Abstract
In the collection of poems entitled Psychodia Platonica (‘The Platonic Song of the Soul’, 1642; 1647), and in particular in the poem entitled Psychozoia (‘The Life of the Soul’), Henry More laid the groundwork for his life-long inquiry into the nature of the human self. He provided a poetic commentary of Plotinus’s Enneads in which three ontological dimensions – the life of nature, animal perception and the intellect – created an allegorical background against which one could articulate a systematic analysis of the individual human self in its relationships with God and created reality. Psychozoia ended with a conversion, in which the soul of a Platonic pilgrim (Mnemon) was released from its condition of ‘autaesthesia’ (the kind of self-consciousness that fails to disengage from selfishness) so that it was finally able to reach a state of ‘anautoaesthesia’ (the awareness that true happiness can only lie in surrendering one’s will to the One, i.e., God). Significantly, More characterized this crucial shift from self-perception to the annihilation of the individual self as a motion towards ‘self-senslessnesse’ and ‘self-deadnesse’. Regardless of its aesthetic merits, More’s poem dramatizes key philosophical notions, while bringing to the fore the prodigious effervescence of his linguistic skills. In this sense, Psychozoia remains an important document to understand the evolution of More’s thought.
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Notes
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- 2.
The complete title of the collection reads: ΨΥΧΩΔΙΑ Platonica: or A Platonicall song of the soul, consisting of foure severall poems; viz. ΨΥΧΟΖΩΙΑ, ΨΥΧΑΘΑΝΑΣΙΑ, ΑΝΤΙΨΥΧΟΠΑΝΝΥΧΙΑ, ΑΝΤΙΜΟΝΟΨΥΧΙΑ. Hereto is added a paraphrasticall interpretation of the answer of Apollo, consulted by Amelius, about Plotinus soul departed this life. The title-page of the 1647 edition is friendlier to the reader: A Platonick song of the soul, treating of, the life of the soul, her immortalitie, the sleep of the soul, the unitie of souls, and memorie after death. On Psychozoia, see Bullough (1931), xli–lxxiv; Crocker (2003), 17–27; Fouke (1997), 18–49; Hoyles (1971), 6–10; Jacob (1985); Jacob (1998), 27–37; Nicolson (1922); Staudenbaur (1986).
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More, ‘Notes upon Psychozoia’, in More (1647), 366–67.
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On nullibism, see now Reid (2012).
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This is how More recapitulates the emanative setting: ‘These three are Ahad, Aeon, Uranore: /Ahad these three in one doth counite. / What so is done on earth, the self-same power / (which is exert upon each mortall wight) / is joyntly from all these. But she that hight / fair Uranore, men also Psyche call’ (I, xxxix, 1–6).
- 10.
On Mnemon’s vicissitudes as an example of conversion narrative and identity change, see Bergemann (2016).
- 11.
More, ‘Notes upon Psychozoia’, in More (1647), 362.
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More, ‘Notes upon Psychozoia’, in More (1647), 357.
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More, ‘Notes upon Psychozoia’, in More (1647), 342.
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More, ‘The interpretation of the more unusuall names or words’, in More (1642), Q3r; More, ‘The interpretation generall’, in More (1647), 428. See also Phychathanasia Platonica, I, iii, xxiv, 1–4: ‘That last [Hyle] is nought but potentiality, / which in the lower creature causeth strife, / destruction by incompossibility / in some, as in the Forms Quantitative’.
- 18.
On early modern psychopannychism, see Hamilton (2001).
- 19.
See also Psychathanasia, II, iii, ix, 5–9: ‘Imagination / that takes its raise from sense so high ascent / can never reach, yet intellection / or higher gets, or at least hath some sent / of God, vaticinates, or is parturient’.
- 20.
- 21.
Psychathanasia, III,iii, ii. Cf. Dante’s notion of alta fantasia in Paradiso, 30, 142.
- 22.
Psychozoia, I, vi, 1; I, xv, 7; I, xvi, 8; II, v, 5; II, lxviii, 9; III, xx, 9.
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- 25.
Psychathanasia, I, ii, xvi, 4; I, ii, xxxv, 9; I, iv, iv, 3; II, i, i, 7; II, i, v, 8; II, i, vi, 3; II, i, xvi, 3; III, ii, xlvii, 4; III, iii, xvi, 9; III, iii, xlv, 1; III, iii, lxviii, 1.
- 26.
See, for instance, Robert Southey in Omniana: ‘The allegory in Spenser is the worst part of his poem, but the worst allegory in Spenser is far better than the best in Henry More’ (Southey and Coleridge 1812, II, 157).
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- 28.
On this particular tension in More’s philosophy, see Hutton (2013).
- 29.
On the verb ‘spie’, see Psychozoia, I, xvi, 2; I, xxxi, 1; xxxxi, 2.
- 30.
Spenser (1978 [1590, 1596, 1609]), 15–16.
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Giglioni, G. (2019). Plotinus in Verses: The Epic of Emanation in Henry More’s Psychozoia. In: Hedley, D., Leech, D. (eds) Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 222. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_5
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