Plotinus’s Theory of Mimesis, and Its Implications for the Actual Composing of Musie Aron M. Yofte International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 11, No. 1. (un., 1980), pp. 87-91 Stable URL tp: flinksjstor-org/sici%sici=0351-$796%28198006%2911%3, 1%3C87%3APTOMAI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music is eurrently published by Croatian Musicological Society. ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www jstororglabout/terms.htmi. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of « journal or multiple copies of articles, and You may use content in the ISTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use ofthis work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www jstor.org/jounals/eroat html Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission, JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org, hupshvwwjstororg/ Mon Nov 13 08:57:25 2006‘A.M. YOFFE, PLOTINUS'S THEORY, IRASM 1! (18), 1, 1 a7 PLOTINUS'S THEORY OF MIMESIS, AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ACTUAL COMPOSING OF MUSIC ARON M, YOFFE oe mt at:ras004 "Ori! scleife Pepe Dartmouth College, Hanover, Prisjelo: 2, kalovora BD. Received: Aagut 20, 1979 N. H. 03755, U.S.A. eae Accepted: October 25, 19 Plotinus, in his essay On the Intellectual Beauty, presents beauty as the manifestation of the unifying force of the universe, a force without which there can be no existence. This unifying force ema- nates from the One, which represents Plotinus’s conception of the highest realm of idea — a pure, partless, and infinite whole, from which all else. is derived — but which, ‘having always existed, is itself derived from nothing. The One reveals itself through a some- what more knowable triad, the All-Soul, the Good, and the Intellect’, Since most of what Plotinus has to say about art js contained in On the Intellectual Beauty, and since here Plotinus deals almost exclu- sively with the Intellect, my examination of his theory of mimesis shall in turn be restricted to this member of the triad. Everything is idea, matter being the lowest form of it. Idea is weakest in matter, because since it has parts, occupies space, etc., it is by nature furthest removed from the One. All the qualities of matter upon which beauty is dependent (e.g., symmetry, proportion, unity, brightness, and consonance of parts} can only be bestowed upon matter through the imposition of idea. As more and more idea is infused into the matter, these qualities approach perfection (the ultimate perfection — unattainable with matter — of, for example, consonance of parts, is found in the Intellect, where »each [is] alle @)). Pure idea is the most beautiful thing of all. * All quoted references, unless otherwise specified, were taken from Ste- phen MacKenna’s translation of PLOTINUS'S On the Intellectual Beauty. The parenthesized number following each quote refers to the section of the essay from which the quote was taken. * Hazard ADAMS (Ed), Critical Theory Since Plato, Harcourt, Brace Jo- vanovich, Inc., New York’ 1971, p. 105.88 [A.M YOFE, PLOTINUS'S THEORY, IRASM 11 (180), 1, £701 ‘Through all of this, the artist plays a central role. Since he is seen as possessed of a heightened awareness into the nature of the One, it is his task to take his ideas, impose them upon whatever form of matter he communicates through (air, for the composer), and thus transfer his knowledge to the less gifted audience. If the artist, in describing an object, infuses some idea into it, he gives a different but truer (and also’ more beautiful) representation of the object than that found in nature, and thus completes nature in the Aristo- telian sense: »we must recognize that they [the artists) give no bare reproduction of the thing seen but go back to the reason-principles from which nature itself derives, and furthermore, that much of their work is all their own; they are holders of beauty and add where nature is lacking.« (1) Were an artist able to reach the satu- ration point of idea in matter, his work would have attained the level of the nature-principle, the ideal archetype of all beauty found in nature. An example of this could be a musical composition that perfectly represented the entelechy of all oak trees. Plotinus wrote that »Then again every prime cause must be, with- in itself, more powerful than its effect can be: the musical does not derive from an unmusical source but from music; and so the art exhibited in the material work derives from an art yet higher.« (1) The ‘higher art’ producing this beauty found in nature is an earlier beauty that comes from the inner, from a source closer to the One. This prior beauty is the reason-principle, the ideal arche- type that exists in a person's soul. The reason-principle in turn has as its antecedent the intellectual-principle, otherwise known as the Intellect, which is a partless archetype that exists as beauty pri- mally. It is present nowhere, remains in itself alone, and can be thought of as a heaven of pure intellect, where everything is heav- en, and where everything is one. There, ‘according to Plotinus, »va- ety is mother and nurse, existence and sustenange.., Allis trang parent... nothing resistant... light runs through light. And each being... contains all within itself, and at the same time sees all in every other, so that everywhere there is all, and all is all, and each all, and infinite the glory.« (2) In summary, the artist has a gifted insight into the intellectual-principle, that he uses to sharpen and uplift his own reasomprinciple, of which he transfers as much as possible (with some unavoidable dilution, because matter inter- feres) into matter, into the medium of his art. ‘The major remaining idea running through Plotinus's theory of mimesis is that the artist creates through deduction: »the artist himself goes back, after all, to that wisdom in nature which is em- bodied in himself, and this is not a wisdom built up of theorems but one totality, not a wisdom consisting of manifold detail coordinated into a unity, but rather a unity working out into detail.« (5) Thus al-‘A.M, YOFFE, PLOTINUS'S THEORY, IRASM i (1880), 1, 8191 89 though his product is Aristotelian (i¢., »completing natures), his means is rather Platonic (j.e., the use of deduction), Plotinus’s means of course differs slightly from that of Plato, because Plotinus does not view the artist as mad. Rather, Plotinus goes to great lengths to demonstrate that in undergoing the transformation to »seere (II), the artist instead gains increased mental stability through a heightened ‘awareness of self.’ Induction plays much less of a role for Plotinus than it did for Aristotle, because Plotinus views general principles as much easier to get at: Aristotle felt that a whole species of particulars had to be examined for a general prin- ciple to be induced; Plotinus contends that since each individual unity acts as a microcosm of the ideas present in all higher levels, the general may be derived from examination of a single individual. Among the major implications of Plotinus’s mimetic theory is that by adding ideas derived from the Intellect, the composer not only makes his music more beautiful, but also more enduring: »for every image whose existence lies in the nature of things must stand during the entire existence of the archetype.« (12) This latter point is similar to Samuel Johnson's much later conception concerning how that which is a ‘just representation of general nature’ will best stand the test of time. Plotinus’s theories can also be applied to the concept of the »genre« in music. Plotinus states that all the different gods in the In- tellect are wholes, yet at the same time all these wholes together form a single parties whole. How can this be so? His explanation is, that »some one manner of being is dominant in eachs (4) (thus there are different gods, different wholes), and that while to us, »each whole is... an individual manifestation of a part,... to the keen vi- sion There, [each is] ... known for the whole it is.« (4) Analogously, a certain musical genre would be perfect if each composition were able to remain distinct from all the others, yet when combined, all compositions fitted perfectly together to form a homogencous whole Note that the one problem with which Plotinus concerns himself greatly is that ideas cannot be communicated from one person to another without a medium (matter). Unfortunately, the conception formed within the reason-principle of the artist is’ always vitiated by that medium (thus bringing it down to the level of the nature- -principle and below) in the process of being put into communicable form. It is thus always in this alloyed state that the audience re- ceives the idea. Plotinus may then be telling us that the highest form of art is one that is so well conceived, and that comes as close to the reason-principle as is possible for matter, that when it enters the mind of the percipient, it is instantaneously able to revert back to its original, unalloyed reason-principle form, with little or no change in concept.90 ‘A.M. YOFFE, PLOTINUS'S THEORY, TRASM It (18), 1, 791 1t suppose that because air is so ethereal, music would be only slightly diluted by its medium, and thus should be very effective at conveying every nuance and’subtlety of the composer's ideas. Why, then, is it so difficult to use music to communicate com- plex theories (note, eg., the difficulties that Richard Strauss en- countered in giving musical interpretation to some of Friedrich Nie- tzsche’s works)? I propose that the problem arises out of the inabil- ity of most people to understand each composer's »musical lan- guage,« relative to how well they understand the spoken word, In other words, the difficulty occurs in the latter stage of the transmis- sion process, where the composer's message is supposed to revert to its reasonprinciple form in the minds of the audience. At least in western cultures, humans rely almost solely upon ‘words for exchange of ideas; they have thus acquired a very highly developed sense of associating the sounds of words with their in- tellectual content. With music, however, sounds are often more ap- preciated for their emotional associations, and intellectual meaning can usually be derived only in a less direct way (eg., from the title of the piece, the program used, or the words). But it is not the listen- er alone who should be blamed for this situation. The composers themselves never seem to have made any organized attempts to define the intellectual content of sounds for their listeners, much less created a standardized sort of musical language. One could en- vision this sort of standardization as being necessary by considering that expecting a person who understood the »musical language« of Bach (if such a person exists) to explain the intellectual content of ‘one of Tchaikovsky's works would perhaps be similar to asking a monolingual German to read War and Peace in the Russian. Per- haps it was a frustration with music's inadequacy in this regard that drove Beethoven to include words in his Ninth Symphony. This is not at all to say, however, that such a language should be drawn up. Note that music is still extremely effective at communi- cating emotional themes, perhaps more so than literature. It is not unlikely that composers have intentionally avoided such a lan- guage, feeling that it would come back to haunt them by being too restrictive and thus possibly hindering music’s emotional expres- sion, and so not in the balance being a desirable thing. We have seen that much can be found in Plotinus's brilliant essay on aesthetic theory that is relevant to the composing of music. But J feel that a strict and complete reconciliation of the art of music composing to the theories of Plotinus is not fully called for: Ploti- nus views the beauty of music, and thus the pleasure music gives to the listener, as arising out of the intellectual enlightenment it bestows; yet it seems that one should also recognize the impor- tance that music provide, as Coleridge writes, »excitement of emotion for the immediate purpose of pleasure through the medium of beau-‘A.M. YOFFE, PLOTINUS'S THEORY, IRASM It (180), 1, 791 91 ty,’ as well as having as its ultimate end the Plotinean conception of the giving of pleasure, not directly by any emotional associations, but by the beauty of its truth Satetak PLOTINOVA TEORIJA MIMEZISA I NIEZINE IMPLIKACIE ZA KOMPONIRANJE GLAZBE Plotin u svojem napisu O duhovnoj Hjepoti tumati ljepotu kao odito- vanje ujedinjujuce snage svemira, snage bez koje ne bi bilo postojanja. Ova ujedinjujuca snaga isijava iz »Jednogae, koje predstavlja Plotinovo shvaéanje 0 najvigem podrucju ideje, éiste beskonaéne cjeline iz koje je, sve drugo izvedeno, no koja postoji oduvijek i sama je izvedena i nistavila. Sve kvalitete materije 6 Kojima ljepota ovisi mogu se podariti materiji tek usadivanjem ideje. S obzirom da se smatra kako umjetnik posjeduje poveéanu svijest 0 sirod Jednoga, njegov je posao da se prvi th ideja, nadjene th ilo Kojem obliku materije pomocu kojeg komunicira (za kompozitora je to melodija) i tako prenese svoje spoznaje drugima. Na nesrecu, shvaanje oblikovang u duu umjetnika uvijek se kvari medijem (ma: terijom) koji upotrebljava. Zbog toga je mozuéa implikacija da je naj- vila forma umjetnosti ona koja je tako dobro’ shvacena da se nakon Sto ude u duh primaoca moze smjesta vratiti w izvorni, cisti oblik koji je imala u duhu umjetnika, Moze se pretpostavljati da ¢é zato Sto je me- Iodija tako eteriéna, glazbu njezin medij tek neznatno razvodniti, pa da jg zato velo djelotvorna w izrazavanju apstraktnih i sloZenihIntelektual- nih teorija. Medutim, ipak nije tako, jer slusatel} ito procjenjuju anikove gazbe'u olvitn emoconainog, a manje itlekiuaneg sister. Kompozitori su modda mogli organizirano pokuSati stvoriti »glazbeni jeziks ili, drugim rijetima, odrediti intelektualni sadriaj raznih glar- benih zvukova za svoje slugatelje. Ipak, éini se da bi takva upotreba glaz benog jezika mogla ograniavati i tako u krajnjoj liniji prijetiti emo vnu izrazajnost glazbe. Zbog toga se ne moze zahtijevati striktno pomi- Fenje umjeinosti glazbenog komponiranja i Plotinovi teorja, jer treba priznati da glazba — prema rijecima Samuela Taylora Coleridgea — i ziva »emotivno uzbudenje za neposredan cilj uzivanja pomocu medija Higpotes, kao Sto ima kao krajnj cll plotinovsko shvaéanje prufanja witka, Jako ne direktno nekom emotivnom asocijacijom veé {jepotom svoje istine. » Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE, On the Principles of Genial Criticism con- coming the Fine Arise, Feliz Fariey’s Bristol Journal, Bristol (England), Ait gust, 1814.