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ISSN 1392-0588 (spausdintas)ISSN 2335-8769 (internetinis)
http://dx.doi.org/10.7220/2335-8769.66.82016. 66
DDRHETORIC, LIBERTIES, AND CLASSICAL CULTURE. FROM FREE SPEECH
(PARRHESIA ) TO SERIO - COMIC (SPOUDOGELOION ) IN LUCIAN OF
SAMOSATAMICHEL BRIAND
University of Poitiers, France
SUMMARY. This paper extends a recently published preface (in
Lageot & Marchadier F. (dir.), Le blasphème dans une société
démocratique. Paris: Dalloz, 2016). In the polymorphous and
paradoxical works of Lucian of Samosata, “the ancient Voltaire,” I
propose to focus on some rhetorical devices which intensely perform
and stage the freedom of speech denoted by the Greek notion of
parrhesia, as M. Foucault reappraised it, in a cultural and
political per-spective (Foucault M. Le courage de la vérité. Le
gouvernement de soi et des autres II (Cours au Collège de France,
1984). Paris: Gallimard/Le Seuil, 2009). For instance, in The Dead
Come to Life or The Fisherman and Philosophies for Sale, or Zeus
Rants, Lucian stretches and articulates sophistic and true (or
false) philosophy, Socratic dialogue and comedy, epideixis and
dialectics, by renewing, hybridizing or inventing genres and
registers which still inspire contemporary critical theory, as well
as a significant part of post-modern creations. As he applies a
pragmatic conception of thought, which is not reluctant to use
satire, allegorical fiction, and polemical or fantastic discourse,
Lucian may become an important reference for new rhetoric, as it
both resists and produces new dynamic values, altogether practical
and theoretical, or even, while facing discourses and images, is
able to combine active, even critical and distanced, reception and
sensitive immersion, and reflexivity or meta-fictionality. Four
main enunciative strategies and processes have been scrutinized in
this study: the interplays of rhetoric and false or true
phi-losophy; the dynamics of hyperrealistic, fantastic, and
specular auto-fiction, e.g., in Alexander the False Prophet, True
Stories, The Dream or Lucian’s Carrier; the dialogic powers of
serio-comic (spoudogeloion), between reflexion and comedy, e.g., in
The Fly, Charon or the Inspectors, and the Dialogues of the Dead;
and the dialectics of critical / immersive readership and
meta-fictional / committed authorship, e.g., in Heracles, The Hall
and About Dance.KEY WORDS: freedom of speech, postmodernity,
parrhesia, auto-fiction, meta-fiction, serio-comic, scepticism,
Lucian of Samosata, satirical dialogue, authorship/readership,
classical culture, critical thought.
As a contribution to the general debate about what the
rhetorical tradition may offer to confront some contemporary
challenges, I chose to focus on liberties, especially freedom of
thought and speech, and the way several classical models may
provide us with some discursive, artistic, and cognitive devices
that, although essentially literary, are not mere ornaments but
necessary to the efficient expression
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and discussion of intricate and tensed issues that monological
and simplistic dis-courses and convictions often excessively reduce
to binary or totalitarian norms and solutions. Our times really
need rhetoric and (classical) culture, at least if we hold that
literature, as thought in action, must relate to life. And the
revaluation of contemporary rhetoric may partly rely on the
rehabilitation of ancient Sophists, both of the first (Vth and IVth
c. B. C.) and second Sophistic (IInd c.), as humanists and experts
of practical philosophy. Among these rhetorical devices which
democ-racy (and humanity) needs, I shall count figures like irony,
fiction, reflexivity and meta-fiction, or metalepsis, and
interplays of realism and fantasy, seriousness and humor, or even
commitment and critical distance, as displayed by the Greek
rhet-orician and satirist of the IInd century, Lucian of Samosata,
surnamed “le Voltaire de l’Antiquité” by Mme de Staël.1 He is both
a perfect historical example of critical thought and
enlightenment,2 a radically sceptical thinker with unique skills
for comic effects, and a vivid prototype for our post-modern
culture, that is intrinsi-cally connecting classicism and
contemporaneity. There is no space here to study this question
through the approximately eighty texts we have received from him,
including dialogues, treatises, and narratives, but I shall try to
show how inspiring this reference is.
INTERPL AYS OF RHETORIC AND FALSE OR TRUE PHILOSOPHY
This paper is connected to a recently published foreword
proposed for the pro- ceedings of a conference which was tackling a
crucial issue in contemporary culture and politics and where I was
referring to ancient rhetoric as a still vivid source, not only for
forms, but also for ways of thought and action, or even better said
for efficient and embodied discursivity and thought, as well as for
thoughtful and mea-ningful action.3 One crucial issue in a
democracy is the freedom of speech, and in the polymorphous and
paradoxical works of Lucian of Samosata, we may first focus on some
rhetorical devices which intensely perform and stage the Greek
notion of
1 Mme de Staël, De l’Allemagne, 1813.2 Narbonne J.-M. Antiquité
critique et modernité. Essai sur le rôle de la pensée critique en
Occident. Paris: Les
Belles Lettres, 2016, especially chap. IV Du scepticisme ancien
à la tolérance moderne: l’héritage paradigmatique de Lucien,
139–189.
3 Briand M. Du blasphème en démocratie, par un détour en Grèce
ancienne, à Poitiers. In Lageot C. & Marchadier F. (dir.) Le
blasphème dans une société démocratique. Paris: Dalloz, 2016,
11–17.
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parrhesia, as Michel Foucault reappraised it, in a cultural and
political perspective.4 Lucian invented the name Parrhesiadês
(Free-Speaker) for one of the various figures representing him in
his dialogues, as in The Dead Come to Life or The Fisherman, in
defense against the violent critics Lucian had just faced in his
Philosophies for Sale. In this satiric dialogue (another model from
which (post-)modernity might get much inspiration and cultural,
argumentative, and cognitive efficiency),5 he represented an
Athenian market where the products to be sold, through hard
bargain, were the prominent figures of all philosophy schools, like
Chrysippus, Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes, etc. In The Dead Come to
Life or The Fisherman Lucian imagines that all the dead
philosophers run out of the netherworld to attack the writer,
because of his comic texts they consider as blasphemous libels
(blasphêmia in Greek is not limited to religious questions) against
Philosophy herself. They intend to stone to death Parrhesiades, who
eventually manages to be judged in a regular trial chaired by
Philosophy herself, with such prestigious jurors as Truth or
Argument. After the speeches for the prosecution by Diogenes and
for the defense by Parrhesiades himself, the prosecuted Sophist
triumphs over his assaulters and is considered innocent by the jury
of true philosophers. The last part of the piece is a
quasi-Aristophanian fantasy, where Parrhesiades and some
philosophers, with the help of different allegories, try to
identify the different schools of philosophy among the thousands of
philosophical fishes, which they attract with golden baits: the
satire continues intensively, for the sake of truth and
laughter.
The strength of rhetoric (the words) is here typically opposed
to physical vio-lence. Pursued by the philosophers, Παρρησιάδης
utters what could be a slogan for all free-thinkers and democrats
confronting terror, for instance, the editorial cartoonists of
Charlie Hebdo: The Dead Come to Life 3, “Then will ye slay me now,
because of words?” (Νῦν ἕκατι ῥημάσιν κτενεῖτέ με;).6 And the
following argu-ments, which Plato and others try to answer as
self-proclaimed defenders of Philos-ophy, already are the first
steps to Lucian’s victory, since they substitute dialogue and
reflexion, even fragile and tense, to sheer brutality and
fanaticism: “Well, then, as you are absolutely determined to kill
me and there is no possibility of my escaping, do tell me at least
who you are and what irreparable injuries you have received
from
4 Foucault M. Le courage de la vérité. Le gouvernement de soi et
des autres II (Cours au Collège de France, 1984). Paris:
Gallimard/Le Seuil, 2009. See also Camerotto A. Le metamorfosi
della parola. Studi sulla parodia in Luciano di Samosata. Pisa /
Roma: Istituti Editoriali E Poligrafici Internazionali, 1998, and
Gli occhi e la lingua della satira. Studi sull’eroe satirico in
Luciano di Samosata. Milano / Udine: Mimesis Edizioni, 2014,
especially chap. IV Le virtù e la potenza della vista, 191–224, and
chap. V La libertà e il dovere del dire, 225–283.
5 Lucian claims to have invented the genre of the Dialogue of
the Dead by hybridizing philosophical dialogue and comedy: Briand
M. Les Dialogues des morts de Lucien, entre dialectique et satire:
une hybridité générique fondatrice. In Eissen A. (dir.) Les
dialogues des morts. Otrante 22, 2007, 61–72.
6 All the English translations of Lucian quoted here are from
the Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, by A. M.
Harmon.
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me that you are irreconcilably angry and have seized me for
execution.” At the end of the dialogue, conversely, Lucian
associates Rhetoric with Philosophy as its best defender,
especially against false philosophers, that is, those whose real
behavior does not match their constantly dull claims and outlooks.
This capacity to unveil hypoc-risy is at the core of the plea
Parrhesiades presents to the allegory of Philosophy, who is
chairing the trial; the advocacy for rhetoric is also a praise of
real philosophy:
In that way you can find out whom I put up for sale and abused,
calling them pretenders and cheats (κακῶς ἠγόρευον ἀλαζόνας καὶ
γόητας ἀποκάλων). And I beg you merely to note throughout whether
what I say about them is true. If my speech should prove to contain
anything shocking or offensive (τι βλάσφημον ἢ τραχὺ), it is not I,
their critic (τὸν διελέγχοντα ἐμὲ), but they, I think, whom you
would justly blame for it, acting as they do. As soon as I
perceived how many disagreeable attributes a public speaker must
acquire, such as chicanery, lying, impudence, loudness of mouth,
sharpness of elbow, and what all besides, I fled from all that, as
was natural, and set out to attain your high ideals, Philosophy ...
(The Dead Come to Life, 29)
Lucian’s apology also concerns true philosophers: rhetoric is
one of the best methods to distinguish truth and lies, good and bad
lives, and noble and ridiculous personalities. This is paradoxical
only for those who do not know that laughter, fic-tion, and images
are necessary for thought and action, especially when addressing an
audience larger than the readers of univocally serious
treatises.7
These self-styled philosophers do just that, and I for my part
abused their sort (κακῶς ἠγόρευον), and shall never stop
criticizing and ridiculing them (διελέγχων καὶ κωμωι-δῶν). But as
for you and those who resemble you — for there are, there are some
who truly cultivate philosophy and abide by your laws — may I never
be so insane as to say anything abusive or unkind of you! (The Dead
Come to Life, 29)
The dialogue called Philosophies for Sale, for which
Parrhesiades / Lucian was about to be stoned to death, well shows
the philosophical and social usefulness of satirical rhetoric and
literature, when utopia tackles crucial issues like the precari-ous
and multiple meaning of life. As a sophist criticizing all
philosophical schools, Lucian is a philosopher, and also when he
caricatures the Cynics, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, or even
Socrates himself (9–11 and 15–16). And Lucian’s rhetoric is
thoroughly reflexive, that is, meta-rhetorical, with important
consequences for the way he stages man’s relations to his
environment in his imaginary dialogues. For example, in Zeus Rants
he promotes the necessity of critical thought and cul-ture, that
is, rhetoric again, and mockery, for the construction and
transmission of the good and beautiful. Zeus himself proclaims it,
when speaking to Momus, an allegory of derision (19): “Speak,
Momus, with full confidence (πάνυ θαρρῶν),
7 Briand A. La fiction qui pense en riant : avatars et paradoxes
du muthos et du pseudos chez Lucien, [2014 01 04].
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for it is clear that your frankness will be intended for our
common good (τῶι συμφέροντι παρρησιασόμενος).”
This is also a way to confirm a radical conception of humanism,
more based on dissent than on compromise: for Lucian, the real gods
want to let human beings live by themselves. When Timocles accuses
the sceptic Damis of blasphemy, for his claiming the gods do not
exist or at least have no interest in humanity, Damis argues
pleasantly about their laziness and lack of concern for humans,
pious or not (37):
And when can they find time for me, when they have so many
cares, you say, and manage all creation, which is unlimited in its
extent? That is why they have not yet paid you back for all your
false oaths and everything else — I don’t want to be forced to deal
in abuse (βλασφημεῖν) like you, contrary to our stipulations: and
yet I don’t see what better manifestation of their providence they
could have made than to crush your life out miserably, miserable
sinner that you are!
In a more general perspective, the intention of this study is to
show briefly how a reference to Lucian, such a prominent and
complex member of the Second Sophistic, with Philostratus,
Plutarch, or Galen, may provide us with still useful devices; and
how those texts, in their meaning as well as in their oratory and
specta-cular pragmatics, stretch and articulate sophistic and
philosophy, Socratic dialogue and comedy, or epideixis and
dialectics: to do so, Lucian renews or invents genres and registers
which still inspire contemporary critical theory, consciously or
not, as well as a significant part of post- and alter-modern
creations. As he applies a pra-gmatic conception of thought, which
does not shy away from satire, fiction, and polemical or fantastic
discourse, Lucian may become a reference for new rhetoric, as it
both resists and produces dynamic values, altogether practical and
theoretical, or even, while facing discourses and images, is able
to combine active, even critical and distanced reception and
sensitive immersion.
Besides parrhêsia, three main enunciative strategies and
processes will be dis-cussed here: fantastic auto-fiction, in V.
Colona’s terms;8 Lucianic dialogue as a hybridization of laughter
and thought (e. g., Dialogues of the Dead); and both the serious
and the comical register of spoudogeloion, in its cynical /
sceptical and the-atrical double meaning. And this reflexion should
prepare us for a comparison of post-classical and post-modern
rhetoric, that is, of Lucian and our times.9
8 Colonna V. Autofictions et autres mythomanies littéraires.
Auch: Tristram, 2004.9 In reference to Bartley A. A Lucian for our
times. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009;
Ligota C. & Panizza L. (eds.) Lucian of Samosata Vivus and
Redivivus. London: The Warburg Institute / Turin: Nino Aragno
Editore, 2007; and to Eissen A. & Briand M. (dir.) Lucien (de
Samosate) et nous, Cahiers du FoReLL 1, 2013, [2014 01 04]. (Eissen
A. Lucien, personnage de fictions lucianesques; Rabau S. Pourquoi
dit-on que Lucien est un auteur de Science-Fiction ?; Garelli
M.-H. La Danse de Lucien : défense d’une cause ou trait
d’esprit ?, Guez J.-Ph. Lucien, l’ivresse ou la gueule de
bois; Briand M. La fiction qui pense en riant : avatars et
paradoxes du muthos et du pseudos chez Lucien).
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THE DYNAMICS OF HYPERREALISTIC, FANTASTIC, AND SPECUL AR
AUTO -FICTION
A fine example of spectacular hyperrealism in Lucian of Samosata
might be the biography of Alexander the False Prophet; for
instance, the description of his death, both ridiculous and
horrible, where Lucian, as a critical historian, shares some
fea-tures with Momos, the allegory of sarcastic denunciation. Here,
satirical rhetoric is one of the most efficient ways to reveal the
mendacities and swindles of false thought leaders and gurus
(59):
In spite of his prediction in an oracle that he was fated to
live a hundred and fifty years and then die by a stroke of
lightning, he met a most wretched end before reaching the age of
seventy, in a manner that befitted a son of Podaleirius; for his
leg became morti-fied quite to the groin and was infested with
maggots. It was then that his baldness was detected: because of the
pain he let the doctors foment his head, which they could not have
done unless his wig had been removed.
In doing so in many texts, dialogues or discourses, Lucian also
proves the argu-mentative value of literature, which he calls
rhetoric or even poetry, especially when it unmasks manipulative
and mendacious self-proclaimed philosophers or histo-rians, as in
the preface to the True Stories, which, like their title implies,
provide essential truths precisely because they are fantastically
fictitious: this work presents itself as a rhetorical journey
allegorized as both a satirical and a fantastic voyage (A2), “the
sort of reading that, instead of affording just pure amusement
based on wit and humor (ἐκ τοῦ ἀστείου τε καὶ χαρίεντος ψιλὴν
παρέξει τὴν ψυχαγωγίαν), also boasts a little food for thought that
the Muses would not altogether spur (θεωρίαν οὐκ ἄμουσον)”.
Consciously outspoken fiction, especially in a programmatic
pref-ace such as this one, helps readers to be aware of Lucian’s
intentions, both parodic and serious. Especially when they are both
satirical and obviously fabulous, rhetori-cal stories may be
enigmas worth interpreting from a philosophical point of
view:10
I tell all kinds of lies in a plausible and specious way
(ψεύσματα ποικίλα πιθανῶς τε καὶ ἐναλήθως), but also because
everything in my story is a more or less comical parody (οὐκ
ἀκωμωιδήτως ἤινικται) of one or another of the poets, historians
and philosophers of old, who have written much that smacks of
miracles and fables (πολλὰ τεράστια καὶ μυθώδη).
Here Lucian refers to Socratic self-irony, which he exceeds by
associating it with abundance and seduction. He goes further than
his philosophical model, who may
10 Laird A. Fiction as a Discourse of Philosophy in Lucian’s
Verae Historiae. In Panayotakis S., Zimmerman M., Keulen W. The
Ancient Novel and Beyond. Leiden: Brill, Mnemosyne Suppl. 241,
2003, 115–127, and Georgiadou A. et Larmour D. H.-J. Lucian’s
Science Fiction Novel True Histories: Interpretation and
Commentary. Leiden: Brill, Mnemosyne Supplement, 1998.
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be more Xenophon’s than Plato’s Socrates, and relates with his
readers / listeners in a most ambivalent way, typical of a cultural
context where pseudos can be both lie and fiction and the notion of
plasma (“modelling, shaping, fiction”) gets positive undertones, in
relation to the notion of “poetic licence” and the freedom to tell
fictions (A4):11
Therefore, as I myself, thanks to my vanity, was eager to hand
something down to pos-terity, that I might be the only one excluded
from the privileges of poetic licence (ἐν τῶι μυθολογεῖν
ἐλευθερἰας), and as I had nothing true to tell (μηδὲν ἀληθὲς
ἱστορεῖν), not having had any adventures of significance, I took to
lying (ἐπὶ τὸ ψεῦδος ἐτραπόμεν). But my lying is far more honest
than theirs, for though I tell the truth in nothing else, I shall
at least be truthful in saying that I am a liar (κἂν ἓν γὰρ δὴ
τοῦτο ἀληθεύσω λέγων ὅτι ψεύδομαι).
Thus rhetoric gives the writer and the listener or reader a
superior or distanced posture, which is well symbolized by the
great “looking-glass fixed above a well” (A26) Lucian found on the
Moon, during his stay there. This marvel (θαῦμα) provides the
narrator with the ability to watch and listen to everything going
on everywhere on earth, especially in his country, city, and
family: the sophist here stages the critical vision by which we may
better understand and judge our own lives.12 But he does it in a
playfully ambivalent way: this marvel only exists in the fantastic
fiction he is narrating and describing: “Anyone who does not
believe this is so will find, if ever he gets there himself, that I
am telling the truth (εἴσεται ὡς ἀληθῆ λέγω)”. And concerning
precarious though crucial relations of reality, truth, and
imagination, another powerful allegory is presented in the episode
of Lucian’s visit (B34):
There were winged and portentous dreams among them, and there
were others dressed up as if for a carnival, being clothed to
represent kings and gods and different characters of the sort. We
actually recognised many of them, whom we had seen long ago at
home. These came up to us and greeted us like old acquaintances,
took us with them, put us to sleep and entertained us very
splendidly and hospitably. They treated us like lords in every way,
and even promised to make us kings and nabobs. A few of them
actually took us off home, gave us a sight of our friends and
families and brought us back the same day.
11 Cassin B. L’Effet sophistique. Paris: Gallimard, 1995, and
Cassin B. Du faux ou du mensonge à la fiction (de pseudos à
plasma). In B. Cassin (ed.). Le plaisir de parler. Paris: Editions
de Minuit, Arguments, 1986, 3–29. See also Gassino I. Par delà
toutes les frontières: le pseudos dans les Histoires vraies de
Lucien. In Mestre F. & Gómez P. (eds.) Lucian of Samosata.
Greek writer and Roman citizen. Barcelona: Universitat de
Barcelona, 2010, 63–71.
12 Ni Mheallaigh K. Reading Fiction with Lucian. Fakes, Freaks
and Hyperreality. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., Greek Culture in the
Roman World, 2014, especially Introduction. Lucian’s Promethean
poetics: hybridity, fiction and the postmodern, 1–38, chap. 6 True
Stories: travels in hyperreality, 206–260, chap. 7 Conclusion.
Fiction and the wonder-culture of the Roman empire, 261–277, and
Von Möllendorff P. Auf der Suche nach der verlogenen Wahrheit:
Lukians Wahre Geschichten. Tübingen: Classica Monacensia, vol.
21, Gunter Narr, 2000.
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Though both fantastically and comically depicted, these rhetoric
forms are quite serious affairs, as it is well shown in Lucian’s
texts where the “ego” is more directly autobiographical, or at
least auto-fictional. For example, in The Dream or Lucian’s Career,
Lucian tells the story of his childhood and youth: as coming from a
poor Syrian family, he first was an apprentice at a stone-mason and
sculptor’s workshop, before, during one night, two allegories (of
Sculpture and Education) appeared to him in a dream, and made him
choose rhetoric (and Greek culture) for a living, rather than the
dirty and hard job of handicraft. Education (Paideia) presents
her-self as Lucian’s true destiny (9): “My child, I am Education,
with whom you are already acquainted and familiar, even if you have
not yet completed your expe-rience of me.” The child’s future, that
is Lucian’s present, is promoted as bright, rich, and free:
rhetoric is clearly one of the best ways of emancipation,
humorously first for the sophist himself, as a brilliant member of
the Second Sophistic, but exemplarily too for any Roman citizen,
from any origin, who could be educated in Greek values and culture
(12-13): “If ever you go abroad, even on foreign soil you will not
be unknown or inconspicuous, for I will attach to you such marks of
identification that everyone who sees you will nudge his neighbor
and point you out with his finger, saying, There he is!”
The sophist may even be compared to Prometheus himself, the god
of cunning intelligence, who created all living creatures,
especially human beings, from clay figures. As plasma designates
both concrete figures and fiction (as different from lies), the god
is also a rhetorician, and conversely the sophist somehow divine,
with a bit of humor. Modern, post-modern, and contemporary
constructionism and relativism often have ancient references. For
instance, in the dialogue To One Who Said “You’re a Prometheus in
Words” (1-2):
What you do is truly alive and breathing and, yes, its heat is
that of fire. This too is from Prometheus with the sole difference
that what you fashion is not clay but in many cases your fictions
are golden (πλάττετε ... πλάσματα). We however who come before a
crowd and offer our lectures, such as they are, show you a few
figurines (εἴδωλα), and our modelling is entirely in mud as I said
just now, like that of doll-makers.
That also concerns rhetorical forms: for Lucian, the most
interesting and typi-cal of his own practices are the most hybrid,
apparently disharmonious and asy-mmetrical, like an Hippocentaur.
Lucian ironically and provocatively assumes the responsibility for
these artificial and monstrous figures representing his works, like
the Lucianesque dialogue, a vivid crossing of philosophical
dialogue with (ancient or new) comedy (To One Who Said … 5):
“… even the combination of those two very fine creations,
dialogue and comedy, is not enough for beauty of form if the
blending lacks harmony and symmetry. The synthesis of two fine
things can be a freak — the hippocentaur is an obvious
example”.
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Something similar happens in The Double Indictment (6–7), where
a trial oppo-ses Lucian (the Syrian) to the allegory of Dialogue,
who complains about the way the sophist made him comical and
popular. This complex attitude is typical not only for Lucian
himself, but also for a rhetorical culture, both profound and
always ironically distanced with itself, that is partly similar to
critical and sceptical philo-sophies, as in the preface to the True
Stories:
Nevertheless I have dared to combine them (philosophical
dialogue and comedy) as they are into a harmony, though they are
not in the least docile and do not easily tolerate partnership. (…)
Whom could I steal from? Unless someone has invented such
fish-horses and goat-stags independently without my knowing. But
what could I do? I must abide by what I chose once and for all. To
change one’s plan is the work of Epimetheus, not Prometheus.
Lucian is an expert in all kinds of mixed discursive and
literary genres and this heterogeneity of enunciative voices,
tones, styles, and philosophical references is constitutive of his
own polyphonic creation and expression as well as of his elo-quent,
colorful, and animated conception of human life, fundamentally
agonis-tic and unsteady. And this is especially difficult for any
monological reader, who is looking forwards to getting from the
texts he explores univocal solutions and responses.
THE DIALOGIC POWERS OF SPOUDOGELOION : BETWEEN REFLEXION
AND COMEDY
This problematic and always problematized characteristic of the
works of Lucian, typically rhetorical and philosophical at the same
time as well as providing possible models for our times, appears in
monologues, for instance, in paradoxical praises (since irony is
related to polyphony) or in fantastic auto-fictions like True
Stories, no less than in comical dialogues about philosophical
topics, such as Charon or the Dialogues of the Dead.
A fine example of a polyphonic monologue (and a spectacular one,
typical of Lucian’s sophistic activities as a kind of roving
showman) is The Fly, where the mocking praise of the humblest of
insects turns into a dynamic deconstruction of Platonism and its
serious systematicity. Here, rhetorical culture aims uppermost to
produce, stage (first in oral conferences, then in published
texts), and transmit practical devices, which help dealing with
life, language, and thought. What the contemporary philosopher
Gilles Deleuze called a “toolbox” (boîte à outils)–“that’s exactly
what a theory is. It has to serve, it must perform its function.
And not just for itself. If there are no people for it to serve …
it’s as if it isn’t worth anything, or
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at least its moment has not arrived.”13 One of these tools is
paradoxical irony, like in The Fly (7), where Lucian criticizes
Plato for having forgotten to mention the immortality of the
insect’s soul.
The same appears in dramatized texts like Charon or the
Inspectors (1), where the ferryman of the underworld takes some
vacation in the living world, in order to better understand the
human beings he is the first to welcome when they are dead. And
under the baton of Hermes, both the guide of the dead into the
netherworld and the god of interpretation and exegesis, Charon
observes our world from high mountains resembling theater-benches,
in a way similar to the mirror on the moon, in the True Stories: “I
wanted to see what it is like in life, Hermes, what men do in it,
and what they lose that makes them all grieve when they come down
to us; for none of them has ever made the crossing without a tear.”
Among various reactions of Charon, whom the precariousness of human
values makes mostly laugh, one rhetorical tool can frequently be
found: metaphor, as in the passage where men are best comprehended
as bubbles, both ridiculous and pathetic. Hermes assimilates it to
Homer’s comparison of men and tree-leaves (19–20):
Let me tell you, Hermes, what I think men and the whole life of
man resemble. You have noticed bubbles in water, caused by a
streamlet plashing down — I mean those that mass to make foam? Some
of them, being small, burst and are gone in an instant, while some
last longer and as others join them, become swollen and grow to
exceedingly great compass; but afterwards they also burst without
fail in time, for it cannot be otherwise. Such is the life of men;
they are all swollen with wind, some to greater size, others to
less; and with some the swelling is short-lived and swift-fated,
while with others it is over as soon as it comes into being; but in
any case they all must burst.
In fact, in Lucian’s texts, especially the satirical ones that
are deeply philosophi-cal, one crucial issue is death.14 As of
course in the Dialogues of the Dead, a genre invented again by
Lucian, which could have been performed during banquets (symposia)
and played a role similar to the philosophical observation of
skulls and skeletons, as in Petrone’s Satiricon. A typical example
is the scene where Menippus the Cynic ironically welcomes Socrates
himself, the ironist and gay lover, to the underworld, in Dialogue
20.5:
Menippus. In these respects at least, you’re a lucky fellow,
Socrates. At any rate they all think you were a wonderful
(θαυμάσιον) man, and knew everything, though — I think I’m right in
saying so — you knew nothing. – Socrates. That’s what I myself kept
telling
13 « C’est ça, une théorie, c’est exactement comme une
boîte à outils. Il faut que ça serve, il faut que ça fonctionne. Et
pas pour soi-même. S’il n’y a pas des gens pour s’en servir [...]
c’est qu’elle ne vaut rien ou que le moment n’est pas
venu. » In a conversation between M. Foucault and G.
Deleuze, “Les intellectuels et le pouvoir”, March 4th 1972. In
Defert D. & Ewald F. Dits et écrits, vol. 2, 1976–1988. Paris:
Gallimard, 2001, text 106.
14 Halliwell S. Greek Laughter. A Study of Cultural Psychology
from Homer to Early Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2008,
chap. 9, Lucian and the laughter of life and death, 429–469.
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them, but they thought it was all pretence (εἰρωνείαν) on my
part. – M. But who are these round you?– S. Charmides, my good
fellow, and Phaedrus and Clinias’ son. – M. Bravo Socrates! Still
following your own special line here! Still with an eye for beauty!
– S. What could I find to do more agreeable? But won’t you lie down
by us, please? – M. Oh, no; I’m going off to Croesus and
Sardanapalus, to stay near them. I expect to have plenty of fun
hearing their lamentations.
CRITICAL/IMMERSIVE READERSHIP AND META-FICTIONAL/COMMIT TED
AUTHORSHIP
Lucian, as a perfect rhetorician, always offers at least two
modalities of reception for his oral discourses/written texts: one
immersive, impressive, based on energetic effects of sensorial
intensity (visual, aural, kinaesthetic, etc.) and therefore
out-standingly pleasant, for instance. in vivid descriptions and
discussions; the other critical and reflexive, satirical and
distanced, somehow para-platonic or stoic. His attitude is quite
similar to the situation his contemporary Philostratus stages in
the Images, when he presents both dynamic ekphraseis of the
paintings he describes and their critical interpretation. Lucian
does something of the same quality in his pro-lalia (“introductive
talk”) Heracles,15 which might have been a sort of preface to one
book of the True Stories, when they were performed orally. Lucian
describes here an enigmatic painting of Heracles Ogmios, which he
tells he discovered in Gaul, during one of his successful tour in
the best theaters of the Empire.16 Happily, he benefited from the
help of a Celtic guide and interpreter. He first gives a direct and
“most surprising” (παραδοξότατον) and “strangest” (ἀτοπώτατον)
description of the old hero (3), who “drags after him a great crowd
of men who are all tethered by the ears”, by chains of gold and
amber. The followers of this “leader” are cheerful and joyous,
always not only accepting, but also praising their submission. And
the most enigmatic detail, in the representation of Heracles, is
that the artist “pierced the tip of his tongue and represented him
drawing the men by that means”, ant that the hero “is smiling”,
when looking back at his subjects.
Then follows the allegorical meaning of the painting (Heracles
5), mak-ing the sophist a kind of an explicitly seductive god of
speech and words. The special humour of the text relies on the fact
that Lucian pretends to warn his
15 See also Briand M. Le dialogue entre mythe et fiction :
à propos du Dionysos de Lucien. In Augier D. & Delattre C.
Mythe et fiction. Paris: PU de Paris Ouest, 2010,
219–237. One important feature of Lucian’s rhetoric is his both
imitative and innovative relation to classical literature: see
Briand M. L’Homère sophiste de Lucien ou les ambiguïtés d’une
mimesis ironique. In G. W. Most, L. F. Norman, S. Rabau (éds.).
Révolutions homériques. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 2009,
27–46.
16 Schmitz T. Bildung und Macht. Zur sozialen und politischen
Funktion der zweiten Sophistik in der griechischen Welt der
Kaiserzeit. Münich: Beck, 1997, and Korenjak M. Publikum und
Redner. Ihre Interaktionen in der sophistischen Rhetorik der
Kaiserzeit. Münich: Beck, 2000.
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listeners / readers about the dangers of rhetoric and fiction,
which he will submit them to, in the True Stories:
In general, we consider that the real Heracles was a wise man
who achieved everything by eloquence and applied persuasion as his
principal force. His arrows represent words, I suppose, keen, sure
and swift, which make their wounds in souls. In fact, you
your-selves admit that words are winged.
Quite important too is the fact that these cultural skills
(visualisation, interpre-tation, sense of humour) are exemplified
by an hellenized Syrian, Lucian, and his Celtic interlocutor, both
citizens of the Roman Empire, that is one ancient kind of cultural
globalization.17 Here again, culture is based upon Hellenism, that
is first of all rhetorical, artistic, and philosophical practices.
Lucian was himself a Barbarian, when not educated, but now he is an
outstanding Greek, like in The Hall, where he praises a beautiful
place where he is presenting a lecture. As Isocrates, the classical
rhetorician of the V–IVth c. Athens, puts it in his Panegyric
(50):
Our city has so far surpassed other men in thought and speech
that students of Athens have become the teachers of others, and the
city has made the name “Greek” seem to be not that of a people but
of a way of thinking; and people are called Greeks because they
share in our education (paideusis) rather than in our birth.
Lucian opposes barbarian vanity and Greek, that is rhetorical,
culture, while associating spectacular rhetoric and visual art, in
The Hall (6):18 “… the beauty of this hall has nothing to do with
barbarian eyes, Persian flattery (Περσικὴν ἀλαζονείαν), or Sultanic
vainglory. Instead of just a poor man, it wants a cultured man for
a spectator, who, instead of judging with his eyes, applies thought
to what he sees”.
EPILOGUE
A last remark about what Lucian and ancient rhetoric may provide
us and post-mo-dern rhetoric with, also in our complicated times,
may well be exemplified by a passage in his treatise About Dance
(81), which is in fact ancient pantomime. In this passage he
compares sophistic and choreographic spectacles with philosophical
introspection. The rhetor and the dancer are well represented, he
says, by Proteus, the god of “elusive sea change” and
metamorphosis. This passage of Lucian’s treatise
17 Whitmarsh T. Greek Literature and the Roman Empire. The
Politics of Imitation. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2011, especially chap.
V Satirizing Rome: Lucian, 247–293.
18 Dubel S. (éd.) Lucien de Samosate. Portrait du sophiste en
amateur d’art. Paris: Éd. Rue d’Ulm, 2014 (with a postface by J.
Pigeaud, Lucien et l’ekphrasis, 177–210).
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offers a possible model for what our post-modern conception of
embodied thought and intelligent action and our notion of rhetoric
(and oratory performance) could entail, that is, the search for
fluid and real self-knowledge all tying together the Delphic
precept “know thyself,” Socratic introspection and dialectics,
artistic cul-ture and mediation, and sophistic expression and
pleasures:
In general, the dancer should be perfect in every point, so as
to be wholly rhythmical, graceful, symmetrical, consistent,
unexceptionable, impeccable, not wanting in any way, blent of the
highest qualities, keen in his ideas, profound in his culture, and
above all, human in his sentiments. In fact, the praise that he
gets from the spectators will be con-summate when each of those who
behold him recognises his own traits, or rather sees in the dancer
as in a mirror (ἐν κατόπτρωι) his very self, with his customary
feelings and actions.
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Michel Br iand
RETORIKA, L AISVĖS IR KL ASIKOS KULTŪRA: NUO L AISVOSIOS KALBOS
(PARRHESIA )
IKI RIMTOSIOS KOMEDIJOS (SPOUDOGELOION ) LUKIANO IŠ SAMOSATOS
RAŠTUOSE
SANTRAUKA. Šis straipsnis pratęsia neseniai publikuotą įžangą
2016 m. knygai „Le blasphème dans une société démocratique“
(„Piktžodžiavimas demokratinėje visuomenėje“). Poliformiškuose ir
paradoksiškuose Lukiano iš Samosatos, „antikos Voltaire‘o“,
veikaluose siūlau koncentruotis į retorikos priemones, kurios
intensyviai inscenizuoja žodžio laisvę, įvar-dijamą graikiškos
parezijos samprata, kaip ją naujai nušvietė Michelis Foucault iš
kultūros ir politikos perspektyvos. Pavyzdžiui, tekstuose
„Mirusieji atgyja“ ar „Žvejys“ ir „Filosofijos parda-vimui“ ar
„Dzeusas šūkauja“ Lukianas lavina ir artikuliuoja sofistinę bei
teisingą (ar klaidingą) filosofiją, sokratinį dialogą ir komediją,
epideiktiką bei dialektiką tuo būdu, kad atnaujina, hibridizuoja ar
išranda žanrus ar registrus, kurie vis dar įkvepia šiuolaikinę
kritinę teoriją ir didelę dalį postmoderniosios kūrybos. Kadangi
jis taiko pragmatišką mąstymo, nebijančio nau-dotis satyra,
alegorine beletristika ir poleminiu arba fantastiniu diskursu,
sampratą, Lukianas ir gali tapti svarbia nuoroda į naująją
retoriką, kuri priešindamasi kuria naujas dinamines praktiš-kas bei
teorines vertes, o diskursų bei vaizdų atžvilgiu sugeba sujungti
aktyvią, netgi kritišką ir atokią recepciją su jautriu įsigilinimu,
refleksyvumu ar metafiktyvumu. Šioje studijoje tiriami keturi
išsakymo būdai ir procesai: retorikos ir teisingos ar neteisingos
filosofijos sąveikos; hiper-realistinės, fantastinės, veidrodinės
autofikcijos dinamika tekstuose: „Aleksandras, neteisingas
pranašas“, „Tikros istorijos“, „Sapnas“ ar „Lukiano krepšys“;
rimtosios komikos (spoudogeloion) dialoginės galios tarp
refleksijos ir komedijos, pavyzdžiui, tekstuose „Musė“, „Charonas,
arba Inspektoriai“ ir „Mirusiųjų dialogai“; kritinio /
įsigilinančio skaitytojiškumo ir metafikcinio / įsipareigojančio
autoriškumo dialektika veikaluose „Heraklis“, „Halė“ ir „Apie
šokį“. RAKTAŽODŽIAI : kalbos laisvė, postmodernybė, parezija,
autofikcija, metafikcija, rimtoji komika, skepticizmas, Lukianas iš
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