The Boethius Project

Consolation of Philosophy, I

We join “the prisoner,” as Boethius calls himself, in his prison cell, awaiting execution. As he bemoans his fate, the Muses of Poetry sing tunes of despair and push him further and further to the brink. That’s when something extraordinary happens: the prisoner senses someone standing over him as he writes. This is Lady Philosophy, and she has come to guide him home.

  • Here’s my draft translation (work in progress by Dr. SJ Murray) of the opening in Book 1, meter 1 (or 1.m1) — Boethius alternates sections of verse and prose. Here, he opens on an all-time low. Many of us have been there, those of us who have can only wish others have not and will not. He’s imprisoned, overwhelmed with grief, and the Muses of poetry amplify his suffering by feeding him words that drive him to wallow in it and inch closer to utter despair. His demise from the world of public affairs at the court of Theodoric in the Western Roman Empire has left him empty, exhausted, frail. Amidst the suffering there’s a glimmer of hope: he recalls a lesson, buried in a lamentation. That if his friends uplifted him as happy and successful, at the height of his influence, power, and wealth, he now realizes that his feet were never firmly planted on solid ground. Tomorrow, I’ll pick up on Book 1, prose 1 (1.p1) and continue the journey through 1500 years of wisdom. For those interested, I’m putting together a large, open-access digital reading project on the Consolation over the next few years, on the heels of producing a feature documentary for public media that we’ve begun editing. But at the core of all these initiatives is a return to the simplicity of reading the Consolation.

Miniature from Boethius, Consolation de philosophie, Coëtivy Masters (Henri de Vulcop?) from The Getty Museum

  • Ever felt like the world was shifting like quicksand underneath your feet? After the opening verses of the Consolation, composed with his companions the Muses, Boethius feels a presence towering over him: Lady Philosophy. She casts the Muses out, explaining that her own Muses will now tend to the prisoner and heal him. Boethius is stunned. Who is this woman with her eyes ablaze, who seems so tall at times that her head scrapes the sky? But at others seems to shrink to the height of a normal human being? She cannot be mistaken as someone of our own time. Her dress is timeless, but people have ripped it to shreds trying to snatch whatever little bit they might carry off… and in the bottom border is engraved the Greek letter Pi, for “practice,” and above, the letter theta, for “theory.” A ladder runs between the two, symbolizing the steps we must take to make the ascent. She seems familiar to Boethius — and indeed she tells the Muses that she nourished him once in his youth, that’s why she has a stake in this and won’t allow him to forget all her teachings. But he has forgotten her. Perhaps, she points out, he has forgotten himself as well. She sits down beside him and dries his eyes with the fabric of her dress. And so the conversation begins.

Belish from Adobe Stock

  • After she dries Boethius’s tears with the hem of her dress, Lady Philosophy introduces a new theme of poetry into the discussion in Book 1 meter 2. This is not the song of despair the Muses of Poetry kindled in him when the story began. Rather, she sings an ode to everything Boethius has lost, bringing together not only his ability to think through questions of philosophy, but especially how he has lost sight of everything the natural sciences taught him. Did Boethius not once contemplate the stars and the moon? Did he not seek out Nature’s great secrets? Understand the seasons and see through the fabric of the universe until he grasped the pulse at the heart of creation itself? Now, however, he drowns in the depths, thrashing around in the waves as the storm of life wreak havoc on him. Those eyes he once turned to the heavens, discerning the great Maker behind such beauty? Now, they turn only to the cold, hard ground, having lost the ability to look up. This is the first ill Lady Philosophy must address.

Philosophy Presenting the Seven Liberal Arts to Boethius, Coëtivy Master (Henri de Vulcan?) from The Getty Museum

  • Have you ever forgotten who you are and what you stand for, only to have something or someone remind you? This is the role Lady Philosophy takes in Book 1 Prose 2 of the Consolation. After singing her poem, she tells Boethius “it is time for treatment,” and “not for complaining.” She reminds him that she nurtured him in his youth and taught him important lessons to prepare him to face adversity, even death… and that he has forgotten them, and even himself. When he is speechless, she reassures him: he is not in danger but suffers from the sickness of lethargy. He will recover, and now she must help him recover clarity of thought and vision. It’s at this moment (not earlier, as I hinted in my post yesterday), that she wipes the tears from his eyes with her robe. A great reminder that lessons can be firm, but also nurturing, and that in our moment of greatest need, only truth can set us truly free. 

oraziopuccio from Adobe Stock

  • This poem marks the transition away from darkness and night, from menacing north winds and a sky filled with rain clouds that darken the world and give the illusion of night — even though the stars have not yet appeared. A fresh gust of wind blows through the prisoner’s mind and dissipates the darkness and with it, the confusion in his mind. Philosophy restores Boethius’s sight (although he still has a long way to go!) and the poem culminates in the image of the dazzling sun, high in the sky, that illuminates the world and dazzles our gaze.

The Death of Seneca by Jean Guillaume Moitte from The Met Museum

  • Have you ever been persecuted for standing up for the truth, even in a small way? Has this made you wonder if it’s better to keep your head down, remain quiet, and just let the truth slip by? Maybe the real question we should and could be asking is: if we won’t, as human beings, risk everything to uphold Truth, then what actuall is worth fighting for? Could the lack of integrity in this world have something to do with the way we turn away from truth so readily, leaving it to anyone but us to champion? Maybe because it’s easier to get ahead that way. Maybe it helps us avoid suffering? These are the kinds of questions Lady Philosophy introduces in Book 1, prose 3. 

    After assuring Boethius that she’d never abandon anyone to false accusations, she reminds him that she has always been there with those who have stood up for Truth. Some examples she cites include Socrates, Plato’s teacher who drank hemlock, Cicero, whose head and hands were cut off and nailed on public display in Rome: speak out—write against me, Marc Anthony, and you, too will meet such a fate. Or Seneca, who falls out of favor with Nero and commits suicide…  a tragic scene  captured  by  the emotional  art of Jean Guillaume Moitte  (seen  here)  and  so  many  other  artists. 

    Iniquity  abounds  in  this  world,  she  notes.  We  should  not  be  surprised  by  it.  The  wicked  seem  powerful,  and  although  they  are  many,  we  must  remember  that  they  have  no  principles  to  lead  them :  they’re  pushed  and  pulled  along  by  whim  only  (Aristotle’s  passions),  and  wreck  their  rational  faculty  in  the  service  of  base  ends.  An  important  conversation,  to  which  Philosophy  will  return ,  with  Boethius,  in  Book  4.  

    Perhaps  most  notably,  Philsophy  tells  the  prisoner:  “Should  I  not  help  you  with  that  burden  you  bear  in  no  small  measure  because  of  my  teachings  and  the  hatred  of  my  name?”  If  the  words  sound  familiar,  it’s  because  they  are.  They  loudly  echo  Matthew  21-22:  “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rise against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of My name, but the one who perseveres to the end will be saved.”

    All  of  this  begs  more  questioning…  to  what  extent  were  the  accusations  against  Boethius  “false”  and  what  does  that  even  mean?  Did  he  never write  against  Theoderic  to  the  emperor  in  the  East?  Or,  in  writing  to  uphold  orthodox  Nicene  Christianity,  was  he  pursuing  truth,  and  speaking  out  against  falsehood,  so  that  he  was  not  betraying  the  true  order  of  creation  itself,  but  only  a  flawed  model  of  earthly  governance?  Food  for  thought.

Fortune by Sebald Beham from the National Gallery of Art

  • What does Buc-ee’s have to do with Boethius, Fortune and her wheel? In some ways not much other than the fact I’m writing this on the way back to Austin after class today, and getting some gas. But step inside a Buc-ee’s and you’ll encounter as far as the eye stretches every form of snack reward and knick-knack you might be convinced you really do need at this one moment in time. It calls for… RESTRAINT. And that’s what this poem is all about. If we are not masters of our own minds and lives, and turn them over to the rise and fall of Fortune’s wheel, what do we really have at all in this life? How do we “have a life in proper order, prepared for good fortune and bad”? Answering that question is what the Consolation is going to be about, at its core. Philosophy is going to coach us through restraint… so that we don’t succumb to all the honors and materials goods of the Buc-ee’s of life, only to find out they can’t bring long term happiness. (For those not introduced to Buc-ee’s yet, just visit when you’re next in Texas. People time their gas purchases to make it there.)

Initial V: The Assumption of the Virgin (Ms. 44/Ludwig VI 5 (92.MH.22), p. 115) from The Getty Museum

  • Why did the donkey play the harp? And how are we humans all too often like asses who fail to recognize our own ability to hear the music of the spheres?

    At the beginning of this prose section, Lady Philosophy asks the prisoner: Do you understand what I’m saying? Is it sinking in? Or are you a donkey hearing a lyre (or harp — but not a “lute” as in some mistranslations)? Why are you still weeping?

    The motif of a donkey playing a lyre became a popular motif in medieval sculpture and art. We find it also referenced by authors like Dante, Chaucer, and even later by Erasmus and Shakespeare—who can forget Bottom transformed into “an ass”? All of these likely stem from Boethius passing along an Ancient Greek proverb to the Middle Ages: “the ass playing the lyre.” It survived also in the Latin fable by Phaedrus, translated from Aesop’s Greek, and the motif likely stems back much further to Mesopotamia. (Illustrations on an ancient Sumerian lyre in fact depict a donkey strumming a lyre.)

    Lady Philosophy isn’t calling Boethius stupid here. The imagery goes much deeper. In the Aesopian fable, the donkey finds a lyre in a field, strums it, and finds the sounds to be beautiful. But then he reminds himself that he’s just a donkey. So what does he know of these kinds of questions? (Such as what beauty is.) Like the donkey, we all have ears. How can we use them to hear beyond worldly music? How can we tune them into more?

    If the songs Lady Philosophy has been singing are to do their job, the prisoner must reactivate his reason and hear beyond the physical world. Animals hear sounds, but Lady Philosophy is asking Boethius (and us) to employ a deeper dimension of hearing: to have “ears to hear” beyond mere physical reality. To return to contemplating the order of creation, and to listen to the music of the spheres. Not only with our earthly ears, but with the ears of our intellect. The very thing that, for Aristotle, separates us from other animals.

Thetis dompelt Achilles onder in de Styx, Franz Ertinger, after Paul Rubens from the Rijksmuseum

  • Have you ever held unshared pain in your heart? If so, you know how much it might destroy you… in Book 1, prose 4 of the Consolation of Philosophy, right after Philosophy alludes to the Greek saying (that became a widespread Christian metaphor) about the donkey playing the harp, she reminds him: “Homer tells us this, ‘Speak. Don’t hold it buried in your heart.’” To receive Philosophy’s medicine, the prisoner must admit his ill(ness). The intertextual reference here is powerful: it’s more than a line to adorn the text. This refers to Book 1 of Homer’s Iliad, when Achilles calls out in pain to his mother, Thetis, and asks for her to intervene for him in the counsel of the gods after Agamemnon takes Briseis away. Like Thetis, Lady Philosophy invokes through this reference what she is about to say next: that many who follow philosophy and seek truth encounter suffering and even death. “Ah to a cruel fate I bore you,” says Thetis (in my mentor Bob Fagles’ translation). “Doomed to a short life, you have so little time. And not only short, now, but filled with heartbreak too.” A quiet and subtle allusion to Philosophy’s ability to “suffer with,” and demonstrate “sympathy” as the Greek etymology of our English word reflects. It’s also the same verbal origin (pathein) for Christ’s “passion.” Before the prisoner accused her, for a moment, of leading him down the path of his own doom, Philosophy has already spoken the truth over him. A moving moment, for those willing to pause and reflect on Boethius’s source. Not just the line, but the broader context. Will Boethius’s rage and anguish be his undoing, as it will for Homer’s Achilles? We hope not. Even though the prisoner will no doubt, like his Greek predecessor, face death soon.

Four Landscapes, Representing the Four Seasons, Jacques-Guillaume van Blarenberghe from the Rijksmuseum

  • Are you ever frustrated seeing wicked people get ahead? So is Boethius. 

    In his Consolation, Book 1, meter 5, the prisoner sings a lengthy lament. He recognizes the ordering power of God over the whole of Nature: the cycle of the seasons, the movement of the heavens… not even the winds, he says, are random. Everything follows God’s command. Why, then, make human beings alone of all creation free to choose? Free to make their own decisions? It seems that Nature continues in full harmony, whereas amongst humans, “the innocent suffer” and “wicked men sit upon thrones” playing their games and toppling systems of governance whenever they fancy. He entreats God: look down on us! Bring order to our human chaos! Why, when you are so powerful, are you leaving us to make our own mess?

    Here, Boethius introduces another key theme of the Consolation: free will. How will Lady Philosophy respond?

Boèce, De Consolatione Philosophiae, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Néerlandais 1 fol. 12v.

  • After the prisoner’s lengthy lamentation, Lady Philosophy is not impressed. Yes, he has been wrongly accused. And talk of his so-called crimes are everywhere. (Rumors work like that, even before social media, as Boethius and his successors including Chaucer knew well! They run rampant.) Yes, he’s right; they’re not meeting in a cozy library anymore. There are no comfy chairs. But if his body is imprisoned, that doesn’t mean he has to imprison his mind and soul as well. A tough lesson, but a good one: “you are the cause of your own torments.” This is a message drawn from the Stoics; but it’s also more than that. She explains to him that it’s not the library itself that’s important. It’s not the books. (As much as some of us may enjoy the pleasure of holding an old book, like a slice of history in our hands.) Lady Philosophy wants him to remember that it’s what is IN the books that matters. The words that forge our character and cultivate moral formation. The words on the page are but potential, waiting to be read and then integrated into our own life experiences and decision-making. That’s when they become fully actualized: when we live out the lessons in the books, by emulating the good examples and avoiding the bad. That’s what the great conversation across time and space is all about. I like to call it “looking back to grow forward.” The medievals called it… translatio. (The Latin word from which our modern English “translation” derives.) Consuming the knowledge in books and making it our own, to call up in times of trouble for example is, for Lady Philosophy, part of investigating what it means to be human is all about. And yes: it’s one reason why the humanities matter more than ever. Because, like the prisoner, we’re prone to forgetting that message — and in the process, ourselves.

Wheat Reaper with Hat, Seen from Behind, Vincent Van Gogh from the Rijksmuseum

  • What does Van Gogh have to do with Boethius? 

    Here, Boethius picks up the theme of sowing on fertile ground: in the right place, at the right time. This, too, is what Van Gogh captures in his sketch, Wheat Reaper with Hat, Seen from Behind. If we don’t plant at the right time, Philosophy reminds us, then the seed won’t flourish and we must wander instead hungry about the woods searching for bitter acorns. “For God has marked out the year’s order.” And “whoever defies Nature’s laws will come to ruin and regret his folly.” So too is it with the planting of our minds with the ideas contained in the books of libraries—an idea she set up in the preceding section. Sowing also involves a season of waiting and of tending the field so that it yields crop. Whatever season you’re in right now, it has a purpose. Don’t rush it. Align with the greater sense of order and of creation.

The Sermon on the Mount by Jan Brueghel the Elder from The Getty Museum

  • “But are you not something more?” asks Philosophy. First, she asks: “are you a man?” And then, “if so, what is a man?” The prisoner offers up an Aristotelian response: are you asking me if I believe that man is a mortal and rational animal? This, to be fair, seems like the right kind of answer to give to Philosophy herself. But… she’s not impressed. She pauses. (Always watch out for when Philosophy takes a breather!) And then, the mic drop question: “But you are not something more?” There it is. That moment when Philosophy herself reminds the prisoner that, unless we believe in divine reason, the things unfolding in the world can seem like a string of random events. But they’re not. The same ordering and careful instrumentation that Boethius observes in the seasons governs the affairs of men, even if it’s hard sometimes to see. And because of his illness, that she will now begin to cure, he has trouble seeing clearly. His mind is foggy. But there’s still a spark within, and, operating in consort with “the author of all health,” she will help him find his way back towards the “shining truth.” Out of darkness and into light.

Dante Perdu, Gustave Doré from Picryl

  • When all seems lost and dark, are the stars still there? Boethius and Dante both have a great deal to say about this, and that’s no coincidence. Their wisdom remains relevant to us today… not only in theory, but also in practice.

    To end Book 1, Philosophy shares another poem (or song). She reminds us that the darkness of clouds hides the stars, but we have to read through the letters and reveal the meaning, lurking beneath the veil: the stars are still there. They’re just hidden. Is the water of the sea not clear like glass, so that on some days you can see through it as if to the depths? And yet sometimes it seems opaque, whipped up by a storm. If the winds are strong enough, the ocean whips up mud, making it even murkier. All of these images are metaphors, or images, to help the prisoner understand how his mind is clouded. And blocked. He’s like Dante, lost in a dark wood, who cannot see the stars because of the trees and because of his own fears and blockage that prevents him from looking up. And yet, the stars are still there in the night sky. “The right road awaits you still.” At the end of the day, we’re never fully lost, or abandoned, in a dark wood, although it sure can feel that way. To find our way out, Philosophy invites us to look deep inside to see the stars with our mind’s eye. Plus, we can always benefit from the help of our friends and guides, like Philosophy and Virgil. Maybe the Divine Comedy is, in part, a “Consolation of Literature.”

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