THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME (432 BC

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME (432 BC): Text, interpretation and memory in Plato's "Protagoras" Author(s): Andrew Ford Source: Poetica , 2014, Vol. 46, No. 1/2 (2014), pp. 17-39 Published by: Brill Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24710119 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Brill is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Poetica This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Andrew Ford (Princeton, Ν J) THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME (432 BC): Text, interpretation and memory in Plato's Protagoras Plato's Protagoras is a unique text in the history of criticism, the only extended example of practical poetic criticism that we have from classical Greece. This long passage (338e-347c) shows a group of fifth-century intellectual luminaries debating the meaning of a dense lyric poem by Simonides: the text is quoted at length and its language examined closely and methodically - and wildly. My paper first attempts to pinpoint how this passage - often written off as a parody or a joke or misunder stood as a simplistic polemic against 'sophistry' - fits into the work. I argue that Plato is more serious here than is usually supposed, and that the passage gives his best account of the uses and limits of literary criticism. In a coda, I consider an analysis of the passage by Glenn Most and suggest that the role of memory in inter pretation is overlooked in academic criticism. The question raised in this paper is one that evidently needs to be periodi cally re-asked even without the expectation of arriving at a final, definitive answer. The formulation in my title is taken from an influential essay by Matthew Arnold in which the "present time" was 1865; Arnold's theme was revisited by T. S. Eliot in 1923 and again by Northrop Frye in 1949.' One indication that the present is another such time is the 2004 issue of Critical Inquiry, a leading journal of literary theory over recent decades: its sympo sium on "The Future of Criticism" shows critical theory pausing to take stock after a generation of energetic production and considering where one might go next. About this second point there appears to be some uncertainty, to judge from the title of a 2000 volume of Essays from the English Institute, 1 Arnold first published "The Functions [sic] of Criticism at the Present Time" in The National Review in November 1864 and then "The Function ..." in id., Essays in Criticism, London/ Cambridge: McMillan and Co., 1865. T. S. Eliot's "The Function of Criticism" appeared in The Criterion of 1923 and was republished in his Selected Essays of 1933 (Eliot also took up Arnold's theme in The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism [1933]). Northop Frye, "The Function of Criticism at the Present time", in: University of Toronto Quarterly 19/1949, pp. 1-16, was reprinted in Malcolm Ross (ed.), Our Sense of Identity, Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1954, and then revised as the "Polemical Introduction" to Northop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Princeton: Prince ton Univ. Press, 1957; on this important essay, see Angus Fletcher, "Northrop Frye: The Critical Passion", in: Critical Inquiry 1/1975, pp. 741-756. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 18 Andrew Ford What s Left of Theory!, or Terry Eagleton's After Theory of2003 ? Both titles mitigate confessions of exhaustion with paronomasia - but the amphiboly suggests uncertainty: What's Left of Theory asks if there's any theory left to do besides repeating 'leftist' perspectives; After Theory may seem to prom ise a kind of theory different from what we have known so far, but the fact that After Theory had already been used as a title less than a decade earlier, and indeed twice by the same author, may be another sign that a period of extraordinary critical innovation came to an end with the millennium.3 In such a time it is especially interesting to re-read Plato's Protagoras, for it too seems to have been written to take stock at the end of a great generation of critics. Probably written in the 380's, the Protagoras offered its first read ers a richly imagined picture of poetic interpretation as practiced by the greatest minds in Periclean Athens nearly half a century before. The work begins with Socrates recounting how Hippocrates, a young man of good family, woke him that morning in hopes of gaining entrie into one of the greatest gatherings of sages Athens had ever seen. Hippocrates is mainly interested in Protagoras from Abdera, but Prodicus from Ceos and Hippias from Elis are also in town to give lectures and recruit students. Ultimately, these savants will fail to satisfy Socrates on the main philosophic questions he raises - whether human excellence (arete) is teachable and whether it is a form of knowledge - but in the course of the discussion, near the middle of the Protagoras, we are given an extended scene showing how poetry was interpreted and analyzed by the most sophisticated critics of the age. No other Platonic work goes so deeply into literary criticism as a methodical attempt to interpret and evaluate poetry: the Ion tests the knowledge of the poet-performer and finds it wanting, but on the simplistic level of pointing out that Homer and his performers have no expert knowledge of what they talk about; the judging of poetry in the Republic and Laws is not literary in orientation but political, performed by state officials for political ends. By contrast, the Protagoras shows us Greece's leading experts on language and eloquence bringing to bear their technical knowledge, along with some new 2 Judith Butler/ John Guillory/ Kendall Thomas (eds.), What's Left of Theory? New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory (Essays from the English Institute), New York: Routledge, 2000. Terry Eagleton, After Theory, London: Allen Lane, 2003. Eagleton had remarked on the decline of "pure" or "high" theory in the preface to the second edition of his Literary Theory: An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, pp. viii-ix. Going a critical generation back, one finds the same stock-taking in Randall Jarrell's "The Age of Criticism", in: id., Poetry and the Age, New York: Knopf, 1953, focusing on such figures as John Crowe Ransom, F. R. Leavis, Frye, Yvor Winters, and Lionel Trilling. 3 Thomas Docherty, After Theory: Postmodernism/Postmarxism, London: Routledge, 1990, and After Theory, Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1996 This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (432 BC) 19 technical terms, to analyze a poem in close detail, from matters of dialect (346d-e) and word-order {Hyperbaton, 343e, 345e, 346e) down to punctua tion (dialabein 346e) and the function of the particle men (343d). If Plato were writing the Protagoras for our time, he might set it in the 1970's, with young Hippocrates thinking about graduate study at the School of Criticism & Theory at Irvine, where Derrida, de Man and Jameson all happened to be passing through. The precious evidence in the Protagoras, really the only thing of its kind in ancient literature, has been much studied, but it has proved very hard to judge what point Plato is making or even whether he has a serious point at all.4 On the one hand, it seems serious: one can recognize in the exegeses many of the assumptions and methods that still guide contemporary academic interpreta tion, as an analysis by Glenn Most will show; on the other, there are some wild, explicitly unserious claims blended in and it is not clear if we are to regard even Socrates' contribution as any better than the rest. The episode seems to end by declaring itself a waste of time: Socrates brings the poetry discussion to a close by declaring that "it is not possible to interrogate the poets about what they mean; when people bring them up, some say that the poet means this and others that, and the point in dispute can never be decided" (347e-348a).5 He compares talking about poetry to pretentious dinner parties in which people "borrow the voices of poets because they are too ill-educated to converse properly with one another" (347c); he prefers a kind of discussion or "conversation" (347e: διαλεγόμενοι) that is more like dialectic, "dropping the extraneous voices of poets and putting one another and the truth itself to the test by exchanging logoi among ourselves" (347e-348a). The naivete of Socrates' assumption that only a poem's author knows its meaning6 and the fruitlessness of the discussion as a whole are among the 4 Richard Β. Rutherford, The Art of Plato: Ten Essays in Platonic Interpretation, Lon don: Duckworth, 1995, p. 122. For reviews of earlier studies see Fabio M. Giuiliano, "Esegesi letteraria in Platone: La discussione sul carme Simonideo nel Protagora", in: Studi Classici e Orientali 41/1991, pp. 105-190; Marian Demos, Lyric Quotation in Plato, Lanham et al: Roman & Littlefeld, 1999, pp. 1-18 (see the review by Velvet Yates in: Bryn Mawr Classical Review, retrievable at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ bmcr/2000/2000-06-16.html) and Grace M. Ledbetter, Poetics Before Plato: Inter pretation and Authority in Early Greek Theories of Poetry, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2003, pp. 99-117. Philosophers have tended to ignore the literary excursus until recently: see Jonathan Lavery, "Plato's Protagoras and the Frontier of Genre Research: A Reconnaissance Report from the Field", in: Poetics Today 28/2007, pp. 191-246, esp. p. 223. 5 All translations from the Greek are by the author. 6 Michael S. Silk, Interaction in Poetic Imagery: With Special Reference to Early Greek Poetry, Cambridge et al: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006, p. 234, sees intention alism at the heart of Plato's approach to poetry, a "one in a million" attitude he as This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 20 Andrew Ford reasons why the passage has been written off as a sort of joke or under interpreted as a polemic against a broad-brush caricature of'sophistry'.7 But this is unsatisfactory, for it leaves us without any sense of why Plato should have prolonged this episode to fill nearly a fifth of the work (338e-347c).8 Because Plato's point and purpose are obscure, the Protagoras has often been neglected or given tangential mention in histories of Greek criticism.9 A main reason for this, in my view, is a larger problem with the scholarship on Plato's views of poetry, which is that it has been lopsidedly obsessed with metaphysics, putting too much stress on the arguments about mimesis in Republic 10 to the exclusion of Plato's manifold other observations - some admiring, some neutral - about poetry and its uses.10 The Protagoras, how ever, is focused not on mimesis but on exegesis and on the broader question of whether citing the poets and trying to understand them can help us in ethical exploration. In this dialogue at least, Socrates' attitude to poetic authority is not anxious mistrust: he has quotations from Homer handy for any occasion (309b, 315b, c, 340a) and is able to quote from memory much of a complex ode by a poet no longer in fashion (344a-b); this Socrates cribes to the philosopher's rationalist hostility to poetry and suspicion of poetic form. During a recent conference on "Plato as Literary Critic" at the Ludwigs Maximilians Universität, Stephen Halliwell pointed out (in a paper entitled "Author, Text, and Meaning: Some Critical Problems in Plato") that this is too flat as an account of Pla to's views, instancing, inter alia, Apol. 22, where poets are unable to say what their poems mean. 7 Ledbetter, Poetics Before Plato (see note 4), p. 100, n. 2 gives a long list of scholars. The few arguments for Plato's earnestness have not been plausible (cf. p. 101, n. 4 and η. 11 below); 1 differ with Ledbetter's attempt, the strongest, when she argues for a contrast between Socratic and "sophistic methodology" and sees the Protagoras as parodying "the relativist assumptions that typically inform sophistic interpretations of poetry" (p. 6); to my mind, this monolithic notion of sophistic criticism is a straw man that, among other defects, neglects the individuation of the sages in the dialogue; for all Socrates' humor, I see his interpretative sallies not as parody but as doing as well as he can with such an intractable thing as a poem who's reputable author is not present to clarify uncertainties about his meaning. 8 Among those to address this question is Hans Baltussen, "Plato Protagoras 340-348: commentary in the making?", in: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 47/2004, pp. 21-35, arguing that the passage, despite falling short of "sensible philology", rep resents Plato's thought on how to "[deal] with poetry as a carrier of moral thought" (p. 21). 9 So Ruth Scodel, "Literary Interpretation in Plato's Protagorasin: Ancient Philoso phy 6/1986, pp. 25-37, p. 25. To her examples in n. 2 add the too brief remarks in Andrew Ford, The Origins of Criticism: Literary Culture and Poetic Theory in Clas sical Greece, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2002, p. 154 and p. 202. 10 Among those who appreciate that Plato's views on poetry are far richer than he is usually given credit for is Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2002, Ch. 2. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (432 BC) responds to a poem by examining it to see if it is useful and likely to be true; if so, he is perfectly willing to cite the poem as a piece of wisdom." The 'Plato on poetry' that can be discerned behind the Protagoras is not the relentless prosecutor of poets but more like a sociologist or cultural anthro pologist, a detached and keen-eyed observer of how his elite fellow citizens make use of poetry and how they support the claims they make for it. For this reason, the usefulness of the Protagoras for critics of the present time extends beyond the provocation afforded by Socrates' dismissive attitude to talk about poetry; Plato's extended representation of high literary discourse also allows us to reflect on the function of criticism by comparing our prac tices with those in its formative stage 2,400 years ago. I propose, therefore, first to bring out Plato's implicit attitude toward poet ic interpretation in the Protagoras, arguing that the work dramatizes not only the limits of criticism but also its inescapability. My discussion will begin with the first half of the dialogue (309a-338e) that sets the stage for the liter ary conversation and, with typical Platonic irony, makes Socrates' wrangle with Protagoras address the present of Plato's readers. Attending to context prepares us to see that expert criticism, what Protagoras calls "being formi dable on the subject of verse" (δεινός περί έπών), was a rule-bound game, one among various genres of discourse on display, and in a second section I argue that Socrates' performance as literary critic is not wholly parodic: its first part (339b-341 e) is less than earnest and toys with the rules of the game; but when Socrates rises to Protagoras' challenge and promises to show "my own position as far as your 'verses' go" (342a), we get a good-humored but serious demonstration of how Plato thinks we have to grapple with poetic and other provocative texts from the past in our ethical reflections.12 Though his portrait has satiric touches, it tries to show critics doing about as well as 11 See Scodel, "Literary Interpretation" (see note 9), pp. 34-35. For a rich inventory of examples in which "Plato cites poets as authorities on ethical matters" see Theodora Hadjimichal, Bacchylides and the Emergence of the Lyric Canon, PhD Diss., ULC, 2011, p. 137, n. 18, citing, e. g., Rep. 331a3, 331d5, 334a-b; Men. 95c-96a; Phaedo 94d7-95a2, Ille6-112a5. 12 Dorothea Frede, "The Impossibility of Perfection: Socrates' Criticism of Simonides' Poem in the Protagoras", in: The Review of Metaphysics 39.4/1986, pp. 729-753, characterizes this section as "Socrates' serious interpretation" not because it is a good-faith effort to extract Simonides' meaning but because Socrates "imposes, con sciously and forcefully, his own tenets on the poem" (p. 740). She is followed by Marina Berzins McCoy, "Socrates on Simonides: The Use of Poetry in Socratic and Platonic Rhetoric", in: Philosophy and Rhetoric 32.4/1999, pp. 349-367, who argues for a rhetorical, manipulative Socrates who "at the expense of honest hermeneutics" (p. 355) foists his own views on Simonides because "his hermeneutical aim is not poetic interpretation, but dialogue with the poet" (p. 359). Neither rather cynical read ing imputed to Socrates seems worthy of the name dialogue. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 21 22 Andrew Ford they can with a difficult old poem. Finally, to support this reading, I will turn to Most's analysis, which shows not only that serious and defensible princi ples underlie Socrates' argument but that, on a number of basic points, Socrates' interpretative premises are the same as ours. Most's study will also allow me to compare, in a final section, the picture of criticism in 432 BC with our own practices. Taking his conclusions a step further suggests that one function that methodical criticism has served and continues to serve, though it is rarely acknowledged, is to aid us in remembering and preserving poems; conscientiously practiced criticism, despite its limitations and theo retical quandaries, serves as a mode of poetic re-performance and so ensures the preservation and transmission of the text, even when a full and final account of its meaning may continue to elude us. Staging criticism Although the Protagoras is set in a golden past, two ironic moments framing its prologue destabilize and undercut this temporal distancing and put the work into dialogue with audiences of later times. The first moment is found in the work's opening business: an unnamed speaker catches sight of Socrates and surmises that he has been on the hunt for Alcibiades "the fair" (309a); when he adds that he has noticed the youth's beard is coming in, there is a hint which - together with a few other indications and an anachronism - sug gests a dramatic date around 432, when the historical Alcibiades would have been in his late teens and Socrates approaching 40.13 Now, 432 is five years before Plato was born, and pegging the text to the time when Alcibiades' youthful bloom had peaked stresses the past-ness of the story, setting it at an evanescent moment that can never be recaptured. At the same time, this viv id image invests the work with relevance for readers of later times, for the themes of the Protagoras crucially concern any young citizen on the verge of adulthood and independence. Such is Hippocrates, who presumably mir rored many of Plato's readers in his education and his openness to higher 13 See Debra Nails' discussion in The People of Plato: a prosopography of Plato and other Socratics, Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002, pp. 309-310. We know it must be before 429 because Pericles' sons are present, though they died in the plague of that year. This makes anachronistic the reference at 327d to "last year's" production of "The Wild Men" (Agrioi) by Pherecrates, as Athenaeus noticed (218d = Pherecrates Test, i PCG), that would place it in 420. See further Nikos Charalabopoulos, "The metathe atrical reader of Plato's Protagoras", in: Felix Budelmann/ Pantelis Michelakis (eds.), Homer, Tragedy and Beyond. Essays in Honour of P. E. Easterling, London: Soc. for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 2001, pp. 149-178. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (432 BC) 23 inquiry. Most importantly, Hippocrates shares with these readers a mediated relation to the 'real' Protagoras: he mentions that he knows of the sophist through his tremendous reputation for wisdom and eloquence, but he has never had the chance to hear him speak or see him in person, having been too young when Protagoras was last in Athens (310e). Readers of the text in the 380's, when Protagoras had been dead for more than three decades, were in the same position and, it hardly needs to be added, so are readers of the work today; the Protagoras is a sort of novella set in the past, but is addressed to all young people on the verge of maturity and to those who care for them. In reply to the unnamed speaker, Socrates says that he happened to have laid eyes on Alcibiades "this very day" and to have been supported by him in an argument. With this marker placed in the text (309b: we want to hear just what Alcibiades did to help Socrates, and we will at 336b), Socrates is induced to sit down and tell the whole story. The basic philosophic issues of the Protagoras come up as he recounts his conversation with Hippocrates while waiting for a decent hour to call: Socrates asks whether a sophistic education is vocational training or a liberal art, like the study of music or literature (grammatike, 312b). Protagoras would seem to offer professional training, which is one implication of the controversial title "sophist" (3 lie) that he willingly accepts; the well born Athenian Hippocrates, however, blushes at the suggestion that he aspires to become a sophist himself (312a) and ventures that Protagoras' expertise is in knowing how to make someone a "formidable" or "awe-inspiring" speaker (312d: έπιστάτην τοΰ ποιήσαι δε Lvov Λέγειν). Socrates accepts this as at least part of the truth, possibly because he knows that deinos can mean "awful" as well as "awe-inspiring".14 A series of scenes much loved by literary commentators (314c-316a) gets them inside Callicles' grand house where the sages are staying, and Plato marks the formal beginning of the encounter by having Socrates refer back to the frame of his narrative and "Alcibiades the fair" (316a). From this point until the criticism scene begins at 338e, it is helpful to bracket the specific arguments raised and notice the variety of discursive modes the company adopts. Such a focus reveals that this part of Protagoras is a sustained exper iment in the best way to conduct a discussion or conversation:15 the partici 14 We find out later (341a-b) that whenever Socrates was inclined to praise a sophist as σοφός και δεινός Prodicus corrected him, pointing out that demos should properly mean "bad, terrible". (Prodicus is being finicky; for deinos in a positive sense, cf. Ion 531a where it describes Ion's professional skill as performer and explainer of Ho meric poetry.) 15 On Plato's use of dialegesthai for "conversation", which does not necessarily entail formal dialectic, see Andrew Ford, "The Origins of Dialogue", in: Simon Goldhill (ed.), The End of Dialogue, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008, pp. 34-39. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 24 Andrew pants try what Ford out a διαλόγων).16 ground-rules and in umpires this The have is whether pilgrims Socrates disc delicate men. with a the position He then the since the and launc provocativ men a "sophist" purveyors post-Persian were wi foreign improving name of mee they leaves sideration: dox but importance the d t selecte literary of rules. as in are section, see the in need The num fashion War actually cu sophis now, the title and Simonides was r prete religious even cus the since he is lore; expert they a in make sophist, deceive the brilliant, modern a pr truly ironic pupils Being the open sort that he is, Protagoras proposes to hold their discus sion before "any and everybody who is in the house" (απάντων εναντίον τών ένδον όντων, 317c). Socrates opines, in a comic aside, that what Pro tagoras really wanted was to show off before his rivals Prodicus and Hippias, but this humorous moment opens up a second ironic appeal to the reader: 16 Cf. 329a-b, 331 c, 333c, 334d, 336a-d, 347c-348a, 360e-361 e. 17 On the semantics of the word see Andrew Ford, "Sophistic", in: Common Knowledge This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms as that cernment. 1.5/1993, pp. 33-47 with reference to earlier studies. w and teaching potential gy me The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (432 BC) Protagoras' invitation to "those within" to listen in on the proceedings is, pragmatically, also an invitation to "those without", i. e., the readers of Pro tagoras, to follow the discussion as well. Plato's beguiling fantasy of the good old days offers readers of any time the alluring prospect of overhearing great talk. Accordingly, a sort of conference is convened and all sit down to converse "in session".18 In this quasi-public format, Protagoras begins by taking ques tions, for, like other sophists, he "delights in answering questions that are well put" (318d).19 Socrates' questions reveal that they disagree as to wheth er arete can be taught. Socrates holds it cannot for two reasons: the way democratic Athens runs her deliberative assemblies implies that expertise in politics is not the province of any particular group of people; secondly, when noble parents have wastrel children one sees excellence cannot be taught. He thus politely prevails on the sophist to be so kind as to "demonstrate" or "display" his wisdom on this matter (320b: μή φθονήσης άΛΛ' έπίδειξον). Now the epideixis, the elaborate, often mythical or paradoxical display speech, was the main showpiece of many a sophist, and Protagoras is such a master of the form that he can offer Socrates a choice of modes: "I consent, but first: shall I give my display in the form of a story (μΰθον), as an old man speaks to younger men, or shall I go through the argument (λόγω) in detail?" (320c). The company leave this up to Protagoras, and he chooses to tell a myth because he finds doing so more "agreeable" (320c: χαριεστερον). Protagoras' capriciousness suggests that he could do either, and he ends up doing both: his myth of how Prometheus and Epimetheus gave everyone an equal share of political wisdom (320d-323c) explains that Athens is right to run her political assemblies as she does and so answers Socrates' first argu ment (323c-324d). Then with further signposting he turns "from myth to logos" (324d: ούκέτι μΰθόν σοι έρώ άλλα λόγον) to explain why excel lent people do not always raise excellent children. This logos is an inference from observable facts, such as the rules and punishments prescribed in schools and in the laws which imply that children can learn to be good. Pro tagoras' display comes to a close with the declaration that he has answered both of Socrates' doubts through both myth and logos (328c: εγώ και μϋθον και Λόγον εΐρηκα). Socrates finds the epideixis spellbinding and is persuaded, except for a little rub (328e: πλην σμικρόν τί μοι έμποδών). To pursue this he begs 18 317d: συνέδρων κατασκευάσωμεν, ίνα καθεζόμενοι διαλέγησθε. The word (the source, via Aramaic, of the Jewish Sanhedrin) is used both of formal and informal meetings in 4th-century Greek. 19 Hippias also stood for questions from the crowd (Hippias minor 363a-c). Cf. Gorgias in Gorg. 448a: "I haven't had a new question put to me in many years". This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 25 26 Andrew Ford Protagoras to change his mode of discourse, leaving aside the long speeches he's shown he can do so well and switching to the sophistic trick of "brief talk" or brachylogy (329b: άποκρίνασθοα κατά βραχύ). In the short answer mode Protagoras is quickly led down the garden path: using gross equivocations (e. g. 'justice must itself be just', 330c ff.), Socrates makes him contradict himself and presses his advantage by cutting down Protago ras' rhetorical options further when he asks him not to take refuge in answers qualified by "if' (33 lc-d). Protagoras' temper soon begins to fray (332a) and his continually increasing irritation (333b, cf. 333dl) erupts in an applause winning short speech to the effect that all Socrates' terms are relative (333e). Things threaten to fall apart: Socrates repeats his request that Protago ras practice brachylogy (334e), pleading that his comprehension is feeble and that Protagoras, an avowed expert in both styles, should accommodate him (335b-c). Protagoras, for his part, didn't get to be Greece's champion debater by letting others dictate the terms and refuses to abandon long speeches (335a). Socrates declares he has an errand to go on (335c) for he wants a dia logical conversation and not "demagogic" long speeches (336b: δη μηγορειν). As he is about to leave, the others intervene and broker an agreement to let the conversation go on. Here we reach another section-marker in the dialogue, beckoning once more to the opening frame: it is the intervention of Alcibiades that helps keep things going (336b ff.; cf. 309a). The compromise that is worked out is that Protagoras will ask first, and then take his turn answering. Once again we will be changing discursive modes: with Protagoras now in a position to direct the inquiry, the conversation will turn to literary criticism. Summing up this first portion of the dialogue, we may characterize most of the modes of speech on display as 'sophistic' specialties for which paral lels can be found in Plato's Gorgias. That work also pays a great deal of attention to how to conduct "the art of conversation".20 Gorgias begins with the great sophist having just finished one of his display speeches (447a-b) and having challenged to the audience to ask him any question whatever (447c). As in Protagoras, the sophist's modes of display are contrasted with the "conversation" (447a-b) that Socrates prefers to have. Gorgias' pupil Polus is ready to defend the art of rhetoric with a long speech on the origin and progress of the arts (448c; cf. 449b); Socrates interrupts the tyro's dis course, but it easily could have gone on along the lines of Protagoras' μύθος on Prometheus and Epimetheus. As in Protagoras, long-form disquisitions are rejected by Socrates, opposing them as "rhetoric" to "conversation" (448d). He entreats Gorgias to practice brachylogy (449b) and sugarcoats 20 Gorg. 448d; cf. 449b-c, 453b-c, 454c, 457c-458c, 461c-462a, 465e-466a, 471e-472d, 474a-b, 475e, 486d-487b, 505e-506a, 509a. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (432 BC) the request, as in Protagoras, by citing his expertise in speaking (457c; cf. Prot. 335a). Most generally, one finds the same concern for civilized social intercourse as in Protagoras when Socrates deplores occasions in which people conducting a public debate feel threatened by honest requests for clarification and fall into abusing each other with the result that the audience regrets having attended the session (457c-d).21 Whatever advantages it may offer in prompting philosophic dialectic, conversation (διαλέγεσθαι) is rec ommended in both works as the format that best facilitates the even-tem pered exchange and examination of views.22 Socrates peri epön deinos So it is that when in Protagoras the reins are given to Protagoras, he shifts the conversation about virtue yet again, "transferring it onto poetry" (339a), one of his specialties. He begins by asserting that, "The most important part of education is being formidable on the subject of verse" (περί έπων δεινόν είναι, 338e); this means "understanding what is said by the poets, both well and ill, being able to tell the difference and to defend one's views if challenged" (339a). Unlike the earlier modes of discourse paralleled in Gorgias, this agonistic form of criticism seems to have been a Protagorean specialty; it was very likely connected with the linguistic expertise he adver tised as "correct verbal expression" or orthoepeia (339d).23 The game of displaying sophistication about poetry usually began with someone quoting a bit of poetry and declaring it good or bad and then defending that judgment against all challengers.24 Protagoras shows how it is done by quoting the opening of a song by Simonides, a poet whose last work was in the early 460's: "Now for a man to become good truly is hard 21 Eliot sympathizes in his "Function of Criticism": ..] we perceive that criticism, far from being a simple and orderly field of beneficent activity, from which impostors can be readily ejected, is no better than a Sunday park of contending and contentious ora tors, who have not even arrived at the articulation of their differences." (in: The Cri terion 2.5/1923, pp. 31-42, here p. 33). 22 Rutherford, The Art of Plato (see note 4), notices the many shifts in discussion and takes them to be at once illustrative of speakers' personalities and a main unifying factor in the work "to illustrate [...] right and wrong ways of approaching a discus sion of ethical or any other themes" (p. 132). 23 See Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1968, pp. 37-39 and pp. 280 281. 24 See Detlev Fehling, "Zwei Untersuchungen zur griechischen Philosophie", in: Rhei nisches Museum 108/1965, pp. 212-229. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 27 28 Andrew Ford (άνδρ' αγαθόν μεν άλαθέως γενέσθαι χαλεπό ν, 339b), four-square in hands and feet and mind, faultlessly fashioned". He asks if Socrates knows the song, offering to recite it for him if not (339b: τούτο έ πίστα σαι τό άσμα, ή πάν σοι διεξέλθω). By chance Socrates "happens" to have made a study of the song,25 and readily agrees that it is "admirably made and cor rect". He thus falls into the trap, for Protagoras goes on to show that Simon ides contradicts himself "as the song goes along" (339c: προϊόντος τοΰ άσματος) and the poet says, "Nor does that saying of Pittacus ring true to me, / though wise was the one who said it: 'to be noble is hard.'"26 Simon ides cannot both lay it down as a maxim27 in his own person that it is hard to be good (πρώτον αύτός ύπέθετο χαλεπόν είναι άνδρα άγαθόν γενέσθαι, 339d) and "a little while later" (339d) deny Pittacus' maxim that it is hard to be good (χαλεπόν έσθλόν έμμεναι). Protagoras finishes this display of orthoepeia with a flourish that draws applause from the crowd. But it is hard to see what point he has scored in the debate about virtue, apart from pulling a rug from under Socrates. Perhaps he simply wants to show that he is formidably clever, cleverer than Socrates and even than Simonides, whom the sophist had enrolled along with Homer and Hesiod as his prede cessors as teachers of excellence (316d). Socrates confesses that the effect of this performance on him was literally stunning, as if he'd been hit by a boxer in front of a shouting crowd, and that he needed to buy time to "examine closely" what the poet "said" or "meant" (339e: ίνα μοι χρόνος έγγένηται τη σκέψει τί Λέγοι ό ποιητής). He therefore turns to Prodicus for his knowledge of verbal distinctions and together they propose to distinguish between Pittacus' use of the verb "be" and Simonides' "become": Simonides is right, for to "become" good is hard; so too is Pittacus, for "being" good is not hard. In this way Socrates brings the two sentences into harmony with each other and into conformity with traditional wisdom.28 Protagoras retorts that this position entails the unac 25 έπίσταμαί τε γάρ, και πάνυ μοι τυγχάνει μεμεληκός τοϋ άσματος (339b). In making Socrates' knowledge of the song a matter of chance Plato indicates that it was not a widely cited "chestnut" that "everyone" could be expected to know, pace Ledbetter's "well known", Poetics Before Plato (see note 4), p. 99. On Simonides' fading reputation at this time, see Ford, The Origins of Criticism (see note 9), p. 207 with references. 26 542.12-13 PMG\ ουδέ μοι έμμελέως τό Πιττάκειον νέμεται, / καίτοι σοφού παρά φωτός είρημένον χαλεπόν φάτ' έσθλόν / έμμεναι. 27 The choice of verb (339d: αυτός ύπέθετο) has a generic implication, showing that Protagoras takes Simonides to be moralizing in the vein of such works as the Kheir onos hupothekai. Cf. 340c-d: ό Σιμωνίδης τήν έαυτοϋ γνώμην άπεφήνατο. 28 As, e. g., in Hesiod Erga 289 ff. On the verbal distinctions, see Ledbetter, Poetics Before Plato (see note 4), p. 103, n. 6 and p. 104, n. 7. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (432 BC) 29 ceptable claim that virtue is easy to possess when all agree that it is the most difficult thing (340e): "great would be the poet's ignorance" if this were his thought. Socrates and Prodicus accept this and turn to a different word, Pit tacus' "hard" (χαλεπόν). They suggest that in the Cean dialect khalepon meant "bad", and so Cean Simonides was shocked to hear (Lesbian) Pittacus saying "it is bad to be good" (341c). Protagoras is completely unimpressed and dismisses the attempt, noting that it is ruled out by Simonides' following verse which says "god alone can have the privilege" (34 le) of being good. Socrates gives up quite willingly and admits they were only joking. This teaming up with Prodicus illustrates the powers and limitations of semantic analysis in interpretation - for this art is what Prodicus represents. Socrates confesses that his calling on Prodicus was a stall, and they end up admitting that they had not been altogether serious in some suggestions. But it would be wrong to dismiss this passage as simply "anti sophistic" foolery, since Prodicus is a figure Plato never mocks and Socrates, the conversation alist, has every reason to be sincere in praising the knowledge of verbal dis tinctions as an "ancient and divine" art that goes back to Simonides or yet earlier (341a). Although the net result of their teaming up is to return to the contradiction pointed out by Protagoras, the interlude should not be read as pastiche but as a demonstration that even expert lexical analysis cannot solve every interpretative problem.29 The burst trial balloon on "hard" seems to show that linguistic science has limitations, but the distinction between being and becoming is a positive result that Socrates retains and relies on in his subsequent explication. For Socrates, the important feature of the semantic interlude, mixed results and all, was that it was within the rules of Protagoras' game, as he points out in saying he and Prodicus were "teasing you and testing whether you could come to the aid of your own interpretation" (341d; cf. 339a). But things get more serious when, in his own name and without Prodicus' help, Socrates offers to say "what it seems to me Simonides intended in this song, so you can test me on, as you put it, verse".30 This more substantial explica 29 Why is Prodicus in particular brought in? It may be that his "On the correctness of words" (περί ονομάτων όρθότητος, Euthyd. 277e = 84 A 16 DK) featured a dis cussion of the distinction between είναι and γίγνεσθαι, which is the first notion for which Socrates appeals to him at Prot. 340c. 30 341e-342a: αλλ' ά μοι δοκεί διανοεϊσθαι Σιμωνίδης έν τούτψ τώ ασματι, έθέλω σοι ειπείν, εί βούλει λαβείν μου πείρα ν όπως έχω, ο σύ λέγεις τούτο, περί έπων. The final phrase indicates that Protagoras' use of έπος in such expressions as περί έπων δεινόν (339a; cf. 312a) and perhaps too όρθοέπεια (Phrd. 267c) was something between an affectation and a trademark, έπος was cur rent in Ionic for "words" or "language" generally, but in Attic had been largely ousted by logos and was confined to poetic or other specialized expressions. It is natural that This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 30 Andrew Ford tion of the poem (342a-348a) is premised on a fabulous hypothesis about the background of Pittacus' saying. In a genial tour de force - explicitly match ing (342b) Protagoras' fantasy about Greece's hallowed sages being sophists in disguise - Socrates maintains that Pittacus' saying should be understood in light of an ancient but underappreciated mode of philosophizing practiced in Sparta and Crete. The claim is as paradoxical as Protagoras' was, since in Plato's day these Doric areas had a reputation for being backward, inward looking and deeply anti-intellectual. On the contrary, Socrates insists, they were actually devoted to philosophy but practiced it in secret to hide the fact that their military success derived from their wisdom rather than their arms. In Sparta this secret philosophical education produced laconic Laconian phi losophers, simple-appearing men and women who could yet let fall the pith iest brief utterances (343e). Indeed, it was from the Spartans that the Seven Sages learned those "short and memorable pronouncements" that are now repeated as proverbs (343a: ρήματα βραχέα αξιομνημόνευτα). And the only reason that knowledge of this hermetic tradition leaked out was that one time the sages decided to make a thanksgiving offering to Apollo and inscribed a number of "brachylogistic Laconisms" such as "Know thyself' and "Nothing in excess" on the temple of Delphi (343b). Socrates' point in all this is that it reveals Simonides' intention in his ode: if he could overturn a saying by the Sage Pittacus, "which had circulated privately among the wise with great approbation" (343b: τό ρήμα έγκωμιαζόμενον ύπό των σοφών), he himself would get a name for wisdom. This story is ironic and implausible, but it nonetheless makes possible a great gain in interpretative method because it posits a single aim for the poem, the poet's desire to convict the sage of error. It follows that every element of Simonides' ode (344b: δια παντός του άσματος) is to be read as contrib uting to the denial that "to be good is hard". This more wide-angled approach to the poem promises a more comprehensive understanding than the picking at individual words by Protagoras or Prodicus, and it has the potential to lead to a unified reading grounded in the total contents and overall structure of the poem. At the same time, it is undoubtedly true that Socrates' subsequent exe gesis is not without dubious claims, and it is worrying when he discovers Simonides upholding a number of tenets of Socratic philosophy.31 the exquisite sensitiveness to language that Protagoras claimed should be expressed in uncommon diction. 31 For detailed analyses, see Frede, "The Impossibility of Perfection" (see note 12), pp. 740-746; Bernd Manuwald, Platon Protagoras, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ru precht, 1999, pp. 153-156; and Ledbetter, Poetics Before Plato (see note 4), pp. 104 108. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (432 BC) The point and purpose of this fantasy about Doric philosophy emerge more clearly if we view the Laconian philosophical adage against the series of genres or modes of discourse to which Protagoras has been calling atten tion: there was group conversation, mythical and logical epideixis, brachyl ogy, long-form speech and the game of deinos peri epön. Nor have genres of discourse been exhausted: after Socrates performs, Hippias offers to give a disquisition (logos) on Simonides (347b), and of course there is the dia lectical exchange that fills the second half of the work. Within this series, these "short and memorable pronouncements" (343a: ρήματα βραχέα αξιομνημόνευτα) represent another mode of ethical discourse, the com pact, memorizable, citable text: Pittacus' maxim and the laconic Delphic inscriptions exemplify the fact that the wisdom of ancient sages may survive them in oral or written formulations that pose interpretative challenges to moderns,32 and Simonides' poem in turn is another text that takes up respect ed moral sayings of old. As a practical matter, then, moral philosophy needs some form of literary criticism, for just as Pittacus' pronouncement pro voked ambitious Simonides, the poet's rejoinder becomes, for Socrates and anyone who can remember the song, another problematic speech from the past to be wrestled with. Those like Protagoras who claim to be able to con trol the poetic tradition, Plato suggests, will be confronted by memorable but not fully self-explanatory logoi of poets and sages and will have to make the best sense of them that they can. Plato's opening ironies earlier discussed prompt us to realize that we are in this same situation with regard to the Protagoras. For would-be interpreters confronted with such texts, Plato has a form of practical criticism to recommend: we should try to find a sense in which they can be meaningful and true; if no such sense is available, we either confess we do not understand or conclude that their authors were not wise. How soon we give up depends on the source's authority: when the say ing comes from an oracle, for example, piety forecloses the option of saying the source is mistaken and we keep trying new meanings, as in the Apology where Socrates went to great lengths to understand the apparently absurd Delphic utterance, "No one is wiser than Socrates".33 A tag-line from Simo nides gets somewhat less respect in the Republic when Polemarchus cites Simonides' "giving each man what is owed him" (33Id = Sim. 642a PMG) as something the poet said "correctly" (orthös). in what has been called a "transparent misinterpretation"34 of the line, Socrates is able to subvert this 32 Cf. Andrew Ford, '"Protagoras' Head': Interpreting Philosophic Fragments in Theate tus", in: America Journal of Philology 115/1994, pp. 199-218. 33 Cf. Ledbetter, Poetics Before Plato (see note 4), pp. 114-116. 34 C. D. C. Reeve, Philosopher Kings: the argument of Plato s Republic, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988, p. 8. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 31 32 Andrew Ford definition, but in this case he drops the attempt to discover what Simonides truly meant; with cautious or ironic reverence for Simonides, "that wise and godlike man" (33 le), he confesses "though you may know what he means I don't". All one can say is that if a poetic text suggests an immoral or impos sible meaning then whoever said it is not wise (335e-336a).35 So when Socrates takes this same approach in Protagoras, we should allow him to be quite serious. This appears even in one of his more question able interpretations. When he comes to Simonides' "I praise and love all who do nothing wrong willingly" (345d: πάντας δ' έπαίνημι και φιΛέω / έκών όστις έρδη / μηδέν αίσχρόν·), Socrates proposes to detach "unwill ingly" from "do" and take it in hyperbaton with the more distant verb "praise": "All who do no wrong I willingly praise and love". The interpreta tion nicely saves Simonides from contradicting the Socratic principle that no one does wrong willingly, even at the cost of proffering a "forced" and even "blatant perversion of the plain sense of the poem".36 But bending the gram mar to eliminate an unacceptable meaning is a conscious and principled choice, as Socrates says: ού γάρ ούτως απαίδευτος ήν Σιμωνίδης, ώστε τούτους φάναι έπαινειν, ος αν έκών μηδέν κακόν ποιή, ώς όντων τινών οϊ έκόντες κακά ποιούσιν. εγώ γάρ σχεδόν τι οίμαι τούτο, ότι ούδείς τών σοφών ανδρών ηγείται ούδένα ανθρώπων έκόντα έξαμαρτάνειν ούδέ αισχρά τε και κακά έκόντα έργάζεσθαι, άλΛ' εύ ΐσασιν ότι πάντες οι τά αισχρά και τά κακά ποιούντες άκοντες ποιοϋσιν. Simonides was not so uneducated as to say that he praised whoever never did wrong willingly, as if there were people who did wrong willingly. I am fairly sure of this - that none of the wise men thinks that anybody ever willingly errs or will ingly does base and evil deeds; they well know that all who do base and evil things do them unwillingly. (345d-e) Socrates is often content, even in the Republic, to remain undecided about what poets mean and to turn away from literary exegesis to a dialectic exam ination of his interlocutor's views.37 But having been forced by Protagoras to consider this poem by a reputedly 'wise' author, he decides to press for a 35 Scodel, "Literary Interpretation" (see note 9), pp. 30-31 and pp. 34-36, extracts a sim ilar hermeneutics from the dialogue, noting that it applies to the Protagoras as well. 36 Ledbetter, Poetics Before Plato (see note 4), p. 107, quoting Christopher C. W. Tay lor's Plato: Protagoras, translation with notes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976,adloc. 37 Socrates espouses the same view in Hippias Minor 365c-d: "let's dismiss Homer since it is impossible to ask him what he meant when he composed these verses". Cf. Theaetetus 152a with Ford, '"Protagoras' Head'" (see note 32), p. 206-207. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (432 BC) sense in which Simonides' words can yield a meaning that is wise.38 Why? I do not think it is merely to show off or to parody new-fangled criticism as in Socrates' appeal to the novel technical term huperbaton (ύπερβατόν, first attested here). Technical criticism of language, like Prodicean expertise in semantics, is welcome if it can help clarify a moral claim. Socrates' move here has been compared with the modern philosophical principle of "chari ty" in exposition,39 but he is ultimately being charitable to his own philo sophical principles, which he cannot imagine went unknown to earlier sages. In Protagoras, then, interpretation may benefit from specialized linguistic knowledge but the use of such techniques is ultimately governed by consid erations of moral philosophy. A slightly strained construal of Simonides (and of the dicta of the "other wise men" Socrates alludes to) is preferable to assuming that truth has been so poorly served by traditional wisdom. How ever, in the absence of having Simonides at hand to submit to dialectic, Socrates can only offer his interpretation as something of which he is "fairly sure" (345e: σχεδόν τι οίμαι). The ineliminable uncertainty of any attempt to interpret such pronouncements from the past is the reason Socrates ends the discussion by urging that they drop talking about poetry and declare their own views directly. And so the excursus into poetic explication ends. The discussion of Simonides in Protagoras, then, is not a pastiche meant to ridicule attempts to find wisdom in poetry, as the 'ancient quarrel' perspective would suggest. Nor is it an attack on technical or 'sophistic' approaches to poetry, as if there were no utility in their techniques. If we drop the demand that this dialogue add another brick to that imaginary edi fice called 'the Platonic Attack on Poetry', the passage gives us insight into how Plato thought poetic and other texts from the past should be handled in the search for moral knowledge. His Socrates is open to the possibility that bits of old verbal wisdom may contain valuable insights, and he is willing to borrow from the most up-to-date criticism in an effort to determine their meaning. But, as his myth of the old laconic style of philosophizing is meant to show, when certain speech acts leave their authors and circulate beyond their original, enclosed circles of performance, they become subject to attack, misinterpretation and misappropriation. The problem is temporal and existential rather than merely methodological, for no amount of technique or philosophical charity can extract certain knowledge from these orphaned 38 When Socrates says that Simonides is above making ignorant mistakes (345d) and that his poem is "exquisitely well made" (344a-b), he says in effect he is willing to work to find a sound meaning in the verse. 39 Nickolas Pappas, "Socrates' Charitable Treatment of Poetry", in: Philosophy and Lit erature 13/1989, pp. 248-61. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 33 34 Andrew Ford words.40 If Plato does not think that the latest literary techniques produce sure gains in the quest to understand human excellence, Protagoras goes out of its way to show that, in such a quest, criticism not only has certain inevi table limits but also that certain texts, nevertheless, make criticism neces sary, making it necessary for us to adopt some form of criticism to deal with them. Socrates' principles of criticism and ours My claim that Socrates is doing the best he can in Protagoras, indeed that he is doing the best that Plato thought anyone could, is supported by an analysis by Glenn Most that stands out among discussions of this text for its sustained attention to literary theoretical issues.41 "Simonides' Ode to Sco pas in Contexts" argues that all the critical problems on display in Protago ras are essentially matters of contextualization and so the excursus on Simo nides rightly problematizes the role of contexts.42 Indeed, interpretation is, broadly speaking, nothing more than contextualization43 and the differences between critical schools often amount to whether one prefers internal con textualizations (e. g. Derridean deconstruction) to external ones (e. g. Fou cauldian genealogy). On Most's analysis, Protagoras first imputes a contra diction to Simonides by bringing together two uncontextualized phrases, and 40 The connection between the dismissal of 'authorless' poetic texts in the Protagoras and the critique of 'orphaned' written texts in the Phaedrus (esp. 275d-e) emerges most clearly in Socrates' criticism of long speeches at Prot. 328e-329b: και γάρ ει μεν τις περί αύτών τούτων συγγένοιτο ότωούν τών δημηγόρων, τάχ' άν και τοιούτους Λόγους άκούσειεν ή Περικλέους ή άλλου τινός τών ικανών ειπείν- ει δέ έπανέροιτό τινά τι, ώσπερ βιβλία ουδέν έχουσιν ούτε άποκρίνασθαι ούτε αύτοί έρέσθαι, αλλ' εάν τις και σμικρόν επερώτηση τι τών ρηθέντων, ώσπερ τά χαλκία πληγέντα μακρόν ήχει και αποτείνει έάν μή έπιλάβηταιτις. "If a man were present when any of our public orators were speaking about these matters, he might hear a similar speech from a Pericles or another good speaker; but if he should have a question to ask, like books they can neither answer nor put a ques tion in turn; and if any one queries the least detail of their speech, like bronze vases when struck they ring loudly and keep on ringing, until someone puts a hand on them." Exegesis in: Raphael Woolf, "The Written Word in Plato's Protagoras", in: Ancient Philosophy 19/1999, pp. 21-30. 41 Glenn W. Most, "Simonides' Ode to Scopas in Contexts", in: Irene J. F. de Jong/ J. P. Sullivan (eds.), Modern Critical Theory and Classical Literature, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994, pp. 127-152. Scodel, "Literary Interpretation" (see note 9), p. 25, also notes the substantive methodological agreement between Protagoras and Socrates. 42 Most, "Simonides' Ode" (see note 41), p. 134. 43 P. 132. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (432 BC) then Socrates attempts to heal the poem by supplying contexts that would explain each utterance, either internal contexts (i. e. what the poet goes on to say "as the poem goes on") or external ones (i. e. what the words might have meant in the poet's native dialect; what the poet was trying to gain from making the poem, etc.)· Socrates' excursus on Doric philosophy, however 'made up' it may be, is an attempt to supply at least the kind of external con text that would help decide Simonides' meaning. To be sure, Plato does not let the result stand, but Most well observes that Plato does not object to Socrates' interpretation because it has mistakes (which in principle might be remediable), but simply because it is an interpretation. And Plato has good reason to be suspicious of poetic interpretation for it is "ineluctably speculative":44 external contexts are by definition hypothetical, and internal contexts are, as part of the poem to be explicated, not sufficiently independ ent or stable to ground the meaning of another part of the text. In the Protagoras, then, Plato is suspicious of hermeneutics, but this does not prevent him from equipping his brilliant speakers with a firm grasp of reasonable principles to attempt it.45 To show how much we and Socrates agree about how to interpret literature Most identifies five "methodological assumptions that structure the discourse of philology".46 (He is speaking of classical philology in this essay, but his observations apply to interpretation in a wide range of disciplines.) First come three principles that tend to "guide interpretation and at least in appearance (if not in reality) limit its risks":47 1. Economy of consumption: we prefer the interpretation that "makes thrift ier use of the material at hand"48 and leaves the smallest part unexplained. 2. Economy of expense: we prefer a minimum of ad hoc hypotheses (hypoth eses for which the only evidence is the interpretation they are adduced to support). 3. Economy of scope: we prefer the interpretation that explains the most, that "can be applied to the wider range of texts or problems".49 This is the one that does not produce a series of anomalies in the history of literature. Beside these principles, there are two canons of evidence: 1. Parallelism: a hypothesis' plausibility is increased by adducing parallels (linguistic and other) to problematic elements in the text. Buttressing an interpretation with parallels is especially important when studying cul tures that are dead or otherwise difficult of access. 44 Ibid. 45 P. 133 46 P. 134 47 P. 133 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 35 36 Andrew Ford 2. Centripetality·. the explanatory power of parallels increases the closer they are to the text itself. Short of exact iteration, parallels are ranked, with those in works by the same author and in the same genre ranked above, e. g., parallels from a different author, a different culture or in a different art form. It is worth repeating that Most tenders these merely as the disciplinary rules of philology, not as the method to arrive at certain interpretation.50 As such, he offers an acute analysis both of how philology interprets old texts (my own exposition of Plato accords with these principles) and more generally of how we discourse as professionals and evaluate the discourse of our col leagues. For Most, the discussion of Simonides' poetry in Protagoras confirms the importance of contexts in interpreting texts on two levels.51 Within the text, the whole discussion proceeds by finding more or less adequate contexts in which to construe Simonides' words. But in addition, the history of the poem's (mis)interpretations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reveals, unexpectedly, that contextualization can proceed independently of the text: earlier scholars came up with quite plausible interpretations of the poem even though they had a comparatively inferior text, whereas twentieth-cen tury philology did a better job of extracting Simonides' exact words from Plato, but implausibly tried to read the song in the context of a fanciful evo lution in moral consciousness. This history of philological blindness leads Most to the paradoxical conclusion: "Just as the right text does not entail a plausible interpretation, so too a faulty text need not preclude one. Some times, the text may be less important than the contexts against which it is set."52 My reading of Protagoras suggests that we take Most's observations one step further and realize another function of criticism: contexts may be at times more important than texts in interpretation, but as a general rule the best context will tend to resemble the original text as closely as possible, in accordance with the canon of centripetality (see point 2 above). If interpreta tion is a search for the most plausible context in which to construe a text, the 50 E.g. p. 134. 51 Ibid. 52 P. 147. Against twentieth-century philosophizing readings, Most importantly points that the poem is focused on poetic concerns, being about what is "praiseworthy" rather than defining the nature of excellence. A notable recent reconstruction of Simo nides' poem presents us with a dilemma similar to the one Most describes: Adam Beresford, "Nobody's Perfect: A new text and interpretation ofSimonides PMG 542", in: Classical Philology 108/2008, pp. 237-256 gives a new and very appealing version of the poem that is nonetheless very hard to square with its Platonic context (as he admits on pp. 247-250). This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (432 BC) 37 methodical evaluation of possible contexts drives the critic ever more close ly back to the very words she had departed from when she went out in search of help from the context. To make the point with Most's categories: parallels have more force the more they resemble the words they are meant to explain, and centripetality makes us prefer parallels that recall the poet's exact phras ing; economy of expense requires interpretations to add the fewest extra words to the text that is being interpreted, and economy of consumption makes the optimal reading of a text tend toward recalling all its words. Final ly, economy of scope situates the target text within a series of larger contexts, such as the author's corpus and the literary tradition, in the middle of which it sits like a sun in a solar system: the contexts - other texts - that are adduced orbit around the original, reflecting it ever more faintly the further away they are. What Most's analysis permits us to see is that the attempt to give the most well-founded account possible of a poem's meaning turns out to serve as a mnemonic for it; the ideal context is a matrix that registers each detail of the poem and puts it in relationship with every other. If the ultimate confirmation of an interpretation is to be sought in the language of the text, technical criticism will not only have grounds for deciding among possible meanings but will return us at every point to the text that is its foundation. The support ing context or story we set beside the poem to 'justify' our interpretations recalls the original in toto and makes its elements memorable by inserting them in an intelligible relation. In Plato as well, Most's principles and can ons combine to make the 'best' interpretation that which most closely calls back the details of the text, and calls back most of the details. Thus it would seem to be an inevitable function of methodical criticism at any time to recall the poem, and it is appropriate that Simonides is the presiding genius of this critical session since he was known for his techniques of memory, for his ability to place details in order and hold them in mind.53 It is only methodical interpretation that has an inbuilt tendency to recall the poem, and this raises the question of why literary critics might adopt such principles in the first place. Most's use of economic metaphors suggests that we thereby get a maximum of poetic meaning for a minimum expendi ture of effort,54 but I think it is unclear why we should be economical in this sphere. Why not be a big spender in poetry? Why not be profligate and, as some writers do, let interpretation spiral outside the narrow confines of cen tripetal criticism? For academic criticism, a strong impetus for adopting the principle of economy is that it is the best way to bring the interpretation of 53 Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966. 54 Most, "Simonides' Ode" (see note 41), e. g. p. 134. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 38 Andrew Ford poetry closer to the prestige enjoyed by the sciences: constantly reverting to the target poem is like going back to the data set and seeing if it supports a finding. This would be in line with the ambition of criticism since the later nineteenth century to put the human sciences on a par with the natural sci ences and thereby to make criticism a discipline producing a specialized knowledge of its special objects. But in the fourth century BC, in the per spective of the Protagoras, criticism appears as a social activity, an unending practice of pedagogy and shared literary culture; while technical experts may view critical discourse as progressing steadily toward new and better meth ods or sets of questions to put to texts, its essential practice will be regulating discussions about poetry, and, as I have argued, regulating them in such a way that will tend to reproduce the poems even as they escape full and final comprehension. Now I do not wish to conclude with the naive battle cry, "Back to the Texts!" On my view, criticism is already there though it has been hard to accept Arnold's definition of the task of the critic as "to see the object as it really is"55 ever since Wilde called on "The Critic as Artist" to "see the object as in itself it really is not".56 Nor would I issue a call Against Interpre tation, as if theory and practice were neatly separable and sterile theorizing could be set against a more intimate and rewarding experience of texts.57 My reading has simply drawn attention to an additional function of criticism, a byproduct as it were, that may be useful to bear in mind at the end of a great critical age: as the disciplined study of literature goes forward it will con trive, even if not necessarily as its main objective, a way of recalling, repeat ing, and preserving the poets' words. If interpretation in theory pursues clearer, richer or more adequate account of poems, functionally it will serve as a metonymy for those works, and the more methodical the interpretation, the more the target poem will be called into view. Even without a work's being recollected in its entirety or finally understood, there are considerable advantages in interpretation's remaining only a metonymy, in not being the text itself. Methodized criticism serves as a sort of re-performance of the work, reprising it in a condensed form that allows it to enter contexts that 55 Mathew Arnold, "The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time", in: The National Review 1/1864, pp. 230-251, here p. 230. 56 Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist", in: Oscar Wilde, Complete Works, ed. by Vyvyan Holland, London: Collins, 1967, p. 1028. 57 An immersion, however, in literary theory with no reference to text may induce sym pathy for the declaration of Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1967, p. 14.: "Our task is not to find the maximum amount of con tent in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is al ready there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all." This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (432 BC) would normally not have space or time for it to be performed in full (such as a journal, a classroom, a conversation...). Moreover, one who knows the method can reverse the process of condensation so that even a few words can recall the whole: "To be or not to be" can epitomize Hamlet and "fleet-footed Achilles" can set one on the path of the Iliad. I therefore find an un-parodic reading of Protagoras more useful in think ing about the function of criticism and one that gives us a better sense of Plato's broad engagement with poetry. The dialogue is not primarily con cerned with exposing poetic ignorance or parodying literary intellectuals; it models how wise men might make meaning out of memorable pieces of language (whether this be a long lyric or a laconic apothegm) that have sur vived through time to confront them. The literary discussion ends in aporia, as does the dialogue as a whole, but we may infer, though Plato does not say it, that one thing that interpretation infallibly achieves is to hold such texts together and re-circulate them in company. This point is demonstrated most strongly, albeit indirectly, by the text of the Protagoras itself, for its criticism of Simonides' Ode to Scopas is itself the sole source that has preserved this old song for us. When Simonides composed it in the fifth century, we may surmise that he aspired to invest his text, like his good man, with solid endur ance, like a marble statue "fashioned four-square";58 but it was the critical writing of Plato that made Simonides' poem last, delivering most of it, along with his own Protagoras, to us. The contribution of that dialogue to literary theory, therefore, is less epistemological than ecological; it saw no sure knowledge to be won from reading poetry, but at the same time it provided an environment in which words that were, for one reason or another, felt to be worth remembering (343e) could be preserved, not lost from memory, until a later reading, a later interpretation might take them over and hand them on. Andrew Ford Princeton University Department of Classics Princeton, New Jersey, USA [email protected] 58 On Pythagorean overtones of divine perenniality in "fashioned four-square", see Jes per Svenbro, La Parole et le marbre. Aux origines de la poetique grecque, Lund: Student!itteratur, 1984, p. 135. On the endurance of poetry as a theme in Simonides, see Ford, The Origins of Criticism (see note 9), pp. 93-113. My thanks to the editors for insightful suggestions that improved this essay. This content downloaded from 73.4.6.149 on Tue, 09 May 2023 12:40:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 39