Menexenus - Socrates Dancing Naked

There are few readers of Plato who take much delight in the strange little work entitled Menexenus. Among the works attributed to Plato it stands out as especially enigmatic and unusual. Rather than a dialogue, it is a long recitation by Socrates, uninterrupted, of a patriotic Periclean funeral oration. Its purpose and its place in Plato's writings is disputed on every point. Except as an extant example of the genre of Athenian funeral orations, it is largely uninteresting with no obvious philosophical merit.  The present writer, however, regards it as a delight and has a particular attachment to it. This follows from his doctoral work on Plato's Timaeus. He found that the Athenian patriotic mythology that underpins the cosmology presented in Timaeus is presented clearly and directly in the Menexenus and there are important themes common to the two works. He is inclined, therefore, to think that there is a deeper purpose to the Menexenus than at first appears. Although, having said that, he is fully aware of the great difficulties that the work presents. In this sense it is delightful just as a conundrum. If it is not profound, it is certainly intriguing. We might think of it as one of Plato's puzzles. 

Some of the difficulties concerning the Menexenus, with other notes, are presented below:

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Firstly, its authenticity should be regarded as doubtful. In large measure it depends upon notices in Aristotle. The present author has a policy of not reading Plato through Aristotle and rejecting claims where only Aristotle makes them. Without corroboration from other sources, we are right to doubt that Plato was the author of this work. XIXth century scholars regularly questioned its authenticity, but not so scholars of the XXth century. The difference is explained by a shift in perceived connections between Plato and Aristotle. On the whole, the present author is with the XIXth century scholars on this and resists Aristotelean readings of Plato. 

There are, all the same, no counter traditions indicating another provenance have come down to us, and we must admit that the wider Platonic tradition has always regarded the work as by Plato himself. The fact that it is a strange work that seems entirely at odds with the rest of the Platonic corpus must count in favour of its authenticity: the tradition is unlikely to have adopted such a strange work unless it was strongly attested. 

Secondly, it commits blatant anachronisms of a glaring kind. How is this to be explained? Socrates, in the funeral oration he recites - which he says was taught to him by Aspasia, the famed mistress of Pericles - refers to events that happened some thirteen years after his death and after the death of Aspasia much longer. Plato is otherwise careful never to cross temporal verisimilitude: in the Menexenus it is shameless. There seems to be deliberate and systematic distortion of historical chronology. What is to be made of this? There is no chance it has been done in error - a slip of the stylus. So it must be by design. But what design? (Some have gone so far as to suggest that the Socrates we meet here is, in fact, a ghost.) 

This last point reflects, perhaps, the view of al-Farabi, the Mahometan Platonist, who, in his scheme, imagines that Plato wrote the Menexenus last of all at the end of his life. Its theme is death - it is a funeral oration. It is therefore the ultimate dialogue. Perhaps it reflects Plato coming demise in old age, and perhaps the Socrates of the dialogue is speaking from the dead. Or perhaps Socrates here - more than anywhere else - represents Plato himself. It is intriguing that al-Farabi places the Menexenus last among Plato's works. Its chronological position in the dialogues is widely disputed. For al-Farabi it was Plato's last word. This affords it an unusual prominence. The usual tendency is to bury it among the "middle dialogues" so-called where it will be least conspicuous and hopefully not cause too much trouble. 

Regarding the content itself, the question immediately arises: to what extent is it parody? There is no agreement about how to read the work. Some regard it as parodic while others regard it as serious. Some - it is a view with which the present writer is in sympathy - suppose it is both. 

This problem is compounded because there is no clear purpose to attributing the oration to Aspasia, and then the problems concerning the identity and character of Aspasia are themselves doubly confounding. Socrates says that he had Aspasia as a teacher. What are we to make of this report? Aspasia is an enigma. On the strength of this report she is, like Diotima, depicted as a wise philosopher-ess, a female patron of Athen's seers. (See the picture at the head of this page.) More commonly, though, she is presented as a prostitute, emblematic of sensuality, and in a famous incident Socrates is said to have dragged Alcibiades from her embrace back to the life of philosophy, the 'House of Aspasia' being synonymous with a den of sensuality, as shown below:

Most every reader concedes that there is irony in Socrates' words. "Here is a speech I learned from Aspasia..." But at whose expense? What is the point of the irony? The conventions of Platonic irony very often promote disagreement among his readers. No instance of it is more widely disputed than this. There is irony, certainly, when Socrates proclaims that Aspasia taught him formal rhetoric, but no one can agree on the shape and object of the irony. This means that there are numerous entirely divergent ways to read the text. 

Who cannot detect irony in Socrates' speech at the outset of the dialogue?


O Menexenus! Death in battle is certainly in many respects a noble thing. The dead man gets a fine and costly funeral, although he may have been poor, and an elaborate speech is made over him by a wise man who has long ago prepared what he has to say, although he who is praised may not have been good for much. 

The speakers praise him for what he has done and for what he has not done - that is the beauty of them - and they steal away our souls with their embellished words; in every conceivable form they praise the city; and they praise those who died in war, and all our ancestors who went before us; and they praise ourselves also who are still alive, until I feel quite elevated by their laudations, and I stand listening to their words, Menexenus, and become enchanted by them, and all in a moment I imagine myself to have become a greater and nobler and finer man than I was before...

And if, as often happens, there are any foreigners who accompany me to the speech, I become suddenly conscious of having a sort of triumph over them, and they seem to experience a corresponding feeling of admiration at me, and at the greatness of the city, which appears to them, when they are under the influence of the speaker, more wonderful than ever. This consciousness of dignity lasts me more than three days, and not until the fourth or fifth day do I come to my senses and know where I am; in the meantime I have been living in the Islands of the Blest.

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As well as this, being patriotic in nature, the funeral oration has political implications, and so the work is important in determining Plato's political views and ideals. Parody and irony may change the political implications of the work quite dramatically. Is it a lampooning of the pretentious over-blown jingoism typical of Athenian political oration? Is it designed to expose the hypocrisy of the Athenian political class and especially the democracy that executed Socrates and scorned philosophy? Is it a critique of the use of historical appeal in Athenian political speeches? Is it a satire of political rhetoric in general? 

These are all possibilities. But it is also possible that the core of the work is of serious intent. On a simple reading it is patriotic in tone and adds weight to the view that Plato was, in all essential respects, a loyal and patriotic Athenian, an Athenian aristocrat himself, and the work is serious on that level rather than anti-Athenian in any sense.

As for the oration, whose speech is it really? Plato gives it to Socrates who in turn attributes it to Aspasia, whereas in tone and content it would not seem likely to belong to either of them. Very likely it was a separate composition and Plato has worked it into a framework featuring Socrates and then the distancing to Aspasia. The work bears comparison to Pericle's extant Funeral Oration found in Thucidydes History of the Peloponnesian War.

Yet, as we see in the passage quoted above, Socrates charges that such orations bewitch the hearer into a state of revery (semnos) - "living in the Islands of the Blest" - drunk on words. Is the Menexenus intended as a type of counter-charm, an inoculation, against the potency of political oration? 

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These difficulties would seem to be intractable. Even the most basic questions about the work are hotly contested. We can despair at this, or rejoice. It seems that it is only through the agency of a global view, which is to say in the context of Plato as a whole, that one can settle upon any particular reading of the Menexenus. Everything depends upon how one sees Plato in general. For the present author, though, this is a measure of the work's genius and is among the internal points of evidence that must count for its authenticity. In its own way it is a masterpiece. Who but Plato could compose such a perfectly obscure enigma? 

Even so, and in the face of such conundrums, this reader maintains that every work of Plato has a key. He draws attention to the following exchange at the beginning of the dialogue:

MENEXENUS: Then why will you not rehearse what she said?

SOCRATES: Because I am afraid that my mistress may be angry with me if I publish her speech.

MENEXENUS: Nay, Socrates, let us have the speech, whether Aspasia's or any one else's, no matter. I hope that you will oblige me.

SOCRATES: But I am afraid that you will laugh at me if I continue the games of youth in old age.

MENEXENUS: Far otherwise, Socrates; let us by all means have the speech.

SOCRATES: Truly I have such a disposition to oblige you, that if you bid me dance naked I should not like to refuse, since we are alone. Listen then: If I remember rightly, she began as follows, with the mention of the dead:

Two motifs appear in this exchange that are significant for understanding the oration that follows. Nothing - let us insist - is accidental in Plato. Every detail is important. It is often the seemingly odd and insignificant details, easily overlooked, that offer the keys that will open up the secrets of a Platonic dialogue.  In this case, we have, firstly, the "games of youth in old age" motif, and secondly, the "dancing naked" motif. Both, no doubt, are playful, but it is the play in Plato that often reveals most. 

Regarding the youth/age motif, it appears here but also it other crucial points in Platonic dialogues and everywhere it serves to introduce a certain body of material that includes, for example, the myth in the Politicus which is introduced by the device: "Listen, then, to a tale which a child would love to hear; and you are not too old for childish amusement..." Thus the oration in the Menexenus is placed in this category of material. It will be found that this material is on common themes and among them is the doctrine of autochthony, a central theme in the oration. The heart of the oration, which is really quite beautiful, is the following:

And first as to their birth. Their ancestors were not strangers, nor are these their descendants sojourners only, whose fathers have come from another country; but they are the children of the soil, dwelling and living in their own land. And the country which brought them up is not like other countries, a stepmother to her children, but their own true mother; she bore them and nourished them and received them, and in her bosom they now repose. It is meet and right, therefore, that we should begin by praising the land which is their mother, and that will be a way of praising their noble birth.

The country is worthy to be praised, not only by us, but by all mankind; first, and above all, as being dear to the Gods. This is proved by the strife and contention of the Gods respecting her. And ought not the country which the Gods praise to be praised by all mankind? The second praise which may be fairly claimed by her, is that at the time when the whole earth was sending forth and creating diverse animals, tame and wild, she our mother was free and pure from savage monsters, and out of all animals selected and brought forth man, who is superior to the rest in understanding, and alone has justice and religion.

And a great proof that she brought forth the common ancestors of us and of the departed, is that she provided the means of support for her offspring. For as a woman proves her motherhood by giving milk to her young ones (and she who has no fountain of milk is not a mother), so did this our land prove that she was the mother of men, for in those days she alone and first of all brought forth wheat and barley for human food, which is the best and noblest sustenance for man, whom she regarded as her true offspring. And these are truer proofs of motherhood in a country than in a woman, for the woman in her conception and generation is but the imitation of the earth, and not the earth of the woman. And of the fruit of the earth she gave a plenteous supply, not only to her own, but to others also; and afterwards she made the olive to spring up to be a boon to her children, and to help them in their toils. And when she had herself nursed them and brought them up to manhood, she gave them Gods to be their rulers and teachers, whose names are well known, and need not now be repeated. They are the Gods who first ordered our lives, and instructed us in the arts for the supply of our daily needs, and taught us the acquisition and use of arms for the defence of the country.

Thus born into the world and thus educated, the ancestors of the departed lived and made themselves a government...

This reader detects no direct satire in this account but rather a formula to which Plato returns in many forms. Compare the Politicus myth (which cosmologizes the Athenian autochthons) and the prologue to the Timaeus/Critias ensemble and its apparent connections with the Republic. In these structures - which extend across dialogues - first citizens are created and born (from the earth), then educated, then create government. All of this is under the auspices of Athena, goddess of wisdom and patroness of philosophy. Plato is a patriotic Athenian, but his patriotism is, as it were, esoteric. This is the main point that the present writer wants to bring to the study of Plato. Throughout his works he reveals certain "secret" aspects of the Athenian cultus. The Menexenus is among these works, although its first purpose is to provide a measure of common (exoteric) patriotism. 

As for the motif of Socrates "dancing naked", it should be understood in this "esoteric" sense and should be counted as a significant signal rather than merely a passing comment in jest. In the Aspasian oration we have Socrates "dancing naked". We meet Socrates in many moods and many modes in the dialogues of Plato: here he dances naked for us. Whatever this metaphor might mean, it signals that the Menexenus is, in fact, a very important and revealing work, a dance of words but one in which the real nature of the Platonic Socrates is revealed unclothed. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Authentic Reactionary - Nicolás Gómez Dávila

"The reactionary escapes the slavery of history because he pursues in the human wilderness the trace of divine footsteps."

- Don Colacho

Nicolás Gómez Dávila, better known as 'Don Colacho', is a hero of reactionary political thought but little known beyond those circles. He stands as an exemplar in a number of respects. Firstly, he was a private scholar who, being financially independent, devoted himself to compiling a library of great works and then to being absorbed in its books. He never so much as set foot in a university. He is a model of the independent scholar, uncontaminated by the toxins of official thought. He sets an example to be followed. If you are young and intelligent but find universities thoroughly diseased with Marxist pseudo learning, the alternative is to become successful in business (a career path that requires acumen rather than empty academic certification), attain financial independence early in life, then build a library of great works and allow it to be your teacher. That is what books are for; in an age in which the teaching profession is corrupt, books must be our teachers. 

But secondly, since he owned and immersed himself in a vast number of books Don Colacho understood very well that the last thing the world needs now is more books; what it needs are more and better readers. Accordingly, he was disinclined to write very much. Largely, he wrote aphorisms, and he collected and published them in book form only reluctantly. The most important of such collections is 'Scholia To An Implicit Text' which is listed as 'Out of Phase' reading on this present site, here. 

Such admirable restraint in a modern scholar is exceedingly rare. Rather, we live in an age in which scholars and boffins are interminably verbose; every scholar on the planet will shake your hand and begin a conversation with the phrase "Have you read my book?" There have been few men more bookish than Don Colacho, but he found the rush to publish unseemly. There are quite enough books in the world and generally speaking all the essential ones have been written. He almost counts as a modern intellectual saint just on this score: he has the uncommon good grace not to burden his readers with wordiness. Through aphorisms he expounded a philosophy of profound paleoconservative reaction: he proclaimed himself to be a Reactionary and wore the label with pride. His aphorisms constitute a treasury of reactionary thought: essentialized thoughts unlittered by verbiage or clap-trap.

He did, however, write some short essays, and among them one of the most essential is that entitled 'The Authentic Reactionary'. Here Don Colacho proposes that liberalism and conservatism are partial visions, and that the reactionary takes account of a fuller notion of reality. Both the liberal and the conservative, he says, labour under mistaken estimations of history. The reactionary, he says, stands in a proper relation to history, avoiding both miscalculations. This is a theme in the aphorisms too. In the tripartite schema he constructs, Don Calacho sees the reactionary as occupying a radical centre between two dire miscalculations. "History is neither necessity nor freedom," he writes, " but rather their flexible integration." He charts political philosophies against a spectrum extending from fate to free will. This essay is one of the great charters of reactionary ideas. It deserves to be more widely acknowledged. The full essay is presented below:

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THE AUTHENTIC REACTIONARY

Nicolás Gómez Dávila

The existence of the authentic reactionary is usually a scandal to the progressive. His presence causes a vague discomfort. In the face of the reactionary attitude the progressive experiences a slight scorn, accompanied by surprise and restlessness. In order to soothe his apprehensions, the progressive is in the habit of interpreting this unseasonable and shocking attitude as a guise for self-interest or as a symptom of stupidity; but only the journalist, the politician, and the fool are not secretly flustered before the tenacity with which the loftiest intelligences of the West, for the past one hundred fifty years, amass objections against the modern world. Complacent disdain does not, in fact, seem an adequate rejoinder to an attitude where a Goethe and a Dostoevsky can unite in brotherhood.

But if all the conclusions of the reactionary surprise the progressive, the reactionary stance is by itself disconcerting. That the reactionary protests against progressive society, judges it, and condemns it, and yet is resigned to its current monopoly of history, seems an eccentric position. The radical progressive, on the one hand, does not comprehend how the reactionary condemns an action that he acknowledges, and the liberal progressive, on the other, does not understand how he acknowledges an action that he condemns. The first demands that he relinquish his condemnation if he recognizes the action’s necessity, and the second that he not confine himself to abstention from an action that he admits is reprehensible. The former warns him to surrender, the latter to take action. Both censure his passive loyalty in defeat.

The radical progressive and the liberal progressive, in fact, reprove the reactionary in different ways because the one maintains that necessity is reason, while the other affirms that reason is liberty. A different vision of history conditions their critiques. For the radical progressive, necessity and reason are synonyms: reason is the substance of necessity, and necessity the process in which reason is realized. Together they are a single stream of the standing-reserve of existence.

History for the radical progressive is not merely the sum of what has occurred, but rather an epiphany of reason. Even when reason indicates that conflict is the directional mechanism of history, every triumph results from a necessary act, and the discontinuous series of acts is the path traced by the steps of irresistible reason in advancing over vanquished flesh. The radical progressive adheres to the idea that his- tory admonishes, only because the contour of necessity reveals the features of emergent reason. The course of history itself brings forth the ideal norm that haloes it.

Convinced of the rationality of history, the radical progressive assigns himself the duty of collaborating in its success. The root of ethical obligation lies, for him, in the possibility of our propelling history toward its proper ends. The radical progressive is inclined toward the impending event in order to favour its arrival, because in taking action according to the direction of history individual reason coincides with the reason of the world. For the radical progressive, then, to condemn history is not just a vain undertaking, but also a foolish undertaking. A vain undertaking because history is necessity; a foolish undertaking because history is reason.

The liberal progressive, on the other hand, settles down in pure contingency. Liberty, for him, is the substance of reason, and history is the process in which man realizes his liberty. History for the liberal progressive is not a necessary process, but rather the ascent of human liberty toward full possession of itself. Man forges his own history, imposing on nature the errors of his free will. If hatred and greed drag man down among bloody mazes, the struggle is joined between perverted freedoms and just freedoms. Necessity is merely the dead weight of our own inertia, and the liberal progressive reckons that good intentions can redeem man, at any moment, from the servitude that oppresses him.

The liberal progressive insists that history conduct itself in a manner compatible with what reason demands, since liberty creates history; and as his liberty also engenders the causes that he champions, no fact is able to take precedence over the right that liberty establishes. Revolutionary action epitomizes the ethical obligation of the liberal progressive, because to break down what impedes it is the essential act of liberty as it is realized. History is an inert material that a sovereign will fashions. For the liberal progressive, then, to resign oneself to history is an immoral and foolish attitude. Foolish because history is freedom; immoral because liberty is our essence.

The reactionary is, nevertheless, the fool who takes up the vanity of condemning history and the immorality of resigning himself to it. Radical progressivism and liberal progressivism elaborate partial visions. History is neither necessity nor freedom, but rather their flexible integration. History is not, in fact, a divine monstrosity. The human cloud of dust does not seem to arise as if beneath the breath of a sacred beast; the epochs do not seem to be ordered as stages in the embryogenesis of a metaphysical animal; facts are not imbricated one upon another as scales on a heavenly fish. But if history is not an abstract system that germinates beneath implacable laws, neither is it the docile fodder of human madness. The whimsical and arbitrary will of man is not its supreme ruler. Facts are not shaped, like sticky, pliable paste, between industrious fingers.

In fact, history results neither from impersonal necessity nor from human caprice, but rather from a dialectic of the will where free choice unfolds into necessary consequences. History does not develop as a unique and autonomous dialectic, which extends in vital dialectic the dialectic of inanimate nature, but rather as a pluralism of dialectical processes, numerous as free acts and tied to the diversity of their fleshly grounds.

If liberty is the creative act of history, if each free act produces a new history, the free creative act is cast upon the world in an irrevocable process. Liberty secretes history as a metaphysical spider secretes the geometry of its web. Liberty is, in fact, alienated from itself in the same gesture in which it is assumed, because free action possesses a coherent structure, an internal organization, a regular proliferation of sequelae. The act unfolds, opens up, and expands into necessary consequences, in a manner compatible with its intimate character and with its intelligible nature. Every act submits a piece of the world to a specific configuration. 

History, therefore, is an assemblage of freedoms hardened in dialectical processes. The deeper the layer whence free action gushes forth, the more varied are the zones of activity that the process determines, and the greater its duration. The superficial, peripheral act is expended in biographical episodes, while the central, profound act can create an epoch for an entire society. History is articulated, thus, in instants and epochs: in free acts and in dialectical processes. Instants are its fleeting soul, epochs its tangible body. Epochs stretch out like distances between two instants: its seminal instant, and the instant when the inchoate act of a new life brings it to a close. Upon hinges of freedom swing gates of bronze. Epochs do not have an irrevocable duration: the encounter with processes looming up from a greater depth can interrupt them; inertia of the will can prolong them. Conversion is possible, passivity ordinary. History is a necessity that freedom produces and chance destroys.

Collective epochs are the result of an active complicity in an identical decision, or of the passive contamination of inert wills; but while the dialectical process in which freedoms have been poured out lasts, the freedom of the nonconformist is twisted into an ineffectual rebellion. Social freedom is not a permanent option, but rather an unforeseen auspiciousness in the conjunction of affairs. The exercise of freedom supposes an intelligence responsive to history because confronting an entire society alienated from liberty, man can only lie in wait for the noisy crackup of necessity. Every intention is thwarted if it is not introduced into the principal fis- sures of a life.

In the face of history ethical obligation to take action only arises when the conscience consents to a purpose that momentarily prevails, or when circumstances culminate in a conjunction propitious to our freedom. The man whom destiny positions in an epoch without a foreseeable end, the character of which wounds the deepest fibers of his being, cannot heedlessly sacrifice his repugnance to his boldness, nor his intelligence to his vanity. The spectacular, empty gesture earns public applause, but the disdain of those governed by reflection. In the shadowlands of history, man ought to resign himself to patiently undermining human presumption. Man is able, thus, to condemn necessity without contradicting himself, although he is unable to take action except when necessity collapses. 

If the reactionary concedes the fruitlessness of his principles and the uselessness of his censures, it is not because the spectacle of human confusion suffices for him. The reactionary does not refrain from taking action because the risk frightens him, but rather because he judges that the forces of society are at the moment rushing headlong toward a goal that he disdains. Within the current process social forces have carved their channel in bedrock, and nothing will turn their course so long as they have not emptied into the expanse of an unknown plain. The gesticulation of castaways only makes their bodies float along the further bank. But if the reactionary is powerless in our time, his condition obliges him to bear witness to his revulsion. Freedom, for the reactionary, is submission to a mandate. 

In fact, even though it be neither necessity nor caprice, history, for the reactionary, is not, for all that, an interior dialectic of the immanent will, but rather a temporal adventure between man and that which transcends him. His labours are traces, on the disturbed sand, of the body of a man and the body of an angel. History for the reactionary is a tatter, torn from man’s freedom, fluttering in the breath of des- tiny. The reactionary cannot be silent because his liberty is not merely a sanctuary where man escapes from deadening routine and takes refuge in order to be his own master. In the free act the reactionary does not just take possession of his essence. Liberty is not an abstract possibility of choosing among known goods, but rather the concrete condition in which we are granted the possession of new goods. Freedom is not a momentary judgment between conflicting instincts, but rather the summit from which man contemplates the ascent of new stars among the luminous dust of the starry sky. Liberty places man among prohibitions that are not physical and imperatives that are not vital. The free moment dispels the unreal brightness of the day, in order that the motionless universe that slides its fleeting lights over the shuddering of our flesh, might rise up on the horizon of the soul. 

If the progressive casts himself into the future, and the conservative into the past, the reactionary does not measure his anxieties with the history of yesterday or with the history of tomorrow. The reactionary does not extol what the next dawn must bring, nor is he terrified by the last shadows of the night. His dwelling rises up in that luminous space where the essential accosts him with its immortal presence. The reactionary escapes the slavery of history because he pursues in the human wilderness the trace of divine footsteps. Man and his deeds are, for the reactionary, a servile and mortal flesh that breathes gusts from beyond the mountains. To be reactionary is to champion causes that do not turn up on the notice board of history, causes where losing does not mat- ter. To be reactionary is to know that we only discover what we think we invent; it is to admit that our imagination does not create, but only lays bares smooth bodies. To be reactionary is not to espouse settled cases, nor to plead for determined conclusions, but rather to submit our will to the necessity that does not constrain, to surrender our freedom to the exigency that does not compel; it is to find sleeping certainties that guide us to the edge of ancient pools. The reactionary is not a nostalgic dreamer of a cancelled past, but rather a hunter of sacred shades upon the eternal hills.

Trans. RVY

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Isidore Kozminsky: The Magic and Science of Jewels and Stones

An early photograph of Samuel Kozminsky's jewellery store, Melbourne, Australia

Kozminsky's at 421 Burke Street - sumptuous, tasteful, illustrious, iconic - has been the premiere jeweller in Melbourne Australia for over 166 years. The business was founded by Samuel Kozminsky, a Prussian Jew from London, during the gold rushes of the 1850s; Jews like Mr Kozminsky very sensibly realised that there was a better trade to be had in the Australian colonies making gold rings than there was in the backbreaking and largely thankless task of digging the stuff out of the ground like the Irish. Kozminsky prospered; the Irish didn't. Over the years, and with several relocations in the central business district of Melbourne, Kozminsky's became an institution serving the better end of the city's clientele. The premises at 421 Burke St. feature an upstairs Salon known to poets, artists, politicians and other notable persons. It is with great regret, then, to hear that the store has now closed its doors. The final day of trade was February 10th 2017. 

It is from this same family of Prussian Jews that one of Australia's  most important but least acknowledged occultists came - Isidore Israel Kozminsky. He was born in Mortlake, Victoria, in 1870 and, through the family business, developed a deep interest in the occult lore and properties attending the precious metals and stones. This gave him a good knowledge of astrology, numerology, Qabala and similar arcane arts, and it was on these matters that he wrote numerous books. Among them, most importantly, is 'Zodiacal Symbology and its Planetary Power' which concerns, as the title suggests, the esoteric symbolism of each of the three hundred and sixty degrees of the tropical zodiac. It is one of the few works that treats this subject in a systematic way and is preferred by many to the so-called 'Sabian Symbols' promoted by a certain group of American astrologers. Much is written on the twelve signs of the zodiac, on other divisions, and on the planets, but the most basic unit of astrological symbolism is the degree, symbolic of the ideal solar day. What are the powers and pitfalls of each of the three hundred and sixty zodiacal degrees? Isidore Kozminsky wrote a definitive account in 1917. 

The following are some samples of the so-called 'Kozminsky Symbols' each consisting of a simple static image of an allegorical nature. Although not traditional, and mostly mediumistic in origin, they present a certain cogency, resembling the type of images found in the Chinese and other systems of divination whereby cosmic forces are anthropomorphised for mnemonic purposes:

19 Taurus - An archer, dressed in red, firing arrows at the Moon. 

5 Gemini - Little children playing near an old wrecked ship on the seashore.

8 Virgo - A man, holding a pen in his right hand and a sword in his left, standing at the entrance to a palace.

24 Virgo - A colossal giant holding a woman in his hand.

15 Libra - A man who has just left the banquet table in a dazed condition, holding his hand to his head as if trying to remember something.

7 Sagittarius - A large ship on a calm sea in a dark starless night, a black bird of the raven order sitting on the mainmast top.

25 Sagittarius - A ruined castle by a waterfall, near which is a naked woman holding a bunch of grapes to an old philosopher who, seated on a rock, is studying a manuscript.

25 Cpricornus - A man, gaudily attired, opening a document in the centre of which is a dagger.
27 deg. Pisces - A horse running with flames issuing from his nostrils.

30 deg. Pisces - A man trudging along a rough road, dragging a mass of heavy chains. A strong horse in a cart standing idly near.

Kozminskly's masterwork, all the same, was his comprehensive account of the esoteric character of gems, crystals and stones, namely, The Magic And Science Of Jewels And Stones, first published in 1922. 

This is a hefty and encyclopaedic work extending over 434 pages and, as far as the present writer is aware, it remains the finest and most comprehensive book on the subject. No one had a knowledge of jewels and stones - both in science and in superstition - to match Isidore Kozminsky. It is a work of great erudition but, most impressively, of penetrating curiosity. Dr Kozminsky is quite evidently enchanted by the entire crystal realm and is convinced of the power and magic of it all; he has devoted his life to reading and pondering over the vast engagement of humankind with this realm and its extraordinary treasures, drawing upon every culture and all ages, in order to realise the identity of each jewel and to know something of its essence. Dr Kozminsky was awarded a doctorate in science, but his curiosity extends far beyond the usual confines of science and scientistic explanations. He has a great respect for what he calls "the philosophy of old" and thinks it just as likely that the ancient sages of Greece or Hindoostan can tell us about the reality of jewels and stones as much as can the modern geologist or physicist. The most endearing feature of the book is that accurate scientific data and scientific classifications are reported side by side with arcane accounts gathered from a vast assortment of cultural sources. 

Most impressive is Dr Kozminsky's vast command of the relevant symbolism of heraldry, this forming a significant part of the book. Then there is an entire chapter concerning 'Stones in Shakespeare's Plays' which is surely the last word on the topic. Learned in Jewish law and familiar with Jewish esotericism, Dr Kozminsky also provides a brilliant in-depth account of jewel symbolism in the Bible, most especially in the Torah and the scriptural attribution of certain stones to certain tribes and modes of the Israelite priesthood in the Book of Exodus. These are famous Biblical passages, and much-loved by occultists of every age, but Kozminsky's must surely be one of the most proficient and capable accounts ever composed. Yet his inquiry also extends just as capably into oriental religions: the chapter entitled 'Stones in Various Mythologies' stands out for special praise. Certainly, Dr Kozminsky has no great insight into the metaphysical significances of the stones he so loves, but the breadth of his inquiry as a testament to man's enduring fascination with such stones and their magickal allure, and we can forgive him for being theosophical rather than, say, Guenonian. It is a beautiful book; a treasury of treasures. 

These days, as readers will be aware, crystals and gemstones form a staple of the New Age movement with crystals used for healing and sundry purposes by New Age savants. The Magic and Science of Jewels and Stones concerns the same matters but from an era prior to the 'Aquarian' constructions of the 'New Age' in popular occultism during the 1960s and 70s. In this, it is rather more substantial and sane than almost every new work on the subject one could possibly examine. The New Age is spiritual sago, and few areas of the New Age are as sloppy and mushy as crystals and stones. Who has not walked into a New Age bookstore, or come across a New Age stall at a market or fete, and seen the array of expensive coloured stones and gems sitting on display ready to bring atunement and balance to your chakras? Dr Kozminsky offers much more. This is a work of scholarship which is at the same time made interesting by the author's open mind to the subtle and esoteric powers of the many sublime wonders of mineral formations in the strange bosom of the Earth. Any reader who would acquire a serious knowledge of stones and gems and the like, beyond the syrupy sludge of New Age charlatanism and neurotic delusions, would do well to start here and to regard Kozminsky as the standard text. 

The attributions of gems to nations according to "old philosophy" is as follows and differs considerably to more recent accounts of such attributions:

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One of the most interesting features of the book, and the one feature above that that makes it a work of enduring importance, is Dr Kozminsky's analysis of various famous nativities in terms of astrological correspondences with gems and precious stones. In these sections the author reveals a truly unique astrological talent that, as he well understands, conforms to the fact that astrology and alchemy, the astral and the mineral, are, as it were, sisters. The modern astrology is too fixed upon the stars or upon some mathematical abstraction; how many astrologers approach their art through the lens of the planetary metals and the world of astral gemstones? This is actually the place where an integral astrology ought to begin. Dr Kozminsky, that is, has an alchemical understanding of the mineral realm and is able to apply it to astrology since the ancient and occult teaching is that these treasures which we find in the Earth are seeds of the stars, embryonic forms derived from stellar essences. This fable is at the core of astrology and alchemy both. Dr Kozminsky is able to read a horoscope through the agency of and in terms of the planetary and zodiacal gems and stones, the stellar through the mineral. In this book he demonstrates through many examples how it is done. One does not expect to find such an important key to astrology in a book on gemstones, and yet here it is. If one studies it carefully, The Magic And Science Of Jewels And Stones provides a master key to an integral mode of astrological analysis. Unless it is linked in this or similar ways to the mineral world, astrology is a phantasm of the night. 

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Dr Kozminsky married outside of the Jewish faith and appears to have used the name 'Francis Coton' during his married life. Members of his family grew up unaware that they were Jewish and that the Dr Kozminsky to whom Francis Coton might sometimes refer was in fact himself. He was a man, in that sense, with a double life. This forms some of the background to Tangea Tansy's lovely family history, 'A Break in the Chain' (The Early Kosminsky's), the 'break' referring to the break in Jewish lineage that occurs when a Jew marries a Gentile woman. See here. 

Suitably, there is no authoritative account of Dr Kozminsky's demise. He moved with his family from Australia to London in 1935. By one account he died in 1940 after tripping down an escalator in the London underground. A different account relates that he died of pneumonia in a bomb shelter in 1944. It has not been possible for the present writer to find evidence to support either account, nor any to confirm the report - mentioned here and there on some dubious webpages - that Kozminsky was ever a leading member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This is not an outlandish proposition in itself - a man of his station and interests would have been welcome in that company, and there was no obstacles to a Jewish gentleman joining such an irregular masonic organisation (as we see in the case of Israel Regardie) - but the Kozminsky's did not relocate to England until 1935 which is some decades after the period in which the Golden Dawn was a viable occult fraternity. He was certainly not a member of the Order in its heyday. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Carlyle's Sartor Resartus

Edmund J. Sullivan's depiction of Mr Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus is deemed by many to be the great masterpiece of philosophical English in the XIXth century and a work of surpassing profundity. It is, in any case, Mr Carlyle's personal masterpiece; strange, dense, cryptic, convoluted, but the essential Carlyle. It is among the numerous obscure works listed as Out of Phase reading in the relevant section of this web journal, see here. The present author relates there that he attempted to read Sartor Resartus in his teens but found the task overwhelming. It is a strange book, indeed; one like no other. Even for a mature and educated reader it poses a considerable challenge. For a start, the narrator - an anonymous English reviewer of uneven temper - affects a so-called 'German' style and much of the book is supposedly being translated from the German. The XXIst century reader has no way of knowing that, in Carlyle's time, 'German' was an exact synonym for 'mysterious' and to write English in the 'German' style was meant to impart a tone of mystery and deliberate obscurity to a text. 

So here we have a work, written by Thomas Carlyle in Carlylean prose - which is to say, already torturous and obscure and florid as it is - affected to be 'German' since Mr Carlyle was by then Britain's greatest admirer of the Germanic arts and intellect. Today, this makes the style of Sartor Resartus especially inaccessible and perplexing. Carlyle is dense: Carlyle affecting an early XIXth century German English - with all things 'German' understood to be beyond understanding - is exceedingly tricky. 

Why bother? Because this is an extraordinary work of philosophical fiction. The title means 'Tailor Patched' - the text as a patchwork of woven cloth - but the title also introduces the central philosophical metaphor throughout, namely clothes as the forms which the Spirit weaves and wears in manifestation and by which,"it both conceals itself in shame and reveals itself in grace." Carlyle has written a novel in which clothes are a metaphysical symbol. The reader needs to understand this from the outset. It is a book about clothes - or rather a book about a book about clothes. (Carlyle - master of the metanarrative!) And clothes are a symbol of the many forms (appearances) taken by the incarnate spirit of man. The spirit clothes itself in matter. The whole work is an exploration of that metaphor.

Nevertheless, it is not an easy book to appreciate. They say it is autobiographical. The plot: the hero is rejected in matrimony which provokes a spiritual crisis in him and so he sets out to travel and reflect and thereby frames his philosophy of life. This was Carlyle's fate in a romance prior to his marriage. But the autobiography is buried deep under layers of narrative devices and distancing. Mrs Carlyle does not seem to have noticed that it concerns the author's loss of a love prior to her, and after reading it is reported to have said, "It's a work of genius, dear." Others agreed. In the United States it was embraced enthusiastically by Ralph Waldo Emerson and the New England Transcendalists and published under their auspices.

The work, deep with satire, consists of three parts, three books. An English reviewer, the narrator, considers a work by a German philosopher on the philosophy of clothes. In the first part the narrator gives an account of this philosophy but admits to finding it perplexing. In the second part, the narrator, hoping that the biography of the author might shed light on this philosophy, gives an account of the life of the German philosopher concerned. In the third part, returning to the format of the first part, the narrator reconsiders the philosophy in light of the philosopher's life. 

The second part, then, is autobiographical in relation to Carlyle, while the first and third sections give an account of his philosophy. In this it is not systematic: it is, as the title intimates, a patchwork, like a garment patched by a tailor. What we are given here is the philosophy of a man who had once been crushed in love and who thereafter wandered in the world in sorrow and contemplation. Importantly, the work grows as it is told. The Editor (narrator) becomes engrossed in this case and pursues it further and further.

There are many curious complexities to the work. For example, in the final chapter of the first book the narrator receives material concerning the person of the German philosopher (Who's name is Diogenes Teufelsdröckh.) It arrives in a set of bags arranged according to the signs of the Zodiac and in the bags are scraps of paper on which the philosopher has scribbled loose, unconnected pieces and fragments of autobiography. The biography of the philosopher that makes up the second book is thus assembled from these fragments. Thus does Carlyle supply readers with a marvellous cosmology. Its precedent is in the relevant articles of Plato's Timaeus where the elements of matter are said to be "stoicheon" (letters of the alphabet) and so the cosmos is compared to a written text. The Zodiac supplies bags of text which constitute a lived life. Mr Carlyle's symbolism reaches far and deep. Text as 'woven cloth' is a symbolism as old as the Vedas, integral to the Indo-European mind, even the source of 'surah' (weaving) as a name for the chapters of the Mahometan Koran. 

The novel begins in typical Carlyle style, replete in irony:

Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rushlights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or dog-hole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,—it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes.

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The finest edition of Sartor Resartus is that featuring some seventy-eight illustrations by Edmund J. Sullivan. This was Mr Sullivan's greatest undertaking as an illustrator. He had illustrated other works, but not of such high repute. The original publication of the book was in Fraser's Magazine where it was serialised and presented without any indication to readers that it is a work of fiction. The work's first readers, that is, were under the impression that the entire account is true. The original full edition of Sartor Resartus sold some 30,000 copies - a huge readership at that time. Edmund J. Sullivan's 1898 edition also sold in great numbers. It is remarkable that such a work, once so celebrated, is now rated as irredeemably obscure. Carlyle is reviled; Sartor Resartus is forgotten.

Reproductions of Mr Sullivan's illustrations follow:

The Schoolmaster of the Future

The Bedlam of Creation

The Everlasting Yea

Chaos

Attorney Logic

The Old Adam and Eve

The Aboriginal Savage

A Fool's Paradise

Teufelsdröckh's Reverence for Empty Clothes

Blumine

According to the scraps of paper with autobiographical notes supplied to the narrator, in his circles of German nobility, the hero Teufelsdröckh encounters a beautiful woman named Blumine, a name meaning Goddess of Flowers. The tragic tale of Herr Teufelsdröckh has him smitten, giving up his teaching post in order to pursue her, and then to be rejected for a British aristocrat named Towgood. In this crisis, Teufelsdröckh flees and wanders around Europe, but even there - tormented - he encounters Blumine and her new husband on their honeymoon.

The philosophical adventure described in Sartor Resartus goes in three stages: the hero comes first to the Everlasting No. He eventually escapes this place of despair and comes to the Centre of Indifference. Then, finally, he accomplishes affirmation; he comes to the Everlasting Yea. It is a philosophy with a happy ending. 

The most interesting illustration by Edmund J. Sullivan is this one, above, entitled The Real and Its Ideal. In a philosophy where clothes are the central metaphor nakedness must therefore have a special significance. It is an interesting illustration because it violates the conventions of the nude. Here we see a naked woman with her nakedness juxtaposed with clothing. The classical nude, though, is an abstraction kept apart from the reality of clothing. This illustration by Sullivan raised eyebrows because the female figure is not 'nude' but 'naked', as indicated by the contrast of the clothing. What does the caption 'The Real and Its Ideal' do to the illustration? What exactly is being said about nakedness and clothing - reality, appearance, purity, exposure, society, convention, nature? Such is the symbolical and altogether indirect manner by which Mr Carlyle imparts his philosophy in this quite extraordinary work. 

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Yours

Harper McAlpine Black