This week, we again omit the “F” in BWW&FP, at least in
the literal, material sense. Instead, this week’s wine is paired with
sustenance for the soul. Behold.
We have here a 3-liter cask of Almaden Vineyards Heritage
White Zinfandel (from California, $6.99 for the equivalent of four 750
milliliter bottles – that’s less than $2 per bottle, people; curiously, a
slightly better value than the 5-liter casks) paired with Plato, specifically his
Phaedrus. By way of an explanation
for this pairing, allow me to articulate my motivations for selecting this particular
vintage in the first place. (I swear it was not simply the price.)
As I was strolling through the liquor store – or rather,
strolling up and down the aisle in which the boxed wine is stocked – my eye
alighted on the luminous pink hue you see on the side of the cardboard cask,
above the tap.
 |
| A closer look. Fortuitously - fatefully, perhaps - this face of the box, normally concealed, was exposed due to the removal of a neighbor. |
Immediately, Guido Reni’s Archangel Michael hovered before my mind’s eye, as a result of the
confluence between the color of the illustrated inebriant and the coral cloak
of the avenging agent of heaven.
 |
| Guido Reni, The Archangel Michael, 1635; oil on silk; Rome, Santa Maria della Concezione. Admittedly, the color of the cloak is not as radiant in this reproduction, but you get the idea. |
Painted for an altar in the church of Santa Maria della
Concezione in Rome and paid for by the Barberini, the family of the pope at the
time, Urban VIII, Reni’s archangel is effortless finesse anthropomorphized. I
would normally say, “personified,” but of course this isn’t a person, strictly
speaking. The perfection and impassiveness of his visage surpasses that
attainable in the human realm, recalling more closely the symmetrical serenity
found in the carved faces of statuary from classical antiquity. The color of his garments – lighter,
ethereal tints of the traditional red and blue of the Virgin Mary – emphasize
the celestial origin of this heavenly soldier, as opposed to the earthly nature
of the mother of Christ (up until her death, at least). Most indicative of the
empyrean nature of this being, however, is the weightlessness and grace
bestowed upon it by Reni’s own superhuman powers of conception and execution.
Though both of Michael’s feet are planted firmly, they appear to bear no
weight, nor do the muscles of his legs exert any strain, even as the brawny
devil struggles under the left one to escape being smitten by the impending
blow of the archangel’s blade, prefigured by the powerful diagonal
formed by the sword and left leg of Michael, the downward thrust of which
dominates the painting’s composition. Such brutality appears antithetical to
Michael’s balletic beauty – and indeed, Reni balances his work’s arrangement
with the gentle curve formed by the figure’s head, torso, and right leg, a
fittingly angelic arc that contrasts starkly with the blade’s uncompromisingly grim
path – yet the devil’s insistently material bodily presence insists on being
dealt with by violence reserved usually for the corporeal realm.
Luckily, there is preserved a written statement by Reni
regarding this work, which reveals the artist’s intention to contrast heavenly
beauty and base ugliness in the forms of Michael and the devil, respectively. To
the chamberlain of Pope Urban VIII, Reni wrote that he wished he had:
an Angel’s brush or
forms from Paradise when creating the Archangel, and to have seen him in
heaven, but I could not reach such heights and sought him in vain on earth. So
I depended instead on forms whose Idea I had established for myself. One may
also find the Idea of ugliness, but that I leave to the devil to bring out
because I myself flee it even in thought, nor do I care even to occupy my mind
with it.
The use of the term, “Idea,” and reference to heavenly
beauty not to be found on earth indicate clearly the Platonic bent of Reni’s
artistic philosophy, in addition to the conundrum faced by visual artists who
viewed their occupations in such a way.
First, to explain the capitalization of “Idea,” one must be
familiar with Plato’s theory of Forms. As Plato has Socrates state in the Phaedrus, our accompaniment to this
week’s vintage, a Form is “that which, going from a plurality of perceptions is
drawn together by reasoning into a single essence” (Phaedrus 249b). The Form is a singular distillation – the thing in
itself, to borrow Kantian terminology – of that which exists on earth, in the
material realm, as a plurality. For example, for the many chairs that exist on
earth, there is a singular Chair from which all are derived. To explain this
idea in terms of Reni’s words above, he sought to contrast Beauty – its
singular Form, or Idea, as he says – with Ugliness (again, he refers to the
“Idea of ugliness”), but not being able to grasp these singular Forms, he
contrasted that which he could find on earth; namely, visible examples beauty
and ugliness, one each of their many pluralities.
Reni’s failure to grasp Beauty and Ugliness in their
singularity cannot be blamed on any artistic shortcomings, but rather on his
regrettable status as a mortal human. You see, Forms are part of the invisible
realm of Being, as opposed to the physical, mortal realm of Becoming. Forms cannot be perceived by the senses, but only by reason and a soul unencumbered
by a physical body. Socrates explains:
None of the poets
[one could substitute artists of any kind here] on Earth have ever sung the praises of this place beyond heaven, nor
will any ever sing of it adequately, but the hymn goes like this – for we must
have the courage to speak the truth, especially when the true nature of things
is our subject. This is the place of Being, the Being that truly is –
colorless, shapeless, and untouchable, visible to the mind alone, the soul’s
pilot, and the source of true knowledge (Phaedrus 247c).
Every soul originates in this celestial realm of Being and
thus has gazed, so to speak, upon the Forms of things. However, Socrates claims
that souls, which are naturally winged, sometimes lose their feathers. They
then come to settle in an earthly body, animating it as a living, but mortal,
creature (Phaedrus 246c). Now, every
soul strives to return to the realm of Being, and the only way to do so is to
arouse in it the memory of the Forms (or Ideas, to again recall Reni’s term)
that it once viewed there. However, since Forms are not visible to our physical
faculties, how is this to be done on earth? Socrates asserts that, to recollect
those things that the soul once saw when traveling in the company of gods in
the realm of Being, one must look with contempt at those things which we now
say exist around him, and lift up his head to see what really is. “Only the
discursive thinking of the philosopher, the one who is in love with wisdom,
grows wings” (Phaedrus 249c). And so,
when the philosopher, the lover of wisdom, looks upon earthly beauty, he is
reminded of true Beauty (its Form, its Idea) and acquires wings (Phaedrus 249d).
Now we can see that Reni, in his letter to the pope’s
chamberlain, was not so much admitting a failure to depict the Forms of Beauty
and Ugliness - an impossibility and hence a shortcoming for which he cannot be
blamed - but was ascribing to himself the highest motivations possible in this
world – to those invested in Platonic philosophy, at least – the contemplation,
or the striving for remembrance, of Forms. Reni’s description of his plight is
remarkably close to that of the philosopher whose soul recalls true Beauty and
has acquired wings; who shows no concern for the things of this earth and seeks, however futilely, to ascend from amongst this dreck to the divine realm of Being.
Despite Reni’s remarkable skill – he was called il Guido divino by his contemporaries –
the painter’s attempted self-portrayal as a philosopher-artist who disdains the
inferior forms found in the earthly realm rings hollow. No matter how elevated
and immaterial Reni’s “Ideas,” his profession requires that he express them
using undeniably material means – specifically: pigments ground up into a
powder and suspended in some sort of vegetable oil (probably linseed); applied
with brushes made of wood and animal hairs onto a textile support; usually
canvas, but in this case, silk. And herein lies the aforementioned conundrum that
faces visual artists with Platonic aspirations: Painters, sculptors, and other
artists all produce physical objects that, while they may strive to be, or at
least provoke, the Idea or Form of Beauty, are by their inescapably material
nature nothing more than one of the multitude of Beauty’s earthly
manifestations. What’s more, since most men do not love wisdom and are not
philosophers, even a work of art that closely approaches Beauty will not incite
in them the remembrance of the singular Form. For, as Socrates notes, “When
looking at beauty’s namesake here [on earth], [the corrupted] person fails to
experience true reverence as he gazes but yields to pleasure and tries to mount
and spawn children according to the law of a four-footed animal” (Phaedrus 250e). Like me, Plato
apparently had little faith in the philosophical faculties and inclinations of
his fellow man; therefore, he excluded artists from his ideal city (Republic 10:595a-608b), lest skillful
material representations distract citizens from the elevating contemplation of
Forms and instead incite in them vulgar urges.
In my own desperate yearning to escape the baseness of my
surroundings, I must admit to delusions and failures akin to Reni’s (if
anything by Reni could be said to be a failure); in spirit, at least, if not in
magnitude, quality, or importance. Anyway, I have already acknowledged that the
image that graced the box recalled to me a vision I hold to be one of the most
valiant attempts at Beauty I know; and so, like Reni with his art, I sought to use
wine as a medium through which I could glimpse Forms and hopefully begin to
return my soul to the realm of Being. And, I assure you, my notion was not
misguided or self-serving! It has a distinguished philosophical pedigree!
Socrates himself asserts that god-given madness is the greatest of all good
things (Phaedrus 244a; Nietzsche also quotes this line in a clever attempt to undermine Socrates’ usual valorization of reason). And what is drunkenness if not the gift of madness particular to
Dionysos, the god of wine?
However, as usual, things did not turn out as planned (which
is not to say that the result could not have been anticipated). First, when
tapping the cask initially, it became immediately clear that the box’s
representation of what was within was far from accurate.
While the actual appearance of the wine is a rich, reddish
amber – that is far from unpleasant, I must say – I still found myself
disappointed that the illustration’s incandescent ambrosia was not flowing into
my glass. It is a color rarely found in nature, save for on the flanks of
low-hanging clouds during a sunset, and even then it lingers for only a few
moments before the glowing orb that is its origin sinks beneath the horizon. Basically,
I expected to capture in my glass, taste, and consume the fleeting essence of a
beautiful dusk. “To experience the heavenly realm in such a way would surely
spur my soul’s ascension,” I thought, as I basked in the wretched, soulless
fluorescence that lighted the liquor store, simultaneously calculating the cost
per liter of the different size casks and counting the crumpled singles in my
wallet. (Thanks to Joe and Todd for making it rain on the dance floor of the
wedding we recently attended. You guys sort of paid for this wine; and by “sort
of,” I mean “literally.”)
Alas, in regard to the tasting itself, the transcendent
experience I desired was not to be, either. Almaden’s Heritage White Zinfandel
tastes strongly of strawberries, but a bit of dryness takes the edge off of the
sweetness, preventing the drinker from gulping too hastily, as one tends to do
with Almaden’s delectable Mountain Rhine. Again, while not offensive in any
way, the sensation fell far short of what I had anticipated, which was
essentially to taste rays of dazzlingly filtered sunlight alighting on my
tongue as delicately and weightlessly as Reni’s archangel.
Finally, my hopes for the sensation I might have experienced by consuming early twilight condensed into a liquid are encapsulated by a passage from Thomas
Mann’s novel, Doctor Faustus, in
which the narrator describes the rationale behind a minor character’s morphine
addiction:
(…) pain is something
quite beneath man’s dignity, a disgrace not to be suffered. Moreover, quite
apart from the concrete and specific debasement of physical pain or afflictions
of the heart, life itself, in and of itself, mere existence, animal survival,
is an unworthy and ponderous chain, a vile encumbrance, and anything but noble
and proud; it is an exercise of our human rights and a legitimate spiritual act
to thrust aside this burden, so to speak, to be rid of it, and to gain freedom,
lightness, bodiless well-being, as it were, by supplying one’s physical nature
with this blessed stuff, which grants the body emancipation from suffering (…).
The Platonic intimations of this passage are hopefully clear
to you by this point, dear readers; but, as some of you may have realized, they
are also sardonic. Mann’s narrator is describing the consumption of an
addictive substance; an act that, while it provides temporary alleviation from
the pains and cares of the body, is inexorably of it. Not coincidentally, such a
characterization could be applied fittingly to our above discussion of Reni’s
remarks and, more generally, the Platonically inclined visual artists’ conundrum. The Neapolitan painter Luca
Giordano appears, at least in my limited view, to have commented wryly on the
Platonic pretensions of some of his colleagues with his own version of the
archangel Michael, which was clearly inspired by Reni's sublime work.
 |
| Luca Giordano, Saint Michael Vanquishing the Devil, c. 1663; oil on canvas; Berlin, Staatliche Museum. |
Though at first glance exceedingly beautiful and seemingly
heavenly, closer examination reveals details that exclude Luca’s archangel from
the celestial realm occupied by Reni’s. First, Luca’s figure possesses an
insistent luminousness that borders on garishness – and here I am compelled to
admit the hue of the archangel’s cloak in this version matches more closely that
of the image of the wine on the box – making the more subdued tones of Reni’s
Michael appear an echo of the impassive restraint shown in the figure’s lack of
expression. Speaking of expressions, the mouth of Luca’s archangel betrays the
slightest downward turn and barely parted lips. Despite the ambiguity of the
emotion conveyed by this inkling of an expression, its very appearance robs
Luca’s Michael of the inhuman impassiveness of Reni’s, in addition to the fact
that the parted lips suggest a breath being drawn or exhaled. This latter implication
of corporeality is reinforced twice over: once by the figure (of whom we see
only the right leg) tumbling out of the frame of the picture on the bottom
right, off of whom it appears Luca’s angel has vaulted, using his extended left
leg, onto the figure on whom he now alights; and secondly by the soft, fleshy
appearance of the figure’s exposed limbs. These observations imbue Luca’s
Michael with weight and texture, placing him in the realm of the physical. The coup de grâce of my argument – and also that
of the painting itself, quite literally – is the fully realized thrust of the
lance, which penetrates the devil’s ribcage, draws blood, and provokes a
chilling shriek of pain, signified vividly by the cretin’s gaping maw, which
confronts the viewer directly. Whereas Reni’s work depicts detachedly a
juxtaposition of Ideas, Luca’s blazons blatantly a battle of bodies.
As the first flush of the wine’s narcotic effects ebb, my
own bodily pain – the headache, mild fever, and muscular soreness that has
plagued me irregularly and unpredictably for the last fortnight, and on which I
place the blame for my authorial inactivity – returns; as well as the
oppressive weight, the vile encumbrance of life in and of itself, as Mann so
eloquently put it, which is to me an excruciating anchor, holding me fast in
this sinister sphere of petty pluralities. Seeking relief not
given by the wine, I left the house earlier in the evening to stroll pleasantly deserted
paths while the sun set – still chasing that ephemeral, luminescent, roseate
hue – only to be reminded grimly of my constricting corporeal carapace by a
half-dozen disturbingly robust buzzards circling overhead.
(In case you missed it, which would be entirely
understandable, the wine wasn’t half bad. Also, here are a couple tunes that,
in the spirit of this week’s subject, are appropriately transcendent. I had the
Beethoven in mind from the outset; the jj came to my attention while I was
writing and seemed to me too good a fit to exclude - go here if you want to download the song for free and legally.)
Beethoven, Piano Concerto #5 in E Flat, Op. 73, "Emperor;" Second Movement, Adagio un poco mosso
[Notes: In composing this entry, I quoted and paraphrased
from Stephen Scully’s translation of Plato’s Phaedrus, in addition to consulting some of the accompanying
explanatory materials by the same (Focus Publishing, 2003). The quote from Doctor Faustus was taken from page 406
of John E. Woods’ translation (Vintage, 1997; published originally in German in
1947). The quote from Reni is transcribed on page 71 of Ann Sutherland
Harris’ Seventeenth-Century Art &
Architecture (Pearson, 2005). Also, I'm absolutely serious about the vultures. That happened.]
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