What is mimesis, then, as defined according to the paradigm of mousikē? The first explicit mention of both terms occurs simultaneously, in book 2, in the transition from “the city of sows” towards “the city of luxuriousness.” This feverish city will be “gorged with a bulky mass of things, which are not in cities because of necessity—all the hunters and imitators (mimetai), many concerned with figures and colors, many with music (mousikē)” (373b). Mousikē reappears shortly after (376e), introducing the long
discussion about the education of the guardians. These must be properly reared so as to be “philosophic, spirited, swift, and strong,” (376c) and presumably the best means to accomplish this is the traditional paideia: mousikē for the soul, firstly, and gymnastics for the body. In stating the primacy of mousikē, Socrates also expresses a crucial aspect of mimesis as the capacity of something—not yet a person but always already a person—to become like its model.
It is a question of beginnings, and mousikē must be first: “Don’t you know that the beginning is the most important part of every work and that this is especially so with anything young and tender? For at that stage it is most plastic, and each thing assimilates itself to the model (enduetai tupos) whose stamp anyone wishes to give to it” (377b). This point is repeated in similar forms throughout books 2 and 3. Without actually mentioning it, onto-typology—a hylemorphic mimetology according to which a shapeless, feminized matter is imprinted by an ideal form, a type—is here in full, including the idea of the mind, but also the body, as being imprinted by a model, a type (tupos).34 The relation between mimesis and habits is explicitly mentioned in a similar
passage in book 3: “Or haven’t you observed that imitations (mimeseis), if they are practiced continually from youth onwards, become established as habits (ethē) and nature, in body and sounds and in thought?” (395d).
34 Lacoue-Labarthe develops this description of onto-typology in his reading of Heidegger in
The Myth of/at the Origin(al)—Platonic Metamorphoses 79 This passage, which appears in the course of the discussion of the types of
discourse, lexis, appropriate for poetry (mimetic, diegetic, and mixed), considers mimesis as a performance, as an enactment made by the poet, which has effects on the constitution of the body of the listeners and his own. Notably, it is not restricted to young children anymore, it is considered as having effects from “youth onwards,” that is, on anyone who engages in mimetic performances, most crucially the guardians and well-educated men.
More importantly, the passage combines three apparently different aspects of mimesis: (i) The process of plastic formation in education; (ii) The difference between diegetic or direct narration and mimetic narration or lexis; (iii) The effects that
performing mimetic poetry has on the actors and listeners, of “becoming others,” that is, like the models they imitate. In this third sense, especially, there is no distinction between actors and listeners with regards to mimetic effects. In all cases, mimesis is defined as a potentially unbound contagious performance, an affective communication that not only persuades but that also shapes and transforms the listener’s soul and body according to a model. In close connection here are the magicians and enchanters, even Socrates himself according to the Symposium, a better musician than the satyr Marsyas—whose
instruments will be soon shunned from the ideal State—and a magician, a pharmakeus. (Recall that book 2 opens by Socrates complaining that Thrasymachus had been
enchanted too soon).35
While stated here as a prohibition, this definition of mimesis grants it powerful capacities. It determines the plasticity of the human body and soul to be boundless, to be able to take on the character, the imprint, of diverse types of people, and even of “horses neighing, bulls roaring, the crashing of the sea, thunder,” and so on (396b). By defining the limits of mimetic performance, Plato hints at a dangerous, multifarious mimesis in need of control. Crucial to this control is the axiom about the division of labor in the ideal State, which is directed at imitators and sophists as well and which organizes a whole
35 On the relation between music and magic in Plato, see Moutsopoulos, La musique, 13-17. This taxonomy, of course, is not exhaustive. It can be compared, however, to the one advanced by Else as presented in chapter 1, above.
political economy, a political economimesis. In any case, mimesis passes from being simply a problem of education or epistemology to being a problem of political economy in the widest sense.
After discussing the parts of mousikē that concern “speeches and tales” (logos te kai muthos, 398b7), Socrates and Glaucon set out to do the same for “song and melody” (odes kai melon, 398c1-2). Unlike the previous discussion, the legislation of the
“musical” aspects of mousikē is taken up under a veil of ignorance. Socrates initially assumes that “everyone could by now discover what we have to say about how [song and melody] must be if we’re going to remain in accord (sumphonesein) with what has already been said.” But we shouldn’t be misled to think that this presumes that the association of musical modes and types of behavior was common sense in ancient Greece. Laughing out loud, Glaucon replies that he shouldn’t be included amongst “everyone”: “At least I’m not at present capable of suggesting what sort of things we must say. However, I’ve a suspicion” (398c). As it turns out, Glaucon, unlike Socrates, is trained in music, and so it will depend on him to legislate what modes and rhythms are to be accepted in the city.
Mousikē, as presumably everyone in Athens knew, “is composed of three
things—speech (logos), harmonic mode, and rhythm.” For Socrates, sung speech doesn’t differ from speech that isn’t sung, insofar as it must conform to the same models (tupoi) as had been discussed before. Harmonic mode and rhythm come to supplement logos, conforming to the same regulations, thus adding nothing, if not the suspicion that the previous regulation is not complete. If sung speech is the same as unsung speech, and if
mousikē in any case is always sung to musical accompaniment, then there should be no need for further regulation: it is the content of the tales, the nature of the models and the correctness of the imitation, which presumably distinguishes between good and bad mimesis. Why then should harmony and rhythm be regulated separately, yet still following what is said for logos?
This introduces further difficulties. When regulating the content of speeches, where it was the legislator’s role to know the models to which poetry should conform, Socrates had no trouble quoting passages from the poets and censoring what was
The Myth of/at the Origin(al)—Platonic Metamorphoses 81 inappropriate for the education of the guardians. In the discussion on song and melody, however, Socrates declares himself ignorant of music and must delegate to Glaucon:
(399a) I don’t know the modes. Just leave us that mode which would appropriately imitate the sounds and accents of a man who is courageous in warlike deeds and every violent work… (399b) And again, leave another mode for a man who performs a peaceful deed, one that is not violent (biaio) but voluntary (ekousia), either persuading someone of something or making a
request….(399c) These two modes—a violent one and a voluntary one (tautas
duo harmonias, biaion, ekousion), which will produce the finest imitation of the sounds of unfortunate and fortunate, moderate and courageous men—leave these.36
Socrates’s musical ignorance points to a crucial aspect of musical mimesis. As a
theoretician, as having something to contemplate, something with a visible aspect and an
eidos, he is perfectly happy to follow the dialogue wherever it takes him. With mousikē,
he posits his ignorance from the start instead of reaching it as an aporia. Concerning speech there was never any doubt as to the content of tales. The media of speech and bodily performance offer no distortion, no ambiguity. Insofar as the model is the correct one, its mimetic counterpart will be equally good or bad—speech places no mediation between model and copy. Thus, the only regulation to be made is according to good and bad models. In this case, imitation adds nothing, and its value depends entirely on the nature of the model. Rhythm and harmony, on the other hand, are multifarious and ambiguous. There is a multitude of modes and rhythms, and a multitude of instruments,
which are themselves “panharmonic” and “many-stringed.”37
Out of this multitude, only
36 Translation modified.
37 See the introduction to Part I of this dissertation. See also Richard Martin, “‘The Pipes are brawling’: Conceptualizing Musical Performance in Athens.” In The Cultures within Ancient Greek Culture: Contact, Conflict, Collaboration, (ed. Carol Dougherty and Leslie Kurke, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 153-81; Peter Wilson, “The Aulos in Athens” in Performance and Culture in Athenian Democracy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; Wilson, “Athenian Strings; Homeric Strings in Hellenistic Athens” in Wilson and Murray, eds. Music and the Muses: The Culture of “Mousikē” in the Classical
those corresponding to the two ideal temperaments for the guardians, a violent one and a moderate one, are to be preserved in the city. The founders don’t innovate in preferring the music and instruments of Apollo over those of Marsyas (399e). But how to choose them is not as easy. First, the modes are discussed as being something, e.g “the wailing
modes,” (tines oun threnodeis harmoniai, 399d1). Then, Socrates—who doesn’t know
them—asks Glaucon “what modes are soft and suitable for symposia,” and so on (398e9). Only later he asks about a mode “which would appropriately imitate the sounds and accents of a man who is courageous.” We see, then, in the course of the legislation itself, the ambiguity of musical mimesis and the challenges it poses: modes are, or are
appropriate for, or lastly imitate, different types of life and activity, but it is not so clear how this happens.
When turning to rhythms, Glaucon also ends up declaring himself incapable of seeing the correspondence between these and the types of life to which they presumably correspond. “But, by Zeus, I can’t say,” says Glaucon, “There are three forms out of which the feet are woven, just as there are four sounds from which all the modes are compounded—this I’ve observed and could tell. But as to which sort are imitations of which sort of life (opoiou biou), I can’t say” (400a). Socrates then defers to Damon, who is cited as the authority on musical knowledge: “Let these things be turned over to Damon. To separate them out (dielesthai) is no theme for a short argument” (400c).38
Here we find a general condition for the legislation of mousikē: the poets are ignorant of types, only the founders know them. Earlier, Adeimantus asked about the models [tupoi] for tales about the gods that would be allowed, and Socrates replied that, “we are not poets right now but founders of a city. It’s appropriate for founders to know the models according to which the poets must tell their tales. If what the poets produce goes counter to these models, founders must not give way; however, they must not themselves make up tales” (379a).
Athenian City. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Eric Csapo, “The Politics of the
New Music” in idem.
38 On the historical as well as the Platonic figure of Damon see Robert Wallace, “Damon of Oa: A Music Theorist Ostracized?” in Murray and Wilson, eds.; Tosca Lynch, “A Sophist ‘in disguise’: a reconstruction of Damon of Oa and his role in Plato’s dialogues”, Études platoniciennes, 10, 2013. Web. Access Oct 29, 2015.
The Myth of/at the Origin(al)—Platonic Metamorphoses 83 If mimesis in speech is transparent, the copy being no obstacle to understand the nature of the model, musical mimesis is the opposite, but in a baffling way. Musical modes and rhythms correspond to modes of life, but this correspondence is entirely opaque. This depends, on the one hand, on the “indistinction” between subject and object as Havelock presented it. Further, as Séline Gülgönen argues, modes and rhythms are inseparable from the things they are presumed to be copies of. Gülgönen joins scholars like Anne Wersinger in arguing that Greek experience tends not to differentiate between the sense and the sensible that is used to perceive it, such that, for example, the term akoè
means both the audible, the organ of hearing, and that which is heard.
In the Cratylus, Laws and book 3 of the Republic, the use of genitives and adjectives (as in “the wailing modes” threnodeis harmoniai, Rep. 3.398e1; or “these two modes—a violent one and a voluntary one” tautas duo harmonias, biaion, ekousion, Rep. 3.399c1) to account for the relation between modes, rhythms, and their models, indicate that models and rhythms confuse themselves with the affections (etats d’âme) that are presumed to be their models. Not, crucially, because there is any resemblance or similarity between affections and their musical forms, but because modes and rhythms are themselves affections.39
Beyond any distinction between essence and appearance, then, mimesis is defined as a potentially unbound contagious performance, an affective communication that not only persuades but that also shapes and transforms the listener’s soul and body. And it has the strongest effects on listeners, especially when they are young—when their souls and bodies are supple—but also later on.
If we still hold that they are “copies,” these are of a strange kind: they entirely duplicate and replace the model. The copy is no copy, for it does not clearly express its subordinate relation to the model, and hence escapes the regulation that had been made for logos. The interlocutors assume that modes imitate characters, types of life, but upon examination they find them to be indistinguishable; these modes imitate so well that they cease to imitate at all. If Socrates and the others were to approach the matter
“dialectically,” they would have to decide whether the relation between modes and types of life is conventional or by nature. But what shows the relation between them, the
signatura, as the Latin tradition will call them, is hidden—we don’t know the modes. This is the aporia that they do not reach, but presuppose. In either case (natural or conventiona), the modes cannot be sorted out, their divisions cannot be made evident through diairesis—they are irrational, neither conventional nor natural, and they can only be verified after their effects on listeners and performers make it evident. Instead, they are simply classed according to grace and gracelessness (euschemosyne kai
aschemosyne), a general categorization that groups them according to their shape, their schema (what in German is called Gestalt), or what they appear to be, and not truly according to their model, their type.
If the relation between modes and sorts of life isn’t clear, and if the effects of these are so dangerous for whoever engages in them, they should be a matter of serious concern, but Socrates does not want to hear of it. He resorts to a legislation based on an empirical and dogmatic classification, taken entirely from Damon, and to this previous regulation Socrates entrusts the rearing of guardians, who as children would learn to recognize in this way “what isn’t a fine product of craft or what isn’t a fine product of nature” (401e). Likewise, “when reasonable speech comes, the man who’s reared in this way would take most delight in it, recognizing it on account of its being akin” (402a). This affective familiarity with grace and gracelessness before the advent of logos is “the most sovereign rearing,” which repeats the idea of ethical education as a stamping of the soul mentioned before, “because rhythm and harmony most of all insinuate themselves into the inmost part of the soul and most vigorously lay hold of it in bringing grace with them; and they make a man graceful if he is correctly reared, if not, the opposite” (401e).40
I will return to this passage later for, it seems to me, this opinion on music gets modified through the dialogue, especially after the division of the soul, the definition of philosophy, and, most importantly, by the discussion of mimesis in book 10.
40 For music and education in Plato, see Moutsopoulos, la musique dans l’œuvre de Platon, 175 and ff; Moutsopoulos, “Beauté et moralite musicales: une initiative damonienne, un idéal athenien” and Anne Gabrièle Wersinger, “‘Socrate, fais de la musique!’ le destin de la paideia entre musique et philosophie” in Mousikè et Aretè, Malhomme and Wersinger, (eds).
The Myth of/at the Origin(al)—Platonic Metamorphoses 85
In fact, the issue of mousikē almost disappears as a concern in the dialogue after Glaucon, in book 7, recalls that music is the “antistrophe” of gymnastics, concerned with the education of the guardians “through habits, transmitting by harmony a certain harmoniousness, not knowledge, and by rhythm a certain rhythmicalness” (522a; emphasis mine). There is nothing in mousikē that orients itself towards what is, as philosophy must do. Unless, that is, we consider only harmony—and not the whole of
mousikē—as the “antistrophe” of the revised approach to astronomy that make up the third and fourth parts of the curriculum presented towards the end of book 7. Both are concerned with the logos behind the apparent motion of objects and “the movement of harmony” (enarmonion phoran, 530d). As part of the education of the ruling guardians, music will be approached only insofar as it is useful, as long as it rises towards problems, “to the consideration of which numbers are concordant and which not, and why in each case.” (530c).
This would be a good moment to turn to the famous opening of the Phaedo, where Socrates calls philosophy the highest kind of music (megistes mousikēs, Phaedo, 61a). However, I want to remain within the text of the Republic to consider the role of music in the course of the dialogue. After the passage on the curriculum of the guardians in book 7, lack of good musical education is mentioned only three times, always in connection to the different forms of corruption of the cities. Finally, mousikē appears only once in the important discussion of poetry and mimesis in book 10, a passage to