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Sidney's Feigned Apology Author(S): Ronald Levao Source: PMLA, Vol 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 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . 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]. Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PMLA. http://www.jstor.org 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.
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