Plato's Persona. Denis J.-J. Robichaud

prefatory letter to Piero de’ Medici (1471–1503) for his collected epistles is also telling in this regard. Responding proleptically against potential critics who might reproach his miscellaneous style for breaking all conventions and rules of decorum (and he goes through a litany of them), Poliziano ends his preface, one imagines with a clever smile, by discharging one of Cicero’s preferred terms as a projectile aimed at future critics: “In such a manner I hope to be able to wriggle my way out (tergiversari) of whatever comes my way.”⁴⁸ At least, Cortesi reasons, his own style has a clear and noble lineage that expresses itself in a fitting manner at appropriate times. One wonders if Cortesi’s insistence on the filial genealogy of his rhetorical persona and on the orphaned nature of Poliziano’s style struck Poliziano on a personal note, for Poliziano himself was orphaned as a child when his father was murdered for supporting the Medici. Perhaps not. In any case, Poliziano, who found a home in the Medici’s extended familia, never responded to Cortesi’s reply.

      The Philosopher’s Decorum: Giovanni Pico and Barbaro

      The arguments Cortesi makes in his correspondence with Poliziano agree with his preface to his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, where he contends that even in the case of philosophy one cannot do without guidelines for rhetorical style. Contrary to those who see rhetoric and philosophy as incompatible, comparing the application of eloquence to philosophy as hiding a beautiful face behind cosmetics, Cortesi argues that philosophy should at least not be obscure.⁴⁹ The question of the stylistic decorum of philosophy evokes a second important epistolary exchange from 1485 between the Venetian humanist Ermolao Barbaro and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) on the topic of the correct Latin style for philosophy, otherwise known as the question de genera dicendi philosophorum.⁵⁰ These two friends of Poliziano and Ficino took up the question after Barbaro wrote to Pico on 5 April 1485 criticizing the uneducated and barbaric writings of scholastic philosophers. Barbaro was thus following the solidly humanist occupation, dating back to Petrarch, of critiquing medieval doctors for their lack of eloquence, learning, methods, and goals. Petrarch and Barbaro were good candidates for the task, but Pico was one of the prodigious humanists (Ficino is another) who was educated not only in the studia humanitatis but also in scholastic philosophy. Pico’s scholastic education brought him to the University of Bologna to study canon law at the age of fourteen, and a few years later to the Universities of Ferrara and Padua, where he studied philosophy until 1482—it is during a brief trip to Florence at this time that he seems to have first met Poliziano and Girolamo Benivieni (1453–1542). In 1484 he found himself residing in Florence, to which in later years he would often return to converse with Lorenzo, Poliziano, and Ficino. In 1485 the twenty-two-year-old count traveled to the University of Paris to immerse himself further in scholastic philosophy. Barbaro’s letter was therefore undoubtedly spurred by Pico’s scholastic education and perhaps even by his latest desire to study with the Parisian doctors.

      Pico’s response abounds in eloquent and erudite wit, and sets the tone for the debate. Coming to the aid of scholastic philosophers, Pico writes a prosopopoeic defense expressed ex persona barbari. With a clear play on Barbaro’s name—in the Venetian’s own words “barbaros contra Barbarum defendis”—Pico writes in the persona of a barbarian philosopher defending scholasticism through an eloquent rhetorical speech.⁵¹ Pico, who admits his desire to imitate Barbaro’s own rhetorical voice, in effect doubles the personification of his letter, writing in a style that approaches Barbaro’s actual stylistic inclinations.⁵² In effect, Pico is personifying Barbaro, who is cast in the role of a barbarian philosopher eloquently defending the scholastics’ lack of eloquence. For his part, Barbaro responds in the persona of a certain ape from the University of Padua, where Pico had studied. Portraying Pico not as a learned philologist (grammaticus) but as a lowly schoolteacher (grammatista), the Paduan philosopher (Barbaro’s fabricated character) declaims that the scholastic method does not need the help of rhetoric.⁵³ Barbaro’s ape bumbles his way through Cicero’s distinctions between the personae of the client, the patron, and the advocate, as well as the distinctions in registers of Attic, Asiatic, Germanic, and even Persian styles, concluding that none of them is necessary. In the end, he produces clumsy syllogisms to argue his case.

      One should not dismiss the two letters, written in the genre of a paradoxical encomium, as a fictitious debate produced for the private amusement of two humanists essentially sharing the same opinion on the question. Indeed, I would stress two points: first, that since Pico was trained in both camps his exchange with Barbaro was not a simple literary game within the closed circle of humanism and, second, that the tone of the disputation is that of serioludere, or playfully communicating serious matters, often associated with Socrates’ manner of talking. Pico’s own appeal to Glaucon from the Republic underscores the Platonic nature of their exchange. Like Socrates who disavows opinions he has just expressed—one thinks, for example, of Socrates’ personification of Protagoras in the Theaetetus (164e–168c)—Pico declares after his barbarian philosopher has just finished his speech: “But I exercised myself with pleasure in this infamous matter, so to speak, like those who praise the quartan fever, not only to prove my ingenium, but also with this intention: that, just as Plato’s Glaucon praises injustice not according to his own judgment but so that he might spur Socrates to praise justice, so I, in order to hear you defend eloquence passionately, turned on it without restraint—even though my own nature and disposition briefly fought back.”⁵⁴ Barbaro’s initial accusation forces Pico’s philosopher to give a public defense for his office on his own terms without an advocate, which is exactly what Socrates repeatedly claimed the philosopher would never be able to do, stressing the uselessness of philosophy for the public life.⁵⁵ Through these layers and inversions of personifications Pico and Barbaro debate central questions regarding philosophical writing, asking in what style philosophy should be written, does philosophy’s formalized, even artificial language clarify or obscure its content, and, simply, what counts as philosophical language?

      Pico’s philosopher defines these questions by contrasting philosophical and rhetorical language. What is a rhetorician’s duty, he asks, if not to lie, deceive, trick, turn things upside down? The orator changes white into black, black into white, and magically changes his face and appearance. “Does he not mislead just as larvae and simulacra projected onto the mind of the audience to mislead them? Will this person have something in common with the philosopher, whose zeal is completely turned towards the knowledge and demonstration of truth to others?”⁵⁶ The rhetorician’s art is better suited to forensic questions than to the Academy. Pico’s barbarian continues, “Do you not know that not all things made in the same fabric are appropriate to all? I’ll admit that eloquence is filled with lures and delight is indeed elegant, but it is neither acceptable nor fit for the decorum of a philosopher. Who does not esteem a soft step, graceful hands, and playful eyes in an actor or a dancer? But in a citizen, a philosopher, who does not disapprove, complain, and loathe the same features?”⁵⁷ What one says and how one says it must suit the situation, time, place, and audience. If the rhetorician is to retain and present a prediscursive persona in his speech (instead of being nothing but a deceitful magician), his discourse must conform to his natural character. Playing with the imagery of fabric as the textus of speech, Pico’s letter conveys the idea that one’s style of speech must suit one’s style of life, just as one ought to wear clothes appropriate to the occasion. In this case, it is a philosopher’s style of life that is at stake. In the end, Pico’s performance as a scholastic philosopher orating in beautiful Latin to make his case destabilizes any fully defined notion of decorum.

      Glossaries of the Dead: Gianfrancesco Pico and Bembo

      Before turning to Ficino’s own epistolography I think it important to examine a final exchange of letters, dated 1512–13—one of the most famous exhanges on the issue of Ciceronianism—between Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1470–1533), the nephew of Giovanni Pico, and Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) on the question of imitation.⁵⁸ Their correspondence serves as a capstone to the previous debates, not so much because they have the final say on the question of Ciceronianism—in fact Erasmus reignited the question among a wider European audience—but because they recapitulate Poliziano’s and Cortesi’s as well as Giovanni Pico’s and Barbaro’s