particular day’s experiences allowed him to see these Stoic Truths in a different light. While Ancient Greek, Roman, Hindu and Buddhist philosophies have many gods in their beliefs, the Stoics cared to purify the air, simplify the aether, as it were, in order to breathe easy. In simplifying, one can breathe the true, clean air of nature, free from superstition. The first Stoics in 300 BCE were not the first to rid humanity of superstition - that was partially Plato’s goal with the Timaeus (c. 400 BCE) where he describes the world as an ideal and unchanging blueprint. As such, the world could not be altered by the gods unless by the “rules” of this model.

The differences between many of these ancient texts are fundamentally slight and derived from the respective culture. This is partly why we continue to read these important works. In a sense, these ancient writers are freed (and in reading them we are freed) of the thoughts that muddle and preoccupy our minds today. They did not have the technologies that steal so much of our time. Although probably inaccurate, we think of these authors as having simple lives and we read their works as blank slates, unclouded by issues of our time.

However, reading Aurelius and imagining his plight as Roman Emperor on a war front, nothing could have been “simple” for him. (IV.51) “Run always the short road” he warns himself, enforcing the idea that a muddled mind creates more running around. I suspect that practicing empathy helped him not only to keep his ego in check and to be “good” towards others, but also helped him in surviving plots against him and understanding where his enemies might be, what they are thinking and what their motivations are (VI.53) “…be in the mind of the speaker”. I came across a bust of Philippus the Arab, an emperor who reigned less than 100 years after Aurelius, and felt that the complexity in his face would have suited Aurelius’.

The intensity of his gaze and the conflict therein is notable. Here we have a powerful figure facing death each day and struggling with life; struggling with the people who surround him and with his own self. In here, we also see humanity, reason and understanding. (VI.47) "Keep in mind the good qualities of those who surround you today…" How can one do that amidst a population of hungry hurting soldiers? It must have been hard.
On the topic of composure, I visualize Aurelius (VII.60) as composed at all times, under attack or under cover. Remembering Mencius’ comments on posture and composure, one can see that the sage’s physiognomy runs across cultures.

His meditations allowed him to deeply contemplate his actions and motivations. (VI50,51) state clearly that one’s intentions in acting is of the utmost importance; more important than whether you fail or succeed.
One final note on Aurelius, for whom I’ve gained a lot of respect, is that he recognized what humanity needs and was a leader who applied what he recognized as true. He was not one easily deluded or corrupted. It was not a new idea to him that man makes the same mistakes and has been for millennia. (VII.1) “This is Evil; it is that which you have often seen. Have this ready to hand at every emergency, that this is what you have often seen. You will in general find the same things repeated up and down the world. The ancient chronicles are full of them…” How we could use leaders like him today!