Chapter 13: Mimesis and Emulation
Though Plato (you see, I return to him) flows on without disturbing a pebble, he is no less great. Having read in the Republic, you are not ignorant of his type of form: he says that Those in wisdom and excellence inexperienced, but in feasting and the like always present, are carried down ward, it seems, and wander there throughout life, but towards the truth they never gaze nor raise themselves, nor do they taste a safe and pure pleasure, but like cattle gazing downwards and bent towards the ground and pasture they feed and fatten themselves and copulate, and from greed for these things, kicking and butting with iron horns and hooves, they kill each other on account of-their insatiate greed.
2. This man demonstrates to us, if we do not wish to disregard him, how another way, besides those mentioned, stretches to the sublime. It is the mimesis and emulation of the great prosewriters and poets who came before us. And to this aim, of course, dearest friend, let us hold fast. Many, you see, are divinely uplifted by another’s spirit, in the same way that the story says the Pythian priestess approaches the tripod: there, where there is a rift in the earth, she breathes in a divine exhalation from the ground; standing on the same place, impregnated by the daemonic power, she at once begins to prophesy throughout the period of inspiration. In the same way, from the natural greatness of the ancients, as if out of holy orifices, kinds of effluences are carried into the souls of those emulating them; even those who are not given to the oracular and Apollonian are breathed into by these and become inspired by their greatness. 3. Was Herodotus alone thoroughly Homeric? Even before him Stesichorus and Archilochus, and, of all, Plato especially channelled off to himself thousands of such sluices from the Homeric stream. And perhaps we ought to have demonstrated this, if the school of Ammonius had not actually selected and compiled the references by species.
4. But there is no theft in the matter; rather, it is a type of forming one’s work after fine characterizations or molds or works of art. And, in my opinion, Plato would not have reached such an acme in the doctrinal opinions of his philosophy, and he would not have kept pace with such poetic material and phrasing as we find in him, if he had not competed against Homer for the first prize with (by heaven) all his soul, like a youngster matching himself against a man whom all wonder at-though, perhaps, he was too much a lover of contention, and, as it were, of breaking lances-still, not without benefit. 5. According to Hesiod, you see, “This kind of strife is good for mortals.” And the contest for glorious reputation is really a fine thing, and the crown is worthy of the victory in which being worsted by those born before you is not without glory.
Commentary
flows on . . . without stirring a peb ble: the phrase is itself an allusion to a passage in Plato (Theaetetus 144B). Longinus is also picking up the water imagery used of Cicero (ch. 12.4-5) and is justifying his digression on Demos thenes and Cicero by returning to the water-image which he had applied to Plato in 10.2, just after the lacuna. He is, in addition, making one more gentle insult of Cicero: of Cicero he had used the word “profusion” and even “de luge”; of Plato he uses a milder form of “pouring”; in Longinus’ submerged quotation from Plato, the allusion is to a stream of olive-oil poured out on the young men in a Greek gymnasium. In I0.2, Plato’s sea-like calm had been emphasized by the adjective “un ruffled,” regularly used of open seas. The nexus of etymological puns and jokes is worthy of Plato himself.
The passage from the Theaetetus seems to have been a favorite with Lon ginus, who alludes to it at least twice verbally (here and in the phrase “ships without ballast” in 2.2). Through his picture of the young Theaetetus, who takes to his studies with gentle and docile perceptiveness, flowing like a stream of olive-oil, Longinus may be alluding to his own relationship with Terentianus.
having read … you are not ignorant: Longinus, as he had kept up his lightly mordant depreciation of Cicero in the first half of his sentence, keeps up his familiar mockery of Terentianus in the second half. “You have read the Repub lic, of course,” says Longinus—as he makes a literary allusion to another of Plato’s dialogues—”so of course you will know just what I mean about Plato’s fluid copiousness.” Despite Longinus’ repeated gestures of deference to the superior tastes of Terentianus (1.4, 12.5), it is unlikely that the Latin knew Greek as well as the Greek knew Latin.
form: another of Longin us’ many puns on this word (see ch. 10, n. on form). The word means “type, archetype (in Platonic terminology), form, case, mode, genre.” Longinus plants it here so that he can exploit its various senses below.
demonstrates: perhaps, by this word which also means “display,” Longinus intends an allusion to that branch of rhetoric-speech of display, or the epi deictic speech-which Plato is most hostile to, and which he parodies in many dialogues, notably the Phaedrus and the Menexenus, as well as passim in the Protagoras and the Symposium.
mimesis and emulation: in English, “imitation” is used both of the activity and the result of that activity. Because mimesis has been domesticated in Eng lish now, especially by Erich Auerbach in his book Mimesis, we use “mimesis” for the activity. Despite the huge role played by the doctrine of mimesis in ancient art, no formal definition of the term has come down to us from the fifth and fourth centuries bce The late rhetorical critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus (first cen tury ce) wrote a book On Imitation, a few fragments of which survive, and there provides formal definitions of both mimesis and emulation. A note is not the place for a history of mimesis; a few high-points relevant to Longinus must suffice. Homer does not use the word mime sis or its derivatives, but he does refer to activities that are mimetic, e.g., the likeness which Apollo makes of Aeneas to deceive the Greeks (Iliad 5.449); the golden robots shaped like girls that help Hephaestus (Iliad 18.417 f.); and the Shield of Achilles. All of these are examples of visual mimesis. Herodotus mentions “wooden para digms of dead men” (2.86); the term “paradigm” becomes the most generic and inclusive term for the results of mimesis. Plato, discussing Homer in the Re public 598 ff., says that what poets do is to make a work of art out of pictures, and he who practices mimesis is a maker of pictures. The words are very similar in the discussion of mimesis in Plato’s Sophist (265B, 267A-B). Aristotle specifies three kinds of imitation (Poetics 1460b): things as they were or are; things as they are said or seem to be; things as they ought to be. And of the last—paradigms—he says (146lal3) “the paradigm ought to excel.” We should observe that the “paradigm” is not the model which the artist imitates, but the imitation itself, as a computer is a “paradigm” of the human brain which, for the purposes for which it was designed, is superior to the human brain. Longinus uses the word “paradigm” in its more usual sense of “example,” but the principle still obtains: an example is a more perfect illustra tion of the point being discussed, and it is from this superiority that it derives its illustrative power.
In general, Greek literature and art preferred the ideal of the “type” (see ch. 20, n. on vivid typical description); what we call “realism” was an aim in only certain specialized genres, like the mime. The Greeks did not, however, ever stray far from what we call “representational” art; in the Life of Apollonius (2.22), Philostratus recounts a discussion between the sage Apollonius and his disciple Damis on the topic of mimesis. Apollonius takes up the representations which we see in clouds, e.g., centaurs, and concludes that these are not God’s art but chance, whereas human mimesis is deliberate and “rhythmic.” Men by nature are mimetic, he says, but his works of painting and sculpture come from technique. Apollonius is well aware that the medium produces imitations different from reality—e.g., using a white pencil to portray a black-skinned man—but the mimetic effect, he says would still be clear. Two chapters later, Apollonius indicates an awareness (ch. 24) of the non-representational art fashionable in the East, art he calls “symbolic.”
In the definition from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, quoted next, Dionysius will say that mimesis is conducted according to theories. The natural question is, why are not all works of art successes which have been made in accordance with theories? Homer (so far as we can tell), Virgil, Dante, and Mil ton all seem to have worked according to theories in epic; Sophocles and Menander in tragedy and comedy. Is the answer that, in addition to theories, the artist must have divine inspiration, whether it come from “nature or a better god”? Longinus, who is fully aware of the problem (see chs. 2 and 8), offers his fragmentary observations.
The definition from Dionysius of Halicarnassus (On Imitation, fr. 28) gathers up many notions—medium, likeness, technique—into one defini tion: “mimesis is the activity of shaping the paradigms in accordance with theories.” Such theories could come from (1) great models and paradigms; (2) ample time to observe them and work out the rules by which they were governed.
Longinus introduces the dual doc trine of imitation and emulation in this chapter, which is the one which deals most fully with Plato: the passage not only mentions Plato by name repeat edly, but also echoes his language (see above, n. on flows on … without stir ring a pebble); and Longinus reaches a climax of mimetic allusion below (13.4), in the phrase “forming oneself after fine characters and molds and works of art” (see n. below). As usual, Longinus is himself imitating the virtue or vice which he is discussing. By mimetic emulation Longinus takes his place, as he encourages others to do, in what Russell calls (p. 113) “the sacred tradition”: the great artists of the past are like Talmudic scholars in Judaism or bishops in the Christian church, who, in their handiwork, lay their hands on those who come after in succession. Such transmission is the result of both rites (mimesis) and spirit (emulation): the postulant must himself be receptive to his vocation, with an Apollonian enthusiasm.
The term “emulation” is given a brief history, as a social and cultural phenomenon, by Plato in the Menexenus (242A): Socrates says that, in the life of the polis, first came emulation and then begrudgement, both consequent on the establishment of peace and prosperity. Once men had attained an orderly and complex civic life, the principle of “degree” or “hierarchy” or the “estab lishment” created ambition and emula tion and envy.
Aristotle (Rhet. l 388a30) defines emulation thus: “a kind of pain at the visible existence of good things that are held in honor and that are possible for us to attain, possessed by those who are like us in nature; we feel this pain not because the other man has them but because we do not.” His definition is a development of Plato’s point in the Menexenus; it is more philosophically accurate than the one given by Dionysius (quoted next), but does not stress the elevating effect which Longinus and Dionysius perceive. Of course, Aristotle was distinguishing emulation from envy, whereas Dionysius is showing the relationship of emulation to mimesis.
Dionysius defines emulation in terms parallel to his definition of mimesis: “Emulation is an activity of the soul moved toward the wonder of that which seems to be fine” (On Imitation, fr. 28). Dr. Johnson’s remarks on imitation—without emulation—will help show how essential it is to have both (Rambler 154):
No man ever yet became great by imitation. Whoever hopes for the veneration of mankind must have invention in the design or the execution; either the effect itself must be new, or the means by which it is produced. Either truths hitherto unknown must be discovered, or those which are already enforced by stronger evidence, facilitated by clearer method, or elucidated by brighter illustrations.
Johnson’s development of the alter natives—invention in the design or in the execution—suggests that “new truths” are not apt to be discovered, at least not in art. And such was his pre vailing view. Hence the artist had gen erally only the second way open to him. And in this direction lay all that the word “imitation” has come to mean in our day: fake. George Orwell reveals the ambiguous state of the word in his essay “Politics and the English Language”: “Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.”
Imitation and emulation may, of course, discourage no less than incite. Longinus is at pains to overcome this “burden of the past,” which W. Jackson Bate analyzes in his The Burden of the Past and the English Poet (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1970). Ammianus Marcellinus, in the first century, describes this sense of oppression produced by the great cultural legacy of the past under which he and his age staggered (1.17.6-7):
Emulation nourished genius, and now envy, now admiration incites imitation, and by nature what we sought with the utmost zeal ascends to the utmost, and staying in a state of perfection is difficult, and by nature what cannot advance recedes. And as at first we are incited to match those whom we think superior, thus-when we despair of being able to pass or equal them-zeal and expectation grow old together, and what is unable to match ceases to pursue, and-leaving the themes as if cap tured and occupied-seeks new themes.
Hume discusses emulation in Essay XIV in On the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences:
If his [a man’s) own nation be already possessed of many models of eloquence, he naturally com pares his own juvenile exercises with these; and being sensible of the great disproportion, is dis couraged from any further at tempts, and never aims at a rival ship with those authors whom he so much admires. A noble emula tion is the source of every excel lence. Admiration and modesty naturally extinguish this emula tion; and no one is so liable to an excess of admiration and modesty as a truly great genius.
Of Americans, John Adams most often discusses the power of emulation to excite genius. In Discourse on Davila (II) he writes:
Every man not only desires the consideration of others, but he frequently compares himself with others, his friends or his enemies; and in proportion as he exults when he perceives that he has more of it than they, he feels a keener affliction when he sees that one or more of them, are more respected than himself.
This passion, while it is simply a desire to excel another, by fair industry in search of truth, and the practice of virtue, is properly called Emulation.
divine exhalation: modem archaeology has discovered no sanction for this “vulgar error,” widely held in later anti quity; Russell cites many passages al luding to the belief. Plutarch, who wrote an essay on the declining belief in oracles, does not accept the story.
Herodotus … Homeric: Herodotus is like Homer in his power to raise the emotions and in his descriptions, battle scenes, digressions, dramatic speeches, concern for glory, dialect, diction, and rhythms. The late rhetoricians cite him often for many of these features.
Stesichorus and Archilochus: the work of these poets survives in fragments. Both adapted Homeric themes, stories, and diction to lyric poetry. For a deduc tive account of what their work was like, see Sir Maurice Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry.
Homeric stream: Homer was regarded as the father of everything, an idolatry which Plato mocks in his dialogue the Ion.
Ammonius: the successor of Aristar chus, the second century (B.C.) librar ian and textual critic, who established the text of Homer still basically in use today; Ammonius wrote a book on Homer, now lost.
by species: we do not know what form the work of Ammonius took; the phrase “by species” suggests some kind of classification.
theft: the doctrine of mimesis naturally leads to the charge of plagiarism; Rus sell cites the German studies of the sub ject, which was much vexed in antiquity.
fine characterizations . . . works of art: the sequence is rhetorical rather than philosophical; “or” is more appo sitional than disjunctive. Longinus is here constructing a ladder or “climax” of his own in the sequence of nouns.
The word “character” or “characteri zation” is a technical term in rhetoric. Aristotle (Rhetoric 1356al ff.) says that there are three species of proof in a speech: one of these is the character or characterization of the speaker. Hence the rhetorician will try to make his character appear good, since we trust good men in general, and especially in matters which are uncertain. The ano nymous Art of Rhetoric (Spengel I.488) defines “character” as a disposition of the soul which has become inveterate and is hard to let go of, like that of a father for his sons. Hermogenes, in his book On Ideas (Spengel II.350), distin guishes between the “character” which fits appropriately with a particular part of a speech and that which goes through the whole speech, as color through the skin. Both uses employed by Herma genes derive from Aristotle’s analysis in the Nicomachean Ethics and in the Rhetoric; they correspond almost exactly to our word “characterization.”
Longinus, then, is exploiting both the ordinary sense of the word and the technical rhetorical sense: because the great artists display their character in their work, character, or characteriza tion, becomes a kind of work of art, for it is the result of certain techniques and repeated ways of doing something. Plato, of course, was a master of charac terization, and his particular genre, the dialogue, was especially suited to char acterization because of its close affinity to mime and comedy (see also ch. 9, n. on emotion … characterization).
The word “molds,” another favorite term of Plato’s, comes to be a rhetorical term for particular kinds of style.
The last word in the triad—”works of art”—is so special to Plato that its English derivative “demiurge” always refers either to Platonism or to neoplatonism. The word denotes the intermediate being—a kind of manifestation or persona of God—who imposes form on matter in accordance with the divine conceptions. The result of such activity is a “demiurged product” or work of art. Longinus uses the word one other time (43.5), where he advises the artist to imitate nature, who “demiurged man.”
doctrinal opinions: the Greek word ex ists in transliteration in the English “dogma.” The root-word is generally translated as “seem.” Although com monly applied to all philosophical sects, Longinus uses the word only here; hence it may perhaps be one more jocu lar allusion to Platonic philosophy and its constant contrast between “seeming” and “being.”
competed against Homer: Plato’s “breaking lances” with Homer resulted in the famous expulsion of Homer and all poets from the ideal city (Republic 10). Sidney, who probably had not read Longinus, is at great pains in The Defence of Poesie to reconcile Plato’s love and rejection of Homer.
Hesiod: Works and Days 24. Greek emphasis on competition as a means to excellence is Homeric: see the statement Glaucus makes to Diomedes in Iliad 6.208; it is the same line as 11.784, said by Peleus to Achilles. Homer’s line was Cicero’s favorite; Johnson thought it the noblest heathen sentiment (Boswell’s Life, ed. Hill, 11.149). We may compare Alfred North Whitehead’s sentence, “Moral education is impossible apart from the habitual vision of greatness.”
