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The Physiologus: A Poiēsis of Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Patricia Cox
Patricia Cox
Affiliation:
Ms. Cox is associate professor of religion in Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.
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Extract

In August 1940, the poet Wallace Stevens wrote a series of letters to Hi Simons, a Chicago literary critic who had sent Stevens a list of questions concerning various images in his poems. Wary of explanations of poetry that betray the poetic voice, Stevens composed notes which intensified his images, rendering them, if anything, stranger rather than more common. In the course of one letter, he was moved to comment on the nature of poetry itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 1983 , pp. 433 - 443
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1983

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References

1. Stevens to Simons, 10 11 1940, in Letters of Wallace Stevens, ed. Holly, Stevens (New York, 1977), p. 364.Google Scholar

2. Festugière, A.-J., La Révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste, vol. 1, L'Astrologie et les Sciences Occulte (Paris, 1944), pp. 195, 196;Google Scholar Perry, B. E., “Physiologos,” PW 20 (1941), cols. 1098, 1075;Google Scholar Wellmann, Max, “Der Physiologos: Eine religionsgeschichtlich-naturwissenschaftliche Untersuchung,” Philologus, Supplementband 22, Heft 1(1930), p. 1.Google Scholar

3. Wellmann, p. 1.

4. Stevens to Lee, Peter H., 17 02 1955, in Letters, p. 873.Google Scholar

5. All translations from the Physiologus are mine. For convenience and brevity, I have used the critical edition of the text by Lauchert, Friedrich, Geschichte des Physiologus (Strasbourg, 1889), pp. 229–279.Google Scholar For an exhaustive compilation and discussion of all extant Greek texts of the Physiologus, see Sbordone, F., Physiologus (Milan, 1936).Google Scholar

6. Curley, Michael, trans., Physzologus (Austin, Tex., 1979), pp. x– xii,Google Scholar in his translation of the Latin Physiologus, provides a brief but excellent introduction to this literature, stemming from pre-Socratic ancestry to Greco-Roman developments.

7. Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.12, quoted and discussed by Curley, xiii-xiv. For an extended discussion, see Cox, Patricia, “Origen and the Bestial Soul: A Poetics of Nature,” Vigiliae Christianae 36(1982): 115–140.Google Scholar

8. Perry, cols. 1101–1104; Wellmann, , “Der Physiologus,” pp. 11–13, 112–113.Google Scholar

9. Wellmann, , “Der Physiologus,” p. 3;Google Scholar Perry, cols. 1097–1098, 1100, 1104.

10. See Festugière, 1:187–216, and Wellmann, , “Der Physiologus,” pp. 18–81,Google Scholar and especially idem, “Die Phūstka des Bolos Demokritos und der Magier Anaxilaos aus Larissa,” Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, 1928, no. 7.

11. Festugière, 1:198–200; Wellman, , “Der Physiologus,” pp. 18–20.Google Scholar

12. Festugière, 1:202, 208.

13. Bolos, Phūsika dūnamera 15–Koiranides II, 70.8, quoted in Festugière, 1:198.

14. Note that the alternate title of Bolos's work is Per, sūmpatheiōn kai antipatheiōn. For discussions of sympathy and antipathy as a cosmic structure, see Festugière, 1:196–198, and Wellman, , “Der Phūsika des Bolos,” pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

15. Wellmann, , “Der Physiologus,” p. 19.Google Scholar

16. This kind of reversal is found in the Physiologus's psychology also. In chapter 11, for example, the serpent, traditional enemy of humankind from the Judeo-Christian perspective, becomes the model for good Christian behavior.

17. Jung, C. G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ed. Aniela, Jaffe, trans. Richard, and Clarainston, (New York, 1965), pp. 215–216.Google Scholar

18. Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals 10.47. I have followed the English translation of Scholfield, A. F., Aelian: On the Characteristics of Animals, 3 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass., 1958–1959).Google Scholar

19. Oppian, Cynegetica 3.414. I have followed the English translation of Mair, A. W., Oppian Colluthus Tryphiodorus, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1928).Google Scholar See also Plutarch, De sollertia animalium 966D, in Plutarch's Moralia, vol. 12, trans. Cherniss, Harold and Helmbold, William C., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass., 1957).Google Scholar

20. Oppian, Cynegetica 3.432; Aelian 3.22.

21. See Tardieu, Michel, Trois Mythes Gnostiques: Adam, Éros et les animaux d'Ègypte dans un écrit de Nag Hammad, (11,5) (Paris, 1974), pp. 262–274,Google Scholar for a detailed discussion of the relation between the enūdris and the ichneumon.

22. For an extended discussion, with sources, of such bestial metaphors of hell, see Miller, David L., “The Two Sandals of Christ: Descent into History and into Hell,” Eranos Jahrbuch 50 (Frankfort am Main, 1982): 173–178.Google Scholar

23. Origen, On Prayer 27. 12, in Library of Christian Classics, vol. 2, Alexandrian Christianity, trans. Oulton, J. E. L. and Chadwick, Henry (Philadelphia, 1954), p. 301.Google Scholar

24. See Alexandrian Christianity, p. 368n; and Theological Wordbook of the New Testament, trans. Bromiley, Geoffrey (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1977),Google Scholar s.v. “drakūn.”

25. Schnapp-Gourbeillon, Annie, Lions, Héros, Masques: Les représentations de l'animal chez Homère (Paris, 1981), pp. 95–131.Google Scholar The basic point in her discussion of Iliad 10 is that the animal disguises allow the hidden complexities of those so disguised to appear. “Let déguisements animaux… exprime enfin une polysémie normalement proscrite” (p. 129).

26. Ibid., pp. 128–131, 203.

27. 2 Cor. 2:14–16; Origen, Homilies on the Song of Songs 1.3, in Origen: The Song of Songs, Commentary and Homilies, trans. Lawson, R. P., Ancient Christian Writers 26 (New York, 1957), p. 271.Google Scholar

28. See Otto, Walter F., Dionysus, Myth and Cult, trans. Palmer, Robert B. (Bloomington, Ind., 1965), pp. 110–112;Google Scholar for artistic evidence, see Kerenyi, Karl, Dionysos, trans. Manheim, Ralph (Princeton, 1976), pp. 266, 271, 376–377,Google Scholar and plates 66D, 70; and Detienne, Marcel, Dionysos mis à mort (Paris, 1977),Google Scholar especially pp. 93–94. Oppian's story is most interesting in this regard: in Cynegetica 4.235–311, he reports that panthers were once the maenads and nurses of Dionysus, who changed them into their present animal form so that they could attack Pentheus; their Dionysiac character survives in panthers' love of wine.

29. Pliny, Natural History 8.62, in Pliny: Natural history, trans. Rackham, H., Loeb Classical Library (London, 1967);Google Scholar Oppian, Cynegetica 3.63–80; Aesop, Fables 37 and 119, cited and discussed by Detienne, Marcel and Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, trans. Janet Lloyd (Sussex, 1978), pp. 19, 35–36.Google Scholar The term for “many-colored” used by the Physiologus is pampoikilos, an intensification of an already intense word!

30. Detienne and Vernant, pp. 18–21.

31. Pliny, Natural History 8.62.

32. Aelian 5.40; see also Plutarch, De sollertia animalium 976D, and Pliny, Natural History 8.62.

33. See Detienne, , Dionysos mis à mort, p. 124Google Scholar n. 115. Also interesting in this regard is the evidence given by Detienne (pp. 96–97) from Aristophanes, Lysistrata 1014–1015: courtesans, with their perfumed bodies as snares, were called panthers.

34. Brown, Norman O., Closing Time (New York, 1973), p. 61.Google ScholarPubMed