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In Plato's Ion (Greek: Ἴων) Socrates discusses with the title character the question of whether the rhapsode, a professional performer of poetry, gives his performance on account of his skill and knowledge or by virtue of divine possession.
Ion has just come from a festival of Asclepius at the city of Epidarus, and is full of himself for having carried off first prize in the competition. Socrates presses the view that it is divine possession and not acquired skill that is behind the rhapsode's art. Socrates subjects Ion to his philosophical dialectic, and gets him to admit that because he recites Homer's war stories, he is as much military general as rhapsode. Only then does Socrates seem satisfied that he has made a fool of the rhapsode, whom he accuses of being as shifty as Proteus.
Ion admits when Socrates asks, that his skill in performance recitation is limited to Homer, and that all other poets bore him. Socrates finds this puzzling, and sets out to solve the "riddle" of Ion's limited expertise. He points out to Ion that art critics and judges of sculpture normally do not limit themselves to judging the work of only a single artist, but can criticize the art no matter who the particular artist. Socrates deduces from this observation that Ion has no real skill, but is like a soothsayer or prophet in being divinely possessed. Socrates offers the metaphor of a magnet to explain how the rhapsode transmits the poet's original inspiration from the muse to the audience. He says that the god speaks first to the poet, then gives the rhapsode his skill, and thus, gods communicate to the people; the only other option is to be a cheater since Ion does not know of skills in which he recites (military general).
Socrates tells Ion that he must be out of his mind when he acts, because he can weep even though he has lost nothing, and recoil in fear when in front of an admiring audience. Ion says that the explanation for this is very simple: it is the promise of payment that inspires his deliberate disconnection from reality. Ion says that when he looks at the audience and sees them weeping, he knows he will laugh because it has made him richer, and that when they laugh, he will be weeping at losing the money (535e). Ion tells Socrates that he cannot be convinced that he is possessed or mad when he performs, but Socrates does not allow him to explain why he rejects this explanation (536d,e).
Socrates then recites passages from Homer which concern various arts such as medicine, divining, fishing, and making war. He asks Ion if these skills are distinct from his art of recitation. Ion becomes confused and admits that while Homer discusses many different skills in his poetry, he never refers specifically to the rhapsode's craft, which is acting. Socrates peppers Ion with his questions, presses him about the exact nature of his skill. Doing his best to cope with Socrates' dialectic, Ion asserts that when he recites passages concerning military matters, he cannot tell whether he does it with a general's skill, or with a rhapsode's. Socrates complains that Ion changes his occupation. He was first an rhapsode and then has become a general. He gently berates the rhapsode for being Protean, which after all, is exactly what an rhapsode is: a man who is convincingly capable of being different people on stage.
Through his character Socrates, Plato argues that “Ion’s talent as an interpreter cannot be an art, a definable body of knowledge or an ordered system of skills,” but instead must come from the divine inspiration of the Muses.1 Plato’s argument is an early example of a genetic fallacy since his conclusion arises from his famous lodestone (magnet) analogy. Ion, the rhapsode “dangles like a lodestone at the end of a chain of lodestones. The muse inspires the poet (Homer in Ion’s case) and the poet inspires the rhapsode.”2 Plato’s dialogues are themselves “examples of artistry that continue to be stageworthy;” it is a paradox that “Plato the supreme enemy of art is also the supreme artist.”3
Notes
- ^ Barrish, J., The Antitheatrical Prejudice, page 12. University of California Press, 1981.
- ^ Sonkowsky, R. P “Oral Performance and Ancient Greek Literature,” Thompson, D. W., ed., Performance of Literature in Historical Perspectives, page 17. University Press of America, 1983.
- ^ Sonkowsky, R. P “Oral Performance and Ancient Greek Literature,” Thompson, D. W., ed., Performance of Literature in Historical Perspectives, page 17. University Press of America, 1983
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