Picture, Image, and Subjectivity in Medieval Culture

Picture, Image, and Subjectivity in Medieval Culture
Author(s): Stephen G. Nichols

Source: MLN, Vol. 108, No. 4, French Issue (Sep., 1993), pp. 617-637
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Picture,
Image,
and
Subjectivity
in Medieval Culture
Stephen
G. Nichols*
Introduction
Had the role of the
image
been less central to medieval
culture,
it
might
have
produced
less trauma. For how else can we
interpret
the
ongoing controversy,
the
impassioned
denunciations and defenses of
the
image throughout
our
period except
as
betokening
cultural
stress? Whether in visual form as
picture
or
sculpture,
or in
linguistic
form as
figurative description deployed
in historical or
poetic
dis-
course,
the
image preoccupied philosophers, theologians,
ecclesiasti-
cal
councils,
not to mention the role it
played
in secular
politics.
While the roots of this ambivalence reach far back in
antiquity,
as we
know all too
well,
I want to talk about a
peculiarly
medieval form of
the
question
that links the
conception
and
production
of
pictures
and verbal
images
to the
perception
and
shaping
of human con-
sciousness.
This connection between
image theory
and the ethic of existence
required by
the individual to realize
his/her
potential
as an
imago
dei,
an
image
of what was
variously
entitled the
Good,
Beauty,
or the
One,
is what I shall call here the
anthropology
of the
image.
Because it
would be a vast
topic,
I shall not deal with the
theological
ramifica-
*
I would like to
express my
thanks to
my
research assistant Ms.
Tracy
Adams for
her
help
in
procuring
research documents and for
reading
various drafts of the
manuscript.
MLN,
108
(1993):
617-637 ? 1993
by
The
Johns Hopkins University
Press
618 STEPHEN G. NICHOLS
tions of the
question.
Instead,
I want to
begin by evoking
vernacu-
lar French literature and the
manuscript
art associated with its
pro-
duction,
and then focus on classical and late
antique image theory,
paying particular
attention to the
anthropology
of the
image
in
Plotinus's Enneads.
Although very
fruitful,
particularly
as concerns the
problematics
of
subjectivity
and the
representation
of the
body,
the
link between these two
poles
of
philosophical
and artistic
activity
is
not
obvious,
nor has it been much studied in the
ways
I shall be
suggesting today, despite
the
extraordinary currency
of Plotinian
thought throughout
the Middle
Ages.
From the
beginning
of secular art around the tenth and eleventh
centuries,
we find verbal and visual
image production
intimate-
ly
linked to the
representation
of
subjectivity
and
exemplary
modes
of existence in a
variety
of artistic contexts.
Think,
for
example
of
medieval romance from the
early
Roman de Tristan with its name-
changing, self-disguising
hero
Tristan/Tantris,
to Chr6tien's ro-
mances whose heroes must earn their names or win back the
right
to
bear
them,
and whose heroines often find their
ontological
status
equally problematized.
Marie de France's heroes transform them-
selves from
princes
to birds or noblemen to
mythical
beasts as a
matter of
course,
while her heroines
undergo
trials
usually
reserved
for men.
On a more
immediately philosophical
level,
one thinks of
allegori-
cal
epic quests
like the
thirteenth-century Queste
del saint
graal,
or Le
Roman de la
Rose,
or a
fortiori
Dante's Divina Commedia. Each of these
works in different
ways
focuses attention on the
disjunction
between
the
body
as a
physical
measure of existence within a
specific
code of
courtly
conduct and a
spiritual
existence
very
much out of
sympathy
with the
prevailing
social mode. The
point
is that both the
physical
and the
spiritual
modes are somehow conceived as
visible,
as etched
on the
body by
the acid of
experience.
These
texts,
and others one could
cite,
problematize
the
body.
Some do it in terms of
age
as a function of
self-knowledge acquired
through
the
prism
of an
experience
that
profoundly
alters the
subjec-
tivity
of the
hero,
like the five
year
difference between the
twenty-
five-year-old poet
of the Roman de la Rose and his
twenty-year-old
lover-persona.
Chretien's Perceval makes the
trajectory
from a naive
Welsh
bumpkin
at the
beginning
of the Conte du
graal
to a
courtly
and
accomplished knight
in serious need of
religious
consciousness and
counsel at the
point
where his
part
of narrative breaks off.
Indeed,
Perceval's
appearance
mounted,
in full armor on Good
Friday,
the
day
when Christians were
supposed
to throw off
worldly
MLN 619
garb
and walk barefoot
symbolizes
for all to see the
spiritual disarray
of his soul. Chretien marks the contrast
strongly:
Au chief de ces .V. anz avint
Que
il
par
un desert aloit
Cheminant,
si com il
soloit,
De totes ses armes armez.
S'a trois chevaliers acontrez
Et avec dames
jusqu'a
.X.,
Lor chi6s en leur
chaperons
mis,
Et s'aloient trestuit a
pie
Et en
langes
et deschaucie.
De celui
qui
armez venoit
Et la lance et l'escu tenoit
Se merveillerent molt les
dames,
Et
por
sauvement de lor ames
Lor
penitance
a
pi6
faisoient,
Por les
pechiez que
faiz avoient.1
[Five
years
had
passed
when it
happened
that
[Perceval]
was
going
his
way through
an uninhabited
region,
as was his
wont,
armed from head to
toe. He chanced to meet three
knights
and with them as
many
as ten
women,
all with their heads covered
by
their
hoods,
and all were
walking,
barefoot,
wearing simple
wollen robes.
Seeing
he who was
coming
to-
wards them
holding
his lance and his
shield,
the women marvelled
great-
ly,
since for the salvation of their
souls,
they
were
doing penance
on foot
to atone for
past
sins.]
Similarly,
the "mezzo del camin di nostra vita" of Dante's
younger
pilgrim
self in the Divina Commedia marks a
metaphoric dividing
line
in the
poet's autobiography
as he turns from
worldly preoccupa-
tions to
spiritual
renewal. Like
Perceval,
the
metaphoric disjunction
between material existence and
spiritual well-being appears physi-
cally
inscribed on the Florentine.2
Other works
problematize
the
body
as a
phenomenon
of what
Plato calls
indeterminacy, by
which he means a
problem
of
percep-
tion
requiring precise deciphering.3
This
approach
casts humans
as
part
of the
one-and-the-many syndrome.
We see and think of a
person
in one
way
as
having
a
particular identity
and
subjectivity,
1
Chretien de
Troyes,
Le Conte du Graal ou le Roman de Perceval, Edition du manu-
scrit 354 de
Berne,
edited
by
Charles
Mela,
Lettres
Gothiques
(Paris:
Livre de
Poche,
1990):
w. 6164-6178.
2
See for
example, Inferno
1:28-30 & 2:37-48.
3
Plato,
Philebus? 16-e where Socrates discusses the dialectical
relationship
be-
tween limit
(peras)
and
indeterminacy (apeiron)
as a function of the
problem
of the
one-and-the-many.
only
to be told
by
a third
party
that the first
person
is
something very
different from what we
thought.
In other words a
person,
the
person
we see and form an
opinion
of,
can be construed as a virtual narra-
tive or as
history,
an
enigma awaiting decipherment.
This is the
indeterminacy
of
being postulated by
the
one-and-the-many
con-
cept
described
by
Protarchus at Philebus 14d:
"Surely you
don't mean
the claim that
I, Protarchus,
am one
by
nature,
but am also
many
Protarchuses,
which are even
opposed
to one another?"
Socrates
impatiently
dismisses Protarchus's
question. Perhaps
too
quickly,
at least in so far as the
literary
works of twelfth and
thirteenth-century Europe
are concerned. There we often do find
the
question
of
identity-as-social category
at
issue,
a conundrum
posed precisely
via the
body.
In the
epic
such issues assume
metaphysical proportions
from the
earliest
texts,
as we recall from the Chanson de
Roland,
where the
narrative
postulates
diverse and often
opposing perceptions
of such
key
characters as
Roland,
whom we want to be the
hero,
and of
Ganelon who ranks
high
on our traitor index. But while the text
may weight
these emotions toward Roland and
against
Ganelon,
it
indisputably
offers
divergent viewpoints
that continue to fuel schol-
arly disagreement.
Think also
howJean
Renart's
thirteenth-century
Roman de la Rose
ou de Guillaume de Dole
deliberately
makes a
mystery,
as well as a
romance out of the
rose-shaped
birthmark carried
by
the
heroine,
"La belle
Lienor,"
high
on the inside of her
thigh.
This red rose-
"qui n'en est
pas une"-inspires conflicting
stories as to which male
protagonists may
or
may
not have
actually
seen this
symbol/image
of Lienor's
femininity.
A trial
by
ordeal near the end of the work
resolves the
question
from a
purely
narrative
viewpoint, certifying
that no male
protagonist
has seen the birthmark. The
rose-symbol
does not
belong simply
to
plot,
however,
so the closure
sought by
the ordeal cannot deal with the more
problematic psychological
role of the rose. At no
point
does it have
physical
or material status
in the
poem, serving
rather to motivate male erotic
fantasy,
oneiric
reveries
projected
onto the screen of Lienor's
body.
The elusive
image
of the rose in this romance
consequently
serves
to remind readers how
conflicting
narratives focus on the
body
and
condition of female
protagonists.
The
"story
of the rose" tells no one
story,
but rather asks how
many
Lienors,
how
many
stories are there?
Lienor unveiled and
read,
or Lienor whose
body
remains
enigmatic,
indeterminate? Her true
story
untold. The rose
symbol, by allegoriz-
MLN 621
ing
considerations of the
body
and thus of
identity,
shows that if
narrative at least
attempts,
however
unsuccessfully,
to
provide
clo-
sure and a rational
conclusion,
images
resist such
strategies.
The
image question
remains
open
in
Jean
Renart,
for we never
really
discover
just
what it means to be La Demoiselle de la Rose.4
The Roman de
Tristan,
especially
in its distilled version in the two
Folie Tristan
manuscripts, repeatedly
demonstrates how the
body
is
both the scene of
multiple
narratives and the screen
deflecting
determinate
readings
of the
proposed
narratives. In the Folie Tristan
of
Oxford,
Tristan
effectively disguises
himself as a fool to
gain
access to
King
Mark's court so he can meet with Iseut without detec-
tion.
Having
so
successfully put
his
identity
in doubt that Iseut can-
not even
penetrate
the
analogy
with his
previous disguised identity
as
Tantris,
Tristan asks the bewildered Iseut: "Ne sui
je
fo?
Ke vus est
vis?" "Am I not he? How does it
appear
to
you?"5
But
literary
narrative was not the
only
venue for
presenting
im-
ages
of this sort in the twelfth
century.
If one
contemplates
the
prevalence
of verbal
images
in the form of rhetorical
figures,
like
the
descriptions (ekphrases)
of the female
body
and
artworks,
dur-
ing
this
period,
one
gets
a better sense of
why, beginning
in the late
twelfth
century,
there was an ever more
pervasive tendency
to incor-
porate pictures,
illuminations,
in the midst of the columns of writ-
ing
on the
manuscript
folio.
Frequently,
if not
always,
these
pictures
represented
a
person
or scene described as a verbal
image
in the
surrounding
text.
Simply
at the most literal
level,
the two kinds of
images
can be taken as
yet
another manifestation of the one-and-the
many problematic, yet
another dimension offered on the
enigmatic
perception
of a character.
These
pictures may
be taken as so
many
windows in the
space
of
the verbal narrative that direct the
gaze
on
questions
of
subjectivity
and the
representation
of the
body.
Indeed,
sometimes the illu-
minations
represent portraits
of
poets
or authors whose
writings
appear
on the same
page.
At such
moments,
the
portraits
stand
for,
substitute for the absent
author,
but
they
also
present
a
picture
of
the
body
while the
poem images
the
working
and
production
of
4
For an historical
study
of
Jean
Renart's recourse to the ordeal in the context of
the
period
see
my colleague John
Baldwin's
forthcoming
article,
"The Crisis of the
Ordeal:
Literature, Law,
and
Religion
in
Twelfth-Century
France."
5
La Folie Tristan
d'Oxford, publiee
avec commentaire
par
Ernest
Hoepffner.
2e
edition revue et
corrigee.
Publications de la Faculte des Lettres de l'Universite de
Strasbourg.
Textes
d'Etudes,
8.
(Strasbourg,
1943):
1. 366.
inner constituents of
subjectivity
like desire and intellect. I have
discussed elsewhere the
portraits
of
Envy
in illuminated manu-
scripts
of Guillaume de Lorris's Roman de la
Rose,
at the section
where the
poetic
text describes the
portraits
of the
anti-courtly
vices
on the outside wall
surrounding
the Garden of Pleasure.6
As I have
shown,
these
illuminations,
besides
being
a
picture
of
the
picture
of
Envy
described in the
surrounding
text,
also
repre-
sent the
poet
as
voyeur indulging
his libido in
spying
on the lovers
he has created. The illumination thus
represents
a
problematic
of
desire for
illuminator,
poet
or
scribe,
and reader
alike,
a desire that
motivates the
production
and
reception
of word and
picture.
In so
doing,
illumination
implicates
the verbal
image
it
supposedly
illus-
trates,
showing
how both
picture
and text
participate
in the same
mental
activity
for reasons that have their roots
deep
in classical and
medieval
image theory.
Let us now look at some of those roots.
Plato and Classical
Image Theory
The dual
presence
of
writing
and illumination in the
manuscript
enacts rather
dramatically
Plato's
description
of the soul as a book
in which events are inscribed in two media: words and
pictures.
In
the first
instance,
memory
and
perception
collaborate to "write
words in the soul." At the same
time,
Socrates
says,
there is "another
member of the soul's work-force ... an
artist,
who turns the secre-
tary's
words into
images
in the soul."7
Language
and
picture bring together
the
body
and the mind via
memory
and aisthesis
(sensual
perception)
to
produce
the beliefs
and
judgments
that constitute an individual's view of self.
Although
not much remarked in connection with
image theory,
so far as I can
tell,
Philebus
38c-e,
the
passage just
before Socrates's observation of
the
soul-as-book-with-word-and-picture, actually
offers an excellent
description
of one
way
in which
images help
us to understand the
world before us while
showing
how the
images
that arise in our
mind
undergo
discursive dilation in
language.
There he recounts
what
goes
on in the mind when
trying
to make out an
object
far off
in the distance.
6
"Ekphrasis,
Iconoclasm,
and
Desire,"
in
Re-Reading
the Roman de la
Rose,
ed. Kevin
Brownlee and
Sylvia
Huot
(Philadelphia: University
of
Pennsylvania
Press, 1992):
133-66.
7
Plato,
Philebus ?38c-38e.
MLN 623
The scene is
pastoral,
the viewer on a
slight
rise
looking
down the
valley.
Some distance
away,
he
spies
a tree and a
large
rock;
under
the
tree,
next to the rock he sees a vertical
object
that he can't
quite
make
out,
but he takes it for a
person.
It's a
logical
inference his
memory suggests,
for it's about the
right height
relative to the tree
and the
rock,
and the
pastoral
venue
suggests
it
may
be a
shepherd,
or
perhaps-less probable,
but one never knows-the statue of a
shepherd.
What Socrates describes as a
process
of
perception, image
production,
and
interrogation may
be taken as
nothing
short of a
dialogic image theory
that
begins
with the
glimpsing
of an indeter-
minate form in the world that leads the viewer to
postulate
from
memory
a series of
likely
forms that could
explain
the
image.
A
comparative
method of critical evaluation thus
emerges
that
takes the viewer
deep
into his or her own
psyche
and
memory,
always by
means of a
dialogic
and critical
process.
While the
process
interiorizes
perception
and
engages
mental
activity,
it also stimu-
lates
intersubjective
dialectic. Should a friend
happen
to be
present,
the
thoughts
which in the first scenario the viewer
only
thinks to
himself,
would then be formulated as
language
and articulated as
statements. The second
person plays
a crucial role
here,
for with a
competing subjectivity looking
at the same
scene,
the social conse-
quences
of belief and
judgment leading
to debate and
controversy
come into
play.
This whole section
belongs
to an
argument
Socrates
engages
about the
way
true and false beliefs come into
being.
The fact that
they
exist as
image
and as
word,
even
images
and words etched on
the
soul,
suggests just
how
indespensable
a role this double dialectic
plays
in the formation of
everyday subjectivity.
Plato,
obviously,
is
concerned not
just
with mental
activity,
but with the
implications
of
that
activity
for the
way
the individual
lives, his/her
status as a
good
person.
He
stresses,
accordingly,
the interiorization of
perception
as
played
out between
psyche
and the senses.
Aristotle and the Invention of
Energeia
No matter how
plausibly
Plato illustrates the double dialectic of the
visual and verbal
working together
in the same
space
he does not
address the
question
of the creative
force,
the
agent
common to
both kinds of
images.
What was the element that
produced
the
mental
imaging requisite
for both word and
picture?
Aristotle rath-
er than Plato addressed this
question.
In an
early
work with Platonic
overtones,
the
Protrepticus,
Aristotle coined a new term for the in-
tense
activity
of mind
necessary
to
generate
the forms or
images
we've been
discussing.
The
word,
of
course,
is
energeia. Although
/vppycta
is
usually
translated as
"actuality"
in Aristotle's
works,
clos-
er examination of the
etymology
of this
neologism,
as well as a
detailed examination of the contexts in which it
appears, argues
strongly
for a more kinetic
meaning.
Aristotle seems to have coined
the word
by combining:
;v-
meaning
"in" and
-Tpycta,
the noun from
;pydiv...
a rather rare
active form of the common verb
Tpyac-Oat,
a middle
deponent
with the
active
meaning
of "to do" or "to act." ... the active
[form]
is used to
strengthen
the notion of
intensity
of
activity
... Since the middle form
would have occurred
naturally
to
Aristotle,
it
may
be assumed that in
choosing
the active form he intended to stress the notion of
activity.
And
so
etymologically
the word would seem to mean "inward
activity,"
indeed,
the
power
of inner
activity.
.. .8
Energeia,
then,
from its earliest invention in Aristotle connoted an
active
making
or
doing
within the
psyche. Intimately
bound
up
with
the intellectual
activity thought
to form or
shape psyche, energeia
was
very
close to the
processes
of
thinking
and
seeing,
if not
exactly
the
same.9 He insisted on the kinetic sense of
energeia
as movement
stemming
from "the
doing
side of the
word."1'
Through
the
concep-
tion of
potency
and
act,
energeia
is the
agent
that instills in matter
the
"power"
to "do"
form,
where the
activity
of the
"doing"
of matter
is
energeia.11
If the
"doing"
here means intense mental
activity,
the
result of that
activity
will take material form in
speech, writing,
and
pictures.
Medieval
grammars
and
poetics
conceived of
energeia
as
power,
strength,
action,
oratorical
vigor,
and the
power
of
imagination.
We
8
George
A.
Blair,
"The
Meaning
of
'Energeia'
and 'Entelechia'" in
Aristotle,
International
Philosophical Quarterly (1967):
106.
9
Ibid.,
p.
109.
10
Ibid.,
p.
107.
11
Ibid.,
p.
109. "It would seem that he is
trying
to
say
that form is what
matter,
in a
sense, does,
since motion is the
primary
sense of
&v/pyeta....
But this means that
matter is
'power'
not in the
passive
sense of
ability
to receive a
form,
but rather in the
sense of the
ability
to 'do' form.... And that form is a
'doing'
is
perfectly
consistent
with what was seen in the
Protrepicus
where 'to live' and 'to be' are
equated-
provided
that there is no distinction between essence and existence in Aristotle....
Obviously
the
'doing'
which is form is not
activity
in
exactly
the same sense as
seeing
or
thinking.
. ."
MLN 625
can
get
an idea of its
importance
as a
generative
force from such
commentaries as
Sergius's Explanationum
in Artem Donati. In Book
One,
under the
heading,
De
partibus
orationis,
the section
begins
with
a
simple,
but
incredibly
rich-for our
purposes-two-part
defini-
tion. Oratio dicitur elocutio,
quasi
oris
ratio,
"Expression
(oratio)
is
called diction
(elocutio),
a kind of reason of the
mouth,
as it were."12
Both
parts
of this statement relate to the
post-Aristotelian
evolution
of
energeia
and the
conception
of discourse as
participating
in an
anthropology
of the
image,
as
"doing"
forms,
particularly
those
bearing
on character and social
harmony.
First,
by defining
oratio as elocutio,
Sergius
launches a double
movement
linking
"oratio" to directed mental
activity. Initially,
ora-
tio the first
instance,
it is
equated
to "elocutio," the third division of
rhetoric as ars.13 Elocutio was the branch of rhetoric that
shaped
the
language
of
oratory,
that
gave,
as it
were,
a
recognizable identity,
a
style
that
could,
as Karl Vossler and Benedetto Croce
believed,
pro-
vide a
picture
of the mind of the author. Elocutio or diction dealt with
three main
categories:
(1)
the choice and collocation of
words; (2)
the
theory
of the three
genres
of
style,
and
(3)
figures
of
speech.14
Ornate
style,
as Curtius reminds
us,
was the
highest
aim of the
verbal artist from
Quintilian
(VIII, 3)
to the
eighteenth century.
Dante earned the coveted title of
poeta,
reserved for the five
great
classical
poets-Homer, Virgil,
Horace, Ovid,
and Lucan-and a
status as the sixth
among
them
by
his skill with ornate
language (Inf.
4:
94-102).
Virgil's description
in
Inferno
2 of Beatrice's visitation to
him to
explain why
the
Queen
of Heaven and Saint
Lucy
wish to
rescue Dante is cast in an
elegant
rhetoric intended to illustrate
just
why
Dante should merit such
compassion. By way
of
letting
us know
that his
poetry
could be heard and his rhetorical
images
seen even
in
heaven,
Dante has the
Virgin Mary
exhort Beatrice:
Disse:-Beatrice,
loda di Dio
vera,
che non soccorri
quei
che t'am6
tanto,
ch'usci
per
te de la
volgare
schiera?
12
Sergii, Explanationum
in Artem
Donati,
Liber
I,
"De Partibus orationis." Heinrich
Keil,
Grammatici
Latini,
vol. 4: Probi Donati Servii
qui feruntur
De Arte Grammatica Libri.
(Leipsig:
B. G.
Teubner, 1864): 487,
23.
13
The five divisions are: inventio
(invention), dispositio (disposition, "layout"),
elocutio
(X?t;, diction),
memoria
(memory),
and actio
(delivery).
For a
helpful synop-
sis of classical rhetoric as
ars,
see E. R.
Curtius,
European
Literature and the Latin Middle
Ages,
trs. Willard R. Trask
(New
York:
Pantheon, 1953):
68-78.
14
Curtius,
ELLMA,
p.
71.
Non odi tu la
pieta
del suo
pianto,
non vedi tu la morte che '1 combatte
su la fiumana ove '1 mar non ha vanto-?
(Inf. 2:103-108)
[She
said:
"Beatrice,
true
praise
of
God,
why
do
you
not succor him who
bore
you
such love that for
you
he left the
vulgar throng?
Do
you
not hear
his
pitiful
lament? Do
you
not see the death that assails him on that flood
over which the sea has no
vaunt?"]
The women of heaven
recognize
in Dante's
poetry
not
simply
a
pleasing style,
their
approbation signals
the successful mixture of
reason and
speech,
ratio et oratio,
a witness to the
power
of
energeia
to
produce harmony
in the world. That is in
fact,
the second
part
of
the
opening
sentence in
Sergius's commentary
on Donatus: "Oratio
dicitur elocutio,
quasi
oris ratio." "As
though
a reason of the mouth"
yokes speech
and reason to the
dynamo
of
energeia
to "do
forms,"
in
this case the
harmony
that can be
imparted
to
society
and human
behavior
by
rhetoric.
Sergius
defines
"energian"
as an
open-ended
creative
power,
"id
quod
facit"
(p. 487:27)
more
important
than the
grammatical categories
that he treats in his
commentary.
Cicero's De
Officiis,
1,50,
identifies rhetoric as an
agent
of
energeia
whose
power
it extends to
society
at
large.
Rhetoric thus becomes a
key
factor in the
anthropology
of the verbal
image by placing
speech,
the reason of the
mouth,
under the
aegis
of reason.
Togeth-
er,
reason and
speech-ratio
et
oratio-shape society
to reflect the
harmony
of forms of
good
and virtue
apprehended
in the intellect
and transmitted
through
the individual human
by
reason.
Rhetoric,
viewed from this
perspective,
conceives the human as a
performer
of
the union of reason and
speech;
the
performance conveys
the im-
age
of the
harmony
that must ensue when
speech, governed by
reason,
extends the
power
of
operatio
into the world.
Through
this
power
or
activity
that "does"
images,
rhetoric
postulates community
as the one individual
obeying
the
civilizing
rules of rhetoric be-
comes
many
individuals all
adhering
to the norms of oratio et ratio.
In the
Metalogicon, John
of
Salisbury
calls rhetoric "the beautiful
and fruitful union between reason and
expression;" through
harmo-
ny,
it holds human communities
together."15 Hugh
of Saint Victor's
Didascalicon
(12th
century)
makes
energeia,
identified as "the
power
of mind and
reason,"
the third and
highest
of the
powers
of the
15
Quoted by
Curtius,
ELLMA: 77.
MLN 627
soul. I want to
quote Hugh's description,
since it illustrates a twelfth-
century conception
of
energeia
that makes
image production
a cen-
tral focus of mental
activity
but one subordinate to the
power
of
thinking
with
images,
of
reasoning
from
images,
and of
hypothesiz-
ing deductively
about
things
the mind cannot
see,
but whose
image
it
may conjure.
Rooted
entirely
in the
reason,
the third
power
of the soul exercises itself
either in the most
unfaltering grasp
of
things present,
or in the under-
standing
of
things
absent,
or in the
investigation
of
things
unknown. This
power belongs
to humankind alone. It not
only
takes in sense
impres-
sions and
images
which are
perfect
and
well-founded, but,
by
a
complete
act of the
understanding,
it
explains
and confirms what
imagination
has
only suggested.
And,
as has been
said,
this divine nature is not content
with the
knowledge
of those
things
alone which it
perceives spread
be-
fore its
senses, but,
in
addition,
it is able to
provide
even for
things
removed from it names which
imagination
has conceived from the sensi-
ble
world,
and it makes
known,
by arrangement
of the
words,
what it has
grasped by
reason of its
understanding
.. .16
The last
clause,
"and it makes known
by arrangement
of
words,
what it has
grasped by
reason of its
understanding,"
invokes the
coupling
of oratio and ratio
necessary
for effective rhetoric.
Hugh
thus shows in this
passage
the inward
workings
of the
psyche by
which rhetoric
acquires
its
authority
to
convey
the
image
of the
mind in
perfect
balance or
harmony
with itself.
Hugh's passage
thus
shows
exactly
how the connection between the inner
workings
of
energeia
as an intellectual and formative
power
in the individual
psyche
and the
shaping
of an harmonious
community
was under-
stood in the twelfth
century.
But its
emphasis
on the visual
image,
and the
thinking
with visual
images
it
describes,
reminds us that there is
yet
another side to the
equation.
The whole
point
of
energeia
is that it allows for the same
mental
activity,
the same text to
generate
two distinct kinds of mate-
rial
images,
verbal and visual. If rhetoric and elocutio can
produce
a
new
conception
of the verbal
image,
then there must be an
equally
strong theory
of
energeia
in
conjunction
with the visual
image.
That
theory
receives its fullest
early
elaboration in the work of Plotinus in
a
theory
of the human
image-what
it means to
participate
in evolv-
ing
as an individual towards an ideal form. This
theory actually
16
Hugh
of Saint
Victor, Didascalicon,
Lib.
1,
kap.
3. Translation
byJerome Taylor
and Lester
Little,
pp.
49-50.
requires
the individual's intellectual forces and
psyche
to create a
self-identity by suppressing
the
body
and all the material conditions
we associate with the
physical
life.
Plotinus sketches a
theory
whose
praxis
seems to consist in the
renunciation of
making
in the material sense to
permit
the individu-
al to devote
energy
to
evolving
a dialectic of inner vision. What is
truly interesting
here is that Plotinus makes
energeia
and the
produc-
tion of
images
central to his
philosophical anthropology
at the same
time that he works to dissociate the
"doing
of forms" from the
material connotation that classical
rhetoricians,
as we have
just
seen,
were
investing
in the term. Plotinus's
strategy
does not contradict
Aristotle,
but it does construe his
conception
of
energeia
in a more
Platonizing way.
The
problematic
of the
body begins
with the
allegorization
of
Plotinus's own
body
and
subjectivity.
It is the first
thing
we learn
about Plotinus in
Porphyry's Life of
Plotinus,
our
principle
source on
the
philosopher's
life.
"Plotinus,
the
philosopher
of our
times,"
Por-
phyry begins,
"seemed ashamed of
being
in the
body."17
This so-
matic aversion extended to his
unwillingness
to ascribe to it a
gene-
alogy,
race,
or
country
of
origin:
"As a result of this state of mind he
could never bear to talk about his race or his
parents
or his native
country."
On the one
hand,
Porphyry
takes Plotinus's reticence as a
mark of his
philosophical rigor
and
consistency,
while at the same
time
setting
about
providing
a rhetorical substitute for the self-
image
Plotinus refuses.
Indeed,
as
though
to
compensate
for his
mentor's
fastidiousness,
Porphyry
tells us rather more than we want
to know about the
philosopher's body,
and in terms vivid
enough
to
make us understand
why
Plotinus was
body-shy.
After
beginning
the
Life in
chapter
1 with instances of Plotinus's avoidance of the
body,
Porphyry
leads off the
very
next
chapter
with a
description
of his
mentor's
body
so
graphic
it
qualifies
as
hypotyposis,
one of the
figures rhetorically
classed under
energeia:
2. He often suffered from a disease of the
bowels,
but would not submit
to an
enema,
saying
that it was unsuitable for an
elderly
man to
undergo
this sort of treatment. He refused also to take medicines
containing
the
flesh of wild
beasts,
giving
as his reason that he did not
approve
of
eating
the flesh even of domestic animals. He
kept away
from the bath and had
17
Porphyry,
On the
Life ofPlotinus
and the Order
of
his Books 1.1-2. In
Plotinus,
edited
with an
English
translation
by
A. H.
Armstrong,
7 vols.
(Cambridge:
Harvard Univer-
sity
Press, 1966-89),
1:3.
MLN 629
himself
massaged every day
at home. When the
plague
broke out and his
masseurs died he
gave up
treatment of this
kind,
and soon contracted
acute
diphtheria
... his disease increased so much in violence ... that
his voice lost its clearness and
sonority
and his throat
grew
worse,
and his
sight
became blurred and his hands and feet ulcerated.18
Of
course,
Porphyry's description
invokes
allegory
as much as
sober historical
reporting
since it
dramatically
renders the
very
cor-
ruption
of the
body
that
provides
the
principal
evidence for Plotinus
of the
qualitative
difference between
body
and soul. Plotinus's last
words in the deathbed scene recounted a few lines later confirm this
since his words evoke the soul
returning
to
god,
while the
body
slithers back to the earth in the form of a snake:
Then,
he
said,
"Try
to
bring
back the
god
in us to the divine in the All!"
and,
as a snake
crept
under the bed on which he was
lying
and
disap-
peared
into a hole in the
wall,
he breathed his last. It was the end of the
second
year
of the
reign
of
Claudius,
and
according
to Eustochius he was
sixty-six years
old.
[Eustochuius
was another
biographer actually present
at the scene from whom
Porphyry
obtained this
description.]19
Between the
opening
sentence of
chapter
1
asserting
the theme
of somatic
aversion,
and the deathbed scene with its
metamorphosis
of the
corrupt body slithering
back into the
earth,
Porphyry
tells an
anecdote about
attempts
to make a
picture
of Plotinus.
Presumably
Plotinus's
pupils sought
to have his
portrait painted
before he con-
tracted the disease that
fatally disfigured
him and has
usually
been
diagnosed by
modern clinicians on the basis of
Porphyry's descrip-
tion and an even more lurid one
by
Eustochius as
diphtheria
and
leprosy (elephantiasis
Graecorum),
although
more recent work
by
Dr.
Mirko D. Grmek
suggests
that
tuberculosis,
not
leprosy,
more accu-
rately
fits the
presenting symptoms
described
by Porphyry.20
18
Life,
1.2.1-16.
19
Life,
1.2.25-32.
20
Note
1,
pages
4-5 of
Armstrong's
text. For the revisionist view see Mirko D.
Grmek,
"Les maladies et la mort de
Plotin,"
in
Porphyre,
La Vie de
Plotin,
ed.
by
Luc
Brisson et al. Tome II
(Paris: J.
Vrin, 1992):
335-53. I would like to thank Walton 0.
Schalik III for
apprising
me of the medical discussion and
making
a
copy
of Dr.
Grmek's article available. Mr. Schalik's own comments
(letter
of
2/27/93)
are
ger-
mane: "This latter
diagnosis
[of Tuberculosis]
is
perfectly plausible, though
Grmek
does indicate even
ergotism
is
possible.
I would
only
add,
from
my
own
experience
with the difficult and often
dimly
viewed
program
of
retrospective diagnosis,
that
several
separate,
but
simultaneous,
disease entities are
possible, though
less
likely.
If
Grmek is
correct,
then the
"diptheria"
does
easily
relate to the other
systemic
effects,
because Tuberculosis
actually
affects all these
organ systems."
Immediately following
the
opening
assertion of the
Life, already
quoted,
and as
though
to confirm Plotinus's
rejection
of the
body
in
any
form,
Porphyry
tells us that in
response
to the
urging
of a
companion
that he sit for a
sculpted
or
painted portrait,
Plotinus
responds:
"Is it not
enough
to have to
carry
the
image
in which
nature has encased
us,
without
your asking
me to
agree
to leave
behind me a
longer-lasting image
of the
image,
as if it was some-
thing genuinely
worth
looking
at?"21
The
exchange
offers
insight
into the
picture-image dichotomy
in
Plotinus's
thought:
at issue is a
portrait
or icon
(eix6v).
An
icon,
of
course,
is an
image given
material
form,
a
body
as it
were,
just
as a
rhetorical
figure
is an
image
couched in the form of
language.
As
though rejecting
the term cix6v as a
misleading subterfuge,
cre-
ating
the
impression
that an
image given
material form has some
claim to
reality,
Plotinus uses the term
ei'6oXa
three times in a
very
interesting sequence.
First he uses
c't'coa
to refer to the
body qua
external
appearance:
". .. the
image
in which nature has encased us." In other
words,
the
body
does not
represent
the authentic
individual;
it is
"6Ctg;
c?T6-
c0ov,"
nature's
image,
the
reality
or
subjectivity
of the individual
lying
elsewhere,
in the soul which like
beauty
is adventitious to the
body.22
With the
body,
then,
as c't6o;a of the true
being,
a
picture
of the individual can
only
be a
tautology
or
repetition:
"an
image
of
the
image
(cit'66Lu Eit'coov)."
Does that
mean, then,
that there cannot be a
picture
of the
phi-
losopher,
an
etxov?
We need to answer that in two different
ways;
first
by seeing
what Plotinus seems to be
getting
at
here,
and
secondly, by understanding
how he conceives the role of
energeia.
At
the
very
least,
we must admit that Plotinus harbors
many
more reser-
vations about
having
the
image
assume material form as
picture
than do his
counterparts among
the rhetoricians as
regards
the
verbal
image.
The
difference,
of
course,
lies in the relative
difficulty
in
accessing
the two kinds. One must be literate even to
gain
access
to the written
image,
and then mental
activity
comes into
play
to
sort and reconstitute the
description
as
image.
Plotinus does not
expressly
condemn the
picture per
se in this
passage,
he
simply
voices
disgust
with the
body
and astonishment that one would
possibly
21
Life,
1.1:7-10.
22
Ennead 1.6.2.22-24. "So
beauty
rests
upon
the material
thing
when it has been
brought
into
unity,
and
gives
itself to
parts
and wholes alike ...."
MLN 631
want to record so transient and
insignificant
a
part
of one's self.
He's worried less about the
concept
of
picture,
than about its use.
Should it be taken as
standing
for
him,
as an
ikon,
where
bodily
likeness
might
be construed as
substance,
then
no,
no
picture
(cix6v).
For reasons that will be evident in a
moment,
it's not at all
clear that for
Plotinus,
there can or should be a material
image.
He
seems at best uninterested in the
question,
if not
downright
con-
temptuous.
But his
theory
leads
inexorably
to
image production
(ei'6woa),
so
it is both
paradoxical
and
finally
unrealistic to take so uncom-
promising
a stance. As
though
to offer a critical reaction to their
mentor's radical
anti-materialism,
Porphyry
tells us that Plotinus's
friends conceive a
plan
to obtain the icon in
spite
of
him,
and
they
do so in a
way
that illustrates how his
theory
works for
image produc-
tion.
Porphyry
tells us that faced with Plotinus's refusal to collaborate
in the
portrait project,
friends
sought
out a
painter,
"Carterius,
the
best
painter
of his
time,"
and
brought
him to hear Plotinus's lec-
ture.
Day
after
day,
Carterius sat
listening
to Plotinus then returned
to his studio to draw the mental
image
he had formed of the
philos-
opher.
Amelius,
a
disciple
of Plotinus and Carterius's
patron,
"helped
him to
improve
his sketch to a closer resemblance." This
collaboration
"gave
us an excellent
portrait
of Plotinus without his
knowledge."23
The two
portrait
schemes could not be more
different, and,
in the
contrast,
lies a
key point
about the tension as well as the link be-
tween
picture
(Etx6v)
and
image
(ci'6coa)
in Plotinus's aesthetic
theory.
The first
project
would
simply represent
the
body,
the
ap-
pearance
of a motionless Plotinus-the term "to sit for" recurs.
Carterius would transfer
directly
to canvas his
impressions
of this
sitting subject.
The "likeness" would be less a
"doing
of the form" of
Plotinus,
than
something
like a
simple problem
of
draftsmanship
and
coloring.
Worse,
the scenario of vis-a-vis where the
painter
first
peers intently
at his
subject
for
long periods
of time and then the
subject
returns his own
gaze
while
studying
his
portrait,
smacks
suspiciously
of the Narcissus
syndrome
that Plotinus condemns in
Ennead
1.6.8:9-16,
"On
Beauty."
For if a man runs to the
image
and wants to seize it as if it was the
reality
(like
a beautiful reflection
playing
on the
water,
which some
story
some-
23
Life,
1.1.17-20.
where,
I
think,
said
riddlingly
a man wanted to catch and sank down into
the stream and
disappeared)
then this man who
clings
to beautiful bod-
ies and will not let them
go,
will,
like the man in the
story,
but in
soul,
not
in
body,
sink down into the dark
depths
where intellect has no
delight,
and
stay
blind in
Hades,
consorting
with shadows there and here.
Reflection, self-reflection,
even the mirror all
play important
roles
in Plotinus's
concept
of
image production.
For him to evoke and
condemn the Narcissus
myth
so
strongly, making
it an
archetypal
negative example
(he'll
evoke it
again
at Ennead
V.8.2.35-6),
tells us
how
important
to him it was to
convey
the difference between
per-
ception
and
image production.
There is no
energeia
in the Narcissus
moment,
only
mistaken
identity.
Ovid sums
up
the
problem
at Meta-
morphses
111:417 when he
says
of Narcissus:
spem
sine
corpore
amat,
corpus
putat esse,
quod
umbra est
["He
loves
hope
without a
body,
for
he thinks a
body
what is but a
shade"].24
The Middle
Ages
will not dismiss so
readily
as does Plotinus the
Narcissus
conundrum,
coming
back to it
repeatedly,
in a
variety
of
situations and from a number of
viewpoints.
Yet from a Plotinian
standpoint,
the
problem
is
straightforward:
Narcissus
simply
mis-
takes refraction for
thought;
he
projects
sensual desire onto insub-
stantial semblance.
Notoriety,
but neither true
subjectivity
nor iden-
tity
can
emerge
from such a fantasmal
episode.
The Narcissus
anecdote enacts a
popular misconception
about the
image,
one that
locates
meaning
in the material artifact.
But for Plotinus the
eit6o&a
can never be
exterior,
nor can it exist
24
Plotinus,
who
began teaching
at Rome when he was
forty, long
before he
began
to write down his
philosophy (Life,
3.23-4,
and
4.1-7)
may
well have been
thinking
of
Ovid as the unnamed
author,
especially given
Ovid's
problematic
of forms and the
question
of illusion and
reality
of the
body
and its
images.
Of course the more
obvious account he would have known (and one that conforms more
accurately
to
the
story
as he tells
it)
is that found in Pausanius:
Pausanius,
Guide to
Greece,
2
vols.,
tr. Peter Levi
(New
York:
Penguin
Books, 1971).
"Narkissos's river is
there;
they say
Narkissos looked into this water and not
realizing
he was
seeing
his own reflection
fell in love with
himself,
and died of love beside the
spring.
This is
absolutely
stupid-a boy
old
enough
to fall in love not
knowing
a human
being
from a reflec-
tion: but there is another
story
about him less well known
(though
one does hear
it),
that Narkissos had a twin
sister;
they
were
exactly
the same to look at with
just
the
same
hair-style
and the same
clothes,
and
they
even used to
go hunting together.
Narkissos was in love with his
sister,
and when she died he used to visit the
spring;
he
knew what he saw was his own
reflection,
but even so he found some relief in
telling
himself it was his sister's
image.
I think the earth
grew
the flower of the narcissus
before his
time,
at least if we should believe the verses of
Pamphos.
[IX, 31,
pp.
376-377]"
I am indebted to
my colleague,
Milad
Doueihi,
for this reference and for
much
good
discussion on this
topic.
MLN 633
without an investment of the
subject's
intellectual and aisthetic en-
ergy. Consequently,
there can be no
txo6v
or
picture,
which will be
exterior and
material,
without a
pre-existing
c?6wcoa. That's
hardly
news; indeed,
the whole
point
for Plotinus lies in the work the
image
must do in
shaping
the inner
life,
the
qualities
of the soul of the
individual. His
anthropology
of the
image
exists to
guide
the Phidias
within,
not the connoisseur without.
How then can
you
see the sort of
beauty
a
good
soul has? Go back into
yourself
and
look;
and if
you
do not
yet
see
yourself
beautiful, then,
just
as someone
making
a statue which has to be beautiful cuts
away
here and
polishes
there and makes one
part
smooth and clears another till he has
given
his statue a beautiful
face,
so
you
too must cut
away
excess and
straighten
the crooked and clear the dark and make it
bright,
and never
stop 'working
on
your
statue' till the divine
glory
of virtue shines out on
you,
till
you
see
'self-mastery
enthroned
upon
its
holy
seat.'
This
quotation,
from the
very
first
essay
Plotinus wrote and the
basis for his
aesthetics,
offers a demonstration of
energeia
in
action,
though
he will define it more
precisely
in later
essays.
The idea of
the Phidias
within,
the
sculpter
of the soul that we must all
develop
as the root of our
identity
and
subjectivity,
forms the rationale for
the
c't0o6a
in Plotinus's
theory. Seeing
this,
his
disciples
look to
make it the rationale for the
Etx6v
or
picture
as well.
Porphyry's
account of Carterius's
making
of the
portrait
of
Plotinus
begins
not with the
philosopher stiffly
seated,
posing,
but
with the
philosopher
in his school
doing philosophy.
Before Car-
terius can
paint
Plotinus,
he must
comprehend
his
identity,
his
method and his
thought.
Crucial to the
process
of
representation
is
the dialectical role of
memory,
the absence of the
distracting body.
For it is not the
image
of the
body
he
paints,
so much as the
image
of the
philosopher-of
a
subjectivity
and of an
identity.
The
description
of the
portrait process
involves a dialectic first
with Carterius's own
psyche
and
memory
and then with his
patron,
Plotinus's
friend,
Amelius. We see enacted
here,
in
fact,
the sce-
nario described
by
Socrates in Philebus
quoted
earlier,
particularly
the stimulus to one's formulation of the
image
when forced to
put
our
thoughts
into words. In this case we see how the second
per-
son,
bringing
another
perspective
onto the
problem
of
capturing
Plotinus's
identity qua
likeness,
contributes to the success of
pro-
ducing
the
picture.
But whereas Plato left the creative force
vague,
in this case we have a context that seeks to
spell
out not
only
how
energeia
works to
produce
an
txo6v,
as a social
production,
distinct
from an
ei'tcoa,
but also
why
one should do this.
The clue lies in the
philosopher's
own
metaphor.
Does he himself
not invoke the
portrait sculpture by way
of
making
his
point?
Al-
though metaphorically
transformed into an
image
of the
soul,
the
root
image
of the
sculpture
nevertheless remains.
Porphyry's story
or
allegory
of Carterius's
portrait
of
Plotinus,
seems intended to
demonstrate that an icon
produced
in the
right way
and in an
appropriate
context
provides
a
necessary complement
to
philosoph-
ical discourse
proper.
Plotinus describes how the soul should be
modelled like a
portrait sculpture.
What does that mean to the
person
who has never seen a
portrait
bust? What standard of
beauty,
of
form,
of
symmetry
do his
analogies
invoke? Plotinus describes the
process
of
"doing
forms"
very
well,
but his
argument
here,
and
indeed
frequently
when he discusses
aesthetics,
depends upon
a
knowledge
and
appreciation
of fine arts.
Porphyry's allegory
of Plotinus's
portrait
builds
upon
this current
in the master's work to show that
properly
understood,
the ctxov
illustrates the kind of
self-portrait
we must focus our own
energeia
to
produce.
Like Plato's insistence on the scribe and the
painter
in the
soul both
working
to
produce complementary representations,
Plotinus's
portrait
offers a material
example
to
help
readers under-
stand the
image theory
so crucial to his
philosophy,
the
image
theo-
ry
he
urges
them to emulate.25
We can best see how the
portrait might
be intended to serve as a
heuristic
by connecting
it with his
philosophical exposition
of ener-
geia
in Ennead IV.5.6-7. In these
chapters
he
develops
two
principles
that form the basis for a critical and theoretical
thinking
with im-
ages
that,
in its
implications,
constitutes a radical shift in the
way
in
which visual and verbal
images may
be
juxtaposed
and utilized in a
variety
of formats.
The first
equates
the
principles
of
energeia responsible
for
shaping
the individual human
subject
with the
principles
of
energeia
used in
visual and verbal
representation.
This
means,
in
effect,
that the
same
principle
is used
by
the human
being
to
shape subjectivity-to
sculpt
the
soul,
as it
were,
as in
making
a
picture.
At Ennead
IV.5.6.24-31,
Plotinus
says
that
Light,
Life,
and the Soul are all ener-
25
In
passing,
we must remember that the
portrait
bears an emblematic relation-
ship
to
Porphyry's
own
Life of
Potinus. But that's another
story.
MLN 635
geia.
These
principles shape
the soul as
eit6o&a,
thereby
also defin-
ing
the individual's
image
as a
specific identity
and
subjectivity
with-
in a
given
historical, social,
religious,
and
political
horizon. But we
have also seen that the
eit6oka
of the individual human
subject
can,
by
the same
principles
of
energeia
be extended to the icon
(ctxov).
With this first theoretical
principle
of
energeia,
Plotinus establishes
not
only
an
anthropology
of the
image,
but also a
rigorously
ethical
theory
of art criticism which will
play
an
important
role in the icono-
clastic
controversy, notably
in Saint
John
of Damascus's treatises
defending
icons.
Secondly,
he
develops
a mirror
theory
of
representation.
Plotinus
urges
the mirror as an
allegory
for the critical
dialogue
between the
ideal forms
produced
in the soul and the
disparate, contradictory
bits of information about the self fed to the
memory
and sense
perception by
the
eyes
and ears as visual and verbal
images.
The
body
serves as the
ground
for the mirror that reflects not so much
the inner on the
outer,
but rather shows obverse and
reverse,
the
continuum of
being
and consciousness.26
Plotinus avoids an "inner-outer"
dichotomy
of the
mind-body
problem by
his
picture theory
of
being
and
subjectivity.
Just
as Car-
terius
gradually
discovered the true likeness of Plotinus
by watching
the
body
in action as a
speaking, thinking being,
so individual iden-
tity
and
subjective
consciousness evolve as the ct6coka of virtual
being gradually
becomes the cfx6v of the individual
living being.
Subjectivity
arises from
perceiving
the
"weaving through"
of soul in
body.
The self
begins
where
thought begins
as it
processes
and
pictures
the motion of intellectual and
sensory
stimuli.
From these forms
[that
the soul
contemplates],
from which the soul
alone receives its
lordship
over the
living being,
come
reasonings,
and
opinions,
and acts of intuitive
intelligence;
and this
precisely
is where
"we" are.
[...]
"we" in our
presidency
over the
living being,
are what
extends from this
point upwards.27
The mirror also becomes the
figure
for the critical
contemplation
that constitutes an essential constituent for Plotinian
subjectivity.
The
soul, then,
is the mirror
"pictured
as
being present
to bodies
since it shines into them and makes
living
creatures,
not of itself and
26
Ennead I.
1,
"What is the
Living Being?", develops
the
concept
of
body
and soul
as continuum rather than as
dichotomy, using language
like the
"weaving through"
of
body
and soul.
27
Ennead
I.1.7,
"What is the
Living Being?"
the
body,
but
abiding
itself and
giving images
of
itself,
like a face
seen in
many
mirrors."28
Energeia,
the
"doing
of
images," undergirds
the mirror
allegory lending
it the force both to
generate
the dialec-
tical
image play
so
necessary
to Plotinian
subjectivity
and to
high-
light
the tension between
apeiron
and
peras, indeterminacy
and
limit,
that marks the
contingency
of consciousness.
Finally,
we should not
ignore
the
way
Plotinus's mirror
allegories
continually
evoke the double dialectic of word and
image.
"In the
soul,"
Plotinus
says, "sight
directed towards intellect is
wisdom,
theo-
retical and
practical."29
Wisdom,
the
goal
of
philosophy,
must be
obtained in
part,
at
least,
by
means of
dialectic,
"the
purest part
of
intelligence
and wisdom."30 So verbal
image, picture,
and
subjec-
tivity,
like the continuum of
body
and
soul,
interweave in a
perpetu-
al motion in an
unceasing quest
for
understanding.
By way
of
illustrating
these
issues,
I would like to evoke a well-
known
literary
scene from the
high
Middle
Ages
that combines both
principles
of Plotinian
energeia,
(1)
the ethical
symmetry
between
the human
image
and the material
picture
it makes of
itself,
and
(2)
his mirror
allegory.
We find these illustrated
succinctly
in the
inscription
over the
portal
of Hell at the
beginning
of Canto III of
Dante's
Inferno.
The
inscription
enumerates,
practically point-by-point,
the Ploti-
nian definition of
energeia
with
Life, Soul,
and
Light
Christianized as
they
had been since
Augustine's
time as Divine
Justice,
Divine Pow-
er,
and
Supreme
Wisdom. It's worth
noting
that most editions of
Inferno
continue the
manuscript
tradition of
printing
the
inscription
as it would have been
carved,
in formal
capitals.
The
inscription
actualizes Plotinus's mirror
principle
of
representation by
a
princi-
ple according
to which each sinner's
punishment
reflects his or her
sin in life now mirrored
by
the
punishment
that
governs
his
body
and soul in Hell.
What the condemned souls discover as
they
cross into the mirror
of Hell is that sin is less a
particular
vice than a
general perversion
of
the
energeia
or
activity by
which
they
should have
sculpted
their soul
and thus their
identity
and
subjectivity
in the world. This
captures
exactly
Plotinus's
thought
that ". . . each
thing
that exists has an
activity,
which is a likeness of
itself,
so that while it exists that like-
28
Ibid.,
1.1.8.
29
Ennead
1.2.7,
"On Virtues."
30
Philebus 58D6-7,
quoted by
Plotinus at Ennead
1.3.5,
"On Dialectic."
MLN 637
ness exists ..."
(IV.5.7.17f).
It is the likeness of their true soul that
the damned are condemned to
contemplate
and to
explain
eter-
nally:
PER ME SI VA NE LA CITTA
DOLENTE,
PER ME SI VA NE L'ETTERNO
DOLARE,
PER ME SI VA TRA LA PERDUTA GENTE.
GIUSTIZIA MOSSE IL MIO ALTO
FATTORE;
FECEMI LA DIVINA
PODESTATE,
LA SOMMA SAPIENZA E 'L PRIMO AMORE.
DINANZI A ME NON FUOR COSE CREATE
SE NON
ETTERNE,
E IO ETTERNO DURO.
LASCIATE OGNE
SPERANZA,
VOI CH'INTRATE.
(Inf.,
III, 1-9)
THROUGH ME YOU ENTER THE WOEFUL CITY,
THROUGH ME YOU ENTER ETERNAL GRIEF,
THROUGH ME YOU ENTER AMONG THE LOST.
JUSTICE
MOVED MY HIGH MAKER:
THE DIVINE POWER MADE ME,
THE SUPREME WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE.
BEFORE ME NOTHING WAS CREATED
IF NOT ETERNAL,
AND ETERNAL I ENDURE.
ABANDON EVERY HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER.
The
John
Hopkins University

Picture, Image, and Subjectivity in Medieval Culture

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