Download PDF | Michael Psellos On Literature And Art A Byzantine Perspective On Aesthetics,By Michael Psellos, Charles Barber (Translator), Stratis Papaioannou (Editor), University of Notre Dame Press 2017.
432 Pages
Note to the Reader
The present volume is the third in the project Michael Psellos in Translation, following two earlier works: Mothers and Sons, Fathers and Daughters: The Byzantine Family of Michael Psellos, edited by Anthony Kaldellis (2006) and Psellos and the Patriarchs: Letters and Funeral Orations for Keroullarios, Leichoudes, and Xiphilinos, translated by Anthony Kaldellis and Ioannis Polemis (2015). Like those volumes, this one too is the result of a collaborative effort. It 1s divided into two parts, the first devoted to Psellos’ literary theory and the second to his visual aesthetics; Stratis Papaioannou was responsible for the review and writing of Part 1, and Charles Barber for Part 2; the names of the two editors or those of further contributors have been further identified in the chapters.
We have neither followed nor imposed absolute rules for the rendition of Psellos’ demanding Greek into English, though we have generally attempted to err on the side of the literal meaning. We have also tried to create some consistency in the translation of recurrent rhetorical terms. The most important and common among these are cited also in their original Greek form within square brackets [ ], and have been gathered in a “List of Rhetorical Terms” at the end of the book. When necessary, though rarely, Greek terms have been simply transliterated and explained with a footnote.
Square brackets are used also for line and page numbers as well as for necessary explanatory remarks or simply supplementary words for the sake of clarification. Angle brackets < > have been employed either (a) to indicate words that have been added by editors of the Greek originals in places where a lacuna in the text has been identified or (b) to include words and phrases that were deemed necessary to complete the meaning in English.
The names of most Byzantine persons have been transliterated into English, thus: Psellos and not Psellus, Ioannes Sikeliotes and not John of Sicily, and so forth.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the many contributors to this volume for their efficiency and patience, the two anonymous reviewers who provided much useful commentary, as well as Stephen Little, our editor at the University of Notre Dame Press, for supporting this project; Matthew Dowd undertook the copyediting of the book and we are grateful for his exemplary work. The editors would also like to thank the Center for Hellenic Studies for allowing us to include in this volume slightly revised versions of Elizabeth A. Fisher’s introductions to and translations of Psellos’ Encomium for Kyr Symeon Metaphrastes and his Discourse on the Miracle that Occurred in the Blachernai Church, which are also available .
Stratis Papaioannou would also like to thank: Dr. Byron MacDougal who, with utmost care, precision, and adeptness, reviewed the English as well as the translations of Part 1; the Classics Department at Brown University for generously funding the project; David Konstan, who commented on the translation of several passages, and Ioannes Polemis, who read the critical edition of the Letters, as both offered precious suggestions; and Charis Messis, who, with his usual wisdom, discussed the contents of the book at various stages of its creation.
Charles Barber would like to thank: the University of Notre Dame and Princeton University for the sabbatical leaves that made work on this project possible.
General Introduction
Stratis Papaioannou
Though Michael Psellos is a towering figure in the history of Byzantine letters, his theoretical and critical reflections on literature and art are little known beyond a circle of specialists. Modern readers know Psellos primarily for his Chronographia, a history of eleventh-century Byzantine emperors and their reigns, an international Byzantine “best seller” with its fourteen translations into modern languages since 1874.' Yet Psellos also excelled in describing as well as prescribing practices, rules, created objects, and creative subjects of literary discourse and visual culture. The present volume introduces precisely this aspect of Psellian writing to a wider public. The aim is to illustrate an important chapter in the history of Greek literary and art criticism, and thence to contribute to the history of premodern aesthetics.
To this purpose, we have gathered together thirty Psellian texts, all of which are translated—some partly, but most in their entirety—into English; in the case of a group of Psellian letters, a new edition of the Greek original is also offered. The majority of the works are translated for the first time in any modern language, and several of them have found their first sustained discussion here. We have grouped them in two separate sections, which roughly correspond to two areas of theoretical reflection that are associated with the modern terms of “literature” and “art.” What these terms mean in a Byzantine context, and for Psellos specifically, is explained in the relevant introductions to the two sections. In these introductions, the reader will also find general discussions of what kinds of texts we have selected and where these texts belong within Psellos’ oeuvre as well as within the wider Byzantine tradition in terms of content, context, and literary form.
What are presented in this book are indeed two different collections brought together (somewhat deceptively, we might acknowledge) under the headings of literature and art. Modern readers are accustomed to link these two fields to each other as they consider them (along with other activities such as theater and music) as parallel and related expressions of human creativity and leisurely entertainment, pleasure, and pastime—in other words, the modern commonsense understanding of aesthetic experience.
The actual Byzantine connection is somewhat different. All the essays fit the requirements—and indeed several of them represent exquisite specimens —of what in Byzantium would have been regarded as rhetoric and philosophy, pytopiKy and @iococogtia. The two terms denoted, respectively, high discursive style and high discursive knowledge, representing the apex of Byzantine education and erudition. Together, the two disciplines covered almost all aspects of linguistic expression and learning in Byzantium. And they were “high” both because of the specialized traming they required and because of their perceived social status. Though not all Byzantine professional rhetors/philosophers could hope to enjoy high social and economic benefits, acquaintance with rhetoric and philosophy as practices was frequently a prerequisite for high social distinction.
The selected texts in both sections also converge in their concern for aesthetic experience, in the more literal meaning of sensuous perception of material form. They intersect, that is, in their emphasis on the creation, manipulation, experience, and understanding of what may be termed cultured sense perception, whether in words or in images. As such, these texts display views, attitudes, and ultimately tastes regarding what is thought to be beautiful as well as moral, appealing as well as mentally and psychologically effective in texts and artistic objects.’
The underlying theory of literary and visual taste, the theory of aesthetics, that is—by which word we do not mean here any systematized theory or neatly defined separate field of thought—is not Psellos’ alone. As is perhaps always the case with aesthetics, his aesthetic too addresses a set of expectations that are indebted both to earlier traditions of writing and thinking about literature and art as well as to contemporary ideas and practices—in this case, those of the Constantinopolitan social elite to which Psellos belonged. The details of this nexus of intellectual tradition and eleventh-century Constantinopolitan social and intellectual aristocracy will be illuminated by the collection of texts and the discussions that follow below.
Michael Psellos (1018-1078)
One of the most prolific and popular medieval Greek authors, Psellos has been regarded as everything from a typical Byzantine courtier to a protagonist in the history of Byzantine culture. A total of 1176 titles (among them 500 letters as well as 163 spurious works) are attributed to him in impressively numerous manuscripts, and an immense modern bibliography deals with his life and works.3
He was born to a middle-class family in the Constantinopolitan suburb Ta Narsou, at a time when Constantinople, and the empire ruled by its imperial court, had reached a peak in economic, political, military, and cultural impact on the Mediterranean, Balkan, and wider European and Middle Eastern worlds. His surname, perhaps a personal designation, denotes someone who “lisps.” Starting at the age of five, he began his education in grammar, orthography, and Homeric poetry. At eleven, he continued with rhetoric and then philosophy, studying together with future friends under several teachers (including Ioannes Mauropous, another notable intellectual figure of the century). This education provided entry to provincial administration and then imperial bureaucracy. By 1041, Psellos became secretary in the imperial court —an untitled poem can be set in this context (Poem. 16). Around 1043, he came to the attention of emperor Konstantinos IX Monomachos (1042-1055) —two of his earliest texts are an encomium for Monomachos, occasioned by the failed revolt of Georgios Maniakes (1043; Or. pan. 2) and a funeral poem for Monomachos’ mistress Maria Skleraina (Poem. 17; ca. 1045).
Under Monomachos’ patronage, Psellos’ career blossomed, his wealth increased, and his social network was enlarged. From this time on, his primary function was that of teacher, public orator, and impromptu court advisor and mediator. He remained an unofficial court “secretary” drafting documents and operating on behalf of an increasingly large number of associates and clients (as is evident from a number of his letters).
For his teaching, he was given a new title created especially for him, likely around 1045: taatoc tHv Piooogwv. The term translates as the “consul of the philosophers” and indicates something like “the chief of the teachers” who taught in essentially private schools, supported partly by the state. Psellos prided himself on this title as well as on his international fame as a teacher;for example, he attracted students of southern Italian (loannes Italos; see Or. min. 18 and 19) and Georgian descent (Ioane Petric’1). He also tutored the nephews of the patriarch Michael Keroularios (1005/1010-1059) with whom Psellos had a turbulent relationship (see Kaldellis and Polemis 2015: 11-22, 37-128), and, later, taught Theophylaktos Hephaistos (1055-1107), the future archbishop of Ochrid.
Things changed in the 1050s, both in Psellos’ private and public life. His biological daughter Styliane died around 1052; a good marriage for his adoptive daughter Euphemia fell through, likely in 1053; and his mother, Theodote, died in late 1054 (the relevant texts are translated in Kaldellis 2006). Along with friends (such as Mauropous), he also fell out of favor with Monomachos. He was “forced” to become a monk at a monastery in Bithynia, changing his lay baptismal name Konstantinos (or Konstas for short) to a monastic one, Michael.
He quickly returned to Constantinople in 1055 and would remain there until his death, continuing to work as a teacher, speaker, and advisor, but apparently without the luster of his Monomachos years—even if he accrued more titles (proedros, protoproedros, and hypertimos). His association with the imperial family of the Doukai provided the most significant context for his literary and social activity during this period. The son of Konstantinos X Doukas and Eudokia Makrembolitissa, the future emperor Michael VII (1071-1078), was his student—their relationship is commemorated in the only portrait of Psellos we possess from a late twelfth- or early thirteenthcentury manuscript (Athos, Pantokratoros 234, f. 254r). After various ups and downs in his political influence, Psellos likely died in 1078— if we are to accept information reported in Michael Attaleiates’ History (though the issue is far from settled).*
Apart from official documents and a large number of letters of recommendation and intervention, his oeuvre may be divided (though the division is often lost in the texts themselves, as already noted above) into what he termed insistently (a) Oytopucy and (b) @iAocogia: the former referring to literarily wrought works for public performance or private communication and the latter designating texts for the purposes of teaching that took the form of poems, letters, lectures, compilation of excerpts, and essays. These texts usually addressed a circle of close friends, associates, students, and patrons that he acquired throughout his career. The most important of these were the following: the emperors Konstantinos IX Monomachos and Michael VII Doukas, the kaisar Ioannes Doukas (?—ca. 1088; thirty-seven of Psellos’ letters are addressed to him, as well as a funeral oration for his wife, Eirene: K-D I 21 dated to the mid-1060s), and Konstantinos, the nephew of Keroularios (seventeen letters; Or. min. 31; Or. for. 5; see also the very lengthy hagiographical oration on Michael Keroularios: Or. fun. 1 with Kaldellis and Polemis 2015: 49-128).
Psellos taught everything from basic grammar, Homeric poetry, and Aristotelian logic to Hermogenian rhetoric and Neoplatonic philosophy, and wrote on nearly every subject (from medicine to law and from vernacular expressions to occult sciences)—most of these texts are gathered in Theol. I and II, Phil. min. I and II, and Or. min., and several of these are translated below. Psellos aggressively expanded the curriculum, in terms of both method and the authoritative texts that were to be studied, commented upon, and revised. His most important contribution in this respect is the use of preByzantine rhetorical aesthetics and Neoplatonic hermeneutics (especially those of Proklos, 410/412-485) for the interpretation of the rhetoric and theology of Gregory of Nazianzos (329/330-ca. 390), to whom Psellos devoted numerous texts; three of them are included in the present volume (Discourse Improvised ... about the Style of the Theologian; Theol. 1 19 and 98).
For Monomachos, Psellos composed instructional poems in fifteensyllable politikos verse (Poems 1, 2, 3, 4, 6) and a first redaction of his relatively popular Concise Answers to Various Questions (= De Omnifaria Doctrina). For Michael VII, he wrote several more instructional pieces (Poem 7 on rhetoric is translated in this volume), revised several of the earlier poems and the earlier Concise Answers, and wrote the Historia Syntomos, a compendium of biographical vignettes of Roman rulers from Romulus to Basil II with a decidedly Roman perspective on the history of the empire.
His rhetorical production includes: several encomia for emperors (most importantly Monomachos: Or. pan. 1-7; S 115); a rather peculiar mixture of a legal document combined with panegyrical speech pertaining to the socalled Usual Miracle in Blachernai (Or. hag. 4, written in July 1075—also in the present volume); funeral orations—notable among them are two lengthy pieces on Konstantinos Leichoudes (Or. fun. 2) and Ioannes Xiphilinos (Or. fun. 3), both completed after August 1075 (translated in Kaldellis and Polemis 2015); lengthy and rhetorically elaborate letters (five of them in the present collection); short playful pieces (e.g., an Encomium of Wine: Or. min. 30); several texts of self-defense, including an invective poem against a monk Iakobos in the form of a hymnographical kanén (Poem 22); hagiographical texts in the mode of Symeon Metaphrastes; and, of course, the texts on literary and visual aesthetics presented below.°
Somewhere between rhetoric and instruction, encomium and classicizing history lies his most renowned text: the Chronographia, which is primarily a history of a series of Byzantine emperors from Basil II to Michael VII. In its present, incomplete form, the text ends with the description of Ioannes Doukas who was clearly an (if not the) addressee of the work in its last version. Yet, the Chronographia was written and revised in stages (the earliest evidence points to 1057) for a small, though fluid, group of addressees (particularly members of the Doukas family). Though it survives in essentially one manuscript (Paris, BNF, gr. 1712; twelfth century), this brilliantly textured narrative exerted influence in twelfth-century historiography and has been Psellos’ most popular text among modern scholars.°
Psellos’ texts (including the spuria) are transmitted in approximately 765 manuscripts; about a third of these manuscripts date from the twelfth through to the fourteenth century. However, the transmission is uneven. We do not possess a collection of his works that dates to his lifetime or reflects his editorial choices. And only a few texts circulated in a somewhat wide number of manuscripts (works of popularizing knowledge, such as some of his Poems).’ The rhetorical works—often highly self-referential, with an emphasis on aesthetic pleasure, emotion (pathos), and Hellenism—survive in relatively few manuscripts. Nevertheless, these texts reached an influential audience among the educated elite during the twelfth century (the princess and historian Anna Komnene, 1083-ca. 1150-55, is important in this respect) and then again in the late thirteenth century. The three most important Psellos manuscripts betray these later Byzantine readers: Florence, Bibl. Med. Laur., Plut. gr. 57.40 (early twelfth century); Paris, BNF, gr. 1182 (likely commissioned by Eustathios of Thessalonike in the late twelfth century), and Vatican, BAV, gr. 672 (late thirteenth century, before July 1293; for this date cf. Pérez Martin 2012: 171; the manuscript was produced perhaps in the circle of the rhetor Manuel Holobolos—on this see below pp. 222 and 231n33)—they are also the primary witnesses for the texts of our collection.
Psellos’ most important modern readers/editors were Leo Allatius (Chios 1586—Rome 1669) and Konstantinos Sathas (Athens 1842-Paris 1914), followed by a host of scholars who worked on the protean and prolific Psellos. It is in their footsteps that we offer the present book.
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