PLATO

I’m not sure –

ACASTOS

I like your picture – very much – though I can’t understand it.

DEXIMENES

Neither can he.

ACASTOS

But where does art come in? Of course I see that a lot of art is just shadows and illusions, images on a flickering screen –

DEXIMENES

The fantasy of the artist arousing the fantasy of the viewer.

ACASTOS

But what about good art?

PLATO

Is there any?

DEXIMENES

Oh come – !

ACASTOS

Yes, of course!

PLATO

Don’t we deceive ourselves? We want to worship artists because they save us trouble. They give the illusion of thinking great thoughts. But art is never far from fantasy, and the people who enjoy it degrade it even further! Art isn’t something up in heaven in an airtight box looked after by Apollo, it’s just words or pictures which people find attractive!

ACASTOS confused

But language does refer to a separate reality, and –

PLATO

That reality is separate is my point! Any language depends on some sense of true and false, but language is as good as its user. Most people only believe in themselves, they don’t really think other people exist, they don’t explore the real world, it’s too difficult and painful, and their language is weak and limited, just a network of illusions. And of course many high things can be hard to express, hard to say at all except to somebody else who understands. Language travels with the soul, it becomes purer through trying to tell truth. Reality is difficult to get to, we have to try –

DEXIMENES

You mean we ought to try. But can’t we separate truth and goodness?

PLATO

No. They’re interlocked. That’s just where art misleads us, it seems to remove the difficulty, it produces such a strong impression that we imagine we’ve arrived, that we’re in the presence of something real! Good art can be a kind of image or imitation of goodness. That’s how it deceives enlightened people and stops them from trying to become better. It’s a kind of sacrilege. If you believe in the gods, whatever they may be, you know that they make some absolute pure demand – the highest thing of all – it’s like when an athlete in the Games is strained almost beyond endurance, almost to dying. Art softens the demand of the gods. It puts an attractive veil over that final awful demand, that final transformation into goodness, the almost impossible last step which is what human life is really all about.

Pause.

DEXIMENES

That’s what you meant by the last exit.

MANTIAS

I’m all for religion but this is crazy.

CALLISTOS

I think Plato hates art because he’s envious. He’s envious of the great poets, he wishes he was one.

PLATO

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.