Mimesis (15 page)

(When my things were arranged in the room, I decided to go to the baths, but first I went to the market place to buy some food
for supper. I there saw very good fish for sale, asked the price, and got it down from a hundred to twenty denarii. I was just about to leave when Pythias, a fellow student of mine from Athens, happened to pass by. After some hesitation he finally recognized me, came toward me with a great display of affection, kissed me, and said: “My dear Lucius, how long since I’ve seen you! I believe not since we left our teacher Clytius! But what are you doing here?” “You shall learn that tomorrow,” I said. “But what does this mean? I must congratulate you; I see these servants and verges and yourself in the dress of a magistrate.” “I am the aedile in charge of the market place,” he said. “If there is anything you want to buy, I shall be delighted to help you.” I declined and said that I had already bought enough fish for supper. But Pythias saw my basket, shook the fish to have a better look, and said: “And what did you pay for this stuff?” “With quite some trouble,” I said, “I got the man to let me have them for twenty denarii.” He took me by the hand and led me back to the market. “And from which of these dealers did you buy this stuff?” he asked. I pointed to a little old man sitting in a corner. At once, by reason of his power of office, he began giving him a piece of his mind. “So,” he said, “this is how you treat my friends, to say nothing of other strangers! Selling such cheap fish for such a high price! By your excessive prices you transform this flowering city of Thessaly into a barren rock which no one cares to visit. But this must not pass unpunished. No—I shall show you how evil-doers are disciplined under my administration.” Then he threw the contents of my basket on the ground and ordered one of his servants to step on the fish and grind his heels into them. Delighted with his severity, Pythias advised me to make myself scarce and said: “My dear Lucius, that was quite a disgrace for the old man; I think I shall let it go at that.” Amazed if not stupefied by these occurrences, I went on to the baths. Through the energetic intervention of my smart fellow student I had lost both my money and my supper.)

No doubt there have been and are readers who simply laugh over this story and consider it a farce, a mere joke. But I do not believe that is quite enough. The behavior of Lucius’ long-lost friend, of whom we are told nothing except that they had just been reunited, is either wilfully malicious (which he had no reason to be) or insane (but there is no reference to his not being quite right in his mind). We cannot
avoid the impression of a half silly, half spectral distortion of ordinary, average occurrences in human life. The friend has been delighted by the unexpected encounter; he has offered his services and actually insisted on being of help. Yet without the slightest concern for the consequences of his action, he robs Lucius of his supper and his money. As for the fishmonger’s punishment, there is no such thing; he still has his money. And if I am not mistaken, Pythias urges Lucius to leave the market place, because the dealers will not sell him anything after such an incident and might actually attempt to wreak vengeance upon him. The whole affair, with all its silliness, is carefully calculated to fool Lucius and play him a mean trick—but for what purpose and to what end? Is it silliness, is it malice, is it insanity? The silliness of it cannot prevent the reader from feeling bewildered and disturbed. And what a strangely unpleasant, foul, and somehow sadistic idea—that of the fish being trodden to pulp on the pavement of the market place by order of the law!

The same invasion of a glaringly pictorial realism into the elevated style, which we found in Ammianus, and which progressively undermines the classical separation of styles, obtains among the Christian authors too. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, as we have previously pointed out, there was no separating the elevated style from realism; and on the other side, the influence of classical rhetoric upon the Church Fathers—a very strong influence, as we know, especially since many of the Fathers were highly educated men, thoroughly trained in philosophy and rhetoric—began to exert itself only when the undermining process just mentioned had gone quite far, not only in respect to the separation of styles but also in respect to stylistic harmony and restraint in general. Hence, in the Fathers too, we not infrequently encounter a mixture of rhetorical pomp and a glaring depiction of reality. Jerome in particular goes to extremes in these respects. His satirical caricatures, which far outdo Horace and Juvenal, are strongly pictorial; even more so are certain passages in which, without enjoining the slightest regard for convention and decency upon himself, he sets forth ascetic maxims which go into the least details of eating and drinking, of bodily care (or rather carelessness), and of sexual chastity. What extremes of vividness in the gruesome his epideictic style can attain, may be seen from a passage in his letters (66, 5; Pat. lat. 22, 641), which may be the most effective but it is by no means the only one of its kind. A woman of noble lineage, Paulina, has died and her surviving husband, Pammachius, has decided to give his wealth to the
poor and become a monk. The eulogistic and hortatory epistle which Jerome writes on this occasion contains the following paragraph:

Ardentes gemmae, quibus ante collum et facies ornabantur, egentium ventres saturant. Vestes sericae, et aurum in fila lentescens, in mollia lanarum vestimenta mutata sunt, quibus repellatur frigus, non quibus nudetur ambitio. Deliciarum quondam suppelectilem virtus insumit. Ille caecus extendens manum, et saepe ubi nemo est clamitans, heres Paulinae, coheres Pammachii est. Illum truncum pedibus, et toto corpore se trahentem, tenerae puellae sustentant manus. Fores quae prius salutantium turbas vomebant, nunc a miseris obsidentur. Alius tumenti aqualiculo mortem parturit; alius elinguis et mutus, et ne hoc quidem habens unde roget, magis rogat dum rogare non potest. Ilic debilitatus a parvo non sibi mendicat stipem; ille putrefactus morbo regio supravivit cadaveri suo.

Non mihi si linguae centum sint, oraque centum,

Omnia poenarum percurrere nomina possim. (Aen.
VI
, 625, 627)

Hoc exercitu comitatus incedit, in his Christum confovet, horum sordibus dealbatur. Munerarius pauperum et egentium candidatus sic festinat ad coelum. Ceteri mariti super tumulos conjugum spargunt violas, rosas, lilia, floresque purpureos, et dolorem pectoris his officiis consolantur. Pammachius noster sanctam favillam ossaque veneranda eleemosynae balsamis rigat. …

(The shining gems which once adorned her neck and her face serve to make full the stomachs of the needy. The silken robes and interwoven threads of gold have been transformed into soft woollen clothes which are a cover against the cold, not an uncovering of vanity. What was once an instrument of luxury is employed by virtue. That blind man there who often extends his hand and calls out where no one is, becomes Paulina’s heir, Pammachius’ coheir. That other man with mutilated feet, who drags himself along with his entire body, is supported by a tender girl’s hands. The gates, once spewing forth groups of adulating visitors, are now besieged by the poor. The one there with his swollen belly is pregnant with his own death. Another, tongueless and mute, has not even that with which he might implore, and implores the more persuasively because he cannot implore. This one, sickly from childhood, no longer needs to beg [?] for his alms; that one, decomposed by disease [jaundice?], survives his
own corpse. “Not, if a hundred tongues were mine and a hundred mouths, could I enumerate the names of all their sufferings.” Accompanied by this host he advances. In them he cares for Christ. In their squalor he is washed white. Thus the treasurer of the poor, the
candidatus
[i.e., both the loving wooer and one who wears a white toga] of the indigent hurries toward heaven. Other husbands scatter on their wives’ graves violets, roses, lilies, and purple flowers and by these offerings console the grief of their hearts. Our Pammachius sprinkles the balsam of mercy upon the sacred ashes and the venerable bones. …)

The procession of the sick folk and beggars is of course based on the Bible both in content and feeling. The Book of Job, together with the healings of the sick and the ethics of sacrifice and humility in the New Testament, form the basis for such a display of physical horrors. At a very early period, devoted self-sacrifice for the benefit of those suffering from repulsive diseases (
spirans cadaver
, Jerome says elsewhere), and especially physical contact with them while attending to their needs, were considered among the most important characteristics indicative of Christian humility and aspiration toward saintliness. But it is clear that the rhetorical devices of late antiquity likewise contributed their share to the glaring effect of our passage—and I am inclined to think that it is the lion’s share. The showy pictorial style of this rhetoric is apparent from the very beginning in the contrasting expressions of the greatest luxury and the most pitiful misery, where the opposite poles of style are consciously displayed:
ardentes gemmae
over against
egentium ventres
! The same pictorial style is apparent in the play with verbal and conceptual antithesis (
lanarum vestimenta quibus repellatur frigus
over against
vestes sericae
, etc.
quibus nudetur ambitio—ubi nemo est clamitans—ne hoc quidem habens unde roget
, etc.—
supravivit cadaveri suo—sordibus dealbatur
—and so forth), in the preference given to showy adjectives and images, the emotive use of anaphora (
hoc, his, horum
). Of course, Jerome differs from his contemporary Ammianus in that the fire of his display (
ardentes gemmae
) is fed by love and enthusiasm—the lyrical flight of the concluding sentences, with Pammachius soaring heavenward and bedewing the ashes of his beloved with the balsam of charity is magnificent, doubly effective after the procession of the sick; and the flowers which Pammachius does not strew, but which are enumerated one by one, contribute their fragrance. It is a marvelous piece, a delight for lovers of
what later on came to be called Baroque; and Ammianus, with his much more rigid and intrinsically frozen splendor, has nothing to compare with it. Yet even Jerome’s hope, which enables him to rise to such moving lyrical heights, has no reference whatever to this world. His propaganda, directed entirely toward an ideal of ascetic virginity, is opposed to generation and intent upon the annihilation of the earthly. It is only with difficulty and halfheartedly that he allows the resistance, which had then just set in, to extract partial concessions from him. His is a somber fire too; in him too, the contrast between the pictorial splendor of the language and the somberly suicidal ethos, the immersion in horror, in distortion of life and hostility to life, is often almost unbearable. He is not the last to clothe such asceticism and murderous hatred of the world in an extravagantly pictorial style; that remains a Christian tradition. But in him the effect is all the more lugubrious because there is a complete lack of the opposing voices of delight in the world, which make themselves heard in all later forms of the Baroque, even in the most profoundly ecstatic devotion. It seems that declining antiquity, somberly and desperately on the defensive, could no longer produce such voices.

However, even in the Fathers there are texts which reveal a completely different, a much more dramatically militant attitude toward the realities of their time—and, with it, a completely different, a much less baroque form of expression, much more under the influence of the classical tradition. The following text, which I shall use to illustrate this, is chapter 8 of book 6 of Augustine’s
Confessions
. The person referred to is Alypius, a friend of Augustine’s earlier years and one of his disciples. The person addressed (
tu
) is God.

Non sane relinquens incantatam sibi a parentibus terrenam viam, Romam praecesserat, ut ius disceret; et ibi gladiatorii spectaculi hiatu incredibili et incredibiliter abreptus est. Cum enim aversaretur et detestaretur talia, quidam eius amici et condiscipuli, cum forte de prandio redeuntibus per viam obvius esset, recusantem vehementer et resistentem familiari violentia duxerunt in amphitheatrum, crudelium et funestorum ludorum diebus, haec dicentem: si corpus meum in illum locum trahitis, et ibi constituitis, numquid et animum et oculos meos in illa spectacula potestis intendere? Adero itaque absens, ac sic et vos et illa superabo. Quibus auditis illi nihilo segnius eum adduxerunt secum, idipsum forte explorare cupientes, utrum posset efficere. Quo ubi ventum est,
et sedibus, quibus potuerunt, locati sunt, fervebant omnia imanissimis voluptatibus. Ille autem clausis foribus oculorum interdixit animo, ne in tanta mala procederet, atque utinam et aures obturavisset. Nam quodam pugnae casu, cum clamor ingens totius populi vehementer eum pulsasset, curiositate victus et quasi paratus quicquid illud esset etiam visu contemnere et vincere, aperuit oculos; et percussus est graviore vulnere in anima, quam ille in corpore, quem cernere concupivit, ceciditque miserabilius, quam ille quo cadente factus est clamor: qui per eius aures intravit, et reseravit eius lumina, ut esset, qua feriretur et deiiceretur, audax adhuc potius quam fortis animus; et eo infirmior, quod de se etiam praesumpserat quod debuit tibi. Ut enim vidit illum sanguinem, immanitatem simul ebibit, et non se avertit, sed fixit adspectum, et hauriebat furias, et nesciebat; et delectabatur scelere certaminis, et cruenta voluptate inebriabatur. Et non erat iam ille qui venerat, sed unus de turba ad quam venerat, et verus eorum socius a quibus adductus erat. Quid plura? Spectavit, clamavit, exarsit, abstulit inde secum insaniam qua stimularetur redire: non tantum cum illis a quibus prius abstractus est, sed etiam prae illis, et alios trahens. Et inde tamen manu validissima et misericordissima eruisti eum tu, et docuisti eum non sui habere, sed tui fiduciam; sed longe postea.

(He, not relinquishing that worldly way which his parents had bewitched him to pursue, had gone before me to Rome, to study law, and there he was carried away in an extraordinary manner with an incredible eagerness after the gladiatorial shows. For, being utterly opposed to and detesting such spectacles, he was one day met by chance by divers of his acquaintance and fellow-students returning from dinner, and they with a friendly violence drew him, vehemently objecting and resisting, into the amphitheater, on a day of these cruel and deadly shows, he thus protesting: “Though you drag my body to that place, and there place me, can you force me to give my mind and lend my eyes to these shows? Thus shall I be absent while present, and so shall overcome both you and them.” They hearing this, dragged him on nevertheless, desirous, perchance, to see whether he could do as he said. When they had arrived thither, and had taken their places as they could, the whole place became excited with the inhuman sports. But he, shutting up the doors of his eyes, forbade
his mind to roam abroad after such naughtiness; and would that he had shut his ears also! For, upon the fall of one in the fight, a mighty cry from the whole audience stirring him strongly, he, overcome by curiosity, and prepared as it were to despite and rise superior to it, no matter what it were, opened his eyes, and was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the other, whom he desired to see, was in his body; and he fell more miserably than he on whose fall that mighty clamor was raised, which entered through his ears, and unlocked his eyes, to make way for the striking and beating down of his soul, which was bold rather than valiant hitherto; and so much the weaker in that it presumed on itself, which ought to have depended on Thee. For, directly he saw that blood, he therewith imbibed a sort of savageness; nor did he turn away, but fixed his eye, drinking in madness unconsciously, and was delighted with the guilty contest, and drunken with the bloody pastime. Nor was he now the same he came in, but was one of the throng he came unto, and a true companion of those who had brought him thither. Why need I say more? He looked, shouted, was excited, carried away with him the madness which would stimulate him to return, not only with those who first enticed him, but also before them, yea, and to draw in others. And from all this didst Thou, with a most powerful and most merciful hand, pluck him, and taughtest him not to repose confidence in himself, but in Thee—but not until long after.)
The Confessions of St. Augustine
. Translated by J. C. Pilkington. Citadel Press. 1943.