Notes after reading Alberto Manguel

Dante: Errori non falsi - “Lies that are not false.”

”In the nineteenth book of the Odyssey, Penelope speaks of dreams and says that they come forth through two gates: one made of burnished ivory, for the dreams that deceive us, and one of glistening horn, for the dreams that tell us the truth.”

”Perhaps writers must content themselves with using only the ivory gate for their dreams, knowing that their craft consists in telling lies. Except that the lies told by writers are not untruths; they are merely unreal.”

I found these words by Manguel in a notebook from 2014. They were there as prompt to dig deeper into the idea of two gates. I understand the role they serve in the Odyssey, helping Penelope to negotiate real-world interactions, but outside that context some questions arise:

Is the flow only one way?
Are the gates always open?
Who or what emerges from the gates?
Does everyone stand before the same gates?

I don’t expect to answer these questions, but I do agree with Manguel regarding artistic lies. Picasso said very much the same thing in a bit more depth: “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.”

Nietzsche a century earlier had claimed a life dedicated to absolute truth would be insupportable. He called art a "cult of the untrue" that saves us from realities that would otherwise overwhelm us.

Now let’s go back even further. In Plato's Republic there is the concept of a noble lie. This is a myth in a society that emerges by itself or is propagated by an elite in order to maintain social order or for the "greater good". Plato also suggests there are three levels of reality: form; physical object, and art. This is explained by his ‘three beds’ analogy.

Form
The perfect, ideal bed in the realm of forms.

Physical object
A bed made by a carpenter based on the perfect form but never matching it.

Art
A depiction of the physical object. Imitation twice removed from the truth.

This model has a certain logic that appeals but I can’t say I agree with Plato when he decides that art is false knowledge of reality. In fact at one point I felt so strongly opposed to his line of reasoning that I made a painting ‘Balls to Plato’.

What Plato considered imitation I prefer to think of as equivalence. Of course there is a long history of art that attempts to create the illusion of depth, volume and texture, perhaps best typified by tromp l’oeil painting but artists also assimilate and translate form. In this context the gate is neither horn nor ivory, it is flesh and blood.

The house of Sleep, print by Bernard Picart Le Romain