On Viewing Rembrandt’s ‘Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer’
By:George Friedman
Last weekend I was in New York City, with a rare moment for indulgence.I chose to visit an old love, one who taught me about my life and what it would cost me. That love was a painting by Rembrandt, the centerpiece of an exhibition of Dutch masters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is called by several names, but for me, its name will always be “Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer.” It is a painting about philosophy, politics and beauty, and the longing for what no one can have: all three.  Aristotle is at the center, dominating the painting. He is dressed lavishly in cloth of extraordinary luxury, with an ambiguous hat, barely visible, atop his head. But the true center of the painting is a magnificent gold chain that encircles his body. It is sensuous in its beauty, but the beauty can’t hide its strength. What it surrounds it controls, and it surrounds Aristotle. The reason he is wearing the chain is at first a mystery; he is, after all, a philosopher, a scholar who studied under Plato. Such men neither have the means nor the appetite for such ornaments. Then, if you look very carefully at the painting, you see a small medallion attached to the chain, and on the medallion is an image of Alexander the Great, the man who conquered the known world to the foot of the Himalayas and planted himself in eternity, with cities named after him scattered through his empires. He used these cities as the foundation of his empire, linking them together in trade and weapons. And in his short life, the Greek from the foothills of the Balkans reshaped the world. The mystery begins to resolve itself with that medallion, for Aristotle was Alexander’s teacher and teachers bear at least some or sometimes all of what their students become. Aristotle clearly was proud of his student; otherwise, why would he be clothed in silks and gold and bear the picture of his student so near to his heart? His bearing is proud in the painting; a man who taught Alexander how to be great must be great as well. Aristotle’s teaching was not of the art of war but rather of philosophy. Philosophy teaches about the moral obligations that men bear. It teaches them about justice, and it teaches them when justice requires kindness and when it requires cruelty. Philosophy teaches about the city, the polis – or our modern-day nations – and teaches how they are constructed, how they should be ruled, and how they should avoid defeat and slavery. In the end, philosophy teaches about a place, justice and injustice, and teaches the warrior who must choose the place, and choose what is just. To me, Aristotle bears himself as a well-decorated soldier. His hand on his hip, his posture straight, he appears to us as Alexander might, a warrior who has risked much, from his life to his soul, and has emerged with both intact. When Napoleon visited the great German writer Goethe, Bonaparte is said to have exclaimed, “You are a man.” He expected to meet another feeble scholar, one who I suppose infested the Bourbon court, uttering platitudes. That a great writer, and truly a philosopher as well, should turn out to be both a thinker and a man in full astounded Napoleon, perhaps the greatest warrior since Alexander, does not surprise me. There is a connection in my mind between the scholar and weakness, a willingness to imagine justice but not to fight and die for it. But Rembrandt understood Aristotle, the philosopher. The chain is the chain of office. It is the chain an important adviser to a ruler might wear. And in the end, philosophy becomes an adviser to the ruler. A man who devotes himself to questions of justice and war and to truly understanding their necessity and the paradox that exists in them, is inevitably advising the ruler, whether the ruler understands it or not. He shapes the time in which he lives, waging a war against the superficial and self-serving, and usually losing. Aristotle had won. He had honed an instrument of justice and war unlike many the world has seen, and Alexander understood – according to Rembrandt, at least – that he had been honed. You can see the pride with which he wears the gold chain. But you can also see sadness. To Aristotle’s right, clouded in the darkness Rembrandt had mastered, is the bust of Homer, the blind poet of the heroic age of Greece, without malice on the part of anyone, shunted off into the murk. Aristotle’s hand rests on Homer’s head, gently and almost tenderly. His eyes do not face straight ahead like a soldier’s, or suspiciously in all directions as a politician’s would. Aristotle’s hand rests on the bust like a lover’s, but the eyes aren’t focused. They see Homer, but they see something else, something that is not there but that rivets Aristotle’s attention. He has one hand on his chain, another on Homer, and his eyes contain a deep sadness. Forget that the chain is gold, forget that it is a reward for his greatness. It is still a chain that binds him to Alexander, a bond forged because he was a philosopher who taught a conqueror how to conquer. That is a triumph – the highest triumph philosophy can achieve – but is it enough to satisfy the soul of philosophy? Homer was a poet, and poets hear and sing songs. He knew that hearing the songs of the sirens was worth dying for. He wrote of the battle for Troy as if dying were a small price to pay for having been there. The poet’s song is the song of beauty and despair and makes no attempt to justify either. This makes poetry the enemy of philosophy. Philosophy must explain everything. Its need, its compulsion, is to leave nothing as the philosopher found it but to examine it, twisting and turning it until he owns its soul. Poetry celebrates the simple reality of being. It does not weigh the good and the evil but gives thanks to the gods that both are there. The philosopher is proud of what he knows and is proud of the mark he left on history. The poet is a sensualist. He wants to teach feeling by revealing it in language turned to song. With this, the poet teaches what true joy and true sorrow feel like. The philosopher lives by rigor, suppressing feelings in the name of truth and necessity. The poet lives sensually, in the mind, soul and body, and contents himself with celebrating what is, whether victory or defeat. In a way, the poet is an anarchist, subject to his tropes only when he chooses, in love with what he sees and with whoever listens. The lover may be twisted and depraved, but that simply makes his lover worthier of the song. Aristotle is caught between the power of the state, the rigor of philosophy and the voluptuousness of the poet. Aristotle chose to be the adversary of the poet, and he achieved everything any reasonable man could dream of. But the price he paid for both was the rigorous management of all his feelings, a constant analysis of why the world is as it is and why rulers rule as they do. Homer never cared about either. He accepted the world as it was, and he wanted to capture treachery, bravery, banality and the enchanted. He never explained why the siren’s song was so seductive. He was simply content to speak of women who generate urges that would cause men to knowingly go to their death. Aristotle would have dissected it. Homer might well have died simply to die hearing that song. The tension is between experiencing life, understanding life and dominating life. Aristotle ultimately chose the last two. Homer chose the first. Rembrandt portrays Aristotle, perhaps at the moment he realized what he won and what he lost, longing for the life of the poet. There is a sense given to all of us who are human, when the tension between being somewhere and cherishing it for what it is, competes with the mind wandering off to other things. Homer was the siren, asking us to stop thinking and give ourselves over to his song. And Aristotle was the philosopher and adviser to the great who realized he had never done that, and that it was now too late to do more than imagine that purity. Rembrandt had to have understood this agony, or he couldn’t have painted the picture. Philosophy, statecraft and poetry are far from the only moments, but they are at the extreme. The painting is a monument to our lives, of the price we pay for Eden, where we learned of good and evil, and from which Cain could learn to kill Abel. It would seem to be the tragedy of the human condition, that the search for justice and power destroys the pleasure of being human. I myself have rarely found escape from the conundrum, but I have found a path. She who lives hidden in plain sight. |
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