Abstract

The objective of this study is to examine the metaphors Plato uses to describe poetry and the poet, and to compare them with his metaphors for philosophy and the philosopher. The scope is confined mainly to dialogues from Plato's early to middle period, with reference also to the Laws. This study finds that Plato's two metaphors for depicting poetry and poets are those of divine inspiration and of imitation. Plato relies on Pindar and Simonides as sources for these two concepts, while adding new elements of his own. He makes divine inspiration into a passive bacchic frenzy, while poetic imitation, like painting, is three removes from the truth. The poet is also like the sophist in presenting a foreign, seductive challenge to the philosopher's projects, and in appearing to know many things while actually knowing nothing. ;The models of divine inspiration and artistic imitation both deny knowledge to the poet, who at most possesses a low-level techne consisting of rhyme schemes and the like. The model of imitation gains in allowing the criticism of the content of poetry, and defining the critic who does so. Only the philosopher has knowledge of the originals, i.e. the Forms, of which the poet produces imitations, and can judge an imitation's fidelity to the original. ;The philosopher is an imitator himself, whose highest imitations consist of the founding of cities or of 'ways of life.' The philosopher is also more truly inspired than the poet. Philosophical training at its very beginning has a disorienting effect proper to the beginning of mystery rites, an effect shared also by bacchic frenzy and erotic madness. Hence the metaphors of philosophy as eros and as bacchic frenzy in some dialogues. Yet these metaphors are not native to philosophy, the pinnacle of which is a vision akin to the epopteia of the Eleusinian Mysteries. This calm glimpse into the true order of things contrasts with the uproar of the bacchic rites, with which poetic inspiration is compared. Bacchism and eros, with which poetry is aligned, lead ultimately to chaos and destruction for the soul