8.4. Poetic Discourse: Maritain vs. Thomas
There are a number of passages in Thomas in which he gives a definition of poetic discourse that is frankly discouraging (Summa Theologiae I, I, 9; II, 101, 2 ad 2). He speaks of poetry as an “infima doctrina” (“inferior learning”) and opines that “poetica non capiuntur propter defectum veritatis qui est in eis” (“poetic matters cannot be grasped because they are deficient in truth”). This definition of the modus poeticus as inferior is fully justified in the context in which Thomas proposes it: that is, in a comparison between vernacular poetry and Holy Scripture and subsequently between poetry and theology; and, within the hierarchical system in which the sciences derive their dignity from the dignity of the object to which they apply, poetry is fated to be the loser. Its defectus veritatis or deficiency of truth derives from the fact that it narrates nonexistent things; it uses metaphors for the purposes of representation and to provide delight; it evades the strict control of reason and claims to be an instrument, not of knowledge, but instead of pleasure.11
It is true, as Curtius (1948: chs. XI and XII) clearly demonstrates, that it was on the basis of this same distinction between the poet and the theologian, and of certain affirmations made by Aristotle concerning the first poet-theologians, that protohumanists like Albertino Mussato began to adumbrate a notion of the revelatory role of poetry; but by then we will have abandoned the confines of Scholasticism and its inflexible epistemology. In the eyes of which, given its defectus veritatis, to interpret the modus poeticus as a perceptio confusa of the Baumgartian type would be, to say the least, a stretch.
Maritain (1938a–b), in contrast, goes back to Thomas’s own writings in order to identify the modus poeticus, precisely because of its imprecise and representative nature, as knowledge by “affective connaturality with reality” (“connaturalité affective à la réalité”), a knowledge that is nonconceptualizable, inasmuch as it awakens within itself the creative profundities of the subject. Poetic knowledge is “inseparable from the productivity of the spirit” (“inséparable de la productivité de l’esprit”) (1938a: 95–96).
What can the expressive and communicative instrument of this knowledge “by affective connaturality” be? It is the poetic symbol, which is a sign-image, something sensible that signifies its object by way of an analogy between sign and object, and therefore a sign, which, over and above its semantic effectiveness, obtains a practical result (by communicating an order, an appeal) by means of suggestion—an operation that Maritain does not hesitate to define as “magical” (1938a: 299 et seq.).
Nevertheless, no doubt because he did not believe that Thomas’s own texts would support this interpretation, Maritain seeks confirmation in a Scholastic of the Counter-Reformation, to be specific, in John of Saint Thomas (1589–1644; aka John Poinsot, hereinafter “John”).
Now, John’s linguistic theory is a theory of philosophical language and he does not have the slightest interest in the possibilities of poetic language. The linguistic expression or term is what the proposition can be reduced to, as occurs in the case of the subject and the predicate; the term is both vox and signum, both mental and written, and it is ex quo simplex conficitur propositio (“that out of which a simple proposition is made”); it is a vox significativa (and therefore is not meaningless, unlike, for instance, the sound blitiri); and it is such ad placitum, that is, by stipulation or convention. Meaningful words (voces significativae) that have not been agreed upon, such as moans and groans, are excluded.12
Maritain, for his part, endeavors to find allusions to the “symbolic” value of images in certain citations from John (such as “ratio imaginis consistit in hoc quod procedat ab alio ut a principio et in similitudinem ejus, ut docet S. Thomas” (“the rationale of an image, therefore, consists in this, that it proceeds from another as from a principle and in a similitude or likeness of that other, as Saint Thomas teaches”) (Deely 1985: 219). While it is true that Thomas states (in Summa Theologiae I, 35) that “species, prout ponitur ab Hilario in definitione imaginis, importat formam deductam in aliquo ab alio” (“the term species, as Hillary claims in his definition of the image, implies a form in one thing derived from another”), what he is talking about is the more traditional definition of the image as bound to the object by a relationship of likeness, not by convention, and this reading does not lend itself to a “symbolist” interpretation. Maritain, on the other hand, makes it the basis for a definition of the poetic symbol as a sign-image endowed with an analogical and ambiguous (or polysemic) relationship with the signatum. Thomas was not unaware of the existence of such sign-images capable of standing in a vaguely ambiguous position vis-à-vis the signatum; but he saw them as being the kind of visions that appear to prophets, announcing the fact, for instance, that there will be seven years of plenty by showing seven full ears of corn. This would be a purely poetic proceeding, and here again Thomas implies that it is inferior; so much so that he considers more valid and reliable those prophecies in which, instead of images, we have words, far less equivocal signs, and more desirable in a circumstance as delicate as that of the reception of the divine message.13
Saying, however, that in prophecy we encounter “poetic” procedures does not mean that prophecy and poetic procedures are one and the same thing.
Let us grant then, in order to get this false issue out of the way, that there does exist, in the authors to whom Maritain refers, a sign-image based on a relationship of analogy—and the fact that it is somewhat played down is surely not all that important, seeing that, here and elsewhere, what is at stake, as we have seen, is more a question of theology than one of aesthetics. Furthermore, the most reliable communicative vehicles are to be preferred, those that are, in other words, less “poetically” ambiguous. However, once the existence of sign-images had been recognized (as the entire allegorical tradition is there to attest), medieval thinkers invariably made every attempt to conventionalize them as much as they could, through their repertories of symbols, attributing a single meaning to every image (or at most a choice amongst four). If there are more—if, for example, in certain bestiaries, the lion may signify both Christ and the Devil—this is because of the overlapping of traditional associations. But the task of medieval hermeneutics, however much Maritain, as a reader of Baudelaire, would have preferred it, is not to cultivate a fruitful ambiguity, fraught with manifold suggestions, but on the contrary to identify as expeditiously as possible a definite meaning valid for the context at hand (which is usually scriptural).
The only way Maritain could have defended his position was by placing himself clearly outside the medieval tradition and declaring that modern man had turned the situation on its head. Incapable of choosing between the role of modern symbolist and that of ancient allegorist, on the one hand he throws a veil of ambiguity over his medieval sources, while on the other he undermines the comprehension of his personal proposals by making them sound like superannuated ruminations on Thomistic positions, whereas, if the truth were known, they are in reality assertions typical of contemporary aesthetics. It is not easy to keep one foot in Montparnasse and the other in the Street of Straw (Vicus Straminis = Ruelle au Fouarre). But this untenable ubiquity is the very essence of Maritain’s aesthetic. It explains its fascination, however outmoded today, as well as the reason why it was so short-lived.