Neoplatonically Profane Love

Profane Demons

First, what does "profane" mean exactly? As an Adjective it can merely mean "not sacred" as inthe title of Titian's picture:


http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/titian/sacred_profane.jpg.html


Note also that Profane Love has all of her clothes on and is thinking of Earthly things while Sacred Love is a bit undressed and has a lamp to show us the example of higher Neoplatonic things...but she is looking at Profane love who has turned away...perhaps from contemplating herself in the water inside of a sacrophagus now that Eros has roiled the waters inside an ancient tomb.

So, the Profane is just a non-sacred area, or in this case a liminal, allegorical space at sunset by a pagan tomb.

This liminal side of the Profane, is for me, something to consider in portraying or analyzing certain types of supernatural beings as they appear in myth, or fantasy or possibly, one's own writing.

Demons especially would seem to profit as characters from being removed from the polarities of the Sacred and allowed to roil the waters, Eros-like, in a more liminal region: a tomb full of nothing but water at sunset.

Meanings in Allegory

Melisande said:

I found this description of the painting here;

http://www.finearttouch.com/Sacred_...Differences_Between_Titian_and_Giorgione.html

According to this explanation the water is a representation of love, and is therefore not .

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Eros is stirring the water, but it is still water in an empty sarcophagus with a pagan relief on it. The water might be an aspect of Love, but if the Women personify Sacred and Profane Love, then the water is something else. Something stirred by Eros in an empty tomb.

The tomb appearently is not pagan either, as described here;

http://www.answers.com/topic/sacred-and-profane-love-1

A coat-of-arms, as far as I understand, would be a sign of knighthood.

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The arms are those of the patrons, the sarcophagus is pagan in theme and structure. It's probably about as pagan as Titian could make it.

Looking at the picture, I see the profane, fully dressed woman; not as , but opening herself to love. I also see the sacred, almost nude woman; not as , but an affirmation that love is all inspiring.

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Ms Profane,it seems to me is in the process of loss...scattering flowers, with an empty offering bowl to her own left on the sacraphagus. The sun is going down behind her and she is looking in the direction of darkness.

I am sorry if I misunderstand, but I thought that the very definition of demons was the fact that they are the antipodes to anything sacred, and that they indeed are mischievous by nature, stirring the water wherever they turn up.

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I'm suggesting a non-polar demon might be a better choice for a writer who has to have characters who are demons...which seems to come up a lot.

Now, I had never heard the word liminal before, and looked it up. Briefly it means threshold, barely perceptible, in between.

So excuse me for asking, but what do you mean?

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I'm suggesting that instead of opposing the demonic to the sacred, the demon should be situated in a liminal space such as this picture suggests can befall any allegory that includes hints of loss or transition.

Looks different to me

Melisande said:

No matter what, I kind of think that a demon who wasn't pure evil, but a more shadowy creature, would be less fun. But that's just me, of course. There are lots of different archetypes to use instead. Elves, gnomes, half-gods, trolls and fairies. Even angels. If writing fantasy one also has the possibility to make up any kind of entity one wishes.

I think that by transforming the essence of an archetype into something else, one might risk to be confusing.

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I don't find the idea of archetypes very convincing. After all "demons" in the original greek sense were just potentially helpful spirits or even a lucky aspect of a person (as in a "demon of Socrates" that saves him from disaster by making him sneeze). It's true one could use other folkloric creatures, but none of them have as all-encompassing a relation to the indefinite or the liminal or underworlds. For another after all...one interpretation of the picture "Sacred and Profane Love" is that Venus herself is there illuminating things for Ms. Profane Bride (who was a widow and so would not have been recently deflowered and who would have suffered some major loss). And Venus has her demonic Eros with her and he is stirring the water in the sarcophagus. Not anything archetypical, but something suggestive of the potential for ignoring the apparent inflexibility of archetypes from time to time.

widows and demons

Melisande said:

I stand corrected. Didn't know she was a widow.



You have given me a lot to think about, and I realize there is a lot of new (to me) things to learn. Thank you. But let me also ask you this; The demon of Socrates was his genius, so to speak. So would the shadowy demon always be an extension of some character? Or would it be an entity of it's own merit?

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She's only a widow according to some readings of the picture.

As for demons, here is a rather Jungian account, which seems pretty straighforward for all that:

http://www.prometheustrust.co.uk/Meadow_2/Greek_Philosophical_Terms/greek_philosophical_terms.html

The idea of the "profane" is that it is not "sacred"...but in Renaissance Neoplatonism (along the lines of Cardinal Bembo star of Castiglione's The Courtier) Profane Love is the imperfect image of Sacred Love and both are on the same trail to Neoplatonic Perfection.

Traditionally, this picture of Titian's supposedly was an allegory of Sacred and Profane Love.

http://encarta.msn.com/media_461517122/Sacred_and_Profane_Love.html

So the question is: if the Profane is a preliminary stage of the Sacred, what kind of preliminary is it? Does this idea of the pre(-proto)-liminality of the Profane only work in the most extreme Renaissance Neoplatonism or is there a possibly wider range of categorical juxtapositions that would illuminate how the "Profane" is a strange state to propose within human life?

Sorry

Sassenach said:

WTF?

Have you confused AW with a scholarly list?

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Sorry. I'm not a scholar so I must be confused about something, but it would not be with any scholarly lists. This was originally in a relgious subforum and got moved. I can't apologize enough. I will not mention "Profane" again in any subforum with a significant readership.

First, my apologies

Sean D. Schaffer said:

It looks to me like Sokal was trying to add to a thread called 'Profane Demons' farther down the AW Roundtable. I've heard of people replying to threads in the past and having their reply become a totally new thread. That might be what happened here.

However, Sokal would be the only one who could answer that properly.

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First, my apologies. And then a brief confession. Okay, so yesterday, I had the thought that demons could be problematic as characters. This was due to a thread in the Christian subforum, but I thought what I had so say about demons would only be confusing for Christians so I tried the Athiests, but since the thread appeared to be about writing, it got moved here. Today I thought I would try again, but focus more on the idea of the Profane vs the Sacred. Again, I tried this in the Atheist subforum, but apparently the religious side of the question about the Profane was a bit unclear...and so...If I mention the "Profane" again it will be in the critical thinking subforum where there is not much traffic and nobody will be offended, I hope.

Liminal Bembo

Medievalist said:

Oh, give over do; it's Plato's Symposium and Diotima's ladder.


And here's Castiglione's take, via Hoby's 1561 translation:



Enough already. This is like watching someone cram for humanism 101.

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Well...that's probably Cardinal Bembo who is discoursing in the Hoby. To continue in the H101 vein, the site you cite says:


"Unfortunately for Renaissance Platonism, both Greek
and Italian scholars of the fifteenth century accepted
uncritically Plotinus' declaration that in all his writings
he was simply a repeater and interpreter of Plato. The
adulteration of authentic Platonism by Neo-Platonism
colored the history of Platonism throughout the
Renaissance"

So we are stuck with Neoplatonism as usual in the Latin west and all the moreso since everything "Neoplatonic" had an echo in PseudoDionysius the PseudoAeropagite.

Anyway...what I thought was interesting was this: if the Profane is a preliminary step on the way to the Sacred, then isn't the Profane a liminal state?

Liminality of the Profane

Medievalist said:

If it's a discrete step then it's not liminal, dude.

This is pretty much academic wankery Sokal; you got a point?

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My point is that the idea of the "Profane" (discrete or not) is still possibly a liminal state. I don't see why a step or stage can't be liminal. A state of passage is a natural part of the liminal state. This "non-place" in the world but on the way to the Sacred could be a useful way to think of the place of demons or other difficult-to-picture types of characters. Still in the world, but fixed right on the edge and maybe for a long time (a long time, paradoxically, in a liminal state).

And look at what is happening (or not happening) in the picture:

http://encarta.msn.com/media_461517122/Sacred_and_Profane_Love.html

Profane love is just there in some sort of suspended or transitional state right beside Sacred Love. The painting (possibly supervised by Bembo and painted in within a year or two of the Publication of Ficino's translations of Plato) emphasizes the emotionally problematic nature of this transitional state: on a sarcophagus at sunrise or sunset with Eros stirring the water in the tomb upon which both Sacred and Profane Love are sitting.

Allegory of Imagination

Birol said:

I've merged the Profane Demons thread with this one, since they seem to be addressing the same topic.

How does looking at these different representations and definitions of profane, sacred, liminal, allegorical, and the evolving definitions and mythological associations apply to writing today?

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Apparently not much in those terms...except maybe for me. However, something that has occurred to me along these lines is that such things as Allegory, the Profane etc. might offer some people a way of looking at how their imaginations work. For me a thing by itself doesn't suggest much of a story and the arrangement of things implies some ordering structure, myth, possibly, or celebrities and TV shows. So my imagination tends to follow certain trains of images and these tend to mushroom giddily on visits to art museums or archaeological sites or concerts. Moreover, for better or worse, I need to have the feeling (at least) that I am reaching the edge of what can be pictured or easily described...because, for me, its the indescribable that drives me to keep writing. Of course, part of what is "indescribable" is not incomprehensible, it just has no valued analogs in present novelistic/writerly discourse. After all, the world of writing that sells on its own merit (ie not for what it brings to light, not for what else it points to) is a small subset of all the writing that is out there in specialized journals (for example). So we write in a relatively confined space of possible writings because most writing is not going to sell to most people. This doesn't mean we have to moralistically confine our own imaginations...though of course it does imply that people like me are going to have a hard time gauging what can be brought into the realm of writing that is valued in some commercial or creative sense.
To me this seems a bit melodramatic: the heroic explorer (ie me) who ventures to the edge of the acceptibly writerly and generally comes back with some variety of what is certifiably "nothing" in the realm of the generally culturally valuable. This is probably mostly an illusion, but it does keep me motivated to try new things, new approaches and new themes....such as this current melodrama: the demonic Profane on the edge of a Culturally defined "nothingness"...