"Hermeneutics" derives from the Greek verb hermeneuein, "to interpret." Other related words include hermeios, the priest at the Delphic oracle, and the messenger-god Hermes himself--who is related to hermeneuein already in Plato's Cratylus. It is not clear which of the words derives from the other. Apart from being the god of merchants and thieves, Hermes was the god of speech and communication. He invented both language and writing, the tools we use to grasp and transmit meaning. As the interpreter of the divine will, "Hermes is associated with the function of transmuting what is beyond human understanding into a form that human intelligence can grasp." Richard Palmer offers a suggestive analysis of three basic directions in the sense of hermeneuein: "to say," "to express," and "to translate." All three share the basic meaning of "making something understood," "bringing to understanding":
1) To express, to say, to speak aloud, to announce. Oral recitation, hermeneia, was a way of making poets known in Greece. These reciters, the rhapsodes, combined the functions of minstrels and interpreters: their role, according to Plato, was to understand the poet's meaning and "interpret the mind of the poet to his hearers" (Ion 12). Oral language is more clear than written language, and one of the primary senses of interpretation is to read, to allow a text to speak, to allow written language to come to the life of speech once again. Palmer defines reading as a dialectical grasping of meaning, in which we reinfuse oral language into writing, supplying attitude, intonation, emphasis. To read aloud involves a reproduction, and therefore an interpretation of the text. Even more, "every silent reading of a literary text is a disguised form of oral interpretation" (Hermeneutics 17).
2) The second meaning of hermeneuein is "to explain". To explain involves to make clear a meaning which is not evident. Aristotle calls his treatise on the truth and falsity of statements "On Interpretation." In this way, he seems to point out that interpretation is a primary maneuver in the construction of meaning. A logical statement is already the product of an interpretation, of joining a subject and a predicate, of relating two ideas. In this way, Aristotle places a basic moment of interpretation even before logic, rhetoric or poetics. Explanation cannot be completely separated from simple description: from the moment we choose or accept a standpoint, a view on the object, a starting point and a series of tools for our description, we are already effecting an interpretive task.
3) The third sense of hermeneuein is "to translate." We have already mentioned the kinship of interpretation and translation. Translation from another language often involves not just a change of grammatical perspective, but also a culture clash. The translator must mediate between two different world-views and areas of experience. This is a problem in translation which escapes any methodical rules, because each new situation must be solved by the translator on the basis of those aspects of the work that he wants to emphasize: a sense of immediacy, or clarity of meaning, or precision in reference. A literary interpretation is also a translation in this sense: the interpreter must mediate between the work and the interpretive context, which very often amounts to giving the work a new sense, to enlarge its significance, just as a translation acquires new meanings which were not present in the original text.
However, when we turn our attention to classical criticism we find that interpretation originally appears as the exception, and not as the rule. In Aristotle, in Horace or Longinus the meaning of a poem is not usually subject to debate: it is there, it is evident for the audience and shared by all, and only occasional obscurities need interpretation (usually of a grammatical kind). However, a tradition of literary interpretation already exists in the classical world, and it will gain strength in the later ages. An opposition between the literal meaning and the hidden meanings found by interpreters will develop, and in the end it will become consubstantial to the definition of poetry. The origin of this line of thought is to be found in the allegorical interpretations of classical texts, of texts which are "sacred" in one way or another. The interpretive tradition is linked from the beginning to a religious question: there is a mystery at the core of the text, and the supreme paradox occurs that language does not mean what it means. Instead, meaning proliferates and negates itself simultaneously.
The word "allegory" (allegoría) was already used in ancient Greece. It was a late (Alexandrian) coinage, but an earlier word with this meaning, hyponoia, "deep meaning" or "underlying sense," existed before the diffusion of "allegory." According to Quintilian, "allegorían facit continua metaphorá" (Institutio IX 2, 46). Augustine will compare allegory to parable, and uses the word aenigma for those allegories whose sense is obscure. Under the neoplatonics, new terms are introduced to designate hidden meanings: mystérion, aínigma, symbolon.
Allegorical readings are found already among the first Homeric scholars, such as Theagenes of Rhegium and Metrodorus of Lampsachus. Theagenes (6th century BC) was the first to study the life of Homer and also his work in a double sense: an interpretation of hidden meanings and a grammatical study of the Greek language as used by Homer. The main aim of allegorical interpretation was to defend Homer from his detractors --the philosophers who react against the traditional mythic conceptions of the universe. Foremost among these was Plato, who, as we have seen, banned fictional poetry from the perfect commonwhealth and denounced Homer as the author of immoral narratives not fit for the education of children or the religious beliefs of the citizens. This reaction was not new or exclusive in Plato. A reaction against the religious conceptions of Homer had taken place already in the 6th century B. C. The behaviour of his gods is found to be inmoral; some thinkers go further and feel uncomfortable with such an anthropomorphic vision of divinity. These new attitudes had to come to terms with the preeminence of Homer as the fountainhead of Greek civilization, and the continued taste for his works. Allegorical interpretation allowed to restore and even reinforce Homer's position in the cultural tradition, tracing back to his works all sorts of discoveries and conceptions.
Most of the allegorists were not strikingly original. Even though their interpretations may seem far-fetched to us, they followed a logic of their own and respected an interpretive tradition, without risking themselves too much in adding new interpretations of their own. However, most of the works in this tradition have reached us in a fragmentary state, mainly through references in other writers. Apart from interpretive fragments in non-critical works, and critical notes or scholia which focus on grammatical problems and the odd interpretive question, the main extant treatises in this allegorical tradition are:
- Heraclitus, Homeric Allegories. (1st century A. D.)
- Plutarch, On the Life and Poetry of Homer (2nd century A. D.?)
- Porphyry, The Cave of the Nymphs in the Odyssey. (3rd century A.D.).
Exegesis in these works develops along four main lines:
· Physical exegesis: Homer knew and expressed in mythical form all kinds of knowledge about nature and the laws of the material universe. This kind of exegesis was one of the first to appear, since it is already found in the time of pre-Socratic thinking, when thought was concerned mainly with the structure of the universe.
· Historical exegesis (applied to myths). A myth is traced back to a historical event which was elaborated upon by the poet (e. g. in the work of the peripathetic writer Palephatus, De Incredibilibus).
· Moral exegesis. Homeric narratives are allegories of good and evil, of virtuous or sinful behaviour. This kind of exegesis appears later than the physical one, and will flourish under the Stoics and the followers of Plato and Aristotle (though not with Plato or Aristotle themselves ). Plutarch (De audiendis poetis) rejects against scientific interpretations of Homer, and favours a moral interpretation of the myths and epics. As late as the 12th century we still find Eustatius, the archbishop of Thessalonica, writing moral Commentaries on the Homeric poems, which are interpreted as educational literature.
· The last type of exegesis will be mystical. Mystical exegesis was present at least since the work of Plutarch (A. D. 46? - 120?). It became common under the neo-Platonics, in the third and fourth centuries A. D., and its importance grew under Christianity. The events in a narrative will be taken to be a representation of the afterlife, of the fate of the souls. This kind of interpretation is inspired those sections of the myths or the epics which deal with a voyage of the hero to the nether world (in the Odyssey, the Aeneid, in Plato's myths, or in Cicero's "Scipio's Dream"). But whole narratives will soon be interpreted allegorically in this way: the Odyssey will become the story of the soul's wandering in the world before reaching eternity.
The Stoics were important allegorizers of Homer. They interpreted the Iliad and the Odyssey as moral treatises, where the main heroes enact the Stoic ideals of morality and resist the personifications of vices and foibles which assail them. The early allegorical treatises are lost, but we some later works which belong to the same tradition have been preserved. Heraclitus (1st century A. D.?) is the author of Homeric Allegories, a work in the Stoic tradition. The avowed aim of Heraclitus is to defend Homer from the accusation of immorality. It is curious to see that he presupposes the greatness of Homer, and deduces from it the necessity of an allegorical reading, rather than the other way round: "Homer is pitilessly charged with lack of respect towards divinity: all of his stories would be irreverent, unless we interpret them as allegories" (I,1). Heraclitus defines allegory as "the trope which consists in speaking about one thing, but which in fact refers to another thing different from the one mentioned." The interpretations he proposes were common in the Stoic tradition, where they present few variations. Heraclitus follows the order of the poems, not a logical order according to the kind of meaning retrieved, but his interpretations are mainly physical or moral: "Homer pits vices against virtues, and presents the elements warring against their contraries" (54,1). Physical exegesis explains problematic passages as a figuration of natural phenomena. Where Apollo kills the Greeks with his arrows in the Iliad, Heraclitus finds a representation of the plague diffused by the heat of the sun, without any responsibility whatsoever on the part of the divinity (6,5). So, "the choler of angry Apollo is not arbitrary; rather, it is the philosophical expression of a physical phenomenon" (16,5). In fact, according to Heraclitus, Homer is the first and foremost among the philosophers of natrue: "Actually, Homer is the first author to put forth ideas on the nature of the elements; he is the teacher of all those who followed him with those discoveries of which they seemed to be the authors" (22,2). In favour of these interpretations, Heraclitus points to the poetic and metaphorical language used by the early philosophers, such as his namesake Heraclitus of Ephesus or Empedocles. The extended passage in the Iliad where the shield of Achilles is described as it is being forged by Hephestos is the most comprehensive of Homer's allegories:
In the vast and cosmogonic vision of the passages where the weapons are forged, Homer has concentrated the genesis of the universe. Whence came the earliest origin of the world, who was the artificer, how the diverse elements parted from the compact whole they constituted, all this Homer explains with clear examples as he forges in Achilles' shield an image of the cosmos in its circular shape. (43, 1-2)
Moral exegesis transforms characters into embodiments of vices or virtues. Heraclitus identifies some of the gods in the Iliad with parts of the soul of the human protagonists, such as they had been described by Plato. Athena is reason, Ares is courage and Aphrodite is desire. The whole of the Odyssey is a moral journey:
If somebody wants to examine closely Odysseus' wandering journey, he will find that it is an allegory from beginning to end. Indeed, when Homer presents his hero as the instrument of all virtues, he is using him philosophically to teach wisdom, since Odysseus hates vice, which destroys the life of men. (70,1-2)
There is no mystical exegesis in Heraclitus, since this kind of interpretations will not become common before the end of the first century A. D. In order to justify his interpretations, Heraclitus has often resource to etymology, but his etymologies are not to be relied on: they are more akin to word games, a kind of extravagant punning which tries to force together surface and the hidden meaning. But sometimes he gets his etymologies right:
As to Iris [from eíro, "to say"], the messenger and envoy of Zeus, she symbolizes the language "that speaks," just as Hermes [from hermeneúo, "to interpret"] is the language "that interprets." Both are the messengers of the gods, and their names mean nothing other than the faculty of expressing thought by means of speech. (28,2)
It is a curious corollary of Heraclitus' interpretive assumptions that the literal sense seems to be obliterated by the allegorical one to the extent that no trace of immorality left, and "both works, first the Iliad and then the Odyssey, let us hear unanimously a voice which speaks of piety, a voice free from any kind of impurity." We could argue that he does not really counter the Platonic objections to Homer, since according to Plato these stories about the gods should not be permitted, whether they have an allegorical meaning or not.
After Heraclitus, we can mention Pseudo-Plutarch (again, not the author of the Parallel Lives), who wrote a work On the Life and Poetry of Homer. His aim is to show that all kinds of human knowledge, including all sorts of literary devices and styles, can be traced back to some passage or other of the Homeric poems:
if we read everything they say not in passing but rigorously, we shall find that they contain all rational sciences and arts,and that they have procured posterity numerous starting points, as well as the seeds of sundry words and actions, and this not only to poets, but also to historians and philosophers. (II, 6)
And we should not find it strange that he expounds his thoughs by means of enigmas and myths. The reason is a poetical one, and also a habit of the ancients, to entrap the sould of those lovers of truth who have a certain taste for art, that they may look for truth and find it the more easily, while ignorant people are kept from despising what they cannot understand--since hidden meanings are attractive, while it is vulgar to express things in an open way. (II, 92)
Very often the kind of analysis found in Pseudo-Plutarch is not what we would call an allegorical interpretation, but rather a somewhat far-fetched analysis of presuppositions and style.
Pseudo-Plutarch tells an interpretive anecdote dealing with Homer. On arriving to the island of Ios on his way to a musical competition in Thebes, Homer sat on the shore and saw a couple of fishermen arriving and he asked them about their catch. They happened to have caught nothing, and had passed their time killing their lice. So they answered: Everything we caught, we left behind; everything we failed to catch, we bring with us. Being unable to interpret this problem, Homer died of discouragement.
The neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry, with his allegorical reading of The Cave of the Nymphs in the Odyssey, offers yet another version of allegorical interpretation. Porphyry notes that patent absurdity requires an allegorical interpretation: the absurd will therefore become its opposite, the most meaningful.
Since the tale is full of such obscurities, it cannot be a random invention, written as a mere pastime, or a precise geographical description; rather, the poet is using an allegorical mode of expression. (IV)
We should not think that such interpretations are strained and plausible verisimilitudes devised by the witty; if we consider the wisdom of the ancients, Homer's vast intelligence and his rightness in all virtues, it will be impossible to reject the idea that under a mythical form he alluded enigmatically to images of diviner realities. (XXXVI)
The most salient feature of Porphyry's approach is the combination of historical and allegorical interpretation: that is, historical data and current knowledge about myths are used to support an allegorical reading of a passage in the Odyssey. Porphyry is one of the first close readers in history, since he devotes a whole treatise to the exegesis of eleven Homeric lines. The episode of the cave of the nymphs in the Odyssey can be read allegorically because such caves sacred to the nymphs actually existed and were given an allegorical signification, according to Porphyry. Whether this actual cave was real or fictional, he argues, the interpretive problem is the same: to discover the intention of those who sacred the cave or of Homer himself in inventing it. Another characteristic of Porphyrian allegory is the ease with which he offers different readings of a single element: an Homeric line can be read in the direction of historical, moral or mystical exegesis. The senses Porphyry finds are, quite predictably, those of neo-Platonic philosophy: an allegory of an ordered universe and the reincarnation of the souls. This will not prevent Porphyry from complaining that other Homeric interpreters "try to carry the poet away in the direction of their own thoughts."
In the 6th century, Fabius Planciades Fulgentius will offer us an interpretation of the Aeneid as an allegory of human life from birth to salvation. A similar equation of an epic narrative and the span of human life had already been proposed by one Numenius with reference to the Odyssey (see Porphyry, De antro nympharum XXXIV). Fulgentius' aim is to explain "the hidden natural lore of Vergil, avoiding those things which are more dangerous than praiseworthy." (69). There are things in the poem, indeed, which are best left to the Pagans, not being fit for Christian ears. The Eclogues and the Georgics also contain deep meanings: Fulgentius relates a particular science or art to each of the books in these works. He begins his explanation of the Aeneid with an invocation of the poet himself, and Virgil appears, muttering "some mysterious truth that wells up within him" (70). Virgil himself explains the origin of these mysterious truths: "I rejoice . . . because although I did not know the full truth concerning the nature of the righteous life, still, truth sprinkled its sparks in my darkened mind with a kind of blind favor" (72). The development of the Aeneid is divided into three phases, just like the moral life of man: from the inner capacity of childhood, through the process of learning, to the fully formed moral person. These phases are shown allegorically. For instance, Book 1 of the Aeneid begins in medias res, with a storm that throws Aeneas and his companions on the African shore. Fulgentius is not satisfied with this temporal distortion, and turns the beginning of the poem into a real chronological beginning through allegory: "The shipwreck symbolizes the perils of birth in which the mother suffers birth pangs, and the infant endures the danger of being born" (73). Through the first few books of the Aeneid, the hero is a child: first he is unable to recognize his mother, then he is reared and educated, he becomes independent of his father and suffers temptations of vanity (the cyclops) and lust (Dido). But he listens to the voice of reason (Hermes) and follows the path of study which takes him to the underworld, or hidden knowledge. Later Aeneas fights Turnus, a symbol of rage, and Mezentius, impiety. These intepretations are bolstered up by a generous use of fanciful etymologies which turn the names of the characters into a description of their allegorical sense. Fulgentius chides Virgil for his ideas on reincarnation, but he inaugurates the medieval tradition of looking on Virgil as an inspired Pagan who received an indirect light from a divine source. This conception, that divine revelation may be present in other cultures in an imperfect form, before its full manifestation in the Christian revelation, is characteristic of the neoplatonists of the Alexandrian school, like Origen and Clement of Alexandria (Hardison et al. 68).
Other interpretive traditions parallel this taste for allegorical readings of literature. Arithmology or numerology was already fashionable in antiquity (Philolaus, Speusippus, Plutarch, Porphyry, Fulgentius). This kind of interpretation tries to find significant numerical recurrences in works (e. g. number nine in Homer, according to Pseudo-Plutarch II, 145), and an hermetical sense was attributed to those numbers. But the real favourite is personification: giving a concrete human shape to an abstract principle or idea. Cornutus (1st century A. D.), another Stoic writer, wrote a Digest of Greek Theology where he explains the physical or moral significance of the Greek gods. The Greek pantheon seemed to call for this kind of interpretation, and it seems that in the late Antiquity it was common to see in the figures of the Gods allegorical representations of natural or moral phenomena. Thus, Plutarch tells us that "the Greeks see in Chronos an allegorical representation of Time."
The taste for allegory came more and more to affect writing and creation, and not merely interpretation. We can mention an obvious example: the parables in the New Testament, which are immediately explained by Jesus himself, acting as author and interpreter of the hidden sense. Indeed, Christianity will favour the use of images of ordinary life to reflect the work of God; the whole universe becomes a symptom of God's existence and can therefore be read, interpreted. Reality becomes the symbol of a hidden meaning. Allegorical poetry will also be written, also with a moral or religious aim in view. Prudentius wrote a Psychomachy which will become the model for countless poems in the medieval tradition (from the Roman de la rose or Piers Plowman to El Criticón or Pilgrim's Progress). The soul of Everyman is assailed by allegorical figures representing the virtues and the vices, who fight each other in a psychological landscape. These allegorical works stem from a previous tradition of allegorizing readings of other works.
In the late classical age these traditions will converge with other influeces comming from the near East: the first kabbalistic interpretations of the Bible, which followed a path similar to the allegorizations of the Homeric poems, and the hermetical tradition of writing coming from Egypt. The opposition between the surface meaning and the hidden meaning reigns supreme, and is the whole substance of writing, the secret of its power.
Complex interpretations will meet a measure of opposition from the very beginning. Plato already laughs at deep readers in Phaedrus, rejecting the allegorical interpretations of myths. Alluding to a physical interpretation of a local myth, Socrates affirms that he is satisfied with the surface meaning of such stories, and that he is ready to believe them at face value, without trying to go into deeper philosophical exegesis: "As for me, Phaedrus, I consider that such interpretations have a charm of their own, but they require too much time and work on the part of the interpreter" (854). Moreover, he implies that once we begin to interpret, there is no way of stopping, and that more and more elements will seem to require an interpretation as we go along. Socrates' advice is that we delve in ourselves, and leave the stories alone. This irony did not prevent Plato from using parables and allegorical narratives in his own works--and to tempt later interpreters into the exegesis of these myths. The main body of Phaedrus, however, deals not with mythical stories, but with discourses and treatises. Both, however, seem to share the same fate: they are fixed pieces of language which have a face value and cannot go beyond it themselves. It is here that Socrates delivers his famous criticism of writing and his defense of dialogue:
What is a bit terrible about writing, Phaedrus, is the real similarity it has with painting. Indeed, pictures look like living beings, but if you ask them anything they remain solemnly silent. The same happens with writings: you could think they speak as if they were people, but if you question them on the things they say, in order to learn, they answer only one thing, and always the same. Besides, once they have been written, all discourses circulate everywhere and in the same way, among the experts and among those who care nothing about them, and they do not know who they should address themselves to and whom they should avoid. And when they are abused or unjustly insulted they always need their father's protection, since on their own they are unable to defend or help themselves. (802)
It is not surprising that Plato looks on the meaning of a text as insufficient, and derived from the conscious act of meaning of the author. The image of dialogue as opposed to dissection will remain an ideal for contemporary hermeneutics--but we must still define a way to engage in a dialogue with texts, a possibility which is rejected by Plato.
The poets are called "interpreters of the gods" or "messengers of the gods" by Plato (Ion 15). But elsewhere he does not seem to care much for the mediating role of thie poet, and the hermeneutical function is reserved for the philosopher.
Epicurus will criticize Stoic allegorical interpretations. So will Aristarchus, the great Homeric scholar of Alexandria, who will oppose to these conceptions a more contextualized historical approach: in his view, Homer's poems should be read as belonging to an earlier and simpler age, and that their figurative way of thought is a kind of primitive philosophy, not a key for modern philosophies. Plutarch (De audiendis poetis) complains that interpreters sometimes force and distort the sense of discredited myths trying to find hidden senses. This debate on the excess of allegorical reading will often be repeated in centuries to come: in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, and even today in a different form. This is because allegory, in some form of other, has always been a part of the activity of the critic. Criticism is not just a repetition of the meaning of the work, but an expansion and interpretation of that meaning, and allegory is often used as a tool to expand and interpret meaning.