Sidney's Feigned Apology Author(s): Ronald Levao Source: PMLA, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Mar., 1979), pp. 223-233 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461887 . Accessed: 22/12/2013 19:50

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This content downloaded from 138.253.100.121 on Sun, 22 Dec 2013 19:50:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RONALD LEVAO

Sidney'sFeigned Apology

A NY ATTEMPT to discuss Sidney's any understandingknoweth the skill of the artificer theory of poetic fictions proves to be standeth in that Idea or fore-conceit of the work, and not in the work itself. And that the hath something of a paradox, since An Apol- poet that Idea is manifest, them forth in ogy for Poetry opens with a warning not to take by delivering theories too There such excellency as he hath imagined them. Which seriously. Sidney compares forth also is not as himself to his master in John delivering wholly imaginative, horsemanship, we are wont to say by them that build castles in Pietro not content to teach his Pugliano, who, the air; but so far substantiallyit worketh, not only young students the practical side of his profes- to make a Cyrus, which had been but a particular sion, "sought to enrich [their] minds with the con- excellency as Nature might have done, but to be- templations therein." So mighty does his art stow a Cyrus upon the world to make manyCyruses, appear, thanks to the light of his self-love, that, if they will learn aright why and how that maker Sidney observes, "if I had not been a piece of a made him. (p. 101) before I came to him, I think he would logician What is striking about this defense is that have me to have wished a persuaded myself Sidney seeks to justify poetry by turning toward horse" his (p. 95).1 Following master, Sidney the two extremes it mediates, first to its source in with a theoretical of his own opens justification the poet's "Idea" and then to the moral effect it but with such a vocation, poetry, precedent, has on the reader's world; it becomes a conduit, readers wonder whether will may Sidney per- leading the ideal to flow into the actual. To suade them to wish themselves (which is, poems understand how Sidney puts his argument to- in fact, where ends in Sidney's Astrophel up gether, we must take a closer look at these two Sonnet 45 of Astrophel and Stella). extremes and their relations. If the of the is not opening Apology paradoxi- First, what is the Idea or "fore-conceit"? cal the itself is filled with con- enough, Apology Modern critics are nearly unanimous in pointing tradictions and shifts of these, emphasis. Despite to it as an example of Renaissance it does make certain toward Neoplaton- significant gestures ism and/or Augustinianism. The reasons for this I that readers have theorizing. argue Sidney's are clear: both traditions helped to fulfill a cen- mistaken his intellectual affinities because long tral need for sixteenth-century theorists of the of the and self-conscious he echoes oblique way artist's Idea by giving it a fixed ontological basis.2 traditional and critical philosophical positions. Panofsky's discussion of the revival of Neopla- A closer view of his performance will, I think, tonism is instructive: reveal the Apology as one of the most daring documents of Renaissance criticism, in keeping the Idea was reinvested with its apriori and meta- with the most original thought of its time. physical character .... the autocratic human mind, now conscious of its own spontaneity, believed that it could maintain this spontaneity in the face of I sensory experience only by legitimizing the for- mer sub specie divinitatis; the dignity of genius, now explicitly recognized and is seems obvious to emphasized, justi- Sidney's purpose enough: fied by its origin in God.3 justify poetic fictions against the charge that they are unreal and irresponsible fantasies. For the Rosemond Tuve thinks this kind of justifica- sake of clarity, I begin by dividing my examina- tion is essential to Renaissance poetic theory. tion into two parts, following the line drawn by The poet, she argues in her influential Eliza- Sidney's own argument: bethan and Metaphysical Imagery, "simply has 223

This content downloaded from 138.253.100.121 on Sun, 22 Dec 2013 19:50:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 224 Sidney's Feigned Apology no nervousness dealing overtly with universals." a "proposed subject" instead of their own "in- She attributes this confidence to "the pervasive- vention") that another distinction is easily ness of Platonic and Neo-Platonic conceptions missed.7 It can, however, be deduced easily of reality . . . imitating Plotinus' ideal form and enough, and it is equally important to his argu- order."4 As Kristeller had previously noted, for ment. Sidney is interested in a poetic grounded the Neoplatonist, the "true poet does not follow entirely in the human mind, and inspiration the arbitrary impulse of human thought, but is would compromise its autonomy. As Sidney tells inspired by God."5 us later, Plato in his Ion "attributeth unto Poesy Sidney seems to need this justification as more than myself do, namely, to be a very in- much as any other theorist. Like the boldest spiring of a divine force, far above man's wit" Neoplatonists before him, he praises the poet as (p. 130). a free creator "lifted up with the vigour of his Sidney's use of metaphysics can be deceptive. own invention . . . freely ranging only within the Though he uses its terms to praise the poet's zodiac of his own wit" (p. 100). He is free of creativity, he then dismisses them before they nature and of any given subject matter; he does can compromise the mind's autonomy. The not derive "conceit out of a matter, but maketh same pattern recurs immediately after the vates matter for a conceit" (p. 120). But in the Apol- discussion, when Sidney turns to the word ogy, Sidney tends to regard the protection the "poet": "It cometh of this word poiein, which is Platonic-Augustinian argument would afford as 'to make.'" Sidney's use of Greek etymology, part of a voice that he self-consciously affects, a like Landino's, serves as an occasion to praise voice he asks us to think about critically, even as the poet, and Sidney follows with his famous he uses it to provide terms for the poet's cre- celebration of poetry's golden world and the ativity. poet's creation of a new nature. Sidney then de- Sidney's discussion of poetic inspiration, for fends his claims: is and ambivalent. example, deliberately tangled Neither let it be deemed too a to He starts the Roman term for saucy comparison by examining balance the of man's wit with the vates: he translates this title as highest point poet, "heavenly" efficacy of Nature; but rather give right honour to or and that the "diviner, forseer, prophet" says the heavenly Maker of that maker, who having Romans attributed the power of prophecy to made man to His own likeness, set him beyond and Vergil. Sidney then gives us two contradictory over all the works of that second nature: which in reactions to this information. First he condemns nothing he showeth so much as in Poetry, when the Romans for their "vain and godless super- with the force of a divine breath he bringeththings stition" (p. 98), and then he tells us they were forth far surpassingher doings, with no small argu- ment to the incredulous of that first accursed fall "altogether not without ground." He softens his of Adam: since our erected wit maketh us know criticisms because "that same exquisite observ- what perfectionis, and yet our infected will keepeth of number and measure in words, and that ing us from reaching unto it. (p. 101) high flying liberty of conceit proper to the poet, did seem to have some divine force in it" (p. Our position in the universe is a gift of God, and 99). The poet, then, is not really inspired; his we are fitted into a hierarchical series of makers, heavenly and divine nature is at best metaphori- beginning with God, who surpasses us, and na- cal. It is an illusion, but an understandable one, ture, which we surpass. But if the gift explains based on verbal artifice and the "high flying lib- our capacity, it does not control our use of it erty of conceit." The irony is clear: inspiration or bind it to the fixed order of things. After the is not the cause of the poet's conceit but the vates argument, the "divine breath" must be effect that the conceit has on the reader. metaphorical, referring to our own efforts to Where Sidney does mention poets who were bring forth our own creations, perhaps echoing truly inspired by God (David, Solomon, et al.), Scaliger's claim that man "transforms himself he is careful to set them apart from "right into a second deity." We reveal our divinity poets," his subject.6 He makes so many motions through our own effort. in distinguishing these right poets from philo- But, more important, there is no clear transi- sophical and historical poets (those who follow tion from the mind's operations to its transcen-

This content downloaded from 138.253.100.121 on Sun, 22 Dec 2013 19:50:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Ronald Levao 225 dental source. Sidney's "highest point of man's light: the fallen world is deficient, while poetry's wit" is not a mystical apex mentis directly golden world reveals a "fullness of being," sparked by the divine. It is the faculty that which fully actualizes the act of cognition.9 I creates fictions, the faculty that creates another would argue, on the contrary, that the poetic nature and so reveals our divinity to ourselves. object is best proportioned to our reason be- In order to demonstrate "erected wit," we must cause that object is a projection of our reason. be "lifted up with the vigour of [our] own in- Jacopo Mazzoni made this very argument in vention" (p. 100). We know our Ideas, not by Italy, only a few years after the Apology was tracing them back to an eternal logos, but by written. The object of poetic imitation is one making them "manifest, by delivering them forth that is consciously framed to fit the poet's intel- in such excellency as [we have] imagined them" lectual needs.10 (p. 101). The more autonomous the poet's Idea be- Furthermore, the above quotation on the comes, however, the more insistent the need to hierarchy of makers is a defense of one possible attach it to something outside itself. And if a metaphor, an attempt to show that it is not "too metaphysical foundation is lacking, then a prac- saucy." After his magnificent praise of the tical and ethical application becomes all-impor- erected wit, Sidney tells us: tant. The function of poetry is to reform the will, as well as to perfect the wit, since "no learning is But these will few be understood,and arguments by so good as that which teacheth and moveth to by fewer granted.Thus much (1 hope) will be given virtue" (p. 123). a me, that the Greeks with some probabilityof reason Using suggestive pun, Sidney writes, "the ... doth draw the mind more gave him the name above all names of learning. poet (p. 101) effectually than any other art doth" (p. 115). The poet both depicts the mind and leads it to All is suddenly qualified as Sidney reminds us action. And this brings us to the second part of that the passage is part of a voice he has as- Sidney's theory, that poetry is justified not only sumed for the sake of a few debatable argu- by the brilliance of the Idea but by the way it ments. He is not concerned with establishing works in the world, bestowing a "Cyrus upon the their objective validity, and he neither affirms world to make many Cyruses." nor denies them. He is satisfied with showing Sidney echoes the humanists' rhetorical inter- that, at best, they point to "some probability of pretation of poetry, and following Minturno's reason." Indeed, the entire argument for the transference of Cicero's "teach, delight, and poet as maker is not so much a justification of move" from the orator to the poet, he writes that the wit as a demonstration of it. It is a bold poets "imitate both to delight and teach: and "comparison," which, according to Aristotle and delight to move men to take that goodness in Renaissance rhetoricians, is a prime way of ex- hand" (p. 103). According to Paul Alpers, this hibiting wit.8 is the distinctive mark of Sidney's "golden world." It is not a self-consistent "heterocosm," a "self-contained universe of discourse." Rather, II Sidney stresses the didactic efficacy of the poet's moral exempla.11 If the poet is "lifted up with the vigour of his But if poetry makes a rhetorical address to own invention," so too is the reader. Poetry is the reader, it does so only in a way that con- the best teacher, the "first light-giver to ig- forms to Sidney's radical conception of the norance," and the first study to show us a "plea- status of a poet's Idea, a way that Sidney defines sure in the exercises of the mind" (pp. 96, 98). by opposing poets to philosophers and his- The separation of the Idea from a fixed ontol- torians. ogy, moreover, makes poetry a special kind of A philosopher claims that, by teaching what exercise. In a fascinating article, A. E. Malloch virtue is, his discipline makes clear "how it ex- argues that, for Sidney, it is only in poetry that tendeth itself out of the limits of a man's own reason finds an object properly proportioned to little world to the government of families, and its capacities. But Malloch sees this in a Thomist maintaining of public societies" (p. 105). Ac-

This content downloaded from 138.253.100.121 on Sun, 22 Dec 2013 19:50:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 226 Sidney's Feigned Apology cording to Sidney, a philosopher never extends necessary consequence," and so the historian himself; he is trapped within the closed world of follows the logic that, "because it rained yester- his fellow philosophers: "the philosopher teach- day, therefore it should rain to-day" (pp. 107, eth, but he teacheth obscurely, so as the learned 110). The historian cannot understand the na- only can understand him; that is to say, he ture of examples and how the mind uses them: teacheth them that are already taught" (p. 109). but if he know an informs a con- A philosopher depends on others coming to him, example only likelihood, and so reason, the into his own exclusive world. While pretending jectured go by poet doth so far exceed him as he is to frame his to out the limitations of Sid- example point philosophers, to that which is most reasonable. . . where the his- the of their discourse: ney parodies circularity torian in his bare was .....must tell events whereof he can yield no cause; or, if he do, it must be Nay truly, learned men have learnedlythought that where once reason hath so much overmastered poetical. (p. 110) a free passion as that the mind hath desire to do The knows that the mind must work the inward each mind hath in itself is as poet well, light and that can lead good as a philosopher'sbook; seeing in Nature we through conjectures examples to "a likelihood." Thus the know it is well to do well. (p. 113) only conjectured poet is freed from imitating things as they have the "bare and is able to The learned learnedly discuss how it is well to been, was," concentrate, on the modes of them- do well, but their terms only point to them- instead, understanding the lines of connection or selves: "happy is that man who may understand selves, consequence that the mind to draw in sense [them], and more happy that can apply what he attempts making out of the world. in are framed doth understand" (p. 107). The same charge Examples poetry "to that which is most reappears indirectly, if a bit more cruelly, during according reasonable," not to external res. It is of small a later discussion of love: "some of my masters according any that the historian can boast of the philosophers spent a good deal of their lamp- importance bring- us of true such as indeed oil in setting forth the excellency of it" (p. 125). ing "images matters, were and not such as or Lamp oil, Sidney suggests, is all a philosopher done, fantastically be to have been done" usually "spends" in love. A philosopher fails in falsely may suggested (p. The historian knows better "how this teaching and seduction because his definitions 109). world than how his own wit runneth" "lie dark before the imaginative and judging goeth (p. The no law but power, if they be not illuminated or figured forth 105). poet, by contrast, having wit, can frame into of by the speaking picture of poesy" (p. 107). examples purified types moral ideals: "If the do his he Poetry extends itself into the world in peculiar poet part aright, will show in and such ways, as Sidney's argument with history makes you Tantalus, Atreus, like, that is not to be in clear. If philosophy gives us reason devoid of nothing shunned; Cyrus, each to be followed" external application, history is caught in the ex- Aeneas, Ulysses, thing (p. The faces a brazen a foolish ternal world, one devoid of any inherent ration- 110). poet world, world of moral disorder that snares the historian ality. The historian is "bound to tell things as in its but delivers a things were" and "cannot be liberal ... of a senselessness, golden world, another nature structured reason. perfect pattern" (p. 110): by Sidney is often seen as a Platonist because the to a historian,being captived the truth of foolish this theme of reshaping the world echoes Neo- world, is times a terror from and many well-doing, platonic claims, just as Sidney's Idea does. an to unbridledwickedness. For see encouragement Ficino writes: "What, then does the intellect we not valiant Miltiades rot in his fetters? the just seek if not to transform all into itself Phocion and the Socrates to death things by accomplished put all in the intellect to like traitors?the cruel Severus live prosperously? depicting things according the nature of the intellect? . . . the in a (pp. 111-12) universe, certain manner, should become intellect."'2 As Not only is the historian's world one of moral in the first part of his theory, Sidney both ad- chaos, but history, in recording it, lacks logical vances metaphysical claims and refuses to rely coherence. The example of history "draweth no on them for protection. If there is any justifica-

This content downloaded from 138.253.100.121 on Sun, 22 Dec 2013 19:50:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Ronald Levao 227 tion for the poet's inventions, it must lie in their distortion was a powerful theme in Renaissance didactic efficacy. England, and English texts are filled with ad- If we look back to the Idea/Cyrus passage, we monitions to control the imagination.14 George can see how insistently Sidney attempts to join Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie (1589) re- his golden world and his didacticism in a bond lies heavily on the Platonic theme of controlling of dialectical necessity. The poet's fiction, the our representations by carefully fitting the mind delivering of the Idea, is to objective truth. Despite his earlier echo of Sidney, that the poet "contrives out of his owne not wholly imaginative, as we are wont to say by braine" without foreine or the but so far "any copie example," them that build castles in air; sub- Puttenham insists that the it not to make a orderly imagination stantially worketh, only Cyrus, must which had been but a particularexcellency as Na- represent things but to bestow a ture might have done, Cyrus upon accordingto their very truth. If otherwise,then doth . . . the world, to make many Cyruses (p. 101) it breede Chimeres and monsters in mans imagina- tions and not only in his imaginationsbut also in his A poet's effect on the world is as important to ordinarieactions and life which ensues.15 him as it is to the world he affects. It is the only way he can grant substance to his creations, the The useful life must be "illuminated with the only way he can be sure that his poetry is not a brightest irradiations of knowledge and of the sign of his estrangement. For Sidney suspects, as veritie and due proportion of things." Danielle Barabaro and others did, that eloquent Sidney, by contrast, avoids such Augustinian fantasies must be carefully directed to prevent metaphysics. More decisively committed to po- the teacher of the many from becoming the etic feigning, he welcomes the mind's ability to frenzied and solitary builder of castles in the air create such new forms "as never were in Nature, (Hathaway, Criticism, p. 332). as the Heroes, Demigods, Cyclops, Chimeras, At crucial junctures in the Apology, where Furies" (p. 100). He reduces the icastic/fantas- Sidney would have found a metaphysical argu- tic dichotomy from a metaphysical to an ethical ment most useful, we discover, instead, claims distinction: for didactic Forrest Robinson, in efficacy. keep- For I will with his that the has access to not deny but that man's wit may make ing argument poet which should be which some absolute that the foreconceit is Poesy, eikastike, patterns, suggests learned have defined, 'figuringforth good things,' to a mental because of preverbal diagram, which, be phantastike,which doth contrariwiseinfect the its in absolute serves as a participation truth, fancy with unworthy objects. (p. 125) universal frame to ensure a uniform response in all readers (Shape of Things Known, p. 118). There is no question here of approximating an But when Sidney comes to discuss how this image to an external model, of a faithful likeness frame works, he simply tells us that, when read- being opposed to a mere semblance. For Sidney, ers of poesy are "looking but for fiction, they as for Mazzoni, who actually placed the fantas- shall use the narration but as an imaginative tic over the icastic, this approximation has be- ground-plot of a profitable invention" (p. 124). come too restrictive. But instead of reversing the Sidney does not claim that there is any true or distinction, Sidney redefines it; "good" and universal Idea embodied by, or hidden in, the "unworthy" are purely ethical. Thomas Wright ground plot. "Invention" carries its full ambigu- was to warn his English audience in 1605 that ity here, and we cannot tell whether readers the distorted imagination "putteth greene spec- come upon a preestablished meaning or simply tacles before the eyes of the witte, to make it see create their own.13 All we do know is that it nothing but greene" (Rossky, p. 56). But for ought to be "profitable." We are not guaranteed Sidney, one can never take away the spectacles. a fixed unity between speaker and hearer; the All cognition implies some filtering or refraction; most we can aim for is some ethical utility. we can only hope to control the lenses we use. A similar development appears in the all- But what is this hope based on? As the pre- important icastic/fantastic opposition. As Wil- ceding quotation admits, man's wit has made liam Rossky has shown, the fear of imaginative irresponsible poetry. Sidney hopes by this ad-

This content downloaded from 138.253.100.121 on Sun, 22 Dec 2013 19:50:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 228 Sidney's Feigned Apology mission to answer those who see poetry as a cally derived true conclusions from false ele- corrupting influence: we should "not say that ments, Sidney tells us: Poetry abuseth man's wit, but that man's wit Now for the he and therefore abuseth Poetry" (p. 125). This closes one prob- poet, nothing affirms, never lieth. For, as 1 take it, to lie is to affirmthat lem but opens a larger one. on Poetry depends to be true which is so as the other and the wit, it is born in the foreconceit, and false; artists, poets the follow no law but wit. Without a direct especially historian, affirmingmany things can, argument in the cloudy knowledge of mankind, hardlyescape of or how can we tell inspiration illumination, from many lies. But the poet (as I said before) whether light-giving poets themselves have the never affirmeth.The poet never maketh any circles proper light? What is the foundation for their about your imagination, to conjure you to believe claims? Some critics, borrowing from the rhe- for true what he writes. (pp. 123-24) torical tradition, argue that good poets must also be morally good, but this only begs the Insisting on the fictional nature of poetry, Sidney cluestion, rather than answers it. argues that its essential feature is the poet's The problem with Sidney's double justification "feigning," "not rhyming and versing" (p. is that both sides are problematic: Sidney wants 103).'" Poetry appears to inhabit a special to make the kinds of claims that traditionally realm of discourse, one that eludes the strict have been supported by some metaphysic but laws of verification. Sidney's claim may not be tries to make them without such support. The unique to the Renaissance, but the route by poetic Idea, as we have seen, points to perfec- which he arrives at his claim and the conse- tion only by pointing back to itself. It justifies quences he draws from it have an important itself only by repeating its own act of creation. effect on the way we read the Apology, giving us The other side of the argument, the attempt to a more general sense of what all discourse im- translate poetic effects into moral ones, faces a plies for Sidney. similar dilemma. Wimsatt notes: Poetic fictions, for Sidney, are the result of a coincidence of conventional opposites. Poetry like most of those who have maintained Sidney, fuses the two extremes of philosophy and his- that poetry is (and ought to be) moral, has not been tory, as it "coupleth the general notion with the able to resolve an ambiguity of the word ought as particular It is not an Aris- used in the formula. Is this a poetic "ought,"or is example." clearly totelian mean between them, as some Italian it in fact only a moral "ought"? In the second theorists have reckoned it on a scale of sense, "ought to be moral" is a tautology-since abstrac- moral is what all our works ought to be. (p. 171) tions.'7 Sidney includes both extremes within the synthesis, which gives rise to an entirely new The easiest way out for Sidney would have been mode of discourse, one that, he claims, goes to repeat Boccaccio's claims for the unity of beyond conventional limits. It is, in a sense, poetry and theology or to claim some meta- more abstract than metaphysics, because it is physical universal at work, as many did who completely free from nature, unlike the "meta- turned Aristotle's "ought" into a moral term physic, though it be in the second and abstract (Hathaway, Criticism, p. 130). As Sidney's ar- notions, and therefore be counted supernatural, gument stands, it comes close to telling us that yet doth he indeed build upon the depth of Na- poetry ought to be what it ought to be, and like ture" (p. 100). At the same time, it is more the moral philosophers he parodies, Sidney finds concrete than history, since its speaking pictures his terms pointing back to themselves. and shining images are able to instruct and move men immediately.18 There is something unsettling in Sidney's III comparison between this special mode and the others. He does not argue the claims of fiction One of the reasons there is such difficulty on over fact, but he does suggest that all attempts to both sides of the justification is the paradoxical make sense out of the world are based on illu- nature of the poetic fictions that lie between sion; poetry is only a special instance of the fic- them. Unlike some rhetorical critics, who magi- tionality that pervades all discourse. The most

This content downloaded from 138.253.100.121 on Sun, 22 Dec 2013 19:50:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Ronald Levao 229 casual observation shows that other disciplines Sidney would object, however, that the only real use fictions to enhance their effectiveness: law- "poesie" is poetry itself. It is the greatest of the yers use such fictitious names as "John a Stile" arts because it is the only one to realize that it is and "John a Noakes" in their cases for the sake not anchored to a fixed and objective Truth. Sid- of making "their picture the more lively," while ney does not let this realization force him back chess players call a piece of wood a bishop. So to a passive fideism: poets recognize the neces- too historians, despite their claims of truthful- sity of conjecture and so boldly set about in- ness, still give "many particularities of battles, venting their own. which no man could affirm" and invent "long This claim inevitably doubles back to affect orations," which historical figures never pro- the status of the Apology. If the only choice is nounced (p. 97). between those who unconsciously live fictions In a profounder sense any attempt at rational and those who act their own, then Sidney, as the communication leads to fiction making. Our only speaker of the Apology, makes it clear that he choice is whether or not to acknowledge the pre- thinks of himself as one of the latter. tense. So the historian is described as "loaden At the beginning of the Apology, Sidney tells with old mouse-eaten records, authorising him- us that he is following the example of John Pie- self (for the most part) upon other histories, tro Pugliano, the master horseman and self- whose greatest authorities are built upon the promoter, and that in order to defend his own notable foundation of hearsay." Any art that craft, poetry, he needs "to bring some more purports to rest on the foundation of external available proofs." He is alluding to Aristotle's verities finds that its support quickly disinte- definition of rhetoric as the "faculty of observing grates. Even those who go beyond books to in any given case, the available means of persua- nature find themselves in this vertiginous plight: sion," and so is signaling us that he is about to adopt the role of rhetorician. Kenneth Myrick's There is no art delivered to mankind that hath not book on Sidney makes clear just how self- the works of Nature for his principal object, with- conscious an actor Sidney is, as he closely mod- out which could not and on which they consist, they els his work after the "judicial oration in behalf so as become actors and as it depend, they players, of an accused client."21 Sidney, furthermore, were, of what Nature will have set forth. seems to remind us continually of the role he is (pp. 99-100) playing. As Myrick demonstrates, Sidney not follows the form of an oration as to "follow nature" but find them- only seven-part They pretend he found it described Thomas Wilson but selves on a their words turned into by stage, play- does so in elaborate the rec- ers' their deeds transformed into mere detail, following lines, ommended matter and for each sec- theatrics. subject style tion and even the transitions between A. C. Hamilton has that marking argued Sidney's par- them with 54-55). adox is borrowed from at- conspicuous phrases (pp. Agrippa's skeptical This is a role for tack on the of human studies.19 However fitting Sidney, considering vanity the highly rhetorical role he for much we attribute to influence, imagines poetry. Agrippa's But the thickens when we realize that whether on the basis of his tone or of paradox mocking is not the rhetorician but the his that can be affirmed, it is Sidney playing only argument nothing as well. He tells us at the start that he has clear that carries the poet Sidney skeptical argument into the title of and he often dem- to its that our access to slipped poet, conclusion, only reality onstrates the of that title in the is fiction and As appropriateness through conjecture. Montaigne After as writes: Apology. describing poetry "feigning notable images of virtues, vices, or what else," to notable of the Have I not seen this divine saying in Plato, that Sidney proceeds "feign images" the moral Nature is nothing but an aenigmaticallpoesie? As a poet's competitors, including philoso- whom he envisions him man might say, an overshadowedand darke picture, phers, approaching inter-shiningwith an infinit varietie of false lights, "with a sullen gravity," and the historian, stag- to exercise our conjectures . . . philosophy is noth- gering under a load of mouse-eaten records. ing else but a sophisticatedpoesie.20 Before they have a chance to speak, Sidney gives

This content downloaded from 138.253.100.121 on Sun, 22 Dec 2013 19:50:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 230 Sidney's Feigned Apology us a notable image of them as hypocrites and action imitated. The play should be "fitted to the buffoons and, in the process, characterizes him- time it set forth" (p. 134). self as one who acts out his own theories. These reversals are not restricted to specific Sidney leads us to recognize his arguments for questions of dramaturgy. At one moment the his craft as examples of his craft by showing us poets are free of the works of nature, not en- that they are in the same realm of discourse, the closed by its "narrow warrant"; at another, they realm of feigned images and self-conscious con- must rely on the "force truth hath in nature," jectures. I have already mentioned the discus- and their proper effects are endangered if the sion of the poet as maker as a kind of conjec- matter is "disproportioned to ourselves and na- ture. Later, during a crucial argument with those ture" (p. 136). We may even suspect that Sid- who claim that fictions are mere daydreams or ney is allowing himself to act out his own toys, Sidney counters, "if to a slight conjecture a ambivalence about the poet's "high flying liberty conjecture may be opposed, truly it may seem, of conceit." Late in the Apology, Sidney tells us that as by him [Homer] their learned men took that "the highest-flying wit [must] have a Dae- almost their first light of knowledge, so their ac- dalus to guide him," and that this Daedalus has tive men received their first motions of courage" three wings, "Art, Imitation, and Exercise": (p. 127). There are, of course, advantages to adopting Exercise indeed we do, but that very fore-back- this role. Sidney can demonstrate, even as he wardly: for where we should exercise to know, we describes, the persuasive force of poetry. And by exercise as having known; and so is our brain de- treating his arguments as conjectures, he can ar- livered of much matter which never was begotten range a variety of them without strict regard for by knowledge. (p. 133) consistency. He presents us with "something for everyone," aiming different claims at different Sidney more strictly regulates the poet with a readers, hoping that all will find something to firmer objective orientation. The next sentence, serve as "an imaginative ground-plot of a profit- in fact, complains, "For there being two princi- able invention." We often find, in fact, running pal parts-matter to be expressed by words and counter to what I have described as the central words to express the matter-in neither we use theory, the testing of more conservative possibil- Art or Imitation rightly" (p. 133). Sidney does ities, aimed at those who may be unhappy with not openly contradict his earlier idealistic claim the more daring claims for the poet's creativity. that the poet "bringeth his own stuff, and doth We can see this, for example, in the notion of not learn a conceit out of a matter, but maketh poetic "fitness." matter for a conceit" (p. 120), but he is clearly Early in the Apology, when praising the poet's suggesting a safer res/verba distinction, as used creativity, Sidney argues for the peculiar "re- by the Horatian critics to direct poetry outward, verse adequation" found in critics like Mazzoni. toward the solidity of "things."22 The mind does not fit its concepts to externals Sidney can take these liberties because of the but, rather, invents forms to fit its own faculties. nature of the Apology. But his retreat to more Poets are like painters, who, "having no law but conservative themes does not solve his dilem- wit, bestow that in colours upon you which is mas; rather, their conjectural quality serves only fittest for the eye to see" (p. 102). If verse is to remind us of those dilemmas. The claim that used in poetry, so much the better, because of poetry neither affirms nor denies may not have the "fitness it hath for memory" (p. 122). But been unprecedented in the Renaissance, but the later, when discussing stage productions, Sidney suggestion that one's own defense of poetry moves far away from the freedom of Mazzoni's follows the same pattern questions the very pos- idols and closer to the unimaginative literalness sibility of making such a defense. of Castelvetro. Unity of place is essential be- Sidney's theory requires that he take an cause no audience could believe a rapid change affirmative stand somewhere, that he find some of location. Playwrights are attacked for being first premise from which to deduce his conclu- too "liberal" with time as well. There must be a sions. Sidney himself makes this need explicit by correspondence between the imitation and the reducing his argument to a syllogism:

This content downloaded from 138.253.100.121 on Sun, 22 Dec 2013 19:50:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Ronald Levao 231 if it be, as I affirm, that no learning is so good as guments made in the Apology, now paraded that which teacheth and moveth to virtue, and that without distinction. We are conjured to believe none can both teach and move thereto so much as arguments that Sidney has made essential, Poetry, then is the conclusion manifest that ink namely, for poetry as a civilizing force and for and paper cannot be to a more profitablepurpose its didactic efficacy; those he has rejected, such employed. (p. 123) as Landino's for poetry as an emanation of divine or Sidney makes this statement just after he has fury; and those he has deliberately minimized given a lesson in logic to the poetry haters, ignored, such as the view of poetry as a veil of All are laughing at their argument that "doth (as they allegory or as a mystery for the initiated. say) but petere principium" (p. 123). But im- brought out like actors at the end of a play, tak- mediately after his own argument, he under- ing their bows. mines the clause on which the entire syllogism Sidney cannot expect that his readers will be- rests, "I affirm." For it is here that he chooses to lieve so many conflicting points of view, and the place the already quoted passage on how the lack of distinction among them hurts their credi- we do believe poet "never affirmeth," unlike the others who, bility. Even his insistence that "affirming many things, can, in the cloudy them, when he "conjure[s us] . . . to believe," echoes of knowledge of mankind, hardly escape from is a self-parody, teasing us with verbal many lies" (p. 124). Even as he points out the a previous denial: "The poet never maketh any to to logical mistakes of his opponents, Sidney seems circles about your imagination, conjure you to be deliberately committing his own, making believe for true what he writes." of Sid- any first premise impossible and so exposing Myrick, who gives an excellent survey himself to an inevitable infinite regress.23 To ney's rhetorical strategies, argues that this kind of put the matter more simply, if the best the mind playfulness adds to the Apology's persuasive- can accomplish is conjecture, then its justifica- ness. It is a sign of Sidney's sprezzatura, a tion is also a conjecture. "courtly grace which conceals a sober purpose" Sidney reminds us of this problem in the (p. 298). Sidney does praise the courtier who peroratio, or conclusion: finds a style "fittest to nature" and who "doth according to art, though not by art," and contrasts I conjureyou all that have had the evil luck to read him to the pedant who uses "art to show art, and this ink-wasting toy of mine, . . . to believe, with not to hide art" (p. 139). But Sidney is not that that were the ancient treasurersof Aristotle, they courtier. Little is hidden by the style of the the Grecians'divinity; to believe, with Bembus,that His role is announced as an were first of all to Apology. adopted they bringers-in civility; believe, and all his tricks with that no can adopted role, nearly persuasive Scaliger, philosopher's precepts and anecdotes are relished as sooner make you an honest man than the readingof witty persuasive tricks and demonstrations of wit. We lose Virgil; to believe, with Clauserus,the translatorof rarely Cornutus, that it pleased the heavenly Deity, by sight of the self-conscious fashioning of the Hesiod and Homer, under the veil of fables, to give Apology and cannot forget that Sidney is, in us all knowledge, Logic, Rhetoric, Philosophy na- Myrick's terms, a "literary craftsman" construct- tural and moral, and quid non?; to believe, with ing a "literary artifact." me, that there are many mysteries contained in Poetry, which of purpose were written darkly, lest by profane wits it should be abused;to believe, with It would be to conclude that the that are so beloved of the that tempting Landino, they gods acts out its own that the whatsoever write of divine Apology argument, they proceeds fury; work itself moves us and fic- lastly, to believe themselves,when they tell you they through images tions while the of to move will make you immortalby their verses. praising power poetry (pp. 141-42) us through images and fictions. But if this were so, there would be no real argument to act out, The facetious tone is unmistakable, from open- only a fiction that neither affirms nor denies, tak- ing self-deprecation to insistence that we believe ing as its subject still other fictions. The Apology the love poet's favorite seduction line. But we requires another Apology to justify it, and so on also find a summary listing of nearly all the ar- without end.

This content downloaded from 138.253.100.121 on Sun, 22 Dec 2013 19:50:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 232 Sidney's Feigned Apology What the Apology does act out are the ten- when I am earnestly applying the feeble powers sions characteristic of the best Renaissance of my mind to some high and difficult sub- thought. Sidney's intellectual affinities lie not so ject."26 Languet approves of his enthusiasm but much with Ficino and the Neoplatonists as with is forever warning him not to spend too much thinkers like Nicholas of Cusa. Cusa, in his most time on studies that do not lead directly to a life famous work, De Docta Ignorantia, tells us that of action. He recommends Cicero's letters "not previous philosophers erred in their attempts to only for the beauty of the Latin but also for the understand the nature of things because of the very important matter they contain" (p. 20). illusion that the world has some fixed structure. But he is guarded about those who practice a With his doctrine of "learned ignorance," he at- double translation method, turning Latin into a tempts to free his readers from this mistake by modern language and then closing the book to short-circuiting traditional logical categories, translate it back again. This exercise in style is teasing his readers with puzzles that lead to a considered useful by some, but it smacks too coincidence of opposites. The technique does much of what Languet later calls "literary lei- not free them from illusion but does bring them sure." Sidney responds: to recognize its inevitability, allowing them to I intend to follow advice about manipulate it consciously. Cusa calls this free your composition, thus: I shall first take one of Cicero's letters and play "conjecture," which encourages the mind to its own forms of turn it into French; then from French into English, project thought-mathematical, and so once more a sort of motion ... and a world that by perpetual symbolic, metaphorical-onto it shall come round into Latin again. Perhaps,too, I lacks inherent Like any rationality.24 Sidney, shall improvemyself in Italianby the same exercise. Cusa argues that conjecture, while neither true (p. 23) nor false, has a practical value: it erects the wit and energizes the will, leading man to the Good. Like Languet, Sidney wants to direct his It hardly seems necessary to point out that it is learning outward, to energize the will through often difficult to tell whether we are to take even the wit. That the transition can be made is con- this claim as yet another conjecture.2" fidently, even aggressively, asserted in the Apol- This is the kind of play that is going on in ogy. But for Sidney, there always seems to be Sidney's Apology. Sidney's friend Hubert Lan- another game to be played by the wit, yet an- guet had little patience with such protracted other circuit to be made by its self-circling ener- ambiguities, and Sidney loved to tease him about gies, before it can make that transition. it. In his correspondence with the older hu- manist, Sidney praises the joys of mental exer- Princeton University cise: "I am never less a prey to melancholy than Princeton, New Jersey

Notes

1 All quotations of Sidney are from An Apology for the former deals with the general nature of cognition, Poetry, ed. and introd. Geoffrey Shepherd (1965; rpt. the latter with a special poetic gift. But both fulfill London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1973), hereafter cited similar functions in Renaissance poetics. The argument as Apology. for Sidney's Augustinianism is derived from Mornay 2 For Sidney as a Renaissance Platonist, see F. Mic- and Hoskins' hierarchy of inner "words," leading to hael Krouse, "Plato and Sidney's Defence of Poesie," the divine Logos. See Apology, pp. 59, 157-58, n.; An Comparative Literature, 6 (Spring 1954), 138-47; Wil- Apology for Poetry, ed. and introd. Forrest G. Robin- liam Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: son (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), p. 17, n. 63; A Short History (New York: Knopf, 1957), p. 174; and Forrest G. Robinson, The Shape of Things Known: A. C. Hamilton, The Structure of Allegory in the Faerie Sidney's Apology in Its Philosophical Tradition (Cam- Queene (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), pp. 15-29; and bridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972), Ch. iii. Walter Davis, Idea and Act in Elizabethan Fiction 3 Erwin Panofsky, Idea: A Concept in Art Theory, (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 31, 37. trans. Joseph Peake (New York: Harper, 1968), pp. Besides the obvious metaphorical difference, Augustin- 91-92. ian illumination is different from Platonic inspiration; 4 Rosemond Tuve, Elizabethan and Metaphysical

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Imagery (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1947), pp. History of Literary Criticisml in the Italian Renaissance 41-42. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 31. By Paul Oskar Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio contrast, Jacob Bronowski has noted that in the Apology Ficino, trans. Virginia Conant (1943; rpt. Gloucester: poetry appears to be straining in two directions at once, Peter Smith, 1964), p. 308. toward liberated ideality and a forced application to ; See A. C. Hamilton, "Sidney's Idea of the 'Right the concrete. See Bronowski, The Poet's Defence (Cam- Poet,'" Comparative Literature, 9 (Winter 1957), bridge: University Press, 1939), esp. pp. 39-56. 51-59. 18 For the argument that Tasso likewise defines a 7 This silence is part of Sidney's rhetorical strategy. new realm of poetic discourse through a coincidence of He wants us to be able to say, as does John Buxton, opposites, the "intellectual fantasy," see Phillip Damon, that "Sidney describes the poet as a combination of "History and Idea in Renaissance Criticism," in Literary vates, divinely inspired seer, and poet, or maker" (Sir Criticism and Historical Understanding (New York: Philip Sidney and the English Renaissance [London: Columbia Univ. Press, 1967). Macmillan, 1954], p. 4). But Sidney is careful to leave 11)A. C. Hamilton, "Sidney and Agrippa," Review of us enough evidence to deduce a more precise set of English Studies, 7, No. 26 (1956), 151-57. Similar theoretical distinctions. claims are made in Hamilton's book on Spenser, cited s William G. Crane, Wit and Rhetoric in the Renais- in n. 2. sance (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1937), p. 14. 20 Montaigne, Essays, trans. John Florio (London, 9 A. E. Malloch, "'Architectonic' Knowledge and 1919; rpt. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1938), ii, Sidney's Apologie," ELH, 20 (1953), 181-85. 244-45. 10 See Allan Gilbert, ed., Literary Criticismi: Plato to 21 Kenneth Myrick, Sir Philip Sidney as a Literary Dryden (1940; rpt. Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, Craftsman (1935; rpt. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska 1962), pp. 358-403, and Baxter Hathaway, The Age of Press, 1965), p. 53. Criticismz (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1962). 22 Weinberg, pp. 77, 93, 99-100, 158, 801. For later 11 See Paul J. Alpers, The Poetry of the Faerie Queene developments of this controlling of the imagination (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 19-20. through res/verba distinctions, see A. C. Howell, Tuve's final chapter in Elizabethan and Metaphysical "Res et Verba: Words and Things," ELH, 13 (1946), Imlagery has a brilliant summary of didactic theory, 131-42. though it depends on some questionable platonizing 23 Sidney violates an essential principle of Aristotle's and an idealized psychology that Sidney rarely, if ever, Posterior Analytics, on the intuitive acceptance of first realized. principles. From the thirteenth century on, this work, 12 Ficino, "Five Questions concerning the Mind," in which shows what a body of knowledge should "look" Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago: Univ. of like and deals with the use of syllogisms, became in- Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 201-02. For an argument creasingly important in describing an art. See Etienne that Sidney's notion of poetic feigning may have been Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Midtile influenced by Ficino, see Cornell March Dowlin, "Sid- Ages (New York: Random, 1955), p. 312. ney's Two Definitions of Poetry," Modern Language 24 Of equal importance is Cusa's second major work, Quarterly, 3 (1942), 579. De Coniecturis, which complements the first. I am not '3 See Murray Wright Bundy, "'Invention' and 'Imag- arguing that Sidney read Cusa's works; if he heard ination' in the Renaissance," Journal of English and of him at all, it was probably from chance comments Germanic Philology, 29 (1930), 535-45, and Baxter made by Giordano Bruno. I am interested here more Hathaway, Marvels and Commonplaces (New York: in pointing out conceptual parallels that will help to Random, 1968), p. 56. trace a Renaissance theory of fiction than in ascribing 14 William Rossky, "Imagination in the English sources. Renaissance: Psychology and Poetic," Studies in the "2 The essential studies of Cusa are in Ernst Cassirer, Renaissance, 5 (1958), 49-73. The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philoso- 1) George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, phy, trans. Mario Domandi (New York: Harper, 1963), facsimile of 1906 rpt., ed. Edward Arber (Kent, Ohio: and Maurice de Gandillac, La Philosophie de Nicholas Kent State Univ. Press, 1970), p. 35. de Cues (Paris: Aubier, 1942). The best treatment of 16 For arguments that Sidney's radical insistence on this paradox in Cusa's thought, however, is in Karl the poet's free feigning sets Sidney apart from such Jaspers, The Great Philosophers, trans. Ralph Manheim Italian sources as Scaliger and Minturno, see Cornell (New York: Harcourt, 1962), Vol. In. March Dowlin, "Sidney and Other Men's Thought," 26 Correspondence of Sidney and Languet, ed. and Review of English Studies, 20, No. 80 (1944), 257-71, trans. Steuart Pears (London: W. Pickering, 1845), and Hamilton, "Sidney's Idea of the 'Right Poet.'" p. 29. 17 For poetry as a mean, see Bernard Weinberg, A

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