I had always thought that Socrates had been a real person. Rather, it turns out that Socrates was made-up: an avatar, a trope, a device used by Plato--who was a real person--to render more dialectic his dialogues.
This fact was reinforced upon me once again as I read in THE ELOQUENCE OF THE SCRIBES, by Ayi Kwei Armah (2006) the following attribution:
"Readers, I hope, will accept Plato as a credible presenter of the first articulate European view on the matter ["conception of inspiration "]. Instead of a paraphrase, let us use a direct quote. Here is the explanation of poetic inspiration Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates as he addresses Ion:
"'[A]ll good poets...compose their beautiful poems not as works of art, but because they are inspired and possessed. As the Corybantian revelers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind, when they are composing their beautiful strains.... For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer in him...God takes away the minds of poets and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know that they speak not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us."
P.265-266, "The Dance of Inspiration."
Monday, June 5, 2017
INSPIRATION
I had always thought that Socrates had been a real person. Rather, it turns out that Socrates was made-up: an avatar, a trope, a device used by Plato--who was a real person--to render more dialectic his dialogues.
This fact was reinforced upon me once again as I read in THE ELOQUENCE OF THE SCRIBES, by Ayi Kwei Armah (2006) the following attribution:
"Readers, I hope, will accept Plato as a credible presenter of the first articulate European view on the matter ["conception of inspiration "]. Instead of a paraphrase, let us use a direct quote. Here is the explanation of poetic inspiration Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates as he addresses Ion:
"'[A]ll good poets...compose their beautiful poems not as works of art, but because they are inspired and possessed. As the Corybantian revelers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind, when they are composing their beautiful strains.... For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer in him...God takes away the minds of poets and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know that they speak not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us."
P.265-266, "The Dance of Inspiration."