Berghahn Books

'Timon of Athens'
Author(s): J. M. PHELPS
Source: Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, No. 47 (October 1976), pp. 83-84
Published by: Berghahn Books
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41801611
Accessed: 29-05-2020 20:00 UTC

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Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory

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 CORRESPONDENCE:

'Timon of Athens'

Dear Sirs,
I have returned a number of times to Mr Bizley's 'Language
and Currency in "Timon of Athens" ' ( Theoria 44) because,
while aspects of it are impressive, there is a paradox in his subtle
argument about 'languages' which leaves me dissatisfied.
Mr Bizley suggests that 'fundamental to the drama of Timon
... is the way the language of money is played off against a more
primary language, the language that is in fact its source'. In his
careful and frequently sensitive analysis of the text he demon-
strates that Timon's is the source language and, as the play
develops, that of the abdicated artists, the fallen-off friends, the
Athenian senators, is the secondary language, the language of
'exchange'. What is primary about Timon's language is that he
'speaks his own standing'. What is secondary about the others'
language is that it is a fence behind which they seek to hide from
their original human involvement in Timon's world. It is, as Mr
Bizley points out, 'a purchased concealment, an abstract system
delaying "presentment" . . .'. But no matter how much it is
true that in Timon's mouth language is speech , the openly spoken
word that carries human meaning to the hearer, it must also be
emphasised that however much the shifting friends attempt to
hide behind the secondary language, and for all that by talking in
league with each other the illusion that they do hide is reinforced,
they do not hide from us in the audience, nor ultimately from
Timon. And this is Shakespeare's intent. This is the spring to
the tragedy, the moral impulse to the play. No matter how
subtle is their language of detachment, to us they also 'speak
their own standing' - as hypocrites, cowards, shirkers, those in
fact without the dynamic complexity that makes for an under-
standing of Timon's vital presence and generosity.
I conclude from this that none of the 'language' in the play
can ever, in the first place, be removed from the characters who
use it, that somewhere whatever they speak is primary. Surely
without this understanding we will never grasp how Shakespeare's
imaginative representation has the power to take us outwards
into the real world of dynamic human relationships. In Mr
Bizley's concern for a 'conflict of languages', however, I always
come up against the idea that for him the 'languages' can be
detached, and, even, that it is Shakespeare's 'fundamental' intent

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 g4 THEORIA

to figure deta
'culture's broad
relationship o
I mean is in this formulation:

That there was once available to the common psyche of

Europe an 'act' or sense of the self 'presented' that scorned
the dualism of 'exchange', a time when a man might 'back'
his appropriate standing in words that were the immediate
seal of intention - that is the sort of phenomenon that
Shakespreare's language can remind us of. ... We must
propose such a phase ... if we are going to vindicate our
sense that the language of Timon has certain presuppositions
to it, certain underlying components that must be observed
if the play isn't going to be seen in a cultural vacuum.

To me this is an inversion of priorities and confusion of aims.

Shakespeare does not simply remind us of what is lost to culture.
Rather he makes clear what is active now. It is the open fluency
of individual speech which makes reality communicable and
which gives a meaning to culture itself; and which disallows the
self-conscious displacement implied in 'certain presuppositions,
certain underlying components'.

Yours faithfully,
J. M. PHELPS

P.O. Box 10051,

Scottsville,
Pietermaritzburg.

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