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52 II An Old Quarrel Poetry and Philosophy Plato as First Philosopher of the Tragic Having sketched the general historical and philosophical context of the quarrel of ancients and moderns, which hinges onthe significance of art and nature for the Greeks as opposed to for us, I will now turn to the more specific quarrel between art and philosophy. My focus will be on two versions of the end of art—one ancient, the other modern: Plato’s banishment of the poets from his ideal city and Hegel’s famous declaration that “art is, and remains for us, on the side of its highest destiny, a thing of the past” (Lectures on Aesthetics 13).1 Before delving into this project, some words of clarification are due concerning potential objections to the interchangeability of the terms “poetry,” which my title—following Plato2—juxtaposes to philosophy, and “art,” which I will often use in lieu of poetry. Andrzej Warminski, for instance, whose reading of Hölderlin I have engaged in the previous chapter, insists on a sharp distinction between art and poetry. In his argument, art is synonymous with the image and, therefore, with a mimetic, symbolic impulse. It follows that art belongs to the sphere of representation and reflection from which aesthetic narratives such as Hegel’s proceed. In contrast, poetry’s reliance on words, sounds, rhythms, and tones exemplifies the antimimetic thrust of language that Warminski aligns with rhetoric and allegory as opposed to image and symbol. Poetics as linguistic antimimesis, then, is presented as the other of the dominant reflexive tradition of aesthetics and representation. It is, of course, not my intention here to assess the merits of so firm a distinction between language and image; whatever its merits or pitfalls, it is certainly instrumental to Warminski’s general argument and consistent with his privileging of rhetoric over mimesis.3 I am 53 an Old Quarrel merely citing it as a likely critical objection against my choice to use poetry and art synonymously—a choice, however, that is not arbitrary on my part. Insofar as poesis means an act of creation in general and is not limited to works of prosody alone, the English term “art” applies comprehensively to this creative domain, while the term “poetry” describes rather exclusively verse. Additionally, my decision conforms with the thinkers I discuss in this chapter: it conforms with Hegel, whom Warminski critiques for reading the Greeks aesthetically (instead of rhetorically) in order to invent them as the origin of his own Western aesthetic narrative; it also conforms with Giorgio Agamben, with whom I conclude this chapter and whose discussion of art encompasses both linguistic and nonlinguistic works. Above all, however, I follow Plato, who does not confine poesis to verse when he raises the problematic of creative works, even though it is true that tragic verse does preoccupy him the most, as it is also true that his attitude toward tragedy remains of utmost relevance to this study. Nevertheless, Plato also speaks of music, painting, and their interrelation with poetry, since they all play an equally important role in affecting the human soul. In fact, as philosopher and art historian Edgar Wind has observed, Plato’s suspicion of art in his time was largely due to a recent development that had rendered the different branches of art independent of one another and thus brought about the fragmentation of the human soul.4 As the arts grew isolated within their autonomous domains, they targeted different registers of the soul, compartmentalizing the human being and fostering discord rather than harmony among its faculties: It is precisely this development of the part in isolation from the whole that, because of its inherently destructive force, and its impulse towards selfsufficient perfection, leads to disruption and discord. Once the arts have become free their balanced hierarchy of relationships with one another also begins to shift. Now a harmonious rhythm which is suited to a noble gesture may invest one that is ignoble, and we may be so enchanted by its magic that we either fail to notice that the gesture is ignoble or feel that it actually heightens the charm of the effect. . . . During the transition from the fifth to the fourth century, Greek art did, in fact, undergo that refinement of its several branches, and that assertion of the separate identity of each, against which Plato directs all the resources of his logic and eloquence. . . . Plato contends that this shift affects not only art in the...

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