How to Read the Consolation of Philosophy
[In the following essay, written shortly before the critic's death in 1984, Curley analyzes the philosophical content, structure, and genre of the Consolation of Philosophy.]
I. INTRODUCTORY
Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, for centuries one of the most widely read and revered books in the West, is now little more than a historical curiosity. Most, but not all, educated people have heard of it; some have read it; very few seem to like it. But the reasons for the work's neglect are more significant than our common twentieth-century amnesia toward what one might term "the tradition". In the first place we are separated by a centuries-long tradition of philosophy from the intellectual context which gave rise to Boethius' synthesis of Plato and Aristotle. Minds such as Descartes and Kant have so altered the cast of western thinking that it is all but impossible, at least at first glance, to take Boethius seriously as a philosopher. What is more, the two dominant tendencies of twentieth century philosophy, the analytic school in England and America, and the continental schools of existentialism and phenomenology, are in radical disagreement with Boethius' most basic assumptions.
What, for instance, would A. J. Ayer, the author of a short and popularly accessible philosophic manifesto, comparable in scope to the Boethian text, make of the following exchange between the character Boethius and Dame Philosophy at the very beginning of the work:
Turn illa: Huncine, inquit, mundum temerariis agi fortuitisque casibus putas an ullum credis ei regimen inesse rationis? Atqui, inquam, nullo existimaverim modo ut fortuita temeritate tarn certa moveantur, verum operi suo conditorem praesidere deum scio nec umquam fucrit dies qui me ab hac sententiae ventate depellat (Bk. I, pr. 6, 3-4).
(Then she said, "Do you think that this world is driven by reckless and haphazard chance or do you believe there to be any rational direction to it?" And I said, "But in no way would I think that such regular phaenomena are moved by reckless haphazard; rather I know that the creator god presides over his handiwork, and there will never be a day which might drive me from the truth of this opinion.")
Because Ayer dismisses metaphysical questions and answers as not only wrong but nonsensical, he could continue reading only on the assumption that he was perusing a text indicative of the philosophical errors of the past.
Likewise, what would Sartre, who in an accessible manifesto of his own defines existentialism as the conviction that existence precedes essence, make of the following argument in which existence is treated as a predicate like any other and derivable from the essence of the good:
Quo fit ut, si in quolibet genere imperfectum quid esse videatur, in eo perfectum quoque aliquid esse necesse sit; etenim perfectione sublata unde illud quod imperfectum perhibetur exstiterit ne fingi quidem potest (Bk. III, pr. 10, 4).
(Thus it happens that, if there should be seen to be any imperfect example of a given genus, it is necessary that there should also be a perfect example of that genus; for it is impossible to imagine whence that which is considered imperfect might come to exist, if the perfect is removed.)
In Sartre's case as well further reading could only proceed on the assumption that he was engaged in the merely academic exercise of becoming proficient in the history of philosophy.
Thus there exist significant intellectual differences to account for our neglect of Boethius' text and our failure to appreciate it. I suspect, however, that other equally important factors come into play. The Consolatio, in addition to being a work of philosophy, is also an intricately crafted work of literature: a dramatic dialogue between two fictional characters composed in alternating verse and prose. This blending of poetry and philosophy, categories we tend to keep strictly apart, is as great an obstacle to our understanding Boethius' intentions as is the incompatibility of his philosophical presuppositions with those of the twentieth century. We pay lip service to the clarity of certain philosophers' prose (that of David Hume and A. J. Ayer, for example) and to the wit and style of others' (Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's, for instance); but in fact we believe that philosophic exposition is one thing, poetic invention quite another. We simply do not know how to read philosophy as poetry, or poetry as philosophy, which is precisely the response demanded by Boethius' text.
This distance from the work, both intellectual and aesthetic, clarifies the nature and limitations of Boethian scholarship in the last century. Modern research into the Consolatio may be dated from the publication in 1877 of Hermann Usener's Anecdoton Holderi. In this monograph the author dismisses the Consolatio as an unoriginal compilation of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic sources. Usener grants as Boethius' own an introduction (up through Bk. II, pr. 4, 38) and the metra, which he rates very low; otherwise he sees the text as an amateurish pastiche of philosophical arguments better expressed elsewhere. On the one hand, Usener's approach was obviously determined by the twin tendencies of nineteenth century German scholarship: analysis and "Quellenforschung"; on the other, such blindness to the nature and merits of the text can only be explained on the basis of a deep lack of sympathy with Boethius' philosophic and poetic stance.
One might characterize twentieth-century scholarship on the Consolatio as constituting two possible responses to Usener's thesis: defense and illustration of the integrity and originality of the work or increasingly sophisticated investigation of the sources exploited by Boethius in the composition of his text. The first camp is led by E. K. Rand, who in 1904 ["On the Composition of Boethius' Consolation Philosophiae, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 15, (1904)] produced a thorough and reasoned rebuttal of Usener's point of view. His lead was followed by such scholars as Klingner and Reichenberger, who made considerable progress towards demonstrating the very complex structure of Boethius' work and the methods by which he made his sources his own. On the other hand scholars such as Courcelle, Silk, and most recently, Gruber, have brought the analysis of the influences on Boethius to the point where it is now clear that his command of his sources was extraordinary. If Boethius was a mere compiler, he was at least a compiler of the first rank.
Thus the result of the last century's researches into the Consolatio is, as often in the world of scholarship, the conclusion that the debate over Boethius' originality was a false question. It has turned out that in almost every line of both the prose and verse sections Boethius can be detected echoing, if not quoting, the literature and philosophy of the past; nonetheless it has become increasingly clear that he has shaped his material into a complex pattern of his own contrivance. The question then becomes, what are the dynamics of this curious work, so removed from us both philosophically and aesthetically. And in recent years a small group of scholars have begun to address this issue. L. Alfonsi has traced the relationship between the personal and the universal as dramatized in the dialogue between Boethius and Dame Philosophy. More recently still, F. Anne Payne [in Chaucer and Menippean Satire, 1981] has attempted to read the work as an example of Menippean Satire, while Anna Crabbe [in Boethius: His Life, Thought, and Influence, ed. Margaret Gibson, 1981] has sought the key to the work in its essential eclecticism which embraces and transcends the responses to adversity of such exemplars as Ovid, Cicero, Seneca, Socrates, and St. Augustine.
The problem with this trend of criticism is that its practitioners have either limited themselves to one aspect of Boethius' manifold text or have become tendentious in championing an idiosyncratic approach to the work. What has been most lacking is a comprehensive approach which takes into account both the philosophic and literary aspects of the work and seeks to demonstrate how they inform each other. This paper is intended, at least in part, to fill that gap.
Because the Consolatio, as many readers have pointed out, is so eclectic, I shall take this very eclecticism as my starting point and organize my argument around three aspects of the text's diversity. First of all, since the work is a philosophical treatise, it is necessary to clarify the structure and drift of its philosophical content. I shall not be concerned to label the provenance of this or that argument, a task largely completed by other more competent scholars, most notably, Gruber. I will, however, endeavor to make clear the structure into which Boethius has molded his Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic materials. Second, since Boethius chose to cast his work in the form of a dialogue, the implications of this choice on the philosophical content must be gauged before a full understanding of the work can be achieved. To do so I shall have both to glance at the tradition of philosophie dialogue in antiquity, most importantly Plato and Augustine, and to uncover the dynamics of interaction between the character Boethius and Dame Philosophy. Finally, since the Consolatio is an example of that curious genre, Menippean Satire, it is incumbent on me at least to hazard a response to the question why Boethius chose to write a philosophie dialogue in the very artificial form of alternating verse and prose.
II. THE PHILOSOPHICAL CONTENT
The Consolation of Philosophy is essentially a dramatized therapy. Boethius is smitten with despair over his fall from fortune and Dame Philosophy endeavors to restore her pupil to a state of insight and calm. As first step on the way to Boethius' cure is the diagnosis which Dame Philosophy performs in Book I, prose 6. At the end of her examination of the patient, she summarizes his illness under three points:
Nam quoniam tui oblivione confunderis, et exsulem te et exspoliatum propriis bonis esse doluisti; quoniam vero quis sit rerum finis ignoras, nequam homines atque nefarios potentes felicesque arbitraris; quoniam vero quibus gubernaculis mundus regatur oblitus es, has fortunarum vices aestimas sine rectore fluitare: magnae non ad morbum modo, verum ad interitum quoque causae (Bk. I, pr. 6, 19-19).
(For since you have been confused by forgetfulness of your self, you have complained that you are in exile and dispossessed of your own goods; and since you do not know the purpose of things, you think that worthless and evil men are powerful and happy; and since you have forgotten by what means the universe is governed, you judge that these changes of fortune are in flux and without any direction: great causes not only of illness but of death as well.)
This passage is clearly meant to be programmatic for the structure of Books II through V. The second book is concerned with loosening Boethius' attachment to the gifts of fortune and, as Dame Philosophy repeatedly points out, Boethius' vulnerability to the rise and fall of fortune is occasioned by his lack of a sense of self:
Quid igitur, o mortales, extra petitis intra vos positam felicitatem? Error vos inscitiaque confundit. Ostendam breviter tibi summae cardinem felicitatis. Estne aliquid tibi te ipso pretiosius? Nihil, inquies. Igitur si tui compos fueris, possidebis quod nec tu amittere umquam velis nec fortuna possit auferre (Bk. II, pr. 4, 22-23).
(Thus, o mortals, why do you seek outside yourselves the happiness which is placed within yourselves. Error and ignorance are confusing you. I shall briefly demonstrate to you the essence of the greatest happiness. Is there anything more precious to you than yourself? "Nothing," you say. Thus if you should be in possession of yourself, you will be in possession of that which neither you would wish to lose nor fortune be able to remove.)
Thus Book II in its long discussion of the various gifts of fortune is in fact an attempt to restore to Boethius a strong sense of identity. Likewise, Book III seeks to make clear to Boethius the existence of the "summum bonum" which is the "telos" of all things. First by a kind of "via negativa" which demonstrates that wealth, fame, power, and pleasure cannot embody the highest good, and then in a more positive manner, Dame Philosophy elucidates the identity of God, the good, and happiness. Finally, Books IV and V seek as it were to justify the ways of God to man. The nature of the human self and of God as the goal of all things has been established in Books II and III; in these final two books the relationship between these two entities is depicted in all its complexity, as the dialogue ranges over such topics as theodicy, free will, determinism, and providence. Thus the most readily apparent structure of the Consolatio is the rather straightforward succession of three arguments calculated to address the three aspects of Boethius' illness as diagnosed in the first book: ignorance of self, of the "summum bonum", and of the relationship between the two.
But the situation is far more complex than these preliminary observations might indicate. As many scholars have pointed out, the mode or style of argumentation in the Consolatìo changes as Dame Philosophy procedes in her exposition. F. Anne Payne's summary is a good example of such analysis:
The names I give the four sections of her (i.e. Philosophy's) argument—Cynic (Bk. II-Bk. III, pr. 9), Platonic (Bk. III, m.9-Bk. IV, pr. 5), Aristotelian (Bk. IV, pr.6-Bk. V, m.I), and Augustinian (Bk. V, prs. 2-6)—are not intended to indicate Boethius' literal sources for these sections, but rather techniques and points of view to which the sections allude. The analogies between Lucían and the first section have already been discussed. The Platonic section begins with a paraphrase of Plato's Timaeus, and two proses of the discussion on evil contain a paraphrase of the Gorgias. The Aristotelian section ends with an allusion to Aristotle's definition of chance. The debate about the relation of foreknowledge and free will in the final section of the Consolation, which contains one indirect allusion to the City of God (Bk. V, pr. 4), is a debate always associated with Augustine.
The question then arises, how is this philosophic eclecticism rendered coherent?
One answer is that the Consolation may be seen as a succession of three increasingly lofty and comprehensive disquisitions on the order of the universe. In Books I and II, the ways of the world are viewed as they appear to the eyes of the unregenerate human soul, that is, under the aspect of "fortuna". In Book III, the way is opened up towards a clearer vision of the universal order, that is, under its aspect of "fatum"; and in Book IV, fate's determination of events is demonstrated with great rigor and detail. Finally, in Book V, the discussion seeks to rise beyond the merely human and rational point of view and to adumbrate God's own perspective on the universe, that "Providentia" which is the viewpoint of the "nunc stans" of eternity. Thus, in addition to what one might term the "personal" structure of the work, that by which the text is organized according to the personal dilemma of Boethius, there is a second structural device, the cosmological, which articulates the text according to three aspects of cosmological order: "fortuna", "fatum", and "Providentia".
Finally there is a third set of structures at work in the text, that which I choose to call the "epistemological" and which is the most important of all three structural systems. At prose 4 in Book V, in her attempt to explain divine providence, Dame Philosophy makes the following observation:
… Omne … quod cognoscitur non secundum sui vim sed secundum cognoscentium potius comprehenditur facultatem (Bk. V, pr. 4, 25).
(Everything which is known is understood not according to its own power but according to the capability of those knowing it.)
She then goes on to enumerate the four principal "faculties" of knowledge:
Sensus … figuram in subiecta materia constitutam, imaginatio vero solam sine materia iudicat figuram; ratio vero hanc quoque transcendit speciemque ipsam quae singularibus inest universali consideratione perpendit. Intellegentiae vero celsior oculus exsistit; supergressa namque universitatis ambitum ipsam illam simplicem formam pura mentis acie contuetur (Bk. V, pr. 4, 28-30).
(The senses judge of form embodied in underlying matter, the imagination judges of the mere form without matter; reason transcends even this latter form and by a universal meditation weighs the idea itself which is present in individual things. But the eye of intellection exists on an even higher plane, for it transcends the ambit of the universe and with the pure vision of the mind contemplates that simple idea itself.)
Although this hierarchy of knowledge is articulated only towards the very end of the text, upon reflection it be-comes clear that these four categories have provided a structural scheme for the work parallel to the two already described.
The fact that the work opens with Boethius writing an elegiac lament in which the physical details of his decay are dwelt upon:
Intempestivi funduntur vertice cani
et tremit effeto corpore laxa cutis (Bk. I, m.I,
11-12).
(Prematurely white hair covers my head and the loosened skin of my weakened body shakes.)
indicates that he is mired in the material world, reacting to the universe mainly by means of his senses. As token of this first sensual stage of perception Dame Philosophy adapts herself to Boethius' capacities and responds to his condition in terms which he can comprehend, namely, those of touch. Thus she diagnoses Boethius' initial silence and causes him to recognize her for what she is, all by touch:
Cumque me non modo taciturn sed elinguem prorsus mutumque vidisset, ammovit pectori meo leniter manum et … oculosque meos fletibus undantes contracta in rugam veste siccavit (Bk. I, pr. 2, 5-7).
(When she perceived that I was not merely silent but mute and quite incapable of speech, she lightly touched my breast with her hand and with a portion of her garment drawn into a fold she dried my eyes which were overflowing with tears.)
The realistic detail of the phrase, "contracta in rugam veste", is very rare in the Consolatio and is appropriate only at this preliminary stage of "sensus".
In Book II Dame Philosophy begins to employ the next faculty in her epistemological hierarchy, the imagination. Whereas in the first book attention was focused on the particulars of Boethius' immediate situation, in the second book Philosophy leads her pupil towards a consideration of fortune in general, a step which can be taken only with the aid of imagination. The most striking example of this strategy occurs in prose 2 where Philosophy puts on the mask of "Fortuna" and interrogates Boethius on his claim to the gifts of fortune:
Vellem autem pauca tecum Fortunae ipsius verbis agitare; tu igitur an ius postulet animadverte (Bk. II, pr. 2, 1).
(I would like to discuss a few matters with you in the words of Fortuna herself. Therefore consider whether her claim is just.)
In fact Philosophy is here using one of the imagination's greatest achievements, the theater, to effect her own purposes. This recourse to the imagination is further underscored when, during her speech in the persona of Fortuna, she alludes to various works of the imagination such as legend, tragedy, and epic:…
Were you unware of Croesus, king of the Lydians, an object of fear to Cyrus and then an object of pity, who, when handed over to the flames of the pyre, was saved by a miraculous shower of rain? And it has not escaped your notice, has it, that Paulus shed pious tears over the misfortunes of the Persian king, whom he himself had captured? What else does the shouting of tragedy bewail but fortune overturning prosperous kingdoms with a sudden blow? As a student, didn't you learn that "two jars, the one of evils and the other of goods" stand in Jove's threshold?
And throughout the book Philosophy constantly urges Boethius to imagine the situation of the rich man, the powerful man, the famous man, and so on, as means towards understanding the vanity of human fortune.
At the beginning of Book III the transition from "imaginatio" to "ratio" is signalled by the following statement by the character Boethius:
O, inquam, summum lassorum solamen animorum, quam tu me vel sententiarum pondere vel canendi etiam iucunditate refovisti, adeo ut iam me posthac imparem fortunae ictibus esse non arbitrer! Itaque remedia quae paulo acriora esse dicebas non modo non perhorresco, sed audiendi avidus vehementer efflagito (Bk. II, pr. 1, 2).
("O greatest comfort of afflicted minds," I said, "how you have restored me, whether by the weight of your proposition or the delight of your singing, so that I do not think that hereafter I shall be unequal to the blows of fortune. Therefore, those remedies, which you said were slightly more bitter, not only do I not fear them, in fact I am strongly desirous of hearing them.")
The harsher remedies of strict reason are employed throughout Books III and IV to demonstrate the existence of the "summum bonum" and to elucidate its relation to the universe in general and to man in particular. In this section Boethius' borrowings from Plato are particularly frequent and particularly appropriate. The Platonic imagery of metrum 9 of Book III and the arguments drawn from the Gorgias in Book IV are incorporated into a rational explanation of the universal scheme of things. Furthermore, not only are the instruments of reason employed in this section, they are also reflected on in a critical way, in a fashion parallel to the criticisms of poetry to be found in Books I and II.
Finally, Book V constitutes an attempt to explain to the highest faculty of human understanding (ratio) the nature and scope of divine understanding (intellegentia). We have been led through the various stages of human knowledge: "sensus", "imaginado", and "ratio"; Dame Philosophy now seeks to communicate to Boethius some indication of how the universe appears to the eyes of eternity. The exposition remains strictly rational in form, but because a reality beyond the humanly rational is being described, there is a religious, almost mystical, tone to Philosophy's speech, which breaks forth, for instance, in the final lines of the work:
Magna vobis est, si dissimulare non vultis, necessitas indicta probitatis, cum ante oculos agitis iudicis cuncta cernentis (Bk. V, pr. 6, 48).
(Unless you wish to pretend otherwise, a great necessity of acting virtuously has been pronounced to you, since you act under the gaze of a judge who discerns all things.)
Thus the philosophical content of the Consolatio is organized according to three different but parallel sets of categories. First of all Philosophy's exposition is structured to correspond to Boethius' particular situation: she first restores his sense of self, then points to the end or "telos" of things, and finally demonstrates the relationship between the individual human reality and the Alpha-Omega of the universe, God. Second, the content also falls into the three-fold division of "fortuna", "fatum", and "providentia". That is, the same cosmos is portrayed under three different lights: that of the human being as possessor of "sensus" and "imaginatio", that of the human as rational animal, and that of God as immediate and all-encompassing knower of the universe. Finally, these personal and cosmological sets of categories are set in relief by a fourfold epistemological structure: "sensus", "imaginatio", "ratio", and "intellegentia". The human being, as a human, has access to the first three modes of knowledge; the fourth can only be hinted at by the highest means at hand, namely, the rational.
The common purpose of all three sets of categories is to cure Boethius, to effect a conversion, or turning about, of his soul. The work is entitled a "Consolation"; it is in fact a "therapy". But it is a very different kind of therapy of the soul from that most familiar to us in the twentieth century, that is, psychoanalysis. Whereas in the contemporary analyst's office the patient does all the talking, in Boethius' prison cell Dame Philosophy is the principal interlocutor; and whereas modern analysis proceeds on the assumption that the higher faculties of imagination and reason are explicable in terms of unconscious drives and therefore reducible to the rank of "epiphaenomena" of "sensus", Dame Philosophy effects her cure of Boethius' soul by leading him upward from the senses, to the imagination, to reason, and at last points to the ultimate reality, "intellegentia". The problems and dilemmas of one level are resolved by proceeding upward to the next level rather than by descending backwards to a lower level. This procedure is most clearly set forth in the crucial step from "ratio" to "intellegentia". Boethius has just formulated his inability to maintain the seemingly contradictory propositions of "providentia" and human free will; Philosophy responds by stating that a higher vantage point must be reached before this contradiction can be resolved:
Cuius caliginis causa est quod humanae ratiocinationis motus ad divinae praescientiae simplicitatem non potest ammoveri; quae si ullo modo cogitari quest, nihil prorsus relinquetur ambigui (Bk. V, pr. 4, 2).
(The cause of this obscurity is the fact that the impulse of the human power to reason cannot reach the simplicity of divine foreknowledge; if this latter could in any way be conceived, absolutely nothing would remain unclear.)
Nonetheless, it is important to note that although philosophy resolves the conflicts of one level by appealing to the next faculty up in the hierarchy, the lower and intermediate levels are not rendered insignificant in the light of "intellegentia" or "Providentia". Rather, throughout the work Philosophy is careful to accommodate her mode of discourse to the condition of Boethius' soul. What is more, the whole process is based on the assumption that although a given level surpasses that below it, nonetheless that lower level is encompassed and perfected within the wider scope of the higher:
Superior comprehendendi vis amplectitur inferiorem, inferior vero ad superiorem nullo modo consurgit. Neque enim sensus aliquid extra materiam valet vel universales species imaginatio contuetur vel ratio capit simplicem formam; sed intellegentia quasi desuper spectans concepta forma quae subsunt etiam cuncta diiudicat, sed eo modo quo formam ipsam, quae nulli alii nota esse poterat, comprehendit (Bk. V, pr. 4, 31-32)
(The higher faculty of understanding embraces the lower; but the lower can in no way rise towards the higher. For sense perception is good for nothing apart from matter, nor does the imagination contemplate universal categories, nor does reason grasp the pure form; but "intellegentia", as if looking down from above, both perceives the form and also discerns everything which lies below, but in the same manner in which it comprehends the form itself, which was incapable of being known to any of the other faculties.)
It is precisely in this harmony of all aspects of the cosmos: of the human and the divine, of the temporal and the eternal, of becoming and being, of change and order, that the central point of the Consolatio as a work of philosophy lies. This harmony is not achieved through the blurring of distinctions, it consists, in fact, of a hierarchical articulation of the various aspects of the universe. The particular beauty of this hierarchy is that, although Philosophy insists on a strict protocol in the relation of lower to higher, nonetheless the lower is never completely jettisoned, rather it is embraced and validated within the context of the higher.
Thus Philosophy has a double task: to make manifest the divine order in the apparent flux of the world and to validate human striving within the order thus revealed. Thus double task is indicated by certain striking verbal echoes in the text. For instance, at the end of the first book, in which the interlocutors have been introduced and the nature of Boethius' illness has been diagnosed, Philosophy gives her "alumnus" straightforward moral counsel:
Tu quoque si vis
lumine claro
cernere verum,
tramite recto
carpere callem:
gaudia pelle,
pelle timorem
spemque fugato
nec dolor adsit (Bk. I, m. 7, 20-28).
(If you, too, desire to discern the truth with clear vision and to make your way along the straight path, cast out joys, cast out fear, put hope to flight, nor let sorrow be present.)
This stoical warning against the power of the passions to cloud intellectual vision, appropriate to Boethius at this stage of dismay and self-pity, is turned on its head in the final sentences of Philosophy's disquisition on the harmony of divine "Providentia" and human free will, where she insists on the validity of human striving within the context of divine order:
Quae cum ita sint, manet intemerata mortalibus arbitrii libertas nec iniquae leges solutis omni necessitate voluntatibus praemia poenasque proponunt.… Nec frustra sunt in deo positae spes precesque, quae cum rectae sunt inefficaces esse non possunt. Aversamini igitur vitia, volite virtutes, ad rectas spes animum sublevate, humiles preces in excelsa porrigite (Bk. V, pr. 6, 44-47).
(Since this is the case, human free will remains inviolate nor do laws unfairly propose rewards and punishment for wills freed from all necessity.… Nor are hopes and prayers, placed in God, in vain; as long as they are correct, they cannot be ineffectual. Therefore avoid vices, cultivate virtues, lift up your mind towards proper hopes, extend humble prayers on high.)
By way of summary, one might well point out that this central message of the work, the essential harmony between the microcosm and the macrocosm, is reflected in the relation among the three parallel structures of the work's philosophical content. The first structure is based on Boethius' three points of ignorance: of self, of the "telos" of things, and of the means by which the cosmos is governed, and as such may be termed the "personal". The second structure views the world under three aspects: "fortuna", "fatum", and "Providentia", and can thus be properly labeled the "cosmic". The third structure, that of "sensus", "imaginado", "ratio", and "intellegentia", is clearly epistemological and may be seen as the harmony of the first two structures, the personal and the cosmic. For the concerns of the microcosm, man can only be seen as in harmony with the laws of the macrocosm, the universe, when the possible epistemological relations between man and cosmos are defined, distinguished, and understood.
III. THE DIALOGUE FORM
But this philosophical content is couched in the form of a dialogue, and what is more, in the form of a very peculiar kind of dialogue. First of all, the setting, though deducible from certain scattered hints within the text, is never clearly indicated. Because Boethius at one point says to Philosophy
Et quid, inquam, tu in has exsilii nostri solitudines, o omnium magistra virtutum, supero cardine delapsa venisti? (Bk. I, pr. 3, 3)
(And why, I said, have you, O teacher of all virtues, descended from on high to enter into the loneliness of my exile?);
because at another point he gestures towards his surroundings with the rhetorical question
Haecine est bibliotheca, quam certissimam tibi sedem nostris in laribus ipsa delegeras, in qua mecum saepe residens de humanarum divinarumque rerum scientia disserebas? (Bk. I, pr. 4, 3)
(Is this the library which you yourself chose as your most fixed abode in my household, in which you often used to sit with me and discourse on the knowledge of things human and divine?);
and because at the end of his "defense" before Philosophy, as if before a court (Bk. I, pr. 4), he states
Nunc quingentis fere passuum milibus procul muti atque indefensi ob studium propensius in senatum morti proscriptionique damnamur (Bk. I, pr. 4, 36).
(Now about fifty miles away, unheard and without defense, I am condemned to death and proscription on account of my too great zeal on behalf of the senate.);
we infer that the setting is a prison cell, or some place where Boethius is being held under house arrest, at some distance from Ravenna, Theodoric's capital in Italy. And our ancient testimonia corroborate these hints within the text: it seems that Boethius fell from Theodoric's favor when he defended a fellow senator, Albinus, who was being prosecuted for treason. Boethius himself was soon accused of the same crime, tried and convicted in absentia, and executed in 524 A.D. Thus the reader is aware that Boethius is in prison, under sentence of death, alone, and in exile; but we are never told for how long or where Boethius has been imprisoned, nor when he expected to die, as we are, for instance, in the case of the most obvious model for Boethius' text, Plato's Phaedo. This vagueness of setting, with its associations of solitude, exile, alienation, and impending doom, is clearly meant to make identification with the character Boethius all the more easy. It renders him an everyman, lost and out of touch with his real self and purpose.
Now, the very mention of the "character Boethius" raises the question: where is Boethius in the text? Our sources and the manuscript tradition assure us that the author of the Consolatio is indeed the historical Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, an orphaned member of the Roman senatorial aristocracy, who was adopted by the Symmachi and grew up giving every evidence of extraordinary literary and intellectual ability. He married the daughter of his adoptive father and had two sons by her. While pursuing a political career as a high official under Theodoric, he conceived the enormous project of translating the respective oeuvres of Plato and Aristotle, producing commentaries on them, and harmonizing the two systems of thought. In addition to the Consolatio there remain extant a few theological treatises, a textbook on music, and a translated introduction to Aristotle's Organon, which seems to represent as far as he progressed in his lifelong project before his early death. Thus "Boethius" is the author of the text. And because the text is such a highly wrought object, combining all manner of discourse in the alternating verse and prose of Menippean Satire, one can say something about the author based on the fact of the text. He must therefore have been extraordinarily learned, especially for this time. Not only does he exhibit a command of all possible Latin prose styles and meters, he also displays an acquaintance with Greek philosophy, not only with the Neoplatonism of late antiquity but with Plato and Aristotle as well, a phenomenon rare in an age when knowledge of Greek in the West had all but disappeared. In fact, the author Boethius stands as a lonely last citadel of the Greco-Roman tradition before western Europe enters definitively into what we rightly or wrongly term "The Dark Ages". Thus the first answer to the question of Boethius' presence in the work is that he is the author, heir by birth, breeding, and education to the twin tradition of ancient philosophy and literature.
But Boethius the author is not the only Boethius present in the text. Boethius the narrator of his encounter with Dame Philosophy and Boethius the character within that narration constitute two further personae of the author. This double aspect of Boethius within the text, as narrator and as character, makes for certain striking effects. Thus the work opens with an elegiac poem spoken in the first person:
Carmina qui quondam studio florente peregi,
flebilis, heu, maestos cogor inire modos (Bk. I,
m. 1, 1-2).
(I, who in my youthful zeal composed verses, am now forced tearfully to begin sad lamentations.)
The reader naturally assumes that the speaker is the author, especially since the voice contrasts its unhappy present with a pleasant past; but at the beginning of the first prose section one discovers that the voice pronouncing the poem was being quoted by the narrator-voice of the whole work:
Haec dum mecum tacitus ipse reputarem querimoniamque lacrimabilem stili officio signarem … (Bk. I, pr. 1, 1).
(While I silently thought these things over with myself and inscribed my tearful lament by means of a stylus … )
These two passages, the first couplet of the metrum and the first clause of the prose section, taken together express the complexity of the Boethian presence within the text. First of all, the character Boethius has a past, a history which has brought him to the point of despair expressed in the opening elegy. Second, upon hearing the narrative voice at the beginning of the prose section, we realize that the character Boethius also has a future ahead of him, a development which will transform the character into the narrator. The distance to be traveled in the passage from the former condition to the latter is emphasized throughout the first book. Thus the narrator describes the character's elegy as a "querimoniam lacrimabilem"; likewise the narrator dismisses the character's defense and appeal to God (Bk. I, pr. 4 & m. 5) as mere barking:
Haec ubi continuato dolore delatravi … (Bk. I, pr. 5, 1)
(When I had barked all that with uninterrupted self-pity … )
Clearly the distraught and preoccupied character has a long way to go before attaining the firm calm of the narrator.
Finally, the emphasis within the text upon writing as opposed to speech serves a double purpose, illustrative of the relationship between Boethius the character and Boethius the narrator. On the one hand the description of the interaction between the elegiac Muses and the character expresses his passivity at this stage of despair: both the character and the narrator depict the Muses as dictating a discourse which Boethius merely copies down:
Ecce mihi lacerae dictant scribenda Camenae (Bk. I, m. 1, 3).
(Behold the mourning Muses dictate what I am to write.)
Quae ubi poeticas Musas vidit nostro assistentes toro fletibusque meis verba dictantes … (Bk. I, pr. 1, 7)
(When she saw the poetic Muses standing by my bed and dictating words to my tears …)
This passivity, whereby the character Boethius merely transcribes the words of others is strongly contrasted with the more active response demanded of Boethius by Dame Philosophy. After routing the elegiac Muses, her first action is to cure Boethius' blindness and dumbness, thus enabling him to become an active partner in the dialogue which will constitute his therapy (see Bk. I, pr. 2, 1-7, & pr. 3, 1-3). This transition from written poetry to spoken dialogue, parallel to the development of Boethius the character into Boethius the narrator, is reminiscent of the theme and dynamics of Plato's Phaedrus, which may well have been the source of this motif in the Consolatio.
But it is important to note that in this dichotomy between written verse and spoken prose, the former element is not simply negated in the face of the latter. The fairly frequent mention of writing and its products (e.g. "stili officio" at Bk. I, pr. 1, 1, & "bibliotheca" at Bk. I, pr. 4, 3) reminds the reader that what he has before him is a written text. In particular the character Boethius' mention of a library surely draws attention to the fact that the text before us is a veritable library, an anthology of all available forms of discourse and philosophic arguments, a "library" which only an author, who had spent much of his life among books, could have composed. Thus in addition to underscoring the evolution of Boethius the character into Boethius the narrator, the motif of written poetry versus spoken dialogue also hints at the further evolution of Boethius into the author of the poem which is the Consolatio.
To sum up the complex presence of Boethius in the Consolatio, one might say that the author of the text assumes the persona of the narrator in order to portray the story of the character. The character is pictured at the beginning of the text as indulging in poetry; the author of the text is obviously a poet, for the text itself constitutes a poem. But these two forms of poetry are very different and much of the dynamics of the Consolatio has to do with the process whereby Boethius the character develops to the point where he is identical with Boethius the narrator and foreshadows the figure of Boethius the author. In other words, Boethius must undergo the therapy of philosophy before he can handle narrative prose or imagistic poetry in other than self-destructive ways.
Thus the dialogue in the Consolatio must be viewed as taking place between the character Boethius and Dame Philosophy, as reported by the narrator Boethius, and as fashioned by the poet Boethius. What then are we to make of the other participant in the dialogue, Dame Philosophy? She is, first of all, the voice of being, eternity, and truth, in contrast with the character Boethius, the mouthpiece of suffering humanity, subject to the vicissitudes of time and the deceptions of appearance. That Dame Philosophy is the spokeswoman for eternity is clear not only from the fact that she guides the character Boethius towards an awareness of being in the midst of becoming but also from the description of her appearance in Book I:
Astitisse mihi supra verticem visa est mulier reverendi admodum vultus, oculis ardentibus et ultra communem hominum valentiam perspicacibus, colore vivido atque inexhausti vigoris, quamvis ita aevi plena foret ut millo modo nostrae crederetur aetatis (Bk. I, pr. 1, 1).
(There appeared standing above my head a woman of a most dignified aspect, with eyes shining and piercing beyond the usual power of men, with a glowing complexion and inexhaustible strength, although she was of such an age that in no way could it be credited of our life span.)
That Dame Philosophy is both young ("colore vivido atque inexhausti vigoris") and old ("aevi plena") foreshadows her own disquisition on eternity in Book V, where "aeternitas" is defined as:
interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio (Bk. V, pr. 6, 4).
(the completely simultaneous and perfect possession of life without beginning or end.);
that is, a state where all time is contemporaneous. Dame Philosophy's simultaneous youth and age clearly indicates that she embodies eternity's comprehension of all time.
But Dame Philosophy represents not only eternity but also a certain aspect of the character Boethius. This assertion is never explicitly made in the text, but the tradition of philosophic dialogue in antiquity, of which the Consolatio is the last great example, makes it evident that, when the character Boethius is in conversation with Philosophy, he is in some way talking to himself. At one point in the Thaeatetus Socrates describes the process of thinking as follows: …
As a discussion which the soul maintains with itself concerning whatever it is considering. I'm sure I must seem a fool, but it seems to me that the soul, when it is thinking, is engaged in nothing other than talking with itself, asking and answering questions, making claims and denials. And when it comes to a decision, whether slowly or rushing to it quickly, and is in agreement and no longer differs with itself, we call this its judgment. So that I define the process of thought as discourse and judgment as a statement pronounced, not to another nor audibly, but silently and to oneself. But what do you think?
What Boethius has accomplished by introducing the persona of Philosophy is to dramatize this interior dialogue which is thought.
Both the Platonic and, as far as we know, the Aristotelian dialogues portrayed interpersonal dialogue and by and large the ancient tradition followed the same procedure. But in late antiquity there appear certain signs of a preoccupation with intrapersonal dialogue, that is, with thought. The phenomenon exists in Plato, as when Socrates stands meditating outside the house of Agathon (Symposium 174d-175b) or when his fellow soldiers take bets on how long he will remain standing, lost in thought (Symposium 220cd), but it is always portrayed from the outside, as a withdrawal of the person from interaction with others, never from the inside as a kind of interaction with one's self. However, in later works, such as Marcus Aurelius' Meditations …, where the author is both speaker and audience, and Plotinus' Enneads, which often read like a man thinking aloud, one sees the roots of a systematic portrayal of interior dialogue. A link between these first tentative ventures into the dramatization of thought and its full-blown accomplishment in Boethius is to be found in Augustine's Soliloquia, where the author recounts his dialogue with a personified "Ratio", who is explicitly stated to be both a divine figure and an aspect of Augustine himself.
Now if Dame Philosophy is in some way an aspect of Boethius himself, just what aspect is she? Since the author Boethius is the remarkably learned man he was, when he portrays himself as talking to himself, he does so by recording a dialogue between himself and the whole tradition of Greco-Roman philosophy, as he had learned and appropriated it. Thus Dame Philosophy, voice of eternity and aspect of Boethius, is also an image, or icon, representing the centuries-long tradition of thought of which Boethius is the end point. Not only does Dame Philosophy in the course of the dialogue avail herself of every conceivable kind of philosophic argument: Stoic, Platonic, Aristotelian, and Augustinian; but also our first encounter with her in Book I clearly indicates her role as image of the philosophic tradition:
Vestes erant tenuissimis filis subtili artificio indissolubili materia perfectae, quas, uti post eadem prodente cognovi, suis manibus ipsa texuerat; quarum speciem, veluti fumosas imagines solet, caligo quaedam neglectae vetustatis obduxerat. Harum in extremo margine "Ð" Graecum, in supremo vero "É" legebatur intextum atque in utrasque litteras in scalarum modum gradus quidam insigniti videbantur, quibus ab inferiore ad superius elementum esset ascensus. Eandem tarnen vestem violentorum quorundam sciderant manus et partículas quas quisque potuit abstulerant. Et dextra quidem eius libellos, sceptrum vero sinistra gestabat (Bk. I, pr. 1, 3-6).
(Her clothes were made, by subtle craft, of the finest threads of an indissoluble material; and as I later learned from her own lips, she had woven them with her own hands. A certain duskiness of long neglect had darkened their appearance, as is often the case with images smudged with smoke. On the lower hem a Greek "Ð", on the upper border a "É" was to be read inwoven; and certain embroidered steps were to be seen between the two letters in the manner of a ladder, by which there was a means of ascent from the lower to the higher letter. But the hands of certain violent individuals had rent this garment and they had taken away those portions that each was able to. Finally, she carried books in her right hand, and in her left she held a scepter.)
Furthermore, Dame Philosophy's explanation of how her garments were torn betrays a critical understanding of the history of ancient philosophy, an understanding quite in accord with Boethius' own life-long task of reconciling the two fountainheads of the tradition, Plato and Aristotle:
Cuius (Socrates' and/or Plato's) hereditatem cum deinceps Epicureum vulgus ac Stoicum certerique pro sua quisque parte raptum ire molirentur meque reclamantem renitentemque velut in partem praedae traherent, vestem quam meis texueram manibus disciderunt abreptisque ab ea panniculis totam me sibi cessisse credentes abiere (Bk. I, pr. 3, 7).
When thereafter the Epicurean and Stoic crowd, and others, endeavored, each for his own part, to steal his (Socrates' or Plato's) inheritance and when they were dragging me away as if I were booty and I shouted and struggled against them, they tore the garment which I had woven with my own hands and they went away believing that I had yielded to them the whole garment, when in fact they had only snatched tatters from it.
Thus the figure of Philosophy, like the figure of Boethius, is also multifaceted: she is the voice of eternity, an aspect of Boethius, and a representation of the whole philosophic tradition. This refraction of the interlocutors into several aspects allows for a complex dramatic portrayal of the interior dialogue which is thought, a phenomenon which, from the outside, would appear as distant and opaque as the figure of the abstracted Socrates.
That Boethius, as heir to the gregarious tradition of ancient philosophy, which was almost always pursued in the context of human intercourse, be it the agora, the academy, the porch, or the garden, should be so cut off as to take refuge in the dramatization of thought, is perhaps the most poignant aspect of the Consolatio. Comparison with the Phaedo will make this point quite clear. Although condemned by the city, Socrates is portrayed as engaging in conversation with family and friends as he prepares to drink the hemlock. In contrast, Boethius has to write his own swan song, for there is no one present to whom he can talk and who might preserve his memory. What is more, this solitude in prison and in the face of death is merely a concrete image of Boethius' essential solitude as someone who had digested and could manipulate the twin tradition of ancient philosophy and poetry at a time when Western Europe had all but forgotten the tradition and was plunging into the simplifications of popularized Christianity.
Now how does this peculiar kind of dialogue play itself out and how does it inform the philosophic content of the work? After the opening elegy the character Boethius falls silent until Philosophy loosens his tongue by her touch; in Book V, after expressing the paradox of maintaining both God's providence and human free will, the character Boethius again falls all but completely silent, while Philosophy delivers her disquisition on eternity which constitutes the end of the work. But these two discourses and their subsequent silences are very different from one another and the process whereby the character Boethius progresses from the former to the later is the history of his progress in the therapy of philosophy.
From beginning to end Boethius the character remains the spokesman for suffering humanity. He bemoans his fall from fortune in the opening elegy and presents his case before Philosophy and God, as if in a court of law, in prose 4 and metrum 5 of the first book. Thereafter, throughout the therapy which Philosophy applies, Boethius continues to insist on, to focus attention on, the plight of man in an apparently unjust universe. In response to Philosophy's prosopopoeia of "Fortuna", in which she challenges Boethius' claim to the gifts of fortune, the character Boethius replies:
Tum ego: Speciosa quidem ista sunt, inquam, oblitaque rhetoricae ac musicae melle dulcedinis turn tantum cum audiuntur oblectant, sed miseris malorum altior sensus est; itaque cum haec auribus insonare desierint insitus animum maeror praegravat (Bk. II, pr. 3, 2).
(And then I said, "Those arguments are indeed splendid and covered as they are with the honey of rhetorical and poetic sweetness they delight as long as they are being heard; but in the case of the wretched the sensation of misfortune lies deeper, and thus, when these arguments cease to ring in their ears, an innate sadness weighs down their mind.")
This elicits from Philosophy a list of the variety of good fortune Boethius has enjoyed, but he responds with the following reformulation of his sense of suffering:
Tum ego: Vera, inquam, commemoras, o virtutum omnium nutrix, nec infitiari possum prosperitatis meae velocissimum cursum. Sed hoc est quod recolentem vehementius coquit; nam in omni adversitate fortunae infelicissimum est genus infortunii fuisse felicem (Bk. II, pr. 4, 1-2).
(And then I said, "What you say is true, O nurse of all the virtues, nor can I deny the swift course of my prosperity. But it is just this very fact which troubles me even more when I look back, for in every adversity of fortune the most unhappy kind of misfortune is to have been happy.")
This in turn moves Philosophy to catalogue the benefits of fortune which Boethius, despite his misery, still enjoys; to which he replies:
Et haereant, inquam, precor; illis namque manentibus, utcumque se res habeant, enatabimus. Sed quantum ornamentis nostris decesserit vides (Bk. II, pr. 4, 10).
(And I said, "I pray that they (the "anchors" of father-in-law, wife, and children) continue to hold, for as long as they remain, whatever the situation is, I shall stay afloat. But you see how much has disappeared of my honors.")
Although he has made some progress:
Et ilia: Promovimus, inquit, aliquantum si te nondum totius tuae sortis piget (Bk. II, pr. 4, 11).
(And she said, "we have made a little progress, if you are no longer completely dissatisfied with your lot.")
Boethius the character still insists that Philosophy take his immediate pain seriously.
Likewise, later in Book II, after Philosophy has made clear the vanity of worldly glory, the character Boethius objects that he sought office not for personal glory but in order to exercise virtue:
Tum ego: Scis, inquam, ipsa minimum nobis ambitionem mortalium rerum fuisse dominatam; sed materiam gerendis rebus optavimus, quo ne virtus tacita consenesceret (Bk. II, pr. 7, 1).
(Then I said, "You yourself know that ambition for the things of this world had very little hold over me; rather in the governance of affairs I sought the occasion whereby my virtue might not grow old, passed over in silence.)
To which Philosophy replies that this desire is the last weakness of noble minds, thus acknowledging, with reservation, the validity of certain human aspirations.
After Philosophy has demonstrated the relationship between the false goods of fortune and the true "summum bonum" in Books II and III, the character Boethius stresses his private suffering less and less; but all the same he still continues to focus Philosophy's attention on the apparent contradictions of the human condition. Thus at the opening of Book IV, after admitting the validity of Philosophy's arguments, he claims that the problem of theodicy remains unsolved:
Sed ea ipsa est vel maxima nostri causa maeroris quod, cum rerum bonus rector existat, vel esse omnino mala possint vel impunita praetereant; quod solum quanta dignum sit ammiratione profecto consideras. At huic aliud maius adiungitur; nam imperante florenteque nequitia virtus non solum praemiis caret, verum etiam sceleratorum pedibus subiecta calcatur et in locum facinorum supplicia luit (Bk. IV, pr. 1, 3-4).
(But that is precisely the greatest cause of my grief, that, although there exists a good lord over things, evils are able to exist at all or to go unpunished, which fact alone you yourself judge to be worthy of great wonder. But in addition to this there is something even greater, for, while evil rules and flourishes, not only does virtue go without rewards, but it is even cast at the feet of the wicked and trod upon and it suffers the punishments due to crimes.)
This insistence on taking a paradox of the human condition seriously elicits from Philosophy the Platonic arguments, derived from the Gorgias, by which good men are proven to be naturally happy, evil men naturally unhappy. And Boethius the character, while granting Philosophy's points, nonetheless maintains a human, down to earth, attitude towards the issue:
Tum ego: Fateor, inquam, nec iniuria dici video vitiosos, tametsi humani corporis speciem servent, in beluas tamen animorum qualitate mutari; sed quorum atrox scelerataque mens bonorum pernicie saevit, id ipsum eis licere noluissem (Bk. IV, pr. 4, 1).
(Then I said, "I admit and I do not consider that it is said wrongly that the vicious, although they keep the appearance of their human body, are nonetheless transformed into beasts with respect to the quality of their minds. But I would prefer that it not be allowed them that their fierce and criminal intention rage for the destruction of the good.")
Accedo, inquam, sed uti hoc infortunio cito careant patrandi sceleris possibilitate deserti vehementer exopto (Bk. IV, pr. 4, 6).
("I agree", I said, "but I strongly wish that, deprived of the possibility of accomplishing evil, they soon lack this misfortune.")
Tum ego: Cum tuas, inquam, rationes considero, nihil dici verius puto; at si ad hominum iudicia revertar, quis ille est cui non credenda modo sed saltern audienda videantur? (Bk. IV, pr. 4, 26)
(Then I said, "When I consider your reasoning, I think that nothing is more truly said; but if I revert to the judgment of mankind, who is there to whom these arguments would seem not only worthy of belief but even of hearing?")
Soon thereafter Boethius the character asks the decisive question, if the sun shines on good and bad alike, what is the difference between a cosmos ruled by God and a chaotic universe:
Minus etenim mirarer si misceri omnia fortuitis casibus crederem. Nunc stuporem meum deus rector exaggerat. Qui cum saepe bonis iucunda, malis aspera contraque bonis dura tribuat, malis optata concedat, nisi causa deprehenditur, quid est quod a fortuitis casibus differre videatur? (Bk. IV, pr. 5, 5-6)
("I would be less bewildered, if I believed that everything was mixed together randomly. But now the idea of a controlling god increases my bewilderment. Since he often apportions pleasant things for the good and bitter for the bad, but also bestows hardship on the good and their heart's desire to the bad, unless some cause is apprehended, what distinguishes this situation from pure chance?")
This question leads Philosophy into a discussion of providence, fate, fortune, divine predestination, and human free will which will occupy the remaining pages of the text and which represents the height of human understanding of the universe.
Finally, in Book V, first in prose (3) and then in verse (3), the character Boethius restates the human aspect of the work's central problem, how to reconcile divine providence and human free will:
Igitur nec sperandi aliquid nec deprecandi ulla ratio est; quid enim vel speret quisque vel etiam deprecetur quando optanda omnia series indeflexa conectit? (Bk. V, pr. 3. 33)
("Therefore there is no reason to hope for or to seek to avoid anything, for what might anyone hope for or seek to avoid, when an unchangeable order binds all objects of hope together?")
In the verse section he goes a step further and views the problem as one of epistemology:
An nulla est discordia veris
semperque sibi certa cohaerent,
sed mens caecis obruta membris
nequit oppressi luminis igne
rerum tenues noscere nexus?
(Bk. V, m. 3, 6-10)
(Or is there no contradiction between truths and are they firmly connected one with the other, while the mind, buried in the imperceptive limbs of the body, is unable to perceive the subtle interweaving of things by the flame of its buried vision?)
Taken together, prose 3 and verse 3 of Book V parallel prose 4 and verse 5 of Book I. In both passages the character Boethius first explains his dilemma in prose and then again in verse. In fact, the two verse sections are composed in the same meter (Anapestic Dimeter Acatalectic), a particularly striking coincidence, for verse 3 in Book V is the first time Boethius the character has spoken in verse since verse section 5 in Book I. The purpose of this parallelism is to demonstrate that from beginning to end the character Boethius continues to focus on the human point of view in contrast to Philosophy's tendency to view the issues at hand from the viewpoint of eternity. But while remaining the spokesman for humanity Boethius does change and develop. Whereas his formulation of the problem in Book I was personal and naïve, a performance which the narrator Boethius characterized as "barking", this formulation in Book V is intellectually sophisticated and motivated less by self-pity than by an honest bewilderment at man's epistemological position in the universe. What is more, this final articulation of the problem elicits the best Philosophy has to offer, her disquisition on eternity and its relationship to temporality, with which the work ends.
Let us now consider more closely by precisely what stages the character Boethius develops from the naïve self-centeredness of Book I to the intellectually sophisticated and emotionally balanced maturity of Book V. When Dame Philosophy appears and scatters the elegiac Muses, Boethius the character falls into a state of speechlessness. Upon receiving the healing touch of Philosophy he immediately recognizes her and expresses surprize that such an august personage should condescend to inhabit such lowly and ignoble environs. To which Philosophy responds, by listing many examples of martyrs to philosophy, that her devotees have always been subject to unjust suspicion and punishment. The first remark by the character Boethius neatly expresses his "problem", that which he must resolve before perceiving the cosmos correctly, namely, his inability to reconcile the reality of being, truth, and goodness with the reality of human suffering and ignorance. As Dame Philosophy will sum it up after performing her diagnosis: the character Boethius suffers from ignorance of self, of the end of things, and of the means by which the cosmos is governed.
At this preliminary stage of his therapy Philosophy insists on using mild remedies before proceeding to harsher medicines:
Sed quoniam plurimus tibi affectuum tumultus incubuit diversumque te dolor ira maeror distrahunt, uti nunc mentis es, nondum te validiora remedia contingunt. Itaque lenioribus paulisper utemur, ut quae in tumorem perturbationibus influentibus induruerunt ad acrioris vim medicaminis recipiendam tactu blandiore mollescant (Bk. I, pr. 5, 11-12).
(But since a great crowd of passions has settled upon you and pain, anger, and grief pull you in different directions, in your present state of mind stronger remedies are not yet appropriate for you. Therefore let us make use of milder ones for a while, so that those faculties, which have hardened into a tumor under the influence of disturbing passions, might, by means of a gentle touch, soften so as to become receptive to the power of stronger medicine.)
The effect of these mild remedies of poetry and rhetoric is to encourage Boethius to take his first step towards health by admitting that despite his immediate suffering Fortune has in general been kind to him. As Philosophy puts it:
Promovimus, inquit, aliquantum si te nondum totius tuae sortis piget (Bk. II, pr. 4, 11).
("We have made some progress," she said, "if you are no longer completely dissatisfied with your lot.")
Shortly thereafter she judges that slightly stronger remedies may now be applied to her recuperating patient:
Sed quoniam rationum iam in te mearum fomenta descendunt, paulo validioribus utendum puto (Bk. II, pr. 5, 1).
(But since the good effects of my reasoning are penetrating into you, I think that I may now use stronger ones.)
And when Philosophy has reviewed all the gifts of fortune and demonstrated that they can neither really benefit nor harm Boethius in his essence, at the opening of Book III, in which she will clarify the difference between the false goods of fortune and the true good, Boethius states:
Itaque remedia quae paulo acriora esse dicebas non modo non perhorresco, sed audiendi avidus vehementer efflagito (Bk. III, pr. 1, 2).
(Therefore those remedies which you said were a little harsher, not only am I not afraid of them, in fact I am eager to hear them and earnestly beg for them.)
Thus for the first time he explicitly expresses his readiness to undergo the harsher stages of his therapy.
When Philosophy has definitively demonstrated the inadequacies of all fortune's gifts and is about to delineate the form of the true good, the following interchange takes place between the two interlocutors:
Hactenus mendacis formam felicitatis ostendisse suffecerit; quam si perspicaciter intueris, ordo est deinceps quae sit vera monstrare. Atqui video, inquam, nec opibus sufficientiam nec regnis potentiam nec reverentiam dignitatibus nec celebritatem gloria nec laetitiam voluptatibus posse contingere. An etiam causas cur id ita sit deprehendisti? Tenui quidem veluti rimula mihi videor intueri, sed ex te apertius cognoscere malim (Bk. III, pr. 9, 1-3).
("Let the preceding suffice to show the form of false happiness; if you have clearly seen into it, the next step is to demonstrate what true happiness is." "And indeed I do see," I said, "that sufficiency cannot appertain to wealth, nor power to kingship, nor honor to office, nor glory to fame, nor joy to pleasure." "But have you also grasped the causes why this is the case?" "I think that I catch a glimpse as if through a slender crack, but I would prefer to learn more clearly from you.")
Here for the first time the character Boethius expresses a dawning ability to discern for himself, but he still needs the tutelage of Philosophy to attain full insight.
Later in Book III, when Philosophy has explained the nature of the true good and proclaimed that it is to be sought within and not without, Boethius again states that he can anticipate Philosophy's line of reasoning:
Tum ego: Platoni, inquam, vehementer assentior; nam me horum iam secundo commemoras, primum quod memoriam corporea contagione, dehinc cum maeroris mole pressus amisi. Tum illa: Si priora, inquit, concessa respicias, ne illud quidem longius aberit quin recorderis quod te dudum nescire confessus es. Quid? inquam. Quibus, ait illa, gubernaculis mundus regatur. Memini, inquam, me inscitiam meam fuisse confessum, sed quid afferas, licet iam prospiciam, planius tarnen ex te audire desidero (Bk. III, pr. 12, 1-3).
(Then I said, "I am in strong agreement with Plato, since for a second time you remind me of those things, the memory of which I first lost through contact with the body, and then for a second time, because I was overwhelmed with the weight of grief." Then she said, "If you consider the points you have already conceded, it should not be very long before you remember what you recently confessed you did not know." "What," I said. "The means," she said, "by which the universe is controlled." "I remember," I said, "that I confessed my ignorance; but, although I already foresee the answer, I nonetheless desire to hear it more clearly from your lips.")
Here, too, the character Boethius expresses his ability to see into the nature of things. Even more importantly, he has reached a level of self-awareness where he can accurately describe his condition as that of one who has twice forgotten the truth, that is, the Consolatio portrays not the education of a neophyte but the re-education of a lapsed philosopher. Boethius' increasing insight and self-confidence are expressed in the following passage, where for the first time he reasons for himself without the aid of Dame Philosophy:
Mundum, inquit, hunc deo regi paulo ante minime dubitandum putabas. Ne nunc quidem arbitror, inquam, nec umquam dubitandum putabo, quibusque in hoc rationibus accedam breviter exponam (Bk. III, pr. 12, 4).
("Recently," she said, "you were of the opinion that in no way could it be doubted that this world is ruled by God." "Nor do I think so now," said I, "nor shall I ever think that it can be doubted, and I shall briefly lay before you the reasoning by which I came to this opinion.)
Finally, when Philosophy makes the bold assertion that evil does not, properly speaking, exist, Boethius the character is by now an active enough interlocutor to question her reasoning and to suggest that her argument might be circular:
Ludisne, inquam, me inextricabilem labyrinthum rationibus texens, quae nunc quidem qua egrediaris introeas, nunc vero quo introieris egrediare, an mirabilem quendam divinae simplicitatis orbem complicas? (Bk. III, pr. 12, 30)
("Are you playing with me," I said, "by weaving an inextricable labyrinth with your arguments, so that now you enter where you exited, and now you exit where you entered, or are you winding some marvelous circle of divine simplicity?")
Thus by the end of Book III the character Boethius has reached the point where he is beginning to see things for himself and to take a more active role in the dialogue with Philosophy.
As I have already pointed out, the character Boethius in Books IV and V restates the central question of the Consolatio in more and more sophisticated terms and thus elicits from Philosophy progressively more sophisticated responses (see Bk. IV, pr. 1, 2-5, & Bk. V, pr.3-m.3). He remains a spokesman for the human point of view, but he is no longer plagued with blindness and dumbness; he can now manipulate and determine the direction of the discourse taking place between him and Philosophy. Thus at the opening of Book V he is confident enough of his abilities to insist that she discuss the question of chance despite her claim that the question is fraught with difficulty and is somewhat irrelevant to the progress of his therapy:
Dixerat orationisque cursum ad alia quaedam tractanda atque expedienda vertebat. Turn ego: Recta quidem, inquam, exhortatio tuaque prorsus auctoritate dignissima, sed quod tu dudum de providentia quaestionem pluribus aliis implicitam esse dixisti re experior. Quaero enim an esse aliquid omnino et quidnam esse casum arbitrere. Tum illa: Festino, inquit, debitum promissionis absoluere viamque tibi qua patriam reveharis aperire. Haec autem etsi perutilia cognitu tamen a propositi nostri tramite paulisper aversa sunt, verendumque est ne deviis fatigatus ad emetiendum rectum iter sufficere non possis. Ne id, inquam, prorsus vereare; nam quietis mihi loco fuerit ea quibus maxime delector agnoscere. Simul, cum omne disputationis tuae latus indubitata fide constiterit, nihil de sequentibus ambigatur (Bk. V, pr. 1, i-7).
(She had spoken and was about to turn the direction of her speech towards treating and explaining other matters. Then I said, "Your exhortation is proper and most worthy of your authority, but what you said before about the question of providence being tied up with many others, I now experience in fact. For I wonder whether you think chance exists at all and what sort of thing it is." Then she said, "I am in a hurry to pay the debt of my promise and to open up the way by which you might return to your fatherland. These matters, however, although useful to know, are nonetheless somewhat removed from the path of our undertaking and it is to be feared, lest, fatigued by side-tracks, you not be up to completing the right journey." "Have no fears at all," I said, "for it would be like a rest to become acquainted with those things in which I most delight. Likewise, since every side of your argument has been constructed with the strongest conviction, let there be no doubt about what follows.)
Thus we see that the character Boethius, by assuming the function of determining the course of the dialogue, instead of merely reacting to the initiatives of Dame philosophy, is approaching the status of Boethius the narrator. What is more, by his restatement of the problem in epistemological terms in verse 3 of Book V, the only time he speaks in verse after verse 5 of Book I, the character Boethius also approaches the status of the author Boethius who can manipulate all kinds of discourse, both prose and verse, in the construction of the elaborate poem which is the text of the Consolatio. So by the end of the work the character Boethius, while remaining the voice of the human condition, has nonetheless undergone a transformation from a passive and prostrate victim of fortune to an active and vigorous partner in the quest for the solution to the central human dilemma: how to harmonize being and becoming.
The character Boethius' silence in the last sections of Book V and the fact that the author Boethius has not framed his vision of Philosophy with a description of her departure have troubled many readers and have led some to suspect that the work is unfinished. But if my analysis of the development of Boethius the character is correct, the ending is no longer problematic; it is in fact the only possible satisfying conclusion to the work. Boethius the author has portrayed the evolution of the character Boethius into the narrator Boethius and has hinted at the further development of Boethius the narrator into Boethius the author of the text. Thus the voice of Philosophy at the end of the work, which had been contrasted with the human voice of Boethius the character and recounted by Boethius the narrator, is now seen to be one of the voices of Boethius the author. And what the voice says represents the successful completion of the work's central project, to harmonize being and becoming, for human hopes and prayers are validated within a universe under the strict determinism of God.
We have seen that just as Boethius' presence in the text is refracted into three facets: author, narrator, and character, so, too, does Dame Philosophy appear under three guises: the voice of being, an aspect of Boethius himself, and an image of the whole tradition of ancient philosophy. Likewise, just as the character Boethius undergoes a transformation in the course of his dialogue with philosophy, so, too, does she undergo an analogous transformation from "Icon" to "Sybil". Furthermore, as I shall demonstrate, Philosophy's transformations are calculated to correspond to Boethius' specific capabilities at any given stage of his therapy.
The most efficient way of making clear the evolution of Philosophy's character is by reference to the epistemological structure of the work, whereby the text follows the progress of Boethius from "sensus" to "imaginatio", to "ratio", and finally towards "intellegentia". My claim is that Dame Philosophy adapts herself to each stage of this progress and thereby presents a different appearance to Boethius the character at each of the four levels of knowledge.
Thus in Book I, where the character Boethius is portrayed as mired in the realm of the senses, reacting to the blows of fortune in a merely personal way, Philosophy, in order to make herself apparent to Boethius, uses the only means he is prepared to understand, namely, the senses. Her first appearance is that of an icon, the imagery of whose person and raiment shadow forth her nature as it will unfold itself in the course of the dialogue. Furthermore, when she has put the elegiac Muses to rout and is faced with a dumb and blind Boethius, she again avails herself of the senses, in this case the sense of touch, in order to restore his powers of speech and sight (see Bk. I, pr. 2, 7). In addition to sight and touch, Philosophy also has recourse to the sense of hearing as a means towards reaching Boethius in his present condition:
Itaque lenioribus paulisper utemur, ut quae in tumorem perturbationibus influentibus induruerunt ad acrioris vim medicaminis recipiendam tactu blandiore mollescant (Bk. I, pr. 5, 12).
(Therefore let us make use of milder remedies for a while, so that those faculties, which have hardened into a tumor under the influence of disturbing passions, might, by means of a gentle touch, soften so as to become receptive to the power of stronger medicine.)
Here "tactu blandiore" obviously refers to the gentle touch of verse, which at this stage of Boethius' therapy is one of the principal means of care.
In the second book, where Philosophy seeks to lead Boethius from an exclusive preoccupation with his personal situation and to instill in him an understanding of the nature of fortune in general, she begins to exercise his faculty of imagination, which allows the human being to perceive the general form apart from its specific embodiment in matter (see Bk. V, pr. 4, 28). Thus Philosophy puts off her persona of icon and puts on that of Muse. This transformation is strikingly signaled in the second prose section of Book II, where Philosophy, in her attempt to reconcile Boethius to his lot, employs one of imagination's most powerful instruments, the theater, by playing the role of Fortuna herself. And in the course of her speech Philosophy as Fortuna alludes to various products of the imagination such as history, tragedy, and epic (see Bk. II, pr. 2, 11-13).
The transition from imagination to reason in Boethius' therapy and the analogous transformation of Philosophy from Muse to "Magistra" is clearly marked at the opening of Book III (see pr. 1, 1-3). Boethius describes himself as enchanted by the charms of Philosophy's poetic discourse, but also ready for the "somewhat harsher remedies" of pure reason. In her response Philosophy characterizes the nature of poetry and the function it has served in a philosophic therapy:
… eumque tuae mentis habitum vel exspectavi vel, quod est verius, ipsa perfeci … (Bk. III, pr. 1, 3).
(And I was expecting this condition of your mind or, what is truer, I myself brought it about.)
That is, she emphasizes the affective power of poetry to change moods and dispositions which was needed to render Boethius receptive to the stronger medicine of pure philosophy.
Thus throughout Books III, IV, and the opening sections of Book V Philosophy will play the role of a "magistra" instructing her "alumnus". Sometimes she delivers lectures in which she sets forth doctrines in a straightforward format (e.g., Bk. III, pr. 2, & Bk. IV, pr. 6, 7ff.); sometimes she questions her pupil so as to involve him in the process of reasoning (e.g., Bk. III, pr. 3, 5ff., & Bk. IV, pr. 7). At times, as we have already pointed out, Boethius himself comments on the argumentation, sets forth arguments of his own, and initiates new avenues of discussion. The purpose and effect of this process are concisely represented at the opening of Book IV, where Philosophy borrows Plato's image of the wings of the soul:
Pennas etiam tuae menti quibus se in altum tollere possit adfigam, ut perturbatione depulsa sospes in patriam meo ductu, mea semita, meis etiam vehiculis revertaris (Bk. IV, pr. 1, 9).
(And I shall attach wings to your mind by means of which it will be able to lift itself on high, so that, with all disturbance removed, you might safely turn back towards your homeland under my guidance, along my path, and by my conveyance.)
The image of wings and the insistent travel motif characterizes reason as a specifically human mode of knowledge. Since the human being is born into the realm of becoming, with its dimensions of time and space, the appropriately human mode of knowing must move from one point to another, must be forever in motion. But the ultimate goal of this movement is the "homeland", the realm of being and eternal rest. Thus "ratio", though it is a way towards the truth, is not the truth itself. This problem and its solution will constitute the conclusion of the work in the second half of Book V.
At the beginning of Book V Boethius the character changes the course of the dialogue by focusing on the question of chance, which focus in turn leads to the felt contradiction between the two concepts, divine providence and human free will. By redirecting the conversation and by articulating the paradox of maintaining seemingly contradictory propositions Boethius both displays his full command of the faculty of reason and shows up the ultimate limitations of that faculty, bound as it is by the human dimensions of time and space. Thus the "wings" of "ratio" have conveyed Boethius to the frontier of his "patria", but they are incapable of bearing him into the realm of eternal being itself. To effect this final step into the realm of the eternal Dame Philosophy undergoes her final metamorphosis: she takes off the mask of "magistra" and assumes the persona of Sybil, the mouthpiece of divine wisdom.
This change of Philosophy's role, and thus by implication of the role of the character Boethius, is represented by a sudden change in the nature of the dialogue. In the first half of Book V (through verse section 3) Boethius takes a very active part in the discussion; but once Philosophy begins to speak as a prophetess, propounding the ways of God to man, Boethius says little more than a perfunctory "yes" or "no". Throughout her dazzling disquisition on the four modes of knowledge, on the difference between "aeternitas" and "perpetuitas", in the analogous distinction between "providentia" and "praevidentia", and on the two forms of necessity, Philosophy speaks as an oracle revealing divine truth to a human audience. But as she herself says concerning the four modes of knowledge, the higher does not invalidate the lower, it merely subsumes and transcends it (see Bk. V, pr. 4, 24-39). Likewise, Philosophy as Sybil is not the negation of Philosophy as Icon, Muse, and Magistra; rather she is the culmination of her former roles, roles without which her pupil would never have progressed to a position where he is able to receive her divine teachings.
Thus, although at first sight Dame Philosophy might seem an unchanging, hieratic figure, an appropriate appearance for the mouthpiece of eternity, nonetheless her most important role in the dialogue is to constitute the second voice which makes the interior dialogue of thought possible and to serve as mediator between the character Boethius and the realm of being. This Hermes-like role, whereby Philosophy adapts herself to the capabilities of Boethius and interprets being to him in terms he is prepared to understand, that is, a power neither merely human nor fully divine which acts as intermediary between the two realms.
The epithets with which Boethius the character from time to time addresses his interlocutor underscore Philosophy's function as intermediary. Upon recognizing her for the first time Boethius refers to her as "nutricem meam" (Bk. I, pr. 3, 2), that is, as his nurse. Thus Philosophy is that power which oversees his growth, his transition from intellectual infancy to adulthood. After Philosophy's prosopopoeia of "Fortuna" in Book II, Boethius adresses her as "virtutum omnium nutrix" (Bk. II, pr. 4, 1), that is, as nurse of all the virtues. Thus Philosophy is now characterized not as Boethius' own private nurse but as a force nourishing all the excellencies of the human soul. This address represents a development in Boethius' understanding of his interlocutor: he no longer sees her merely from his own personal point of view. What is more, he aptly describes Philosophy, not as excellence itself, but as the nourisher of excellencies, much as in Plato, philosophy is not wisdom but the enamored pursuit of wisdom. At the opening of Book III, when Boethius the character claims that he is cured of his addiction to fortune, he addresses Dame Philosophy as "summum lassorum solamen animorum" (Bk. III, pr. 1, 2), that is, as the greatest comfort of weary souls. Thus Philosophy as a curative means is a figure whose function is essentially "demonic" or "hermeneutic", that is, to be the guide of the soul from one state to another, in other words, a psychopomp. Finally, in the first prose section of Book IV, Boethius addresses philosophy as "veri praevia luminis" (Bk. IV, pr. 1, 2), that is, as guide to the true light. Here Philosophy's function as guide or intermediary is most clearly expressed: she is the way towards the light not the light itself.
This "hermeneutic" aspect of Philosophy was also signaled at the very beginning of the text, where the figures embroidered on her garments were described. The pi (the practical) and the theta (the theoretic) connected by a series of steps constituting a means of ascent from the former to the latter are clear images of Philosophy's role in the text. As mouthpiece of eternity and aspect of Boethius himself she … provides the means, the ladder, affording access to the higher realm from the lower. This ladder is the dialogue itself which conveys Boethius from the depths of humanity to the heights of divinity by means of discourses drawn from the whole tradition of Greco-Roman antiquity all calculated to correspond to Boethius' stage of receptivity at any given rung.
To summarize, therefore, the significance of the dialogue form of the Consolatio, one could say that, although firmly within tradition of ancient philosophic dialogue, Boethius' use of the genre is internalized to a degree which no previous practitioner of the genre had attained. This interiority reflects the alienation of Boethius the author, master of the tradition at a time when the tradition was in danger of being forgotten; but it also enables him to dramatize the only interaction available to him, interaction with himself. What is more, the dynamics of this interior dialogue allow him to achieve a great deal more than a simple portrait of intellectual alienation; they constitute a subtle and complex image of the individual human being's epistemological condition.
First of all, the three-fold persona of Boethius in the text: as author, as narrator, and as character, mirrors with remarkable accuracy the complexity of human selfidentity. Every human being, whenever he or she pronounces the word "I", is involved in just this three-fold problem of identity. For instance, in the sentence, "I bought the paper this morning", the "I" first of all refers to the character who bought the paper within the story of that sentence. But the "I" also identifies that character with the speaker of the sentence, that is, with the narrator of the story. Finally the use of the word "I" suggests that elusive "I" which is beyond the "I" of the character and the narrator, which is always subject and never object, which determines what stories the narrator "I" will tell and in what manner. What Boethius has accomplished in the Consolatio is the depiction of the process of integrating these three aspects of "ego". As author he composes a text in which he, as narrator, tells the story of how he, as character, developed to the stage where he was capable of becoming both narrator and author. But it is important to note that Boethius never simply collapses the three aspects into an undifferentiated whole; rather he carefully articulates the drama whereby the three aspects interact.
Likewise with Dame Philosophy. Beyond the importance of any Platonic influence, such as Socrates' remarks in the Theaetetus concerning thought as an interior dialogue, the striking thing about Boethius' introduction of Philosophy as the second interlocutor in the dialogue is its accuracy as a depiction of the process of human thinking. We have all had, or nearly had, the embarrassing experience of being caught unawares talking to ourselves. The impulse to do so and the embarrassment at being observed to do so are both instructive. On the one hand, for a human being, to think implies the staging of a drama within one's self. The activity of thought can only proceed through the give and take of different voices, of different points of view. On the other hand, to be observed doing so, either aloud or silently as in the examples of Socrates in the Symposium, is to be considered somehow strange, either praeternaturally wise or a fool. This embarrassment is also significant, for clearly our human ability to think has as its basis our most characteristically human means of communicating with each other, language. Thus to talk to oneself, rather than to another, is in some way unusual or "unnatural"; it is the sign either of a great mind or of the failure to interact satisfactorily with our fellow humans. Thus what Boethius has accomplished by including the necessary second voice in any interior dialogue, and which had never been done quite so systematically before him, is the dramatization of the process of thought.
Now if the human "I" is three-faceted, it is natural to expect that the second voice, which we contrive in order to talk with ourselves, would also be three-faceted, depending on what aspect of the self the voice is felt to correspond to. And so it is with Boethius' Dame philosophy. As the voice of eternity Philosophy obviously corresponds to Boethius as the author of the text, for both are in a position to comprehend the sequence of time and the expanse of space in an instantaneous and all-inclusive grasp. In a certain sense both stand outside the text: Boethius as fashioner of the story and Philosophy as the image of eternity which transcends all stories. Second, Dame Philosophy as the representative of the whole tradition of ancient philosophy can be associated with Boethius as narrator of the story. Both have a history: the narrator has his as character in the story he tells, philosophy has hers as the history of the various schools of ancient philosophy, their rise and fall, and their interaction. Likewise both tell a story: the narrator recounts the progress of the character, Philosophy unfolds the whole content of Greco-Roman speculation in a sequential order corresponding to the progress of Boethius the character. Finally, Philosophy as an aspect of Boethius himself, as that second voice necessary for interior dialogue, clearly corresponds to Boethius the character. She converses with him throughout the text and adapts herself to his capacities at every stage of their conversation.
Thus Sartre, whom in my introduction I portrayed as pursuing the Consolatio merely for reasons of general education, should now be reading with greater attention, in fact, with a certain fascination. For, apart from whatever dogmatic biases Boethius may hold, he has, by means of the dialogue form of the work, taken great pains to depict the existential conditions of human thought and knowledge. On the other hand, I criticized F. Anne Payne for what I felt to be her tendentious characterization of the Consolatio as a text signaling the absolute relativity of all human discourse and understanding. By now I am in a better position to specify the terms of my disagreement. At one point in her study, Chaucer and Menippean Satire, she describes the final effect of the work as follows:
There is no inevitable sequence in the subjects she (i.e. Philosophy) discusses (fortune, happiness, evil, providence and fate, chance, foresight and freewill), nor does Boethius ever reach his "home", the goal promised a number of times, partly because he keeps asking questions, partly because "home" for man is the recognition that he lives in time, that the dialogue will continue, that there will be insights, but no final answers.
First of all, there is indeed a clear and ordered sequence of subjects discussed, as I have demonstrated in my remarks on the philosophical content. Second, as Philosophy states very early in the work, Boethius' "patria" is a special kind of homeland, residence in which or exile from which is a matter of internal disposition not external necessity:
An ignoras illam tuae civitatis antiquissimam legem qua sanctum est ei ius exsulare non esse quisquis in ea sedem fundare maluerit? Nam qui vallo eius ac munimine continetur, nullus metus est ne exsul esse mereatur; at quisquis inhabitare cam velle desierit pariter desinit etiam mereri (Bk. I, pr. 5, 5).
(Are you unaware of that most ancient law of your home city, according to which it is declared illegal to exile whoever prefers to establish his residence there? For whoever is protected by its moat and walls, there is no fear that he should ever deserve to be an exile. But whoever stops wanting to live there, likewise ceases to deserve to do so.)
Thus, if I have rightly understood the dynamics of the dialogue, Boethius the character by the end of the work has evolved to the point where he is in fact properly disposed for entrance into the city. Third, the fact that Boethius the character insistently asks questions in his role as representative of the human condition does not prevent him from entering the city, indeed, the sophisticated nature of his final questions proves him ready to enter.
Finally, the claim that home for man is in time and that there are no final answers, though similar to certain strains within the Consolatio, is a great simplification of Boethius' stance. As a pupil of Plato, Boethius is accutely sensitive to the paradox that, although man lives in the "metaxy", that is, in the realm between pure being and utter nonbeing, a part of him is nonetheless nostalgic for another home in the realm of eternal, unchanging being. With rare exceptions the platonic tradition takes both sides of this paradox seriously with the result that at its best Platonism achieves a delicate balance of emphasis between the relativism and uncertainty of our human condition and the instinct for being, which, though never completely realized, it would be false to deny as characteristically human. Thus Boethius' refusal to depict true being in a straightforward and simplistic manner does not imply the denial of being as real, it merely represents a profound respect for the givens of the human condition, which "cannot bear very much reality". Although Plato and Boethius might fashion literary objects in which are portrayed various aspects of the human being's progress, or lack thereof, towards being, the great truth itself is always treated as a mystery, which, because it cannot be portrayed directly, must not be. Boethius, by his use of the dialogue form, exhibits an awareness, rare for a philosopher, that there is no such thing as a simple, declarative sentence, and then proceeds, informed by this awareness, to trace how one human being, cut off from all other human beings, might, in the drama of his own thought, approach being.
IV. THE MENIPPEAN-SATIRE FORM
But this highly wrought text has been elaborated in yet another fashion. Not only is the philosophical content structured according to three different but analogous sets of categories; not only is the work couched in the form of a dialogue between two multifaceted interlocutors; the text has also been cast in the highly artificial form of Menippean Satire, a medley of alternating verse and prose, which had enjoyed a long and various history before Boethius chose to appropriate it for his own purposes.
The genre seems to have originated with Menippus of Gadara, a Greek-speaking Syrian who flourished in the first half of the third century BC. He used the form of alternating verse and prose to write essays expressive of a Cynic's seriocomic attitude towards the world and mankind. It is unclear, however, exactly how the verse sections in his works functioned: they may have been original compositions or merely quotations from previous literature. Menippus was followed by his fellow Gadarean, Meleager, who produced a body of Cynic discourse in the Menippean form around BC 100. The genre was taken over into Latin by Marcus Terentius Varro (BC 116-27), who wrote 110 books of Menippean satires, of which some 600 fragments are extant and in which he mocked human foibles. In the first century AD Varro's lead was taken up by Petronius in the Satyricon and by "Seneca" in the Apocolocyntosis. Likewise, in the second century AD, Lucian of Samosate wrote a series of dialogues in which the Menippean influence is strong and in which "Menippus" himself sometimes appears as character. But, although Lucian shares Menippus' seriocomic stance, he does not choose to employ the format of alternating verse and prose to which Menippus had given his name.
The form then seems not to have attracted practitioners for almost three centuries; and when it reappears in the fifth and early sixth centuries AD, its characteristically cynic tone seems to have undergone a radical transformation. No longer is the genre used to poke fun at the pretensions and vanities of mankind; instead it is an aspect of the baroque complexity of composition characteristic of much of the literature produced in the Latin West during this period. Thus Martianus Capella (fl. c. 425) casts his highly elaborate allegory, De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae, in the Menippean Satire form; and Fulgentius (467-532 AD) does the same in the first book of his collection of allegorical interpretations of classical myths, Mitologiarum Libri Tres. Thus by the time Boethius inherited the genre it had long lost its associations with the mocking tones of the Cynics and had taken on the status of a genre appropriate for the explication of lofty mysteries and expressive of the technical literary mastery of its practitioners. The question then arises, why did Boethius choose this strangely artificial form as medium for his Consolatì?
The first observation to be made about Boethius' use of Menippean Satire is the systematic pervasiveness of alternating verse and prose throughout the text. Both his rough contemporaries, Martianus Capella and Fulgentius, employ the form only intermittently; furthermore, their use of verse appears merely decorative and at times gratuitous. In contrast, Boethius alternates verse and prose from beginning to end of the Consolatio and he endows verse with many important functions throughout the progress of the work. At times it serves to illustrate points made in the prose sections with the more vivid images of poetry (e.g., the metra of Book II); sometimes it actually advances the argument (e.g., metrum 3 of Book V); sometimes it is reserved for purposes less appropriately treated in prose, namely, prayer (e.g. metrum 5 of Book I & metrum IX of Book III); sometimes it serves to refresh Boethius the character between strenuous dialectical workouts (e.g., metrum 6 of Book IV). Finally, the effect of the verse sections in the Consolatio is analogous in many ways to that of the similes in the Iliad. In both works these respective devices interject aspects of reality not to be encountered in the stark settings of the main action. In the Iliad, the entire plot of which is restricted to the bleak plane running from the Trojan citadel to the sea, the similes afford glimpses of the natural world of plants and animals, and of the workaday world of humans at their domestic chores. Likewise in the Consolatio, all of which takes place within Boethius' prison cell, the verse sections continually present images of natural phenomena, both terrestrial and celestial, and sometimes refer to the characters of history and myth (e.g., metrum 6 of Book II; metrum 12 of Book III; metra 3 & 7 of Book IV). Thus, on first reading, the Menippean Satire format of the Consolatio appears more integrated than in other comparable works. But the question still stands, what end does Menippean Satire allow Boethius to achieve, which otherwise he could not have?
There existed throughout Greco-Roman antiquity an inveterate feud, which even in the fourth century BC Plato could refer to as a "certain ancient dispute", between philosophy and poetry. The most common expression of this tension was the repeated attack launched by philosophical critics against poetry as fictitious and false. As early as Xenophanes, most articulately in certain Platonic passages, and as late as Boethius, poetry is accused of beguiling the mind with dangerously deceptive fabrications. On the other hand, philosophy itself felt the strong pull of poetry; in fact, much of what we term ancient philosophy was composed as poetry, if not verse. For example both Parmenides and Empedocles chose to couch their thoughts in the heroic hexameters of Homer and Hesiod; Plato wrote philosophical closet dramas; Lucretius followed in Latin the example set by Empedocles; and Boethius chose the highly artificial form of Menippean Satire in which to compose his Consolatio. A tension between philosophy and poetry is present throughout Boethius' text; but if my understanding of their interaction is accurate, the outcome of the feud is a draw.
Before proceeding I should forestall a possible confusion of terms. Menippean Satire is often defined as a potpourri of verse and prose, which is as good a definition as any. But when I speak of the relationship between poetry and philosophy in the Consolatio, I do not mean to suggest that Boethius has cast his philosophy in prose and his poetic aspirations in verse. The verse and prose sections are equally poetic, or literary; the philosophy is not to be found in any one specific mode of discourse but in the arrangement of the work as a whole. Thus, although the following analysis concentrates on the functions of the metra, much the same arguments could be applied to the variety of discourse to be found in the prose sections as well.
Verse in the Consolatio functions as a "pharmakon", that is, as a potent substance of mysterious, almost magical, properties, which can either cure or kill. Who applies the pharmakon and how it is applied are essential factors contributing to its eventual good or bad effect. Thus the whole work can be read, at least on one level, as the history of the right and wrong uses of this pharmakon which is verse.
The Consolatio opens with Boethius the character bewailing his fall from fortune in a poem firmly within the tradition of Latin elegy. Dame Philosophy then appears and scatters the elegiac Muses, but she immediately substitutes her own Muses in their stead:
Quis, inquit, has scenicas meretriculas ad hunc aegrum permisit accedere, quae dolores eius non modo nullis remediis foverent, verum dulcibus insuper alerent venenis? … Sed abite potius, Sirenes usque in exitium dulces, meisque eum Musis curandum sanandumque relinquite (Bk. I, pr. 1, 8 & 11).
("Who," she said, "has allowed these theatrical bawds to approach this patient? Not only do they not tend him with any remedies, in fact, in addition, they feed him on sweet poisons. But off with you, you Sirens sweet even unto death, and leave him to be cared for and cured by my Muses.")
Thus verse is not viewed as essentially pernicious; its effects can be harmful or beneficial, depending on how it is used and by whom. And the first book of the Consolatio may be read as an account of how Philosophy removes verse from Boethius' hands and appropriates it for her own uses. After expressing his inability to perceive the hand of God in human affairs in the fifth metrum of Book I Boethius the character will not speak in verse again until the third metrum of Book V. Meanwhile Philosophy will wield verse in a variety of ways, all calculated to further the progress of Boethius' therapy.
The first use made by Philosophy of verse is what I shall term "the affective". Early in Book I, after giving the stoical advice to resist fortune (Bk. I, m. 4), Philosophy asks Boethius: …
"Do you perceive these things," she said, "and have they penetrated your mind, or are you as an ass to the lyre?"
The implication is that in his present condition Boethius is incapable of receiving the healing truth of philosophy and the mention of the lyre hints at the instrument which will be able to effect the necessary change of heart, namely, verse. Accordingly, later in Book I, Philosophy describes her use of verse as calculated to respond to Boethius' emotional state:
Sed quoniam firmioribus remediis nondum tempus est, et eam mentium constat esse naturaram ut quotiens abiecerint veras, falsis opinionibus induantur, ex quibus orta perturbationum caligo verum illum confundit intuitum, hanc paulisper lenibus mediocribus fomentis attenuare temptabo, ut dimotis fallacium affectionum tenebris splendorem verae lucis possis agnoscere (Bk. I, pr. 6, 21).
(But since it is not yet time for stronger remedies and the nature of minds is so constituted that they put on false opinions as often as they divest themselves of true ones and from these false opinions there arises a fog of disturbing passions which clouds the capacity for true insight, I shall attempt for a little while to disperse this fog with mild treatments of moderate strength, so that, with the shadows of false affections removed, you might be able to recognize the splendor of the true light.)
This affective use of poetry will prevail throughout Book II, in the course of which Philosophy appeals principally to Boethius' imagination. Even when Boethius himself complains of the ultimate inability of verse and rhetoric to alleviate deeply rooted sorrow (Bk. II, pr. 3, 2), Philosophy insists that at this stage of his therapy poetry is the most he can expect:
Et illa: Ita est, inquit; haec enim nondum morbi tui remedia, sed adhuc contumacis adversum curationem doloris fomenta quaedam sunt; nam quae in profundum sese penetrent cum tempestivum fuerit ammovebo (Bk. II, pr. 3, 3-4).
(And she said, "So it is, for these measures are not cures for your illness, they are merely certain comforts preparatory to the cure of your persistent pain. For when the time is right, I shall apply those measures which penetrate deeply.")
In Book III, a second, loftier use of verse comes into play, that which I choose to call its power to illuminate. Already in Book I, in the passage recently cited, Philosophy had hinted at the power of verse to reveal, to shed light on reality. This ability of verse to illumine is most effectively exercised in the central prayer to God as ruler of the cosmos:
O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas,
terrarum caelique sator, qui tempus ab aevo
ire iubes stabilisque manens das cuncta moveri …
(Bk. III, m. 9, 1-3).
(O you who govern the cosmos with constant reason, begetter of earth and heaven, who order time to proceed from eternity, and who, while remaining stationary, enable all things to move …)
This is the only verse section in the entire Consolatio to be composed in dactylic hexameters; which fact taken together with the poem's central position in the text indicates its status as the acme of verse's career in the work.
Accordingly it presents a cosmology, derived in large measure from Plato's Timaeus, in terms of which the whole philosophical content of the second half of the text will be expressed. At the very heart of a philosophical treatise, designed to demonstrate the harmony of being and becoming, Boethius has placed a hexameter poem expressing the nature of God as beginning, middle, and end of all moving things:
… tu namque serenum,
tu requies tranquilla piis, te cernere finis,
principium, vector, dux, semita, terminus idem
(Bk. I, m. 9, 26-28).
(For you are the cloudless sky, peaceful rest for the good, the goal is to perceive you, beginning, conveyor, leader, path, end, all in the same being.)
But soon thereafter the status of verse as an instrument of philosophy begins to decline. Book III ends with a poem describing the descent into Hades of Orpheus in order to rescue Eurydice. The stated significance of the legend, to be found in the text of the poem itself, is that on the soul's voyage towards celestial truth it should not look back on terrestrial realities:
Vos haec fabula respicit
quicumque in superum diem
mentem ducere quaeritis;
nam qui Tartareum in specus
victus lumina flexerit,
quicquid praecipuum trahit
perdit cum videt inferos
(Bk. III, m. 12, 52-58).
(This tale concerns you who seek to lead your mind to the daylight above, for he who is overcome and bends his sight towards the Tartarean cave, loses whatever excellence he bore, when he sees the world below.)
But because Orpheus was a stock type of the poet in much Latin literature, I am sure that this description of a poet's failure to regain his wife is meant to suggest the ultimate inability of verse to grasp and keep whatever truths it might convey. Therefore, though not a definitive dismissal of verse from its employ under Philosophy, this poem does indicate the decreasing importance of verse as the therapy of philosophy advances.
Accordingly, in Books IV and V, verse will appear less frequently; nor is it insignificant that, whereas Book I began and ended in verse, Book V opens and closes with prose. Furthermore, Philosophy explicitly describes verse's diminished role at this stage of philosophic therapy. She prefaces a long lecture on "providentia" with these words
Quodi te musici carminis oblectamenta delectant, hanc oportet paulisper differas voluptatem dum nexas sibi ordine contexo rationes (Bk. IV, pr. 6, 6).
(But if the delights of musical song please you, you must defer this pleasure for a little, while I weave together lines of reasoning connected one with the other in strict order.);
and concludes the same lecture with the following remarks
Sed video te iam dudum et pondere quaestionis oneratum et rationis prolixitate fatigatum aliquam carminis exspectare dulcedinem; accipe igitur haustum quo refectus firmior in ulteriora centendas (Bk. IV, 6, 57).
(But I see that for some time now, burdened by the weight of the question and fatigued by the extent of our reasoning, you look forward to some poetic sweetness; receive therefore a draught, restored by which you might all the more firmly struggle onward.)
Verse is no longer characterized as affective or illuminating, as it had been in Books I-III; it is now merely restorative; it no longer works hand in hand with philosophy towards curing ignorance, it only serves as a rest stop on the arduous way towards truth.
But this is not the last word on verse in the Consolatio. Since the fifth metrum in Book I Boethius the character has not once spoken in verse. Then suddenly, as just about his last words in the text at all, he breaks into verse (Bk. V, m. 3) before Philosophy launches into her disquisition on the four modes of knowledge, on eternity and perpetuity, on "providentia" and "praevidentia", with which the works comes to an end. In Book I Boethius had complained:
Omnia certo fine gubernans
hominum solos respuis actus
merito rector cohibere modo.
Nam cur tantas lubrica versat
Fortuna vices? …
Rapidos, rector, comprime fluctus
et quo caelum regis immensum
firma stabiles foedere terras
(Bk. I, m. 5, 25-29 & 46-48).
(You who govern all things with fixed purpose, it is only human affairs which you refuse to contain as ruler within the deserved measure. For why does slippery fortune turn such changes? Ruler, quiet the rushing waves, and with the same bond by which you control the great heavens, fix and stabilize the earth.)
In Book V he puts the matter as follows:
Quaenam discors foedera rerum
causa resolvit? Quis tanta deus
veris statuit bella duobus
ut quae carptim singula constent
eadem nolint mixta iugari?
An nulla est discordia veris
semperque sibi certa cohaerent,
sed mens caecis obruta membris
nequit oppressi luminis igne
rerum tenues noscere nexus?
(Bk. V, m. 3, 1-10)
(What discordant cause has undone the bonds of things? What god has established such contention between two truths, so that the same propositions, which, when taken one by one, are valid, should refuse to be joined together? Or in fact is there no discord among truths and they always firmly cohere one with the other, but the mind, buried in imperceptive limbs, is unable by the fire of its buried vision to discern the subtle interweaving of things.)
It is important to note that these final words of Boethius the character are couched in the same meter as the last verse he spoke in Book I (Anapestic Dimeter Acatalectic) and that this latter verse section poses essentially the same question as the former—what is the relationship between the realm of unchanging being and the unpredictably various world of humanity—but that it does so in less personal and emotional terms and with greater self-consciousness and epistemological sophistication.
I interpret this development as the last stage of verse's career throughout the Consolatio. In the first book Dame Philosophy removed the "pharmakon" of verse from Boethius' hands much as a mother would take a potentially dangerous object from her infant child. Philosophy then proceeds to make use of that same "pharmakon" as one means among many in the course of Boethius' therapy. Thus, depending on the stage of therapy involved, verse fills more or less important functions. In the end, as token of his successful cure and new maturity, Boethius the character speaks in verse one last time, thus demonstrating his newly acquired ability to manipulate the "pharmakon" of verse correctly and beneficially.
Throughout its career in the Consolatio, verse, as well as the variety of prose styles, is judged according to the criteria of philosophy. As Dame Philosophy puts it at the opening of Book II:
Adsit igitur rhetoricae suadela dulcedinis, quae tum tantum recta calle procedit cum nostra instituta non deserit cumque hac musica laris nostri vernacula nunc leviores nunc graviores modos succinat (Bk. II, pr. 1, 8).
(Therefore let there be present rhetorical sweetness' power of persuasion, which advances along the straight path, only when it does not abandon our precepts and while, as a handmaid in our household, it sings measures now soft, now grave in its music.)
In this regard Boethius may be seen as coming down on the side of philosophy in its ancient feud with poetry, for the value of the latter is strictly determined by the canon of the former. But the situation is considerably more complex than this, for Menippean Satire, at least as Boethius handles it, is more than a simple alternation of verse and prose, it constitutes a veritable encyclopedia of available forms of discourse. Elegiac verse (Bk. I, m. 1), visionary literature (Bk. I, pr. 1, 1-6), allegorical literature (Bk. I, pr. 1, 7-11), didactic verse (Bk. I, m. 2), Cynic-Stoic diatribe (Bk. I, pr. 3), prayer (Bk. I, m. 5), forensic oratory (Bk. I, pr. 4, 2ff.), philosophic dialogue (Bk. I, pr. 6), and expository prose (Bk. I, pr. 5) are just some of the many genres included in this extraordinarily eclectic work. Thus the texture of the composition is one of great variety and one which displays its artificiality openly, almost proudly. That is, Boethius the author is consciously playing the whole gamut of ancient literary genres and he wants his reader to be aware of the fact. But again, to what end?
One answer, which does not really get to the heart of the matter, is that Boethius manipulates various forms of discourse according to a canon of propriety of form to content. Thus Boethius the character bewails his fall from fortune in the tones traditional to Latin elegy; Philosophy's first appearance is described according to the conventions of ancient vision literature and her rout of the Muses recalls the allegorical methods of a Prudentius; when presenting the case for his despondency Boethius the character speaks as if before a jury, employing the form and many topoi traditional to Roman forensic oratory; and so on throughout the work. Moreover this correspondence of medium to message is organized according to the same hierarchical structure which informs the philosophical content and shapes the progress of the diadlogue. Thus the work opens with the character Boethius indulging in the lachrymose strains of elegy and closes with Dame Philosophy's disquisition on "providentia" couched in a lofty, almost oracular, prose reminiscent of certain such passages in Plato. The evolution from one mode of discourse to another follows the same progress from "sensus" to "imaginatio" to "ratio" and finally towards "intellegentia", which we have traced in other contexts. In this regard as well Boethius is clearly subjecting poetry to the demands of philosophy and in so doing he implicitly ranks poetry on a level lower than philosophy.
But the fact that the Consolatio itself as a text is essentially a poem, that is, a crafted fiction which Boethius the author presents to the reader as an obviously wrought object, has further implications. At the very core of the work, in the hexameter hymn to God at the exact middle of the central Book III (metrum 9), Dame Philosophy addresses a prayer to the fashioner of the universe. Throughout this poem God is depicted as crafting the "mundus", which is Latin for "cosmos", that is, the universe as an orderly structured whole:
O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas,
terrarum caelique sator, qui tempus ab aevo
ire iubes stabilisque manens das cuncta moveri,
quem non externae pepulerunt fingere causae
materiae fluitantis epus verum insita summi
forma boni livore carens, tu cuneta superno
ducis ab exemplo, pulchrum pulcherrimus ipse
mundum mente gerens similique in imagine
formans
perfectasque iubens perfectum absoluere partes
(Bk. III, m. 9, 1-9).
(O you who govern the world with constant reason, progenitor of earth and heaven, who order temporality to proceed from eternity, and while remaining stationary endow all things with motion, whom no external causes forced to fashion this work of inconstant matter but the innate idea of the highest good lacking all envy. You bring forth all things from the exemplar on high, yourself most beautiful wielding a beautiful world and shaping it according to a like image, ordering the perfect parts to complete a perfect whole.)
Then in Book V it becomes clear that not only is God's generation of the universe an act of "poiesis", his perspective on his creation is that of an observer viewing a work of art:
Intellegentiae vero celsior oculus exsistit; supergressa namque universitatis ambitum ipsam illam simplicem formam pura mentis acie contuetur (Bk. V, pr. 4, 30).
(But the eye of intellect exists on a higher plane, for transcending the circle of the universe it beholds the simple form with pure mental vision.)
To God's eye the universe does not appear as a history, that is, as a sequence of events, but as a poem, that is, as a wrought object capable of being immediately and completely perceived:
Quod igitur interminabilis vitae plenitudinem totam pariter comprehendit ac possidet, cui neque futuri quicquam absit nec praeteriti fluxerit, id aeternum esse iure perhibetur idque necesse est et sui compos praesens sibi semper assistere et infinitatem mobilis temporis habere praesentem (Bk. V, pr. 6, 8)
(Therefore that which equally grasps and possesses the whole fullness of life without beginning or end, and from which no future thing is absent nor has the past flowed by, that is rightly held to be eternal, and it is necessary that, possessed of itself, it is always present to itself and holds as present the whole infinity of moving time.)
Finally, the Consolatio closes with a vision of God as eternally fashioning and eternally contemplating his creation:
Manet etiam spectator desuper cunctorum praescius deus visionisque eius praesens semper aeternitas cum nostrorum actuum futura qualitate concurrit bonis praemia malis supplicia dispensans (Bk. V, pr. 6, 45).
(There also remains as spectator from above God who foreknows all things and the constantly present eternity of his vision is in accord with the future quality of our actions, dispensing as it does punishments for evils and rewards for good actions.)
Because within the text God is portrayed as a poet and his creation as a poem, the Consolatio as a poem assumes great significance. Although verse throughout the work has been criticized and subjected to the purification of philosophy, the goal of philosophy, which, in the Platonic tradition, is always a means and never an end, is the appreciation of the "supreme fiction" which is the cosmos. Thus just as God fashions the universe and contemplates his work of art, so too does Boethius the author fashion a text, the purpose of which is to guide the reader towards a perspective where he can view the world as God does, that is, as a poem. Therefore the critique and subordination of verse to philosophy within the text must be understood, not as the dismissal of an inferior technique, but as the castigation of the highest and most dangerous human capacity for not living up to its potential, for not constituting the human fiction which might adequately reflect God's supreme fiction. In the end, Menippean Satire allows Boethius to compose a kind of metapoem, that is, a poem freed from the conventional constraints of traditional literary genres, able to subordinate those genres to the demands of philosophy, and capable of reflecting on itself as an analogue to God's poem, the universe.
We have seen how the dialogue form of the work allows Boethius to portray the development of Boethius the character into Boethius the narrator; or, as Sartre might have put it, dialogue allows Boethius to portray the existential conditions of human knowledge. Likewise, Menippean Satire allows Boethius to present himself as a poet as opposed to a dogmatic philosopher. The implication of this strategy is that, unlike A. J. Ayer for instance, Boethius does not believe that philosophy's proper medium is a succession of simple declarative sentences but a highly wrought text, the many voices and tones of which interact so as to produce a pattern mirroring the complexity of the cosmos.
V. CONCLUSION
On the strength of the preceding analyses of the philosophical content, of the dialogue form, and of the format of Menippean Satire we can at last draw some firm conclusions as to how one might best approach the text, in other words, how one should read the Consolatio.
On the one hand it is clear that we cannot treat the text as a straightforward philosophical essay or treatise, the elements of which, such as definitions, propositions, and arguments, are best understood when read most literally and as directly expressive of the author's intention. Thus, for instance, when Boethius the character concludes the opening elegy with the statement
Quid me felicem totiens iactastis, amici?
Qui cecidit, stabili non erat ille gradu
(Bk. I, m. 1, 21-22).
(Why, my friends, did you so often boast of my prosperity? He, who has fallen, proves that he was not in a secure position.)
we are not meant to assume that he speaks for Boethius the author, at least not as these words stand in their immediate context. Likewise, as we have already seen, when in the final metrum of Book I Dame Philosophy advises Boethius to cast out all hopes and fears, this exhortation cannot be simply accepted as Philosophy's last words on the subject, never mind as the opinion of the author, for the same character in the last sentences of the text will eloquently defend the validity of human hope (Bk. V, pr. 5, 44-48).
On the other hand to subject the text to a structuralist analysis or to deconstruction would be inappropriate, at least at this stage of our understanding, for both these methods arrogate to their practitioners a privileged position vis-à-vis the text and downplay or ignore the conscious craftsmanship, and thereby the intention, of the author. In the case of the Consolatio the foregoing pages will have given us good reason to suppose that whatever strategies we may tease out of the text were deliberately inserted by the author as elements in a larger construction. Thus, until we are confident that we understand the intended interaction of elements within the text and the intended implications of the text as a whole, it would be rash and wrongheaded to reduce the Consolatio to a set of structural categories or to a representation seeking to conceal or display its "difference". For example, the attentive reader will notice that the text on several occasions makes reference to the theme: "To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven" (e.g. Bk. I, m. 1, 11; Bk. I, m. 6; Bk. III, m. 1). But to latch on to this motif as one element in an underlying structure or as evidence betraying an anxiety about the existence of an appropriate time would constitute a failure to appreciate both the generic status of the text—this "tempestivus" theme being one of the few elements which Boethius' Consolatio shares with more conventional examples of consolation literature—and the significance of this motif within the larger dialectic of time and eternity, order and chaos. I am not claiming that a structuralist or deconstructionist approach might not uncover some fascinating material; I am saying that the elaborate intricacy of the text should indicate to us that we are up against a master of construction and instill in us a healthy humility with regard to his work.
How, then, should one read the Consolatio? I would respond that it requires both the mind of a philosopher and that of a poet fully to appreciate the dynamics and significance of the work. When confronted with the world the philosopher reacts by giving an account. The English word, "account", its Latin forerunner, "ratio", and the Greek archetype, "logos" all denote a rational explanation and further connote mathematical proportion. Thus the properly philosophic mode of discourse attempts to illumine reality by coming up, as it were, with a formula corresponding to the interaction of the elements of reality. On the other hand, the poet responds to experience by telling a story. This poetic response shares certain features with the philosophic: both attempt to represent reality and the consonance of certain English words, such as "to tell" and "to tally", "to recount" and "to count", suggests that in some ways the poetic story is a kind of philosophic account. But always present and operative in the telling of a story is the mode, "it is as if; in other words, the poet's story, although meant to reflect reality, is always a consciously fabricated fiction.
Thus the "ancient disagreement" between philosophy and poetry is a family feud. The philosopher and poet, like Cain and Abel, like Eteocles and Polyneices, desire the same end, to represent what is, but their respective means, the account and the story, although they display a common concern for the orderly arrangement of parts within a whole, appear to be irreconcilable, for the philosopher's account cannot tolerate fiction and the poet's story ceases to function if read as a formula. As is true of all family feuds, the very likeness of the combatants renders the conflict all the more vehement.
Therefore the Boethian achievement and the response which that achievement demands are bold ones indeed, for they constitute nothing less than the reconciliation of philosophy and poetry. The various "stories" within the text (e.g. Boethius' elegy at Bk. I, m. 1 and his defense at Bk. I, pr. 4; Philosophy's prosopopoeia of Fortuna at Bk. II, pr. 2 and her retelling of ancient legends at Bk. III, m. 12, Bk. IV, m. 3, and Bk. IV, m. 7) are all subject and subordinate to a philosophic account expressed most clearly in the epistemological hierarchy of "sensus", "imaginatio", "ratio", and "intellegentia" (Bk. V, pr. 4, 24-39); on the other hand, that philosophical account is contained within the story of Boethius' encounter with Dame Philosophy: it is placed in a context, it is led up to by dialogue, and it is proferred not in the author's words but in those of a character within the story. The implication seems to be that to respond to reality merely as a philosopher or merely as a poet is insufficient, for being requires both an account and a story, and the tension between these modes must be endured. In the end the depiction of the universe as God's "supreme fiction" suggests a possible harmony between philosophy and poetry. Philosophy's account is required both to purge human fictions and to lead man towards God's perspective; but from this perspective the world constitutes a poem and must be read as such.
But what in practice does it mean to read a text with the dual focus of philosophy and poetry? The clearest response is to give a specific example. Thus it is very likely that the reader of this paper, and very certain that the reader of the Consolatio itself, will have realized by now that the central theme of the work is the question of the order and coherence of the universe. The question is not a new one, even for Boethius; but his means of addressing the question is novel.
The first formulation of the question is the character Boethius' distressed complaint in the middle of the first book:
Omnia certo fine gubernans
hominum solos respuis actus
merito rector cohibere modo
(Bk. I, m. 5, 25-27).
(You who govern all things with fixed purpose, it is only human affairs which you refuse to contain, as ruler, within the deserved measure.)
His claim that order seems to reign over every aspect of the universe except that of human fortune is implicitly countered in the very next verse section, in which Dame Philosophy maintains that a universal order does obtain and that it is man's duty to conform to it:
Signat tempora propriis
aptans officiis deus
nec quas ipse cohercuit
misceri patitur vices.
Sic quod praecipiti via
certum deserit ordinem
laetos non habet exitus
(Bk. I, m. 6, 16-22).
(God stamps the seasons, assigning each to its proper duties; nor does he allow the cycles which he himself has bound to be confused. Therefore whatever in its headlong course abandons this fixed order has no happy outcome.)
Here two opposing conceptions of man's position in the universe are simply juxtaposed. As Boethius the character sees it, mankind is in exile, because God's order does not extend to the realm of human affairs; while from Philosophy's point of view, man has exiled himself by failing to conform to the order inherent in the nature of things. What is important to note is that neither side of the question is guaranteed as the author's own; in fact, the entire Consolatio may be read as a dialogue between these opposing points of view.
Book II represents an attempt on Philosophy's part to convince Boethius the character not only that the gifts of fortune are not by right the possession of any human being but furthermore that the apparent flux of fortune in reality constitutes a kind of order:
Constat aeterna positumque lege est,
ut constet genitum nihil
(Bk. II, m. 3, 17-18).
(It stands firm and fixed by eternal law that nothing born stands firm.)
This law of change, according to which all sublunary creatures are destined to suffer highs and lows in the turn of fortune's wheel, when properly understood, no longer functions as the deceptive seductress, fortune's usual persona in philosophical texts, but as an effective teacher:
Etenim plus hominibus reor adversam quam prosperam prodesse fortunam; illa enim semper specie felicitatis, cum videtur blanda, mentitur, haec semper vera est, cum se instabilem mutatione demonstrat (Bk. II, pr. 8, 3).
(Therefore, I believe that bad fortune is of more use to mankind than good, for the latter, while it seems propitious, deceives by means of the appearance of happiness, whereas the former is always true, for by its change it demonstrates its essential instability.)
This pedagogical power of fortune was foreshadowed and dramatized early in Book II when Dame Philosophy put on the mask of Fortuna herself in order to address Boethius' complaints (Bk. II, pr. 2, 1ff.). What is more, the paradox of change as the order of fortune gives rise at the end of Book II to the vision of "amor" as the principle of order in the universe:
Hanc rerum seriem ligat
terras ac pelagus regens
et caelo imperitans amor
(Bk. II, m. 8, 13-15).
(Love, which rules supreme in heaven, and which controls both land and sea, also binds this series of things.)
Thus we have the first response to Boethius' dilemma: the very fortune which he thought chaotic turns out to function according to a law proper to it, and the universe, seen in the light of fortune's law, is governed by a tensile harmony, best described as "amor". But again, one must remember that this description of universal order is not necessarily the author's opinion; instead it represents a calculated attempt by Dame Philosophy to communicate with Boethius the character on terms which he is capable of understanding.
This point becomes all the more clear when in Book III we see that certain aspects of this first conception of universal order are called into question. The first metrum of Book III reads very much like metrum 6 of Book I, both poems preach a proper order which it is man's duty to imitate; but in the very next verse section, #2, which seeks to describe the nature of this order in greater detail, certain troubling traits begin to emerge. Dame Philosophy opens the poem by stating her intention to sing of the means by which "Natura" governs the universe. There follow three examples illustrative of nature's ability to reassert herself despite the artificial interventions of humanity: the tame lion, who once he tastes blood, recovers his wild nature; the caged bird, who, though well fed by its human captors, breaks into song when it escapes to its natural haunts; and the tree, the top of which has been bent to the ground, snapping back straight up when released. In all three cases man appears as in some way not belonging to the nature of things, for the emphasis is on nature's capacity to maintain its own course despite human interference. In addition, all three examples bear associations of violence or ingratitude which might well instill in the reader a certain unease about the operations of nature. Likewise in the fourth and final example, and again in the concluding lines of the poem, the natural order described holds no place for man. The return of the sun every morning at dawn (11.31-33) is a process independent of man's control; and the concluding generalities about the "eternal return" of nature certainly suggest man's singularity in the larger scheme of things, for he is just that creature who seems unable to join his end to his beginning and thus to enter into the eternal round of nature:
Repetunt proprios quaeque recursus
redituque suo singula gaudent
nec manet ulli traditus ordo
nisi quod fini iunxerit ortum
stabilemque sui fecerit orbem
(Bk. II, m. 2, 34-38).
(All things seek out their proper cycles and everything rejoices in its own return, nor is any order handed down to anything, except that it join its beginning to its end and make a stable circuit of itself.)
Thus the natural order of things celebrated in the second book is here shown to have precious little to do with the realities of the human condition. What is more, the principle of "amor" no longer functions as it did in the final verse section of Book II, where it constituted a law or bond uniting the disparate contraries of the world. In Book II the turning of Fortune's wheel and the cosmic principle of "amor" were seen as counterbalancing man's lawless appetites, his eternal desire for more (Bk. II, m. 2); thus the book can end on a triumphant note of achieved harmony between order and desire:
O felix hominum genus
si vestros animos amor
quo caelum regitur regat
(Bk. II, m. 8, 28-30).
(O happy race of men, if the love by which heaven is ordered orders your minds.)
But in Book III nature's eternal return is suggested to be of little concern to mankind and consequently "amor" loses its status as a principle of order. When in the final metrum of Book III Orpheus attempts to rescue Eurydice from Hades, a human interference with the cycle of nature parallel to those described in the second metrum, he fails because his "amor" cannot bear to be constrained by Hades' "law":
'Donamus comitem viro
emptam carmine coniugem;
sed lex dona coherceat,
ne dum Tartara liquerit
fas sit lumina flectere.'
Quis legem det amantibus?
Maior lex amor est sibi
(Bk. III, m. 12, 42-47).
('We grant as companion to her husband this wife, bought for a song. But let one law hedge in this gift: it is not allowed to look back until he has left the infernal regions.' Who may impose a law on lovers? Love is its own greater law.)
Thus all that has happened in the progress from Book I to Book III is the attainment of a more intense and more sophisticated sense of man's disjunction with the universe. The realm of fortune and "amor" as described in Book II are in Book III shown up as in reality excluding all properly human aspiration. But of course this is not the whole picture; Boethius the author is not a Camus, he does not envision man as in an "absurd" relation with the world. What has been lacking throughout Books II and III is a sense of man's proper place in the universe; but the answer to this lack, which will be treated in detail in Books IV and V, has already been foreshadowed in the central verse section, #9, of Book III. There, in the context of a prayer, all that will become explicit in the disquisitions of the final two books, is succinctly summarized. Man does have a "homeland" but he is in exile from it and his reentry into it requires not only movement within one dimension, but the passage from one dimension to another. Likewise, it is possible to characterize man's place or homeland as the lack of a home, as his pilgrim status in the universe, but only with the proviso that man is on the way towards some very definite goal.
In Book IV the means of progressing towards this goal are mapped out with a certain precision. The significance of the wing imagery in the first verse section is elucidated not only in the arguments of the prose sections but, even more strikingly, in the measures of the verse sections. Thus in the fifth metrum the obstacle to man's return is declared to be, not distance, but ignorance, while in the sixth metrum the object of man's actual ignorance and potential knowledge is described in terms reminiscent of "amor" in Book II, but with certain all-important differences. God is portrayed as harmonizing the cosmos by means of "amor":
Hic est cunctis communis amor
repetuntque boni fine teneri,
quia non aliter durare queant
nisi converso rursus amore
refluant causae quae dedit esse
(Bk. IV, m. 6, 44-48).
(This is the love common to all things, whereby they seek to be contained within the boundary of the good; for not otherwise are they able to endure, unless, with love turned back full circle, they return to the cause which gave them being.)
But the relation between the principle of order and the ordered universe is profoundly different from that drawn in the final metrum of Book II. There the "amor" regulating the cosmos was depicted as immanent in the world itself, whereas here the principle of order is radically transcendent. The world, as before, is depicted as moving in eternally repetitive circles (Bk. IV, m. 6, 6-33), but, in contrast, the agent of order is exempt from this circularity, for he is exempt from all movement:
Sedet interea conditor altus
rerumque regens flectit habenas
rex et dominus, fons et origo,
lex et sapiens arbiter aequi,
et quae motu concitat ire
sistit retrahens ac vaga firmat
(Bk. IV, m. 6, 34-39).
(Meanwhile the lofty creator sits in control turning the reins of things, the king and lord, the fount and source, the law and wise arbiter of justice, and what he has put into motion, by pulling back, he brings to a halt, and he stabilizes what otherwise would wander.)
Thus by the end of the fourth book Boethius the character and Dame Philosophy agree that there is an order to the universe and, what is even more important, an order which makes sense to human beings and makes sense of human activity:
Ite nunc, fortes, ubi celsa magni
ducit exempli via. Cur inertes
terga nudatis? Superata tellus
sidera donat
(Bk. IV, m. 7, 32-35).
(Now go forth, heroes, where the lofty path of the great exemplar leads. Why, inactive, do you keep your backs free of burdens? The earth once overcome bestows the stars.)
What renders this order humanly satisfying, in a way which the order described in Book II was not, is the fact that it is in some way out of nature, just as man is in some way out of nature. But this very quality of transcendence is what makes this order so inaccessible to man, for if man is in one sense out of nature, he is even more obviously bound to nature. The expression of this dilemma and of the solution to it will constitute the content of Book V.
As I have pointed out in more than one context, metra 3 and 4 of Book V strikingly echo metra 5 and 6 of Book I. The metres of the respective poems are the same; in the first of each pair Boethius the character expresses his dilemma; in the second Dame Philosophy, somewhat obliquely, suggests a solution. The real and significant difference lies in the fact that the two poems in Book I represent the mere juxtaposition of two opposing points of view, whereas in verse section 3 and 4 of Book V Boethius first expresses his dilemma in intellectually sophisticated terms, terms which eventually elicit from Dame Philosophy the epistemological poem which is verse section 4 and in which she makes a strong case for the existence of the more active and creative mental faculties. In Book I Boethius says one thing, Dame Philosophy another; there is no attempt to harmonize their respective points of view, because it will require the whole process depicted in Books II, III, and IV before Boethius and Philosophy can, as it were, speak the same language. The various philosophical doctrines and arguments employed are important in and of themselves, but even more important is the process whereby a human interlocutor progresses to the point where he is on the verge of viewing his human condition from a radically different perspective, that, in fact, of eternity.
For the pair of poems in Book V portray Boethius as making the decisive change of procedure from thought to critical thought and Dame Philosophy as completing Boethius' tentative venture into epistemology. Boethius first wonders why the universe is so constructed as to allow the paradox of divine providence and human free will (Bk. V, m. 3, 1-5) but immediately thereafter asks the more self-conscious and sophisticated question, is this apparent paradox merely the result of our limited powers of perception and reasoning? (Bk. V, m. 3, 6-10) The remainder of the poem is taken up with reflections on the peculiar mixture of knowledge and ignorance which is characteristic of the human mind. In the fourth verse section Philosophy continues these investigations into the workings of the human mind and claims that essential to an understanding of human mental activity is an appreciation of the mind's active role in perception, imagination, and reason. Thus in metrum 3 Boethius the character exhibits the mind's capacity for creative thought while in metrum 4 Dame Philosophy draws general conclusions from this one example as prelude to her revelation of the mysteries of eternity.
We see then that in the progress from Book I to Book V the question of the order of the universe is not handled as it might have been in an Aristotelian treatise. Instead of an exclusively rational account of the problem at hand, we are presented with a dialogue between two interlocutors who at first appear as polar opposites but who in the end complete each other's arguments. On the other hand, we are not merely presented with a story, as for instance in Hesiod's Theogony, of the rise of universal order; essential to Boethius' story are the various arguments contained within it and the over-arching epistemological hierarchy which structures it. By the blending of these two modes of discourse Boethius the author contrives not only to dramatize the process of thought, but even more significantly, to dramatize the emergence, on the epistemological level, or order itself. That is, Boethius not only gives an account, in fact several accounts, of order in the universe; he also tells a story about the revelation of order in the process of human thought. He seems to imply that it is inadequate merely to give an account without placing that account in the context of a story, or just to tell a story without subjecting it to the rigor of a philosophical account.
Thus poetry and philosophy, which we along with many in antiquity feel to be mutually exclusive modes of discourse, are here used to complement each other. Every story requires an explanation, an interpretation; and yet merely to explain, to interpret, or to give an account of, is by itself unsatisfying: every explanation must lead to another, better story if it is not to remain sterile. By constructing a text in which various stories are subject to the critical account of philosophy, in which various philosophical accounts are contained within a larger story, in which that larger story is structured according to an epistemological hierarchy, and finally, in which that epistemological hierarchy ushers in the vision of God creating and viewing his creation as a poem, by intertwining all these strategies Boethius manages not only to produce a subtly nuanced and delicately balanced depiction of the human condition, he also demonstrates what is required to make such a depiction possible, namely, the reconciliation of poetry and philosophy.
Early in the same century in which Cassiodorus composed his Institutiones, that model of perfection for the ossification of the Greco-Roman tradition under the aegis of the Christian cult, and in which Benedict produced his Regula in the rough and ready patois that spoken Latin had become in the sixth century as a guide to the practice of "holy ignorance", Boethius contrives a text which avoids the complementary pitfalls of merely academic erudition and religious ignorance, which, in fact, betrays on its author's part a mastery of the ancient tradition and an ability to handle that tradition creatively. Boethius himself was no doubt nominally a Christian: for all intents and purposes there was no other cult available in the Latin West; one could not hold official posts without being a Christian; and it is as certain as these matters can be that Boethius in fact wrote the theological treatises ascribed to him. But the fact that many scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were convinced that Boethius the author of the Consolatio could not have composed Christian theological treatises together with the further fact that medieval commentators were by and large anxious about Boethius' orthodoxy, whether they expressed that anxiety in direct denunciation or by attempting to gloss over certain troubling passages, suggests that Boethius' Christianity, and thus his role in the transition from antiquity to the western European Middle Ages, is an unusual and complicated one.
There are echoes of Christian doctrine and of the Christian scriptures to be found here and there in the Consolatio, but the truly significant fact is that in the final analysis the text, though not anti-Christian, is profoundly non-Christian. Faced with his own mortality Boethius refuses to cut the Gordian knot by throwing himself onto the mercy of a God made man; rather he carefully traces the intricacies of that knot and produces a portrait of man, ignorant and hungry for wisdom, mortal and nostalgic for immortality. Although Christianity has on several occasions appropriated philosophy and poetry as handmaidens to revelation, it is nonetheless deeply suspicious of the artifices of poetry and impatient with the slow hard work of philosophy. Boethius, in contrast, works with and through these two modes of discourse and produces a philosophical poem, which serves as one of the few examples of "doing philosophy" available to the early Latin middle ages, and which provided a store of poetic strategies to be exploited by the likes of Dante and Chaucer. The question of Boethius' personal allegiance to Christianity is probably unanswerable and is certainly in bad taste—it is just not done among gentlefolk to force simplistic statements of belief or unbelief from one another. What we do know, what Boethius allows us to know is that, confronted with death, he chose to practice philosophy and poetry.
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