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Piero Boitani on the Timaeus, Beauty, and Poetic Thought
49 Plays15 days ago
In this episode, Dr Sam Bennett speaks with the Italian literary critic and poet Piero Boitani about his recent book Timaeus in Paradise: Metaphors and Beauty from Plato to Dante and Beyond, alongside his long poetic work Plato’s Poem. We begin with the remarkable story behind these works, including the unexpected emergence of poetic inspiration late in Piero's life. From there, the conversation turns to the enduring influence of Plato’s Timaeus, especially its reception in the Western tradition and its role in shaping reflections on beauty, order, and metaphor. A central part of the discussion includes readings from Boitani’s poetry. We recite and reflect on passages such as Jacob’s Song for Rachel’s Beauty, and Dionysius Sings of Beauty, which traces a metaphysical vision of beauty as both the origin and end of the universe. As Boitani writes, “Europe, listening, experienced fire,” capturing the transmission of the Timaean vision across the tradition.
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Transcript
Introduction to Piero Boitani & His Works
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the Dionysus Circle podcast. I'm Dr. Sam Bennett, and I'm very honored to share a conversation with the Italian literary critic and now poet, Piero Boitani. He's the author of The Gospel According to Shakespeare, The Tragic and the Sublime in Medieval Literature.
00:00:16
Speaker
ah The Shadow of Ulysses, Figures of a Myth, among many other works. Now, in this episode, we discuss his new book, translated by Princeton University Press, Timaeus in Paradise, Metaphors and Beauty from Plato to Dante and Beyond. So this book is basically tracing the influence of Plato's Timaeus across the Western tradition. So, you know, we're talking Hugh of St. Victor, Augustine, Boethius, Dionysius, Aquinas, Dante, and so forth.
00:00:44
Speaker
um But now we're also discussing this conversation a remarkable work of poetry that Pierre has written called Plato's Poem.
Boitani's Poetry Journey
00:00:54
Speaker
It stretches to roughly 3,000 lines, and in many ways, um it overlaps, at least thematically, with his work on the Timaeus.
00:01:04
Speaker
um Now, the poem, sorry, the story behind the poem is very, is is extraordinary. it's It's a, imagine a man in his 70s, Piero, who had not previously published poetry, suddenly finding lines, a verse forming in his mind, not in his native Italian, however, but in English. So that's where we begin our conversation. We discuss the remarkable origin story of this poem.
00:01:33
Speaker
it's ah It's a complex story in a sense, because ah like everything in life, that is um it started when this book came out.
00:01:44
Speaker
This is a contemporary edition about three years ago, four years ago, of Plato's Timaeus, brand new edition critical edition of the Timaeus in Italian with Greek, of course, the original Greek, also critical text, a long introduction and long commentary, first-class work.
00:02:04
Speaker
in this collection, ah which is called Fondazione Valla Mondadori Milan. Mondadori is a big editor, big publisher, and Fondazione Valla, it's us, rather it's me, in that I am the director or general editor of the series.
Dante, Plato, and Theology
00:02:24
Speaker
Now, when this book came out,
00:02:27
Speaker
They wanted to have a launch of it and in Pavia, which is where the man who introduces it, Franco Ferrari, teaches. Pavia is a very ancient university near Milan and so on. So they invited me.
00:02:42
Speaker
This must have been October or November, and four or five years ago. And ah I said, well, yes, I will come, definitely. And I went. and They wanted me to you know be present there at the launch. And there people would speak about the book and the philologists would speak and philosophers would speak and so on. And they asked me to say something about it. So i I didn't know really what I wanted to say, but there was this line from Dante that you know was over my mind or on my mind all the time. The line comes from Paradiso 4 and says,
00:03:24
Speaker
ah Quel che Timeo dell'anime argomenta, what Timeus argues about the souls, that is, about their returning to the stars from which they've come and so on.
Inspiration & Collaborations
00:03:38
Speaker
um Well, Dante goes on to say, it's Beatrice speaking, that is not true and you can now see it with your own eyes, because you're up in heaven, you don't see souls returning. and Unless, of course, Plato means it metaphorically.
00:03:55
Speaker
um That is, unless he speaks like scripture, which lends God hands and feet, but it doesn't mean it literally, God doesn't have the hands and feet. um And, you know, it scripture means something else. So Dante makes Plato, in a sense, the equivalent of Scripture in this metaphorical kind of speaking. And I said I wanted to say something about this, and I did, about 10 minutes or so.
00:04:25
Speaker
ah then After that, I went back home and I said, well, I thought I'm retired. i can do whatever I like. and Why don't I go into this thing of metaphorical speaking and, you metaphorical speech and from the Timaeus, from Plato, that is. and And I started writing an essay, ah which went on in Italian.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yes, in Italian, I think. And he went on for about, well, it was finished in about 50 pages, from you know, computer script. And I sent it to two friends of mine, both Dante scholars, Dante and much else. One was a professor, had been a professor of Italian and at Cambridge, England. And the other one was, had been, Professor of Italian at Harvard, Cambridge, Mass. So yeah the two Cambridges, you were. And they both said, oh, wonderful. and Yes, it's all compact. And, you know, go on, go on. I sent them, you know, 10 pages by 10 pages, you were. And so they incited me to to go to go on and and finish it.
00:05:36
Speaker
And I did. And um they were very, glad, and they said, all right, we have to find a way of publishing it, which of course
Health, Poetry, and Friendship
00:05:45
Speaker
I had. But then I went, at the end of this, it must have been in December, to a book launch, the book um somebody else's book, in Rome.
00:05:55
Speaker
And there was a former pupil of mine um at university who'd done a PhD with me. and and now worked for a publishing house and called Elena.
00:06:07
Speaker
Elena said, oh because I was talking about this this, you know, sudden enthusiasm of mine for the Timers and the essay and so on. And she said, well, I would very much like to read that essay. and Can you send it to me? I said, well, of course, yeah.
00:06:22
Speaker
So I came back home and sent it by email and and The reply came after a couple of days saying, why don't we publish that essay as a small book, very small book, but yeah we'll put the text of the Timius in Italian, in it, um of the new edition, this one, and we'll just have those 50 pages printed. And at that point I said, well, no, I think if I want it published, I'll have to write some more because there's so much information.
00:06:52
Speaker
which i had I had actually gathered there was a lot of things to say. and so I said, well, Elena, if you can wait a few months, I'll i'll see what what else I can add and and see how it goes.
00:07:06
Speaker
And so I started thinking of a book that is a scholarly book or a critical book on the Timaeus and its fortune in western and the Western tradition in Italian.
00:07:18
Speaker
then... then Complete disaster happened. i fell in the street and broke everything I could possibly break in in my body, all the bones and teeth and God knows what. So I was in hospital then in bed for you know quite a while and lots of complications and things, plus becoming old suddenly. And ah ah one point, while I had started thinking of writing that book,
00:07:49
Speaker
One morning i woke up and I had the beginning of the Timaeus in my mind, ice i sort of, you know, there was something like two or three lines in poetry, in verse, dancing in my head, and they were in English, not in Italian. So I scribbled them down and left it at that.
00:08:11
Speaker
and At the time, i was corresponding very intensely with Michael Longley, the great Irish, or Anglo-Irish poet from Belfast, a great poet, I think, And i sent I sent those three lines to Michael, who had been in Rome only a month before, two months before. I said, Michael, I don't know what this is, but it it seems like two or three lines of English poetry.
00:08:37
Speaker
But you are the poet, so you can you can tell me what they are. And he replied, oh, but this is ah He had no idea i was a poet. And I had no idea I was a poet, of course. um ah Because you, the last time...
00:08:52
Speaker
But prior to that moment, you hadn't written written poetry since your like twenty s right? Something like that? Well, since and not since I was an adolescent. I mean, I discovered, discovered it remembered at one point that I had written poetry at the age of, say, 16 or 18. And I had indeed won a prize in school for poetry at that time.
00:09:15
Speaker
um But then nothing in between. So it was, what, 60, 50 or so years without writing poetry. at all, I think.
00:09:26
Speaker
And yet you experienced this sudden inspiration. it was yeah I mean, I read poetry, i always liked poetry, and I read a lot of it in all possible languages, or those that I could those that i knew anyway, and ah loved it, but never tried to, you know, maybe scribble the line or oh two or so, but I mean, I don't think so. I mean, I haven't found anything of the sort anywhere since after the age 18 or 20 at least.
00:09:53
Speaker
um So when Michael said, well, we try to you see if you can go on and and see what what happens. So I did and the thing became longer and longer. And then the ideas came and the ideas were coming at the same time for the other thing, the the scholarly book.
00:10:10
Speaker
and that that indicates that the two were progressing at the same at the same time, in a way, but that they were completely different, one from the other, although the subject was the same, because there are things you can you know you can say in a critical essay which you cannot say in poetry, and vice versa.
00:10:31
Speaker
You can treat the subject in poetry um in such a way that the critical materials may not be the background of it. um I had another friend, an Englishman, who was former professor of French at Oxford, whom I knew very well, Terence Cave.
00:10:48
Speaker
And ah I don't know why we were corresponding at the time. And I said, Terence, would you like to read some of the stuff that has come to my mind? Yes, of course. So I sent it to him while I wrote it said,
00:11:02
Speaker
and we said are
Philosophy: Truth & Beauty
00:11:04
Speaker
you writing a a book about this as well, I mean a critical book? I said, yes, I think I am. he said, so which one will come out first? And I said, I think the poet the the poetry thing will come out first. So he says, well, um no. I said, I said i think the critical book will come out before the poem. And he said, well, it means that the scholia come out before the actual poem to which they are, the scholia.
00:11:33
Speaker
I said, well, I think so. yeah in fact, it did it happened exactly like that. The critical book, I have it, but to fish it out now would mean that all these piles were four of lot, and it's too much for my broken wrist to manage. and the That came out after the actual poem.
00:11:55
Speaker
Remember that the poem was written in English and corrected. I mean, Terence Cave helped me and Michael Longley went over it and so on and so forth. Several friends were involved in in suggesting you know this or that avenue of history.
00:12:15
Speaker
proceeding and it had to be translated into Italian because there was no point in publishing an English poem in Italy. So I got a another friend who was a poet, a real he is a real poet, Paolo Febraro, and he decided to do the translation and introduction, so to be the editor, as it were, of that. Not only that, but he acted with the actual editor of the publishing house as ah as an intermediary and convinced him that this was worth publishing, which he did. and So in in spite of all this, the poem was ready before the the scholarly book and it came out first um in, I think, September 24, think. And the other one, the scholarly book, the Italian version of of Plato, of Timaeus in Paradise, came out only afterwards. And there is a difference between, again, the Italian version of that book and the English one, because every time you know somebody asks me to publish something afterwards in another language, I can't stay just happy with what I've done.
00:13:29
Speaker
Until then, i add something, I change this, I change that, Above all, i I add bits and pieces. The English version published by Princeton has quite a bit more than the Italian, um which is in a sense is ah quite important in fact. and in In that bit more, the the poem taught me what you know what to add how to do it and and and to what end as well.
00:13:58
Speaker
So this is the story, which is, ah you know, it's a mess in a sense, but it makes sense in my in my development, as it and as it were. And You must also understand, or the public must understand, that I was growing old ah at the same time. So every month or every you know ah year in between, I was growing older.
00:14:23
Speaker
So things developed quickly because my mind was still working quite it still is working quite fast. but ah But the awareness of not having the entire life... ahead of me, but only whatever it is that one can imagine at 75 or 76 was also present. So I wanted to do it you know, quickly. And in the end, we managed.
00:14:53
Speaker
yeah Well, it's ah it's a wonderful story that, you know, late in life, a sudden yeah urge to to write a poem and and the fact that it was, you know, in English, you know, rather than your your native like but your like native language, makes
Plato's Influence on Western Thought
00:15:10
Speaker
it all the more extraordinary. And then, of course, um I'm thinking about how it sort of reminds me of, I believe it was you Socrates, right? Who, late in life. Exactly, yes. nice I didn't actually, at the time, I wasn't aware of, I was aware, you know,
00:15:29
Speaker
sort of in in in the background background. But I wasn't aware that this was happening to me the same way as it happened to Socrates. that you know ah God was telling him, look, Socrates, now that you're old, before you die, you better compose some poetry. and But it it sort of worked the same way. yeah Now, I guess I would want to ask you if you have any reflections on these different modes of discourse, the the critical scholarly mode versus the poetic mode. And, you know, i mean, one question I guess I would have asked is that when you were writing the poem,
00:16:05
Speaker
Did you feel as though you were in the pursuit of truth as one might feel when writing a scholarly book? I feel as though it's clearly an inquiry seeking truth on some matter. Yeah. um When you were writing the poem, did you feel as though your eye was primarily on beauty or instead was it also sort of an inquiry into reality, into truth? So I'm kind of curious, yeah, how you... compare those. Yes. ah
00:16:36
Speaker
Well, I don't think I make any sort of major difference between truth and beauty. ah I sort of go by the way Keats went in the ode, um and truth is beauty, and beauty is truth, and that's all you need to know.
00:16:54
Speaker
ah And one of the things that helped me in that way was the the fact that that there was a famous American, rather Indian American physicist, Chanjaseka, who had written a book entitled Truth is Beauty.
00:17:10
Speaker
ah And this was a physicist. And in indeed, I had written her a book before that. Sorry, I better put this away, other otherwise everything would fall apart.
00:17:21
Speaker
m I had written a big book called Grande Racconto delle Stelle, The Great Story of Stars, literally, then came out in English with a different title. um And ah there I used Chandra's book and i become convinced that the end of the inquiry of truth and inquiry of beauty can proceed parallel ways or in fact in ways which are interlocked, as it were, one into the other. and
00:18:00
Speaker
So I wouldn't say that that was and that the depth the difference between the two. Of course, the beauty of ah in in science is a beauty which depends on mathematics and which has a beauty of its own to begin with. um but ah But the end of both seems to be to be the same, basically, that the cognitive route towards the supreme beauty and towards the supreme truth are the same. As a matter of fact, Plato, of course, for folk Plato, they're both transcendental, so they they come at the end of ah of that process in a sense and I would not basically see them as diverging but as being the same and indeed the language with which with which poetry speaks which is basically metaphorical imagery and so on ah is another way of pursuing the truth
00:18:59
Speaker
In this sense, I'm not so much platonic because Plato, of course, maintains that poetry basically is false, is a fable. But I am Aristotelian in that Aristotle, in the Poetics, ah fighting against Plato, says, well, poetry tells you the universal thing.
00:19:20
Speaker
you know and Whereas history, for instance, um tells you the particular, what Arcibriades did and when and so on. Whereas poetry will say, what Arcibriades might have done he proceeded along, etc. True. Aristotle understands poetry in a sense more than Plato.
00:19:43
Speaker
Plato makes poetry more. rather than than understanding i mean the understanding its mechanism, although he does too. but ah Aristotle understands how it works and I think he he's perfect in that respect and he talks about poetry not only in the poetics but also in the metaphysics at the very beginning when you know the the two ways of poetry and philosophy as it were are outlined and grounded, both grounded in wonder.
00:20:16
Speaker
and the Wonder is the basic thing from which everything starts. yeah and Yeah. and And so, you know, when it comes to the these two works, your sorority work and then this poem,
00:20:28
Speaker
I mean, the object of inquiry in a way, or the object that you're sort of pursuing is the Timaeus and its kind of afterlife and in the Western tradition, as you mentioned earlier. um And so ah maybe, yeah, maybe right now we could just talk a little bit. what what Why do you find the Timaeus so fascinating personally? And then also, yeah why do you think it exerts such a profound influence on the Western tradition? Well, The fact is that Timaeus contains everything that a philosopher of the of that time or of the early Middle Ages, for instance, would want a philosophical work to have.
00:21:14
Speaker
So it it has, you know... It talks about the creation of the world. It talks about the structure of the world. It has astronomy, physiology, mathematics, geometry, astronomy, absolutely everything.
00:21:30
Speaker
And that is one of the reasons why it it sort of was revered even then
00:21:39
Speaker
years as the source. It was the work in antiquity which was in one book, it was contained everything, so to speak. So you could read read that and you have an idea of what it means. Also, the fact is that the language of the Timaeus is so attractive. it you know It speaks, I was yesterday, i was just reading, or rereading for the umpteenth time, in fact, a passage, a famous passage from ah chapter 47. Let me see if I find it. if This is a Loeb edition with the English translation.
00:22:17
Speaker
and Yeah, I think it's here. where he talks about view, sight, as the the great um vision, in my view, is the cause of the greatest benefit to us, inasmuch as none of the accounts now given concerning the universe,
00:22:39
Speaker
would ever have been given if men had not seen the stars or the sun or the heaven. But as it is, the vision of day and night and of months and the circling years has created the art of number and has given us not only the notion of time, but also means of research into the nature of the universe. From this, we have procured philosophy in all its range, than which no greater boon ever has come or will come by divine bestowal unto the race of mortals.
00:23:10
Speaker
You see, I mean, this way of saying important things, it's just absolutely, it takes it takes you, it completely captures you from the very beginning, and goes on for several pages like this. This is Timaeus speaking, of course. And then at the end of that of that speech, he adds something, which is, ah you know, he's been talking about asked be vision, sight, eyesight.
00:23:32
Speaker
Now he talks about sound. ah Music too, insofar as it uses audible sound, was bestowed for the sake of harmony. And harmony, which has motions also to the revolutions of the soul within us, was given by the muses to him who makes intelligent use of the muses and is an aid to irrational pleasure, as is now supposed, both as an auxiliary to the inner revolution of the soul, where it has lost its harmony, to assist in restoring it to order and conquered with itself.
00:24:07
Speaker
So what he's saying is that we have In our mind, we have lots of revolutions, you know things yeah moderne like things know thoughts revolving around, ah and you know they become out yeah yeah come out as words as ah as ah sentences phrases and so and they are dictated by the muse. So the that um the harmony, the music that comes from in that speech is in fact the same as the structure of the of the mind, as the revolutions of the mind. Absolutely but perfect in a sense. and Whether it is true or not
00:24:46
Speaker
materially, we, of course, don't know. i mean, but it is intuitively true. And, uh, and people took it as true for, you know, over a thousand years, well, more than a thousand years, in fact, for, for almost 2000 years. Um, and,
Christianity & Classical Texts
00:25:02
Speaker
ah Add to this ah chance, add to this the fact that ah the Timaeus was the only dialogue of Plato which had been translated into Latin.
00:25:15
Speaker
And therefore, since only Latin survived in the West, the Timaeus translated into Latin was the only dialogue of Plato which survived in the West for over a thousand years. And that was...
00:25:28
Speaker
and that was purely the the working and the working of chance. And it was a miracle. and One could speculate whether it was providence, that actually some kind of providence that actually saved the Tremios rather than another one, you know.
00:25:46
Speaker
ah But it did happen like like that. ah And so it became standard. You started studying philosophy from the Timaeus. I have to get up because my legs are slightly nervous at the moment. Oh sure, yeah. I can move the yeah the screen, I think, and see okay yeah arrange it like that without having the computer. Yeah, okay.
00:26:11
Speaker
um Yeah, maybe maybe just briefly for the listeners, we could just um or I could just briefly go over some of the basics of the Timaeus just so that people kind of understand. um So it's basically it's like, i guess, like it's kind of starts, if I remember correctly, Socrates is asking for a kind of concrete example of an ideal city. And yeah,
00:26:34
Speaker
But then the conversation sort of shifts toward explaining the kind of the origin and the structure of the universe itself. And, um you know, there's this really important part where Timaeus kind of distinguishes between eternal reality, which, you know, what that which truly exists versus a kind of changing world that's becoming. And and that's a sort of metaphysical framework that's kind of behind the Timaeus. And then just to continue on real quick, you know, it's like, then he discusses a kind of good divine craftsman, a Demiurge who kind of orders the cosmos, but according to eternal models. And this makes the world rational. It makes the world beautiful. He makes the world as good as possible, this divine craftsman. And then, um and then just, yeah, another kind of interesting dimension of the Timaeus is the idea that
00:27:23
Speaker
The whole universe is actually a sort of living being with a soul yeah and it's structured mathematically. It's structured harmoniously. And then finally, just another point I wanted to, this quick five, you know, five step summary, that humans, bodies, perception elements, they're all explained as part of this ordered system.
00:27:46
Speaker
um Though, as you would emphasize, they're kind of described through, likely stories or there's sort of this blend of myth um in reason and And one of the kind of primary themes in your work, I guess, might be the necessity of myth, that sort of mythological and maybe in the broad sense of at least figurative, allegorical, metaphorical language,
00:28:15
Speaker
This is really um necessary at some level in our search for truth. and i I find that the fact that you were arguing that and then simultaneously a poem was sort of foisted upon you as if to confirm that, yes, that's right. It is necessary. And I will lay it upon you sort of in a forced way. At any rate. Yeah. So that I just think that. um Yeah. So yeah one of the key themes, if you i don't know if you want to talk about that, the idea of like. Yeah, well, myth is absolutely essential um to me, to Plato, who loves it and is at the same time, you know, disgusted in a sense by it. I mean Plato says, well, in the Republic, for instance, you can't have someone like Homer ah say that there are fights, the gods are fighting like
00:29:08
Speaker
like human beings, i mean we should be which is what happens in the Iliad. and This is obviously absurd. means a completely wrong idea of divinity and so on, which is true, of course. ah And so he says, well, out go the poets. They they have no place in the republic the ideal republic or ideal state. um Whereas Plato, of course, wanted to found a republic, a state based on philosophy, of which he would be the chief, of course, and so on. um
00:29:40
Speaker
A rather authoritarian kind of democracy, if you see. but and but True, of course. At the same time, he is, he Plato, is in love with myth. Of course, he creates his own myth. Okay, his own myths, more than one. um And he goes on and, you know, he... the theca the mythic cave, the the demurge, all these things are myths in many ways, his own. so they would sleep they would be actually likely, so they would be more probable, more realistic in a sense, that the word is wrong, realistic, but likely, likelihood is the the thing. um
00:30:24
Speaker
True. Then comes Aristotle, and who says, well, what is this crap about poets out of the Republic? This completely wrong. it's not but But he's saying, well why do you have to chase poets out of the of the state? Poets are as good as philosophers, and poetry is better than history. Actually, it's more serious. and you know He uses, fact, that word, serious. More serious and more philosophical than history.
00:30:54
Speaker
So that at that point, you you start thinking, well, um if Aristotle puts it like that, and Aristotle can see just a little bit more than Plato, you know, we are dwarves on the head on the shoulders of giants, and and therefore we are dwarves, but we see a bit a bit more because we stand on the shoulders of giants. and Aristotle stands on the shoulders of Plato, so he can actually see a little bit forward, head, And i also, when you follow the history of Platonism, and and not only Platonism, but let's say poetics and aesthetics, you find out that, for instance, the anonymous author of The Sublime, and who comes along in the first, second century AD, and you know is active in Rome, he writes in Greek, but he's actually active around Rome or in Rome itself. Well, he says, why is Plato sublime?
00:31:56
Speaker
guess I don't know. Is Plato sublime? Yes, of course he is. at But the anonymous of the sublime says he Plato is sublime because he wants to buy with Homer.
00:32:08
Speaker
He wants to be Homer. So he writes he writes his stuff to be better than Homer. And you start thinking, my God, he's right. He's right. I mean, he's writing poetry.
00:32:19
Speaker
ah Prose, of course, not poetry, but the prose is very artistic and very poetic, as it were, in in many ways. And Plato wants to be the Homer of philosophy. In a way, of course, he is, since everything in Western philosophy, as Whitehead said, is only a footnote to Plato. So he becomes the Homer of of philosophy. ah And ah people like the subsequent Platonists, Platonists like Broclus and so on, did see the fact that there were two strains in Plato, as in fact I go on to to see both in the poem and in the book, in the critical book. and you know There is ah a side to it which is Pythagorean in a sense, with all intuition and enthusiasm and mania and so on. which comes out in the iron and various other dialogues. and indeed in the Timaeus, and the other side, which is scientific, in inverted commas, because we cannot take science in antiquity to be exactly the same so thing as science in modernity, and the difference being made by by mathematics, basically. you know When Galileo comes along and says, well, the language of the universe, the language of science is ah mathematics,
00:33:46
Speaker
Well, that doesn't apply in antiquity, of course. simply they don't see They see the connection between harmony and and and physics, or but not the actual strict connection between between mathematics and physics or
Philosophical Ideas in Architecture
00:34:05
Speaker
whatever. So it this is extremely important in the in the tradition. You can adapt a lot.
00:34:11
Speaker
ah And it all comes basically comes from the Timers. Plus, there is another thing. um the Christians, when they come along when in the first century AD, well, at first they behave towards ah pagan antiquity and paganism in their own time.
00:34:33
Speaker
and as one would say the Taliban did only a few years ago, or perhaps still now, well, they destroyed it. You know you found it an ancient temple, out it goes. from You burn it, or and whatever. ah You burn the books, you burn the art, the sculpture, ah you break the sculpture into smithereens with hammers and things, which they did, monks did, um exactly like the Taliban.
00:34:59
Speaker
But then, after a while, the Christians themselves are taken aback by one fact is that the stories of paganism, the stories handed over by by the pagans like Homer, like Ovid, like Virgil, they're so damn beautiful.
00:35:19
Speaker
What can you do with them? I mean, you can't forget you know just completely. you You can't say, I you can't throw Homer to the dogs. For throwing out something so beautiful, that that would have to be a sin, So what have to do, What you can do is interpret that stuff allegorically and say that, as far as Ovid's metaphors, for instance, are concerned, that Daphne means fame. it doesn't yeah The erotic meaning of Daphne, which is sensational in Ovid, Well, you you you'd sort of push it a bit to the side because that is not really Christian. But if you say that Daphne is fame and that Apollo is he who seeks fame, well, then you can deal with it and you can still read the story, which is what you want to do, basically. So they then spend the next 10 centuries ah allegorizing Ovid or Homer or Virgil and and reading it and copying it.
00:36:23
Speaker
I mean, first they destroy the stuff. Then in the monasteries, they copy out the stuff.
00:36:30
Speaker
It's almost ridiculous, but that is the way it goes. you know and yeah There is a Renaissance every two centuries. We talk about the Carolingian Renaissance. the Ottonian Renaissance, the Renaissance of the 12th century, and finally when the Renaissance comes um comes along, you know in a shiment or the Renaissance of the 15th century, 15th, 16th, depending on where in Europe you are, well,
00:36:57
Speaker
you know That is the Renaissance where they say, well, everything that goes before us is dark ages. We are the Renaissance because we are going back to antiquity really seriously. We actually have the texts we've gone, get them you know get them into Constantinople, um and they are the real stuff, not just invented. well you know But you've had in the meantime, you've had three or four Renascences going on. So that even there, there is a kind of continuity um but between late antiquity antiquity.
00:37:34
Speaker
and early modernity, as it were. it's it's you know It's a strange sort of continuity because in some things it it simply does not happen.
00:37:45
Speaker
i mean, ah i always taught my students that if you try to go to the toilet in the Middle Ages, you you know you'd be absolutely horrified there was no toilet. at The standard of the of and hygienics and so forth in 4th century roman and his fourtht centurytutory Roman Empire. was only reached again in the late 19th century.
00:38:13
Speaker
So in between, no bathrooms, no showers, no no bathtubs, no toilets, no, you know. it was The world would have smelled a little bit different. Exactly. It was completely... People don't realize, because it wasn't just a question that there was no light, no electric electricity, and no gas, no stoves, no dear but but in fact, it was as basic as that. I mean, you went... You walked the streets into which they threw from up their their dwellings. God knows what they threw. mean, we know perfectly well what they threw threw down to the street. and You walked on that.
00:38:53
Speaker
And so illnesses, plagues, all sorts of things, you know, ah and Now, this is not philosophy, of course. Strangely in enough, philosophy continued to be thought or elaborated, even in this complete mess.
00:39:10
Speaker
It was like building... basziuss or churches, and beautiful ones, depending on which style, but I mean, still whatever Romanesque or Gothic.
00:39:22
Speaker
and you know they They were absolutely wonderful churches, like temples, Greek and Roman temples had been before. So the tradition was beauty again. And and and philosophy at times, or even even mysticism, anticipated the the the kind of rules that would um and what rules that would dictate the way of building new churches. An example is...
00:39:54
Speaker
ah xji Abbot Sujet in Saint Denis, who followed dionysus hyeropragi or pseudo-d Dionysius, in his aesthetic criteria. He wanted to build a church that was as beautiful as what? As what Dionysius has said in philosophy, or rather, not just philosophy, but mystical philosophy, you know which is incredible.
00:40:18
Speaker
um But they did. um And then, of course, Rome was a different case because in Rome they went on building the same kind of church for at least 1400 years from the very, you know, Constantine, the basilicas, all the way to the end of the Middle Ages and then the Renaissance. Basically they did not change. They're still, they were still the same and they're still the same today. The you know the the the structure of a church will be like that, Latin cross, with you and so on. and so forth There's a beautiful book by Krauthimer called Rome 1314 to 1314, which proves that sort of constant pattern.
00:41:02
Speaker
thirteen fourteen which you know proves that sort of constant constant pattern And so you become aware that things go on for a long time. and It is a long-duré discourse that you are that you are following and that you are trying to reconstruct the various byways and and you know ah branches, as it were, time.
00:41:30
Speaker
in time <unk> It's interesting you bring up the architecture because um it almost seems like the the architect was striving to be like the Demiurge of of the Timaeus in the sense of you know he's going to build according to mathematical
Dionysius the Areopagite's Impact
00:41:47
Speaker
standards.
00:41:47
Speaker
rules and ratios um he maybe even wants the the structure of the church itself to be like a a little microcosm of the whole whole cosmos and that idea of the microcosm macrocosm is a time and idea and then just in general i mean it seems like a key i don't know how you would describe the aesthetics of i mean that's this is one of the key you know Another key theme in your work is kind of the aesthetics of Timaeus. What kind of aesthetic outlook does the Timaeus provide? But it seems like one of them is beauty is is profoundly connected to order, to structure in harmony among among parts. And... But yeah, anyway, the Timaeus is kind of made visible in a lot of these these medieval architectural achievements, I suppose. Yeah, there's no doubt. And even more so, of course, when it comes to the Renaissance, except that it isn't just the Timaeus in that case. it It becomes more mixed up with the Roman architecture, which they are uncovering.
00:42:50
Speaker
than in the 15th century and so on. But I mean, basically the idea is that harmony, that order and arm harmony are the supreme criteria in in that respect.
00:43:00
Speaker
One must also remember, though I don't do so in the sort of book in a book, but that when There's the other influence, which is Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, of course, when you say, well, Thomas says, pulcra sunt que visa placent, what is beautiful is what what pleases one.
00:43:22
Speaker
So he introduces the the psyche and the feeling, the reaction of the feeling. When then the criteria ah for beauty, which which is ah almost scientific in Thomas, you what what are the criteria? Well, integritas, consolancia, and claritas. So integritas, they must be whole, you know, whole things.
00:43:45
Speaker
Consonancia, they must be in harmony with each other. And claritas, they must be clear and full of light, as it were. ah Now this is pseudo-Aristotelian or post-Aristotelian aesthetics, which goes all the way to the 19th century, to Joyce, for instance, in the portrait of an um to Stephen Daedalus.
00:44:09
Speaker
But that is very important in the Middle Ages and then later, of course. ah Whether they acknowledge the Aristotelian sort of ancestry of all this doesn't really matter, but but that is what they want.
00:44:23
Speaker
And ultimately... It even agrees with ah with oh oh here we are with with the Plato as well, um except that Plato goes there in different ways, i mean it reaches that point in different ways. um One story which got me in writing both ah books, ah both works, let's say, it was the story of Dionysius the Arapagite,
00:44:54
Speaker
um I don't know if you if you got that, but it's ah it's a marvelous story. In fact, its it's ah it's a novel or a romance. You provide a great summary of it too, the extraordinary life of Dionysius the Areopagite. And the fact is that this man, Dionysus, of whom we have no reason to doubt, because Paul mentions it, belhaer the Acts of the Apostles mentions mentions it him, when Paul goes to Athens and tries to convert the Athenians,
00:45:32
Speaker
ah They all listen to him very carefully and fine and fine until he gets to the point of explaining about the resurrection of the flesh. Then they live in disgust because, you know, the resurrection of the flesh, when you have the word logos, I mean, you can't apply for for Greek thought. This is complete blasphemy. You can't have thought resurrected, you know, in the flesh. um But two people, they all go away. all the all the people the public to whom, to to which Paul is preaching, ah leave the Agora, except two remain, one is this Dionysus and one is a woman. And Dionysus in due course becomes the Bishop of Athens, and which perhaps it's true.
00:46:20
Speaker
Now, this would be, ah ph chronologically speaking, in the years between say 50 and 60 AD, before Paul comes to Rome, all right. ah Then Dionysius quarrels with his colleagues in Athens, and this is where the legend starts of course. He goes away and comes to Rome, where he finds he finds himself with the Pope. They they become friends, Clement.
00:46:49
Speaker
and They become good friends, but Clement immediately dispatches him to Gaul, to France, you know on a mission to convert the French, the Gauls, in fact.
00:47:02
Speaker
And he goes, and as soon as he arrives, he's captured by by the Gallic priests and and condemned to death and indeed beheaded. and All right. So he becomes a martyr. But what happens to him is that he picks up his head from the ground and walks for hundreds and hundreds of yards or meters, whatever, to the place where the future basilica of Saint-Denis will be built, so just outside Paris.
00:47:33
Speaker
And there, eventually, he is buried. and eventually the basilica is built. now Several centuries later. Now more or less, second century, yeah right?
00:47:48
Speaker
So there's an enormous gap because from the years 50, 60, we are now in the years, let's say, 150. but it's all fictional. Suddenly, in the 6th century AD, somebody, presumably in Syria, pretending to be Dionysus the Agrippagite, writes a series of treatises, mystical treatises of in in Christian terms, in Greek. And he says, well, I um i was there at the resurrection. was there.
00:48:20
Speaker
I'm a witness, an apostolic witness. um So he sends his, or he or his his group, send the writings to the Greek fathers, and they sort of, you know, talk about this for a while, and then they decide that they are fine, that they are orthodox, and they take the stuff as true and true patristic writings, I think. And they call him Dionysius the Arapagite, the way he calls himself.
00:48:49
Speaker
now and We are now in the 6th century AD, so with four centuries in between or more. um And this is in Greek, and not in Latin. Though the the West knows about this, I mean, they know that there is this incredible,
00:49:04
Speaker
you know fervor of attention to these mystical writings, but they have no way of following it because it's in Greek and then nobody knows Greek anymore in the West.
00:49:14
Speaker
ah Until suddenly, in the 8th century, the emperor Constantinople decides to send a copy of all the Dionysian writings to the king of the Francos, the the French, who are in fact the Franks, right who are still half barbarian. you know And sends a manuscript,
00:49:36
Speaker
and the king the French king, Beglade, immediately asks his abbot of Saint-Denis to translate the stuff into into Latin. And Hildebert, that's his name, aided by certain a number of people does it.
00:49:56
Speaker
The translation is not exactly beautiful, but it you can work a little bit. um At least you can try to understand it. But it is obviously extremely important because 50 years later, less than 50 years later, John's Codus Eriogena does another translation and John Scotus knows Greek better than Hildebert um and writes on it as well. And and so there's a new story, which is a story of Dionysius, which is sort second Christian Plato, as it were, in the West and between 800 and 1400.
00:50:33
Speaker
Yeah, 1400. yeah voting hundred I don't know how many translations and commentaries on Dionysius come out in Western Europe, just in all languages, basically Latin, of course, but also in vernacular languages, in england in England, for instance. So it's an astonishing story um until, finally, Marsilio Ficino, a humanist, a great humanist, in fact, does translate the translation of the entire mystical corpus of Dionysus, the same way he'd done with Plato, of course.
00:51:10
Speaker
Yeah, mean yeah it's it's a um you have ah actually a few wonderful poems. one of them quite humorous going over uh, or section, sorry, there's a few wonderful sections of your extended poem, Plato's poem that deal with Dionysius. And one of them is actually quite, um, humorous about the adventures of the the three Dionysi. Um, but another one I found, uh, is quite beautiful. Let me see. What was the name of this one? Because there's a few. Yeah, there's a chapter in in in your poem called Dionysius Sings of Beauty. And I don't know, would you ah be willing to to read perhaps the final stanza of it? I think, let me see here.
00:51:59
Speaker
Dionysius Sings of Beauty starts at page 130 and then ah it goes on for quite a while. and Yeah, maybe we can read some of the one that stanza that begins, Timaeus and Boethius chant.
00:52:14
Speaker
Timaeus and Boethius chant through Dionysius. Creative cause, the beautiful is also the final cause, the God of all things, since it is a longing for beauty, that brings them into existence.
00:52:30
Speaker
Even non-being shares this beauty because if you apply non-being transcendentally to God as a denial of all things, it is itself beautiful and good, the one, the good, the beautiful.
00:52:43
Speaker
Following Proclus now, Dionysus would never stop singing beauty. Europe, listening, experienced fire and eventually thought beauty was to save the world.
00:52:56
Speaker
But some, like Sujet, abbot of Saint Denis, tried to translate the flame into high walls aspiring to the sky and multi-colored light filtered by the windows.
00:53:08
Speaker
pointed arches, the space enchanted of his new church. And that is the end, I think, of that section. The next chapter, or next canto, as it were, is on John's Cotus Eugenia, who is the continuator and interpreter of Dionysius. But you know there's a a section before, when still in the Dionysius section, where i you know I quote a passage, of course in English, but a passage which in the Greek is so close to what Plato says in the symposium that what he's doing is simply putting in from the symposium bu from into his own writing.
00:53:50
Speaker
and that's why it is so, one of the reasons why it is so attractive to people in the Middle Ages. They don't know that it is the symposium, but it is amazing. yeah yeah Yeah, yeah yeah and in in terms of the You know, the resonances, connections between um the Timaeus and Dionysius. I mean, I guess we could point out some just some basic things, you know, God being the source of order and beauty in the world. I think both would agree on that. Both would agree. that there's a kind of participation, you know, in Timaeus, the world is understood to be in an image of an eternal model. And, and I think that kind of corresponds in some sense to Dionysus saying that all beings participate in God and kind of, you we flow from God in some sense. And then of course the idea of a hierarchical structured cosmos, you know, Dionysus is famous for that. And you also find that in the Timaeus with there being sort of ah levels of being. Yeah.
00:54:52
Speaker
And then, you know, maybe we could talk about, maybe we'd park on this idea that the world is made beautiful, according to the Timaeus, because God is good. God, the Demiurge, is good. And so, of course, he would make a beautiful world. It's like, why would a good, loving, not envious God make anything but a beautiful world? And and then in Dionysius, you know, beauty is, yes, it's a it's ah it's a cause. It's it's it's an efficient, it's a formal, it's a final cause in this world. And so, um I don't know. And then, I mean, I guess just really quick, I wanted to say it in some ways, it seems like in terms of giving beauty a privileged role in your metaphysics, it seems like you can't really surpass Dionysius. I mean, yeah.
00:55:43
Speaker
I either Plato or Dionysius is. Yeah, it's just, I mean, he's the greatest friend of beauty you could imagine, i suppose, in
Aesthetics: Platonic & Christian Fusion
00:55:52
Speaker
the whole tradition. So, um yeah, anyway, I don't know if you have any thoughts about it. No, no, I mean, it's clear that, well, the Platonic tradition, whether in Plato himself at the beginning or later in Plotinus,
00:56:07
Speaker
and Plotinus is a great interpreter of beauty, of course, and perhaps even better than Dionysius in many ways. and Plotinus is extraordinary and he dictates... well, he dictates is the wrong word, but inspires the whole aesthetics of medieval Byzantium, for instance. you know It's completely Plotinian in many ways.
00:56:32
Speaker
um and And then Dionysus. Yeah, I mean, these are the top the tops of of that. and and There's what something I want to say about the ideal, because they're talking they all are talking about the ideal of beauty, but then beginning with Plato, you know.
00:56:51
Speaker
now Whereas Aristotle, who will not talk about beauty as such, the kalos or the kalon, he's interested in poetry, yes, and rhetoric, yes, but not not exactly the beautiful.
00:57:08
Speaker
um So when you're talking about we're talking about an ideal beauty. Now, between that and the actual reality of the world, obviously there is a difference. We do experience the ugly or ugliness or you know moral turpitude and and so on and so forth.
00:57:28
Speaker
Yes, but they would say, you know leave that behind. you you you want to go you want to go to the other side. You want to to proceed on that road. You don't want to proceed on the road to ugliness.
00:57:40
Speaker
um You don't want to become ugly. You want to become beautiful. True. So they would they would point out the various roads that lead um to ideal beauty.
00:57:54
Speaker
um And this becomes akin to what Christianity does, though Christianity doesn't speak of beauty as such, but it tells you, of you know, it it shows you a way of getting closer to God, shrugging off sin and becoming, you know, purer and purer time goes on, as you go up under this this this ladder, as it were, towards towards God. So this is this makes of of Platonism and Neoplatonism the sort of natural ally
00:58:28
Speaker
and of the church and of Christianity as such. And that is extremely important. So there is one hand the fact that you know Genesis can be interpreted by way of the Timias. On the other there's the fact that you can apply Platonic or Neoplatonic criteria to the assizes of Christianity. And, you know, that that makes makes incredible success, I think. And that that is me still, in a sense, appealing to us in different ways from from the from what it was in the 15th century or or or before.
00:59:09
Speaker
and But that's why Heisenberg, for instance, or or whitehall Whitehead, still think Plato's images in the Timaeus are in a sense more yeah are closer because they are elastic. They're having geometry ah at at its base, like the triangles, the circles, and so on. Well, they can be used by modern science. You can't do the same with Aristotelian science, which is fixed, not elastic at all. it's just you know You either dismiss it the way Galileo did,
00:59:46
Speaker
ah or you accept it and then you you stop before going into modern science. and that's I think that's a way of seeing it, I think, but it's possibly you know true, historically at least. and yeah Yeah, yeah it's it's fascinating your discussion of Heisenberg's reflection yeah reflections on Timaeus and his appreciation of the Timaeus. And maybe we could touch on that in a moment. i I wanted to, you know, since you brought up the the the integration of Platonism in Christian, sort of a Christian form of thinking, in aesthetics specifically, I i kind of wanted maybe we could bring up the lilies of the field. That's oh one ah one of my favorite parts of your book is talking about, you know, what are the most important, you know, biblical
01:00:40
Speaker
What are the key aspects of the biblical Testament, at least the New Testament biblical account of beauty? And one of them is certainly the lilies of the field where Jesus suggests that these lilies surpass even Solomon in glory. And, you know, what this suggests is that beauty is already present in ordinary nature. Right. Uh, and it's not just in a higher, higher realm. And, and so someone who, you know, misunderstands Plato and thinks that, Oh, Plato, his thing is, um, he rejects the world as ugly and says that we should abandon it for, you know, the higher beauty, you know, you might, if you think that's what Plato is saying, then you would think, know, the lilies of the field doesn't sit well with that. But in fact, you know, you know, it's such, um,
01:01:26
Speaker
It just seems like what you one thing that you extract from the Timaeus, at least my reading of your work, is the Timaeus provides an excellent way of balancing both an eye toward higher beauty, something that's transcendent and beyond, and that maybe is ineffable and that we can't fully grasp.
01:01:45
Speaker
you know and And in Dionysius, it's God itself is is beautiful. But on the other hand, the Timaeus provides a way of thinking about the world where, no, it is beautiful precisely because it is an image of the higher world. So anyway, it seems like it ah it provides a way of, yeah, saying that the lilies of the field are beautiful, but then on the other hand, pointing a sire simultaneously.
Reflections on Biblical Beauty
01:02:10
Speaker
Yes, yes, yes.
01:02:11
Speaker
Yes, and and guys the biblical strain in the in the both in the poem and in the scholarly book, as it were, is very important because it always it came to to me years and years ago when I visited Jerusalem and other places. mean, I'm a Roman and therefore...
01:02:35
Speaker
somehow a Roman Catholic, so not quite a complete Roman Catholic. But when you're here, you can't not be influenced by what you see and you know live in that culture, in a sense.
01:02:49
Speaker
um So there is a, there was, i had a problem figuring out the beauty of the Bible to begin with the Old Testament, of course, because it had always been denied. Beauty is not important in the Bible, you know, said people. um What is important is the message, salvation and so on and so on ah But beauty is in the Bible, damn it. It is there. And, you know, ah it's not just enough to say, well, beauty is in the legs of the runner who runs bringing news to new tidings to Jerusalem. No, it's not just that. But, you know, when Rachel and... ah
01:03:32
Speaker
Rebecca and so on are ah are called beautiful. yeah It means beautiful. I mean, they might not be as beautiful as Helen, perhaps, because they don't insist i mean they on that, but they are beautiful, comely, comely. mean, it's it's a form of grace.
01:03:51
Speaker
and when What struck me, and in fact in the book is very much, in the poem it's very much emphasized, is you know when Jekyll first sees Rachel, he's just completely struck. When we did launch this book last year, and of the poem, Stephen Greenblatt read, the Rachel and Jacob um bit and he read it very well and got an open applause as he was reading because it is a a crucial moment when you know Rachel is beautiful and that's why Rachel, sorry, Jacob loves her. you know prefers her to Leah. And of course, he's tricked by by by Laban and has to lie with Leah first. But anyway, the the beauty is what strikes him.
01:04:43
Speaker
um And ah that is you know beauty in the flesh. you You cannot represent human beings or God in human form in and synagogues. so It's the same thing as in in mosques later. You cannot have you know paintings like that, like we have in our churches. and But the beauty is there all the same. I mean, the texts, when you read the texts, of people must have reflect you know must have thought, my goodness, there is beauty in Rachel and Ruth and know and so on. goes all the way down. and
01:05:22
Speaker
And then Jesus comes along, and although he doesn't talk about the beauty of women, he says, well, what about the beauty of the flowers, the field, you know?
01:05:32
Speaker
And that is even more integral, in a sense, more, you know it goes to the substance of things. seems If flowers are better than Solomon and in all its glory, well, then, you know, beauty is there. Beauty is is available to all of us in the flowers of the field.
01:05:52
Speaker
And that is, you know, it's extremely important indeed. Indeed. Perhaps, so you know, i want to be sensitive to your time here, but maybe we could We could close by reading chapter the eight of um from your poem. It's the Jacob song for Rachel's Beauty, the one that you yes you mentioned, Stephen. Stephen Green-Gatred, yes. yeah's um I don't believe it's too long to read the whole one. No, it's actually manageable. I mean, we did it in the, yeah, here it is. We did it at Academia de Lincey.
01:06:28
Speaker
um in in Rome and think Stephen did the English and Paolo Febrara, the poet, who was also a translator in the Italian, but no, it's not too long. yeah wonderful It's entitled, this is some canto, as it were or number eight, or or episode number eight, Jacob's Song for Rachel's Beauty.
01:06:53
Speaker
Rachel, my love, Rachel, my lamb, I was dead tired when I got to Haran and saw the well from afar. and men lying about, surrounded by sheep and breeding goats, doing nothing. They said, no, Rachel is coming.
01:07:11
Speaker
i didn't care. I thought the flock more important. The day was long. There would be time still for the sheep to graze. Then you were there, you, the shepherdess girl, enchanting, overpowering. It was as if lightning struck me, as if through my body to the ground for suddenly I became ten men strong and lifted the stone on top of the well.
01:07:39
Speaker
By myself, Rachel. no one helped. And I kissed you and burst out in tears. You were gone in an instant, Rachel, running home on your girl's legs, thin as a flower's stems, a gazelle fleeing with the wind, calmly of forms, calmly of looks, Rachel. You were beauty herself in my eyes, and I loved you then forever.
01:08:05
Speaker
Some people say we wandering shepherds of Asia don't know what beauty is. We aren't civilized enough. We sheep of among our sheep can only conceive beauty as the messenger's feet running over the mountains to bring tidings of peace and announce the reign of God.
01:08:23
Speaker
But wasn't it a shepherd migrating through Asia Wasn't it my father's father, who first looked at the stars, the innumerable gold pins and white knots twinkling at night? Wasn't it Abraham, who came from Ur with the Chaldean passion for the dancing spheres, who sings to the heavens, they tell God's glory, and the sky declares his handiwork? Like the plaidies, your eyes, my Rachel, shine like doves through the screen of your dresses.
01:08:55
Speaker
A scarlet thread, your lips, your breasts like two fawns, twins of a gazelle grazing among the lilies. Twice, seven years, i served for you.
01:09:08
Speaker
Twice, seven years. And you were lovelier at the end, my lamb, than when I first saw you, as he, at the right time, makes everything beautiful.
01:09:19
Speaker
My bride, finally. My bride, comely of the comeliest in figure and looks. Happiness was that, tenderness renewed every day and night, love without end.
01:09:32
Speaker
You died, daed Rachel, dearest, giving birth to our child too early. I kissed your lips and burst out weeping.
01:09:43
Speaker
So that is the the sort of story of Rachel summed up in a few, say, 50 lines or so, maybe bit more. But I think I wanted to... write it in ah in a sort of neutral but moving way so that people would reflect what is the beauty of race? What effect does it does it have? ah Well, if it's moving, then you know if it's important as as important as the beauty of the sea that Longinus sings earlier on, well then it must be obviously relevant. you know
01:10:21
Speaker
um and And it is, I think. and Then this has a some reflection at the end. What I call the ah appendices were added afterwards, the jim agony of the gaudy the dying goal and the muse, Polymnia. were added at the end after I finished the poem. But as as the two summarizing, but the beauty the beauty of Polymnia is the beauty of Rachel and and so on. you know the The agonizing goal is the the agony of the of the ah ancient world, all of it, you know the representation representations
01:11:06
Speaker
um it it did of ah of beauty in spite of the of the grief, in spite his dying. So do you actually make beauty out of dying?
01:11:19
Speaker
and you know It's a terrible thing to to do, but they did, and and we do too, of
Recent Publications & Reception
01:11:26
Speaker
course. and it you I think it's essential. we we think We think we have extended the field of beauty, but they they did that in the third century BCE, that statue. The first Hellenistic then translated be done by the Romans later on. so Well, Piero, you've written really a beautiful scholarly work and also a genuinely beautiful poem in my eyes. So thank you so much for reading some of it i'll thank you writing it. And thank you so much for joining me today to discuss it. Thank you. well I've written more afterwards. that Oh, wonderful. Quite a bit. just In fact, one thing has just come out, ah a shorter poem, fortunately, not as long as I'm entitled, The Five Elements. I'll show it to you just a second. and I'll pick it up.
01:12:23
Speaker
There it is. and that is a um and In fact, it does have a preface by Stephen Grimblatt, Oh, great. you know need So you wrote that in English as well? Yes, yes. i' For some reason, I have now taken that route. Wonderful, yeah. In English and and the rest in Italian. I'm not complaining, so...
01:12:47
Speaker
No, no, and this, unlike the first one, this actually came out with a major, in fact, the biggest publishing house in Italy in a very famous series entitled called Lo Specchio, where all the great poets of the 20th century, like Montale and Ungerich, were published. So I don't know what success or echo my like and It will have, but at least it's it's there. And we'll see the reviews when they come out. yeah
01:13:23
Speaker
Anyway, it's I think that the people who who have read it so far have found it fascinating. But and I haven't seen reviews yet. So but it's early for reviews. I liked, I had a great fun writing it. Oh, good, yes. on And pain at the same time. but yeah but Well, I look forward to reading. i mean if I'm going to find a way to get my hands on it. so maybe you'll have Yes, you can you find it. I think you'll find it in on Amazon, on amazon um possibly even the American one, and though it will be more difficult to get. but Yeah. if i Sometimes you will send it on to the American Amazon. awesome That's right, yeah. there's There's a way you can, even if
01:14:07
Speaker
<unk> You're normally using the American Amazon. you can i think here there's a way you can get yourself onto the Italian one. So maybe that's what I'll often jump into that stream and then and and catch it that way. but's Wonderful.
01:14:19
Speaker
Well, thank you thank you again, Pierre. really appreciate it. Thank you. And good luck with you everything. And I hope we'll be in touch. I have to get rid of this thing first and start using my hand again.