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THE ORPHEUS MYTH IN MUSICAL THOUGHT OF ANTIQUITY, THE RENAISSANCE, AND MODERN TIMES

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

By Vladimir L. Marchenkov, M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University 1998

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Lee Brown, Adviser

Professor James Scanlan Adviser Professor Margarita Ophee-Mazo Interdisciplinary Graduate Professor Charles Atkinson Programs

Professor Sabra Webber UMI Number: 9834028

Copyright 1998 by Marchenkov, Vladimir Leonidovich

All rights reserved.

UMI Microform 9834028 Copyright 1998, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 ABSTRACT

The Orpheus myth has played an important role in European musical thought for over twenty-five hundred years. As a comprehensive symbol of the powers of music, it has had an impact on many philosophers and musicians. In Antiquity

Plato's treatment of the myth assumed three distinct, yet closely intermingled forms. Orpheus was for Plato one of the great Greek poets of the past whose art represented the supreme achievements of poetry. He was also, in contrast to the first role, a representative of the race of poets whose art had to be radically submitted to the censure of philosophy in Plato's ideal city-state. Finally, the Orpheus myth's symbolism served as a source for Plato's cosmology and music's ethical influence. This symbolism was transformed by Plato into abstract concepts of his theories, as well as into a distinct intermediary form that combined mythical with philosophical language, i. e. into mythosophia. In the

Renaissance the interpretations of the Orpheus myth occur within two major trends; aesthetic-humanistic and Hermetic.

In Marsilio Ficino's conceptions of music's powers the myth was a source for a theory of musical magic that also served as a basis for attempts to reconstruct and practice magical

ii "Orphic” rites. Claudio Monteverdi's and Alessandro

Striggio's use of the myth in their Orfeo drew on both the humanistic and magical traditions. Orpheus the magus, however, was completely overshadowed by Orpheus the operatic hero. As a theatrical figure he was understood in fundamentally different ways from the ancient magus. The magus was a real-historical figure for Ficino, whereas Orpheus on the operatic stage was a purely fictional one. Ficino's beliefs about music's ability to influence celestial bodies yielded to purely psychological and subjective view of music's impact. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov used a Russian counterpart of the Orpheus myth as a subject of his opera Sadko. The opera projects a symbolic narrative that communicates Rimsky-

Korsakov' s ideas about music, fantasy, and the real world.

The effects of music are directly dependent, the narrative suggests, on the moral content of the musician. Music's benign impact on life is only possible when the musician obeys the commandment of divine authority to serve his community.

Vyacheslav Ivanov made a conscious attempt to revive the myth in its mystical significance and employed it as a central symbol in his doctrine of theurgy. The composer Alexander

Scriabin, whom Ivanov portrayed as a reincarnation of Orpheus' spirit, made an attempt to create the Mysterium, a mystical world-transfiguring act. Scriabin's mysticism, however, defied the basic precepts of Ivanov's understanding of theurgy. The analyses show that a myth can be demythicized by

iii philosophical critique, but also restored as a myth through a conscious theoretical effort. The Orpheus myth thus retains its ability to resume functioning as a myth (as distinct from a fictional story), and redefine our conceptions about the powers of music.

IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank my adviser. Dr. Lee B. Brown, and the members of my committee for their support, advice, patience, and guidance in my work on this dissertation.

I would like to thank my wife, Ludmila, and my daughters,

Maria and Darya, for their unfailing support and encouragement of my work. They have been a source of strength and inspiration for me during the past few exciting, if sometimes trying, years.

I am also grateful to the staff of the OSU Graduate

School, and especially Stephanie Griffin, who have helped me on numerous occasions in the course of my interdisciplinary program. VITA

June 24, 1957...... Born, Leninogorsk, Kazakhstan, USSR

1980 ...... Diploma, English and Danish, Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages, Moscow, USSR

1980-1989...... Translator, Central Pulp and Paper Research Institute, Moscow, USSR

1989-1991...... Translator, Post factum News Agency, Moscow, USSR

1992 - present...... Graduate Research Associate, The Ohio State University

PUBLICATIONS

Research Publications

1. Vladimir Marchenkov, “Orpheus and Vyacheslav Ivanov’s Philosophy of Art,” Symposion. A Journal of Russian Thought, vol. 2 (1997). 2. Vladimir Marchenkov, “From The Dialectics of Myth,” excerpt from the translation of Alexei Losev’s book Dialektika mifa (The Dialectics of Myth) (1930), Symposion. A Journal of Russian Thought, vol. 1 (1996): 122-140. 3. Vladimir Marchenkov, “Conservative Ideas in Modern Russia,” Slavic Almanach: The South African Year Book for Slavic, Central and East European Studies, vol. 3/Numbers 3-4, 1995, University of South Africa, Pretoria.

FIELDS OF STUDY

Interdisciplinary

Philosophy, Music, and Corparative Studies

v i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgments ...... v

Vita ...... vi

Chapters :

1. Introduction ...... 1

2. Outlining the Questions: Myth, Philosophy, and Music ...... 6

3. The Orpheus Myth and Plato's Philosophy of Music ...... 35

4. From Ficino to Monteverdi: Transformations of Orpheus' Power ...... 64

5. The Orpheus Myth in Modernity: Rimsky-Korsakov's Opera Sadko ...... 126

6. The Orpheus Myth and Musical Theurgy: Vyacheslav Ivanov and Alexander Scriabin ...... 161

7. Conclusions ...... 204

Bibliography ...... 211

Vll Chapter 1

Introduction

This study will address the role that the Orpheus myth played in formulating the views of music’s powers in

Antiquity, the Renaissance, and modern times. The Orpheus myth is the most remarkable example in the history of

European music culture of the influence that a myth can exercise on musical thought and musical practice. What makes it especially important and interesting is its continuous and active presence from archaic times to the twentieth century. In the course of its history the Orpheus myth has been used innumerable times by poets, composers, artists, sculptors, and philosophers. The history of its uses and interpretations is a rich resource for understanding the roots of our ideas about music and its possibilities.

To investigate the role of the Orpheus myth during such an enormous historical period in one study is obviously impossible and one therefore must concentrate on representative cases. For the analyses that will follow we have chosen the treatment of the Orpheus myth by Plato in Antiquity; philosopher Marsilio Ficino and composer Claudio

Monteverdi in the Renaissance; and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov,

Vyacheslav Ivanov and Alexander Scriabin in modern times.

In all these cases the myth (or its Russian counterpart, the myth of Sadko) provided inspiration for articulating

beliefs about the powers of music. Plato’s doctrine about music has served as the primary source for the entire history of musical thought in Europe, hence the importance of investigating the factors that contributed to its

formation. The Renaissance was a turning point in European music culture and Marsilio Ficino played an extremely

important role in it as a philosopher, and as a translator and commentator of ancient philosophy. The Orpheus myth is at the heart of Ficino’s view of music, as it is for many

Renaissance thinkers, and serves as a typical example of the myth’s role in the musical thought of the period. The author of the first opera in history, Claudio Monteverdi, chose the story of Orpheus as the subject and his treatment of the myth is especially significant as a musician’s response to Renaissance concerns about the powers of music.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Sadko is one of the most notable examples of using a local folkloric parallel to the Orpheus myth in modern musical theater. The story of Sadko, i. e. of Orpheus’ Russian counterpart, is employed in it as a symbolic narrative about music and its relation to the world of fantasy and reality. Finally, Ivanov’s and

Scriabin’s views of music are instances of the profound

influence exercised by the Orpheus myth on early twentieth-

century musical thought.

Another theme that will be pursued in conjunction with

the first one is the status of a mythical narrative in

various contexts, especially as far as the interactions of

such a narrative with philosophical thought and musical practice are concerned. It is quite obvious that the mythical Orpheus of archaic Greece, for example, is a different entity from the Orpheus that emerges from Plato’s writings. The same is true about Ficino’s and Monteverdi’s

Orpheuses, and even more so about Rimsky-Korsakov’s and

Ivanov’s treatments of Sadko and Orpheus, respectively.

The question that will be asked is what happens to the

Orpheus myth and what kind of narrative or symbol it becomes, and to answer this question a certain definition of myth will be adopted. In addition, we shall use Orpheus to analyze the relationship between myth and philosophy, as well as between myth and art.

The next chapter introduces the Orpheus myth as an example of music mythology and formulates the understanding of the term “myth” that will be used in this study. The definition of myth is complemented by an analysis of the distinctions and similarities among myth, magic. philosophy, and art. Finally, this chapter proposes the concept of “mythosophia,” which will play an important part in the subsequent analysis.

Chapter 3 addresses the Orpheus myth in Plato’s doctrine of music. It contains analyses of Plato’s treatment of the traditional Greek myth, as well as of the role it played in his musical cosmology and his theory of music’s ethical effects. As one of the most significant ways in which the myth informed Plato’s philosophy of music we shall address his music mythosophia in the famous myth of Er.

The Orpheus myth in the Renaissance discussion of music’s powers is the subject of Chapter 4, which focuses on the contrasts between the humanistic and Hermetic, mythical and aesthetic, and magical and operatic uses of the Orpheus myth. The pervasive, if changing, impact of the myth on Renaissance conceptions of music is demonstrated by the trajectory that the interpretations of the myth described from Ficino’s musical magic to

Monteverdi’s musical theater.

The purely aesthetic, operatic use of an ancient

Russian myth that is one of the numerous counterparts of the Orpheus myth in world mythology is the subject of

Chapter 5. Rimsky-Korsakov’s treatment of the Sadko story invites an analysis of it as a symbolic narrative about music. The discussion concentrates on the interplay among the opera’s symbols of music, creative fantasy, and real life and aims at reconstructing the underlying narrative in which these symbols act as protagonists. A special emphasis is put on the moral and religious aspects of this symbolic narrative.

Chapter 6 describes a conscious attempt to revive the

Orpheus myth as an active force in contemporary life. It addresses the place of the myth in the doctrine of theurgy formulated by Vyacheslav Ivanov, a prominent symbolist poet, philosopher, and scholar of Antiquity. Ivanov’s theory is then compared to Scriabin’s contentious idea of the Mysterium, a mystical project aimed at a universal transformation of humanity and the cosmos. The content of

Scriabin’s philosophical-mystical ideas is contrasted with

Ivanov’s view of theurgy and implications are drawn for the significance of the Orpheus myth in the letter’s thought.

To sum up the main points, this study is an analysis of the Orpheus myth as a factor in formulating various conceptions about the powers of music. It will discuss both the changing views of music and, in conjunction with them, the changes that the myth undergoes from one cultural-historical context to another. Chapter 2

Outlining the Questions: Myth, Philosophy, and Music

1. Introduction: Music Mythology

Thoughts about music can assume many forms: a theoretical treatise, poem, novel, or mythical story. In all of these forms human musical experience seeks to give itself a certain shape. “Music mythology” is the body of mythical narratives whose subject-matter is music.

Mythological traditions of the world include countless stories about music: its powers, musicians, musical instruments, magical effects, and role in the evolution of culture and civilization. Music mythology constitutes an identifiable area within myth in general and deserves to be viewed in its own right.

The Orpheus myth is perhaps the best-known example of ancient Greek music mythology. In Finnish mythology one of the main music myths is that of Vainamoinen, the

“primeval minstrel” of the Kalevala, who bears much resemblance to Orpheus. In traditional Russian mythology one of the most prominent music myths is the story of Sadko, again, parallel in many ways to the myths about

Orpheus and Vainamoinen. Hebrew music mythology can be

represented by King David. There are the Hindu myths of

Gandharvas the heavenly musicians and Krishna the divine

flutist; the Sumer-Accadian story of Gilgamesh the inventor

of the drum; and the Egyptian myth of Osiris the singer-

civilizer. Clearly, music mythology is widespread and can

serve as a rich resource for understanding the sources and

evolution of our ideas about music.

2. The Definition of Myth

The term “myth” is famous for its ambiguity and the difficulties it presents for a precise definition. Views

on the nature of myth vary widely, ranging from those that understand it as a true and even sacred narrative to those that see nothing but fiction in it. The more serious,

scholarly approach tends to take the former view of myth,

i. e. that within its own cultural context myth is regarded as a true and often sacred story. Such a view is expressed, for example, by Alan Dundes, the editor of a collection of essays on myth theory entitled Sacred Narrative.^ The more common use of the term, on the

contrary, emphasizes the false nature of myth.

In this study myth will be understood as a narrative

about reality adopted as true by a certain culture. (This

preliminary and abridged definition will be explained and

expanded below.) Such a perspective is characteristic

particularly of scholars in the fields of religion studies,

folklore, and cultural anthropology, especially those that

observe myths in their cultural contexts. One of the

earliest examples of a contemporary scholar of myth is

Bronislaw Malinowski, student of the folklore and culture

of the Trobriand Islanders:

Myths (liliu) are regarded not merely as true, but as venerable and sacred. They are told when rituals to which they refer are to be performed, or when the validity of these rituals is questioned.^

A similar observation was made by W. H. Davenport about the

Marshall Islanders' folklore:

The myths are generally accepted as true, though today parts, particularly those which tell of the old gods and demigods, may not be so regarded. . . Modern myths are the “true” stories of today. Because their veracity is undisputed, they are very hard to get, for

* Dundes, Alan (ed.). Sacred Narrative. Readings in the Theory of Myth, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1984.

^ Malinowski, B. Myth in Primitive Psychology (New York, 1926), p. 30 (?) ; quoted in William R. Bascom’s essay “Four Functions of Folklore,” Journal of American Folklore, vol. 67 (1954), pp. 333-49.

8 the people do not class them with the other forms of stories.3

The same attitude to myths was reported among the Kimbundu of Angola, Dakota Indians, I bo and Yoruba, the Ashanti, the

Mandan, Hidatsa, among others.^

The view of myth as a true narrative is not confined, however, to ethnology that came to it as a result of fieldwork among the so-called “primitive” cultures. Roughly at the same time as Malinowski was reporting his findings, a similar view was advanced by two “armchair” scholars:

Ernst Cassirer in Germany and Alexei Losev in Russia.

Cassirer’s view, derived from Schelling’s, took into account “the intensity with which [myth] is experienced, with which it is believed— as only something endowed with objective reality can be believed.” “This basic fact,” he further observes, “of mythical consciousness suffices to frustrate any attempt to seek its ultimate source in an

^ W. H. Davenport, “Marshallese Folklore Types,” Journal of American Folklore, vol. 66 (1953), pp.221, 223; quoted in Bascom’s essay, p. 283. Davenport’s observation about the “undisputed veracity” and difficulty of obtaining myths from informants is very important and we shall return to it later.

** Bascom, loc. cit. From observations like these, arose also Raffaele Pettazzoni’s understanding of myth as a true story (“The Truth of Myth,” in Dundes, op. cit., p. 99) . invention— whether poetic or philosophical.”* Losev’s

theory is the chief source for understanding the category

of myth in this study and therefore needs to be explained

in detail. The following is not a complete account of this theory and touches only on some of its main points, namely those that are especially relevant in the context of the present investigation. Reference will also be made to other theories that lend support to Losev’s theses.

Losev’s theory of myth, expounded in his book

Dialektika mifa (The Dialectics of Myth) (1930), was elaborated independently from the general tendency toward revising the precepts and methods of the older schools of thought. This trend was represented by scholars as disparate as Ernst Cassirer and Bronislaw Malinowski,* and

Losev’s work displays significant parallels with both while retaining its own, unique perspective. Perhaps the most characteristic feature of the older theories— represented

* Cassirer, Ernst, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Volume Two: Mythical Thought, transi. Ralph Manheim, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1955 (originally published in German in 1925) , pp. 4-5.

* Cassirer considered the trend as “the return from positivism to idealism” (The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, p. 16) while Malinowski’s approach emphasized “having the myth maker at the [anthropologist’s] elbow,” i. e. experiencing “the fullness of life itself from which the myth has been born” (Myth in Primitive Psychology, New York, 1926, pp. 17-18; guoted in William Bascom, op. cit., p. 281-2).

10 by the views of James Frazer, Andrew Lang, and many others-

-was the desire to reduce mythology to some other cultural phenomena, i. e. to interpret it as a “primitive science,” a metaphysics or philosophy.

Losev, on the contrary, was concerned with establishing the unique place of myth in culture and consciousness. He made a special effort to distinguish myth from science, metaphysics, poetry, and religion. In this he was not unlike Malinowski who insisted that myth is

“neither a mere narrative, nor a form of science, nor a branch of art, nor an explanatory tale,” but “fulfills a function sui generis...”^ Cassirer, although quite aware of the difficulties encountered by the ethnographic study of myth, approved of ethnographers' attempts to describe myth “as a unitary form of consciousness with its specific and characteristic features.”* Like Cassirer’s, Losev’s objective was not simply to establish the unique position of myth among cultural phenomena, but also to identify it as an independent category of thinking. The scholars’ respective methods and solutions differed dramatically but the desire to define myth as a distinct entity was common to them.

’ Magic, Science, and Religion; quoted in Dundes, op. cit., p. 194.

* The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, p. 16.

11 One of the most important features of myth is its

immediate and unreflected nature. The mythical understanding of things, Losev notes, “is characterized by a most primitive and biologically immediate contact between consciousness and objects. Without [such contact] there are no vital objects of experience.”’ The immediate nature of mythical thinking has been repeatedly noted by scholars.

Cassirer, for example, viewed “the world of mythical consciousness” as even more primitive than the level of sense-perception:

What is commonly called the sensory consciousness, the content of the “world of perception”— which is further subdivided into distinct spheres of perception, into the sensory elements of color, tone, etc.— this is itself a product of abstraction, a theoretical elaboration of the “given.” Before self-consciousness rises to this abstraction, it lives in the world of the mythical consciousness, a world not of “things” and their “attributes” but of mythical potencies and powers, of demons and gods. If then... science is to provide the natural consciousness with a ladder leading to itself (i. e. to the level of science— V. M. ) , it must set this ladder a step lower (than the “world of perception”— V. M.).’°

In a similar vein, Claude Lévi-Strauss maintained that

“[t]he elements of mythical thought... lie half-way between percepts and concepts.” This should not be taken to mean

’ Ibid., p. 456.

Cassirer, op. cit., p. xvi.

" Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind, transi. George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd., The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1968 (originally published in

12 that myth is purely a result of perceptual knowledge. The

fact that myth is a narrative, i. e. has a relatively

complex and developed structure and meaning, presupposes

the contribution of higher faculties than sensory

perception. Rather, what these observations appear to

convey is the sense that the mythical narrative itself

derives from the most immediate encounter of thought with

its object.

The distinction between myth and poetry plays an

important role in this study and Losev’s analysis is useful

in this respect. Myth and poetry, notes Losev, are similar

in many respects: they are both expressive, immediate, and

at the same time detached from their objects. It is in

this detachment, however, that they differ: poetry is

detached from the reality of things, Losev proposes, while myth is detached from the their mundane meanings. This is

a subtle point that requires a closer look. • Losev explains

it in the following way:

Poetry and art in general are characterized by detachment in the sense that they excite emotions not toward things as such, but toward a certain aspect of their meaning and form. When we see a fire, murder, etc. on the stage of the theater— we do not rush to prevent the calamity. Rather, we remain in our seats whatever is presented on stage. Such is art in general. It lives, indeed, by a “disinterested

French, 1962), p. 18.

13 pleasure” and Kant is a thousand times correct about this.

The situation is precisely the opposite with myth.

Rather than sit in silent contemplation, [the mythical subject] does “rush to the stage.” Poetic reality is contemplated while mythic reality is real, reific, and corporeal— even sensuous, despite all its peculiarities and detachment.

Yet to say that myth is simply a realistic attitude to

things seems counterintuitive; myths overflow with objects

and persons that are quite unusual or have extraordinary

properties. The peculiar nature of mythical detachment

consists, according to Losev, in myth’s “lifting” of things

from their mundane context, and immersing them into what

may be defined as the context of universal connectedness.

Myth snatches things away from their usual course of existence, when they are either disconnected or cannot be understood or their further existence is unclear— and immerses them, preserving their reality and reific nature, in a new sphere where their intimate mutual connections are suddenly revealed, the place of each

This must not be taken to mean that Losev was unaware of the social aspects of art. “‘Disinterested pleasure’,” he observes, anticipating Johan Huizinga's reflections, “can indeed have a social significance. Furthermore, the farther art removes us from ‘reality’ and ‘interest,’ frequently the more we pay for it and the greater social role it plays” (ibid., p. 447). Moreover, Losev regarded the Dialektika mifa as “an introduction to the sociology of myth” ( p. 394) He provided an example of such a sociological inquiry in his Ocherki antichnogo simvolizma i mifologii (Essays on Ancient Symbolism and Mythology), Moscow, 1930, ss. 883-5 (cf. note in Dialektika mifa, s. 631).

" Dialektika mifa, pp. 447-8.

14 of them becomes clear, and their further destiny is understood.

This “new sphere” that Losev refers to has to do with the most important feature in the definition of myth. Myth, concludes Losev, is not only the “symbolically given intelligence of life,” but also involves the notion of miracle or magic.

Losev formulates his thaumatology in an argument against several other theories. He rejects the view that a miracle is a result of the interference of “higher powers.” “From the point of view of mythical consciousness,” he writes, “nothing exists without the interference of higher powers of some sort.”*® He notes that, if such a view were adopted in Christian mythology, for example, everything would be a miracle: redemption, creation of the world, and the birth and death of a human being. This, Losev thinks, would render the concept of miracle vacuous. Another view that Losev finds unacceptable is the understanding of miracle as a violation

14 Ibid., p. 455

*® Magical and mythical thinking are routinely linked together in myth scholarship. Cassirer’s view in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (cf., e. g. , p. 24) is one example, and Lévi-Strauss’ in the Savage mind (chapter “The Science of the Concrete,” pp. 1-33) is another.

*® Op. cit., s. 538.

15 of the laws of nature. Again, for the mythical

consciousness, Losev argues, if they can be violated, the

laws of nature are not absolute in themselves, i. e. they

are subject to a higher power, which reduces this view to

the previous one. Wilhelm Wundt’s theory that views

miracle as a result of the transfer of a subjective

experience to objects of nature or religion fails,

according to Losev, to take into account the mythical

subject’s own perception of the phenomenon. “This subject

is fully convinced,” Losev points out, “that the miracle

does not proceed from him... but forcefully enters the

world of his psyche and demands to be recognized.”^ An

explanation of miracle, Losev believes, must recognize the

way in which it is experienced by the believing subject.

Otherwise it leads to a mere substitution of the analyst’s

own opinion about miracle for that of the person for whom

a miracle is real. Such “explanation” simply explains miracle away.

Brushing these theories aside, Losev takes as a point

of departure the premise that a miracle involves the coming together of “two different planes of reality.” These are the ideal plane of a person, her entelechy or (Platonic)

ideal paradigm, and the plane of her real existence. When

Ibid., s. 544.

16 one can see a person’s real existence fully coincide with

her ideal paradigm, even for a moment, then, according to

Losev, a miracle occurs.

[A miracle] is a dialectical synthesis of two personalistic planes, [i. e. ] when a person completely and thoroughly fulfills her original, primary idea, hidden in her depth and underlying her historical evolution. It is the second realization of the idea, as it were; first in the original, ideal archetype and paradigm, and then the letter’s realization in a real historical event.**

As an example Losev refers to the healing that was ascribed to Asclepius in ancient Greece. Everyone knew that

Asclepius was supposed to heal people, i. e. that healing was his “entelechy,” as everyone knew that the priests in his temple (where the healing took place) used medicines and even surgical operations. And yet, says Losev, when someone was healed it was considered a miracle performed by

Asclepius. This was because, Losev maintains, Asclepius’

ideal purpose was visibly fulfilled in life.’’

Losev does not explicitly link the category of miracle with that of the mysterious; he discusses mystery only as the essence of religious rites. The mysterious quality of magic, which will play a significant role in this study.

’* Dialektika mifa, pp. 550-1.

” Ibid., s. 551

17 will be explored below.^ Further, Losev does not seem to

distinguish between the miraculous and the magical, at

least not in context that we addressed above. There are

good reasons for identifying the two concepts at least in

one respect: they both involve the mysterious at the most

fundamental level. Neither magic nor a miracle can be

imagined without appeal to mystery; the mysterious is at the very heart of both, and hence of myth as well. We shall return to this theme shortly.

“Miracle” is the crowning concept in Losev’s analysis of myth, which allows him to tie together all of the other characteristics: myth’s realism, immediacy, personalism, and historicism (we would call the latter narrativism) , and at the same time to distinguish myth from other narratives that can have all of the above characteristics and still fail to be a myth. The concluding definition of myth encodes all of these characteristics and themes in one phrase: “Myth is an unfolded magical name.”^‘ The presence of the “name” in this formula is far from accidental.

Losev was not only the author of the studies of language entitled Filosofila imeni (The Philosophy of Name) and

We do not specifically discuss here Losev’s view of the complex relationship between myth and religion because it is less important in the context of this study than the distinction between, e. g., myth and poetry.

Ibid., p. 579.

18 Veshch i imia (The Thing and the Name), but also a notable

member of the so-called “Onomatodoxy” movement in Russian

Orthodoxy, which espoused the doctrine of the glorification

of God’s name.% Specific theological connotations apart,

the concept of “name” in this context reflects the verbal nature of myth as opposed to visual or aural expression.

It also reflects the personalistic dimension of myth: the

latter “unfolds” not from anonymous objects but from a subject (with a name). The qualifying characteristic

“unfolded” (razvernutoe) emphasizes the fact that in myth we deal with a more or less extended verbal account, i. e. a story, rather than any verbal symbol in general.

To summarize the points that will be important in the following chapters, (i) the truth of myth is (almost) unquestioningly assumed by its bearer (the mythical subject) ; (ii) it is expressed in a narrative; and (iii) its epistemology comprises a magical dimension, i. e. the appeal to the miraculous and the mysterious.

“ Cf. Gogotishvili, L. A., "^Religiozno-filosofskii status iazyka” (The Religious-philosophical Status of Language), in Losev, A. F. Bytie. Imia. Kosmos (Being. Name. Cosmos), Mysl, Moscow, 1993, 908-10. Philosophy of language was an extremely important part of Losev’s outlook, which was, as Gogotishvili notes, quite characteristic of twentieth-century philosophy in general.

19 3. Myth, Philosophy, and Art

Myth and philosophy, one of the objectives of our

investigation, as was said above, is to determine when the

Orpheus story was employed as a myth and when it was not.

It is with this goal in mind that the definition of myth

was discussed above. This definition needs, however, to be

further adapted to the specific subject-matter of our study

and the cultural-historical phenomena it will be applied

to. For this purpose we shall propose an abstract scheme

of two different epistemologies that will eventually help

us situate the Orpheus myth with regard to its various

distinct uses.

One of the most important ways in which magical

thinking is distinct from philosophical thought consists in

its peculiar epistemological position. This position has to do with the attitude toward the unknown. When the knowing subject in general faces the boundary of its knowledge there are two basic attitudes it can assume. The

first consists in presuming that what is beyond the boundary is fundamentally different from knowledge as such,

i. e. something unknowable in principle. In other words, the boundary separates the subject from mystery. This is the choice of the mystic. The second attitude is opposite to the first: it presumes that what is beyond the horizon

20 of knowledge is not essentially different from what is

within it, i. e. the unknown is regarded not as unknowable

but simply as the yet unknown. There is more knowledge,

this view holds, and even if it can never be fully obtained

by the subject it is still potentially obtainable. This is

the choice of the rationalist. (We hardly need to point

out that these two choices have nothing to do with logic or

rational decisions. Since they are dealing with the

unknown, there is no rational justification for either of

them, i. e. both can be adopted only as a leap of faith.)

The scheme will be used as a theoretical tool that

makes it possible to distinguish one cultural form, to

borrow Cassirer’s term, from another. In particular, we

shall invoke it to delimit myth (magic), philosophy, and

art from one another. This, in turn, is important because,

depending on which of these three media it appears in, the

Orpheus myth may change its mythical status and become a

philosophical allegory or a literary tale, i. e. fictitious

and “profane” story.

Myth and magic. Myth and magic are linked, as was

pointed out above, through their appeal to the mysterious.

It would be wrong, however, to regard them as pure

mysticism of the kind that was outlined in the discussion

of the two epistemological positions above. They are both manifestations of the mysterious, i. e. phenomena in which

21 mystery is shown while remaining a mystery. The mythical

Orpheus’ music, for example, has mysterious powers but they remain undemonstrated until he starts to play and his music makes fish gather round his ship or trees march in straight rows. Myth and magic are means of demonstrating the mysterious, which myth accomplishes through a narrative and magic through a rite. This dual nature of myth and magic, in which mystery and its demonstration are intertwined, manifests itself in their peculiar modi operand! in culture.

Speaking of myths among the Marshallese, as we recall,

Davenport remarks: “Because their veracity is undisputed, they are very hard to get, for the people do not class them with other forms of stories.Magic is equally ambivalent with regard to its mysterious side. It is very much the point of magic to be secretive about its operations.^ And yet the magician usually makes sure that

23 Davenport, loc. cit.

The secret nature of magic figures prominently, for example, in Marcel Mauss’ description: “A magical rite is any rite which does not play a part in organized cults— it is private, secret, mysterious and approaches the limit of a prohibited rite... Magical rites are commonly performed in woods, far away from dwelling places, at night or in shadowy corners, in the secret recesses of the house or at any rate in some out-of-the- way place. Where religious rites are performed openly, in full public view, magical rites are carried out in secret. Even when magic is licit, it is done in secret, as if performing some maleficent deed. And even if the

22 the society is aware of his or her operations, i. e. of the fact at the very least that they are performed. We shall note this propensity of the magical outlook in Marsilio

Ficino who advertised magical operations in his influential treatise De vita coelitus comparanda.

Philosophy, in the course of its history philosophy has been frequently associated with mythology and magic, the ancient Pythagorean sect and Hellenic and Renaissance

Neoplatonisms being only three of many examples. If one wishes, however, to distinguish philosophizing from mythopoeia, it is philosophy's explicitly rational and reflective character that provides the sharpest contrast between the two. The rationalistic attitude, as we said, is characterized by the rejection of mystery, however implicit this rejection might be. It considers the object of its knowledge inherently identical to itself and magician has to work in public he makes an attempt to dissemble: his gestures become furtive and his words indistinct. The medicine man and the bone-setter, working before the assembled gathering or a family, mutter their spells, cover up their actions and hide behind simulated or real ecstasies. Thus as far as society is concerned, the magician is a being set apart and he prefers even more to retire to the depths of the forest. <...> Isolation and secrecy are two almost perfect signs of the intimate character of a magical rite. They are always features of a person or persons working in a private capacity; both the act and the actor are shrouded in mystery (A General Theory of Magic, transi, by Robert Brain, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London and Boston, 1972 (first published in French in 1950), pp. 23-4.

23 operates on the basis of this assumption. Even though it begins in the sense of wonder and is sanctioned by supernatural authority, the commandment that philosophy’s rational quest fulfills is “Know thyself.Whatever the admixture of mythical elements in a particular philosophical outlook, it is the rationalistic component in philosophy that propels its inquiry, i. e. the component that declines to stop in awe at the threshold of mystery but proceeds as though there were no such threshold at all.

When a philosopher does acknowledge a mystery in front of him, it is rarely as a rational knowing subject that he does so. Rather, the latter is overtaken by the mystic in him.

Just as the mysterious quality of myth and magic is reflected in their form and functioning, the nonmystical stance of philosophy also manifests itself in its modus operandi: the setting in which philosophical inquiry is pursued is a public gathering. Perhaps the best known example of such a gathering in the history of Western philosophy is the symposion, a secular public feast of

^ “[The] sense of wonder,” says Socrates, “is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin, and he was a good genealogist who made Iris the daughter of Thaumas” (Theatet. 155d). In his famous defense of philosophy in the Apology^ Socrates invokes the authority of the oracle at Delphi that bore the inscription: “Know thyself” (Apol. 20e, Charm. 164d).

24 ideas. In contrast to a magical rite, the audience at such a gathering is supposed to be able to follow and understand exactly what is being said. Even though philosophers have always been aware that their enterprise can become esoteric, its esotericism is quite different from that of magic. Philosophy is open in principle to all and sundry, i. e. it is inherently public, whereas magic requires initiation into mysteries.“

Another distinction between philosophy and magic is philosophy’s contemplative character as opposed to magic as outward action. Philosophy has been viewed as a purely intellectual pursuit from Plato’s to Bertrand Russell’s time.^ Magic, on the other hand, is intrinsically action and cannot be conceived without it. Mauss believed, for example, that “ [magical] rites are eminently effective; they are creative; they do things. It is through these

“ Plato was aware, of course, that it was only in principle that philosophy is open to all but in fact “loses” her adherents as it unfolds, and only a few remain to continue her work. A hint of this awareness, with a mild touch of humor, is found in the end of the Symposium where Socrates’ interlocutors fall asleep, one by one, until finally he is the only one awake and there is no one to listen to his argument about, incidentally, how a tragic poet can also be a comedian (Symp. 223d).

^ Cp. Wisdom of the West, ed. Paul Foulkes, Fawcett Publications, Greenwich, Conn., 1959, p. 9.

25 qualities that magical ritual is recognizable as such.”^*

A philosopher speculates whereas a magician acts.

Art. Even though an artist may wish to create in private, art is usually public and the spectator or listener are in general as indispensable to it as the artist. Moreover, it is quite characteristic of art that the audience remains passive and contemplative, i. e. does not “rush to the stage,” and the active role is entirely given over to the artist. It was not accidental, for example, that in his Mysterium, which was to transcend the limits of art, Scriabin wanted to abolish the distinction between active performers and the passive audience in which he saw “the fundamental great sin of the theater.”^

While sharing with philosophy its public nature, art is sharply distinct from it by virtue of its subjective

Mauss reinforces this observation by reference to etymology: “In some cases even, ritual derives its name from a reference to these effective characteristics: in India the word which best corresponds to our word ritual is karman, action; sympathetic magic is the factum, krtyâ, par excellence. The German word Zauber has the same etymological meaning; in other languages the words for magic contain the root to do” (op. cit., p. 19). Cf. also Tom Driver’s view on the practical nature of magic (“Transformation: The Magic of Ritual,” Grimes, Ronald L. (ed.). Readings in Ritual Studies, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 1996, p. 173).

Cf. Schloezer, B. F. “Zapiska o Predvaritel ’nom Deistvii” (A Note on the Preparatory Act), Russkie propilei, vol. 6, ed. Mikhail 0. Gershenzon, Moscow, 1919, s. 108.

26 character. The subjective nature of aesthetic judgment

that defines modern thinking about art was stated in its

most influential form by Kant:

In order to decide whether anything is beautiful or not, we refer the representation, not by Understanding to the Object of cognition but, by the Imagination (perhaps in conjunction with the Understanding) to the subject, and its feeling of pleasure or pain. The judgment of taste is therefore not a judgment of cognition, and is consequently not logical but aesthetical, by which we understand that whose determining ground can be no other than subjective. Every reference of representations, even that of sensations, may be objective (and then it signifies the real in an empirical representation) ; save only the reference to the feeling of pleasure and pain, by which nothing in the Object is signified, but through which there is a feeling in the subject, as it is affected by the representation. <...> [T]he judgment of taste is merely contemplative; i. e. it is a judgment which, indifferent as regards the being of an object, compares its character with the feeling of pleasure and pain.^°

One does not have to subscribe to Kant’s general view in

order to appreciate the acumen of this observation.

In contrast to myth and magic, art is marked by its

“disinterested” character. It is similar to them, however,

in its appeal to subjectivity, as well as its expressive quality. These distinctions and parallels are important

for the discussion of the Orpheus myth in Ficino’s musical magic and Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo. They will help

Greene, T. M. (ed.) Kant Selections, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1957, pp. 375-6, 378.

27 us determine what was transformed and what was preserved in

the myth as it was passed on from the one to the other.

Art’s relation to the mysterious provides another

contrast with myth and magic. Even if art involves any

mystery, the latter is certainly different from that of

myth and magic. When Mozart showed, for example, the

masonic initiation rites in a Singspiel {The Magic Flute)

he transformed what was supposed to be a secret and serious mystical event into public entertainment. Similarly, a

eucharist performed on the theater stage would be quite

different from one conducted in a church. No matter how

faithfully reproduced, the first is a figurative event whereas the other real. Equally figurative are the persistent references to the “magic” of art, i. e. to what the Greeks called the “ethical” effect of music. Very few people today would relate this “magic,” along with the

anonymous author of the 9th-century treatise Musica enchiriadisf to the divine mysteries of being in general

(cf. Chapter 4).

Insofar as it is detached from reality, art is play,

i. e. it is marked by what Huizinga called “the ludic element,” and in this it is directly opposite to magic.

Though art may be taken extremely seriously and have an

important social as well as economic function, nothing can obscure the fact that, e. g., an act of healing performed

28 as part of a drama in the theater is fundamentally different from a similar act performed as magic, i. e. when it is supposed to produce a real effect. One is play, the other a real act.^‘

To summarize, with their appeal to the mysterious, myth and magic function as a partially hidden narrative and a semi-secret activity; with their rejection of mystery, philosophy and art, on the contrary, function as a public discourse and a public activity. These secretive-public and contemplative-active dichotomies will serve to determine the moments when the Orpheus myth moves from one cultural form to another and changes its mythical quality.

It cannot be emphasized enough, however, that these dichotomies are analytical tools only, that are intended to help us obtain a better understanding of the elements that are inextricably intertwined with one another in the reality of culture and history.

On play-element in art see, e. g., Huizinga, Johan, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., London, 1949, pp. 201-3.

29 5. Mythosophia

In our study of the Orpheus myth we shall address phenomena that resist description both as philosophy and as myth. Such modes of thinking and expression can be found in Plato’s, Ficino’s, and Ivanov’s treatments of the myth.

They combine philosophical ideas with mythical imagery so intimately that it would be a mistake to view the two as distinct elements within such utterances. Their unity suggests rather that we deal with a single form emerging from two sources.

We define this single form as mythosophia, i. e. mythes combined with sophia, resulting, as we said, in the mode of expression that employs mythical imagery to convey philosophical ideas. It is distinct from the familiar genre of philosophical allegory in which the Orpheus myth had such a prominent part during the Middle Ages. In a philosophical allegory the explanation accompanies the figurative representation and states in (more or less) philosophical terms what the imagery signifies. Boethius’ famous Meter XII in Consolatio philosophiae, telling

Orpheus’ story in a moralistic poem, is a classic instance of philosophical allegory.^ Another example is Francis

The meter begins and ends with philosophical commentary, which thus frames the story of Orpheus’ unsuccessful attempt to bring Eurydice back from the

30 Bacon ’ s treatment of the Orpheus myth in the Wisdom of the

Ancients (1609) where the tale and interpretation are separated even more explicitly than in Boethius.^

In mythosophia, on the other hand, the story and its philosophical message are intimately intertwined with each other within a single narrative. Plato’s cosmogony in the

Timaeus is one of the examples of such expression. After recounting a fragment of Orphic théogonies, Plato puts the following words into the mouth of his cosmic Artificer:

Now, when all of them, both those who visibly appear in their revolutions as well as those other gods who are of more retiring nature, had come into being, the creator of the universe addressed them in these words. Gods, children of gods, who are my works and of whom I am the artificer and father, my creations are indissoluble, if I so wish. All that is bound may be undone, but only an evil being would wish to undo that which is harmonious and happy. Wherefore, since you are but creatures, ye are not altogether immortal and indissoluble, but ye shall certainly not be dissolved, other world. The first four lines are:

Felix qui potuit boni Fontem uisere lucidum, Felix qui potuit grauis Terrae soluere uincula

(Happy is he that can behold The well-spring whence all good doth rise. Happy is he that can unfold The bands with which the earth him ties.)

Boethius, translation of “I. T.” (1609) revised by H. F. Stewart, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., MCMLXVIII (1968), p. 295.

Bacon's Essays and Wisdom of the Ancients, Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, 1884, pp. 353-7.

31 nor be liable to the fate of death, having in my will a greater and mightier bond than those with which ye were bound at the time of your birth. And now listen to my instructions. Three tribes of mortal beings remain to be created— without them the universe will be incomplete, for it will not contain every kind of animal which it ought to contain, if it is to be perfect. On the other hand, if they were created by me and received life at my hands, they would be on an equality with the gods. In order then that they may be mortal, and that this universe may be truly universal, do ye, according to your natures, betake yourselves to the formation of animals, imitating the power which was shown by me in creating you. The part of them worthy of the name immortal, which is called divine and is the guiding principle of those who are willing to follow justice and you— of that divine part I will myself sow the seed, and having made the beginning, I will hand the work over to you. And do ye then interweave the mortal with the immortal and make them to grow, and receive them again in death.^

Philosophical and mythical cosmogony, explanation and

imagery are fused together in this excerpt. Although one

can analyze them separately, together these elements produce a single form of expression. The need to create three tribes of mortal beings, for example, is explained in the conceptual terms of perfection understood as completeness. Inherent in the notion of completeness here

is the inclusion of opposites: the presence of immortal beings in the cosmos requires that of mortal ones. Evil is explained as the undoing of the harmony that binds the cosmos together. Mythical expression would have presented

^ Tim. 41a-d, transi. Benjamin Jowet, quoted from The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Princeton University Press, 1961, p. 1170.

32 here the image of an evil demon, which Plato almost does, who would pit itself not against the abstract notion of harmony, but against a good demon. Purely philosophical thought would speak, for example, of evil not as a being but as diminution of cosmic harmony. Plato does neither of these things but at the same time he does both. This is what is understood by mythosophia.

Further, mythosophia is distinct from poetry, that can also be— like Goethe’s Faust, for example— infused with philosophical ideas. The distinction is similar to, although weaker than, that between poetry and myth.

Poetry, as we said, does not inherently make claims as to the reality of the objects it describes, whereas mythosophia does. In comparison with myth, however, the sense of the mythosophic object’s reality is significantly weakened. Mythosophia transforms the “unquestionably true” myth into a “probable tale” sanctioned by philosophical reflection (Plato, Tim. 29d). Far from rejecting or undermining each other, however, myth and philosophy “prop each other up,” as it were. In addition to Plato, we shall meet with the mythosophic mode of expression, as was mentioned above, in the treatment of the Orpheus myth by

Marsilio Ficino in the Renaissance and Vyacheslav Ivanov in the Silver Age, i. e. the dynamic turn-of-the-century

33 period in Russian culture that has often been compared to the Renaissance.

Let us sum up the results of our discussion in this chapter. We have defined myth as a narrative taken to be true and comprising a magical perspective. We have also drawn important contrasts between myth, magic, philosophy, and art. Myth is distinct from philosophy by virtue of its

immediate, unreflected nature, as well as its appeal to mystery. At the same time, however, it is similar to philosophy in its contemplative character, as distinct from the action-oriented nature of magic. Philosophy and art are similar in their renunciation of mystery and their public character, but distinct from each other as contemplation and action. Magic and art are thus both action-oriented but differ from each other in that the one is supposed to produce immediate real-life effects while the other is “disinterested” play. Finally, we have introduced the concept of “mythosophia” that describes the merger of mythical and philosophical thinking and is distinct from philosophical allegory and (philosophical) poetry. These contrasts and similarities will serve as a basis of our analysis in the following chapters. We shall now turn to the Orpheus myth in Plato’s discussion of music.

34 Chapter 3

The Orpheus Myth and Plato’s Philosophy of Music

1. The Orpheus Myth: A Comprehensive Symbol of Music’s Powers

In this chapter we shall define the “Orpheus myth” for the purposes of this study and discuss the relationship between the myth and Plato’s philosophy of music. The purpose of the discussion is to show how Plato transformed the beliefs about music’s powers that the Orpheus myth symbolized in Antiquity. The analysis below addresses two main areas in which this transformation occurred: Plato’s influential doctrine of the “music of the spheres” and his views on the use of music in the life of the ideal city- state. Further, we shall look at the consequences of

Plato’s demythicizing of Orpheus. Plato’s resulting view of music, we argue, was a merging of philosophical and mythical thinking, i. e. the Platonic variety of music mythosophia that stemmed in large part from the Orpheus myth.

35 What is the “Orpheus Myth”? The term "Orpheus myth"

refers in this study to a set of stories united by their

main hero, the legendary poet-singer Orpheus. These

stories or myths depicted Orpheus as a magical musician who

possessed the power to move stones and trees, attract birds

and animals by his music; took part in the Argonautic

expedition in which he outsang the pernicious Sirens;

persuaded through his song the deities of the underworld to

release his wife; and finally was torn limb from limb by

maenads in a Dionysian sacrificial ritual.' Closely

related to this group of narratives was the assortment of writings attributed to the legendary Orpheus in which a

distinct mystical doctrine was expounded.- The modern

reader, who knows the Orpheus story from later sources and

interpretations, needs to be reminded that for the ancients

in general and Plato in particular what we call "the

Orpheus myth" here embraced the mythical figure of Orpheus

in all these capacities at once: the magical archaic poet- musician, the psychopomp, i. e. the leader of souls to (and

‘ This description of the Orpheus myth follows a well-established scholarly practice. Of the enormous literature on Orpheus we can point to such works, adopting similar definitions, as West, M. L. The Orphic Poems, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983, p. 4, and Warden, John (ed.) Orpheus. The Metamorphoses of a Myth, University of Toronto Press, Toronto-Buffalo-London, 1982, pp. vii-ix.

^ These are the subject of a detailed discussion in, e. g., West's book quoted above.

36 possibly from) the underworld, the lover, the mystagogue,

and the founder of a religious cult.^ The Orpheus myth was

thus a cultural locus where the most important questions of human existence— life, death, religion, love, the power of art (understood also as civilization in general since

Orpheus was also regarded as one of mankind’s civilizers) — came to bear upon one another in an extremely complex yet recognizably Orphic blend.

The term “Orpheus myth” will not always be used in this study in the strict sense of a myth as it was defined

in the previous chapter. In the course of its long history the stories about Orpheus have undergone numerous transformations.'* It is one of our purposes to analyze

^ William K. C. Guthrie's book Orpheus and Greek Religion; A Study of the Orphic Movement, London, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1935, is perhaps the most authoritative statement in favour of the existence of an Orphic cult in pre-Classical and Classical Greece, while Ivan Linforth's book The Arts of Orpheus, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1941, is the most definitive argument against it. The majority of authors today seem to agree that the Orphic cult did exist. See e. g. Warden, op. cit., pp. ix (Emmet Robbins, it must be noted, in her essay in the same book suspends judgment, linking the question to the problem of Orpheus’ historical existence, [pp. 12-14]) or Graf, Fritz, “Orpheus: A Poet Among Men,” Interpretations of Greek Mythology, ed. Jan Bremmer, Barnes and Noble Books, Totowa, N.J., 1986.

“* For a relatively concise review of the literary uses of the Orpheus myth see Segal, Charles, Orpheus. The Myth of the Poet, The Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1989, (Chapter 7 “Orpheus from Antiquity to Today: Retrospect and Prospect”), pp. 155-198.

37 some of the important cases in which these stories were used as myths in a strict sense. These cases will be specifically indicated in the course of our discussion. In the absence of such specific characterization the term should be understood in the sense described above.

The Orpheus Myth and the Powers o f Music. The comprehensive power of music and poetry over inanimate and animate nature, the human psyche, and even over the gods is the

Leitmotif that unites all of Orpheus’ hypostases.* This observation may seem superfluous in its obviousness but, without it, it is easy to be overly impressed with the multitude of the legendary singer’s roles and claim, together with James West, that Orpheus’ name “was the only unifying factor” in the numerous allusions to the myth, i. e. that there is no central theme in the usages of this symbol in Antiquity.® In whatever capacity Orpheus was evoked, then just as today, his extraordinary poetic and musical ability was sure to be evoked or at least assumed as well. The fact that the ancient Greek consciousness was capable of viewing religion, statehood, and civilization in general through the prism of music and poetry is the mark

* Orpheus as a symbol of poetry’s powers (as well as of its failures) is among the central themes of e. g. Charles Segal’s analysis of the myth (of. op. cit.. Chapter 1 “The Magic of Orpheus,” pp. 1-35).

® West, op. cit., p. 3.

38 of the unique role it assigned to mouslké. Orpheus was a

mythical expression of the characteristically ancient Greek

belief, according to which music’s participation was

central to the formation of the state (Orpheus the poet-

king), religious cult (Orpheus the priest), exploration of

the outer world and its riches (Orpheus the Argonaut), and

the life of the individual psyche (Orpheus the leader of

Eurydice’s soul).

Orpheus was not, of course, the only symbol of music

in the Greek myth. His was one of many stories that formed

the extensive sphere of ancient Greek music mythology,

inhabited by such characters as Apollo, Hermes, the Muses,

Thamyras, Marsyas, Amphion, Musaeus, Linus, and many other

superhuman and human personages. This mythology includes

stories about the origin of music, musical instruments,

contests, miracles performed with music’s help, etc. Among these stories and images Orpheus was simply the most comprehensive one, representing the universal character of music’s effect.’ Thamyras, for example, epitomizes a musical genius so engrossed in itself that it forgets its

’ Cf. Lippman, E. A. Musical Thought in Ancient Greece, Columbia University Press, New York and London, 1964, p. 45.

39 divine origins and is punished for this.* The Marsyas story is about the contest between two opposite elements within music, i. e. how its noble and orderly aspect, represented by the Dorian Apollo, triumphs over its orgiastic side illustrated by the unfortunate Phrygian satyr. The myth of Amphion served to symbolize music’s role in “constructing” a city (Thebes, i. e. dedicated to

Apollo) understood primarily as a human community.* Even though it would be a mistake to impose too much specialization on these mythical figures, i. e. to make one a religious musician par excellence and another a founder of a community— Orpheus appears to be the only (human) figure in this music mythology who combines music’s varied powers.

As the source of these powers the myth establishes

Orpheus’ divine descent: he is a son of either Apollo or the Muse Calliope or both.'“ He is also a pious musician: his music is pleasing to the gods and, unlike that of

* Thamyras was a legendary singer who arrogantly claimed superiority to the Muses, the divine matrons of his art. As a result, the latter blinded him and withdrew his gift for singing and lyre-playing (Homer, Iliad II 594- 599) .

* Pausanias, Description of Greece IX 5, 7-9.

Gantz, Timothy. Early Greek Myths. A Guide to Literary Sources, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1993, pp. 721-25.

40 Marsyas and Thamyras, it is never Titanic, i. e. never

represents a rebellion against his divine patrons." As

befits a tragic hero, however, his piety did not remain

unquestioned. In the Bassaridae, a lost play by Aeschylus,

for example, Orpheus was depicted as a religious leader and magical singer who “converted” from the Dionysian to

Apollonian cult and was dismembered by Thracian women for this." The motif of Orpheus’ strained relationship with

Bacchus also hovers vaguely over Ovid’s account, i. e. the

scene of Orpheus’ death at the hands of bacchantes. It is promptly dispelled, however, when the god punishes the women by turning them into trees (Wet. XI 1-84) .

2. Plato’s Philosophy of Music: Demythicized Orphism

Plato’s Orpheus. Plato knew all Orpheus’ capacities briefly reviewed above and was just as well-informed about the myth as any educated Greek of his time. First of all,

Orpheus for Plato was an ancient— ancient, that is, already at that time— poet-musician of extraordinary powers. He is

" A significant exception to this observation is Orpheus’ backward glance in violation of Hades’ interdiction for which Eurydice is taken away from him. In this transgression Orpheus does not, however, oppose the Muses and Apollo as Marsyas and Thamyras did.

" Cf. Segal, op. cit., p. 157.

41 mentioned, for example, along with the other two great

archaic poets, Homer and Hesiod, in the Apology (41a),

Protagoras (316d-e), Ion (536c), and Cratylus (402b).

Second, along with Daedalus, Palamides, Marsyas, Olympus,

and Amphion, he was also, according to Plato, among the

post-Flood civilizers of the Greeks, i. e. one of the great

mythological inventors of various arts (Laws 3.677d).

Phaedrus in his famous speech refers, with calculated

disparagement, to Orpheus as a lover who travels to the

underworld to rescue his wife (Symp. 179d). In the passage

of the Cratylus where the "soma-sema" metaphor of the soul-

body relationship is presented, Socrates mentions Orphic

poets who must have been the inventors of the doctrine of

the body as at once a grave and a “sign” for the soul

(Crat. 400c), which shows that Plato was quite familiar with this Orphic belief. Another feature of Orphism that he was clearly aware of was vegetarianism (Laws 6.782).

Plato also knew Orpheus as the charmer of animate nature, which is manifest in his humorous comparison of Protagoras and his admirers to the mythic singer surrounded by enchanted animals (Prot. 315a). Plato's own Orphism will be touched upon later but it needs to be mentioned here that the passages in the Rep. 2.3 63d (life after death) and

10.620 (transmigration of souls), Prot. 316d-e (religious rites and prophecy), Crat. 402b (Orphic theogony), and

42 Symp. 179d (Orpheus the psychopomp) , as well as many

others, all point to Plato's extensive knowledge of the

Orphic doctrine.

There can be little doubt that Orpheus represented for

Plato the supreme heights of musical-poetic skill and

achievement. Socrates' remark in the end of the Apology, where he speaks of the attractions of life after death

testifies to the deep appreciation of the legendary poet's

art. "How much would one of you give to meet Orpheus and

Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer?" asks dying Socrates his disciples.— And answers his own question: "I am willing to die ten times over if this account is true" (41a) . In the

famous "magnet" metaphor of the poetic art in the Ion,

Socrates mentions Orpheus among the greatest poets who are held by the divine power as the "primary rings," i. e. those in immediate contact with the ultimate source of

inspiration from whom others draw it in turn. In Phaedrus' speech, though "a lukewarm lover," Orpheus is depicted as a "minstrel" capable of "scheming his way, living, into

Hades" (Symp. 179d). And when Plato looks for an example of consummate musicianship— only to belittle it in favour of the art produced by model citizens— he, again, resorts to Orpheus the creator of "ravishing notes" (Laws 8.829e).

Though not mentioned directly, Orpheus' presence is felt in

Socrates' account of the origins of music in the same

43 dialogue. Dionysos, Apollo, and the Muses are named here

as the sources of music, i. e. of melody and rhythm

(2.672c-d), and Orpheus is precisely the figure in whom

these three divine forces merge with one another.

According to various accounts, he was alternatively called

the son of Apollo or of the Muse Calliope (and Thracian

river-god Giagros) , and at the same time a priest and

promulgator of the Bacchic-Dionysian mystery cult.

Orpheus, as we said, is not mentioned in this passage but

the peculiar combination of all his divine patrons

certainly suggests an association with him and may have

even been calculated to do so by Plato.

The Greek’s usual reverence toward Orpheus was, however, mixed in Plato with irony and occasional derision.

Plato was a traditionalist and restorationist: in the

Republic and the Laws he proposed a model society that was

fashioned after what he believed had been the exemplary past as distinct from the lamentable present. Because of this, Plato had to uphold the traditional respect for their archaic poet-civilizers and Orpheus in this role is quite a reputable figure in Plato’s dialogues and an authoritative point of reference. On the other hand and

For sources see e. g. Gantz, Timothy. Early Greek Myths. A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1993, pp. 721-25.

44 quite contrary to his first task, it was the authority of poetry that Plato needed to undermine in order to liberate his audience and make it more receptive to his philosophy.w The feud between poetry and philosophy for the minds of the polity was old already by his time.**

Hence Plato’s occasionally disparaging view of Orpheus, especially as a despicably “scheming” musician (Symp. 179d) and the misguided founder of a popular and superstitious religious cult.** Insofar as Orpheus is responsible for the Greeks’ rise from bestial primitivism to the heights of civilization, he is a positive figure. Insofar, however.

"The tyranny of the poets over the culture of [Plato's] contemporaries," writes Julius Elias, "can hardly be exaggerated. It has often been remarked that Homer (and to a lesser degree, Hesiod) was a combination of Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton to the Athenians. <...> This popular wisdom enshrined much that Plato needed to make use of himself for reasons spanning the limitations of his readers as well as the unavowed limitations of his own theory. But the inadequacies of that popular wisdom had first to be displayed; this undertaken by Socrates in the early and middle dialogues, and by Plato in the middle and late ones" (Plato's Defence of Poetry, MacMillan Press, London, 1984, p. 3) .

'* “[T]here is from of old a quarrel between philosophy and poetry” (Rep. 607b).

** "And Musaeus and his son (Orpheus) have a more excellent song... of the blessings that the gods bestow on the righteous," says Adimantus with irony, "For they conduct them to the house of Hades in their tale and arrange a symposium of the saints, where, reclined on couches and crowned with wreaths, they entertain the time henceforth with wine, as if the fairest meed of virtue were an everlasting drunk" (Rep. II 3 63c-d).

45 as he is one of the “poets” responsible for the Greeks’

delusional admiration of the intuitive, unexamined mode of

thinking and living (allegedly promoted by poets) that so

vexed Socrates, he is a pitiful, ridiculous, and altogether

contemptible character (cf. Rep. X 620a).

But this is only the surface of Plato’s ambivalent

engagement with Orpheus. The philosopher’s relationship with the ancient symbol of music and the ideas associated with it was far more complex than oscillation between respect and contempt. There was a give-and-take between the world of Plato’s thought and that of the myth.

Condescendingly dismissing the priest-musician with one hand, Plato reached deep into the baggage of meanings and

intuitions the Orpheus myth carried and wove them into the tapestry of his own thought, making them quite his own.

Plato’s View of Music and the Orpheus Myth. Music in the cosmos was an important area in which Plato the philosopher was responding to the Greek music-mythological intuitions. The

imagery of the Orpheus myth had already been reworked into the Pythagorean doctrine of the numerical-musical harmony of the cosmos.*’ The Pythagorean understanding of music

*’ For Orphism’s influence on the Pythagoreans see Guthrie, op. cit., pp. 216-21. The Pythagorean mathematical view of music is discussed in detail by Herbert M. Schueller in his book The Idea of Music: An Introduction to Musical Aesthetics in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Medieval Institute Publications, Western

46 became one of the fundamental sources of Plato’s cosmogony.

An important role in this process was played by the

Pythagorean transformation of the Orphic cosmogony,

especially the operation that the mathematikoi sect

performed on it by substituting a hierarchy of numbers for

that of Orphic gods. It must be noted that the Orphic

theogony itself invited, to an extent, such philosophizing

treatment, for it represented a transitional phase between

myth and philosophy.'* As Lippman observed.

The Orphic cosmogony extends the Hesiodic by its tendency to personify abstractions; it is still a theogony, but its gods are often concepts expressed in an old form.

It was the Pythagorean number, however, that was

responsible for the crucial metamorphosis in which the

chrysalis of myth was transformed into the butterfly of

science, with far-reaching consequences for music. When

the Pythagoreans replaced divinity with mathematics, as

Lippman points out, the fate of myth was sealed.

Mythology has with this step become philosophy; and although the mathematical studies of the brotherhood... reflect in their very constitution the dominant position of music, there can be no doubt that

Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, 1988, pp. 13-25.

'* Cf. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion, p. 238.

47 a new and higher purification was discovered, and that theory was substituted for sonority.'*

Number, which in Pythagorean thought assumed the potency of the gods,^ was only an instrument; the chief significance of the process consisted in the supplanting of mythical with theoretical authority.

Plato continued this tendency of substituting theory for sonority and the results were quite profound. One of them was that, in comparison with the myth, the relation between music and the cosmos was reversed. Orpheus controlled nature, including even the gods. In Plato’s view, man must imitate the harmonious revolutions of heaven in his soul, i. e. be controlled by the (silent) music of the spheres. Hearing is like sight, says Plato, that is given us so that "we might behold the courses of intelligence in the heaven" in order to be able to "imitate the absolutely unerring courses of God and regulate our own

'* Lippman, op. cit., p. 49. Lippman's remark polemically exaggerates the Pythagoreans' departure from mythology. Losev called their mathematics "numerical mythology," emphasizing the unity of theory and mythology in Pythagorean thought. "Number," observes Losev, "was treated by the Pythagoreans both as a materialistically formed and organized body and as a soul which is the body's organizing principle, as well as the semantic paradigm (zadannost') underlying the soul itself and the ideas that belong to this soul" (Losev, A. F. Istoriia antichnoi estetiki (ranniaia klassika) [A History of Ancient Aesthetics. Early Classical Period], Vysshaia shkola, Moscow, 1963, ss. 265-6).

“ See Schueller, op. cit., p. 24.

48 vagaries" {Tim. 47b-c). This reversal of "power relations" between the music-making man and the world around him is reflected also on the ethical-political plane. In contrast to the Orpheus myth, music no longer guides the life of the

Platonic human society but, as we shall presently see, is subordinated instead to the political interests of the state. This happens, however, only with the actual music, the music that is played on instruments, sung by voices, and heard by ears. The other, speculative music is the principle that, in fact, guides the life of the state.

This speculative “music” is primarily understood as philosophy and related intellectual-ethical pursuits.

^‘This is how Plato describes the conditions for musical-poetic composition in the ideal city-state: "The composition of... verses shall not be for everyone. The author must, in the first place, have reached the age of not less than fifty; moreover, he must not be one of those who have within them a sufficient vein of literature and music but have never achieved one noble and illustrious deed. But the verse of composers who are in their own persons men of worth, held in public honor as authors of noble deeds, may be sung, even though it have no real musical quality. The selection of composers shall be in the hands of the minister of education and his colleagues, the curators of law, who are to allow them this special privilege. Their music, and theirs only, shall be free and uncensored, whereas this liberty shall be granted to no one else, and no other citizen shall presume, without the curator's license, to sign an unauthorized air, were it notes more ravishing than those of Thamyras or Orpheus themselves, but only such verse as has been duly consecrated to the gods and such compositions by men of true worth as have been pronounced to convey laudation or reproof with due propriety" (Laws VIII 829c-e).

49 In full compliance with this larger tendency, Plato radically limits the role of the poet. The archaic poet- hero was, from the mythical point of view, a whole person in whom thought and action, i. e. singing, were inseparable. Plato takes the poet’s “soul,” i. e. poetry, and discards the poet’s body that acts, i. e. sings, in the world. Poetry is accepted, the poet is rejected. It is hardly surprising, of course, that in his treatment of the

Orpheus myth Plato consistently follows the main theme of his aesthetics in general: the assertion of the ideal world as the primary reality, to the detriment of the terrestrial world which is the secondary reality, and especially of art, including poetry, which is “three removes” away from the "first" reality {Rep. X 599a). Plato the cosmologist silenced music by turning it into a system of numerical- cosmic proportions. (Plato the political theorist, however, could not do the same; he had to concede a space, however strictly controlled, to the sound of the singing voice and playing instrument.)

But perhaps even more importantly, Plato omits Orpheus the singing poet, i. e. the living and real musician who actually plays and sings. He often deprecates practicing musicians, presenting their art as tasteless corruption of the sacred tradition. According to Plato, they abuse the rules of poetry established by the Muses by “setting

50 masculine language to effeminate scale or tune, or wedding melody, or postures worthy of free men with rhythms only fit for slaves and bondsmen...” They “tend to be only too fond of provoking the contempt” of an enlightened listener by “senseless and complicated confusion” and “the worst bad taste” (i. e. imitating the cries of animals, various noises, and sounds) (Laws, II 269c-270a). Orpheus as a human poet-musician is thus reduced to a contemptible state; only the ideas inherent in the symbolism of the

Orpheus myth are “extracted” and set apart on their own, in a new, theoretical context.

In the beginning of his Theogony Hesiod describes the

Muses and their favorites who combine the talents of orators with the status of “kings.” Framing this depiction are the scene of the Muses' singing among the gods, on the one side, and the statement that all singers and lyre- players descend from the Muses and Apollo, on the other.

Endowed with compelling eloquence by the Muses, the kings thus occupy a middle position between divine and human musicians. They do not sing in Hesiod’s account but only pronounce orations in assemblies and courts, resolving conflict by wise and temperate speech.^ As portrayed by

^ “When the daughters of great Zeus will honor a lord/whose lineage is divine, and look upon his birth,/They distill a sweet dew upon his tongue,/And from his mouth words flow like honey. The people/All look to him as he

51 Hesiod, these kings still show signs of belonging, however, to the widespread ancient type of the poet-king. Hesiod’s depiction of the musical-poetic roots of the art of politics is marked by epic composure and equilibrium.

Mousiké and politics act hand-in-hand, both “speaking” wisely, calmly, and majestically. The poet’s songs are wrapped in the blissful and pleasing mode of the Muses’ singing. In Plato, on the other hand, we find a sharp opposition of the ideal statesman and the poet. Plato’s

Muses remain the supreme source of poetic art but their earthly followers become suspect.

Orpheus was a poet-king, too, and even as late as

Horace’s time, i. e. already after Virgil’s and Ovid’s versions of his story had been written, his civilizing role stood out as a prominent feature of his image. “ The arbitrates settlements/With judgments straight. He speaks out in sure tones/And soon puts an end even to bitter disputes./A sound-minded ruler, when someone is wronged,/Sets things to rights in the public assembly,/Conciliating both sides with ease./He comes to the meeting place propitiated as a god,/Treated with respect, preeminent in the crowd./Such is the Muses’ sacred gift to men./For though it is singers and lyre-players/That come from the Muses and far-shooting Apollo/And kings come from Zeus, happy is the man/Whom the Muses love. Sweet flows the voice from his mouth” {Theog. 82-98; Hesiod. Works and Days and Theogony, transi. Stanley Lombardo, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1993 pp. 63-4).

^ "When men still roamed the forests, Orpheus, the priest and prophet of the gods, deterred them from slaughter and from an abominable way of life. On account

52 Romans had their own poet-king Numa Pompilius who, "blessed with a nymph for wife, blessed with the Muses’ guidance, taught holy rites and trained a fierce, warlike people in the arts of peace."* Orpheus epitomizes this type of cultural hero. He was, as we mentioned above, of both royal and divine descent; he was a favourite of the Muses; he resolved conflicts between fierce men;“ and he established laws, religious cults, the arts, and even agriculture.* The emphasis, however, seems to have always been on the poetic-musical side of his contribution, which

is reflected in his genealogy. Hesiod’s kings descend from

Zeus whereas Orpheus descends from Apollo— like Hesiod’s singers and lyre-players.

Plato transformed the civilizing trope of the Orpheus myth into a political-educational theory of music. What the myth tells as a story of Orpheus’ miraculous influence on the Greeks— i. e. how he introduced agriculture, laws of communal living, dissuaded people from their beastly ways,

of this he is said to have tamed savage tigers and lions.” (Ars poetica 391-407; quoted from Hardison and Golden 1995:19).

* Met. XV 482-3; Ovid. Metamorphoses, transi. Frank Justus Miller, William Heinemann, London, MCMXXXIII (1933), p. 399.

* Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica I 500 passim.

* Themistii orationes II 183 7.

53 etc.— Plato formulates as a set of prescriptions about the use of music in the ideal city-state. His prescriptions and proscriptions are based, in turn, on an extended theory of music’s impact on morality. Plato’s ethical-educational doctrine of music was dependent on the Orpheus myth in a broad and profound genetic sense. It incorporated and further developed the general Greek sense of music’s educational value, moral influence, and political significance, i. e. those ideas for which the symbol of

Orpheus stood in the Greek imagination.

The Merging of Myth and Philosophy. “in every respect

Plato imitates the teaching of Orpheus,” wrote

Olympiodorus of Alexandria in the 6th century A. D. , repeating what had become an item of faith among

Neoplatonists toward the grand finale of the Hellenic period.^ Sensitive and sophisticated interpreters of

Plato, the Neoplatonists viewed him as the founder of their own cause and, in fact, called themselves simply Platonists

(the term “Neoplatonism” was a later scholarly invention).

They were thus inclined, perhaps, to give him more credit than was due as far as the remarriage of myth and rational thought was concerned, since the philosophical

Platones Phaedonem commentaria 70c; quoted in Warden, Orpheus, p. 89.

54 rehabilitation of traditional paganism in the face of the rising Christianity was one of their main goals.

Plato’s “relationship” with Orpheus and Orphism developed in the context of his attempts to determine how philosophy was to deal with the cultural heritage of the

Greeks, especially poetry, their most precious treasure and pride; and what place this heritage was to occupy in the rationally constructed life of the individual and society.

The results of these attempts were far from unequivocal, and to the great poets of the past Plato was anything but an obedient disciple faithfully translating ancient truths from the mysterious tongue of myth into the clear language of science. His dialogue with traditional myth and archaic poetry, i. e. the sphere to which the figure of Orpheus belonged, was quite intense and very often, if not always, his acceptance of myth was conditioned by its radical reinterpretation.

The treatment of the Orpheus myth is a particularly good example of such conditioned acceptance. Guthrie distinguishes two ways in which myth was used by Plato: they may be called corroborative and climactic. The first of these is purely illustrative, aiming at corroborating the results of analysis. The second is much more interesting, for its purpose is “to provide some sort of account of regions into which the methods of dialectical

55 reasoning cannot follow.”^* In other words, it is the climax of analysis, the “post-analytic” phase of the argument, as it were. It is a sign of his greatness as a philosopher, Guthrie points out, that Plato was aware of the fact that, no matter how thorough or insightful, scientific analysis eventually stops at the threshold of the unanalyzable. This Protean, elusive element of things possesses, however, a strange obviousness and convincing power. As Guthrie puts it, “we know [these things] to be true and have to explain them as best we can,” and this is where myth becomes indispensable.

Plato was clearly interested in the relation between myth and philosophy and offered an explanation of it. A philosopher, according to him, should accept “the tale which is probable and inquire no further” when he realizes that the rational argument, which must be “altogether and in every respect exact and consistent,” is exhausted and no longer helpful in choosing “amidst the many opinions about the gods and the generation of the universe” (Tim. 29c-d) .

To quote Guthrie again, myth in these cases is used as a probabilistic metaphorical or allegorical substitute for analytic and scientific knowledge.

We take account of myth not because we believe it to be literally true, but as a means of presenting a

Guthrie, op. cit., p. 239.

56 possible account of things which we know to exist but must admit to be too mysterious for exact scientific demonstration.

And it is in dealing with these mysterious, unresolvable questions, such as free will and divine justice, the

immortality of the soul and its transmigration, that Plato often resorts, according to Guthrie, to Orphic myths.

But Plato’s philosophy’s involvement with myth is even more pervasive than this. In his analysis of Plato’s

aesthetics Losev proposes an interpretation of Plato’s theory of ideas that is strikingly relevant to this discussion. Losev interprets Plato’s ideal form as “idea- myth”:

Plato’s Ideas are gods— the gods not of the naive mythology, of course, but those translated into the language of abstract universality. Whereas earlier the [cosmic] elements were posited as the foundation of being [by Presocratics], now these same elements, the principles of all existence, to whom consciousness, soul and intellect, [as well as] a purposeful structure have been given back [by Plato], evidently, become gods. Whereas earlier there were numbers and [geometric] shapes [as in Pythagoreanism], now, upon a new interpretation, these are, evidently, gods. This is the only way we can help separating Plato from his native ancient soil.^°

29 Guthrie, op. cit., p. 239

Losev, A. F. Istoriia antichnoi estetiki. Sofisty, Sokrat, Platon, (A History of Ancient Aesthetics. The Sophists, Socrates, and Plato), Iskusstvo, Moscow, 1969, s. 151, the italics in this and the following quotations are Losev’s. Here and further the translation from Russian is mine— V. M.

57 Socrates turned away from the old cosmologists and, obeying the Delphic oracle, turned his searching gaze into the world of the human soul. The study of man replaced

cosmology as philosophy’s chief concern. Having learned

from his master, Plato turned his philosophic inquiry back

toward the cosmos that now became, in contrast to

Presocratics, a living thing endowed with supreme

intelligence and self-sufficiency. Plato’s thought produces an anthropomorphically interpreted cosmos and

cosmically interpreted human being or, in Losev’s words, a

synthesis of cosmology and anthropology. “In other words,

Plato returns to the old, stable and measured cosmology,” writes Losev, “but understands it now as a problem of

consciousness.”^^ According to Losev, Plato logically, dialectically constructs his idea-myth, even though, paradoxically, he has no theory of ideal forms, if theory means a systematic elaboration of certain principles. At

the same time, while transcending the earlier virgin and unreflected-upon mythology, Losev suggests, Plato’s idea- myth does not reach the level of reflection characteristic

of the later Neoplatonic understanding of myth that crowns

ancient philosophy as a whole.

Losev, loc. cit.

58 Like Guthrie, Losev points to the unanalyzable

component of thinking as the sphere of myth yet his

analysis of it is subtler and farther-reaching.

In myth (as in consciousness in general) there is something that can never become the object of reflection— that the essence of which implies the impossibility of being reflected upon. Yet this imperviousness to reflection is by no means an absence of reflection typical of the original myth. The latter [was characterized] simply by lack of reflection [altogether] whereas here [we find] the awareness of the impossibility of reflecting on it and, most importantly, a positive recognition of those aspects of myth that cannot be reflected upon, [the aspects] that are, furthermore, the deepest and most fundamental.

Losev’s interpretation opens the way to reconcile

Plato-the-theoretician with Plato-the-mythicizer in a fruitful manner, without giving up one side of the philosopher’s persona for the sake of the other. It merges the two aspects of Plato ’ s mode of thinking into one indivisible whole and points to that sphere of Platonism in which theory and myth pollinate each other, as it were, to produce a dialectical-dogmatic amalgam, logic basing itself on (mythical) faith— only to result in faith basing itself on logic. In other words, the analysis of the role of myth in Plato’s philosophizing yields the notion of mythosophia, i. e. mythicizing for the sake of advancement of philosophy

Losev, op. cit., s. 153.

59 and philosophizing that culminates in a new myth, both of

which were highly characteristic features of Platonism.

In the sphere of Plato’s musical thought two famous

excerpts display the merging of mythical and philosophical

thought: the so-called “myth of Er” in the Republic and the

construction of the cosmos in the Timaeus. There are

distinct echoes of the Orpheus myth in the first of these.

The story of the slain warrior Er who is allowed to cross

the boundary between the world of the living and the world

of the dead belongs to the same genre of postmortem visions

as the Orpheus-Eurydice tale and, later, Dante’s Commedia.

These stories are part of what Segal calls the “wisdom

tradition,” i. e. accounts that are designed to provide

“the underworld traveler with knowledge about the

afterlife.”” The musical part of the tale comes when Er

contemplates the inner structure of the cosmos, i. e. the

shaft of life, the spindle of Necessity, the whorls that

rotate around the spindle, the singing Sirens, and the

Fates. Plato’s description includes the arrangement of the

cosmic whorls according to a mathematical proportion and

culminates in the singing of the Sirens and the Fates.

Now the first and outmost whorl had the broadest circular rim, that of the sixth was second, and third

” Op. cit., p. 157; Segal borrows the term from Clark, R. J. Catabasis: Virgil and the Wisdom Tradition, Amsterdam, 1979.

6 0 was that of the fourth, and fourth was that of the eighth, fifth that of the seventh, sixth that of the fifth, seventh that of the third, eighth that of the second. <...> And the spindle turned on the knees of Necessity, and up above each of the rims of the circles a Siren stood, borne around in its revolution and uttering one sound, one note, and from all the eight there was the concord of a single harmony. And there were three others who sat round about at equal intervals, each one on her throne, the Fates, daughters of Necessity, clad in white vestments with filleted heads, Lachesis, and Clotho, and Atropos, who sang in unison with the music of the Sirens, Laches is singing the things that were, Clotho the things that are, and Atropos the things that are to be (Rep. X 616e-617d).

This passage describes the inner structure of the cosmos not only in myth-like terms of Er’s vision, but also in terms of the Pythagorean “scientific” theory of the ancient

Greek perception of the world. The two aspects of the description are merged into a single whole in which the traditional mythical imagery, i. e. the figures of

Necessity, the Sirens, and the Fates, is intimately associated with the mathematical-cosmological theory of

Plato’s time. In addition, this depiction is placed in the context of an Orpheus-like story of Er’s catabasis in the other world.* In contrast to Orpheus, however, Er is not the singer in front of the gods, but their listener.

The songs that he listens to, incidentally, are the fulfillment of a philosopher's ultimate dream: to know

* Incidentally, Plato’s account Er’s journey, like that of Orpheus, includes reference to a forbidden backward glance (621a).

61 everything that was, is, and will be, i. e. absolute knowledge. And yet this knowledge is communicated not to a philosopher, but to the shaman-like warrior Er.

Moreover, the absolute knowledge of the Fates is communicated not through a theory, but through a song.

3. Conclusions

The Orpheus myth undergoes two mutually related, if opposite, operations in Plato’s philosophy of music. The first process consists in demythicizing Orpheus as a poet- musician of the traditional ancient Greek mythology. This

Orpheus is treated by Plato in an ambiguous way. On the one hand, he is one of the founders of Greek civilization and in this capacity is invoked as a revered ancient authority. On the other hand, he is also depicted as a misguided religious leader or a contemptible, “cunning” poet, i. e. a representative of the class of poets of whom

Plato openly disapproves. The second process consists in what Losev called “the translating of myth into the language of abstract universality,” i. e. the articulation of the beliefs that the myth expresses as philosophical concepts thus partially preserving its content in a new form. This process took two main directions in Plato—

6 2 cosmological and ethical-educational— and resulted in the

formulation of two corresponding philosophical doctrines.

There is, however, a tendency in Plato’s thought that

is distinct from these two processes and leads to

formulations that can be described neither as traditional

mythology nor as philosophical expression in the strict

sense. This tendency manifests itself in utterances that

combine traditional myth with philosophical thought. These utterances are examples of mythosophic expression. One of the most characteristic examples of Plato’s mythosophia, the excerpt from the tale of Er that we described above, shows evidence of the Orpheus myth’s influence.

Plato's view of music's powers foregrounds the sway of divine music over the human soul. This is especially evident in the myth of Er which, while depending on the

Orpheus myth, reverses the role of the human traveller in the underworld and makes him an enchanted listener rather than an enchanting singer. Our next example of the Orpheus myth's role in formulating the powers of music shows the opposite process, i. e. the foregrounding of the human musician. This was the central theme of Orpheus' metamorphoses during the Renaissance.

6 3 Chapter 4

From Ficino to Monteverdi: Transformation of Orpheus’ Power

1. Two main views of music’s powers in the Renaissance

Following Angelo Poliziano’s example, the entire

Renaissance can be construed as an enactment of the Orpheus story. Eurydice, the profound wisdom of the ancient world, was dead. Her mere shadow wandered from one learned book to another, dragged by a string of interpretations that drained all her blood, a specter of the woman whose beauty once could inspire a poet to love and to sing. And then came the magical poet and by the power of his song

Eurydice, “the broad judgment” as Fulgentius deciphered her name in the late Antiquity, was brought back to life.

Curiously, the Renaissance began with a celebration of a culture that had been long dead, i. e. with a sort of cultural-historical “necrophilia” attenuated by a no less peculiar “biophobia.” Petrarch, the first humanist, thus described his primary impetus toward writing:

While I write I converse eagerly with our elders, in one way I can. And I gladly forget those among whom I was forced by evil fate to live; I employ all my power of mind to escape them and seek out the ancients. As the very sight of my contemporaries offends me, the remembrance, the splendid deeds, and

6 4 even the bright names of men of old allure me and fill me with inestimable joy; so that many would be shocked to learn how much more I find delight among the dead than with the living.*

Many humanists were drawn to that “world of the dead.”

Antiquity became their Eurydice, calling to Renaissance man

from the depths of oblivion, pleading to be led out into daylight. When she did emerge, her appearance brought about transformations of European culture that no humanist could have foreseen, and nothing has ever been the same since. This metaphor applies to many aspects of the

Renaissance, but to few better than music, whose powers became in that era the subject of close scrutiny and vigorous hermeneutics.

Although far from being the central concern of music historical research, conceptions of music’s powers in the

Renaissance have drawn serious attention of scholars over the recent decades. One can point to three monographs directly dealing with the subject: B. R. Hanning’s Of

Poetry and Music’s Power; Humanism and the Creation of

Opera (1969), Ruth Katz’s Divining the Powers of Music:

Aesthetic Theory and the Origins of Opera (1986) , and Gary

Tomlinson’s Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a

Historiography of Others (1993). The interest in this topic reflects the recognition of the role those

‘ Quoted in Bishop, Maurice. “Petrarch,” The Horizon Book of the Renaissance, American Heritage Publishing Co., New York, 1961, p. 30.

65 conceptions played, as two of the above titles testify, in the rise of opera, which was the most spectacular development in music history in the period of transition from the Renaissance to Baroque. “More than the other musical expressions of its time,” writes Katz, for example,

“opera is quintessentially the search for an answer to questions about the nature and powers of music” and “the embodiment of the aesthetic preoccupations of those who gave it birth.

The “aesthetic preoccupations” that Katz refers to were not confined to theoretical constructions, historical investigations of Girolamo Mei's kind, or hypothetical speculation. A large portion of these preoccupations derived from and fed itself on the mythology of music that the Renaissance musician and music theoretician found themselves heirs to. The Orpheus myth occupied a place of honor in this music mythology; it served as a source of inspiration and as the primary vehicle for symbolic expression of the themes and ideas explored in other types of discourse on music. The main question that concerns us in this chapter is how the Orpheus myth participated in the

^ Katz, Ruth. Divining the Powers of Music: Aesthetic Theory and the Origins of Opera, Pendragon Press, New York, 1986, p. 15. Katz’s opinion is echoed in Joseph Kerman’s remark: “Musical drama was the last and extreme product of the sixteenth century’s faith in the moving power of music” (Opera as Drama, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988, p. 19).

66 evolution of Renaissance musical thought as it pertains to

the formulation and exploitation of music’s possibilities.

Two figures immediately stand out when we look at the

history of the myth during the Renaissance: Marsilio Ficino

and Claudio Monteverdi. With Ficino begins the Renaissance

proper phase in the historical trajectory that the Orpheus

myth described; with Monteverdi it ends and the new, modern

one begins.

The overall spectrum of Renaissance conceptions of

music’s powers can be divided into three unequal segments.

The first two were the largely predominant mainstream view

of music as a means of entertainment and edification, on

the one hand, and, on the other, the less wide-spread view

of music as an occult means of influencing the course of

life’s events. The Orpheus myth played a perceptible role

in both these segments, although its significance could be

quite different depending on which of the two views

employed it. The third major segment where music’s powers were defined in a distinct way was the ecclesiastical

understanding and use of music. For obvious reasons the

Orpheus myth was not a notable part of it.

The boundaries between these three outlooks were not

always clearly defined. The mutual proximity of the first two is perhaps best epitomized by the relationship between two major figures, Angelo Poliziano and Marsilio Ficino.

The two scholars were close friends and collaborators in

67 the Florentine Platonic Academy, yet Poliziano’s Orpheus, as represented in his influential La Fabula d ’Orfeo (1480) , was firmly placed on the aesthetic side of things while

Marsilio Ficino’s interpretation (and exploitation) of the mythic singer’s art was the centerpiece of his doctrine of magic. Nino Pirotta’s observations confirm this contrast:

[Poliziano’s] choice of the main theme [for his Orfeo} is literary— entirely so, in the sense that it contains no trace of the reflections on Ficino’s Orphic mysticism which some have claimed to see in it. <...> In Orfeo, before the chief protagonist arrives Poliziano portrays a bucolic society conscious of many pleasures, not least that of sung poetry, but he never suggests that this state of affairs is a result of Orpheus’ educating influence.^

We shall look at the implications that the difference in the interpretation of the myth had for these two trends of musical thought and, conversely, how these trends affected the status of the Orpheus story as a myth. While much weight in the discussion that follows is placed on the contrasts between the two hypostases of the myth, it is necessary to emphasize that they did not exist in isolation from each other, but continued to exercise far-reaching mutual influence. The recognition of this should not

^ Pirotta, Nino and Povoledo, Elena. Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, transi, by Karen Bales, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney, 1982, p. 15. Pirotta’s association of Ficino’s mysticism with Horace (cf. loc. cit.), is quite puzzling. Apart from the standard reference to Orpheus as the teacher of religious mysteries, there is no mysticism in Horace’s view of Orpheus. Ficino’s mystical Orphism relied on an entirely different set of sources.

68 obscure, however, the many differences between the two attitudes to music and their respective uses of Orpheus.

2. The Magical View: Ficino’s Orphic musical magic

Humanism and Hermeticism. Although historically closely associated with Renaissance humanism, the magical attitude to music was quite distinct from it in both the sources of its inspiration and its aspirations. This distinction stems from the general contrast between the more religiously inclined branch of Renaissance thought,* with its strongly Neoplatonic roots, and its more secular counterpart. Frances Yates believed, for example, that there should be a sharp line drawn between humanism and the

Neoplatonism that informed the magical doctrines of Ficino and his associates.*

* The term “religious” in this context is used quite loosely; a more precise description would be “magical.” Given the quest for a new religious synthesis, however, which characterized, for example, the activities of Gemistus Pletho, a major influence on the Medici-Ficino circle, one is certainly justified in speaking of a religious inclination in this case.

* “These two Renaissance experiences,” she wrote, “seem to me to be of an entirely different order, using different sides of the human mind. The one is scholarly and literary; the other is concerned with philosophy, including natural philosophy, which humanism excludes, and with theology and religion, which humanism does not presume to touch directly. The one sees man in relation to society; the other sees him in relation to the cosmos- -two entirely different approaches to ‘humanism’ in the broader sense of the study of man.” (Yates, F. A. Renaissance and Reform: The Italian Contribution.

69 Yates further observes that the opening phrase of Pico

della Mirandola’s famous Oration on the Dignity of Man,

‘^magnum miraculum est homo, ” was a quote from the Asclepius

that, along with the Corpus Hermeticum, was an influential

piece of magical writing, mistakenly attributed to Hermes

Trismegistus (Thrice-Powerful Hermes), Zoroaster, Orpheus,

Pythagoras, and others.® Responding to P. 0. Kristeller’s

more cautious distinction between the two philosophical

trends, Yates thus summarized the thrust of Pico’s Oration:

Man is a great miracle because of his position in the cosmos, allied by his nature to the ‘race of demons’ or cosmic powers, and hence able to operate on the world. It is man as the Magus, the operator, the Renaissance predecessor of man as scientist, which the Oration glorifies, and this ‘great miracle’ is not the same kind of creature as the man who forms the subject of the more modest meditations of the humanist.?

The figure of Orpheus, as it emerged from both the previous

literary tradition and the newly rediscovered Hermetic

writings, served as a perfect symbol of such a magus.

But, as we shall see, it was equally (and perhaps even

Collected Essays, vol. II, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Boston, Melbourne and Henley, 1983, p. 75. The quoted essay is Yates review of P. O. Kristeller’s book Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance, Stanford, 1964.)

® For a detailed discussion of the Asclepius and the Corpus Hermeticum in the Renaissance see chapters I and III of Yates’ classic Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, The University of Chicago Press, 19 64, pp. 1- 19 and 44-61, respectively.

^ Yates, Renaissance and Reform, p. 75.

70 better) suited for symbolizing the more secular sensibility of the Renaissance. While keeping in mind Yates' distinction between humanism and Hermeticism, we would prefer to view both trends as part of a single humanist outlook, for in our understanding of humanism we rely on the formula proposed by Vyacheslav Ivanov:

By “humanism” I mean the ethico-aesthetic norm that determines man’s relation to everything marked by or serving as the inner quality of being a natural attribute of humankind. Furthermore, this relation is founded— regardless of any religious or metaphysical premises, as well as concrete social conditions— on the constructed, and therefore abstract, notion of the natural dignity of man as such. The attributes of humanity are ascribed positive value and the measure of approaching the perfect condition of the human being is seen in the harmonious development and equilibrium of these human qualities and abilities that define, in a positive sense, human nature.*

Both the secular and the religious humanisms of the

Renaissance place man at the center of their outlooks; both aspire toward a harmonious perfection of all m an’s capacities; both recognize his “naturally” determined central position in the order of things; and both have ethical and aesthetic dimensions. Their respective interests and sources differ, as Yates pointed out, but this does not overshadow their historical and ideological mutual proximity.

* Ivanov, Vyach. I. Sobranie sochinenii {Works), vol. Ill, Foyer Oriental Chrétien, Brussels, 1979, s. 373 (translation here and further is mine, unless otherwise specified— V. M.) .

71 Ficino and Orpheus. Ficino’s engagement with the Orpheus

myth on many levels is a well-researched subject, which is

not surprising given the importance of this engagement for

Ficino’s intellectual and spiritual life. First of all,

Ficino was the translator of the Corpus Hermeticum from

Greek into Latin, which he did at the bidding of his

patron, Cosimo de’Medici.’ It was through this

translation, as well as through Ficino’s own writings that

relied on the Corpus and Neoplatonic sources, that the

Western Renaissance reader gained in large part his renewed

acquaintance with Orpheus the magus— a figure densely

obscured by the host of medieval interpretations of the

Orpheus story and especially the late medieval Orpheus the

courtly lover.

In the closing passage of his article “Orpheus and

Ficino,” Warden thus summarizes the Renaissance

philosopher’s relationship with Orpheus:

’ Walker, D. P. Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella, The Warburg Institute, University of London, London, 1958, p. 62.

Kristeller remarks, for example, that “thanks to [Ficino’s] translation” the Hermetic writings “enjoyed a tremendous vogue throughout the later Renaissance, so much so that the figure of Hermes Trismegistus, along with Socrates and with many biblical persons, found its place even in the pavement of Siena Cathedral” (Kristeller, P. O. Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, Roma, Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1956-1985, p. 53). On the interpretations and transformations of the Orpheus myth in the medieval period see Friedman, J. B. Orpheus in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1970.

72 Orpheus has helped Ficino in many ways: to bridge the gap between pagan and Christian; to rescue Neoplatonic monism and restate it in Christian terms; to redefine the relationship between the first principle and the created world; to combine a sense of delight in the beauty of this world with an aspiration for the beauty that lies beyond; to be aware of both the joys and sadness of existence, its permanence and its evanescence. Above all he enables Ficino to hold the balance between the ordered and stable cosmos of antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the new dynamic concept of man, the restless creator, Proteus and Chameleon, ranging at will and creating his own space. He has contributed to this moment of equilibrium between two worlds."

Among the many roles that the Orpheus myth played in

Ficino’s life and work we can distinguish two main areas:

the philosophical and the “existential.” In the first,

Orpheus steps forth as an ancient theologian, a founder of

the prisca phllosophia (“ancient philosophy”), leader of a

cult, and a magical musician. In the second his presence

is established through Ficino’s seemingly half-serious and half-playful attempts to revive Orphic singing.

The typical way in which Orpheus was “employed” in

Ficino’s philosophy can be demonstrated by one instance

from his commentary on Plato’s Philebus. Ficino often

invoked Orpheus’ authority for the central principles of his philosophical outlook. One such principle was the

relationship between the good and the beautiful that Ficino

sought to establish. He wrote, for example:

" Warden, John (ed.). Orpheus: The Metamorphoses of a Myth, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo, London, 1982, p. 103.

73 Whatever is beautiful in the natural order, is also good. (Quicquid ex ordine rerum pulchrum est, idem et bonum.) . .. Beauty is nothing but the splendour of the highest good, which blazes out principally in the things perceived by the eyes, the ears, the intelligence. (Pulchritudo quidem nihil aliud est quam summi boni splendor, fulgens praecipue in his rebus quae oculis auribus mente percipiuntur.

Orpheus is invoked, in conjunction with this passage to confirm that the One, from which both the good and the beautiful spring, permeates and rules all things: “Orpheus says divinely about it, ‘He is the one that cherishes all and bears himself above all things.'""

It is difficult to decide which of Orpheus’ hypostases, philosophical or musical-existential, was taken more seriously in the Florentine Platonic Academy. In the phrase alluded to in the beginning of this chapter, Angelo

Poliziano, for example, included the revival of Orphic singing among Ficino's— and the age’s— most remarkable accomplishments :

[H]is lyre... far more successful than the lyre of Thracian Orpheus, has brought back from the underworld what is, if I am not mistaken, the true Eurydice, that is Platonic wisdom with its broad judgment.

" Allen, M. B. (ed.) Marsilio Ficino: The Philebus Commentary, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1975, p. 110.

" Loc. cit. Allen observes in a note that this phrase is a quote from a bad translation of the Palinode (Testament).

Poliziano, Opera (Basel 1553) 310; quoted from Warden, op. cit., p. 86.

74 This sentiment was echoed by Lorenzo de’Medici in his poem

Altercazlone', by poet Naldo Naldi who called Ficino the first incarnation of Orpheus’ soul since Antiquity; by sculptor Andrea Ferucci whose bust of Ficino suggests parallels with the mythical singer.^ Last but not least,

Ficino’s own assessment of the importance of Orphic singing also gives us an idea of what place it occupied in the hierarchy of the new age’s fulfillments. In his letter to

Paul of Middleburg (1492) he wrote:

Our century brought to light the liberal arts which had been almost extinct, that is, grammar, poetry, oratory, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and the ancient recital of poems accompanied by the Orphic lyre (antiquum ad Orphicam lyram carminem cantum) , and all this in Florence. Wisdom is combined with eloquence, prudence with the military art. Also astronomy has been revived.**

The question of how seriously these laudatory identifications (and self-identifications) with Orpheus should be taken has been repeatedly asked by scholars.

Warden, for example, views them as stemming from the more general attitude to ancient myth: it appealed to the

Academy’s aesthetic taste but at the same time carried a more serious message:

The aesthetic and imaginative qualities of classical mythology provided a sense of “detachment and joy”; but at the same time... the content of the myths was

** Warden, op. cit., pp. 85-86.

** Quoted in Kristeller, P. 0. Marsilio Ficino and his Work after Five Hundred Years, Leo S. Olschki, Florence, 1987, p. 12.

75 treated seriously not simply as allegory, but as a set of symbols which if correctly read offered an understanding of higher levels of reality.

The mixture of joyful aesthetic detachment and serious purpose in the Ficino circle’s mood has also been noted by loan Couliano who quotes Ficino on this matter:

Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato had the habit of hiding all divine mysteries behind the veil of figurative language to protect their wisdom modestly from the Sophists’ boastfulness, of joking seriously and playing assiduously.**

Ficino’s explanation differs from Warden’s in that, instead of the rather modern “form-content” dichotomy, it employs the ancient “initiated-profane” one. Ficino says, in other words, that he and his friends assumed the playful, humorous attitude to conceal the seriousness of their purpose from the ignorant outsider. Couliano further relates this attitude to the tradition of mystical games, to which belonged Nicholas of Cusa’s De ludo globi (1463) where these games were viewed as a path to “God’s holy wisdom” {sancta sophia dei). It is perhaps not surprising that Couliano evokes the Orphic cosmogony as an explanatory illustration to his observations:

The ludus globi is the supreme mystical game, the game the Titans made Dionysus play in order to seize him

*’ Warden, op. cit., p. 87.

** Ficino, Prooem. in Platonis Parmenidem, Opera, II, p. 1137); quoted in Couliano, loan P. Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, transi, by Margaret Cook, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1987 (original French publication in 1984), pp. 37-8.

76 and put him to death. From the ashes of the Titans struck down by the lightning of Zeus, arose mankind, a race guilty without having sinned because of the deicide of its ancestors. But, since the Titans had incorporated part of the god, men also inherited a spark from the murdered child, the divine child whose game is the metaphor for ages: ‘Aion is a child who plays checkers: the sovereignty of a child 1 ’ [The last phrase is a quote from Heraclitus, Fr. 52].'*

In conjunction with the sancta sophia dei mentioned above, it is perhaps appropriate to note that Eurydice was not infrequently understood also as divine wisdom underlying the effects of music. We have already quoted a passage from Angelo Poliziano in which Eurydice is used as the symbol of ancient wisdom, and that passage, in fact, relied on a very old tradition. In the 9th century treatise

Musica Enchiriadis, for example, Eurydice was interpreted as the mysterious “wisdom” of music concealed in the otherworldly realms and only rarely called forth into this world by “the most noble sound of song.” In addition to

Fulgentius’ Mitologiae (late 5th - early 6th century), this passage may have been influenced by Martianus Capella’s understanding of Eurydice as “the very art of music in its most profound principles” in his Marriage of Mercury and

P h i l o l o g y The anonymous author of the treatise marvelled at the “great affinity and union” that music has with our souls and found in Eurydice a useful symbol to

Cf. loc. cit.

Quoted in Warden, op. cit., p. 67.

77 describe the fleeting moments when the mystery of this

“union” seems to reveal itself to us— only to vanish again, leaving the human musician with the feeling that he was about to grasp the secret but failed. After a somewhat tangled allegorical deciphering of Virgil in which Orpheus is etymologized, a la Fulgentius, as oreo phone, “the best voice,” Aristaeus as the “good man,” and Eurydice “profound understanding,— the anonymous philosopher-musician concludes, with a tinge of melancholy:

So, as in other things that we discern only partly and dimly, this discipline [music] does not at all have a full, comprehensible explanation in this life. To be sure, we can judge whether the construction of a melody is proper and distinguish the qualities of tones and modes and the other things of this art. Likewise, we can adduce, on the basis of numbers, the musical intervals or the symphonies of pitches and give some explanations of consonance and dissonance. But in the way music has so great an affinity and union with our souls— for we know that we are bound to it by a certain likeness— we cannot express easily in words.

In a vague but perceptible way, Sophia the Wisdom of God, widely worshiped in Eastern Christianity, belonged to the same sphere, i. e. to the sphere of divine wisdom, from which emerged the Eurydices of Fulgentius, Martianus

Capella, and the Musica Enchiriadis.

Playful attitudes notwithstanding, the imitation of

Orpheus was an important part of Ficino’s spiritual

Musica Enchiriadis and Scholica Enchiriadis, translated, with an introduction and notes by Raymond Erikcson, ed. Claude Palisca, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1995, p. 31.

78 regimen— important enough, indeed, to recommend the

practice to the readers of his Three Books on Life:

Hermes Trismegistus, Pythagoras, and Plato tell us to calm and cheer the dissonant and the sorrowful mind with constant and harmonious lyre and song. Moreover, David, the sacred poet, used to free Saul from madness with psaltery and psalms. I, too (if I may now compare the lowliest person with the greatest), frequently prove in myself how much the sweetness of the lyre and song avail against the bitterness of black bile.“

Despite such demure rhetoric, the praise lavished on him by his friends suggests that Ficino stood out as a singer even

among the members of Lorenzo de’Medici’s circle, in which

singing and musical skills were by no means rare. Pirotta

points out, for example:

Of those who surrounded [Lorenzo], Marsilio Ficino, Domenico Benivieni, Antonio Naldi and Baccio Ugolini all sang, as did Poliziano and two of his favourite pupils, Piero dei Medici and Lorenzo Tornabuoni.^

(Baccio Ugolini, it should be noted, was the first

performer of Orpheus’ role in Poliziano’s Orfeo in

1480. )2“*

Whereas the earnestness of Ficino’s self-

identification with Orpheus may come into question, the

^ Book I, ch. 10, 49ff; in: Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life. A Critical Edition and Translation with Introduction and Notes by Carol V. Kaske and John Clark, The Renaissance Society of America, Binghampton, New York, 1989, p. 13 5.

“ Pirotta, op. cit., p. 23. Pirotta observes, by the way, that much of the singing was done, probably, to the accompaniment of the lyre (ad lyram or ad eitheram).

Ibid., p. 6.

79 same is hardly true of his attempts to revive the ancient

musical magic. From this point of view, his engagement with Orpheus was an earnest attempt to incorporate the myth

and the magic into his worldview and even daily life.^

The serious nature of Ficino's attitude to Orpheus the magus suggests, in turn, that he made an attempt to revive

the myth as a myth proper, i. e. a true and magical

narrative.

Song as a living organism. One of the most peculiar theories

found in Ficino’s doctrine is the treatment of song as a

living spiritual organism. Tomlinson is quite right in

calling this concept daring; it is a singular contribution

to Renaissance musical thought.“ Ficino proposed the

following:

Now the very matter of song indeed, is altogether purer and more similar to the heavens than is the matter of medicine. For this too is air, hot or warm, still breathing and somehow living; like an animal, it is composed of certain parts and limbs of its own and not only possesses motion and displays passion but even carries meaning like a mind, so that it can be said to be a kind of airy and rational animal.^

^ That he, apparently, had his doubts and hesitations, especially when magic involved demonic forces of unclear ethical-religious inclination,— only shows that he considered the matter serious enough to merit caution (cf. Walker, op. cit., p. 45ff).

Tomlinson, Gary Music in Renaisseince Magic. Toward a Historiography of Others, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1993, p. 123.

” Three Books on Life, III 21:81-85, p. 359.

80 Despite its apparent originality, this theory has roots in the Italian literary tradition. In one of Dante’s canzoni from La vita nuova we find, for example, a passage in which the poem itself is treated in a manner that evokes strong associations with Ficino’s “song-spirit” theory. The canzone is the poet's plea to Death whom he begs to let

Beatrice live longer. In the last stanza, Dante addresses his own verse:

Canzon, tu vedi ben com' è sottile Quel filo, a cui s'attien la mia speranza, E quel che sanza— questa donno io posso: Perô con tua ragion, piana ed umile Muovi, novella mia, non far tardanza; Ch'a tua fidanza— s'è mio prego mosso: E con quella umilta che tieni addosso Fàtti, novella mia, dinanzi a Morte, Sicchè a crudelita rompa le porte, E giunghi alla merce del frutto buono. E s'egli a w i e n che per te sia rimosso Lo suo mortal voler, fa che ne porte Novelle a nostra donna, e la conforte; Si ch' anchor faccia al mondo di sè dono Quest' anima gentil, di cui io sono.

(Song, thou must surely seehow fine a thread This is that my last hope is holden by. And what I should be brought to without her. Therefore for thy plain speech and lowlihead Make thou no pause: but go immediately. Knowing thyself for my heart's minister. And with that very meek and piteous air Thou hast, stand up before the face of Death, To wrench away the bar that prisoneth And win unto the place of the good fruit. And if indeed thou shake by thy soft voice Death's mortal purpose,— haste thee and rejoice Our lady with the issue of thy suit. So yet awhile our earthly nights and days Shall keep the blessed spirit that I praise.)^*

Translated by D. G. Rossetti, in: Lind, L. R. (ed.). Lyric Poetry of the Italian Renaissance. An

81 Such anthropomorphizing (or “orphicizing”?) of the poet's own song appears to be a poetic convention of the time that Dante liberally exploited.We find a similar address in Jacopone da Todi's religious songs.^ The image of Dante's canzone whom he sends to plead before

Death has a strikingly Orphic character: the song is a messenger who stands humbly before the ruler of the underworld and begs him to prolong Beatrice's life. Dante intermixes the anthropomorphic metaphorical understanding of song-the-messenger with the motifs of death, the other world, its ruler, and, most importantly, entreaty for life

Anthology with Verse Translations, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1954, p. 140-1.

Dante resorts to this convention in at least two other canzoni from La vita nuova (cf. The Portable Dante, The Viking Press, New York, 1957, pp. 575 and 603 [transi. D. G. Rossetti]).

See e. g . , Vossler, K. Medieval Culture. An Introduction to Dante and His Time, vol. II, transi. W. C. Lawton, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., New York, 1958, p. 85. Jacopone da Todi (d. 1306) is an especially curious and appropriate example, for the life of this medieval poet repeated almost verbatim some of the twists and turns of the Orpheus legend. He was a prosperous lawyer in Umbria who enjoyed a happy life with his beautiful wife until one day, at a wedding (according to Ovid and Virgil, Orpheus’ tribulations also began at the time of his wedding) , the floor fell through while she and other guests were dancing, and she was killed in a crash. Under her dress was found a haircloth shirt that she had worn to mortify her flesh. Profoundly shaken by her secret devotion, Jacopone gave up his possessions, fled from the world, and after ten years of severe penitence became a Franciscan monk. The author of numerous lauds in which he poured out his religious ardor, he was the most important pre-Dante poet in Italy. Cf. ibid., p. 83.

82 enhanced by music and poetry. This late medieval poetic

tradition, marked by associations with the Orpheus myth,

may have been one of the sources of Marsilio Ficino's

theory of a musical work.

The secret nature o f Ficino*s Orphism. Ficino ' s imitation of

Orpheus had two distinct facets— the public and the secret magical— that should not be confused. When Cosimo

d e ’Medici wrote to him: “Farewell. And do not forget your

Orphic lyre when you come” (Vale et veni non absque Orphica

lyra) , it is unlikely that he was inviting Ficino to perform an Orphic rite.^* Rather, he was obliquely

expressing his appreciation of Ficino’s public performances

among his friends and associates. It is a safe assumption that the other, more direct and much more extravagant compliments of Ficino’s friends which we mentioned above also referred to the purely public and nonmagical singing of “new Orpheus.” This part of Ficino’s Orphism was purely aesthetic and innocent, as it were. His magical

Orphism was, on the contrary, secretive and hidden from the outsider’s eye, although not to the extent that no one knew

it was practiced.

Secrecy, as we argued in Chapter 2, is a characteristic feature of magic, related as it is to the

letter’s appeal to mystery. The contrast between the

Quoted from Warden, op. cit., p. 87.

83 secrecy of magic and the public nature of art is especially relevant for the history of the Orpheus myth in the

Renaissance. As a poet-musician, Orpheus inspired artistic use of his story; as a magus and hierophant, he was equally well-suited to the secretive atmosphere of magical rites and operations. Patricia Vicari observed, for example, that “the idea of the importance of keeping wisdom secret seems to have been thought of as especially enjoined by

Orpheus, who was, after all, the supposed founder of

Mysteries."^ Ficino and some members of his circle, most notably Giovanni Pico (before he turned away from astrology), were prepared to exploit the mystery-laden aspect of the Orpheus myth. Vicari suggests the following explanation as to why this aspect was especially attractive for them:

Esoteric truth was to be both partially revealed and partially concealed through enigmatic language or imagery which both “speaks” and is “silent.” As a rhetorical strategy this lends more authority to what is being taught; it was also part of an elaborate learned game which these men [the Florentine Academy] both took seriously and did not take seriously, in the Renaissance spirit of serio ludere.^^

It goes without saying that the inclination toward secrecy and concealment was also encouraged by the need to avoid

Warden, op. cit., p. 207.

” Ibid., p. 207-8.

84 the danger of persecution from the Church, in which Ficino only barely succeeded.”

The secret nature of Ficino’s magic, however, was combined, as we suggested above, with the magician's irresistible desire to slightly open and “publicize” it.

This desire is evident, first of all, in Ficino's repeated attempts to disclose the workings of magic in terms of a theory— attempts especially visible in the Three Books on

Life (1489), which was “immensely popular” throughout the

Renaissance.^ Ficino's descriptions of various— ostensibly medicinal— operations and the accompanying explanations allowed Walker, for example, to hypothetically reconstruct the type of magical rites that Ficino might have practiced.

He is playing a lira da braccio or a lute, decorated with a picture of Orpheus charming animals, trees, and rocks; he is singing... the Orphic Hymn to the Sun; he is burning frankincense, and at times he drinks wine; perhaps he contemplates a talisman; in day-time he is in sunlight, and at night he “represents the sun by fire”. He is, in fact performing a religious or magical rite...”

” He was accused by Johannes Pannonius (not altogether undeservedly, we should add) of an attempt to revive paganism. Pannonius, incidentally, also compared him to Orpheus (cf. Kristeller, Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, p. 53n; Walker, op. cit., pp. 52-3).

” Cf. Carol Kaske and John R. Clark, Introduction to the Three Books on Life, p. 3.

” Walker, op. cit., p. 30. On the instrument that Ficino might have played see ibid., p. 19-20.

85 The medical context of the treatise thus barely concealed the magic at the heart of Ficino’s “medicine” for scholars which was its “official” subject matter. The practical magic that Walker discerned in it must have been even more obvious to the Renaissance reader.

There is also a curious episode that almost never fails to be mentioned in accounts of Ficino’s magic— perhaps for its rich symbolism and the flavor of the time it conveys. It comes from Ficino’s letter to Cosimo d e ’Medici, written in September 1462, in which Ficino tells how an Orphic séance helped him secure Cosimo’s generosity.

He sang— twice— the Orphic Hymn to the Cosmos, he writes in a half-serious manner, “for the sake of mental relaxation,” in which he asked the Cosmos to grant him a tranquil life, and, miraculously, a letter from Cosimo came to him, announcing that the latter would sponsor Ficino’s studies. The fact that Ficino related this episode in a letter reveals his desire to make more or less public his belief in magic and practicing of it, however hesitant he may have been about them. But the matter is not confined to a purely psychological phenomenon.

Magicians in general faced the difficult problem of passing their art on (not to mention its rehabilitation in

Walker, D. P. The Ancient Theology. Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1972, p. 25.

86 light of the medieval ban on it), while preserving its

essentially secret nature. The Renaissance magician’s

solution is described in Agrippa’s De occulta, philosophia:

We have related this art in such a way that it cannot remain hidden to prudent and intelligent men, but [also in such a way that] it will not admit to the arcana of its secrets the vicious and the incredulous, but will abandon them stupefied and empty-handed in the shadow of ignorance and desperation.^*

This is a very interesting proposition, for in it, apart

from the familiar “initiate-profane” distinction. Agrippa

sets forth two requirements for adherents of the magical

art— requirements that do not readily combine in the modern mind: intelligence and faith. Ficino’s magic was a “space”

(to borrow an expression from Tomlinson) where theory and practice, reason and faith— coincided and were completely merged with each other. The way they coincide is wrapped

in mystery. The mythic Orpheus, one of the first magicians, was well-aware of that. His first words in the

Palinode (Testament) were: "I speak to those who lawfully may hear: All others, ye profane, now close the doors..."”

38 Ill, 65; quoted from Tomlinson, op. cit., p. 187.

” Justin, Hortatory Address to the Greeks, 15; quoted in Skeris, Robert A. Chroma theoy: On the Origins and Theological Interpretation of the Musical Imagery Used by the Ecclesiastical Writers of the First Three Centuries, with Special Reference to the Image of Orpheus, Verlag Alfred Coppenrath, Altotting, 1976, p. 28.

87 Thefolkloric connection. In De vita Ficino proposed three

rules for composing magically effective songs. The first

advises that the text be appropriate to the character of

the celestial body the song is designed to affect. The

third rule recommends that the song be composed in such a

way that it imitates the “speeches, songs, motions, dances,

moral behavior, and actions” induced in people by certain

positions and aspects of the stars. It is in the second

rule that we find a curious case of a magician’s attention

to the popular musical tradition. The composer of magical

songs is advised by Ficino

to take note of what special star rules what place or person and then to observe what sorts of tones and songs these regions and persons generally use, so that you may supply similar ones... to the words which you are trying to expose to the same stars."*®

This rule is interesting in at least two ways. First, it

is an invitation for the composer to employ the “tones and

songs” certain “regions and persons generally use,” i. e. what we would call today “folk music.” Apparently, the philosopher believed that such music possessed a special power to affect the disposition of celestial bodies, i. e. that it was more pleasing to them because it corresponded better to their character(s). This is a remote anticipation of the later view of folk music as a repository of collective wisdom that provides access to the

“0 Three Books on Life III 21:65-70.

88 knowledge about the origins of culture because it is a

“natural,” i. e. unspoiled and spontaneous, means of

expressing this wisdom.

But, second, even though it has parallels in the

future, Ficino’s view is firmly rooted in the past, i. e.

in the ancient tradition of linking certain musical modes with ethnic groups. The names of the Greek modes as well as the stories of their origin, clearly belong to this tradition. “Phrygian,” “Ionian,” “Lydian,” “Aeolian,”

“Dorian,” i. e. the names of modes, were all derived from toponyms and ethnonyms in the Mediterranean basin. The character of the mode was often associated with the character of the population that bore the same name. Such was the view, for example, of Heraclides Ponticus about the direct correspondence between character and music among

Aeolians and lonians.*** Ficino’s view is different from the ancient one, however, in that he links the character of the population of a certain region to celestial influences, whereas in Antiquity it was more often related to the character of religious rites practiced among a given people, e. g., the orgiastic rites of the Phrygians

Cf. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists XIV 624e and 625b.

Aristotle called the Phrygian mode orgiastic (Politics 8, 7, 1342b), and Catullus thus described the rites of the Phrygian Cybele cult: “Come, follow me to the house of the Phrygian Cybele, to the grove of the Phrygian goddess 1 There sounds the clang of cymbals,

89 Underlying the second rule is the idea that, because of the prolonged influence of certain heavenly bodies, people in a given area (gradually and unconsciously) evolve the inodes that optimally correspond to the character of those bodies.This raises the interesting question as to whether Ficino followed this rule himself when he performed his own Orphic magical-astrological rituals. If he did, his version of Orpheus’ song may have sounded like the songs of the Florentine populace of the time.

In fact. Walker proposed something close to this when he commented that Ficino’s own singing may have sounded like the epic song that Angelo Poliziano described in a letter to Pico della Mirandola.^ The song was sung by

Fabio Orsini, the eleven year-old son of Paolo Orsini, the host of the banquet at which Poliziano was a guest.

there echo the tambourines, there the Phrygian flutist plays upon his deep-sounding, twisted reed. There the Maenads, adorned with ivy, toss their head wildly. There they celebrate the holy rites to the sound of shrill screams. There the roving band pursues the goddess” (quoted from Quasten, Johannes. Music and Worship in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, transi. Boniface Ramsey, National Association of Pastoral Musicians, Washington, D. C., 1983 [first publ. 1973], p. 36).

Ficino uses the term “tonis” which Carol V. Kaske translates as “tones” and D. P. Walker as “modes.” Given the overall rather scholarly manner of the whole passage, with its systematic division into three distinct rules, we support Walker’s translation. (See Walker, D. P. Spiritual and Demonic Magic, p. 17).

^ Ibid., p. 20.

90 He... performed an heroic song which he had himself recently composed in praise of our own Piero dei Medici... His voice was not entirely that of someone reading, nor entirely that of someone singing; both could be heard, and yet neither separated one from the other; it was, in any case, even or modulated, and changed as required by the passage. Now it was varied, now sustained, now exalted and now restrained, now calm and now vehement, now slowing down and now quickening its pace, but always it was precise, always clear and always pleasant; and his gestures were not indifferent or sluggish, but not posturing or affected either.

It is very tempting to speculate that this style of singing

had popular roots and the young Fabio learned it not from

the theatre, as Poliziano’s description tends to suggest

(and certainly not from the “learned” musicians of the

time), but from someone like Antonio di Guido, “a

surprisingly cultured and poetically talented Florentine

strolling player {cantimpanca)who a few decades earlier

similarly “amazed learned audiences.”^

Objective and subjective magic. Ficino’s magical use of music

incorporates two distinct goals: to attune one’s own soul to the harmony of the world and to exercise influence on someone else through musical “supplication” to celestial bodies. The first goal is reflected in Mercury’s (Hermes’) speech to the elderly in the second of the Three Books, in which the action of the song on the spirit is compared to that of aromatic substances:

... I pass on to you this lyre, which I made, and with it a Phoeban song, a consolation of travail, a pledge

Nino Pirotta, op. cit., pp. 35-6, n84.

91 of long life. For just as things which are most tempered in quality, and at the same time aromatic, temper both the humors among themselves and the natural spirit with itself, so odors of this kind do for the vital spirit; so again harmonies of this kind do for the animal spirit. While therefore you temper the strings and the sounds in the lyre and the tones in your voice, consider your spirit to be similarly tempered within.*

The other use is associated with what Walker called

Ficino’s “astrological music.” It sought to affect the disposition of the Sun and planets to make it more favorable toward the operator (or his client). The possibility of this sort of magic rested on the following premise;

Even as a certain compound of plants and vapors made through both medical and astronomical science yields a common form [of a medicine], like a harmony endowed with gifts from the stars and then combined according to the congruity of these stars with each other make a sort of common form [presumably a melody or a chord], and in it celestial power arises.^

This was a more objective kind of magic, for it aspired not only to “temper” the psychological state of the person it was directed to, but to invoke in music its “celestial powers.” This power, in turn, is invoked through the combination of musical sounds (whether those combinations were horizontal, i. e. melodic, or vertical, i. e. chordal, is unclear) in order to affect the celestial bodies themselves, as Ficino’s rules for composing magical songs

* Book II, ch. 15 93ff. (pp. 214-215).

De Vita, III 21:41ff; p. 357.

92 show. The ultimate goal of this magic, however, is still

“psychological,” i. e. to “adapt ourselves” so that we would be prepared to receive the “occult and wonderful gifts” brought by celestial influences. In this respect it is not different from the first, purely subjective kind.

The distinction can be further refined in one important way: even when the operator’s goal is to produce an effect on himself, like the “tempering” of his own spirit, his magic would be objective if he attracts the influences that extend far beyond his own psyche, such as those of celestial bodies, for in this case the effect is brought about by forces other than the human subject alone.

In light of Couliano’s understanding of magic as a precursor of modern techniques of manipulating mass psychology,^ it is significant that Ficino is still interested in affecting his celestial, rather than human, audience. In this sense, the three rules mentioned above demonstrate clearly that Walker’s insistence on the purely subjective aspirations of Ficino’s magical operations,^ as well as Couliano’s thesis that these operations were supposed to occur on the purely “phantasmic,” i. e. imaginative, level are inaccurate in a very significant way. Quite apart from the fact that in Ficino’s universe

Couliano, op. cit., pp. 88-9.

49 See Spiritual and Demonic Magic, p. 82

93 it is simply wrong to attempt to draw a hard and fast line between what we consider the objective and the subjective today, the singer-philosopher ’ s musical magic was addressed to the cosmos, not to the human ear or his own phantasy.

The living spirit of the song is the magician’s messenger who “converses,” as it were, with the celestial spirits— not unlike Dante’s canzone that pleads on the poet’s behalf to the gods of the underworld. It is important to stress this— rather obvious— fact about Ficino’s musical magic because it will serve to emphasize the contrast between musical magic and musical theatre. The musical

“conversation” in Ficino’s case, we repeat, was between the magus and the spirits of the cosmos, not solely among human beings.

Music, word, and rationality. The relationship between music and text was the theme that dominated discussions carried on in the late sixteenth century, and opera can be seen as a response to this theme.The connection between this later debate and the earlier, late 15th-century discussion has been an important issue in music-historical literature and its exploration has yielded different conclusions. One disagreement has to do with the relation between rationality or rational meaning, on the one hand, and music

Cf. McGee, Timothy J. “Orfeo and Euridice, the First Two Operas,” in Warden, op. cit., pp. 170-1, 179.

94 and word, on the other, in Ficino’s theory of magical song.

Two distinct views have been proposed: D. P. Walker’s,

which argues that Ficino attributed rational meaning only

to the verbal text while music was confined to the

“subrational” meaning^'; and Gary Tomlinson’s, which

maintains that, in Ficino’s theory, “words... had no claim

to any sort of meaning that musical sounds could not also

claim.Both scholars’ point of departure was Ficino’s

seven-tier hierarchy of magician’s “tools,” spelled out in

Chapter 21:

Now since the planets are seven in number, there are also seven steps through which something from on high can be attracted to the lower things. Sounds occupy the middle position and are dedicated to Apollo (voces medium gradum obtinent et Apollini dedicantur). Harder materials, stones and metals, hold the lowest rank and thus seem to resemble the Moon. Second in ascending order are things composed of plants, fruits of trees, their gums, and the members of animals, and all these correspond to Mercury. .. Third are very fine powders and their vapors selected from among the materials I have already mentioned and the odors of plants and flowers used as simples, and of ointments; they pertain to Venus. Fourth are words, song, and sounds, all of which are rightly dedicated to Apollo whose greatest invention is music. Fifth are the strong concepts of the imagination— forms, motions, passions— which suggest the force of Mars. Sixth are the sequential arguments and deliberations of the human reason which pertain designedly to Jupiter. Seventh are the more remote and simple operations of the understanding, almost now disjoined from motion

Walker wrote, for example: “A song works on body, mind, and on whatever intermediate faculties may be between; but it is the text alone which can carry an intellectual content and thus influence the mind” (op. cit., p. 21).

Tomlinson, op. cit., p. 121.

95 and conjoined to the divine; they are meant for Saturn, whom deservedly the Hebrew call “Sabbath” from the word for “rest.” ”

Walker’s makes the following conclusion from this hierarchy:

The music, abstracted from its text, can reach no higher than the spirit, i. e. the sense and feeling, or at most, through the spirit, the lower parts of the soul, phantasy and imagination. The status of song is clearly shown in the hierarchical list...: Apollo is just above the odors and unguents of Venus, just below the vehement imaginings of Mars, and far below the intellectual contemplation of Saturn.*

The problem with this observation, as Tomlinson notes, is that words occupy precisely the same, i. e. the fourth,

level in the hierarchy and are therefore, we can add, in no more privileged position than music as far as access to rationality of the sixth and seventh levels is concerned.*

Tomlinson goes on to argue that music and words equally belonged to the realm of “images” in Ficino’s system, a virtually all-embracing category, and, if anything, through the notion of universal musical-numerical harmony music was infused with no less rationality than the word. In fact,

Tomlinson goes as far as reversing the relation established by Walker: "The meanings of words were a consequence of their place in the harmonies of the world. They were, in

* Three Books on Life, III 21:24-40.

* Loc. cit.

* Tomlinson, op. cit., p. 104.

9 6 the broadest sense, musically determined.Tomlinson’s position is well-argued and supported by substantial textual evidence both from Ficino ’ s writings and from those belonging to the same magical Neoplatonic tradition. It invites, nevertheless, a comment.

Both Walker and Tomlinson seem to neglect one important detail that characterizes words in Ficino’s hierarchy, namely, the emphasis on their sonorous rather than semantic quality. First of all, Ficino’s choice of terms is indicative of such an emphasis. The Latin word vox for “voice”, “sound”, “tone”, etc. is used when the middle position of sounds among the “seven steps” is affirmed for the first time, before a more detailed explanation: voces medium gradum obtinent (III 21:25-26).

In the enumeration itself, Ficino uses verba (verba, cantuSf soni, quae omnia rite dedicantur Apollini, III

21:32), apparently, to disclose what he includes under the generic term voces a few lines above. The words verba, cantus, soni are thus all subsumed under the category of sonority.

Further, there is the interesting question as to what kind of sonorous word Ficino has in mind here. There are three main possibilities: normal speech, incantation, and the text of a song. Normal speech should probably be

Ibid., p. 121.

97 discarded from the beginning since the magical context

seems to preclude it altogether. Almost immediately before

the passage containing the seven steps incantations are

squarely dismissed: “But it is better to skip incantations”

(Sed praestat dlmittere cantiones, 21:21) , and conversation

quickly turns to singing. The only alternative is

therefore the text of a song— which is supported by the

fact that one paragraph later Ficino explains his rules for

composing magically efficacious songs beginning with their

texts.

Tomlinson is correct in pointing out the identity of words and music in the Ficinian magical hierarchy with

regard to rational meaning: they are put where they are

because of being equally sonorous entities. Moreover, they

are equally removed from what we regard as rationality today, i. e. the sixth level of “the sequential arguments

and deliberations of the human reason” (rationis humanae dlscursiones deliberasque consulte) . On the other hand,

Ficino seems to be positively uninterested in whether the word or music is the more rational of the two; for him both appear to fall short of the higher (Jupiter) and highest

(Saturn) rationalities. The most important point for him seems to be that they are in the middle, i. e. they are

ideal mediators between the rational and subrational domains of being. Given our argument that by “word” Ficino means “the text of a song,” however, it is perhaps more

98 appropriate to speak of just one mediator, i. e. song as a unity of music and text.

The other, even more important point is that for

Ficino the power of music, whether sung or played on the instruments, was comprehensive, i. e. it permeated and affected all levels of experience at once. Ficino wrote in his Commentary on the Timaeus:

Musical sound.. . moves the body by the movement of the air; by purified air it excites the airy spirit, which is the bond of body and soul; by emotion it affects the senses and at the same time the soul; by meaning it works on the mind; finally, by the very movement of its subtle air it penetrates strongly; by its temperament it flows smoothly; by its consonant quality it foods us with a wonderful pleasure; by its

nature, both spiritual and material, it at once seizes and claims as its own man in his entirety

It is the image of Orpheus the poet-musician who epitomized the unity of word and music, on the one hand, and the “ancient theologian” who embodied the archaic shamanic mediation between this and other worlds, on the other, that lurks behind Ficino’s vision of magical song.

In addition, it was Orpheus as the ancient Greek symbol for the all-embracing, comprehensive power of music (cf.

Chapter 2) that tacitly yet authoritatively informed the intuitions of Ficino, his Renaissance “reincarnation,” as

Naldo Naldi called the philosopher. The Orpheus myth thus

” Comm, in Tim., c. xxviii. Opera Omnia, p. 1453; quoted in Walker, op. cit., p. 9, and in Tomlinson, op. cit., p. Ill (italics added— V. M.).

99 participated in the articulation of Ficino’s doctrine of

musical magic not only on the explicit level of textual

references that lent ancient authority for the

philosopher’s quest, but also on the implicit level of

intuitions and tacit preconceptions that operate as hidden

narratives, i. e. as mythJ^ The Orpheus myth was indeed

Ficino’s music myth— on both levels.

Between magic, art, and science. Despite his serious

involvement with the Orpheus myth and explorations of musical magic’s possibilities, Ficino is largely a transitional figure in the sense that he admitted the use

of “Orphic singing” as a purely aesthetic exercise and, more important, sought to explain the mysteries of magic in a “scientific” way, i. e. by rational explication of its principles and operations. No matter how unmodern and unscientific his explanations may seem in light of

science’s subsequent development, they clearly display

Ficino’s desire to make mystery accessible to reason, i. e. provide a rational explanation of how it works. Much of the Three Books on Life, and especially the third of them.

De Vita coelitus comparanda, is dedicated to this purpose.

His Orpheus, in other words, is not entirely homogeneous, but is divided into a three-fold figure, anticipating

further deepening of these divisions.

Cf. discussion on myth in Chapter 1.

100 And yet in Ficino’s spiritual world all these three main hypostases of Orpheus— the singer, magician, and ancient philosopher— are still very closely intertwined, issuing, as it were, from a single source. His musical magic too, as we showed above, was transitional between mystery and objectivity, on the one hand, and public aesthetic uses and subjective “psychotherapy,” on the other. It was, however, still magic in the nonfigurative sense of the word. Within about a century this magical

Orpheus will be almost completely subsumed under his own aesthetic hypostasis, i. e. the operatic Orpheus. The questions we shall try to answer in the next section are about the changes of Orpheus’ mythic and magical status that were involved in this transformation.

3. The Aesthetic View. Monteverdi’s musical theatre

The Orphic explosion. “In the beginning was the myth, and the myth was that of Orpheus”— thus starts one of the recent studies of the early opera.” What happened in the musical Florence and Mantua in the late 16th - early 17th centuries can be called an “Orphic explosion.” According to one count (that includes works of note only), there were at least three musical settings of the myth in

” Sternfeld, F. W. The Birth of Opera, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990, p. 1.

101 Florence between 1599 and 1616, and in Mantua, of course,

there was the Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi and Alessandro

Striggio ( 1 6 0 7 ) This explosion, as we indicated above, was prepared by the work of the 15th-century humanists and especially by the popularity of Poliziano’s Fabula di

Orfeo. Jacopo Peri’s Euridice (1600) and Giulio Caccini’s favola in musica of the same name (1600) were both written on the same libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini which was based on Poliziano’s pastorale. Striggio’s libretto for

Monteverdi’s Orfeo was modelled, in turn, on Rinuccini’s text.

The other, more magical branch of that century’s thought exercised its influence on early opera in a less direct but egually profound way, i. e. through contributing to the theoretical inquiry and experiments that strove to reproduce the effects of the ancient tragedy.

MonteverdVs aesthetic Orpheus. Monteverdi’s Orpheus was presented to the public at the Accademia degli Invaghiti in

Mantua, at carnival time, in 1607. The favola in musica was a success and the performance was repeated several times. The above setting alone provides a striking

“ The Orpheus story continued this explosive proliferation in the Baroque opera; toward the middle of the 17th centuries it was used for over twenty major musical settings (cf. Sternfeld, op. cit., p. 3).

Cf. McGee, Timothy J. “Orfeo and Euridice, the First Two Operas,” in Warden, op. cit., p. 163ff.

102 contrast to Ficino’s magical music-making. In the 1607 presentation of the myth in Mantua nobody tried, of course, to conceal Orpheus’ “magic” from the profane crowd: it would have been absurd in the context of the theatre. And although the audience may have been more or less select, the theatre is open, in principle, to all. It is pointedly public, and Orpheus in it is very different from, for example, the Orpheus of the Palinode who orders doors shut before his “performance. ” There is, in other words, no profane audience in the theatre: everybody is equally select in it. But there is no mystery either: everything is open to the eye and the ear, nothing is hidden, and what is concealed from the spectator is not magic, but the work of the stage machinery. All the “magic” that Monteverdi’s and Striggio’ s Orpheus thus displays is merely hocus-pocus, make-believe, and ludus pueroirum.

The above paragraph is an intentional simplification, of course, undertaken for the sake of contrast between theatre (and art in general) and magic. Not only is there a certain trace of magic in the theatre, and especially perhaps in music theatre, but there is also a trace of mystery in our desire to be “fooled,” time and again, by the spectacle that we know is nothing but a spectacle,

“signifier” without a “signified,” as it were. Moreover, there were in Monteverdi’s and Striggio’s Orpheus notable survivals of the preceding magical tradition. Katz

103 perceives in the style of the early opera, for example, a direct line of descent from Ficino’s Orphic singing which was, she proposes, the prototype of the heightened speech that Peri and Monteverdi were striving to emulate. Jacopo

Peri wrote in the preface to his Euridice that he aimed at the “harmony” used by the ancient Greeks and Romans,

“surpassing that of ordinary speech but falling so far below the melody of song as to take an intermediate form.”® Katz sees a correspondence between this ideal and

Fabio Orsini’s singing in which, as we remember, the “voice was not entirely that of someone reading, nor entirely that of someone singing; both could be heard, and yet neither separated from the other.”®

There is, however, a certain irony in these connections. We suggested above that Ficino’s singing might have drawn, at least in part, on the secular popular tradition and therefore the link between Ficino and the early opera may prove not so much that the latter derived the idea of its recitative from Ficino’s magical singing as that both Ficino and opera composers received some of their

62 In Strunk, Source Readings, vol. 3, p. 14

® Pirotta remarks in conjunction with this description in Poliziano’s letter: “The basic concepts of the monodic reform— the dependence of the music on the text, the recitative or representative style, the sprezzatura of the performance— had not only been formulated but had even been put into practice more than a century before the birth of opera” {Music and Theatre, p. 36) .

104 inspiration from the same folkloric source. And yet there seems to have also been a more direct connection between them. Pirotta suggests, for example, that Orpheus’ famous prayer in Act III comes very close to Ficino’s magical singing. Monteverdi’s genius is apparent, Pirotta believes, in making the aria “into an ‘orphie’ rite, a highly stylized and hieratically formalized incantation, through which a superhuman singer soothes and subdues the forces of darkness crossing his path."*

Pirotta refers, in this passage, to the only episode in the opera in which Orpheus directly displays his musical-magical skill: Orpheus’ dialogue, in the beginning of Act III, with Caronte (Charon) who guards the entrance to Pluto’s kingdom— the confrontation that Hanning calls

“the central psychological climax of the drama.The dialogue includes Orpheus’ famous aria, “Possente Spirto”

(“The Mighty Spirit”), i. e. his plea to Caronte to let him pass. The first, heavily ornamented and virtuosic, part of this plea leaves Caronte only slightly impressed. “Ma lunge, ah, lunge sia da questo petto/Pietà. .. (But far, ah, far from my breast must pity lie),” is his response to

Orpheus. It is the second plea, rendered in the manner of

* Pirrotta, Nino. “Early Opera and Aria,” New Looks at Italian Opera. Essays in Honour of Donald J. Grout, ed. William Austin, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1968, p. 102; quoted from Katz, op. cit., p. 91.

Hanning, op. cit., p. 120.

105 “heightened speech,” that does the trick: it puts Caronte to sleep (somewhat unexpectedly, given its agitated character) . Orpheus addresses this part of his song, incidentally, not to Caronte, but to the gods of Tartarus:

“Rendetemi il mio ben, tartarei Numi!” As the monster falls asleep, the singer steps into its boat and crosses the river. The act closes with a most remarkable chorus of the spirits: “Nulla impresa per uom... (No enterprise by man...).” The Coro di Spiriti discloses for the spectator, in the manner the chorus in ancient Greek drama did, the hidden and therefore true meaning of what has just happened on stage. It is to this meaning that we now turn.

"Affl/i vs. Nature” myth in Orfeo. As they watch Orpheus cross the “inky pool” between this and the other world, the

Coro di Spiriti sing glory to the enterprising man:

Nulla impresa per uom si tenta invano. Né contro a lui più sa Natura armase, Ei de 1 ’instabil piano Aro gl’ondosi campi e ‘1 seme sparse Di sue fatiche, ond’aurea messe accolse. Quinci, perché memoria Vivesse di sua gloria. La Fama a dir di lui sua lingua sciolse, C h ’ei pose freno al mar con fragile legno, Che sprezzô d ’Austro e d ’Aquilon lo sdegno.

(No enterprise by man is undertaken in vain. Nor can Nature further defend herself against him. He has ploughed the waving fields of the uneven plain and scattered the seed of his labour, whence he has reaped golden harvests. Wherefore, so that the memory of his glory shall live. Fame has loosened her tongue to speak of him

106 who tamed the sea with fragile barque and mocked the fury of the winds of the north and south)

The Spiriti’s commentary puts Orpheus’ singing into a context larger than the immediate fabula of the story itself: Orpheus’ music becomes the symbol of humanity’s enterprising engagement with, and conquest of. Nature.

Orpheus is revived here as one of the argonauts, and his journey across the boundary between the two worlds is vaguely likened, perhaps, to Christopher Columbus’ exploits that, too, had “reaped golden harvests” for the enterprising European man. But the symbolic context of the episode is broader still. Striggio and Monteverdi make it a metaphor for the cosmic advance of man, his mocking of the elements (the sea, the winds) , his bold “disarming” of nature. The sense of optimism and triumph (largely anticipatory, considering the rather modest successes of man at the time) that the vision of this conquest engendered is reflected in the musical style Monteverdi employs for this chorus: its setting is polyphonic (the hero is glorified by the chorus), with a vigorous, almost march-like rhythm.

Orpheus the magus, the controller of the universe, has emerged from hiding, charmed nature’s defenses, and set out

^ Quoted from notes to compact disk recording: Monteverdi, Claudio and Alessandro Striggio, L'Orfeo. Favola in musica, Hamburg: Archiv Produktion, 1987, p. 101.

107 to conquer death itself, to wrest his beloved’s soul from the grip of the underworld. Immortality was what Orpheus the enchanter of Hades was ultimately after; he aspired to divinity, to being “man-god,” and his journey after

Eurydice is one after his own life:

Non vivo io, no, che poi di vita è priva Mia cara sposa, il cor non è più meco, E senza cor com’esser puô ch’io viva?

(I am not living: no, for since my dear wife is deprived of life, my heart no longer remains with me, and without a heart, how can it be that I am alive?)*’

Caronte is the only “face” of Nature that Orpheus sees on his way to resolving the mysteries of life and death.

It is the face of a pitiless and obtuse monster who jealously guards the passage to happiness. It is worth recalling here that only a few decades later, in his

Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes presented man’s encounter with “nature” in a similar light, i. e. , as the (terrible) aspect of human existence that makes man’s life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” as the consequence of man’s “natural condition.”** If one were to imagine a symbol for the Hobbesian force that denies man his consort

(and so makes his life solitary), mercy (and so makes his life brutal and nasty), and hope of a longer, happier life

67 Ibid., pp. 96-7,

** Leviathan, ed. Edwin Gurley, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1994, p. 76 (xiii 8-9).

108 (and makes his life short)— Caronte, the “mighty spirit” in the Monteverdi-Striggio Orfeo, would be a perfect match.

Caronte is part of the early modern nature myth. The pointed inhumanity of his character in Orfeo has parallels in the view of the world as a mechanism elaborated by

Descartes at the very same time, i. e. in the first decades of the 17th century.*® That modern mythology of nature was not confined to this particular myth but included (or came to include) an entirely different set of symbols will be seen when we discuss Rimsky-Korsakov’s operatic imagery in the next chapter.

The soloist and the chorus. Ovid ’ s dramatic account of

Orpheus’ death contains the scene of the musical contest between Orpheus and the chorus of bacchantes. Spears and stones proved useless in the assault of the “crazed women of Ciconia” on the singer, Ovid assures us, because they were

overcome by the sweet sound of voice and lyre, and fell at his feet as if [they] would ask forgiveness for [their] mad attempt.

The only means of surmounting the power of Orpheus ’ song was another song, albeit a very different one from his.

And all their weapons would have been harmless under the spell of song; but the huge uproar of the Berecynthian flutes, mixed with discordant horns, the drums and the breast-beatings and bowlings of the

*® For a discussion of the struggle between the Hermetic-magical and Cartesian-mechanistic visions of the universe cf. Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 447ff.

109 Bacchanals, drowned the lyre’s sound; and then at last the stones were reddened with the blood of the bard whose voice they could not hear.™

Orpheus loses his contest with the bacchantes and corybantes: his noble song cannot withstand the discordant onslaught of the revelling chorus. His song is monodic, measured, harmonious, and, we may assume, pleasing to the ear’*; that of the chorus is sung by many voices, imbued with strong passion, ecstatic enthusiasm, and desire to overpower the “audience,” i. e. Orpheus himself. In the theoretical constructions that led up to the emergence of the opera we find a peculiar blend of parallels and reversals of the Ovidian contrast between the soloist and the chorus.

The questions about the power of a single voice as opposed to that of many voices were at the center of the late 16th-century debate on music’s capacity for conveying the affetti from the musician to the audience. There was a distinct sense, on the one side of this debate at any rate, that contemporary music, musica moderna, betrayed the lofty purpose of ancient music, musica antiqua, and that

70 Metamorphoses XI 1-2 0,

’* Cf. Virgil: “[There too, the long-robed Thracian priest] matches their measures with the seven clear notes” (Aeneid VI 646, transi. H. Rushton Fairclough, in Virgil with an English Translation, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1978). This phrase, incidentally, is quoted in Mei’s letter to V. Galilei we shall address below.

1 1 0 the former’s failure to emulate the letter’s ethical

efficacy stemmed precisely from this betrayal. Girolamo

Mei made the following observation;

As to the marvelous effects of the music of the ancients in moving the affections, and not finding any trace of this in the modern... it may happen that we shall marvel no more at the [effects], because our [music] does not have the same goal. This may be because ours does not have any means of accomplishing this as the ancient did, since it has as its object the delectation of the sense of hearing, whereas the ancient had the object of leading someone else to the same affections as one’s own.^

Mei ties in the notion of music’s goal with that of its

means : the goal defines the means, and his extended

argument in the letter to Galilei is designed to show that

the ancients achieved their goal through monody, i. e. the

use of one voice. The modern musical art that is allegedly

designed merely to please the ear and therefore incapable

of conveying the affects is, by contrast, polyphony.

Mei’s argument against polyphony’s ability to produce

emotional effect rests on the assumption that the

simultaneous sounding of different voices cancels out, as

it were, their individual effects and their summary result

is therefore zero. Or as Mei put it, "the quality of one

[voice] ought necessarily to impede the operation of the

^ “Letter [to Vincenzo Galilei] of 8 May 1572,” in: Palisca, Claude V. The Florentine Camerata. Documentary Studies and Translations, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1989, p. 66.

Ill other, the two being opposites."^ Mei further speculates

that had the ancients sung “several airs mixed together in

one and the same song,” their singing could not have had

the wondrous effects reported in their literature. The

imagery of the Orpheus myth was foremost in Mei ’ s mind when

he was alluding to the ancient authority. In fact, Mei

refers to Orpheus in the portion of his letter where he

argues that the instrumental accompaniment of the ancients

followed the sung melody note for n ote.’**

Insightful as it was at the time, M e i ’s argument

rests, however, on a few questionable assumptions. First,

what he calls the “quality of the voice” is considered

“natural,” established forever, and unchanging in time.

The quality of voice, i. e. its ability to express our

“inner states,” has not changed, Mei assumes, from

antiquity to his time. It is the manner in which various voices are used (combined) that are responsible for the

lack of miraculous ethical effects performed by music.

Mei seems to view these voices as though they were

individuals unto themselves, interacting with one another

solely in terms of competition, thus “impeding” one another’s efficacy. The fact that voices in polyphony can be viewed as complementing one another and together forming

Ibid., p. 58.

Ibid., p. 72.

1 1 2 a whole that is greater, not less, than the mere arithmetical sum of its parts, escapes M e i ’s attention.

The complementary model suggests a community of individuals working toward a common goal and based, for example, on the firm foundation of a religious tradition, i. e. the cantus firmus— “the voice of the firmament.” Mei’s description, on the other hand, suggests rather what Hobbes called the

“natural state” of humanity, where total rivalry reigns “of every man against every man.

The late 16th-century polemics around polyphony as incapable of conveying affect and therefore devoid of

“ethical” power, and monody, as endowed with exclusive possession of the “ethical” key, was motivated by the desire to introduce in music a different type of emotionality, and in its zeal simply declared polyphony unemotional. Such a move is not at all unusual in history.

The first step in a struggle with any adversary is the denial of its status as an equal. When such a struggle unfolds between cultures they proclaim each other

“noncultures,” as the Greeks declared their neighbors

“barbarians.” When it occurs between groups of people, the struggle similarly begins with the mutual declaration of the other “inhuman,” as the innumerable episodes of various

Leviathan, xiii 8.

113 colonizations testify.’® The humanistic critique therefore

followed the usual pattern of conflict and conquest when it denied polyphony the ability to express emotions.

“Polyphonic” emotions, the humanist theorists decided in advance (and perhaps intuitively), are simply not emotions at all but either the dry noises of a calculating

One unavoidably incomplete but illuminating litany of such “barbarianizations” can be found in Jean Décarreaux’s book Monks and Civilization: “We are all barbarians,” writes Décarreaux with a tinge of melancholy, “in someone else's view. In the fourth century B.C. Demosthenes sneered at Philip of Macedon, who was unable to pronounce his own name in a pure Attican accent. At the same period Isocrates, his opponent, stigmatized as a barbarian everyone who was unfamiliar with the language, customs, and institutions of Athens. After having been regarded as barbarian by the Greeks, for others Rome became the matrix, mother, and mistress city. The new Rome, Constantinople, on the shores of the Bosphorus, despised the metropolis and was scandalized when a Barbarian, Charlemagne, dared to usurp the title of Emperor. In the middle of the eleventh century, Peter III, the Patriarch of Antioch, stated without a trace of polemical meaning and even with a certain degree of pity, that the Latins were 'barbarian nations,' especially when compared to the Byzantines, 'educated in all the refinements of culture'. In the eighteenth century Italy, England and Spain had produced the finest fruits of their civilizations, and after more than two centuries of the highest culture, around 1750, France had reached a point that might be regarded as its zenith. Yet in 1793 the Emperor of China, Kien-Long, replying to the inquiries of a merchant ambassador, informed King George III that although he appreciated that monarch’s desire to 'participate in the benefits of Chinese civilization,' 'barbarian products' imported from 'an island cut off from the rest of the world' did not interest him. And during the first half of the twentieth century, the German racialists took the view that there was no civilization worthy of name apart from the German” {Monks and Civilization: From the Barbarian Invasions to the Reign of Charlemagne, transi. Charlotte Haldane, George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London, 1964, p. 19).

114 understanding or the sensuous tickling of the ear. Only the strong passions of a hero or heroine, they assume, can be considered emotions, affetti. The human subject emerging on stage began to experience the full power of his feelings and strove to give them expression. Further, the matter was thus not that emotions in general had to be expressed, but that they had to be emotions of a single individual, i. e. expressed by one voice. Polyphony was rejected by humanist musical thought not because of its emotional frigidity, but because of its poly-individual, i. e. many-voiced, nature, on the one hand, and, perhaps, the summary emotion expressed by the whole constituted by many parts, on the other.

Polyphony, as we suggested above, was the expression of a special kind of individuality. It did not deny individuality as such, but affirmed it in interaction with other similar individualities. (The word “monk” is derived from the Greek monos, “one,” “single.”^) Moreover, there existed in it a certain and rather strictly observed hierarchy of individuals, in which cantus firmus occupied the sacrosanct place. It is not altogether impossible that the emergence and evolution of this ordering of voices was influenced, on some level, by Neoplatonic ideas and especially the Areopagitic heavenly hierarchy. The late

^ Ibid., p. 72. “The proper definition of the word ‘monk’,” says Decarreaux, “is a man by himself...”

115 Renaissance Titanic individual strove to break out of this

hierarchy— only to establish his own, anthropocentric

hierarchy of voices. This desire found expression in the

creation and development of the monodic style, where the

free voice-hero soars above the relatively inert and

passive mass of accompaniment, leading this mass and

commanding its shape and direction.

What made Mei, Vincenzo Galilei, and others adopt the

belief in monody’s expressive powers? There were many

reasons, of course, but the imagery of the Orpheus myth

must have been one of the most compelling “arguments,” as

it were, in favor of it. The persuasive force of this

imagery was no doubt greatly enhanced by at least two

factors: the belief in the historical reality of Orpheus

and the corpus of late 15th-century interpretations of the myth that took the powers of music with exceptional

seriousness.

4. The Mystagogue and the Operatic Hero

Let us state the obvious. Ficino’s Orpheus existed in the philosopher’s memory, writings, singing, and semi­

concealed magical rituals. He was a real historical

figure, if of great antiquity, and his magical powers were quite real, too, even though they could be reproduced today

(i. e., in Ficino’s day) only with great difficulty, perhaps not at all. Part of the reason, we surmise, why

116 playing with Orpheus ’ mask was so attractive to Ficino was

because it was impossible to know what Orpheus’ real face

looked like behind this mask. Like the sources of his

mysteries, his true shape and sound were lost in the haze

of the long-forgotten past. Only weak, barely perceptible

echoes of Orpheus’ hymns reached Ficino from that past, and

the philosopher strove, as best he could, to make them

sound again, but he understood, of course, the difference

between himself, “the lowliest of persons,” and the mightiest musician in history. Ficino’s Orpheus was, in

other words, very real but also long, long dead. He could

inspire from afar but not appear in person. In the course

of the Renaissance, however, Orpheus was led out of the

secretive seclusion where he had been an archpriest and put on the stage, where everyone could see him, but no one believed that he was real.

From Ficino to Monteverdi, Orpheus was secularized and

“de-magicized.” His magic, which Ficino wanted to invoke, was taken away from him; it was made into a metaphor behind which there was a different reality and a different faith.

Gone was the Ficinian concentration on the astrological

influence that could be induced by music. This was replaced by the emphasis, not unfamiliar to Ficino but brought forth with renewed vigor, on the power of music to affect the audience psychologically, by-passing any celestial participation.

117 It would be inaccurate, however, to reduce the

difference between the two approaches to a mere shift of

emphasis. Not only did the modus operand! change from the

secretive, mysterial, and objective to the public, known,

and subjective, i. e. from magical to aesthetic, but also

a transformation occurred of the epistemological

presuppositions underlying the two types of musical

practice. The “magic” that occurs during an opera

performance also involves a mystery, just as Ficino’s magic

did. Moreover, just as in the liturgy, this magic occurs

in a public rather than a hidden space. The difference is

that, whereas in the case of Ficino and the liturgy this

mystery is quite objective (in the sense that it is

believed to take place on a level reaching beyond the

individual psyche) , in the case of opera the entire mystery

is believed to transpire within the soul of the spectator.

This is the way in which Renaissance anthropocentrism

affects the conception of music’s power. Ficino’s magic was supposed to operate between the human being, who

occupied a relatively modest position in the middle of the

universal hierarchy, and the celestial spirits that resided

in the supreme cosmic realms. Anthropocentrism makes this middle position the central one, and now musical mysteries play themselves out within the vast expanses of the newly discovered— or rather reinvented— human subjectivity.

118 The convenient ambiguity of the old magical Orpheus, whose journeys and exploits could be alternately and without great loss interpreted as taking place either in the objective world or in subjective dreams and visions— was now unambiguously collapsed into the play of anthropos'

imagination. When seven years after L ’Orfeo's first performance, in 1614, Isaac Casaubon established with devastating conclusiveness that the dating of the Corpus

Hermeticum had been erroneous and that the writings constituting the Corpus had been compiled in the late

Antiquity - early Christian era— he dealt a lethal blow both to the Orpheus myth qua myth and to Orphic magic.^

Hermes Trismegistus, the supposed author of those writings, lost his previously unquestionable, i. e. mythic, ancient authority and so did Orpheus, who was closely associated with him in Renaissance thought. Curiously, this “lifting” of the magical authority “unleashed” Orpheus’ powers, to use Katz’s expression, as an operatic hero.’’ When the

Orpheus myth was finally deprived of its mythic quality and turned into a “profane story” it enjoyed unprecedented success in the musical theatre. It is as though Ficino’s

Orphic magic had indeed contained great powers, after all, and when the constraints of secrecy were removed it poured

78 Cf. Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 398ff.

” One of the chapters in Katz’s book is entitled “Orfeoi Unleashing the Powers of music.”

119 out into the open where it assumed its “natural” shape, i.

e. became music expressive of human emotion.*® Thus a

connection between the defunct magical tradition and the thriving operatic practice was established and, presumably, magic was redeemed.

"Subjectivizing" of Ficino’s magic, however, is the

constant danger that hovers over the investigations that

seek to establish a more-or-less direct link between it and the theories (and practices) of the creators of early operas. This link is especially notable in the late sixteenth-century debates around stile rappresentativo, the style in which music is required to be expressive of the text for the sake of affecting the listener. The danger is that the focus on finding similarities, between theories of magical and dramatic music may result in a lesser sensitivity to the contrasts between them. Magic may begin to look too familiar. Tomlinson’s concern that musicologists have too often produced “the consoling and recognizable picture. .. of music-making and -thinking” in the Renaissance is not altogether unfounded.*' The contrast between magical and aesthetic music that was

*° Cf. Walker’s opinion that “the purely musical side of Ficino’s singing is that it was monodic and that he was aiming at the same ideal of expressive, effect- producing music as the later musical humanists” (Spiritual Magic, p. 20).

*' Tomlinson, op. cit. , p. ix.

1 2 0 repeatedly brought up in this chapter is designed to

underscore the idea that opera and magical practice on the

most fundamental level are directly opposed to each other.

Thus there are two sides to the perspective that seeks

insights into affinities between music-historical

phenomena, such as Pirotta’s observation about traces of

Orphic magic in Monteverdi’s Orfeo. The positive side is

that it demonstrates the historical continuity between

phenomena separated by time and significant differences in

the respective outlooks that inform them. The negative

side is, as we indicated, that it also may obscure the

discontinuity of such phenomena, their irreducible

difference from each other. No matter how much the

Monteverdi-Striggio Orpheus may have owed to Ficino’s

vision of the ancient singer and his art, the two Orpheuses

remain fundamentally different.

Katz yielded to the temptation of conjoining magic with art and science and mistakenly viewed empiricism as

the attitude that turns magic into science. “Joined with

a theory based on empirical observation,” she writes,

“magical operations become increasingly scientific.”*^

According to the criteria that were outlined in Chapter 2, however, it is not empiricism but rather epistemological rationalism, i. e. the faith in the possibility of grasping

*^ Katz, op. cit., p. 109.

1 2 1 everything by means of rational understanding, that distinguishes science from magic. Science renounces the impenetrability of mystery at the heart of being, in contrast to magic that thrives on this mystery, and this renunciation is indispensable to the scientific quest for truth. Art renounces mystery not on the epistemological level, but as modus operandi, i. e. the way in which magical operations are performed: in utter seriousness and secrecy. Art is serious and mysterious, as we discussed in

Chapter 2, in ways entirely different from those of magic.

The mystery of art, as the anonymous author of the Musica enchiriadis correctly observed, has to do with its effect on the human psyche, while the mystery of magic embraces both the latter and the World, often without separating the two. Yates’ distinction between Hermetic and scholarly humanisms hinges on a valid point in the sense that the former places man into a system of relationships with the entire (living) cosmos, while the latter focuses on the human being as such.

Usually Renaissance musical magic is viewed through the prism of opera and underlying such perspective is the tacit understanding that magic failed but what was valuable in it was picked up by art and science. This perspective tends to dissolve, as we suggested above, the uniqueness of the magical outlook and to make it naive, inexperienced science and at the same time art suffering from

1 2 2 megalomania. If we assume for a moment the magician’s point of view, however, and look at the opera as a case of musical magic, we would probably have to say that Orpheus the magus “could really” affect the world with his music whereas Orpheus the operatic hero was merely an allegory.

From the aesthetic point of view, the operatic Orpheus was a tremendous success. From the Ficinian magical point of view, however, he was a miserable failure, impostor, and charlatan. Orpheus the magus and Orpheus the operatic hero do not seem to communicate well with each other, one being on Ficino’s and the other on Monteverdi’s, as well as the modern scholar’s, side of things: they are both failures in each other’s eyes.

Tomlinson is aware of this breakdown in communication between us and our historical others and proposes, as we pointed out in Chapter 1, that “we must pursue a kind of historical understanding that recognizes and maintains the reality of Ficino’s success in astrological song.”*^ He sees the solution to the problem in renouncing, in our own turn, the coercive, dominating posture of our knowledge.

We must recognize that the voicing itself of the question is an unwarranted act of translation, a forced reshaping of Ficino’s world to fit the different shape of our own. Once the question is posed we have jerked Ficino’s songs into our space, into a space we control utterly.”

Op. cit., p. 144.

” Ibid., pp. 249-50.

123 Tomlinson fully realizes that refraining from the question

on our part constitutes the recognition of an impenetrable

mystery lingering between ourselves and our others, the

inexhaustible incompleteness of our dialogue with them.*^

The problem with this solution is that it betrays the

traditional condition of scientific inquiry: renunciation

of mystery. Science does not exhaust the intellectual

world of the human being but the sphere where it reigns

excludes the very principle of mysteriousness. There is

nothing wrong, of course, with going beyond the scientific

attitude to the world, but one must recognize that when we

do so our cognitive orientation shifts from science toward

magic and myth.

5. Conclusions

The Renaissance Orpheus myth oscillated between the

profane story of the humanist-aesthetic culture and the

myth proper of the newly-rediscovered Hermetic tradition.

Ficino engaged the myth in both these capacities at once

but his treatment of the Hermetic Orpheus was more serious

and profound. It found expression both in his

philosophical writings and in his attempts to revive Orphic musical magic. Orpheus the magus symbolized in Ficino's

thought the power of music to influence not only the human

Ibid., p. 251.

124 psyche, but also the spirits of celestial bodies. Toward the end of the Renaissance, however, the aesthetic understanding of the Orpheus myth almost completely takes over. This trend manifested itself in the "Orphic explosion" of the early opera. Despite owing much to the magical view of Orpheus, this was a fundamentally different approach to the myth. The public and ludic aspects of musical theatre transformed Orpheus the magus into an operatic hero whose powers were no longer taken seriously.

This transformation reflected the shift from Ficino's magical hierarchy of being, in which the human magus occupied a modest middle position, to the anthropocentric worldview, in which the human subject took centerstage as a hero who overcomes coarse and hostile nature. In a parallel development, Orpheus as a soloist singer served as a model for the emerging monodic style which became the hallmark of opera.

Despite their fundamental difference, Orpheus the operatic hero kept Orpheus the magus alive, preserving the latter's potential for revival under favorable conditions.

In the next chapter we shall look at a purely aesthetic use of the Orpheus myth— under a new name and in a new cultural-historical context— that eventually contributed to such a revival.

125 Chapter 5 The Orpheus Myth in Modernity: Rimsky-Korsakov’s OperaSadko

1. The Rise of the Local Orpheus

With the advent of Romanticism at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries the relevance of ancient mythology for opera began to wane; and the Orpheus myth was no exception to this tendency.* The Romantics were interested in the folklore of their native lands, and the heroes of

Antiquity lost their appeal to composers and librettists.

The change in attitude to Orpheus is epitomized in the contrast between Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) and

‘ Bare arithmetic is seldom proof of anything in the history of culture but in this case it is telling; in the years between 1750 and 1800 the story supplied subjects for twenty operas while in the period between 1800 and 1850 for only four. The decline of usage in the other arts was less dramatic yet no less conspicuous: within these periods the story was evoked fifty one and twenty one times, respectively. (The first count is based on the list of operas provided in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, vol. 3, article “Orpheus,” p. 777; the second on the list under “Orpheus and Eurydice” in The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300-1990, vol. 2, ed. J. D. Reid, New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 788-90. These counts may be incomplete, of course, but they testify as to the overall tendency beyond any doubt.)

126 J. Offenbach’s operetta Orphee aux enfers (1858). The former was a serious attempt to draw from a noble ancient source, whereas the latter was a mocking allegory of the contemporary musical establishment. N. A. Rimsky-

Korsakov’s opera Sadko was a reappearance of the Orpheus story in the guise of a northern-Russian epic. Closely related to the Orpheus myth, the myth of Sadko served the composer as a vehicle for expressing his ideas and sentiments about music in the modern artistic and intellectual context. Sadko was an example of a Russian national style in opera, yet the national element brought with it not only “local colour,” but also new nuances of symbolic meaning, mythical, and philosophical perspectives.

2. Sadko the Russian Orpheus

Parallels between the Two Myths. Broad circles of Russian musicians were familiar with the image of Orpheus since

1671 at the very latest— the year Nikolai Diletskii’s Idea grammatiki musikiiskoi {The Idea of Musical Grammar) appeared in print, in which Orpheus is mentioned in the typical manner of that age, i. e. as an allegory of the beauty and power of music. Diletsky’s practical treatise was derived from European sources, especially those current in Poland at the time, and the purely conventional use of

127 the Orpheus image in it was an example of the widely spread practice that had made the image an indispensable, if trite, part of musical treatises since the high

Renaissance. One of the early and perhaps the most influential and long-lasting introductions of Russian musicians into contemporary European music theory,

Diletsky’s book was widely used in church schools well into the 18th century. In 1811 Orpheus made his debut as a subject for music written by a significant Russian composer, i. e. in Dmitry Bortnyansky’s cantata Sreten’e

Orfeem Solntsa (Orpheus Meeting the Sun).

The “indigenous” Russian Orpheus, Sadko had been part of the Eastern Slavs’ culture many centuries before his

Greek— by that time Western-European— counterpart made an appearance in seventeenth-century Russia. The bylina about

Sadko had not, however, become a visible part of Russian literate culture until the beginning of the 19th century, when it was “discovered” through the influential anthology of folk songs known as the Kirsha Danilov Collection

(1804) . It is difficult to say who first coined the phrase

“Sadko, the Russian Orpheus,” but the obvious similarities between the ancient Greek and Russian heroes certainly invited the comparison that became a veritable cliche by

Rimsky-Korsakov’s time.

128 Their most conspicuous shared feature is that both

Orpheus and Sadko are musicians of magical powers. Orpheus, as we know, could influence nature with his music, and so could Sadko whose playing on the shore of lake II’men’ brought him first the Sea King’s favor and then induced the latter to an impetuous dance-storm.^ Both Orpheus and

Sadko travel to the underworld: the former to Hades and the latter to the underwater kingdom. In both cases the journey involves two important themes : marriage (spouse) and return from the other world. Orpheus lost his wife

Eurydice and wanted to get her back; through the interference of a higher power, Sadko’s (unconsummated) marriage to one of the Sea King’s daughters became a means of return to the upper world.^ Both are seafarers: the

^ Smirnov and Smolitsky indicate that the episode of “Sadko’s first encounter with the water-nix (vodyanoi)” is least frequently found of the three episodes constituting the bylina as it existed in the second half of the nineteenth century, i. e. at the time of its discovery and intensive collection efforts by Russian folklore students (see the list of bylina variants containing the episode ibid., p. 390) . The “dance” episode is the culminating point of Sadko’s journey to the underwater kingdom and is, on the other hand, the most frequent and, most likely, the most ancient episode of the bylina (for the list of variants containing it see ibid., p. 391). The bylina also includes the episode, preceding Sadko’s journey under water, about Sadko’s supercilious and ill-fated bet to buy up all goods in Novgorod.

^ Vladimir Propp considered this motif central to the very origination of epic. According to his theory, heroic epos as a genre sprang up when clan society began

129 former as a member of the argonauts’ voyage for the Golden

Fleece, and the latter as the leader of a trading expedition to the legendary Golden Horde.* In addition to this, both characters display a close and stable connection with the aquatic element, i. e. rivers, the sea, etc. , as well as its mythical personifications, water- sprites. According to many accounts, including Apollonius of Rhodes ’ , Orpheus was the son of Giagros who was at once

to disintegrate into families and the individual had to assert himself against the older conventions of his community. The epic hero's quest for a wife was, Propp maintained, a reflection of this process (Russkii geroicheskii epos [Russian Heroic Epic Poetry]), Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, Moscow, 1958, ss. 3-5).

Apollonius of Rhodes’ middle of the third century B.C. Aurgonautica is the fullest extant account of that expedition, and begins the enumeration of its participants with Orpheus.

* It is curious that their mutual destinations, Colchis and the Golden Horde (the Mongols’ westernmost empire of the 13th-15th centuries with its capital, Sarai Batu, on the lower Volga) , were not very far apart in terms of real, as distinct from mythical, geography. The historical Colchis is situated in modern Georgia, in the territory now called Mingrelia, and the Golden Horde stretched as far as the Black Sea coast and the Caucasus in the south. Even more curious, perhaps, is another connection between Orpheus and the territory of modern Russia, through Virgil’s legendary “geography”: after Eurydice ’ s death Orpheus is said to have roamed “the northern (Hyperborean) ice, the snowy Tanais, and the fields ever wedded to Rhipaean frosts.” Tanais was the Roman name for the river Don. (Georgies IV 517-518 in: Virgil, transi. H. R. Fairclough, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., MCMXXIV [1924], p. 228-29).

130 a Thracian king and the god of the river of the same name.*

In both Virgil’s and Ovid’s descriptions of his sacrificial death, Orpheus’ head and lyre are thrown by the maenads into the river Hebrus.’ Sadko, as we already mentioned, was sacrificed to the Sea King, and then married his daughter Chernava.*

The Contrast: Tragedy vs. Triumph. Despite these similarities, the effects of music are portrayed differently in the two stories. Orpheus’ music has a pacifying effect on inanimate things and living creatures around him (Argonautica I 450-530). Sadko’s playing, on the contrary, arouses the sea to a storm and even a catastrophic tempest.’ The elemental, Dionysian force in music that so concerned Plato is completely alien to

Orpheus’ art and, in fact, Ovid’s vivid description of his death at the hands of revelling bacchantes contains an episode of a musical confrontation between an Apollonian

* Cf. Mifologicheskii slovar', Moscow, 1991, s. 629. Oiagros was also occasionally believed to be one of Apollo’s avatars (Apollod. 1 3 , 2).

’ Georgies Book IV 521ff, Met. XI 48ff.

* Cf. Novgorodskie byliny, ss. 156-57, no. 27 11. 325-333 and 360-365.

’ Cf. ibid., no. 27 11. 10-35 and 285-297, respectively.

131 priest and a Dionysian mob.*° The ecstatic, bacchic side of music is, in contrast, very much part of Sadko’s art and it has to be checked, as the bylina tells us, lest it cause a universal flood.

Another interesting contrast is that Orpheus is always represented as a singer and often an account of his songs’ content would be given, as Apollonius of Rhodes did in

Argonautica and Virgil in Georgics^^. Sadko is never protrayed as a singer, but only as a gusli-player. There is not a single recorded variant of the Sadko bylina that mentions Sadko’s singing.At least since Plato the text of a song was viewed as the primary factor in what the

Greeks called “melos,” and had to be “followed” by “harmony and rhythm.”" The image of Sadko-the-musician in the folk tradition is, on the other hand, a symbol of wordless music that stands in sharp contrast to Orpheus the poet-musician.

10 Met. XI 1-23

" Ovid, for example, recites Orpheus’ song which is a series of poetic “case studies” of extraordinary instances of love (Met. X 150-739).

" This appears to be characteristic of depictions of musicians in bylinas. In the bylina about Vavilo and skomorokhi (Russian itinerant medieval musicians, often linked to the archaic pagan religion), for example, singing is not mentioned as part of music-making (Smirnov and Smolitskii, op. cit., ss. 301-306, variants no. 70 and 71).

" Rep. 3:398c-d.

132 Further, the social standing of the two heroes is glaringly disparate; Orpheus is a princely character, Sadko

is a “democratic” one. Ancient Greek authors often recite

Orpheus’ half-divine and royal genealogy. Sadko, by contrast, is most often introduced as a poor itinerant musician and rarely, if ever, any hint is given of his ancestry. The mention of his father. Sur Volzhanin, from whom Sadko inherited his magical gusli, in Rimsky-

Korsakov’ s opera does not reflect the broader folk practice, as far as recorded texts show. This dissimilarity between the two characters can be viewed as

further reflection of their music-making. The princely

Orpheus’ music is governed by order and harmony: when he sings the world is frozen in blissful tranquility. The

“uprooted” Sadko’s playing, on the other hand, is marked by turmoil in the elements, turning stability into flux and unrest. This trait of the musician’s folkloric image was exploited, as we shall see, by Rimsky-Korsakov and his

librettists in Sadko.

The most significant contrast between the two stories, however, is that one is a tragedy and the other has a happy

ending. As it came down in Ovid’s and Virgil’s renditions, the Orpheus story is ultimately about the failure of the human artist first to protect his wife from death, to rescue her from Hades, and finally to protect himself from

133 the rage and fury of revelling bacchantes— despite all the magic of his art.*'* The bylina is, on the contrary, a story of Sadko's successful escape from the lower world and death.

Music^S Powers. Despite this contrast, the two stories are in full accord as far as the relation between music and morality is concerned. Orpheus’ failure to restore

Eurydice to life (and thus to demonstrate the ultimate power of his music) is the result of his failure to observe his covenant with the gods of the underworld: he looks back at her shadow, and thus violates it. Sadko is presented with a similar, if more explicit, choice: according to his patron St. Nicholas’ instructions, he has to abstain from “fornication” with his new wife.Unlike

Orpheus, however, Sadko obeys St. Nicholas’ instructions and does wake up in the upper world. Orpheus thus failed not as an artist, but as a human being incapable of

*'* In Russia, it should be noted, VI. Solovyev reversed the traditional European perspective and presented Orpheus as victorious over death in his poem “Three Labours” (“Tri podviga”) (see Chapter 5).

“As you lie down to sleep on your first night [with Chernava],” St. Nicolas tells Sadko, “Do not commit fornication (ne tvori bluda) with your wife in the blue sea!— [Lest] you remain forever in the blue sea. And if you do not commit fornication in the blue sea, you will lie down to sleep by the beautiful maiden's side [and in the morning] will be, Sadke, in Novgorod.” Novgorodskie byliny, s. 156, no. 27 11. 328-338 (my translation).

134 suppressing the impulse toward a transgressive backward glance. Conversely, it is not simply Sadko’s artful playing that triumphs over the lower world. It is rather

Sadko's obedience to the law of a higher order that makes his musical magic effective. Through conversely optimistic and pessimistic visions, both stories establish the same fundamental principle of art’s relation to morality: a potent artistic impulse can only come from a pure, saintly soul. The music-philosophical message of the Sadko story, however, should not be reduced to this bare maxim. It has more intricate implications that we shall explore later.

3. The OperaSadko: Myth vs. Philosophy

Rimsky-Korsakov’s first musical encounter with the bylina about Sadko occurred in the 1860s, when he wrote the tone-poem titled Sadko. The tone-poem was received well and its material thirty years later was used by Rimsky-

Korsakov in the opera of the same name. The history of the latter began in the summer of 1894, when the composer received a letter from N. K. Findeisen, a prominent Russian music historian, with a plan for the libretto of an opera

135 based on the bylina. RimsJcy-Korskov was immediately gripped by the idea.’*

While Snovrmaiden (1882) had been Rimsky-Korsakov ’ s exploration of the Slavic solar mythology, Sadko (1895) became an excursus into Russian folk mythology of water and its spirits. The opera depicts music, personified as

Sadko, and its relation to the aquatic element, personified, in turn, as a number of characters, primarily the Sea Princess Volkhova, one of Rimsky-Korsakov’s portrayals of the “worldsoul,” and Sea King Vodyanik.’’

Before the composition of Sadko Rimsky-Korsakov went through a period of intense philosophical reflection on the

“metaphysical” foundations of art. His ruminations proved to be so frustrating that he burned his notes for the large treatise on aesthetics which he had been trying to write

’* Rimsky-Korsakov, N. A. Letopis moei muzykalnoi zhizni (The Chronicle of My Musical Life), Muzyka, Moscow, 1980, p. 292. A. Solovtsov reports that in the early 1880's Rimsky-Korsakov had in his hands the first libretto on the subject, written by one V. Sidorov, which he rejected. (Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov: Ocherk zhizni i tvorchestva (Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov: Life and Works], Muzyka, Moscow, 1984, s. 185).

I. Lapshin, for example, wrote that “ [Rimsky- Korsakov’s] muse, which appeared consecutively in the images of Snowmaiden, the Nymph, Volkhova, Princess Lebed’ (Swan), etc.— is one and the same worldsoul whose presence the great musician felt in his own soul so vividly” (Rimsky-Korseikov. Dva ocherka [Rimsky-Korsakov. Two Essays], Gosudarstvennaia akademicheskaia filarmoniia, Petersburg, 1922, s. 12).

136 for three years.** A few brief statements did survive and they seem relevant to the content of the opera.

The surviving outlines of the abortive treatise reveal a strong tension between Rimsky-Korsakov’s desire to express his philosophical views, on the one hand, and lack of faith, to put it mildly, in philosophy’s ability to address music adequately.*’ Even as he himself was reflecting on music, he wrote that “the love of words and speeches about music (‘bottomless depths,’ etc.)” is inferior to all other loves of music, including even “the love without understanding, tickling of hearing, instinctive [love].” The lofty and comprehending love, on the other hand, involves, according to the notes, the

“assessment of rhythm, melody, harmony and voice-leading. . . timbres, and nuances,” in other words, a composer’s or

** Rimsky-Korsakov, N. A. My musical life, transi, by Judah A. Joffe, A. A. Knopf, New York, [1923], p. 287n.

*’ The difficulty went the other way as well: as I. Lapshin points out, “N. A. was very sceptical about the possibility for a musician to consciously introduce the philosophical component into his works and regarded such conscious participation of rational thought as alien to the interests of musical creativity” (op. cit., ss. 8-9). Lapshin’s observation contradicts our (as well as his own) thesis about music-philosophical content in Sadko only at first glance. Our argument is not that Rimsky- Korsakov was consciously trying to convey a philosophical idea through his music; that would have been the work of an allegorizer.

137 trained musician’s love.^“ Rimsky-Korsakov thus put musicians and philosophers at the opposite extremes of the entire spectrum of music lovers.

Music, according to Rimsky-Korsakov, “as the chief creative art, is the art of poetic thought expressed in the beauty of musical, tonal-rhythmic texture.” The point about poetic ideas as the content of music is a cornerstone of Rimsky-Korsakov’s aesthetics/" The composer sharply disagreed with the view, advanced by E. Hanslick, of music’s autonomy, i. e. its alleged freedom from extramusical significance. Like so many other features of his outlook, this disagreement stemmed and apparently received additional self-evidence from the synaesthetic nature of Rimsky-Korsakov’s artistic imagination, i. e. the tendency to perceive music as intimately related to various extramusical phenomena, i. e. to associate tonalities and sound-complexes, such as chords, with colours, scents, and even visual images. His perceptual associations between

"Nabroski po estetike" (“Notes on Aesthetics”), Rimsky-Korsakov, N. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Complete Works), vol. 2, Literaturnye proizvedeniia i perepiska (Literary Works and Correspondence), Gosudarstvennoe muzyka1 ’noe izdatel’stvo, Moscow, 1963, s. 65.

In the early 1890's Rimsky-Korsakov was contemplating a book On Poetic Images in Music, surviving notes from which were posthumously included into the collection Muzykal ’nye stat ’i i zametki (Articles and Notes on Music) edited by N. N. Rimskaya-Korsakova (Yastrebtsev, Reminiscences, p. 41).

138 keys and colours were stable, ramified, and bordering on pictorial images. From their descriptions it is also clear that they influenced the choice of keys in Rimsky-

Korsakov’s operas.“ These synaesthetic faculties combined to convince Rimsky-Korsakov of music’s broad potential for representation. Through the play of its sounds, the composer believed, music is capable of expressing the content of art, i. e. “the life of the human spirit and nature in its positive and negative manifestations that express [this life] in their mutual relations.” It is significant that art, according to Rimsky-Korsakov, addresses at once humans and nature; as we shall see, mutual relationships between these two terms are one of the

Leitmotive in Rimsky-Korsakov’s artistic works, especially in the operas Snowmaiden, Sadko, and Kitezh.

Equally important is the composer’s view of the ontological and epistemological status of beauty and art:

The psychological state called contemplation— is it the state of supreme revelation or supreme delusion? Poetry and beauty— are they real qualities of things or merely phantasms of imagination? These questions cannot be resolved. The beautiful conceals itself from observation as something that turns into nothing, leading to an algebraic ambiguity, metaphysical absolute, or the point of indifference. We are aware of this forbidden circle but this very circle is already something rather than nothing. In other

“ See e. g. Yastrebtsev, Reminiscences, pp. 31-2 and 50-1.

139 words; the existence of the very idea of the beautiful proves to us its existence (the ontological proof)

Despite its somewhat muddled language, this statement clearly presents an agnostic and intuitivist view of art’s chief aim, i. e. beauty. The letter’s ontological and epistemological status, Rimsky-Korsakov maintains, cannot be determined, and its very existence is affirmed only through an intuitive act of contemplation: it exists insofar as it is contemplated. And yet beauty, according to Rimsky-Korsakov, is not something empty and primitive; its epistemological opacity is rather the result of its

“infinite complexity.” This agnostic intuitivism endows the artist, whether Rimsky-Korsakov meant it to or not, with an extraordinary role: beauty, in fact, is generated through the artist’s active contemplation (which the composer equated with artistic creation). As a result, a special emphasis is placed on fantasy and imagination that are characterized by the synthesis of sensuous perception and (abstract) thought.

By “fantasy” or “imagination” we mean a distinct activity of the soul which we perceive as dependent, as it were, on combined action of several psychic centres; the psychological state resulting from this activity is called, in turn, contemplation, described

^ Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 2, ss. 63-4 (my translation— V. M.).

140 as sensuous thinking. Contemplation evokes in us the representation of beauty.^"*

In other words, the artist conjures up beauty out of the

“forbidden circle” of nothingness, impenetrable metaphysical depths where being and nonbeing are no longer differentiated from each other. In our analysis of Sadko we shall see that this is exactly the idea that underlies much of the opera’s symbolic narrative about music. The composer had a certain philosophical outlook and his ideas found their way into his compositions. The question is, of course, what is the medium for conveying these ideas in his operas and what conceptual framework can help us identify this medium.

For this purpose we propose the concept of a "symbolic narrative" that has been used above without specifying what it means. Unlike a myth strictly defined, a symbolic narrative does not require the belief in its truth on a literal level. It is a purely aesthetic phenomenon common in literature. It is proposed here to underscore the continuous and consistent way in which the imagery of the opera is employed by Rimsky-Korsakov and his librettists to convey a certain set of ideas. At the same time a symbolic narrative reachers beyond the external outline of a plot

Rimsky-Korsakov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 2, S . 63 .

141 and contains the latter's images as symbolic representations. An individual image, character or set of characters employed by the composer cannot, by themselves, provide an adequate interpretive clue.The images of

Snegurochka and Lei’ , VolJchova and Sadko, as well as their relationships are, on the surface, simply personages in

love dramas and do not project any special meanings. They need to be put in the context of the underlying narrative that determines their mutual relationships on a level deeper and more interesting than that of a love intrigue.

It is nothing new to view a character in an opera as an allegory or symbol for something, especially if this character is, for example, Orpheus (or an Orpheus-like figure) who has always been understood as a symbol of music and poetry. Most of the time, however, the commentary does not go any further and it is not shown, by following the twists and turns of the plot, how this symbol relates to other symbolic images and what “statement,” if any, can be discerned in their evolving relations. It is from a perspective that takes into account such an underlying narrative as a whole, as well as its protagonist-symbols, that one can speak of a music myth, in the loose sense, in

Snowmaiden, Sadko, or Kitezh. Sadko was Rimsky-Korsakov’s major work that began a new period in his evolution as a

142 composer, that imbibed the unwritten (as well as partly written) speculations of the previous period and became

the composer’s music-aesthetic opus magnum.

4, The Myth of Music’s Powers

The Sadko story in Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera is certainly not a myth as it was defined in Chapter 2. There

is no question of anyone’s literal belief in the reality of the events it depicts. There is, however, a rich interplay of symbolic meanings carried by the characters of the opera. It is easy to see, for example, that Sadko can be viewed as a symbol of music and the Sea Princess a symbol of the other world. Let us assume that these symbolic meanings can form a coherent story as we follow them through the plot of the opera. Our purpose is to reconstruct a narrative that can be gleaned behind the external plot of the opera. The protagonists in this narrative are not the characters themselves, but rather the things they are likely to represent. We shall attempt to reconstruct Rimsky-Korsakov’s and V. I. Belsky’s “myth” about music and its powers as they expressed it through the imagery of the opera. We shall focus on the three main events in the opera: Sadko’s first meeting with Volkhova,

143 Sea King Vodyanik’s followed by the obliteration of the underwater kingdom, and the apotheosis of Novgorod in the finale.

The opera begins with a conflict: at a merchant fraternity feast Sadko shares his dreams with fellow-

Novgorodians. He dreams of leaving the comfortable nest of the city and its old ways, travelling far into the ocean- sea, and enriching Novgorod far beyond its present standing. When Novgorodians fail to embrace his outlandish ideas, the offended Sadko leaves. He decides to confess his “precious, secret (zapovednye) thoughts” to lakes and rivers. These respond to Sadko in a strikingly different manner: from the depths of the lake there rises to his song a host of beautiful maidens. Among them is the Sea

Princess Volkhova whose beauty enchants Sadko. In the ensuing love duet, she remains nameless until the very end, and reveals herself first of all as “beauty” and “soul.”

“Who are you, soul (dusha), who are you, my princess?”— asks Sadko three times before she finally answers and tells him that she is a daughter of the Sea King. Volkhova’s love confession to Sadko is very characteristic: “For ages to come, your songs have captured my heart, my darling.”

In other words, she is the soul of the beautiful, fantastic world for Sadko, while for her he is a singer par

144 excellence.^ The love scene at lake Il’men’ is Sadko’s first encounter with the other world. When the encounter is over it seems like a dream. Sadko returns to the city and, with magical help from Volkhova, wins a wager that brings him enough money to go on his great journey.

Before we follow him further, though, a few observations are in order. Appropriately for its subject- matter revolving around the relationship between this world and its fantastic other, Sadko is replete with mirror-like reflections and pairs of mutually “reversed” characters.

The most conspicuous such pair consists of Volkhova and

Sadko’s wife, Liubava. The image of the former is marked by a dreamy transcendence while the latter is portrayed with deliberate realism. Volkhova’s character is reflected in the use of “fantastic,” unusual scales and non-folk music of her duet with Sadko. Liubava’s musical portrayal, on the other hand, is given in a stylized folk idiom.“

“ This was not the first time that the composer depicted music as the medium that draws otherworldly creatures to the human world. Snegurochka, the heroine of Snowmaiden (1881-1882), was also drawn to the human Berendeis because of their music, as she confessed to her father, Moroz (Frost), in the very beginning of her story.

In his musical depiction of the contrast between this and transcendent world Rimsky-Korsakov followed and further developed a tradition established by Glinka in Ruslan i Liudmila (1842) of using unusual scales, mainly octatonic and whole-tone ones. These were used in contrast to diatonic scale-based authentic and stylized

145 Volkhova is the one who encourages Sadko to go away on his

great voyage. Liubava, on the contrary, tries to stop

Sadko. Volkhova needs an extraordinary musician and

adventurer, while Liubava would be happy with an unadventurous but loving Sadko. Despite a common object of their affections, they do not love the same man, and their

impulses are all but opposite, as are their respective

“pulls” on Sadko: one toward fantasy, the other toward reality. Sadko belongs to them both but in the beginning

is drawn toward Volkhova. The human music that has a magical power over the world of fantasy moves away from reality into the sea of dreams.

Let us recall Rimsky-Korsakov’s statement about

fantasy and imagination that he understood as the source of contemplation as "sensuous thinking." Contemplation, in turn, "evokes in us the representation of beauty."^ One cannot help noting that in the opera Volkhova’s magical help sets in motion the events that lead to Sadko ’ s great journey, i. e. fantasy helps the fulfilment of a dream. In other words, there is a parallelism between the “fantasy— sensuous thinking— idea of beauty” sequence in the

folk melodies that were the mark of real characters and events.

” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 2, s. 63.

146 philosophical excerpt and the “fantasy— magic— dream

fulfilment” in the opera.

Another pair of “reverse” characters are Sadko and the young gusli-player Nezhata. Both are musicians but whereas

Sadko is drawn toward the Jenseits, the beckoning beyond,

Nezhata is firmly placed in the Novgorod community. Sadko

sings a “new song” calling to adventure, Nezhata the traditional one from the old days. Sadko acts: he probes the world of water-sprites with his music, stakes his life

in a risky wager, goes on a journey, and descends into the sea. Nezhata reflects: he gives a premonition of Sadko’s

future heroic feats,glorifies him upon their accomplishment, and is generally a source of a lofty post factum comment. And, finally, Sadko always stands out from the crowd whereas Nezhata is always close to the chorus and never contradicts it.^ The contrasts between Sadko and

Nezhata’s bylina about Volkh Vseslav’evich sung in the first scene of the opera is a prefigurement of Sadko’s story. It tells of the birth and heroic deeds of Volkh Vseslav’evich, easily the most shaman-like figure among the Kievan bogatyri, i. e. the mighty heroes of old, who was capable of assuming the shape of animals and knew their tongues, and, like Sadko, had access to the other world through magic. For details about this epic character see Roman Jakobson’s study “The Vseslav Epos,” Russian Epic Studies, American Folklore Society, Philadelphia, 1949 (1976 reprint), pp. 13-86.

Soon after Sadko catches the goldfish Nezhata composes a bylina about this event— an account, by the way, that partially gleans the truth: “The Sea King seems to like [Sadko],” sing Nezhata and the chorus.

147 Nezhata, these two mutually complementary symbols of music,

are reconciled in their equally faithful service to

Novgorod: in the end the former brings and the latter sings

glory to the great city. Interestingly, it is the combined

Sadko-Nezhata image of a musician that corresponds to

Orpheus much more than either of them individually.

The music symbolism of the opera is not limited,

however, to the two singers. Perhaps as in no other of his

operas, in Sadko Rimsky-Korsakov presents a picture of

Russian folk musical life that is rich in diversity and

conflict. In the Novgorod scenes of Sadko, such as Scene

Four, Rimsky-Korsakov depicts the competition among the

various elements of Russian folk religious life, each with

its own unique musical characterization.^" The chorus of kaliki-perekhozhie, Orthodox pilgrims, sings a song about

the so-called Golubinaia kniga, The Dove Book , written,

according to the kaliki tradition, by Christ Himself.

The song of these “gloomy old men,” as the chorus describes

As Taruskin observes, Rimsky-Korsakov showed a special talent for mass scenes with multiple choruses enganged in a dialogue, (op. cit., p. 1332).

For a collection of texts and overview of the so- called “spiritual verses” tradition in Russian folklore see e. g. Golubinaia kniga: Russkie narodnye dukhovnye stikhi XI-XIX vekov (The Dove Book: Russian Folk Spiritual Verses of the llth-19th Centuries) , eds. L. F. Soloshchenko and lu. S. Prokoshina, Moskovskii rabochii, Moscow, 1991.

148 them, is interrupted by the irreverent jugglers, skomorokhi, who counter the pilgrim’s grim sermon by a

Bacchic “dithyramb” to hops. Also here are magi, soothsayers, offering their own brand of popular religion:

invocations of magical forces inhabiting a cosmos with the

Isle Buyan and a buried treasure at its centre. Woven in between their exchanges is Nezhata’s “slava” (glory) to

Novgorod, remarks and exclamations of the chorus, merchants, buyers, etc. Interestingly, when, in the apotheosis of their simultaneity, all these choruses join in a tutti, the kaliki's theme forms the bass, cantus firmus, of the entire polyphonic structure. This may have been the reflection of the importance Rimsky-Korsakov ascribed to popular Orthodoxy in Russian life.

To resume Sadko’s story, twelve years later we find him descending into the underwater kingdom as a human sacrifice to the Sea King who withholds wind from Sadko ’ s ships.The other world’s longing for Sadko’s music is underscored again in this episode: he charms the Sea King with his “slava” ("glory”) to the blue sea. Volkhova (who secretely arranged Sadko’s descent) is given him for a wife

The journey itself is conspicuously omitted from the opera. Similarly, in folkloric sources it is usually described in a few apathetic, formulaic lines. The main interest of the narrative, both in the bylina and opera, lies not in the hero’s conguest of external space, but crossing the boundaries between worlds.

1 4 9 and repeats her love confession: “Your wondrous songs have

captured my heart.” The picturesque wedding ceremony that

follows, with its colourful procession of the sea kingdom’s

inhabitants, culminates in King Vodyanik’s dance that brings about an enormous sea tempest and flood threatening to overwhelm the upper world. The character of music that

Rimsky-Korsakov employs for this dance is quite significant: despite being the dance of the sea kingdom, it

is no longer in the letter's “otherwordly” style, but is marked also by the folk idiom typical of Sadko and other human characters.^

To paraphrase this scene, the world of fantasy seizes the music of this world and, charged with its energy, now has the power to envelop everything in its drowning embrace. The only means to stop it is to interrupt the music. This happens through the interference of a classical operatic deus ex machina, St. Nicholas or the

“Mighty Elder” (Starchishche). The Mighty Elder orders

Sadko to stop playing and the dance ceases. At his command the Sea King and Queen submerge into the depths of the sea and their daughters, including Volkhova, become rivers and streams. Sadko’s music, the Elder points out, must serve

Solovtsov observes, for example, that in this scene (Scene Six) the fantastic and folkloric motives are combined (op. cit., s. 201).

150 not the lower world, but Novgorod. After singing her

farewell lullaby to the sleeping Sadko, Volkhova turns into

a river flowing through the city. Let us recall that the

absence of a big river providing Novgorod with access to

the sea was the reason why Sadko set out on his journey.

St. Nicholas’ intervention transforms the “dark forces

of nature,” into useful and “friendly” phenomena needed by

this world. Interestingly, though, the adventurous artist

helps to accomplish this transformation only by lifting his

gaze from the lower to the human to the heavenly worlds.

This gradual “gesture” of raising his head from lower

realms toward heaven is depicted through Sadko’s complete

enchantment with Volkhova and indifference, if not

hostility, to Liubava in the beginning; then his

conciliatory farewell to Liubava before submerging into the

sea, when he invokes God in the hope of seeing his earthly wife again; and, finally, his complete awakening into and

embracing of human life, now illuminated by a higher

presence. The folk bylina, it should be noted, often mentions in the end that Sadko fulfils his vows to St.

Nicholas (or the Holy Virgin who alternatively figures as

the gusliar’s rescuer) to build a church in gratitude for

151 his deliverance.^ The opera ends, as we already pointed

out, with “glory” to Novgorod and the Mighty Elder as the

power that protects it— “glory” in which everybody joins,

including even the cynical skomorokhi.

Let us now try to sum up the main outline of Rimsky-

Korsakov’ s symbolic narrative about music in Sadko,

occasionally comparing it with similar “symbolic

narratives” in Snowmaiden and Kitezh. In a

characteristically Romantic fashion, the opera’s world is

split in twain: reality and fantasy.The latter is a dream and at the same time the soul, which is fantastic and ephemeral in the opera.Music is the chief mediator

^ Cf. Novgorodskie byliny, variants nos. 27-29, 31- 32, 35 (in which, upon awakening, Sadko finds himself in Kiev, near the Sophia Cathedral), 3 6 (blesses the Holy Virgin), 38-39, 40 (is saved upon a promise to build a church dedicated to St. Nicolas of Mozhaisk), 41 (builds two churches), etc.

The significance of the Romantic dvoemirie, “two- worldedness,” in Rimsky-Korsakov’s artistic universe, as well as the organic whole that these worlds form together, has been much commented on. Kandinsky also notes, quite correctly, the blend of Romanticism and realism in Rimsky-Korsakov ’ s œuvre as an important aesthetic principle (Kandinsky, A. Istoriia russkoi muzyki [A History of Russian Music], vol. ..., Muzyka, Moscow, 1993, s. 21).

Rimsky-Korsakov, incidentally, did not believe in the immortality of the soul. The composer confessed this to V. Yastrebtsev on 19 April 1905— notably in a discussion of VI. Solovyev and his faith in the resurrection of Christ in conjunction with “paradise” in Kitezh: “I personally don’t believe for a minute in the possibility of life after death,” said the composer,

152 between these worlds: the other world longs for the music of the real world.^ Music calls forth the world of pagan water-nix personages that must eventually perish altogether by merging with the real world.

A third and higher force intrudes, briefly but resolutely, on the relations between these two worlds— the

force that was not present in Snowmaiden, appears only transiently in Sadko, and will be more fully explored in

Kitezh. The nature of this third force can be best described as popular Russian Orthodoxy. Rimsky-Korsakov displayed a steady interest in popular Christianity (as distinct from the Church) , and St. Nicholas in Sadko and

Maiden Fevronia in Kitezh all represent that side of

Russian religious life.

In conjunction with popular Orthodoxy, the chorus of the pilgrims deserves special attention. In their song they offer a sort of “moral” cosmology and history of the according to Yastrebtsev (Reminiscences, p. 3 61).

” The mediating role of the musician in Rimsky- Korsakov’s operas was noted by I. Lapshin: “The image of the artist as a mediator between nature and man, expressing the cosmic feeling, was one of Rimsky- Korsakov’s favourite images. It appears now as an artless singer Levko who partakes of the elemental forces of nature and brings relief to the suffering Pannochka; now as Lei’-Apollo who carries in his soul the elemental creative principle that links him to the sun... Sadko, too, is such a mediator between the Cosmos and man” (op. cit., ss. 26- 27; my translation— V. M. ) .

153 world in which the Lie, Krivda, overwhelms the Truth-

Justice, Pravda, forcing it out of this world into heaven,

but then is overwhelmed in turn when heaven sends down its

book of wisdom, accessible only to the holiest of men.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s operatic “cosmology” is similar to that

of the pilgrims in that it, too, emphasizes the religious

and moral dimensions of the cosmos. The pilgrim’s story

should have been a warning to Sadko, if he could have heard

it (it is sung in Sadko ’ s absence); it is a pref igurement

of Sadko’s future tribulations between this and the other

world, between the truth of life and the lie of fantasy, as

well as the ultimate triumph of divine power. Nezhata’s

bylina about Volkh Vseslav’evich in the first scene is the

prophecy about the triumph of Sadko as a human hero; the

pilgrims' song is a prophecy about the triumph of the

divine power.

The collapse of the other world occurs after it tries

but fails to appropriate the music of the real world. In

a sense, music represents the identity of the real world: when it is abducted by the lower world, the real one is threatened by chimeras from the other side. Should it

seize the magical power of music, the netherworld becomes a threat to the distinct forms of the real world. In the

language of mythical imagery this idea is expressed as the threat of a flood and tempest, i. e. cosmic waters

154 engulfing the upper world. The disturbed equilibrium between the two worlds and the advance of the other world against the real, which has lost the magic of its music, is stopped by the miraculous interference of a higher power.

The music must be silenced and returned to its original place, i. e. to the real world. All the time the struggle

is for music, and the outcome determines which world lives and which perishes, even though this is a struggle between two loves in the heart of a musician; for fantasy and reality.

Focusing on the powers of music, the symbolic narrative of the opera appears to run as follows. Music mediates between reality and fantasy. It is an active mediator that upsets the equilibrium and causes the world to expand, but its effect depends on which world it belongs to and to which directs its flight. Music and the different worlds that we live in are closely linked with one another and form a living, dynamic whole. The soul of the world longs for music, responds to its summons, and, invoked from the depths of fantasy, dissolves itself in the real world, expanding it and giving it a more harmonious character. This, in a nutshell, is the “music myth” of

Sadko.

It is not hard to see that the concerns that propel this story echo those that animated aesthetic debates among

155 Russian intellectuals throughout the latter half of the

19th century. The questions about art and the good of the

society, fantasy and reality, art’s elevating and deluding

effects were central to these concerns, and, although it

cannot be reduced to a bare argument, Sadko was Rimsky-

Korsakov’ s response, or rather one of his responses, to

them. It is just as easy to see, however, that there is no

such story told in Rimsky-Korsakov’s writings or

conversations with friends. Like Sadko, Rimsky-Korsakov

could only entrust his thoughts to his muse, i. e. music

replete with “poetic ideas” that was his own worldsoul. To

openly admit that his operas carried an "Esopian” message

seems to have been embarrassing for the composer. He often

tried to conceal his embarrassment behind a jocular tone,

as when, for instance, he called Kitezh a “wholesale

mystical” opera, responding by a pun to the remark that it

was “optimistically mystical” (in contrast to Wagner’s

pessimistic mysticism of Parsifal)This shyness is

hardly surprising in a musician whose intellectual persona was formed in the nihilistic, realistic, and positivistic

1860s. What is surprising is the persistance with which

The Russian for “wholesale mystical,” that Rimsky-Korsakov came up with, was “optom misticheskaia,” a close phonetic equivalent of '^optimisticheskaia,'' i. e. “optimistic” (Yastrebtsev, Rimsky-Korsakov, s. 308).

156 Rimsky-Korsakov’s deeply concealed “music myth” sought an outlet and the power with which it shaped his operas.

The composer refrained from telling the world how real the world of fantasy was to him— to tell it openly and directly at any rate. Like Sadko, he oscillated between belief and nonbelief in the ideal world into which his imagination guided him so often, glorifying in opera the transfigurating power of human sanctity but then renouncing the immortality of the soul in a conversation with his biographer. And yet it was the same Rimsky-Korsakov who made the world of the “nonexistent” fantasy, the fantastic, a palpable presence in Russian music, was irresistably drawn toward that “other” world, and became its chief proponent in Russian opera.

5. Conclusions

The Orpheus myth never relived its own operatic triumph of the Baroque and Classical eras. Although it certainly became more relevant in the 20th than it had been in the 19th century, yielding a larger crop of operas and wider variety of interpretations, the late Renaissance,

Baroque, and Classical opera has to this day remained the friendliest host in history for the grieving Thracian singer with his soulful lament. And yet, in modernity as

157 before, the myth retained its role as a vehicle for an

identifiable complex of ideas about music, its potential, and its role in the world.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Sadko is an especially

interesting case because in it the ancient Greek story is evoked through an ancient Slavic one, representing the merging of the Orpheus myth with the indigenous Russian tradition. It is guestionable, after all, whether the

Sadko story would have carried as great and attractive symbolism as it did had it not been for its numerous parallels with the Orpheus myth. The shadow of the latter always loomed over the Sadko legend in Russian consciousness of the 19th century and added a deeper and

“more ancient” dimension to it.

Despite their largely different cultural-historical paths, both stories project a similar view of the relation between music and morality, namely, that the power of magical sound is incomplete if it does not issue from a pure soul. This leads to a very unmodern conclusion: music and morality are inseparable and moral considerations are indispensable in evaluating what music does or can do. The symbolic narrative that the opera projects revolves around the ideas of art, fantasy, and reality. Music, according to this narrative, draws inspiration from fantasy by immersing itself in it— only to return to real life and

158 transform it. These ideas remained Rimsky-Korsakov's

private "music myth" that he entrusted to operatic

symbolism but never openly discussed elsewhere. In Sadko—

as in the bylina— the effects of music directly depend on

the cause it serves. Divine authority in this narrative

commands the musician to serve the human community.

Closely related to this music-ethical theme is another

one: music and religion. At least since the Renaissance the Orpheus myth has served to put music in the context of a religiosity that was not entirely “official,” especially when it did not seek to set itself in opposition to mainstream religion, Marsilio Ficino’s Orphism being perhaps the paradigmatic instance. In Rimsky-Korsakov’ s case the folkloric Sadko story, too, provided an outlet for a religious sentiment that neither stood in opposition to nor was identical with the official Orthodoxy. Insofar as

its religious content is concerned, Sadko can be viewed as the revival of the religious dimension of the Orpheus myth in opera, even though in it the ancient Thracian singer wears archaic Russian dress and the cult of Apollo is replaced with Russian popular Orthodoxy. This revival was cautious and largely inconclusive, often leaning toward a religiously neutral moral perspective, but it was preparing

159 the way for the bolder exploration of the myth’s religious- artistic symbolism in Russian musical thought of the early

20th century.

160 Chapter 6 The Orpheus Myth and Musical Theurgy: Vyacheslav Ivanov and Alexander Scriabin

The Orpheus myth underwent a remarkable revival in

Russian culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, i. e. during the period that is often referred to as the “Silver Age.” The revival was remarkable because it was a result of a conscious attempt on the part of artists and thinkers to restore and employ myth as an active force in modern consciousness. Moreover, the attempt was not limited to literature and the philosophical critique of culture, but was also made on the practical, e. g., musical-mystical level. Myth, philosophy, and music were amalgamated with one another in this striking period and the Orpheus myth played a notable part in their reunion.

Poet-philosopher Vyacheslav Ivanov and composer-mystic

Alexander Scriabin formed the most notable pair of actors in this process. This chapter will explore the role of the

Orpheus myth in their related philosophical-artistic projects; Ivanov’s doctrine of theurgy and Scriabin’s attempt at creating the Mysterium, i. e. a mystical- artistic event aimed at world-transformation.

161 1. Ivanov’s Orpheus

The Orpheus Myth. In 1912 the publishing house Musaget

decided to release a series of books on mysticism under the title of “Orpheus.” In his brief introduction to this

series Ivanov made several statements that reflect his understanding of the Orpheus myth. First of all, in the

image of Orpheus Ivanov sees the synthesis of the pagan and

Christian mystical traditions that constitute, according to him, two main roots of European mysticism in general.

Second, Orpheus, Ivanov believes, symbolizes mystical cognition that, despite its internal character, is communicable through poetry and philosophy.* And third,

Orpheus is the symbol of three divine figures at once:

Apollo, Dionysus, and Christ. It is the relationships among these three figures that determine the meaning of

Orpheus’ image for Ivanov. Apollo and Dionysus are locked into the Nietzschean opposition-unity, competing with each other for leadership over the “chorus of the Muses. What

' Ivanov, Vyacheslav, Sobranie sochinenii (Works), vol. Ill, Foyer Oriental Chrietien, Bruxelles, 1979, s. 704.

^ The Apollinian and Dionysian tendencies in the art of Antiquity, Nietzsche believed, ran “parallel to each other, for the most part openly at variance; and they continually incite each other to new and more powerful births, which perpetuate an antagonism, only superficially reconciled by the common term ‘art’; till eventually by a metaphysical miracle of the Hellenic

1 6 2 is non-Nietzschean in Ivanov’s symbolic scheme is the

allusion to Christianity as a sort of religious Aufhebung

of the antagonism between the two pagan gods— the Aufhebung

into which the Orpheus of Antiquity is eventually

transformed.

Musaget is “the leader of the Muses.” Around this radiant lyre-player there moves the harmonious chorus of goddesses, daughters of Memory. As planetary souls around the sun, they create the harmony of the spheres. Who was the divine leader of the chorus for the Hellenes? Some said, “Apollo,” others, “Dionysus.” Still others, the junior sons of Hellas, affirmed the mystical unity of the two. “They are two, but they are one,” said these, “the two faces of the god at Delphi can be neither separated nor united with each other.” But who was Orpheus for the Hellenes?— The prophet of both gods: their hypostasis on earth, a two-faced and mysterious embodiment of them both. A lyre-player, like Phoebus, and the arranger of rhythm (Eurhythmos) , he sang in the night the harmony of the sounding spheres and invoked the sun through their movement; like Dionysus,[he was] himself a nocturnal sun and a sufferer of passions. Orpheus is the mystical Musaget, the sun of the dark depths, the logos of the deep cognition stemming from inner experience. Orpheus is the creative Word that moves the world, and signifies God the Word in the Christian symbolism of the first centuries. Orpheus is the beginning of harmony within chaos, the enchanter (zaklinatel ’) of chaos and its liberator in harmony. To invoke Orpheus is to invoke the divine organizing power of the Logos in the darkness of the ultimate depths within a person who cannot grasp her own being without it: “fiat Lux.”^

‘will, ’ they appear coupled with each other, and through this coupling ultimately generate an equally Dionysian and Apollinian form of art— Attic tragedy” (The Birth of Tragedy, in The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, transi. Walter Kaufmann, Vintage Books, New York, 1967, p. 33.

^ Ivanov, op. cit., s. 706.

163 Almost all major themes of Ivanov’s interpretation of the myth are stated or touched upon in the quoted excerpt.

Ivanov understands Orpheus as a historically evolving symbol: from its origins in the combined elements of the

Dionysian and Apollinian cults to their unity in the Greek tragedy to early Christian interpretations of the myth. At the heart of the myth’s symbolism is the idea of illuminating the dark depth of the psyche and the cosmos and thus liberating them from the forces of chaos.

Orpheus’ music, according to Ivanov, permeates the entire universe: from the rhythmic movement of the planets to the circle-dance of the Muses to the individual human soul— and this aspect steps forth mostly in conjunction with the pagan side of Orpheus. His Christian side, on the other hand, is marked by the predominance of the Logos, i. e. divinely inspired poetry. Just as his lyre was assumed to heaven and turned into a constellation, Orpheus’ significance culminates in the symbolism of light: fiat

Lux.*

By invoking the ancient myth Ivanov was responding to several cultural-historical circumstances at once. One was the rising popularity of Orpheus in Russian artistic

Compare this to Nietzsche’s “Licht wird allés, was ich fasse,” “All I seize turns into light,” in his Ecce homo which Ivanov undoubtedly knew.

164 circles of that time. Foremost among those who brought about this popularity, apart from Ivanov himself, were the prominent symbolist poets; Andrei Bely, Alexander Blok, and

Valery Briusov.^ Andrei Bely, for example, was a leading

figure among a group of poets, musicians, and artists who called themselves “argonauts”— after Bely’s poem of the

same name.* Blok, too, paid tribute to the ancient singer.

At the age of fifteen he translated from Latin into Russian an excerpt about Orpheus from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and

later, in his articles and poems, he repeatedly returned to the image of the mythical poet. He was especially fascinated by Orpheus’ backward glance and sacrifice.?

* The Orphic theme in the Silver Age art is not very well studied. We can point to the important pioneering paper by Zoya Yurieff, “Mif ob Orfee v tvorchestve Andreia Belogo, Aleksandra Bloka i Viacheslava Ivanova” (The Myth of Orpheus in the Writings of Andrey Bely, Alexander Blok, and Vyacheslav Ivanov), American Contributions to the Eighth International Congress of Slavists. Zagreb and Ljubljana, September 3- 9, 1978, ed. Victor Terras, Slavica Publishers, Inc., Columbus, Ohio, 1978, pp. 779-799.) More recently the topic was addressed in Hasty, Olga Peters. Tsvetaeva's Orphic journeys in the worlds of the word, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 111., 1996.

* Bely even imagined himself as the Orpheus of this group, and his poem “Golden Fleece” was something of an “anthem” among the early symbolist poets in Moscow (ibid., p. 781).

^ Yurieff notes, for example, that Blok alludes to the transgressive backward glance in his article “Merezhkovsky” (about an important writer and literary figure of the period) in which Eurydice signifies culture threatened by submersion into Hades. Even more

165 Another important factor that added relevance to

Ivanov’s appeal to Orpheus was the mystical quest, wide­

spread among Russian intellectuals of the time, for a “new

religious consciousness.” Perhaps for the first time since the Renaissance Orphism became a subject of a serious mystical interest on the part of artists and thinkers who

strove to formulate theoretically and implement in practice a new vision of art.* Orpheus had often served as a symbol of “unofficial” religiosity, and it was natural that

Russian intellectuals seeking spiritual paths “apart from all ecclesiastical tradition,”'^ found him an appropriate figure to encode their desire for the renewed connection between art and religion. Despite this nonecclesiastical

importantly, the glance and the poet’s self-sacrifice are the imagery of the closing poem in Blok’s enormously important cycle Stikhi o prekrasnoi dame (The Poems of the Fair Lady) (ibid., pp. 786-7).

* This vision was inspired mostly by Vladimir Solovyov’s doctrine of theurgy, i. e. humanity’s “continuation of the artistic cause begun by nature” with the ultimate goal of transfiguring reality in the name of truth, good, and beauty. Solovyov’s aesthetics stemmed from his metaphysics in which beauty was understood as the material realization of the good and truth. (Solovyov, Vladimir. “Obshchii smysl iskusstva” [The General Significance of Art], in Filosofiia iskusstva i literaturnaia kritika [Philosophy of Art and Literary Criticism], Iskusstvo, Moscow, 1991, ss. 74, 80, and 89).

® Dimitri Merezhkovsky’s phrase; see Zenkovsky, V. V. A History of Russian Philosophy, vol. 2, authorized translation by George L. Kline, Columbia University Press, New York, 1953, p. 755.

166 bent and also despite being strongly influenced by

Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity, Russian symbolists for the most part perceived the “new religious consciousness” as a synthesis of various religious traditions rather than a rejection of Christianity. This was characteristic of Vyacheslav Ivanov, but not only of him. “The idea of a synthesis,” Zenkovsky observes, “of

Christianity and paganism— which was much more a matter of paganism than of Christianity— was universally seductive.”'® There was the Nietzschean sense that historical Christianity had unjustly belittled and depreciated the vitality of man’s existence in this world which now had to be redeemed. The “new religious consciousness” thus sought, as Nicholas Berdyaev put it,

“to consecrate world culture religiously.”"

Finally, in Orpheus one found the unity of music and poetry that was so dear to the symbolists. Music was understood in symbolism as the epitome of art in general and the inner essence of any art in particular. Andrei

Bely expressed the symbolists’ extolled view of music with a characteristic flourish:

Loc. cit.

" Ibid., p. 756.

167 In music one finds the closest approximation of spirit’s depths to the surfaces of consciousness. The essence of man is captured by the symbols of the other, not by events. Music ideally expresses symbol. Symbol is therefore always musical. The transition from criticism to symbolism is inevitably accompanied by the awakening of music’s spirit. The spirit of music is the indicator of a transition in consciousness. <...> Modern humanity is aroused by the approach of inner music to the surface of consciousness. It is fascinated not by the event but by the symbol of the other. And until the other is realized the symbols of contemporary creativity will not be clarified. Only the spiritually nearsighted are seeking clarity in symbols. Their souls do not sound: they will learn nothing. Symbol is addressed to what was before time, to what will be. Music splashes from symbol. It bypasses consciousness. He who is not musical will understand nothing. Symbol awakens the soul of music. It always sounds when the world comes into our soul. When the soul becomes the world music will be beyond the world. If it is possible to affect someone at a distance, if magic is possible, we know what leads to it. The musical sounding of the soul enhanced beyond measure— this is what magic is. Enchanting is the soul that is musically tuned. There are charms in music. Music is the window through which the enchanting flux of Eternity is flowing into us and magic is splashing.

Curiously enough, even in Solovyov, who was a soberer thinker than Bely, we find a hint of Bely’s view of music as magic. In the essay we quoted above, Solovyov called music, along with “pure lyrical poetry,” a “direct or magical” apprehension of ideal beauty in art.*^

In addition to mystical-magical perceptions, there was a sense that music was the art that most adequately

Arabeski, in: Slavische Propylaen, Band 63, 1969, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München, ss. 224-5.

Solovyov, op. cit., s. 84

168 corresponded to the spirit of the age. “In our troubled,

seeking, transitory epoch,” wrote Nicholas Berdyaev, for

example, “not incarnate and not yet finished, the spirit of music lords it over the spirit of the plastic.

Berdyaev’s sentiment was echoed by Ivanov who wrote in his

essay “‘Predchuvstviia i predvestiia” (“Presentiments and

Presages”);

We are inclined to think that it is not the static architecture that will mark the rising organic epoch. . . but that dynamic and fluid architecture whose name is Music. This is borne out by the fact that music is predominantly the new and our kind of art in the circle-dance (v khorovode) of the arts of our dynamic and fluid culture.^

The combined sense that music expressed the essence of all art and at the same time was the chief art of the age provided a favourable setting for the revival of the mystical Orpheus. The amalgam of music, poetry, religion, and philosophy is precisely the medium in which Orpheus the poet-musician and mystagogue would be a most appropriate symbol.

Ivanov saw in ancient myths a symbolic reflection of a real experience, carried on by tradition. Myth could faithfully communicate, in Ivanov’s view, essential truths

The Meaning of the Creative Act, transi. Donald A. Lowrie, Harper and Brothers, New York, (no date; first published in Russian in 1915), p. 249.

Rodnoe 1 vselenskoe (The Native and the Universal), Respublika, Moscow, 1994, s. 41.

169 about the history of human culture, even though this communication did not occur on the literal level.

True, it is only in legend that the walls of the seven-gate Thebes put themselves together out of huge rocks, obedient to Amphion’s magical lyre. True, it is only in legend that all of a sudden a feud would stop in Lacedaemon at the first sounds of Terpander’s seven-string kithara. And yet it is not to legend, but to real life that musical-ritual construction and legislation belong, as well as musical-prophetic possession and ecstasy; healing by music and dance, frequent to the point of being customary; the rise of poetry from chant that bound the will of the gods by its measure and rhythm; and, finally, that “syncretic act” of time immemorial in which, for religious- practical purposes, all the musical arts and other artistic wizardry, such as acting and the first achievements in plastic forms and painting, were simultaneously represented— only to be separated from one another later and therefore lose their complete effective force.*®

Orpheus, Amphion, and Terpander represent for Ivanov a certain historical reality and the language of these symbols may be superior to that of modern philosophy.^

This does not mean that Ivanov found philosophy inferior to myth; rather, his approach was to combine mythical imagery with philosophical ideas in a way that would enrich both.

This brings us to the discussion of Ivanov’s mythosophia.

16 Ivanov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. Ill, s. 177.

*’ Contrasting it to the ancient mythical view of religion, for example, Ivanov calls Kant’s term “regulative ideas” a “Barbarism” that “fully corresponds to the prosaic nature of the concept it describes” (loc. cit.).

170 i. e. the medium in which the Orpheus myth’s role was

especially prominent.

Myth and Philosophy. The symbolists were interested in reviving not just individual mythical images and figures.

Their goal was much broader: to revive myth qua. myth and restore its relevance to contemporary culture. Nietzsche and Wagner, who had begun this process, were among Ivanov’s

“heroes” whose cause he wanted to uphold and carry further.

In 1907 Ivanov published an important essay titled “O veselom remesle i umnom veselii” (“Of Gay Craft and

Intelligent Gaiety”) dealing with a broad array of issues in the history of art and culture.** Animated in large part by a mixture of Nietzschean-Wagnerian and Slavophilic motives, the essay explores the relationships among contemporary art, mythopoeia, the folk, and religion. In the closing section, characteristically entitled “Dreams about the Artist-Folk,” Ivanov provides a few concise formulations of myth’s role in contemporary culture— the role, that is, that he wished myth to reclaim.

Art is moving toward an encounter with the soul of the folk. From symbol myth is born. Symbol is the

** The essay was based on Ivanov’s public lecture and published in the journal Zolotoe Runo, no. V, 1907; it was later included in the collection Po zvezdam (By the Stars) (cf. note in Ivanov, op. cit., vol. Ill, p. 707) .

171 ancient legacy of the folk. The old myth turns out to be a relative of the new one.'*

Mythopoeia is thus viewed as an extension of symbolism, and the latter is linked up with the folk tradition.

Ivanov defined myth as “a synthetic proposition in which the symbol-subject is given a verbal predicate.”

Myth begins, according to him, with “proto-myth,” i. e. a simple proposition like “the sun is born,” “the sun dies,”

“god enters into man,” “heaven inseminates his spouse-Earth with rain.”“ This simple and brief proto-myth, Ivanov maintains, is experienced before it is enacted in ritual, and what is usually called “myth” is then gradually elaborated as an etiological narrative about the origins and the meaning of the ritual.^' The life of myth continues, in Ivanov’s view, in poetry.

The livelier the feeling a poet has of “realiora in realibus,” i. e. the feeling of the pathos of Goethe’s words: “All transient things are merely imitations”— the more naturally does it touch and correspond to the proto-images, emerging in the imagination, of ontic (bytlistvennogo) thinking that still lives in the dark memory of the ancient myth. And, conversely, the more deeply a poetic idea is rooted in the native soil of myth, the more significant and internally truthful does it rise

'* Ibid., s. 76.

Ivanov, op. cit., vol. IV, s. 518.

2' Ibid., s. 773n.

172 before those of us who have not yet lost the sense of its magnetic force.^

We are not concerned here with the scientific merits of Ivanov’s doctrine from the point of view of contemporary myth theory. What is important is that he views myth as part of a continuum that also includes ritual, i. e. a religious (mystical) act, and poetry, i. e. (secular) art.

Contemporary poetry, according to Ivanov, aspires to become mythopoeia, as it is drawn toward the ideal of a

“choric” mystical act in which myth and religion will finally be reconciled with it. The Slavic spirit, Ivanov believes, is a medium that is especially favourable for such a reconciliation.

The language of poetry— our language— must grow and is already growing from the roots of the folk language (narodnogo slova) through the thick layer of contemporary speech to become the forest, with a deep and strong voice, of the pan-Slavic word. Through the layers of contemporary cognition poetic cognition must sprout from the depths of the unconscious. [Poetry’s] religious soul can rise from the lowlands of nescience of God, through the clouds of theomachy, to the white summits of seeing God’s face. Surmounting individualism as an abstract principle, as well as the “Euclidian intellect,” and opening its eyes to the faces of the divine, it will write on its tripod these words; Chorus, Myth, and [Mystical] Act.“

Myth’s contemporary role, Ivanov believes, is to help lead the culture of modernity out of its irreligious impasse and

^ Ibid., s. 518.

“Loc. cit.

173 thus free “the soul of the folk” from the threat of

“spiritual slavery.” Alongside art and religion, myth is

called upon to create a new culture where art will be

reunited with the life of the folk.

Then our artist and our folk will meet with each other. The land will be covered with orchestras, phimelas, and round-dances. The genuine mythopoeia will be revived in tragedy or comedy and in folk dithyramb or mystery-play (for genuine mythopoeia is collective [soborno]) , in which freedom itself will find an absolute, unconditional, and spontaneous self- affirmation (for the choruses will be the true expression and voice of the folk’s will)

An important dimension of Ivanov’s doctrine of myth is that it stems from a certain philosophy of history. This philosophy is based on several pairs of opposite categories, the most important of which are art and life, artist and community, and “organic” vs. “critical” periods.

In “organic” epochs art is an integral part of the overall life of the community and an artist works from a communal religious impulse. Such were, according to Ivanov, the pre-Hellenistic and the medieval periods.^ These

“organic” epochs are followed by “critical” ones in which

“a single theurgic religion” is secularized and, consequently, disintegrates into mutually isolated artistic

^‘‘ibid., s. 77. Ivanov uses "orchestra" here in the archaic Greek sense, i. e. as the chorus dancing in the space between the stage and the audience.

^Ibid., ss. 178 and 62-3, respectively.

174 and religious domains. An artist becomes an “idle

philanderer,” i. e. his activity loses its communal

character, and autonomous art comes to the fore. Such were

the periods of Hellenistic culture, culminating in

Alexandrian “refinement and decay,” and the irreligious

culture of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.^ With

Beethoven and Wagner Ivanov associates the beginning of a

new epoch that would overcome the modern “critical” epoch.

Beethoven, Ivanov remarks, returned to music its

“dithyrambic orchestra and to the choric orchestra the face

of an individualistic hero with his tragic myth.” Wagner, whom Ivanov calls a “mystagogue,” continued Beethoven’s

cause and together they awakened Nietzsche, the “prime mover” of the modern soul.” This new epoch, as we saw, is

called upon to restore the unity of art, religion, and

communal life. Myth’s original foundational role in

culture is seen by Ivanov as both an instrument and a result of this restoration. The new organic epoch is

supposed to resolve the series of oppositions that underlay cultural evolution: the artist will be reunited with the community, art with life, and communal life with religion.

^Ibid., s. 179.

” lbid., s. 64.

175 Central to Ivanov’s philosophy is the model in which original unity is followed by disintegration that, in turn, resolves into a new unity. This philosophy required the restoration of myth, justified it, and provided a cultural- historical interpretation of individual myths. This is especially true, as we shall see, of Ivanov’s engagement with the Orpheus myth. Ivanov’s philosophical views were therefore instrumental to his attempts to revive myth qua myth, i. e. as a sacred narrative that expresses fundamental truths of our culture and is used as a tool of the letter’s transformation.

Ivanov’s desire to merge myth, poetry, and philosophy found expression in his “theoretical” style. This style is a carefully crafted combination of theory and— often intentionally archaicized— poetic and mythical imagery.

The result is mythosophic expression, an especially characteristic example of which we quoted in the beginning of this chapter. A conscious combination of mythical and philosophical expression is a distinct characteristic of mythosophia. In such a combination myth undoubtedly loses its immediate character and becomes, as in Plato’s Timaeus, a consciously employed reinforcement, as it were, of philosophy. Its content, however, is not rejected altogether, but merges with that of theory. This is precisely what Ivanov does with the Orpheus myth. Even

176 though the literal meaning of the myth (music moving stones

and trees, attracting birds and animals, calming seastorms,

etc.) recedes in importance, it is not rejected as

arbitrary and accidental, but becomes an integral part of the myth’s symbolic meaning which is at the same time

interpreted in philosophical terms.

Art and Theurgy. We have mentioned above that Ivanov understood Orpheus as a symbol of ancient theurgic art.

That was not, however, the only interpretation of Orpheus

in Ivanov. Orpheus also signified for him an artist as distinct from a theurgist. The distinction between theurgy and art in Ivanov’s philosophy was rather subtle but it was of crucial importance for determining the possibilities of art in general and music in particular. The semantics of

Orpheus’ image shifted, depending on whether it represented theurgic or “normal” art.

In his 1913-14 essay “On the Limits of Art” Ivanov proposed a scheme of the artistic-creative process that is designed to delimit art and theurgy. Central to his analysis are the notions of spiritual ascent and artistic descent reflecting the phases of inspiration and realization of an artwork, respectively. Ivanov’s scheme emerges from his analysis of an excerpt from Dante’s Vita

Nuova (ca. 1293) in which the medieval poet describes a mysterious vision he had in a dream after his second

177 encounter with Beatrice. He saw Beatrice lying in the hands of the Lord who made her eat of the poet ’ s heart that

He held in his hand, after which His rejoicing turned into bitter weeping and He soared into heaven. When he woke up from this dream, Dante wrote a sonnet in which he described his vision and asked other troubadours to help him explain it.M

Taking Dante’s description of the sonnet’s origin as a point of departure, Ivanov proceeds to analyze it into a series of the states of the poet’s psyche. The creation of an artwork, according to this analysis, begins with the artist’s spiritual ascent driven by a “Dionysian excitement” that leads at its peak to a “Dionysian epiphany” or vision into which this excitement resolves.

In this epiphany the artist reaches a “cathartic tranquility” that is followed by another, weaker phase of

Dionysian excitement, this time leading to an “Apollinian dream” in which the artist conceives for the first time the ideal image of the future artwork. From this image, through yet another phase of Dionysian excitement, stems the actual creation of the final artwork.^ Ivanov thus sums up the entire process:

^Ivanov, op. cit., vol. II, ss. 628-9.

^Ivanov, op. cit., vol. II, ss. 630-31.

178 The creation of forms manifests itself... in three points: a) the mystical epiphany of inner experience that can be either a clear vision or the vision of higher realities only in exceptional cases, and as yet lies outside the boundaries of artistic-creative process proper; /?) the Apollinian vision of the purely artistic ideal that is the dream-vision of poetic fantasy which poets are used to calling their creative “dreams”; and 7 ) the final realization of the dream in meaning, sound, and visible or tangible matter.^

The crucial point about the ascent and descent is that

the first is, Ivanov maintains, a “natural” path of the man

in the artist, whereas the second is an “abnormal” action

of the artist proper. “In creating an artwork,” he writes,

“the artist descends from the spheres to which he

penetrates as a spiritual man; and one can therefore say

that there are many who ascend but few who can descend, i.

e. [few] genuine artists.”^' But even though the artist

himself, according to Ivanov, descends in the moment of

creation, others are “moved” by his art in the opposite

direction, i. e. they ascend, thus fulfilling art’s

vocation to lead man “from the real to the more real” (“a realibus ad realiora”), in Ivanov’s own memorable phrase.

This is the justification, Ivanov believes, of the artist’s

sacrifice that consists in reversing the direction of man’s

“normal” spiritual path, i. e. relinquishing the man in

^°Ibid., ss. 631-2.

^‘Ibid., ss. 629-30.

^Ibid., s. 638.

179 himself. When it is done for the right reason and in a

genuinely artistic way, Ivanov thinks, the artist’s descent

is both more sacrificial and more blessed than the normal

ascent.^ The significance of the artist’s sacrifice is that he shares with his fellow-men the spiritual riches he

acquires in the realm of the “more real,” i. e. he gives away his acquisitions while others accumulate them.

Creative work would not be a sacrifice if it were a new spiritual gain; on the contrary, it is the giving away of force, radiation of energy, torment and passion in the sphere of a higher spirituality, responsibility, and the sin of embodiment as it were. But at the same time, it is a redeeming sacrifice, as well as a sweet and passionate one.”

Ivanov describes the cause of art in lofty and reverent terms; his attitude is that of awe and veneration.

It must also be noted that he did not view his analysis as final and complete: it was not supposed to fully disclose what he perceived as the mystery of art. “Mysterious is the nature of any creation,” he wrote later, “worthy of being called a work of art. It is at once created with regard to its creator, and self-creative: "natura naturata' and 'natura naturans.'” An artwork, he believes, does not remain inert, either within itself or with regard to the external world. The original energy that was imparted to

”lbid., s. 634.

”lbid., s. 640.

180 it by the artist persists even after its creation, overflowing from within into the world around. “It is not an inert artefact nor a still-born child of freedom,” writes Ivanov, “but multiplies within itself the life that was put into it and then radiates it out into the world as an effective force {deistvennoiu siloi)

The chief contrast between art and theurgy, according to Ivanov, arises from the reversal of the ascending and descending motions in the latter as compared with the former. In theurgy man descends and the artist ascends.

“In the art that we hope for,” writes Ivanov, “man must descend to the point of a spiritual and real nestling-up

(priniknovenlia) to Mother-Earth, as well as to the point of a most real penetration (proniknoveniia) into her; whereas the artist must ascend to the point of an immediate encounter with higher essences at every step of his artistic act. ” From the point of view of the artist’s work, this means that “each stroke of his chisel or brush must be. . . guided not by him, but by the spirits of divine hierarchies.

The result is that, while art creates symbols, theurgy, according to Ivanov, is the creation of life

^^Ivanov, op. cit., vol. Ill, s. 176.

^®Ivanov, op. cit., vol. II, s. 650.

181 itself. The word “theurgy,” Ivanov remarks, is too lofty

and sacrosanct to be applied to the usual activities of an

artist: “the mysterial act of a symbol is not that of

life.Even though every genuine symbol, according to

Ivanov, embodies “the living divine truth” and therefore

belongs to reality, it still represents a reality “of a

lower order.”

A symbol as we know it in art is an infinitely less animate life than Nature, for she is life even in the face of God. A symbol, on the other hand, is a mediating and mediated life; it is not the form that contains reality but that through which reality flows, now glowing and now fading away in it— the medium of the epiphanies that stream through it. And the liberation of matter achieved by art is merely a symbolic liberation.^*

It is at this point that Ivanov recalls Solovyov’s poem Three Labors to illustrate the distinction between art

and theurgy. The poem was an important source of

inspiration for Ivanov and deserves a close look. Written

in 1882, the year when Rimsky-Korsakov ’ s Snovrmaiden was completed, the poem encapsulates in poetic form Solovyov’s religious-philosophical view of art. In this poem Solovyov presents Orpheus as the theurgic culmination of human artistic creativity that begins with Pygmalion’s chiselling of stone into the beautiful shape of the artist’s dream.

^^Ibid. , s. 646.

^*Ibid. , s. 647.

182 Galatea, i. e. the beautiful dream that Pygmalion realizes in the mundane material and thus gives life to, is overwhelmed, however, by the dragon of evil and darkness: she is Andromeda in desperate need of a second hero,

Perseus. This next hero raises his mirror-like shield and, vanquished by its own reflection, the monster vanishes in the bottomless depths of the sea whence it has emerged.

But even Perseus’ victory over the monstrosities of existence in this world, says Solovyov, does not save

Andromeda (who now turns into Eurydice) from the ultimate evil, i. e. from death. To overcome this latter is left to

Orpheus’ wave-like song:

BojiHbi necHH Bcenoôennoü rioTpflcnH Anna cBon, H BRQEUKQ CMGpTH ÔnsnHOf^ 3 BpHflHKy OTflaGT.

(The waves of triumphant song Shook the dome of Hades, And the master of pale-faced death Releases Eurydice. ) ”

Pygmalion is, Solovyev suggests, an artist who creates the beautiful embodiment of an idea; Perseus an artist who can hold up to life’s ugliness the letter’s own true image and thus protect the ideal beauty; and, finally, Orpheus an

^’Solovyev, VI. “Nepodvizhno lish ’ solntse liubvi...” Stikhi. Proza. P i s ’ma. Vospominaniia sovremennikov (“The Sun of Love Alone Remains Unmoved...” Poems. Prose. Letters. Reminiscences of Contemporaries), ed. A. Nosov, Moskovskii rabochii, Moscow, 1990, ss. 33- 4.

183 artist capable of taking living beauty beyond its present state in which it is forever confronted with death.

Orpheus is therefore, according to Solovyov, the truly theurgic artist whose song completes the purpose of art, and it is his victory that provides the ultimate justification for the previous two, non- or pre-theurgic artistic exploits.

In Ivanov's interpretation, the artist Pygmalion cannot claim the power of Perseus, i. e. the “archangelic might,” and of Orpheus, i. e. of Christ the resurrector.

It is appropriate for an artist to feel the theurgic longing, Ivanov believes, but it is a transgression to assume that his art has theurgic power in the present order of things. “All attempts to find magic in art,” Ivanov writes, “pervert the sanctity of theurgic longing lying at art’s root.”‘*° Within the limits of this world art must remain art.

Ivanov objects to an artist’s attempts at transcending the boundaries of art mainly because he sees in such attempts a violation of “the laws of a given state of nature.” Nature is alive, Ivanov maintains, and her part in human creativity is not passive. Moreover, her

^°Ibid., s. 649.

184 creativity is truly real as opposed to that of the human

artist:

Matter does more than the so-called “creator” and “poet”: it shows its will to follow the spirit along its secret paths not figuratively and conjecturally, but directly and in actuality. There is more sanctity in marble or in the element of word, or in any flesh of any art— than in the human spirit that symbolically animates this visible or audible flesh in an artwork.

Matter, incidentally, for Ivanov appears to be equivalent

to the World Soul and the artist’s task is to seek her

consent to embody an ideal.^ The worship of art,

according to Ivanov, commits the fallacy of valuing only

abstract form, forgetting that beauty, including the beauty

of nature, is a symbol of “divine essences.” An artist’s

role with regard to nature must be like that of Joseph by

Mary’s side. “The holy carpenter Joseph, engaged to Mary, must be [an artist’s] patron and prototype,” declares

Ivanov, “he will be old... and like Joseph, humble to the

end and to an almost complete melting away of his own

external face; and, like Joseph, only an obedient dream-

seer and vigilant, reverent keeper and guide of the World

Soul conceiving directly from the Holy Spirit.”^

‘‘‘Ibid., s. 647.

“^Ibid. , ss. 631-2.

“^Ibid. , s. 650.

185 There is an ambivalence in Ivanov’s view of the relationship between art and theurgy. Solovyov viewed art as a pref igurement of theurgy that would coincide with the end of history. His view presents the picture of art’s gradual ascent toward that ultimate point. Ivanov’s half- mythical history suggests that art has already been theurgical in a golden age, when it was not yet severed from its religious roots. At present, Ivanov believes, the artist should, on the one hand, dream about or at least long for a theurgic power but, on the other hand, refrain from attempts to overstep the boundary that separates his art from theurgy. “Let us not deceive ourselves,” remarks

Ivanov, “beauty will not save the world.” If Dostoevsky was right in supposing that it would, Ivanov submits, it was not the beauty created by “Promethean children wishing to rob heaven” that he had in mind. In other words, the

Titanic character of modern art prevents it from being theurgic. Theurgy will have a “divine and miraculous efficacy” directed at “the liberation of the World Soul.”

To be able to participate in it the artist must have a child-like faith in God that would inspire his prayer-like song.'” Apart from vague allusions to the “divine and miraculous” nature of a theurgic act, Ivanov leaves the

'”lbid. , s. 650.

186 question of a transition from art to theurgy suspended. It

is clear, nevertheless, that such a transition would

involve for Ivanov divine grace rather than man's purely

independent effort. Such a conclusion is suggested by

Ivanov’s appeals to avoid “Prometheanism,” i. e. to eschew acting apart from and in opposition to divine authority, and affirmation of faith in God as a necessary condition

for theurgy.

The ambivalent relationship between art and theurgy is reflected in Ivanov’s understanding of the Orpheus myth.

Orpheus served as a symbol of both art and theurgy in

Ivanov’s semi-philosophical, semi-poetic constructions and sometimes the boundary between these two meanings of the mythical figure became blurred. It is especially true of

its interpretation given in one of Ivanov’s essay on

Scriabin. In the introduction to Musaget’s mystical

literature series, as we remember, Orpheus was described as an artist whose music and poetry move the universe. That was a description of a theurgic artist, as was Ivanov’s understanding of Orpheus derived from Solovyov’s poem. In the essay “Scriabin’s View of Art,” however, Ivanov tones down Orpheus’ powers and the ancient singer becomes the symbol of an artist rather than a theurgist. At the same time, however, he elevates the “liberating” power of art to almost theurgic heights.

187 Orpheus is a symbol of art that is not merely free, but also liberating: [this art is] free to the extent that it liberates the captive world. For he who is alive, enlivens and he who is truly free, liberates [others]. Likewise, genuine art is not only free, but also liberating.^

Ivanov gives an interesting interpretation of the

Eurydice story in this essay that vaguely recalls the version of the myth given by Boethius and in the Musica enchiriadis. An artist, Ivanov believes, is better off if he is unaware of the meaning and essence of his labor. Had

Orpheus not known that he was leading Eurydice out of the kingdom of darkness, he would not have looked back and would not have lost her. The tragedy of an artist, according to Ivanov, up to now has been that, when sufficiently advanced on his way to theurgy, he no longer remains unaware of his cause. (Theurgy, let us note, is therefore a synthesis of self-conscious reflection and spontaneous artistic creativity for Ivanov.) But his awareness of the latter undercuts the artist's spontaneous ability to perform his ultimate task.

At a high point of their ascent to the peaks of theurgy, the mystery of their journey was revealed to artists’ eyes. At that moment they were pierced by the sudden memory of Her, the One (Edinoi) , whom Orpheus called “Eurydice.” Trembling and with ardent longing they turned their glance backward, to the abyss of nonbeing whence the Beauty-Life arose under their guidance— and the magical power left them, and

^Ivanov, op. cit., vol. Ill, s. 176.

188 they remained on this side of the theurgic threshold/*

Olga Deshart points out that Ivanov had doubts about theurgy’s beatific character.^ Deshart sees the source of

Ivanov’s reservation in his conviction, touched upon above, that an artist must respect the current condition of

“nature.” This is how she summarizes Ivanov’s view:

No matter how elevating it may be, a creative contact [with nature] must avoid even the least coerciveness. One must remember that nature is alive. It is inadmissible to impose on her any form of a higher law if such form is not originally inherent to her as a potentiality striving toward manifestation, or as a polarity seeking an opposite force that would complement it.*

Without nature’s consent even the purely spiritual

“insemination” of her through a genial work of art turns into a “distorting magic,” observes Deshart. Yet even though Ivanov understood theoretically that theurgy lies

*Loc. cit.

■^’“Inspirational ‘daring,’” she writes, “as well as creative faith in the possibility, necessity, and beneficence of ‘theurgic art’ did not entirely possess Ivanov’s soul. In the latter’s depth there sounded a troubling and constantly intensifying voice that spoke of the impious and violent nature of a voluntary interference with the world’s destiny. And that voice was victorious...” (Deshart, Olga, Commentary on Ivanov’s essay “‘Religoznoe delo Vladimira Soloviova” [“Vladimir Solovyov’s Religious Cause”], in Ivanov, op. cit., vol. Ill, s. 790).

*Ibid., s. 792.

189 beyond the possibilities of art as such, the artist in him resisted these constraints.^

Both Ivanov ’ s view of art vis-à-vis theurgy and his interpretations of the Orpheus myth thus remained perched on the prongs of the same dilemma: art must strive to be, yet must not become theurgy. Orpheus is, likewise, understood alternatively as a theurgic musician and an artist. A similar sense of ambivalence marks Ivanov's view of Scriabin whom he considered an heir to Orpheus’ mystical-artistic cause.

2. Scriabin and Orpheus

Scriabinas Mysticism and Ivanov’s Theurgy, In his analysis of

Scriabin’s musical mysticism Richard Taruskin remarks that the composer “was the sole musician of his time and place to cast himself in the Orphic image. Scriabin was indeed cast in the image of Orpheus but this was not done by the composer himself. It was primarily Vyacheslav

Ivanov who put the Orphic stamp on the composer’s posthumous portrayals. Ivanov wrote two essays on

Scriabin: “Scriabin’s View of Art” that we are already

^Ibid., s. 796.

^°Defining Russia Musically. Historical and Hermeneutic Essays, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1997, pp. 308.

190 partly familiar with, and “Scriabin and the Spirit of

Revolution” (1917). It is only in the first of these that the composer is explicitly compared with Orpheus; in the second Orpheus’ place is taken over by Dionysus/"

There were two main traits that Ivanov valued highly in Scriabin; “innate mysticism” and artistic genius. Even more importantly for Ivanov, Scriabin aspired to unite his mysticism with his art.

As for the mythical Orpheus, music was for him the principle that moves and constructs the world. It was supposed to blossom into words and evoke images of all and every beauty. It was supposed to entice nature

into its enchanting circle and pour consonance into the harmony of the spheres."

In Scriabin, according to Ivanov, the ancient Orphic faith in the genuinely liberating and world-transfiguring power of art was revived. The composer was an “anointed theurgist,” Ivanov eulogizes, a genuine incarnation of

Orpheus’ spirit.

Oh SbiJT H3 Tex neBuoB (raxos «e Skeji Hobstihc), ^To BeiiaKDT ce6H Hac jrexLHMxa mh JiHp, KoTopHM Ha 3ape BexoB noBHHOBajthcb Jlyx, xaMeHB, iipeBO, 3BepB, Bona, ohohb, ec^Mp.

H o Me)KiLy Tetvi x a x B c e noTObXKH n p M B H asajth cb , H tO nOBJXHHMT-I BOOTBMH BOLLUTH Ha DpaHHîJÏÎ HHp, - OaxjiHTBH BpeBHHe,xaaaJTOCB, yanaBaJiHCB Hm,HM OUHHM OnSTTB -H KOJieSaJIH MHp.

^‘Ivanov, op. cit., s. 192.

"Ibid., s. 175.

191 (He was one of those singers— as was Novalis— Who know that they are heirs to the lyres That commanded, at the dawn of times. Spirit, stone, tree, beasts, water, fire, and ether.

Yet while all [other] scions confessed That they were late guests at the wedding feast. He alone seemed to recognize the ancient spells That shook the world. )

Others merely remembered ancient theurgy, continues Ivanov, but Scriabin “willed and acted” as a theurgic artist.*

Amidst this exultant praise, however, we read something unexpected, namely, that Scriabin was “merely an artist,” after all, seized by a “sacred madness” in his belief that the World Soul was ready to be transformed by his music:

Such was Scriabin’s sacred furfur— the furfur that is the only source of all living things. For all living things are born of ecstasy and madness! Such was the radiant energy of this solar artist who forgot at times that he was merely an artist, as the sun, melting and emitting its life-giving force, seems to forget that it is a heavenly body rather than a flow of fluid fire.

The essay ends with a discussion of Scriabin’s attempts at the synthesis of the arts whose ultimate purpose was liturgical and sacramental. Scriabin was, concludes

Ivanov, an artist who gave up his “superhuman nature” for the sake of humanity and wished for the flame of a new

^^Ibid., s. 181.

*Ibid., s. 182 .

"Ibid., s. 175 (my italics— V. M.)

192 Pentecost that would burn out the “old Adam” in him.* He was, in other words, a genuine artist prepared to sacrifice the man in himself for elevating humanity further toward

“the more real”— but only an artist, nonetheless.

Taruskin points out that he came to trust Ivanov’s interpretation of the composer. This interpretation is indeed compelling, especially because Ivanov’s highly favourable view of Scriabin was later echoed by Boris de

Schloezer^— another authority Taruskin relies on. And yet an analysis of Scriabin’s own philosophical and mystical writings raises serious questions about the Ivanov-

Schloezer-Taruskin benign understanding of the composer’s project.* Here our concern, however, is with how

Scriabin’s artistic-mystical aspirations correspond to

Ivanov’s doctrine of theurgy.

Perhaps the most fundamental feature of Scriabin’s thought is that there is no distinction, central to Ivanov,

*Ibid., s. 188.

* Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, transi. Nicholas Slonimsky, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987 (first published in 1923) .

*Despite its hypercritical character, A. F. Losev’s 1919-21 essay “Mirovozzrenie Skriabina” (“Scriabin’s Worldview”) can provide a useful corrective to such benign interpretations (Losev, A. F. Strast’ k dialektike. Literaturnye razmyshleniia filosofa (A Passion for Dialectics: A Philosopher’s Literary Thoughts), Sovetskii pisatel, Moscow, 1990, ss. 256-301).

193 between “man” and “artist”: the latter completely displaces the former. The erasure of this distinction is the result of Scriabin’s extreme solipsism. “Everything is my creativity,” wrote Scriabin, “Everything that exists, does so only in my consciousness. Everything is my activity which, in turn, is only what it produces... The world (time and space) is the process of my creation. . . The world is my creativity, which is nothing but the world. <...> I create the world through the play of my moods, smile, sigh, caress, anger, hope, and doubt. In a world like this there can be no ascent or descent “from the real to the more real” and Ivanov’s crucial contrast between art and theurgy simply collapses under the pressure of this artistic solipsism.

Further, the theurgic artist’s reverent attitude to nature is replaced with an ardent desire to “dematerialize the cosmos.” “I am the fire,” proclaims Scriabin, “that has embraced the universe and hurled it into the abyss of chaos... I am the blind play of unbridled forces. I am the sleeping consciousness, the extinguished Reason.St.

Joseph’s protective guardianship of the World Soul that

^^""Zapisi A. N. Skriabina” (“A. N. Scriabin’s Notes”), Russkie propilei, vol. 6, ed. M. O. Gershenzon, Sabashnikov, Moscow, 1919, ss. 136-7, 139.

“ Ibid., s. 144.

194 Ivanov insists an artist must practice is overtaken in

Scriabin by eroticism with sadistic overtones: “I want to... take (the world as a woman). <...> I shall exhaust

You with caresses and torture, the craving world, and then take You. And in this Divine Act I shall know You as one with me. I shall let You know [the ultimate] bliss.”**

An artist’s descent to nature, Ivanov believed, was a process in which a union with God was accomplished. “The highest law for the descending [artist], ” Ivanov wrote, “is the veneration of the lower being and obedience to the will of the Earth to whom he brings the ring of wedding with the higher being— not the tablet of supersensible truths: only then does creativity become the good news and [nature’s] obedience to the artist a free submission to God— Who is also freedom— rather than slavery to man-the-coercer.

In other words, the artist is the empathetic mediator that brings the will of God to the consenting nature and thus liberates it. God, man, and nature are united in the

Ivanovian creative act into a mutually loving and

**Ibid., ss. 139, 153. The masculine gender of “mir,” the Russian for “world,” gives this phrase a bisexual ring, which is especially apparent because of the masculine form of the adjective edinym (""edinym so mnoi,” “as one with me”).

“Ivanov, op. cit., ss. 643-4.

195 collaborating triad. In Scriabin one finds a directly opposite, extreme Nietzschean sentiment :

Rise against me, God, prophets, and elements. As you created me by the power of your word, Sabaoth— unless you lied about it— even so do I annihilate you by the indestructible power of my desire and my thought. You are no more, and I am free. The smile of my blissful joy, infinite and free, obliterates by its radiance the timid and cautious glitter of your suns... I am God, I am nothing— I want to be everything.“

This theomachy is deeply rooted in Scriabin’s romantic anthropocentrism. The highest (divine) synthesis, i. e. the ultimate coalescence of the human individual, society, and the universe, he believes, “can only be accomplished by human consciousness.” “The highest individuality,” he continues, “that will be the central consciousness of the world, will liberate the spirit from the shackles of the past and take along all living beings in its divine creative flight. I speak of the final ecstasy that is already near.Scriabin leaves no doubt that it is he himself who represents this “highest individuality.”

The cornerstone of Ivanov’s understanding of theurgy, as we remember, is the letter’s real action upon the world contrasted with art’s purely “symbolic” effect. Scriabin eliminates this contrast, too, through his ludic- spiritualist metaphysics, i. e. the doctrine of the world

“Scriabin, op. cit., ss. 145, 154

“Ibid., s. 171.

196 as pure play of his own spirit. Play, in fact, is as

essential in Scriabin’s solipsistic metaphysics and

cosmology as the “creative flight” (tvorcheskli poryv).

The “I” of the composer is often described as a (divine)

game: “I am Godl I am nothing, I am play, I am freedom, I

am life, I am the limit, I am the summit, I am God. ... I

am the blind play of unbridled forces.In Scriabin’s

fanciful and heavily erotic cosmology, the birth of life is

imagined as the play of divine light with primordial waters. The latter sing glory to their creator:

M bI pOaCHeHEI TBOMM XOTSHBieM pSi 3 JTM R Hac oTSnecKH SeccMepTHoro Jiywa M bi 3HaMeHysM MMp o S m s h o b h T bi b H sc HnrpaeuiB MHOBoneHHocTBKD

(We are born from your desire for difference We are awakened by the glitter of the immortal ray We signify the world of deception and appearances You play in us as a foamy spring.)“

It is natural that in the world where everything comes from the artist’s “I” as a creative effusion of ephemeral appearances the problem of the “other” should be eliminated as well. We have already seen what happens to such

“others” as God and nature in Scriabin’s thought. A similar operation is performed on the “thou,” i. e. the artist’s fellow-humans. “You exist only because I exist,”

“ Ibid., s. 142.

“ Ibid., s. 206.

197 writes Scriabin in an imaginary dialogue with such an

“other,” “I create you. <...> There is only one consciousness: mine.”^ The “other’s” claims for an equally real existence as that of the artist’s “self” are flatly refuted:

You will tell me: I am God, too, because I experience the same things as you do.— No, [you are not], because I have created your consciousness by the power of my free creativity (you did not draw what is in your consciousness from within yourself). By saying that you are God, you profess me. But you will not be God, you will only be like God, my reflection. I have engendered you.

Without a real “other” the artist, obviously, cannot fulfill Ivanov’s requirement for leading humanity “a realibus ad r e a l i o r a unless, that is, the elimination of the “other” is viewed as the letter’s “more real” state.

In this context Ivanov’s notions of an artist’s self- sacrifice and self-limitation also lose their meaning.

Rather, God, the world, and humanity are summarily sacrificed to the artist’s cause. The sensibility that animated Scriabin’s dream of the Mysterium was best expressed by the composer himself in the following ecstatic vision:

Flourish, peoples, create, negate me and rise against me. Rise against me, elements 1 I resurrect you, the horrors of the past and all the fearful, disgusting

*’lbid., ss. 150, 155.

®*Ibid. , s. 156.

198 images, and give you a full bloom. Try to swallow me, the gaping jaws of dragons; snakes, seize, strangle, and sting mel Everyone and all, seek to destroy me, and when everything rises against me, then I shall begin my divine game. I shall conquer you by love. I shall give myself away and take [you]. But I shall never be vanquished, nor shall I be the victor myself. I shall reinforce everything through my struggle, and give everything its full blossom. Then shall I know you, know myself, then shall I be creating you and myself, for I am nothing, I am only what I create. Ours will be a joyous, free, and Divine Game. You will be free and divine in me, and I shall be your God. You will be me, for I have created you, and I [shall be] you, for I am only what I have created. You will be Gods, for I am a god. . . I am nothing, and I am what I have created.”*’

Ivanov remarked in his essay “On the Limits of Art” that “[i]t is easy for an artist, who is a frequent guest in the world of fantasy, to replace the inaccessible ideal of theurgical creation with the figuratively realizable attempt at magic.”™ As an artist with mystical aspirations, Scriabin is an example of a complete obliteration, in his imagination only of course, of the boundary between art and reality, and hence between art and theurgy. The result is, in fact, the preclusion of theurgy altogether, for the latter requires such a boundary and cannot be conceived without it— in Ivanov’s view, at any rate. It is therefore not surprising that Ivanov, in the end, recognizes in Scriabin an artist with theurgic

*’lbid. , s. 152.

™Ivanov, op. cit., s. 649.

199 aspirations rather than a genuine theurgist. What is more difficult to understand is how he managed to ignore the enormous difference between Scriabin’s and his own vision.

Ivanov was acutely aware of the dangers of Titanism and, as we saw, did not appreciate the efforts of “Promethean children” to “rob the heavens.” In his interpretation he virtually omitted, nonetheless, the open and defiant

Prometheanism of Scriabin’s mysticism.

In the last years of his life Scriabin’s visions of the Mysterium, i. e. the mystical act that was to actualize the dematerialization of the cosmos in an upsurge of spiritual energy, became somewhat less fantastical. The

Preparatory Act was a result of the composer’s compromise with “inert” and unyielding reality: it was to serve as a preparation of mankind for the final mystery.^ As

Scriabin was becoming increasingly concerned with the practical side of his project, his entire attitude began to change. Schloezer reports that this self-limitation and

“sobering-up, ” as it were, were parallelled by a change in

Scriabin’s mystical attitude. “Through his inner

^‘Siegfried Schibli remarks in conjunction with this change that, instead of a temple in India (that Scriabin planned to build for the one-time performance of the Mysterium) the composer seemed to be ready to settle for something like Richard Wagner’s theater in Bayreuth (Alexander Skrjabin und seine Musik. Grenziiberschreitungen eines prometheischen Geistes, R. Piper & Co. Verlag, München und Zürich, 1983, S. 338).

200 experience,” writes Schloezer, “from theomachy and self­ deification, Scriabin arrived at the recognition of his own nature and human nature in general, as the self-sacrificial act of the Deity. That was, apparently, a beginning of a new period in Scriabin’s spiritual evolution that was interrupted by his premature death.

Summing up our analysis of the relation between

Scriabin’s mysticism and Ivanov’s understanding of theurgy, we come to a rather negative conclusion. Scriabin eliminated the crucial Ivanovian distinction between (the spiritual) man and artist; his erotic cosmology presents a stark contrast to Ivanov’s vision of the desired relationship between a theurgic artist and nature; his solipsistic and ludic metaphysics made the distinction between real and symbolic action irrelevant; his solipsistic denial of the “other’s” reality is directly opposed to Ivanov’s view of an artist’s mission with regard to his fellow-humans; and, finally, Scriabin’s Nietzschean

Prometheanism is at odds with Ivanov’s insistence on faith in God as a necessary condition for a theurgic act. What

Scriabin does correspond to very well is Ivanov’s description of an artist attempting to willfully overstep the boundaries of art. It is worth recalling what, in

^Op. cit., p. 154.

201 Ivanov’s opinion, such attempts entailed: “All attempts to find magic in art fundamentally pervert the sanctity of theurgic longing lying at art’s root.” Scriabin ardently wished to be a theurgic artist and Ivanov’s favourable view of him suggests that the poet-philosopher wished to find in the mystic-composer a fellow-theurgist. But their respective visions of a world-transforming mystical- artistic act were so different that the composer could not have fulfilled the poet’s dream. Ivanov may have realized this and, in the final analysis, recognized in Scriabin an artist of extraordinary genius and of passionate mystical longing but wisely stopped short of unequivocally ascribing the title of a theurgist to him. Orpheus-Scriabin remained an artist wishing but failing to be a mystagogue.

3. Conclusions

In the course of the Silver Age a conscious attempt was made to revive the Orpheus myth. This attempt was called for and justified by a certain philosophy of cultural history and myth was thus being restored with the help of philosophical thought. The result of this process was an intentional synthesis of mythical and philosophical expression, i. e. what we called “mythosophia,” in which the Orpheus myth played a prominent role.

202 This “revival” of Orpheus did not remain, however, a matter of abstract theory and poetic imagination. It was accompanied by an aspiration to resurrect the mystical transfiguring powers of the ancient singer in corpore, as it were. The renewed interest in mysticism, the symbolist doctrine of theurgy, and the exalted view of music prepared the ground for Scriabin’s attempt at a theurgical-“Orphic” act.

The Orpheus myth served as a symbol of both theurgic and nontheurgic art and the understanding of music’s powers that it symbolized shifted between the real action of theurgy and symbolic action of art proper. In Ivanov’s interpretations of the myth these shifts of meaning were conditioned by an analytic scheme designed to delimit art and theurgy. According to these distinctions, Scriabin’s mystical-artistic aspirations did not pass Ivanov’s theurgic muster and remained artistic rather than theurgic aspirations. The Orpheus myth thus signified for Ivanov the condition of art in which it longs to transcend its boundaries as symbolic activity and restore its ability for real world-transfigurative effects, but should ultimately refrain from doing so lest it turn into coercive magic that interferes with the world’s destiny.

203 Chapter 7

Conclusions

Relying on the definition of myth formulated in

Chapter 2, we have found three ways in which the Orpheus myth was part of Plato’s view of music’s powers. First,

along with Homer and Hesiod, Orpheus was one of the great

archaic Greek poet-civilizers, a symbol of supreme heights

of poetic art that inspired veneration and provided

corroborative authority for Plato’s theoretical

constructions. The second Orpheus is opposite to the

first. He represents poetry as a rival of philosophy and

inspires criticism, rejection, and occasional derision. It

is this Orpheus whose art is not welcome in the ideal city-

state governed by philosophy. He was a symbol of music’s potentially degrading ethical influence and in order to avoid the latter his art had to be radically submitted to philosophy’s censure.

And finally, the Orpheus myth served as a source for

Plato’s cosmology and musical-ethical doctrine. Plato reworked the mythical imagery of Orpheus’ magical powers over animate and inanimate nature, humans, and the gods—

204 into ideas about the harmony of the spheres and music’s role in the ideal polis. In both cases, however, Plato reverses the Orphic notion of music’s power wielded by the

semi-human poet-magician. The Orpheus of the archaic tradition could bind even the gods with the power of his poetic spell. Plato, on the other hand, foregrounds the power of the cosmic, i. e. speculative, music over the human soul, while regarding the music of the human poet with suspicion.

In addition, in Plato we find a merging of philosophical and mythical expression in which they become intimately intertwined with each other. We called this fusion of myth and philosophy “mythosophia” and found this concept useful in discussing the Orpheus myth in Marsilio

Ficino’s and Vyacheslav Ivanov’s views as well.

In the Renaissance the interpretation of the Orpheus myth occurs within two major trends: humanistic and

Hermetic. In the end, the former overwhelms the latter.

From Ficino to Monteverdi the Orpheus myth is secularized and the magical powers of music that it symbolized for the philosopher become purely aesthetic for the composer. Even though traces of Ficino’s view can still be found in

Monteverdi’s and Striggio’s rendition of Orpheus’ story, the two Orpheuses are radically different from each other: one is a magus, the other an operatic hero. For Ficino

205 Orpheus was real, as were his musical powers which the

Renaissance philosopher even attempted to revive in his own brand of Orphic magic. In Monteverdi’s opera there is no pretense at construing Orpheus as a real magus and the

Orpheus myth is rendered as a literary subject. For Ficino

Orpheus symbolized music’s power to influence not only the human psyche, but also the celestial bodies. For

Monteverdi the purely psychological and subjective effect of music becomes more relevant than any other. Ficino’s

Orpheus was a mysterious figure and Orphic magic had to be practiced in secret, whereas Monteverdi’s Orpheus is an operatic, i. e. inherently public, hero.

With the advent of Romanticism, classical mythology loses its relevance for opera as composers explore other sources. Local folklore was one such source and Rimsky-

Korsakov’s opera Sadko is an example of the use of a

Russian myth that is a close counterpart of the ancient

Greek one. Rimsky-Korsakov uses the myth in a purely aesthetic way, which does not prevent him from expressing a certain view about music’s powers with its help. This view is expressed through the opera’s symbolic narrative about the relations among music, the world of fantasy, and real life. Drawing inspiration from the world of fantasy,

Rimsky-Korsakov appears to say, music then returns to reality in order to transform it. This symbolic narrative

206 is distinct from myth in the sense that it is not an immediate expression of beliefs that are unquestionably taken as true. Nor is it Rimsky-Korsakov’s mythosophia of music for, although it does reflect the composer’s ideas, it does so purely through the imagery of the opera, without any direct reference to philosophical concepts. At the same time, through the Sadko story Rimsky-Korsakov revives certain themes of the Orpheus myth that by that time had been lost in European musical theater. The effects of Sadko’s music are seen, in full agreement with the folkloric source, as dependent on the religious-moral authority that music submits itself to. The return to the religious connotations of the Orpheus myth via the ancient

Russian story still has a transitional and tentative character but it represents a growing tendency both in

Rimsky-Korsakov ’ s individual view and the views of other

Russian composers and thinkers of the Silver Age.

Finally, in the symbolist poet and philosopher

Vyacheslav Ivanov we find a thinker who makes a conscious attempt to revive the Orpheus myth as a myth proper. This revival is both required and justified by Ivanov’s philosophy of the history of European culture which viewed the reconciliation of myth, art, and religion as the goal of the new “organic” epoch. Ivanov thus made philosophical ideas an instrument of restoring myth to its original role

207 as Ivanov perceived it. He rarely, if ever, expressed these ideas in the purely conceptual language of philosophy, deliberately blending concepts with poetic and mythical imagery. His favourite mode of expression is a vivid example of mythosophia. The Orpheus myth served as a symbol of theurgic art for Ivanov, i. e. art whose purpose was to transform reality in contrast to “normal” art whose effect on life is purely symbolic. An important aspect of Ivanov’s interpretation of myth is its ambivalence: on the one hand, it stresses the boundary between art and theurgy while, on the other, tending to obliterate it.

Ivanov, however, remained only a theoretician of theurgy, and it was Scriabin who made an attempt at a practical revival of musical mysteries. Ivanov lavished praise on Scriabin’s mystical aspirations but his understanding of Scriabin’s role oscillated between theurgy and art. He seems to have ultimately placed Scriabin among artists rather than theurgists but in both cases Orpheus serves as a symbol disclosing the cultural-historical role of Scriabin’s work and mystical thought. Ivanov’s generous interpretation of Orpheus-Scriabin, however, leaves out the stark contrasts between the philosopher’s view of theurgy and the content of the composer’s mysticism. These contrasts, in fact, precluded an Ivanovian theurgic

208 interpretation of Scriabin’s project. Scriabin’s plans for the Mysterium never materialized, of course, but even if they had the mystical act would be opposite to Ivanov’s vision of theurgy. Despite their common desire to restore music’s power to transfigure life, they understood the transfiguration itself in directly opposite terms.

The above suggests a number of further conclusions.

The relationship between myth and philosophy is not unidirectional: it includes two opposite processes. one consists in what Losev called the “translation” of myth into the “language of abstract universality,” i. e. into philosophical constructions. The other process is the merging of philosophical concepts with mythical imagery to the extent that the two become a single form of utterance, i. e. what we have called “mythosophia.” Further, the repeated attempts to revive myth qua myth, e. g. by Ficino and Ivanov, show that a myth always retains in potentia the ability to resume functioning as such even after prolonged periods of existing as a “profane” story. Under favourable conditions this potential can reveal itself and a myth can again be understood as a true and magical narrative. The belief in a myth’s truth, however, does not assume its original immediate form, but is mediated by philosophical interpretation. It is therefore as mythosophia that myth can be revived. Philosophy can be both a poison and cure

209 to myth, i. e. it can be used both to undermine a myth and to restore it. True, these restorations are not lasting but they can lead to significant long-lasting results.

In the final passage of his review of the Orpheus m y t h ’s history in literature, Charles Segal writes:

How will this myth continue its life in the poems of generations to come? I can only point to what it has meant over the past twenty-five hundred years of Western civilization that I have so briefly surveyed. It offers the creative artist the power to feel his art as a magic that touches sympathetic chords in all of nature and puts him in touch with the thrill of pure life, pure Being. The myth of Orpheus is the myth of the ultimate seriousness of art. It is the myth of art’s total engagement with love, beauty, and the order and harmony of nature— all under the sign of death. It is the myth of the artist’s magic, of his courage for the dark, desperate plunge into the depths of the heart and of the world, and of his hope and need to return to tell the rest of us of his journey.'

To these words we can add that, as long as art in general and music in particular are taken seriously and there is a sense of magic about them, the Orpheus myth will preserve at least the seed of its mythic quality and will be ready to blossom as a myth once again. For this to happen, however, it will once again require assistance from philosophy, and perhaps their joint energy will once again transform music and give it a new impetus and direction.

Segal, op. cit., p. 198.

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