Storytelling, Self, Society, 4: 152162, 2008 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN 1550-5340 print / 1932-0280

0 online DOI: 10.1080/15505340802000875

Defending Ion: A Contemporary Rhapsode Replies

John S. Gentile

Platos dialogue Ion begins the Wests venerable suspicion of art, artists, and artmaking in general and of the poetic, storytelling, and theatrical arts in particular. Platos arguments against Ion, a rhapsode (i.e., a performer of Homeric epic poetry), may be read as strictly pertaining to the ancient rhapsodesor may be read through as a kind of historicized defense of contemporary storytellers. This essay revisits and reconsiders Platos dialogue and offers new replies for the hapless Ion.

He who reads a poem well is also a poet. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Right at the start of the Western critical tradition is Platos dialogue Ion, in which Platos fictionalized version of his mentor Socrates questions and, ultimately, humiliates a rhapsode, a reciter of the Homeric epics, whose name gives us the title of the dialogue. Much of the Ion, writes David H. Richter, is reasonably consistent with the Republic, and a good deal more entertaining if we allow ourselves to enjoy the spectacle of Socrates exposing the vanity and pretensions of the none-too-bright performer for whom the dialogue is named (Richter, 1989, 19). The Ion effectively begins the Wests venerable suspicion of art, artists, and art-making in general and of the poetic, storytelling, and theatrical arts in particular. Plato is an important first voice of what Jonas Parrish calls the antitheatrical prejudice. Consideration of the antitheatrical prejudice must begin with Plato, writes Parrish, who first articulated it, and to whom its later exponents regularly return in support of their proscriptions and prohibition (Parrish, 1981, 5).
Address correspondence to John S. Gentile, Chair, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, Kennesaw State University, MD 3103, Kennesaw, GA 30144-5591. E-mail: jgentile@kennesaw.edu

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While I agree with Richter that the Ion is humorous and entertaining, I find the dialogue contrived and unconvincing as an argument against art. In creating Ion, Plato created a dramatic character that is little more than a cipher, a dupe, or a fool to serve as a foil to Socrates philosophical brilliance. I am a performer who has worked as a storyteller, as a reciter of poetry, and as an actor in plays; I understand firsthand the nuanced differences among those three modes of performance. In addition, I have completed undergraduate and graduate work in the field of performance studies, whose roots are in the tradition of oral interpretation of literature. In short, this essay is a contemporary rhapsodes defense of Ion. My defense is more than a revisionist consideration of a Platonic dialogue, however. Socrates (i.e., Platos) attacks on Ion and his art hold significant implications for todays professional storytellers. Just as the professional storytellers who perform at contemporary festivals face criticism for not being genuine storytellers (see Patrick Ryans essay in this issue), Ion faces criticism from Plato that his art is not a true art. Elsewhere, rhapsodes are dismissed in comparison to their more highly valued predecessors the aoidoi (i.e., oral poets). Other arguments against the rhapsodes point out that their work was ultimately conservative of tradition rather than transformative. In the case of the classical rhapsodes, they were conserving a mythic world view rather than moving toward the new world view emerging at the time through the work of Plato and the Sophists that privileged philosophy and reason.1 While the particulars are different today, the essential charge that todays festival storytellers are essentially conservative in their function remains the same. In his foreword to Michael Wilsons book Storytelling and Theatre: Contemporary Storytellers and Their Art, Jack Zipes argues that
Storytelling has always had and still has two basic functions: first and foremost, to communicate the relevant values, norms, and customary practices of a group of peopleto conserve them and pass them on to future generations so that they will be better able to survive. The second function is to question, change, and overthrow the dominate value systemto transform what has been preserved so that the values, norms and customs enable a group of people not only to survive but to improve their lives and make the distribution of power and wealth more just. (Zipes, 2006, xv - xvi)

It is clear that Zipes values transformative storytelling rather than conservative storytelling. In his essay Revisiting Benjamins The Storyteller, Zipes dismisses todays festival storytellers, whose work he calls commercialized, instrumentalized, or artificial storytelling (136). While the particulars of their arguments may change, the charges that Zipes and Ryan level against contemporary festival storytellers resonate in Platos arguments against Ion.

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Therefore, my defense may be read two ways. It may be read as strictly pertaining to the classical rhapsode. Or it may be read throughas a kind of historicized defense of contemporary storytellers, whose contributions may be erased by charges that their work is not genuine storytelling. I will reconsider Platos dialogue. I want to see his tactics for dismissing the art of the performer and to offer possible new responses for Ion. To do this, I first want to look at what we know about the Greek rhapsode and his art.

THE RHAPSODE IN ANCIENT GREECE The term rhapsode (rhapsidos) is usually translated as song-stitcher or rodchanter. While the second possibility is based on the fact that rhapsodes performed holding a staff or rhabdos or staff (see appendix), recent scholarship prefers the former definition.2 Conventional wisdom teaches us that the rhapsodes of ancient Greece were a class of performer that developed after the invention of literacy and the gradual establishment of standard versions of the great epics of Homer. We may best understand the rhapsodes if we contrast them to the earlier aoidos (singer) or oral poet. Anne Pellowski (1990) offers a fundamental distinction between rhapsode and aoidos in The World of Storytelling:
The two types of chronicler-historians are best exemplified by the Greek aoidos and the rhapsode. The former is the term used in Homer to designate the poet-singer who composed spontaneously as he performed. The latter term came into later use and denotes one who performs Homeric poems. The recitation of the rhapsode was studied, rather than spontaneous, and was judged by how well it corresponded to the previously composed texts, either written or handed down in memorized form (23).

While Pellowski offers us a sound basic idea of the difference between the rhapsode and the aiodos, the distinction bears closer consideration. I correct Pellowski by saying that the aoidos composed simultaneously as he performed based on a highly developed knowledge of formulaic composition, traditional themes, and metrical patterns. Once literacy was invented a new class of performers emerged whose work involved the textual scholarship of Homer, the Homeridae, who are briefly mentioned in the Ion. In an essay titled Between Singer and Rhapsode, Lee Hudson (1980) explains that the Homeridae, sons of Homer, may have initially been a clan or family, who no longer composed in the same manner as did the early singers since there was a Homeric text to be preserved (36). The Homeridae were scholar-performers who retained the authority of a kind of literary guild that (as the Ion tells us) awarded prizes to the rhapsodes. Regardless of the Homeridaes esoteric prestige, Hudson continues, by the

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fourth century, the professional guild of the rhapsodes was now replacing the hereditary guild of the Homeridae (41). Many scholars (themselves non-performers) dismiss the rhapsode as an ignorant reciter of poetry in favor of the bardic aoidos, claiming that the split of the arts of composition and performance at the time of literacy effectively diminished the artistry of the rhapsode to mere rote memorization. Our understanding of the rhapsode deepens when placed within the context of Greeces move from a culture of primary orality to that of literacy. Scholars such as Millman Parry, Albert Lord, John Miles Foley, and Walter J. Ong have changed the way we think about orality and literacy. Rather than seeing the shift from oral culture to literate culture as simple, their work has shown that the transition is gradual, complex, and, finally, incomplete. Literacy does not replace orality; it supplements it. Platos own relationship to orality and literacy is complicated. Plato was a transitional figure, writes Leonard Shlain in The Alphabet and the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, standing on the threshold between orality and literacy. His written dialogues are not quite speech and not quite prose, but contain elements of both (Shlain, 1998, 154). Platos conflicted attitude toward literacy is explicit in his dialogue Phaedrus, in which he writes a dialogue that, in part, dismisses the value of writing. In his own telling of the myth of Thamus and Theuth, Socrates states (through the character of Thamus) that writing will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it; they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing [ ] (Nehamas 551). We may, then, consider Socrates dismissal of Ion at least partly due to Platos apparent (though conflicted) preference for orality over literacy. Platos Socrates should credit the rhapsodes for their practice of memory, at the very least, and for returning a literary text to oral performance. His refusal to praise the rhapsode may be due to his more compelling discomfort over the emotion evoked by the performance. Later in the Phaedrus, he dismisses the recitations that do not offering questioning and explanation, in the manner of the rhapsodes, [and] are given only in order to produce conviction (Nehamas, 554). The distinction between the aoidos and the rhapsode may not have been, in fact, so thorough. It is difficult to distinguish writes Eric Havelock (1986) in his Preface to Plato, between the creative composer and the mere repeater of compositions (12425). Havelock continues:
This may explain both the meagerness of reference to the minstrels as a college and the obscurity which envelops the early relationship between minstrel [aoidos] and the rhapsodist. The activities of both were contemporary and also overlapped. (124125)

The rhapsode of ancient Greece emerged gradually, continued the work of the aoidos, lasted as a profession for nine centuries, and assisted in the complex cultural process of literacy. The usual academics preference for the art of the

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aoidos (associated with the art of composition) over the rhapsode (associated with mere delivery) is not only based on a simplistic distinction between these two kinds of performers, but also on the academys traditional preference for the abstract word over embodied performance. Mythically, we may follow Nietzsche and see this distinction as that between Apollo and Dionysus. Ironically, it turns the usual thinking upside down to associate a preliterate oral poet with the power of logos and dismiss the literate performer as devoid of literary knowledge. This strange reversal also complicates and inverts Leonard Shlains distinctions in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, between the feminine orality and the masculine literacy. Scholars generally agree that the performances by rhapsodes were highly effective and powerful events. Platos Ion attests to this; had the rhapsodes been ineffectual, he never would have written the dialogue. [T]he poetic state of mind is for Plato the arch-enemy, writes Eric Havelock in his Preface to Plato, and it is easy to see whey he considered this enemy so formidable (47). It is the power of poetic performance that he fears, not Ions ineptitude. Successful rhapsodes demonstrated a mastery of complex and specialized knowledge; they combined a celebritys understanding of stage presence along with a literary scholars understanding of text analysis, a poets understanding of meter, a storytellers understanding of narrative suspense, and an actors understanding of characterization. Plato again attests to the specialized knowledge of the rhapsodes, which distinguishes their artistry from that of dramatic actors. He states in the Republic that writers cannot succeed in both comedy and tragedy. The dialogue continues: Any more than they can be rhapsodists and actors as once? True (Jowett, 1971, 29). Rhapsodes were the bearers of the Homeric tradition. Their performances served important social functions and served as sites of cultural memory.3 John D. Niles offers a useful discussion of the five major traits for a successful traditional performer in Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature:
[I]t may be useful to identify five major traits or tendencies that are likely to distinguish strong tradition-bearers from their more passive counterparts: (1) engagement [with the materials of their culture] (2) retentiveness, (3) acquisitiveness [for stories], (4) a high degree of critical consciousness [he is a connoisseur of his traditions ( ) he also knows a lot about what it is that he knows], and (5) at least a shake or two of showmanship [ ]. Showmanship has the main purpose not of showcasing the performer, but rather of communicating meaning in the most forceful way possible (Niles, 1999, 18090).

Niles continues:
[I]f it were not for the strong tradition-bearers ability to refashion the material of a culture into new forms based upon existent ones but not slavishly imitative of them, a tradition of oral narrative would soon lose its urgency (193).

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Xenophon corroborates Platos characterization of the imbecilic Ion. In his Symposium and Memorabilia, as Derek Collins (2001) reminds us, Xenophon claims that rhapsodes were among the stupidest of men (158). However, research clearly demonstrates that they were knowledgeable and highly skilled artists who served important social functions. Most significantly, artists dream the myth onwards (Jung, 1980, 160). The rhapsode, the Homeric traditionbearer, was such an artist.

DEFENDING ION Now that we have a deeper understanding of the art of the rhapsode, I want to turn directly to defending Ion. My intent is not to win over Socrates (or convince Plato) but to simply give the rhapsode a stronger voice. As noted earlier, Plato creates no worthy opponent for his Socrates in Ion; instead, he constructs a comedic foil for his own artistic purposes that accepts Socrates nave assumptions about the arts of poetry and performance. (Whenever I have written new responses for Ion I have placed them in italics to distinguish them readily from the original.) Ion fails in numerous ways: by accepting false compliments and derogatory comments without question, by committing a series of tactical errors, by accepting Socrates refusal to distinguish between life and art, by accepting Socrates simplistic claim that the source of a rhapsodes knowledge of Homer is not art but inspiration, and, finally, by not defending performance as a mode of inquiry, a valuable way of knowing. Socrates begins by offering Ion a false compliment. I have often envied the profession of a rhapsode, Ion, Socrates says ironically, for it is part of your art to wear fine clothes and to look as beautiful as you can [ ] (Jowett, 12). Ion is immediately belittled as a superficial and trite clotheshorse. Ion might have said:
Ion: Socrates, you are right. Rhapsodes do wear find clothes for their performances. We wear them as part of our profession and because the audience and the times dictate. Just as you dress to appear as the wise philosopher who disdains the material world by wearing simple garb, we wear the more elaborate robes to serve Homer and our audience.

Later in the dialogue, he betrays his own intellectual ineptitude by failing to follow Socrates line of argument, which gives Socrates the chance to begrudge him even the power of memory, one of the rhapsodes most noteworthy abilities. Have you already forgotten, says Socrates, what you were saying? A rhapsode ought to have a better memory (Jowett 17). Ion refutes none of Socrates

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sarcasm. Much to the contrary, he appears to be oblivious to Socrates humor at his expense. Socrates proceeds to reduce poetry to information by dividing form and content. Would you or a good prophet, he asks Ion, be a better interpreter of what these two poets say about divination [ ] (Jowett, 1971, 13). Ion replies, A prophet and effectively commits the tactical error of accepting the false argument that poem is reducible to its subject matter. As if once were not enough, Socrates repeats this claim again for charioteers and fishermen, each time claiming greater knowledge for these practitioners in matters of poetry dealing with their profession. Had Ion been written as a stronger opponent, he might have claimed that that imaginative literature cannot be reduced simply to its subject matter and that poetry and performance are their own crafts that demand mastery to be effective as a rhapsode. Ion might have answered:
Ion: Socrates, I would have thought you smarter about the nature of poetry. You reduce poetry to its subject matter alone as if a poem were purely a source or guidebook of factual information. Poetry is a specialized form of language, with its own conventions that have been developed over centuries by artists of the word. Understanding a poem requires more than the simple knowledge of its subject matter.

Later, Socrates compounds his confusion of life and art:

Socrates: Well, Ion, and what are we to say of a man who at a sacrifice or festival, when he is dressed in an embroidered robe, and has golden crowns upon his head, of which nobody has robbed him, appears weeping, or panic-stricken in the presence of more than twenty thousand friendly faces, when there is no one despoiling or wronging himis he in his right mind or is he not? Ion: No indeed, Socrates, I must say that strictly speaking, he is not in his right mind (Jowett, 15).

Instead, Ion should have answered:

Ion: Socrates, you confuse profane and sacred time by denying the social conventions that frame art and that separate the fictive action within the epic from everyday life in order to evoke the imaginative response on the part of the audience.

That all art, Edward Bullough (1971) writes, requires a distance limit beyond which, and a distance within which only aesthetic appreciation becomes possible, is the psychological formulation of a general characteristic of art, viz. its anti-realistic nature (760). While Platos Ion, of course, lacks the benefit of Bulloughs 1912 discussion of the concept of aesthetic distance, he could have answered that the performer participates with the audience in a tacit agreement in order to permit the contemplation of epic art. Furthermore, Ion might have said that the act of performance moves both listeners and performers into sacred or mythic time.

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Ion: Understandably, Socrates, since you are not a performer yourself you lack a full understanding of the work of art. You are unaware that performance is its own kind of consciousness. Rather than say we are reduced to insanity which is clearly not the caseand not in our right minds, let us consider that performance is actually heightened consciousness into a dual awareness. Performers are always aware at some level of both the fictive and the mundane worlds, as are the listeners.

My point here is that while Plato may have disregarded the emotions as a source of knowledge, at least his rhapsode could have given his Socrates a more informed assessment of his art. Two more major points in the Ion deserve rebuttal; they are the most serious. Socrates claims that rhapsodes have no special knowledge and that they simply serve as magnets for divine inspiration. Socrates initially flatters Ion for understanding the work of the poet:
Socrates: I am sure that no man can become a good rhapsode who does not understand the meaning of the poet. For the rhapsode ought to interpret the mind of the poet to his hearers, but how can he interpret him well unless he knows what he means? All this is much to be envied, I repeat. Ion: Very true, Socrates; interpretation has certainly been the most laborious part of my art [ ] (Jowett, 1971, 12).

What appears to be Platos acknowledgement of the careful analytical work of an interpretive artist, however, is later dismissed. [N]ot by art or knowledge about Homer do you say what you say, Socrates later states, but by divine inspiration and by possession (Jowett, 16). Ion says nothing to refute this charge. He says nothing about the thoughtful work of analysis necessary for any interpretive artist to comprehend a text, particularly one as rich, complex, and nuanced as the Homeric epics. Wallace A. Bacon (1979) in The Art of Interpretation writes:
Interpretation is an excellent way of studying literature because it demands that the student perceive. The oral process involves active participation in the perceptions of the poem. Passivity is a completely impossible state for the oral reader. (7)

All Socrates, like any nave audience member, sees is the creative synthesis of the act of public performance, which conceals the work of the artist. Socrates also appears oblivious to the fact that performance is not simply public display (a frequent mistake of non-performers) but is in itself a mode of inquiry. Performance is epistemological. Performance can also be a revealing experience for the performer, write Paul H. Gray and James VanOosting (1996) in Performance in Life and Literature, It can teach as well as demonstrate, generate knowledge as well as appreciation (198). Perhaps Ion might have said:

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Ion: Art conceals art, Socrates. Inspiration may come to the artist as a gift from the gods but the artist must in most circumstances be readied for that moment. Rhapsodes must be educated and experienced. Yes, the gods give individuals gifts of innate talent but so it is in all the disciplines of study. You, Socrates, have been given a great gift of philosophical reasoningbut you lord that gift over other people. In order for the artist to be a ready conduit for divine inspiration, they must prepare mentally for the rigorous work of interpretation, for understanding the work of the poet, as well in the vocal and physical arts of delivery. Furthermore, I grow in deeper knowledge of Homer by performing Homer. Performance is my way to knowledge and to the divine.

The Ion concludes with Socrates statement to the rhapsode that you have no art, but speak all these beautiful words about Homer unconsciously under his inspiring influence [ ] and attribute to you in praises of Homer inspiration, and not art (Jowett, 19). Ultimately, we come up against Platos distrust of emotion, inspiration, and possession. Ion could not, of course, change Socrates opinion that the way to truth is through philosophical discourse and reason (Plato is Plato, after all). The irony remains that Plato, who denies art, is an artist himself. However, if Ion were less of a comic dupe he may have claimed for inspiration its own way of knowing, no matter how unconvincing such a statement might be for the invincible Socrates. And this surely, writes Joseph Campbell (1986) in The Way of the Artist, is the justification of art, its healing force and its wonder; that beauty apprehended should have this power to illuminate the senses, still the mind, and enchant the heart (101). As gifts from the gods, individual talent and inspiration are mysterious and, therefore, threatening to Platos Socrates. Perhaps Ion, if given the last word, may have said these words, with which I close:
Ion: Socrates, you are a brilliant philosopher and have your own way to truth. I do not deny or compete with you on your terms. I cannot offer a flawless logical argument but I do say that reason is only one way of knowing. Inspiration, intuition, and the arts offer another way that I understand disturbs your tidy Republic but that make our lives fully human. Inspiration, as you yourself say, comes from the gods. You know well the story of Pentheus and Dionysus. We deny the gods at our peril!

John S. Gentile, Ph.D., is professor and chair of the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at Kennesaw State University. Additionally, he is a member of the adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a co-founder of Storytelling, Self, Society. He thanks Dr. Christine Downing at Pacifica Graduate Institute for her comments on an earlier version of this essay. jgentile@kennesaw.edu.

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Sonkowsky, R. P. (1983). Oral performance and ancient Greek literature. In: Performance of Literature in Historical Perspectives, D. W. Thomas (ed.). Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Strine, M., Whitaker Long, B., & Hopkins, M. F. (1990). Research in interpretation and performance studies: Trends, issues, priorities. Speech Communication: Essays to Commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Speech Communication Association, G. M. Phillips and J. T. Wood (eds). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 181204. Tarnas, R. (1991). The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View. New York: Ballatine. Thomas, R. (1992). Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zipes, J. (2006). Foreword: The possibility of storytelling and theater in impossible times. In: Storytelling and Theatre: Contemporary Storytellers and Their Art, Wilson, M. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, xivxviii. Zipes, J. (1997). Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry. New York: Routledge.

NOTES
See Tarnas (3 72) for a more complete discussion of this important transformation. See, for example, Collins essay Homer and Rhapsodic Competition in Performance. Collins includes in this essay his translation from Pindar (Nemean, 2.13):
2 1

From the very point where the Homeridae, singers [aoidoi] of stitched-together [rhapta] utterances [ep], most often begin, from a proem of Zeus Pindars view that Homeridae are singers of stitched-together utterances agrees with the linguistic evidence that rhapsidos must derive from the verb rhapt and the noun aoid. Scholars are in relative agreement on this derivation as opposed to the other one attested in the Pindar scholia, which holds that the first component of rhaps-oidos dervies from the rhabdos staff [ ] (132).
3 See Gentili for a full discussion of the social dimension of poetry in ancient Greece and Strine, Long and HopKins for a discussion of performance as cultural memory.

APPENDIX (Rhapsode with his rhabdos, from an Attic red-figure amphora, c. 400 B.C.E. British Museum, No. E 270.)

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