Section One: A Survey of Criticism

"Most simply, the [Western] Canon is . . . the image of the individual thinking, whether it be Socrates thinking through his own dying, or Hamlet contemplating that undiscovered country." (Bloom 35)

Plato, in his Symposium, states that "all creation or passage of nonbeing into being is poetry or making, and the processes of all art are creative; and the masters of arts are all poets or makers" (71). Later he continues: "the greatest and fairest sort of wisdom by far is that which is concerned with the ordering of states and families, and which is called temperance and justice" (74). These two statements offer a synecdoche of Plato's aesthetic philosophy and represent the foundation of Rushdie's and Bulgakov's look at the conception of two of the world's major religions and their creators.

Both Rushdie and Bulgakov examine and portray two artists who were alive much later than the golden age of Athens. Plato wrote the above words at least fourhundred years before Jesus was condemned to die and almost a millennium before Muhammad was to march on Mecca. Yet intrinsic to Plato's dialogues is another kind of genesisa religion in its own right: one based upon the love of beauty.

Plato enumerates his aesthetic theory in several works. Statesman discusses techne, or the pragmatic efficacy of art in measure. Proportion and measure are the basics that must be grasped even before art can be created. Measurement tells the orator how long his speech must be, the poet how to organize his verses, and the politician how to properly distribute work in a society. Imitative art is the subject of portions in The Republic and the Sophist; here the idea of the immutable Forms is introduced. These Forms provide the ultimate reality and the unchanging perfection that all human makers attempt to emulate. Plato's philosopher statesman, the most gifted human maker, regulates the production of art within his creation, society; he looks for true imitation and eschews the false. Poetic inspiration and possession are the subjects of sections of Phaedrus and Ion. The rational mind controls the use of techne, but only the power of the divine can produce true art. Finally, the Symposium shows the ladder that leads to beauty begins with erotic longing for the lover and ascends through stages to arrive at an understanding of Beauty.

The latter two aspects of Plato's aesthetic philosophy are the most germane to the present study. The ideas of poetic inspiration and possession through the converging with a divine source and the gradual climb to the truth through the merging with a lover constitute the basis of the aesthetics in both Bulgakov's and Rushdie's novels by uncovering evil, and allowing the protagonists access to the truth. Therefore, as Carol Arenberg states, Bulgakov views the artist "as an inheritor of creative impulses which are, in origin, divine" (107). Bulgakov's point of view can then be seen as basically religious in that he sees the universe as holistic, where the sparks of inspired creativity exist eternally (Arenberg 107).

Ellendea Proffer states that Bulgakov was profoundly interested in the sources of inspiration, creativity, and their subsequent processes (537). "What kind of idea are you?" echoes throughout Rushdie's novel, questioning the very philosophies that make up his characters and the rest of humanity. This theme is present in both novels: a continual questioning proves necessary to arrive at a greater understanding of the universe and humanity's place in it. The unfortunate souls who allow others to control their lives are terrorized and eventually beaten in both novels, while the fortunate ones are able to acknowledge the question and attempt to relate some sort of answer. Their path to wisdom begins with inspiration and growth through love to realize Beauty.

Yet, before the love of beauty can be examined, an ambiguity concerning the poet in Plato's aesthetics must first be addressed. Plato discusses art as being imitative or representative (mimesis). He distinguishes between skills used in a craft (techne), and those used to produce an image; yet both of these are based upon the absolute, immutable Form of the object to be imitated. Beardsley cites an example of a household knife made by a craftsman and one painted by an artist: "the physical knife may be said to be an image (eidolon) of the ideal knife, and the picture an image of the physical knife" (35). This example illustrates the difference between a genuine likeness (eikon) of the Form and a semblance (phantasma) of the original (Beardsley 36). The latter can be deceptive and obsequiousa inaccurate representation of the truth, or a flattery. This shortcoming, proposes Plato, denies the poet any claim to actual knowledge. The poet is dangerous, therefore, because he could dupe many into believing his flattering, ersatz verses are the truth, or actual knowledge.

If the poet's verses are not communicating knowledge, then what is it they are communicating, and what is the source of their poetry, i.e. what are they imitating? Plato answers this question in Ion: "the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer with him" (55). The force of inspiration, states Plato, is a "divinity" that attracts like a magnet. The magnet attracts metal and imparts to it some if its force of attraction; therefore, like the Muse inspiring first the poet, the poet subsequently inspires others. The poet has been possessed, not by art, but by a poetic madness inspired by divinity: "for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine" (Ion 55).

This madness of the poet, asserts Beardsley, is ambiguous at best (38). It appears pejorative and ironic at times, yet, in Ion, the poet's unrationality seems to transcend reason to elevate the poet into the role of a prophet: "God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, . . . God himself is the speaker, and . . . through them he is conversing with us" (55). This statement, coupled with the imagery of wings in the last paragraph, suggests that something ineffable and passionate controls the verses of poets: This seizes a tender, virgin soul, stimulates it to rapt passionate expression . . . But if any man come to the gates of poetry without the madness of the Muses, persuaded that skill alone will make him a good poet, then shall he and his works of sanity be brought to nought by the poetry of madness. (Beardsley 44)

So this "mad" character of the poet spouting off his divinely inspired verses acts as a magnet that attracts other--he inspires love in many who experience his poetry. His followers become "possessed of him, and receive from him their character and disposition," the qualities of God that the followers attribute to the poet (Phaedrus 64). The poet influences his listeners, "watering them and inclining them to grow . . . in happiness and harmony--masters of themselves and orderly--enslaving the vicious and emancipating the virtuous elements of the soul" (Phaedrus 66). The poet may influence his listeners to look inwardly to their own souls--to embrace their own individuality which will allow them to grow spiritually away from the distractions of life.

Three dangers are relevant here: the deification of the poet, lack of understanding, and temptation. The former danger manifests in a messiah complex. The followers impose upon the poet "the likeness . . . of the god whom they honor" (Phaedrus 64). The poet ceases, then, to be a man, but becomes pseudo divine in the eyes of his followers. This seems to return to Plato's distinction between objects and images and his concern with false knowledge. The former is grounded in ostensible reality (the knife), while the latter is a reflection, dream, or image (the painting of the knife). The poet's words are of the latter category and may be, therefore, illusory or deceptive "with no grasp of reality" (Beardsley 38). How is one to know whether or not the poet is a fraud--a scam artist--a television evangelist who has compromised his vision of wisdom for the temptations of ambition, power, and money? Also, how can one be sure that the poet has understood his own revelation (Simawe 195)?

Plato provides the answer in the Symposium: education and guidance from childhood will help one distinguish beauty from deformity. Education, he states, "should begin in youth to turn to beautiful forms" (353). Only through proper guidance and education in beautiful things can one ascend the ladder of love to existentially know Beauty.

Love, states Plato in the Symposium, "interprets between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods" (347). Plato's personified Love spans the metaphysical chasm between the heavens and earth; since God does not involve himself directly in the daily affairs of humans, Love carries out all divine intercourse with them, whether they are awake or dreaming (347). Yet before this communion can take place, a person must seek after love in the form of the beloved.

Before the poet reaches the heights of beauty through love, there is a progression from a particular love to a general love. The neophyte must be guided to partake of beautiful forms and to love only one of those forms, usually the teacher, guide, or inspirational figure (Symposium 352). This education will progress in the ultimate realization that every form of beauty is one in the same: that his lover is just one manifestation of the divine Beauty (Symposium 353). This process forms a ladder whose final goal is an existential knowledge of Beauty: And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from the one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. (Symposium 354)

Yet, it must be stated again, the message communicated here is not knowledge, but a wisdom, which Plato distinguishes from the common man's "truth" (Ion 53). Socrates tells Ion: "the poets whose verses you sing, are wise; whereas I am a common man, who only speaks the truth" (Ion 53). Perhaps there is no ambiguity present at all. What Plato calls "truth" or "knowledge" appears to represent an empirical, testable, quantifiable reality, while "wisdom" seems to be an existential and mystical understanding of the way the universe works. The former is communicable and demonstrative and thus representative of knowledge, while the latter is experiential and ineffable--unable to be translated into knowledge. However, this differentiation does not make the poet's verses, the musician's symphony, or the painter's image less real. Plato explains that once the lover has been able to climb the ladder to glimpse true, immutable Beauty, that through communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities; for he has hold not of an images but of a reality, and bringing forth and educating true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal men may. Would that be an ignoble life? (Symposium 355) This quotation seems to suggest that wisdom could, perhaps, become knowledge through the voice of the poet. If "reality" can be equated with "truth," then surely the poet/ prophet has communicated the knowledge of God? Perhaps, but this passage more likely suggests that the wisdom exists for the discovering, and that the poet's verse holds some key to unlocking its secrets. The poet's raison d'être, then, is to represent his wisdom in his verses. Edmundson suggests that the poet creates "fresh metaphors" that prompt "cues for action, [and] fresh ways to orient our lives" (65, 66). Following this line of reasoning, the poet's verse contains a practical path for reaching this wisdom, like the Buddha's upaya, or vehicle, for reaching metaphysical enlightenment. This enlightenment, or wisdom, exists in a reality just as knowledge, or "truth" does to the simple man.

Yet, the poet's previous self must die in order to invent these new metaphors. A death must proceed any rebirth. If one clings to absolute views of existence, then nothing new can come into the world; old, tyrannical ideas must die before a newness can occur. A repudiation of established values proves difficult because of the fact of humanity and its propensity to acquiesce to temptation; the path to salvation must first wend through hell (Myers 1478). Therefore any new language takes courage: "Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so make it true" (Verses 281). Courage is integral to artistic expression because of society's adverse reaction to the different. Plato suggests that the poet "forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired" (Phaedrus 60). He may be ostracized and locked up as a madman, but "the rules and properties of life, on which he formerly prided himself, he now despises" because he has his own vision of the truth (Phaedrus 63). The poet no longer belongs to the society, he becomes uprooted--l'étranger, homeless (Myers 157).

Some questions in this discussion of the poet still remain: Just what is the beautiful? and What is the relationship between art and learning about Beauty? Plato made some unsatisfying attempts to answer the first question based upon measure and symmetry, but were not reconciled with the madness or possession of the artist (Beardsley 434). Surely the architect does not leave his mind, but practices his art with the techne needed to construct an ontologically good building, while the poet enters a madness to be inspired by the Muse. So symmetry and measure are used to access the beauty of the visual arts, while madness and inspiration are unique to poetry (Beardsley 45). This anomaly can perhaps be reconciled by reviewing the dichotomy between knowledge and wisdom stated above. The empirical knowledge of measure and symmetry can be learned and communicated through observation and direction, while inspiration and knowledge of Beauty must be experienced existentially. This is the key: only through a personal, ineffable communion with Beauty can one achieve wisdom.

Plato sees this wisdom in Beauty as a universal,2 but the path that leads to this metaphysical truth is wholly individual, a Buddhist upaya. Plato believes that absolute truths exist in the Forms, yet today's postmodern zeitgeist thinks differently. The creative mind could commune with the immutable Forms, states Plato, and by so doing, could create a semblance of order in this plastique reality by which to live. Today, however, many academics gravitate toward an idea of the multiplicity of a fluid reality where absolutes do not exist and barriers between worlds are toppled. Consequently, reality and fantasy become confused and traditional moral values come into question. The only crime in a postmodern world is a lack of individual thought that leads to entropy and control by a dominant, societal force. One must transcend these dominant forces to find his/her own path to wisdom. The individual can be guided and shown ways of achieving wisdom by those who have reached it themselves, but ultimately everyone must choose his/her own path.

Therefore, intrinsic within Plato's aesthetics is the dominant idea of the individual. Even in the communion with the lover, individuality still figures strongly in divining Beauty and in creating art. This divine inspiration, combined with the artist's intimate knowledge of himself and his own freedom, represents, borrowing again from the Greeks, the daimonic. "The daimonic," Arenberg explains, "is the voice of the generative process within the individual. The daimon always fights against death, and struggles to assert its own vitality" (109). The creative individual must be courageous enough to withstand the onslaught of forces that could wish to destroy him, either by assimilation or death.

Both Rushdie and Bulgakov celebrate and embrace the variety and exuberance of life in their novels to illustrate that the only evil is a thoughtless devotion to a fascist ideology, or a compromise of an achieved wisdom. So, while the poet's chosen path does not necessarily enlighten him with knowledge of this world, it bestows an unorthodox, existential enlightenment that may triumph spiritually over rational oppression (Myers 152). The poet who experiences Beauty becomes more than the poet; he has glimpsed wisdom and becomes, therefore, a philosopher (Beardsley 45). Only the philosopher can distinguish between poetry that is false and poetry that is true.

Finally, this leads to Plato's most celebrated artist: the statesman--one whose art is the ordering of communities. The legislator must decide what role the arts will have in the commonwealth; he or she must determine the true value of art to the culture and appraise the ultimate justification for its existence (Beardsley 46). While Plato speaks of his philosopher king as governing a republic, this role of governing could also include the genesis of a religion--a societal microcosm. While the politician must decide pragmatic codes of conduct, the clergyman (for lack of a better word) must create codes of morality for his adherents to follow. Like Plato's politician, the priest (Brahmin, monk, Imam) must also have attained that celestial sagacity which will enable him to effectively guide his community along a path to wisdom.

The statesman must be both knowledgeable and wise to effectively practice an art of community. Yet, many fall short of this goal and become obdurate tyrants, enslaved by power, wealth, or popularity. When this happens, the closure of citizens' minds is an inevitability, because the freedom to explore alternate paths to wisdom is necessarily outlawed and denounced as evil. Any other paths would be a threat to the established order and must be done away with quickly before citizens begin asking questions. This tyrant can be both literal and figurative; it is anything that closes one's mind to new and different possibilities. The tyrant tells people what is right and takes away their need to decide, their freedom to decide, and, in most cases, the choices themselves.

We must keep our minds open to possibilities--a closed mind ruled by tyrants constitutes the only true evil for Rushdie and Bulgakov. In a true postmodern ideology, the individuals are ultimately responsible for their own action or inaction in trying to find meaning. The ideas of Plato and postmodernism are not mutually exclusive. The latter does not negate the possibility of absolutes, but makes them lesscertain in an ostensibly quixotic reality. Ultimately, the question becomes irrelevant. Thoughtful and sensitive individuals believe in ideas because these ideas ring true to their thoughts and observations; humans still read Shakespeare because he still says something significant and pertinent about what it means to be human. All humans must come to realize their own truths, and art brings humanity as close to universals as we can get--at least in this reality. Nietzsche, in A Will to Power, sums up these ideas: the artist "instinctively gathers from all that he sees, hears, experiences, what advances his main concern--he follows a principle of selection--he allows much to fall through; . . . he tests a stimulus for its origin and its intentions, he does not submit" (520). Edmundson suggests that poets fail when they accept someone else's version of the truth, when they "execute a previously prepared program" (65). Compromise, for Proffer, however, does not represent the worst sin: she sees poets as a failures when they cease creating altogether--beaten by their enemies (564).

The poet, then, creates truths. His job is to express what he sees as the truth. Arenberg sums up these ideas in a few lines: In a general sense, the artist attempts to see beyond the artificial categories of good and evil and the chaos of happenstance to the underlying unity of life and death and to create it in a concrete form. In this way the artist imitates the role of God through the language of his art. He sets himself apart from ordinary human beings. (111). Regardless of whether the "underlying unity" is a Form, chaos, or anything in between, the poet must do his best to represent the truth that he has gleaned from an intimate contact with Beauty. If there is a Truth, it remains outside time and space, and both Bulgakov's and Rushdie's novels manipulate time and space in their quest for Truth (Proffer 559). Rushdie and Bulgakov portray the artist in his struggle against the resentement and conformity of the masses to his individuality: "he is always in his own company" (Nietzsche 520). Harold Bloom elaborates further: "the individual self is the only means by which and the whole standard for apprehending aesthetic value. But 'the individual self,' I unhappily grant, is defined only against society, and part of its agon with the communal inevitably partakes of the conflict between social and economic classes" (23). The artist battles against "absolute truths," societal temptations, and self doubt, but, in the end, makes any sacrifice to uphold his vision of the truth. The poet must be prepared to defend his words, his creation; he must be willing, states Myers, to crucify "himself on a cross of his own making" in opposition to the tyranny of oppressive, absolute truths (151). Many "truths" are put to the test by Rushdie and Bulgakov, including the "gospel" truths of the New Testament and the verse truths of the Qur'an and how they compare to individual ideas of the characters in The Satanic Verses and The Master and Margarita.