Art is a sort of copying or imitating, because it is about the real world somehow, though I’m not sure about music, and it has a pattern and form, so it does change things, it’s sort of neater and clearer than life, but it shows us real things with great – force – with emotion – and through seeing and hearing and imagining – and it’s not sort of analysed, it’s all condensed into one, like a thing – and it’s exciting and sexy and – oh dear –

SOCRATES

No, no, you’ve done very well. You’ve talked most excellent nonsense and helped our argument along splendidly. You said art was like a realistic picture, then you said it was like a map, then you said it was like music where an emotional pattern enters into the body. And just now you spoke of seeing and hearing and imagining. Are all arts something to do with the senses?

CALLISTOS

Yes, I think so –

ACASTOS

But–

SOCRATES

Acastos has been waving his hand at me for some time, let us hear what he has to say.

ACASTOS

I agree that art is to do with the senses – I mean poetry has rhythms and sounds and pictures have shapes and colours, and the body is involved, I don’t mean like sex –

DEXIMENES

Why not?

ACASTOS

But really art is thinking. I mean, good art is deep wise thinking. And bad art is bad because it’s stupid or depraved thinking. Callistos said something about a ‘feeling–thought’. I don’t know what that is. But I’m sure good art tells us something. It isn’t just a dose of emotion. It’s like vision – insight – knowledge –

SOCRATES

Good, good, you are continuing Callistos’s splendid nonsense! Copying, maps, feeling, thinking. Yes, we use all these ideas to help each other out, as each one by itself seems helpless. But still the ideas remain obscure, they stand as it were in a ring holding hands and each idea tries to support the next but cannot support itself. Do you want to keep Callistos’s idea that art is imitation of the world?

ACASTOS

Yes, but not simple like a real man and a marble man, it’s indirect.

CALLISTOS

I said it was different!

ACASTOS

The artist puts thoughts in, he’s a judge of reality.

SOCRATES

A judge suggests justice – truth –

ACASTOS

Yes, the idea of copying and judging means truth and morality. Art has got to be true. Deximenes said art is trickery and fantasy and perhaps bad art is, but good art is wisdom and truth. Art is looking at the world and explaining it in a deep way and when we understand the explanation or even half understand it we feel oh – such joy – and I think that’s what beauty is –

DEXIMENES

What about beauty in nature? Nature doesn’t explain!