Pinchard ISNS 2012 Cagliari

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Alexis Pinchard, Professeur agrg de philosophie (CNRS, UMR 7528 / Lyce Militaire dAix-en-Provence, CPGE), The ISNS Tenth International Conference, Cagliari 2012, [email protected]

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Abstract:The Salvific Function of Memory in ArchaicPoetry, in the Orphic Gold Tablets and in Plato: WhatContinuity, What Break?

According to this paper, the Athenian Neoplatonic idea that there was a deep accordance betweenOrpheus, Pythagoras and Plato about the method and the definition of soul salvation (see Syrianus) is notfully erroneous. It just has to be put in a dynamic perspective instead of a static one. Original Orphism mayindeed be defined as the cultural processneither a fixed doctrine nor an organized church that leadsfrom the positive valuation of an external memory concerning epic or theogonic old paterns, working as acondition of the kleos aphthiton for heroes and poets, toward the positive valuation of the internal memorywhich is conceived of as bringing the philosophers soul in touch with eternal realities. Orphism does notdeny the authority of Homeric or Hesiodic tradition, which makes immortal the names of heroes, butOrphism gradually transfers it inside the soul and thus discovers a new level of immortality, whichconcerns the ego and is independent from the surviving part of human society, just like the commonimmortality of soul demonstrated by Plato in the Phaedo does paradoxically not prevent certain souls frombeing more subject to death than other ones (see for example the end of the Timaeus, 90c)! In certainOrphic gold tablets, Mnemosyne is not invocated in order to keep alive an oral tradition throughsuccessive generations but for an individual soul to re-assume its own divine origin. This soteriologicalinterpretation of the role played by memory is confirmed by the cyclical sequence bios thanatos bios foundin the Olbia bones fragments (OF463.1 Bernab). Such a mental power makes the soul able to escape anever-lasting re-birth and re-death cycle, just like the anamnsis in Plato does, although the divine part ofsoul is identified only with rationality in Plato, and no longer with any vitalizing spirit correlated with body.The life of the soul, according to Plato, is overall an adequate relationship to itself, which is calledintellection (nous; cf. Sophist, 249a;Leges X, 896a). But Orphism has already overcome the idea that thesole material ritual could work as a sufficient means for salvation. Moreover, there is no historical familytradition in Orphism unlike in the Homeric tradition. There are no Orphidai like theHomridai of Chios.Lineage in the Orphic tradition is only ritual and is only a matter of initiation. One selfs connection withOrpheus depends on will and on undertaking of a re-birth ritual, not on blood. The whole humanity ispotentially in connection with Orpheus just like the Orphic Zeus contains everything and is contained by

everything. For example, Pythagoras was re-enacting Orpheus although he was not Orpheuss natural son(see Gregory NagysHomer the Preclassic, E116). In the same way, Plato asserts that every human beinghas seen the Ideas and can remember them by practicing dialectics. Finally, in Orphism, the self-identification of the rhapsode with the mythical proto-poet occurs during the whole life, and not only duringthe oral performance. This is why there is a real Orphic way of life (vegetarian food, non-violence,saying truth; see Plato,Leges, 782 c-d), and not only an Orphic way of singing. Moreover, since the Orphicpoems were written quite early and thus became protected against oral variations, the initiate could notidentify himself with Orpheus as a creative poet. The very process of improvisation during an oralperformance was forbidden to him. Therefore the ritual and ethic behavior, or the rationalizinginterpretation of Orphic poems just like in the Derveni Papyrus, became the only way of re-enactingOrpheus. On one hand Orpheuss powerful living voice was admitted as definitely remoted in the past, buton the other hand the inner and spiritual life became the most important factor of continuity in the Orphictradition.

So Orphism might be the analogy-generating tradition in which Plato found the first connectionbetween different kinds of memory and different levels of immortality (see especially Diotimas speechduring the Symposium, 208c-d, 212a). Such a connection was the condition for dialectics, so that it couldnot be the result a dialectics. Of course, following Plato himself, modern scholars have accepted thishierarchy as a distinctive feature through which one could isolate Plato from other salvation traditions inGreek culture, as if to conceive of the genuine immortality as an instantaneous return to our metaphysicalorigin were the special innovation of philosophy. But, as we said, Plato might have just continued theprocess inaugurated by Orphism, and this process might also be not later than the Homeric poetry. Indeed,on the basis of much data excerpted from comparative poetics dealing with Indian and Iranian sacredpoetry, we may assume that such a growing complexity of immortality and memory was a permanent trendin some ancient cultures, synchronically organized rather than diachronically, just like the Neoplaonicthinkers believed.


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bringing it in touch with the eternal realities which the soul is based on. Orphism does not

deny the authority of Homeric or Hesiodic traditions, which make immortal the names of

heroes, but Orphism gradually transfers the narrative content of these traditions inside thesoul of every initiated human being and thus discovers a new level of immortality. 4 This

new level concerns the ego as an individual consciousness and is independent from the

surviving part of human society, which only keeps a mental trace of the dead. This higherlevel does not destroy the lower one, just as the common immortality of soul

demonstrated by Plato in the Phaedo does paradoxically not prevent certain souls frombeing more subject to death than other ones. Orphism did not find out new means of

salvation in Greece, but it found out salvation itself inasmuch as the concept of salvationimplies that the consciousness can experience for ever a state of inner perfection. Of

course, the internalization process defining Orphism is also evidenced in ritual. The way

is as well interiorised as the goal: to understand the meaning and the mechanism ofinitiatory rituals is at least as important in order to obtain the highest immortality as to

accomplish them externally. Through Orphism to think became the most efficient ritual,

as it actually is in Platonic philosophy.5

So Orphism might be the primeval analogy-generating tradition in which Plato

found the idea of a connection between different kinds of memory and different levels of

immortality (see especially Diotimas speech during the Symposium, 208c-d, 212a). Sucha connection was the condition for dialectics, so that it could not be the result of

dialectics.

Text of some gold tabletsThe famous gold tablets, frequently called Orphic gold tablets although

Orpheuss name does not occur in them, can confirm my hypothesis.

Let us give in a synoptic way the text of what Pugliese Carratelli called thePythagorean tablets (we use his classification and numbering system), and thereaftertheir Orphic nature will be briefly discussed:

1: 1. 0 . (cf. I A 2. 12 et I A 4. 0)2: 4. 2 [ ************************** ] 3: 2. 1 , (cf. I A 1 & 3. 1)4: 2. 2 (cf. I A 1 & 3. 2 ; I A 41. 5)5: 1. 3 . (cf. I A 41. 6)6: 2. 3 . (cf. I A 1. 4 et I A 41. 7)7: 2. 4 , (cf. I A 1. 5 et I A 3. 4)8: 2. 5 . (cf. I A 1. 6 et I A 3. 5)

9: 1. 7 (cf. I A 3. 6 et I A 41. 10)10: 1. 8 . (cf. I A 41. 11)11: 1. 3 12: 3. 7 .13: 3. 8 , (cf. I A 1. 9 / 2. 6 / 3. 8 / 41. 12 ; I B 1. 3)14: 3. 9 15: 2. 7 (cf. I A 42. 1)16: 2. 8 (cf. I A 1. 8 et I A 3. 9 et A 41. 13 et I B 1. 1)

4 For the complex complementarity between Orphic and Homeric poetry, see Herrero 2008: 247-248and 273-275, while analyzing Aristophaness Ranae, 1030-1036. According to Herreo, the differencebetween both traditions does not nccessarily concern the subject of poems, but the state of mind of the of

the author and of the audience (2008: 275). Indeed we are now trying to define this specific state of mind.5 Feyerabend ( 1984: 17) already noticed that the justification of ritual by logos in Bacchic mysteries(hieros logos) prepares the justification of ontology in Parmenides.


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17: 2. 9 . (cf. I A 1. 11 et I A 41. 14)18: 1. 12 , (cf. I A 42. 2)19: 2. 10 , (cf. I A 1. 13)20: 2. 11 [ ] .21: 1. 14 22: 1. 15 .

This is the work of memory, when you are about to die.[] remembering heroYou will find to the left (right) of the house of Hades a spring and standing by it a white cypress.

Descending to it, the souls of the dead refresh themselves. Do not even go near to this spring !You will find another one, from the Lake of Memory, cold water pouring forth ; there are guards

before it. They will ask you, with astute wisdom, what you are seeking in the darkness of murky Hades.Who are you? Where are you from?You, tell them the entire truth. Say: I am a child of Earth and starry Sky.My name is Starry:my race is heavenly; you yourself know this. I am parched with thirst and I am dying. But quickly

grant me cold water from the Lake of Memory to drink! And they will announce you to the ChthonianKing, and they will grant you to drink from the divine spring. And thereafter you will rule with other

heroes.You, too, having drunk, will go along the sacred road with other glorious initiates and possessed byDionysos travel (transl. Graf modified).

Of course there are other gold tablets. I have selected these on the basis of theirconnection with Mnemosyne because this connection at the same time seems to be a

rejoinder against their belonging to Orphism and really is the proof thereof.

Orphism and PythagoreanismI agree with Pugliese Carratelli when he attributes Mnemosynes gold tablets to the

Pythagorean milieu because to train memory was the favorite mental exercise amongPythagorass disciples.6 This view is also evidenced by the stress laid upon heavenlyimmortality in Mnemosynes gold tablets, for example in the initiatiory naming , whereas heavenly immortality is alluded in a famous Pythagorean akousma,where the sun and the moon, according to a metaphoric use of Hesiods l anguage, arecalled the Islesof the Blessed (Iamblichus,De vita pythagorica, XVIII, 82; cf. Hesiod,Opera et dies, 171).

But this Pythagorean origin should not prevent us from rooting Mnemosynes goldtablets in Orphism. On the contrary, Pythagoreanism may be viewed as the most genuine

Orphic tradition, where the initiatiory filiation could be really or mythically traced back

on a very long period, until Orpheus himself. In Pythaorism the name of the lore masterwas always known. Peter Kingsleyfor the most points, especially concerning his anti-

Platonic bias and his shamanistic interpretation of Greek philosophy, I am absolutely nota Kingsleyan has rightly insisted on the initiatory adoptive relationship in thePythagorean and Parmenidian traditions.7 Such an importance of the wisdom lineageexplains why Pythagoreanism was a kind of elite Orphism, as it has been suggested by

Walter Burkert (1966: 109). Beside this elite Orphism, there was also a popular Orphims

based on books and promoted by Orpheotelests, which Plato likely critized in theRepublic (364e-365a). If Pythagoras or his first disciple really composed several poemswhich they themselves attributed to Orpheus, as it is said by several old testimonies,8 it

6

See Pugliese Carratelli 2003: 17-20.7 See Kingsley 2001: Part III.8 See Ion of Chios, 36 B 2 DK, and 36 B 15 DK.


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did not deal with a fake, but it was a way to re-enact during an oral performance the very

source of the sacred tradition. Nagy has also rightly pointed out this fact.9

Memory in gold tabletsIn our gold tablets Memory, either as a mental faculty or as personified under the

name of goddess Mnemosyne, appears in at least two ways. First, the deceased has toremember the correct password he learned by heart during his initiation in the terrestrial

life, in order to be granted the access to Mnemosynes pool. The deceased must say thewhole a-ltheia to the guardians, without forgetting anything. Therefore the written goldtablet works as hypomnma, a means of remembrance (cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 276d 3), butthe dead has to keep in mind what was taught to him during his terrestrial life:

(OF 478.2 = IIB2 Pugliese Carratelli). The passwordindicates where the initiate comes from and his secret divine filiation. So the passwordconveys information about his own mythical past.

But by drinking Mnemosynes water, the soul of the deceased will obtain anotherremembrance. Quite paradoxically, the deceased has firstly to remember in order to beable to remember further. This circularity echoes the famous incipit of Orpheusstheogony in the Derveni Papyrus:

I shall sing for the ones who are informed. Put doors to your ears, o profanes! (OF1a)

In which extent does the initiates need Orpheuss song if they already know themysteries of the successive divine generations?

Similarly Parmenides is already a knowing man before being taught by thedivinity who stands beyond the gates of Night and Day:

, ' ,, ' , ' The mares that carry me kept conveyiong me as far as ever my spirit reached, once they had taken

and set me on the goddess way of much discourse, which carries through every stage to meet her face toface a man who knows (Parmenides fr. 1.1-3, transl. Coxon modified)

9 See Nagy (2012: E116-117): Just as Hesiod is mediated by Kynaithos in a performance of aHymn to Apollo that re-enacts Hesiod as well as Homer, so also Orpheus is mediated by Pythagoras inperformances that re-enact Orpheus. It is not that Pythagoras simply attributed the verses of Orpheus tohimself. Rather, as I argued in Chapter 3, he took on the persona of Orpheus when he performed versesattributed to Orpheus. As I also argued in Chapter 3, the attribution to Orpheus and the self-identification ofPythagoras with Orpheus would have been simultaneous at the moment of performance. Similarly,Kynaithos identifies with Hesiod when he performs verses sacred to the Pythian Apollo, just as he identifieswith Homer when he performs verses sacred to the Delian Apollo [].The mentioning of the trousers wornby Pythagoras indicates that he cultivated Thracian wear, since Thracians wore trousers.9 By implication,Pythagoras was Thracian in the same way that Orpheus was Thracian, in that Orpheus was conventionallyrepresented as associating with Thracians.9 In short, the wearing of Thracian trousers by Pythagoras

conjures up the Thracian associations of Orpheus as a poet who became alien to Hellenism in the process ofbecoming marginalized at the Panathenaia.


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Here, in the gold tablets, the object of the new remembrance is not explicitly

described. There is a kind of religious taboo. I suppose it does not mainly deal with the

remembrance of the previous lives within the doctrine of transmigration, even if thisknowledge is not excluded. Indeed this doctrine was well-known in Pythagoreanism and

had nothing secret. More likely is the hypothesis that the deceased, through Mnemosynes

water, can remember his divine origin, which is beyond every incarnation and which stillremains active in him. He can rejoin the central part of himself, his true identity. He

remembers neither an objective fact nor a special speech, but an aspect of his own being

with which he has to coincide. Whereas by remembering the password the initiate

abstractally knows his heavenly filiation, he immediately experienced this inner divinityby drinking the cold water from Mnemosynes spring. He does not anymore represent hisdaimonic origin, but he really identifies with it, so that he becomes immortal. This change

in the way he is conscious of his own origin is the salvation itself.Some other Orphic fragments might sustain this interpretation, if one keep in mind

that Orphism inverted the values of life and death that hold in Homeric epic. According

to Platos Cratylus (400c) certain people who explicitly claim to follow the authority ofOrpheus, called the body a jail for pseudo-etymological reasons:

{.} , . , , . , , , , , , , [] , ' .

[Socr. :] I think this () admits of many explanations, if a little, even very little, change is made;for some say it is the tomb () of the soul, [400c] their notion being that the soul is buried in the presentlife; and again, because by its means the soul gives any signs which it gives, it is for this reason also

properly called sign (). But I think it most likely that Orpheuss disciples gave this name, with theidea that the soul is undergoing punishment for something; they think it has the body as an enclosure tokeep it safe, like a prison, and this is, as the name itself denotes, the safe () for the soul, until thepenalty is paid, and not even a letter needs to be changed (Plato, Cratylus, 400c-d, OF430).

Of course, in the Cratylus, those who acknowledge Orpheuss authority do notconnect sma and sma, but it is not excluded. The corporeal jail can threaten the soulwith death. In his Protrepticus (fr. 60 Rose, OF 430), Aristoteles transmits a doctrinefrom the mystery cults, of which Orpheus elsewhere (Aristophanes , Frogs, 1032 andEuripides ,Rhesus, 943-947 = OF510 and 511) was said to be the founder. This doctrinecan be summed up as follows: the souls of seemingly living men have to be punished for

previous sins and are bound with their body just like prisoners were closely bound withhuman corpses by cruel Etruscan pirates in order to be killed. So the metaphor of the

body jail stands quite close to the one of the body conveived as a source of death.10 Inboth case it deals with a pessimistic view of what we commonly call human life andwith a positive valuation of afterlife.

In the Gorgias (493a), this inversion is developed by a wise man with thestatement that we currently are dead:

' , ' , ,

10 For a complete study of this metaphor, see Bernab 1995.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sw%3Dma&la=greek&can=sw%3Dma0&prior=yuxh/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sw%3Dma&la=greek&can=sw%3Dma0&prior=yuxh/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sw%3Dma&la=greek&can=sw%3Dma0&prior=yuxh/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sh%3Dma&la=greek&can=sh%3Dma0&prior=sw=mahttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sh%3Dma&la=greek&can=sh%3Dma0&prior=sw=mahttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sh%3Dma&la=greek&can=sh%3Dma0&prior=sw=mahttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sh%3Dma&la=greek&can=sh%3Dma0http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sh%3Dma&la=greek&can=sh%3Dma0http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sw%3Dma&la=greek&can=sw%3Dma0&prior=sh=mahttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sw%3Dma&la=greek&can=sw%3Dma0&prior=sh=mahttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sw%3Dma&la=greek&can=sw%3Dma0&prior=sh=mahttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sw%3Dma&la=greek&can=sw%3Dma0&prior=sh=mahttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sh%3Dma&la=greek&can=sh%3Dma0http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sh%3Dma&la=greek&can=sh%3Dma0&prior=sw=mahttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sw%3Dma&la=greek&can=sw%3Dma0&prior=yuxh/


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, , , , , , ' , , , . ,

, , , . , , , ' . ' , , , , . , ' ,

For I tell you I should not wonder if Euripides words were true, when he say s: Who knows if tolive is to be dead, and to be dead, to live? and now we really, it may be, are dead; in fact I once heardsomeone among the sages say that we are now dead, and the body is our tomb,1and the part of the soul inwhich we have desires is liable to be over-persuaded and to vacillate to and fro, and so some smart fellow, a

Sicilian, I daresay, or Italian,

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made a fable in whichby a play of words3

he named this part, as being soimpressionable and persuadable, a jar, and the thoughtless he called uninitiate:4[493b] in these uninitiatethat part of the soul where the desires are, the licentious and fissured part, he named a leaky jar in hisallegory, because it is so insatiate. So you see this person, Callicles, takes the opposite view to yours,showing how of all who are in Hadesmeaning of course the invisiblethese uninitiate will be mostwretched, and will carry water into their leaky jar with a sieve which is no less leaky. And then by thesieve, [493c] as my story-teller said, he means the soul: and the soul of the thoughtless he likened to asieve, as being perforated, since it is unable to hold anything by reason of its unbelief and forgetfulness. Allthis, indeed, is bordering pretty well on the absurd; but still it sets forth what I wish to impress upon you, ifI somehow can, in order to induce you to make a change, and instead of a life of insatiate licentiousness tochoose an orderly one that is set up and contented with what it happens to have got. [493d] Now, am I at allprevailing upon you to change over to the view that the orderly people are happier than the licentious orwill no amount of similar fables that I might tell you have any effect in changing your mind? (Plato,

Gorgias, 493a-d, transl. modified)

So, according to Socrates and his wise sources( , ),the man who intemperately lives, endures in this world the same torture as certain heroesin the classical hell. Therefore he really is dead, whereas Callicles assumed that corpses

would be similar rather to the man who is satifisfied with what he has and who is not

inhabited by desire. Socrates here mixes several sources, maybe Empedocles andPythagoras, but they all are clearly associated with the Orphic sma-sma doctrine.

Now we can understand the explicitly Orphic bones fragments from Olbia:

, , [] (OF463, the bones tablets of Olbia (Vth century BC))

The circular sequence , , does not concern transmigration butconcerns the coming back to the metaphysical origin of the soul, the salvation. Dionysos

is the paradigm of the whole circular process. Altheia, the perfect absence of anyoblivion, cannot be associated with the terrestrial life as it is proven by the other tablets

which connect sma withpseudos:

[] (OF464)
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note1http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note1http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note1http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note2http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note2http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note2http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note3http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note3http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note4http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note4http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note4http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note4http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note3http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note2http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D493#note1


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[][] (OF465)

--

---- / (OF535, 300 BCE)

I also deny that the dying hero of the Mnemosyne tablets might thanks to the sacredspring merely remember the events of the life he has just left. 11 Such a hypothesis does

not match Mnemosynes function in poetry: Mnemosyne provides a visionary inspirationto the poet, so that he attends the very beginning of the world, the first moments of the

theogony for example. Of course, in Homer, most of the dead are deprived of memoryand have forgotten their terrestrial life, so that Hades can be called the plain of Lth( , Aristophanes, Ranae, 186). In this case, to keep the actual

remembrance of their past life appears as a great privilege, as it was for Teiresias. But,according to Orphic tradition, the epic values are inverted: the Homeric hell is equated

with the the terrestrial life. Therefore, the real oblivion occurs in the terrestrial life and

Mnemosyne grants the remembrance of what is forgotten in the terrestrial life, not of theterrestrial life itself.

To be banished from divinity in Hesiod and Empedocles

Finally, I suppose that Mnemosynes water reminds the primeval condition of soulbefore every incarnation because Empedocles, who composes his poem under the

guidance of a , a Muse of rich memory (fr. 3.8 DK), was aware ofsuch a metaphysical cycle:

, ,, ,


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Shall wander thrice ten thousand weary yearsFar from the Blessed, and be born through timeIn various shapes of mortal kind, which changeEver and ever troublous paths of life:For now Air hunts them onward to the Sea;Now the wild Sea disgorges them on Land;

Now Earth will spue toward beams of radiant Sun;Whence he will toss them back to whirling AirEach gets from other what they all abhor.And in that brood I too am numbered now,A fugitive from divinity and vagabond,As one trusting in raving Strife (Empedocles, fr. 115 DK).

It has already been noticed that other Empocless fragments connected this demonicstory are consonant with certain gold tablets. For example, the primeval state of the soulis qualified by Empedocles as a great and , summit of happiness (fr.119 DK), whereas the initiate of IIB1 (Pugliese Carratelli) claims to be of ,

of a happy race (line 3), and he himself will be (line 10) after his death thanksto the initiatory ritual. Apost-mortem, being the privilege the who have beeninitiated is also mentioned in the clearly Dionysiac tablet IIB3 (line 6). Moreover

Empedocles claims to be an immortal god and no longer a mortal ( , , fr. 112.3) thanks to his knowledge concerning the cosmos and the fate ofindividual souls. In the same way the initiate of II.B1 is told that he will be a god insteadof a mortal ( , line 10). Of course, there is a great differencebetween Empocles and the group and this group of gold tablets inasmuch as Empocleshas right now his divine status whereas the initiate has to wait for his afterlife. But this

difference makes the link with the Mnemosyne tablets. Empedocles is an immortal god

already in his terrestrial life because he has realized that a daimon inhabits his owninteriority and such daimon, at the very beginning, was one of the gods, as it is expressed

in the fr. 115. In the Mnemosyne tablets the initiate is just called hero and not god(), but title might be applied with regard to the fact that he knows only the secretdoctrines taught during the ritual initiation in his present life, whereas he will be a

complete god when he will have drunk Mnemosynes water. At the beginning of thesalvation process, the initiate still has a trace of his earthly maternal genos since heintroduces himself as the child of Earth and starry Sky ( ), but he claims to be accepted by the underworld king only on the base ofhis heavenly filiation, his genos ouranion. Here the earth might symbolize the mortalelement of the intermediate heroic status, since each hero is born from a god or goddess

and from a mortal. We are not told by the Hipponion gold tablet about such an ultimatetransformation, but we neither are told about the end of the sacred road. Thus Memoryis the ultimate reason of Empedocles immortality, although he was told about such ametaphysical past by no human teacher. The sole tradition which he might have learned

by heart about some cyclical story of daimons is Hesiods theogony, which also seems tobe alluded in the gold tablets through the formula (see Theogony, 106):12

,

12 Betz 2011: 107.


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' , , ' . , ' ,

' ' ' ' ' . ' , ' .But when strife and quarrel arise among the deathless gods, and when any one of them who live in

the house ofOlympus lies, then Zeus sends Iris to bring in a golden jug the great oath of the gods [785]from far away, the famous cold water which trickles down from a high and beetling rock. Far under thewide-pathed earth a branch of Oceanus flows through the dark night out of the holy stream, and a tenth partof his water is allotted to her. [790] With nine silver-swirling streams he winds about the earth and the sea'swide back, and then falls into the main2; but the tenth flows out from a rock, a sore trouble to the gods. Forwhoever of the deathless gods that hold the peaks of snowy Olympus pours a libation of her water and is

forsworn, [795] must lie breathless until a full year is completed, and never come near to taste ambrosia andnectar, but lie spiritless and voiceless on a strewn bed: and a heavy trance overshadows him. But when hehas spent a long year in his sickness, [800] another penance more hard follows after the first. For nine yearshe is cut off from the eternal gods and never joins their councils or their feasts, nine full years. But in thetenth year he comes again to join the assemblies of the deathless gods who live in the house ofOlympus.[805] Such an oath, then, did the gods appoint the eternal and primeval water of Styx to be: and it spoutsthrough a rugged place (Hesiod, Theogony, 783-806).

Empedocles has clearly transposed this mythical account into his own spiritual fate.We find here again the double aspect of the salvific memory: lore passed on by

generation in generation and personal reminiscence of a metaphysical past. The personal

reminiscence presents the individual inner life as the secret re-enacting of a myth which

was learned by heart through oral tradition. But the transposition achieved byEmpedocles is twofold: the myth, which is peculiar by itself, concerning some divine

character, becomes as well universal as singular. The two divine entities, Love and Strife,

help to understand the cyclical evolution of the whole reality, from unity to multiplicityand back, as well as the fate of a single daimon. The path of the individual soul betweensin and salvation echoes the global rhythm of the world, although the fate of the soul is

due to its free will and thus allows redemption through a certain personal activity,especially an intellectual activity.13

One might ask what the connection with Orphism is since neither Empedocles nor

Hesiod mention Orpheus. But it is worth noticing that Hesiods account about the

perjuring god was also attributed to Orpheus by ancient commentaries.14

Such a pasagewas probably felt as especially fit for the transposition process which defines Orphism.

And we have other examples of such a transposition directly in the gold tablets.

The epic and lyric paradigmIn archaic Greek poetry, memory plays at least a double part. On the one hand, the

aoidos has to learn by heart the traditional metric formulae in order to be able toimprovise by variously combining these formulae. He cannot and may not find out these

formulae which are taught by his master. On the other hand, he has to experience

personally the vision of the mythical origin of the world or of the heroic past, although it

13 See Balaud 2010: 96-98.14 See West 1966: 374, ad Theogony, 793. Cf. Servius,Aen. 6.565. Cf. OF344-345.
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is not his own past. The poet, through his special power, embodies the invisible origin in

the visible world, but this gift has no connection with its individuality. Mnemosyne, as

mother of the Muses, guarantees both the concret training of human mind as well as themystic transportation in the realm of primeval realities.15 But both aspects are

complementary. The poet has to improvise and create variation in the traditional canon

during his oral performance in order to testify his inner contact with the sacredherebeyond. Through the poetic improvisation the transcendental reality is made present

to human eyes and ears. Thus, novelty is not the sign of any treason against origin. On the

contrary, this is the variation in oral poetry which ensures that the tradition is still based

on the same extraordinary experience. The poetic tradition can remain fundamentally oneand the same just because it changes on the level of external performance. A tradition is

precisely such a reinforcment of spiritual identity thanks to differences throughout the

course of time. When performative variations ceases, tradition is broken.In the same way, the Orphic initiate of the gold tablets has to learn the password by

heart as well as to experience a personal contact with divinity thanks to Mnemosynes

water. So both aspects of theogonic memory have been kept in Orphism. But it does notdeal anymore with the origin of the whole cosmos: only the single ego is concerned andthis origin coincides with the end. The mystic vision has from now on the form of a return

to oneself. It follows that everybody is potentially concerned with such vision. The voiceof a poet is no longer needed in order to be in touch with the invisible realm because the

invisible realm stands in every human soul. It is not the privilege of a particular genos butof the whole human genos. This is consistent with the lack ofhistorical family tradition inOrphism unlike in the Homeric tradition. There are no Orphidai like the Homridai ofChios. Lineage in the Orphic tradition is only ritual and is only a matter of initiation.

Oneselfs connection with Orpheus depends on will and on undertaking of a re-birthritual, not on blood. The whole humanity is potentially in connection with Orpheus justlike the Orphic Zeus contains everything and is contained by everything. For example,Pythagoras was re-enacting Orpheus although he was not Orpheuss natural son.16 In thesame way, Plato asserts that every human being has seen the Ideas and can rememberthem by practicing dialectics. Finally, in Orphism, the self-identification of the rhapsode

with the mythical proto-poet occurs during ones whole life, and not only during the oralperformance. This is why there is a real Orphic way of life (vegetarian food, non -violence, saying truth; see Plato,Leges, 782 c-d), and not only an Orphic way of singing.

Moreover a kind of connection between memory and immortality is also to be found

in epic and in the old lyric poetry, but not in the same way as in the gold tablets.

As Herrero has rightly noticed,17 the heroic soul of the Orphic initiate has borrowed

its main features from the epic terrestrial hero, but they are transposed in the realm ofafterlife. The epic tale was changed in into a soteriological program, so that thepersonal immortality obtained in the hereafter by remembering the past lives and further the divine origin reflects the unfailing kleos granted by the professionalmemory of the epic rhapsodes. This is proven by the syntaxical and lexical similarities

between, on the one hand, the claim of the epic hero for belonging to a superior genos,just before a deciding fight which will bring glory or shame to his whole lineage, and, onthe other hand, in the gold tablets, the claim of the deceaseds soul for its genos ouranion,i.e., its essential nature transcending every temporal incarnation. Following an

15

See Vernant 1966 (1959): 111-112.16 See Gregory Nagy 2012: E116.17 See Herrero 2011: 288-289.


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example, since he is at the same time a poet and an epic character, may be considered as

the first . Of course, Odysseus was already a sincehe wanted to , to be mindful ofhis return at home (Odyssey III,142), and carefully avoided what could let him forget his desire to return home, for

example the food of the Lotus-Eaters (cf. , Odyssey IX, 97).23 But

divinity and immortality proposed to the clever hero by Calypso were the main reasonswhy an oblivion of return was possible. For Odysseus, to remember and to remain a

mortal were the same thing. On the contrary, the home which the Orphic initiate has to

remember is divinity and immortality. His real fatherland is among the gods. On the other

hand, like the winner of an agn, the initiate of the gold tablets is brought in contact withhis heroic origin thanks to Mnemosyne. And inasmuch as he has a divine part in himeself,

he is remembered like the glorious ancestors of the present athlete are. But he will be

glorious because he will be immortal whereas the epic hero was immortal because he wasglorious. Therefore, the immortality and the consequent glory of the Orphic initiate do

not prevent other souls from being glorious and immortal because the victory that he has

won is a victory against himself, against his passions, like the human souls in the mythosof Platos Phaedrus (cf. Phaedrus, 247b 5-6: ), and not a victory against other souls. Thus we can view Orphism as amovement of universalisation of divine fate and not only a process of internalization intocertain souls.

Pindar opposes the road traveled by the poet from present time towards the heroic

origins, to the road traveled by the glorious members of a virtuous genos towards theirfuture. Firstly the road of the poet is traveled after the victory of the present athlete:

, - ,

, ' , -

, - ' -

Phintis, come now and yoke the strength of mules for me, quickly, so that we can drive the

chariot along a clear path, and I can at last arrive at the race of these men. [25] For those mules

above all others know how to lead the way along this path, since they have won garlands at Olympia.And so it is right to open for them the gates of song; and I must go today, in good time, to Pitana,

beside the ford of Eurotas (Pindar, Olymp. VI, 21-28).

Such a road is direcly connected with Mnemosyne:

][] ' ' [][] ' -

.][ ] ,] ' ..[..]. . (Pindar, fr. 52h, 15-20, Pean)

in which mnemosyne grants kleos (2011: 289). But the dead remains object of memory too; in the goldtablets he is both object and subject of memory.23 See Frame 1978: 35.
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I invoke Mnemosyne, the weel-dressed daughter of Sky, and her maidens in order that theygive me inspiration, for the minds of men are blind when they want, without the Heliconian girls, toexplore the deep road of wisdom (Pindar, fr. 52h, 15-20, Pean)

Through the traveling of this anagogic road by the poet, the real individuals of this

genos can travel the road of their life as a glorious road, even after having died: ' -

' ' Since then the race of the sons of Iamus has been very famous throughout Greece. Prosperity

attended them; and by honoring excellence, they walk along a bright path. (Pindar, Olymp. VI, 71-73).

But, in the gold tablets, it is one and the same road since the hero himself isremembering, although several words and ideas are shared:24

1. 14 1. 15 .

In spite of being almost anonymous among the mortals who still live on earth, the

initiate will be glorious in the hereafter because he will takes part in the glory ofDionysos himself. His name will be the secret name of the god and thus will be repeated

in every earthy and heavenly prayer. Such a triumphal road may be compared with the

road which is supposed by the fact that, in the Nekyia of the Odyssey, swiftfootedAchilless souljoyfully walk with great [strides], i.e., runs (XI, 539) across theinfernal field of asphodel after having heard Odysseuss words about his glorious son. Onthe historical level, the comparison may be drawn also with the road which the victorious

athletes used to travel in the Olympic games: both roads lead from death to a kind ofimmortality. The isles of the Blessed are their final destination, may it be mysteriously

kept in silence or ritually symbolized.25 But the Orphic road is at the same time the road

of poetic song. So the gold tablets consciously play with epic and lyric inter-textuality.

From solace to salvationThe words by which salvation is described in the gold leaves are also kindred with

Hesiods. Memory and oblivion still play the greatest part.26 In Hesiod, Mnemosyneparadoxically lets human sorrows be forgotten:

, , .Them in Pieria begot Mnemosyne, who reigns over the hills of Eleuther, bear of union with the

father, the son of Cronos, [55] a forgetting of ills and a rest from sorrow (Hesiod, Theogony, 53-55).

, ,'

24

See Feyerabend 1984.25 See Quinlan 2009: 116.26 See Simondon 1982: 128-129.
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.For although a man has sorrow and grief in his newly-troubled soul and lives in dread because his

heart is distressed, yet, when a singer, [100] the servant of the Muses, chants the glorious deeds of men ofold and the blessed gods who inhabit Olympus, at once he forgets his heaviness and remembers not hissorrows at all; but the gifts of the goddesses soon turn him away from these (Hesiod, Theogony, 98-103).

But, in Hesiod, the sorrow forgotten thanks to Mnemosyne is associated with thefear from ones own death and from the death of beloved people. Similarly a young victorin some athletic games, inasmuch as his deeds are praised by Pindar, can forget Hads:

.Hades is forgotten by a man with good accomplishments (Pindar, Ol. VIII, 72)

Even his dead ancestors receive some happiness when they hear his praise by theinspired poet. Of course, the oblivion of Hads is the oblivion of oblivion27 since Hads is

ordinarily identified with the plain of Lth ( , Aristophanes, Ranae,

186).On the contrary, in Orphism, the Lth river stands on the path to the terrestrial life

(see Plato,Respublica X, 621a) and the only opportuny to access the genuine memory isto be found in Hads. Moreover this life in itself is a source of pain whereas bliss canhappen only while escaping the series of reincarnation:

I flew forth from the painful cycle of deep sorrow (Thurium, OF 488.6 Bernab, IIB1 Pugliese

Carratelli, transl. by Bernab-Jimnez San Cristbal 2008).

In the Orphic gold tablets, the pain from which Mnemosyne makes the soul free is

not due to a particular event which would have happened during the present life, but itdeals with the native condition of human beings. Success or defeat in society have no

influence on this pain. Since this pain is punishment for a surnatural guilt, which is not

visible in the world and which can not be remembered by normal people, human actionscan not delete it unless with the help of the gods in initiation ritual. This is why we may

speak of salvation about Orphism rather than solace.

Plato: anamnsisas the real life of soul

Plato goes one step further in the identification between the one who remembersand the object that is remembered in the salvific remembrance. Whereas in the gold

tablets Mnemosynes water is for the initiate only a means to reach his own divine center,the Platonic anamnsis is already the real immortality itself. Henceforth the internal lifeof the soul is an aspect of intellectual activity. The internal daimon has not only to beremembered, but it itself is the act of remembering. The salvation is somehow obtained

through remembering memory, or through perceiving and saying the -, like in thegold tablets, but about the plain of- itself, as it is said in the Phaedrus (247cand 248b, ).28 The act of remembering is from now on the aimas well as the means, the goal as well as the road. For the intelligible Forms stand inside

the remembering intellect, although they are not ontologically dependent on it and, on thecontrary, founds it; thus, by remembering the intelligible Forms, which have no material

27 See Segal 1985: 209.28 See Pinchard 2009: 415.


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support and so are entirely present as soon as they are remembered, the soul accesses also

itself as pure intellect, i.e., as a pure remembrance process. The divine part of the soul,

the intellect, is not something which can accidentally remember, but is the rememberingitself. In this case the subject and its act are not to be separated. For the soul essentially is

a movement that moves itself, and the intellect is just the circular figure which such a

movement can take on, but not an independant thing. The nosis must be a circularmovement because the intelligible Forms which the intellect can grasp stand at the center

of the soul since its origin. So the act through which the intellect returns to itself is its

very essence. Anamnsis is nothing less than such a return, such a connection between

end and beginning. Therefore, while practising the philosophical anamnsis withdialectics, the subject of salvific remembrance is the same as the object of remembrance

inasmuch as it is remembering. Henceforth the active relationship between the subject

and the object of remembrance is an expression of their original nature, and not anymorean artificial and secondary synthesis.

Of course, the divine part of soul was already an immortal principle a life in

Orphism, may it be viewed as the cosmic breath or as something immaterial. But Platoadds that such a life is perfectly itself only when the soul actually works as intellect

(nos). The intellect is the most living part of soul, its very self, and is no longer one ofthe instruments which the transmigrating daimon can successively use:

' , , ' ' , , , , '

Will it not be a fair plea in his defence to say that it was the nature of the real lover of knowledge to

strive emulously for true being and that he would not linger over the many particulars that are opined to bereal, but would hold on his way, and the edge of his passion would not be blunted nor would his desire failtill he came into touch with the nature of each thing in itself by that part of his soul to which it belongs tolay hold on that kind of realitythe part akin to it, namelyand through that approaching it, andconsorting with reality really, he would beget intelligence and truth, attain to knowledge and truly live andgrow, and so find surcease from his travail of soul, but not before? (Respublica VI, 490a-b)

The life of the soul, according to Plato, is essentially an adequate relationship toitself, and is no longer defined by a correlation with the body although it can eventually

move the body.29 For, first, the soul is defined as the movement that can move itself( ,Leges X, 896a 1-2), so that the soul is theonly necessarily permanent movement (Phaedrus, 245c). Since the soul moves itself, itmust be the first principle of every movement in the world. Moreover a sensible thing

may be said alive inasmuch as it moves itself without any help of another sensible thing

although a body is unable to move by itself inasmuch as it is a particular body (Leges X,895c). Therefore a sensible being can be alive only because it is linked with a soul. The

fact that soul provides life to certain bodies implies that the soul itself is always alive and

so that life consists in moving oneself.Second, to move has to different meanings: on the one hand to give just impulse,

on the other hand to fixe a direction. The soul is able to do both for itself. It is only in the

29 See Delcomminette (2008:131): Toute vie se ramne en dfinitive cette source unique, que

Socrate qualifie dailleurs de vie vritable (cf. Rpublique, VI, 490 b6), qui, selon le langage de latripartition, trouve son sige dans la partie rationnelle de lme, mais en tant que celle-ci est le lieu o lmeest le plus purement elle-mme, le plus conforme sa nature automotrice.


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act of intellection that soul also masters the direction of its own movement. In this case

self-motion includes real autonomy. It is the complete self-motion. To change from

suffering alien orientations to fixing every aspect of its own movement depends on thesoul itself: it is the ultimate meaning of self-motion. It may be called freedom. Each soul

Each soul has an intellect, which is not an organ different from its function, but an always

actual and complete self-motion. For example, even the soul of the worst tyrant contains apart that has an intellection of the Idea of Egality in itself, may he pay attention to it or

no. Nevertheless the intellect is relatively more important in certain souls than in others

because a single soul can develop into several movements. The wise soul is that which

has absorbed all its movements in the complete self-motion, or has at least limited theirspreading according to its own law, whereas the wicked soul has a lot of movements not

under control, such as sexual desire, greed, anger and so on. The movements the direction

of which is not mastererd by the soul itself are associated with the body. Spiritualprogress towards virtue consists in converting more and more psychic movements into

complete self-motion. Such a progress can be achieved only when the soul is separated

from the body. Quite paradoxically the excellent soul is more immortal than other onesinasmuch as it takes a greater part in the perfect life of intellect, but its duration is not

different since every soul has necessarily a permanent duration:

, , , ' ' , , , .

But he who has seriously devoted himself to learning and to true thoughts, and has exercised thesequalities above all his others, must necessarily and inevitably think thoughts that are immortal and divine, ifso be that he lays hold on truth, and in so far as it is possible for human nature to partake of immortality, he

must fall short thereof in no degree; and inasmuch as he is for ever tending his divine part and dulymagnifying that daemon who dwells along with him, he must be supremely blessed (Plato, Timaeus, 90c).

Indeed such an increased immortality is almost not concerned with time. It occurs intime but does not consist in any space of time. Although it is not limited, it could be fully

experienced by the soul at every moment in its life because it deals with aceessing the

eternity of intelligible Forms, which also are said to be immortal30. The Forms areimmortal thanks to an intrinsic necessity because they are ungenerated and simple; butsouls in general are complex and generated from a cause which stands out of the world,

so that it is only the fact that they move as long as they are, which is necessary: their

immortal being depends on the good will of the Demiurgos. Of course, even if they were

destroyedwhat will certainly not happen, their permanent self-motion would be notinterrupted at a certain date because the time itself is an aspect of their motion. The

notions of beginning and end presuppose the being of the soul. So there is nocontradiction between the different levels of immortality established in the Timaeus (41a-b), among which the highest one belongs to the intelligible Forms, and the necessity of a

permanent movement for the soul demonsrated in the Phaedrus (245c-e). Theimmortality of Forms is stronger than the one of souls in general, and to approach theForms with the intellect brings to the soul a more intensive immortality. The intellect isnourished (, Republic VI, 490b 6; cf. Phaedrus, 247d) and grows in the wisesoul, whereas it looses its central part in the wicked soul. By giving the central part to its

intellect, the soul possesses better and better what happens in itself. The soul becomes30, Phaedo, 81a; cf. Timaeus, 41b and Phaedrus, 249c. See Pinchard 2001: 278, note 39.


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more and more was it has to be according to its essence, i.e., the intellectual self-motion,

which has never absolutely disappeared in spite of incarnation. Thereby its essence

conquers its whole being. This essence is worth being obeyed because it was created bythe Good itself. During the spiritual progess, the soul returns to itself; in orherwords it

remembers.

But the point is that such a return process coincides with the very essence of thesoul, i.e., with the complete self-motion wich is also called intellect. For intellect is

always a circular movement. Conversely, a soul in which the intellect does not play the

central part has no center at all because only the complete self-motion and every

complete self-motion produces a circular movement. Therefore, concerning the soul, theact of becoming more and more oneself is the Self itself. Such a Self is essentiallydynamic. The spiritual progress belongs to the essence of soul.

Finally, why does the soul fixe for itself precisely a circularmovement when it doesnot let the bodily stimuli fixe the various directions of its own movements? The circular

movement of the stars in heaven matches the true nature of soul because, one the one

hand, this movement is the best image, inside genesis, of the eternal identity whichdefines the intelligible Forms for such a movement makes no difference between itsbeginning and its end; and on the other hand the soul is originally kindred with

intelligible Forms because it is invisible like the Forms and the Forms rule its innerstructure, so that they do not stand outside the soul. Thus the soul which is thinking

(nosis) is perfectly alive because it is perfectly itself and this self is a principle of life.

So, while practising the philosophical anamnsis, the human soul becomes similar

to the divine cosmic soul which leads the circular movement of stars. This is whySocrates says in the Phaedrus:

When the soul is perfect and endowed with feathers, it travels through sky and administers the wholeworld (Phaedrus, 246c).

We have here maybe a new interpretation of the gold tablet sentence:

2. 11 [ ] .And thereafter you will rule with other heroes.

The Pythagorean belief in astral immortality is now necessarily and explicitly

connected with the the metaphysical anamnsis which was only alluded in the gold

tablets.

However one could wonder whether, according to Plato, the perfect immortalityreally concerns the individual consciousness or not. Is a revolving intellect still an ego?Does it have some difference with other revolving intellects? Does it feel these eventual

differences? What about the Orphic plural with other heroes? If there is no plurality inafterlife, is there any community, any friendship? Indeed, by definition, an intellect must

think the same thing as every other intellect inasmuch as they are intellects. The

intelligible Forms do not change according to the viewpoint they are seen. The Forms areabsolute. Thus the most immortal souls consist in a universal thought which they share

and they seem to lose their individuality. Whereas the epic speech praises the deeds of

heroes and makes immortal only the various collections of their actions, leaving aside the

subjectivity in itself, the philosophical logos makes eternal the universal essence of the

subject itself, the nos, beyond the manifold actions that were sustained by it and thatused to individualize it. On the one hand, immortality does not save self-consciousness;


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on the other hand immortality leaves a side the personal singularity. But during our

terrestrial life we are afraid by death because we would like to keep our personal

individuality. This is the single ego, with its pains and pleasures, actions andpassions,who refuses to meet his end. The immortality promised by religions, especially

Orphic religions, assumes both the individual dimension and the conscious dimension of

salvation. On the contrary, the philosophical conception of immortality seems to beunable to solve the human fear of death because anamnsis forgets individuality.Philosophical immortality is at least so long as the time itself, it is very secure, it even

transcends time, but it is the immortality of nobody. Do we care about what philosophy

saves?The erotic personal relationship between master and disciple might be the solution.

A philosopher can access eternity and universality only through the love of a single soul.

To merge with intelligible universality implies that one goes further into singularity, butnot that one avoids it. Philosophy needs to be taught by generation in generation and a

genuine tradition is never the tradition of nobody. Eternity happens to us at a certain time

and a certain place: this not accidental in respect of eternity itself, it is one of its essentialproperties. If you do not focus on certain persons living at a certain time and in a certain

place, eternity will not be granted to you. Eternity needs the singularity of the moment in

order to be itself. Thus, in the philosophical immortality, individuality is not kept but itreceives some sense. It gets a function. It is redeemed.

Plato and traditional memoryThis concern with individuality is the reason why Plato does not neglect the duality

of the immortalizing memory which was assumed as well among epic or mythic poets as

in Orphism. According to many proemium of Platos works, the philosophical dialogues

have to be learnt by heart as epic poems which were at the beginning orally transmitted.Plato explicitly asserts that a good empirical memory is needed to study philosophy,

although it is not sufficient (see Epistula VII, 344a). But even this last kind of memory istransformed by Plato. He introduces a cyclical process in human tradition just like in

metaphysical memory. Lore is not an enduring trace kept in mind by generation in

generation, but it lives as a succession of oblivion and recollection just like what happensin individual minds according to the Symposium (208a-b). Tradition is viewed as a returnrather than a linear road. Just like an animal species is immortal whereas the individuals

are not, so traditional elements are regularly scattered or lost, and regularly similar new

elements are brought into tradition in order to maintain its apparent shape. Human

tradition can not be a divine reality which always remains perfectly the same as itself.Plato has understood that indeed, since the very beginning, the corpus of tradition has

been already desintegrated. The story of a primeval perfect corpus that was perfectlytransmitted during some golden age and then was lost and reconstructed thereafter by a

genial poet is a myth. The true text is always lost, corrupted or scattered! Each transmitter

practices a kind of bricolage. But such a defect of the transmitted material is necessaryin order to keep alive the tradition : each transmitting poet has to re-enact the very

moment of the creation of the future tradition, so that he has to get in touch with the

realm of divine archetypes. The space of time where the corpus is supposed to habe beenperfectly transmitted has no historical meaning; it belongs to another level of realitywhich can be accessed only through an extraordinary vision power. Orpheuss membra


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disjecta were the first symbol of this textual fact,31 but it was not explicitly formulatedbefore Plato.

So, according to Plato, sometimes knowledge is orally transmitted and remainsactually present in the minds of its holders, sometimes it sleeps in writings. For example,

the story told in the Critias was at the beginning a pure oral tradition, but then it was

written down by Egyptian priests, and then it was anew orally transmitted by Solo, andthen written anew by Plato himself. But, concerning the philosophical tradition, a new

beginning is possible only if a metaphysical anamnsis happens. Hermeneutics of partlylost or unclear old philosophical texts is possible only if pure Ideas are remembered.

Reciprocally, the attempt to interpret old philosophical written texts can releaseanamnsis. Therefore it is a good thing that written texts are not perfectly kept and

perfectly clear!

Indeed, epic tradition also accepted variation in itself, but is progressively becamefrozen and crystallized. Tradition has been assimilated with a perfectly remaining identity

throughout time. Orphism took over the part of variation, at least at the symbolic level.

Conclusion

Following Ernst Cassirer (1972: 275), we may say that Orphism was the dialecticalaspect of the mythical consciousness. Thanks to Orphism an internalization of epic

memory happens and such an internalization provides a salvific function to memory at

the level of individual soul.But, on the one hand, such an expression holds only from an a posteriori view

point. One should not think that before Orphism or outside Orphism the difference

between what is internal in consciousness and what is external was already felt. Indeed

Orphism was the very first cultural moment when an individual consciousness

acknowledged what is internal in itself, and the individual consciousness was able toachieve such a recognition only inasmuch as its inner life had the form of an epic tale.

The individual consciousness was able to perceive its own interiority only inasmuch asthis interiority put on the epic garnment. In other words, we are allowed to speak of

Orphism when someone views the mythical beings as a paradigm of his own being and

translates this aknowledgment into a new mythical element, or when myths and epicwork as a mirror and explicitly assume this status. We may speak of Orphism when

someone becomes aware of the destiny of its own soul by watching at the destiny of an

epic hero or of a god. In Orphism, myth defines the internal personality and does not

presuppose it. Orphism is the constitutive aspect of myth for spiritual interiority.32

On the other hand, this process of internalization has not to be equated with theprimeval unity, when psychic interiority and exteriority were not distinguished yet. The

interiority of the spiritual content is experienced as an abolished exteriority. It keeps atrace of its past. The Orphic internalization brings its own history with itself.The Orphic

internalization manifests as such and thus presupposes the great divisions between men

and gods established by theogonies, such as Hesiods. The divine part of the soul is notviewed as something immediately obvious, but as as a deep mystery. The empirical life

remains structured by the usual dichotomies. These dichotomies are even increased since

the visible life is viewed as necessarily made of pain and sorrow. However the

interiorised myth is also increased to the level of a unversal order. So the Orphic

31 See also Nagy 2012: E86-87.32 See Cassirer 1972 (1953): 186.


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interiorisation is not a reduction. Because of the Orphic transposition, the peculiarity of

Hesiodic myth has split into two directions: the singularity of the inner life happening in

every soul, and the universality of the cosmic Reason.But the Orphic transposition consists not only in a scale difference: also values are

inverted: whereas in Hesiodic myth the best state is the end, the Orphic interiorisation

positively values origin. Salvation is an inverted cosmogony.Finally, the difference between Homeric tradition and Orphic tradition is not a

matter of chronology.33 It is a logical difference. It deals with two aspects of Greek

culture, two conceptual moments of Greek mentality that have been or could have been

synchronical. As a proof, the reverse transposition, from Orpheus to Homer, did occur. 34Moreover, on the basis of much data excerpted from comparative poetics dealing withIndian and Iranian sacred poetry, we may assume that such growing complexity of

immortality inasmuch as it is correlated with memory was a permanent trend in someancient cultures, synchronically organized rather than diachronically, just like the

Neoplaonic thinkers believed.

33 Herrero (2008: 252) also admits a common Indo-European origin of both traditions.34 See Herrero 2011 bis.


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