Let’s get didactic
The idea that Boethius’ use of poetry is not so simply wrangled into Philosophy’s service, but is actually functioning as part of a larger satirical structure, is not the popular answer to the difficult question of how exactly we are to read the Consolation. Wayne Hankey takes it as a given that Boethius is writing a straightforward consolation: “The Consolation of Philosophy records the purely philosophical doctrine which persuaded and comforted, and would persuade and comfort, Christians even in extremis for a millennium and a half.”1 Chadwick, whose text has provided a standard interpretation of Consolation for philosophy and theology for the past twenty years, also takes a literal reading of the Consolation. The title alone tells its genre and the object of the consolation, Philosophy, is the consoler. He takes Boethius at face value when he says that he is trying to make the interpretive task easier for the reader by including poetry, and suggests that the meter sections merely extend the arguments. Boethius uses poetry, “with the intention of lightening the reader’s task with a difficult subject.”2 But does this mean that we are to simply mine the poems for content similar to that in the prose sections? Chadwick seems to say yes. “The poems normally have subtle links with the prose sections that precede or follow them.”3 Beyond this, as Joel Relihan says, tongue in cheek, “it seems much safer to confound Philosophy and pedantry and attribute [the Consolation’s] perceived dullness to high-mindedness.”4 Chadwick notes that the Consolation resembles other works written in a Menippean Satire format (a combination of prose with poetry that is lighthearted or pokes fun at the matter of the prose), like Capella’s Marriage of Philology and Mercury, which also is about a kind of pilgrimage.5 He applies the same interpretive formula to these as well. Hermeneutically speaking, Chadwick doubts that Boethius is performing anything unusual, ironic or groundbreaking by employing the Menippean format.
Philosophers are not the only ones that have read the Consolation this way. Even recent literary theorists expound on it in light of its supposed genre, taking a literal tack to the characters’ arguments. Jo-Marie Claassen, in Displaced Persons (1999), believes that the title and genre of Consolation are pretty straightforward. There is nothing ironic or subtle about Boethius’ turn from an Ovidian elegiac to Philosophical dialogue. Rather, this turn is transparently underscored by his rejection to use anything “remotely Ovidian” until the last poem of Book III (III.m.12).6 There, Boethius recounts Orpheus’ heroic, yet tragic, descent into hell to rescue his lover, Eurydice. Orpheus is successful in recovering Eurydice, but is warned against looking upon her until they surface from the cave, which in his love Orpheus is unable to do, thus losing Eurydice. “Who can give lovers laws? / Love is a greater law unto itself.”7 Claassen reminds us that the singer Orpheus gains the freedom of Eurydice through song, but is unable to keep her, “incapacitated by the very emotion, romantic love, that had sent him to look for her.” Both T. F. Curley and Claassen argue that Boethius’ inclusion of this poem, his final tribute to the elegiac, is his way of forgoing, once and for all, the possibility of ascent through poetry. He resolutely identifies the Orphic character with his state at the beginning of the Consolation. He has since recommitted himself to Philosophy. He now has no pretension that poetry might harbor some ability foreign to or greater than Philosophy’s own abilities.8 “Ovidian ‘truth’ apparently pales before the ‘truth of philosophy’.”9
Claassen gives no defense for her particular typological interpretation of Orpheus. One wonders if Orpheus must be read as an exemplar of the poets, or if it is clear that Boethius read him that way? Nor does she explain her sharp dichotomy between poetry and philosophy.10 Does Boethius tell the poem in order to draw attention to poetry as such, or does he tell the poem to reference - and possibly counterpoint - the end of the tragic Orphic quest? More problematic is her understanding of how Boethius reads the Orphic figure. Whereas Claassen would have us read Boethius as replacing Orpheus qua poetry with Philosophy, one finds countless instances of philosophers and theologians in the Christian tradition reading Orpheus as a Christological figure.11 Jesus Christ, the perfect Orpheus, is able to rescue his lover, the world, from hell. And while we do not have an overt hermeneutic of the Orphic type, Claassen gives no support for why one should so easily dismiss that Boethius’ interpretive methods might have been concomitant with his Christian theological commitments.
Claassen concludes that Philosophy is ultimately successful in her act of consolation.12 She leads Boethius to the good, a sign that the author Boethius had already found peace with his imprisonment and impending death.13 Claassen is confident of this interpretation, even despite the complexities of the Menippean format.14 As I will demonstrate below, however, the satirical and dialogical structure of the Consolation create nuances, resonances, and complexities for which Claassen can only unsatisfactorily account in her straightforward, didactic reading. By neglecting the impact of the dialogue, the Menippean form, and similarities to Biblical wisdom literature in her interpretation, she is forced to either ignore the weaknesses in Philosophy’s arguments, or dismiss them as poor writing on Boethius’ part.15
- Wayne Hankey, “Ad intellectum ratiocinatio: Three Procline logics, the Divine Names of Psuedo-Dionysius, Eriugena’s Periphyseon and Boethius’ Consolatio Philosophiae,” in Studia Patristica, vol. XXIX, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 244.↩
- Chadwick, The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 223.↩
- Chadwick, The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy, 223.↩
- Joel Relihan, The Prisoner’s Philosophy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 2007), 1.↩
- Chadwick, The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy, 224.↩
- Claassen, Displaced Persons: the literature of exile from Cicero to Boethius (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 68.↩
- Consolation, III.m.12, 47-48.↩
- Claassen, Displaced Persons, 68.↩
- Claassen, Displaced Persons, 69.↩
- Claassen obscures any poetic import, opting instead to read the work as “a reportage of auto-didacticism, cast as dialogue” (169).↩
- Peter Dronke supports this thesis, that the Christian tradition has read Orpheus as a pre-figuring of Christ, an image or symbol which the resurrected Christ perfects; cf. “La persistenza dei miti musicali greci attraverso la letteratura mediolatina,” Musica e storia 1 (1998): 55-80.↩
- “…the imprisoned exile has passed from the stormy rebellion or deep depression of the earlier books to a philosophical judgement of exile as merely a non-desideratum” (Claassen, Displaced Persons, 172).↩
- Relihan accuses this reading of missing the point about death, that Philosophy brings death to Boethius and hopes that Boethius will follow her to his “true home”; Boethius, however, has not accepted death in Relihan’s reading, but in fact refuses Philosophy’s consolation, refuses to follow her in her ascent, and looks instead to the world, and therefore to life (The Prisoner’s Philosophy, 129).↩
- “Whether the work is truly autobiographical, or whether its Menippean form and largely traditional content are literary or conventional, this passage [IV.5] shows that the disgraced consular had, during the course of his imprisonment, long before he had sat down to pen the dialogue, achieved a state of tranquil acceptance of his lot” (Claassen, Displaced Persons, 172).↩
- Weaknesses like not completing her view of happiness as proposed in III.1-8, and the awkward transition that follows in which instead of giving an account for true happiness as she declares, she instead gives a broken account for “human error” in pursuing true happiness (III.9); and lastly her unusual identification of true happiness with “God” (III.10), and that humans who attain true happiness become gods themselves: “they are made happy by the acquisition of divinity” (III.10.85-86, Loeb ed.).↩
Okay, I’ve got to reread this piece. (The best kind of reaction to produce in a reader, right?)
I mean the primary text. The Boethius composition.
Janet,
I’m glad it interested you. I’ll be excited to hear your comments. I should be posting part three in a day or two. Part four, the last part, will be up a couple days after that.
Same here — even though I’m not yet persuaded to interpret the CoP differently. I’m thinking one could just as easily (and more straightforwardly) take the poetry sections as a kind of existential rest-stop for the dreamer from one prose section to another.
You’re welcome to read it that way, Scott. But to do so is to ignore 1. that Menippean Satire is an established genre at Beothius’ time, and 2. that Boethius is obvious employing dialogue and Menippean Satire. To assert some existential purpose is to read a foreign, and modern, purpose onto an ancient author. You basically have no reason, historically speaking, to do so. But I’d be up for hearing your argument why you think that’s a helpful reading of what Boethius is doing.
Lastly, your willingness to divorce the poetry from the Consolation, in favor of what you call a more straightforward reading, is actually the least straightforward reading you could take. After all, Book 1 opens with Philosophy chastising Boethius for using Ovidean elegy, which he abondons altogether, except for a rather satirical Ovidean elegy in Book III, where when read straightforwardly Boethius recounts the Orpheus myth in order to show that poetry is not helpful for finding deeper (what I take you to mean by Existential) meaning in suffering.
With all due respect, moves like yours, that divorce form from content, are troubling because they show little respect for the genre that the author intentionally chooses in order to convey the content. In words of a friend who is a Lit prof at U Delaware, you can’t separate form from content like it’s just the wrapping paper on a gift. The gift, rather, is the form and the content in an inseparable union. Let’s try to find a way that we can read the Consolation that respects both Boethius’ philosophical aims as well as the format in which he choose to enshroud those aims.
‘enshroud’?
If you take ‘existential’ to mean ‘for oneself’ (e.g. bonum sibi), then it works perfectly fine in the ancient context. I should’ve just used that phrase instead. None of the existentialist ontology of course was implied–after all Boethius is very much into essences being the good neo-Platonist that he is!
Scott, you say “I’m thinking one could just as easily (and more straightforwardly) take the poetry sections as a kind of existential rest-stop for the dreamer from one prose section to another.” and are taking existential here to mean “for oneself”. Thus, we get the poetry sections being a “for oneself” rest stop.
This is all well and good until we remember that Philosophy is claiming to lead Boethius to “the good”, and thus to true happiness. If by ‘for oneself’ you mean a particular, ie. unique, happiness, then again you are not taking any kind of straightforward reading of the Consolation. For, the good, and thus true happiness are not unique or particular by any stretch of the means. If the good was particular and not universal, then it would not be the good.
another option: If by ‘for oneself’ you instead mean that Boethius is just taking some time out from the rigor of the prose sections, then it occurs to me that you have posited a kind of art for arts sake, or maybe art for therapy sake, both of which again would be complete foreign to either the straightforward reading or my reading of the consolation. 1. art for arts sake is the most modern notion that I can think of. You’re familiar with my masters thesis, so I won’t rehash it here. But suffice it to say, one has literally no support for positing art for arts sake in the ancient world. If on the other hand you mean that poetry is providing a kind of therapy for Boethius, you again need to explain why Boethius is using poetry when Philosophy so severely chastens him for it on Page 1! If he is ignoring her chastening by using poetry throughout the ENTIRE Consolation, they you seem to be positing something similar my thesis, that poetry provides a way for Beothius to subtly subvert the aims of Philosophy. However, in this case it’s no rest stop that he’s taking. Rather, he aiming for something greater than philosophy. An aside, I think he’s employing an incarnational model of thought by fusing poetry and theological/philosophical reflection.
lastly, it seems to me that you deplete the Consolation’s ingenuity by claiming that the poems are existential rest stops - I’m not even sure I get what that means. But if it’s the case that they’re not central, or part of the center, of the dialogue between Philosophy and Boethius, if they’re just ancillary bits that the author Boethius tacked on, then we’re left with another one of the form divorced from content statements. But I’m arguing that these kind of statements can handle developments after the Consolation like Canterbury Tales and Divine Comedy, which are doing a fair amount of theology in their own right precisely through their form.
My basic worry is this: why suppose that the poetry sections subvert or critique the prose sections? Could we not as easily take the opposite view, that learning philosophy is hard work, and sometimes the dreamer requires another medium that helps him along, a medium that supports the prose sections? So, the question is this, what evidence do we have the the poetry goes against rather than supports the prose?
I do think the poetry contributes something positive to the overall task of the consolation, so it is a matter of identifying how it does this–and I happen to think the poetry does this by somehow supporting the prose sections (for the good of the dreamer), rather than somehow putting into question what the prose sections are trying to do.
The issue of the ’stable good’ versus the ‘transitory good’ obviously is central to the Consolation–as you rightly point out. It is a further question to ask whether the stable good can in fact function as a ‘good for me’. And in fact, I think it should–precisely b/c the treatise wouldn’t be a consolation for the dreamer, if learning what the stable good is could not in some way console the dreamer. Anselm discusses this a bit in On the Fall of the Devil where he distinguishes btwn. the affection for the good in itself, and the affection for the good for oneself– and yet later Scotus takes up this distinction to claim that love for the good in itself is so good, that loving this good is a good for oneself.
Scott, you’re confusing my thesis - that the Menippean format (prose poetry) subverts the pretensions of the subject matter - with something else (poetry subverting prose you say above - that’s not what I’m arguing here). But I would say there’s a subversion, and your reading - that the poetry is merely supporting the prose doesn’t work for a couple reasons.
First, there’s no straightforward prose in the Consolation. It’s a dialogue. Any attempt to extract a siloloquy or doctrine from the Consolation MUST deal with its dialogical context. Otherwise, you’re completing ignoring how it fits into the dialogue tradition.
Second, regarding the poetry, it’s not merely ancillary because this is how the Menippean format works. Read part III to get a better sense of this argument.
I think your worry to support what you think the prose sections are doing is based on a false notion that the prose sections ARE doing something straightforward. But then you need to show that they are doing something didactic, whereas I’m asking how one can so easily dismiss their dialogical context. After all, it is a conversation between the two. Surely you can admit that there’s something more complex going on here?
Dan,
I’ll have a read through CoP again. I have been talking from memory up to this point. But yes, the prose section = dialogue, and the poetry section = .. poetry. We should also keep in mind, as you probably have, that Boethius is writing the parts for the dreamer and for Lady Philosophy.
In any case, I’ll get back to this later when I get the chance.
Scott. that’s exactly my point. we can just read the character Boethius or Philosophy as the authoritative voice in the dialogue section. rather, together and with the poetry they make the whole of the Consolation. And reading it both as dialogue and Menippean satire makes the most of this.
forest, trees, its all out there. in maine, I mean, which is where I spent the weekend.