Frances A. Yates

Gravira “Melanholija I” smatra se jednim od najznačajnijih dela renesansog majstora Albrehta Direra, ali o njenoj zagonetnoj ikonografiji i dalje ne postoji stručni konsenzus. Većina istraživača uverena je da se u osnovi vizuelne predstave nalazi učenje o četiri telesna fluida kao uzročnika četiri temperamenta (koleričnog, sangviničnog, flegmatičnog i melanholičnog), zbog čega predstojeći rad započinje istorijatom i kulturološkim implikacijama ove medicinske zablude. Zatim su prikazane četiri različite interpretacije “Melanholije I”. Prema prvoj, Direrova gravira portretiše frustriranog renesansnog genija koji se u traganju za savršenom lepotom suočava sa ograničenjima ljudske prirode. Prema drugoj, radi se o prikazu vizionarskog transa, pri čemu je glavna figura sjedinjena sa dobrim duhovima Saturna. Treća posmatra graviru kao direktnu ilustraciju Platonovog dijaloga “Hipija veći”. Četvrta, u stručnim krugovima još uvek apokrifna interpretacija tumači „Melanholiju I“ kao prikaz prve faze alhemijskog Magnum Opus-a.

This article analyzes new evidence from the marginalia to Ficino’s Plotinus manuscripts and offers a novel reading of Ficino’s “De Vita” 3. It settles scholarly disagreements concerning Paul O. Kristeller’s manuscript research and Frances Yates’s Hermetic thesis about “De Vita” 3, and reconsiders accepted conclusions regarding the centrality of Hermetic magic in Ficino’s philosophy. It demonstrates the origins and sources for “De Vita” 3 in Ficino’s reading of Plotinus’s explanations of prayer, and also reveals Iamblichus’s overlooked influence on Ficino: on the performative nature of philosophy in “De Vita” 3, and even on Ficino’s acknowledgment of the pseudonymity of the Hermetica.

This is the first complete edition and translation in any modern language of the Hermetic writings of Lodovico Lazzarelli, an Italian poet and mystical philosopher from the late 15th century. Lazzarelli’s seminal importance for the history of Renaissance Hermetism was recognized by Paul Oskar Kristeller as early as 1938. While Marsilio Ficino had famously translated the Corpus Hermeticum into Latin, it was Lazzarelli who had first translated its final three tracts, that had been absent from the manuscript used by Ficino. Furthermore, with his Crater Hermetis Lazzarelli had produced a jewel of Christian Hermetic literature, which still remains one of the purest and most impressive examples of the genre, in addition to being one of the very earliest testimonies of Christian kabbalah as well. In recognition of these facts, Lazzarelli was given a central role in the first scholarly collection of Renaissance Hermetic texts, published by Eugenio Garin and others in 1955. However, in the wake of Frances Yates’ Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964), which brought the Hermetic Tradition to the attention of a large international audience, Lazzarelli was marginalized and forgotten. Only since the mid-1980s, Italian scholars like Claudio Moreschini and Maria Paola Saci have began once more to call attention to the poet from San Severino, but again their influence has remained restricted to the circles of Italian specialists.

Academics tend to look on 'esoteric', 'occult' or 'magical' beliefs with contempt, but are usually ignorant about the religious and philosophical traditions to which these terms refer, or their relevance to intellectual history. Wouter Hanegraaff tells the neglected story of how intellectuals since the Renaissance have tried to come to terms with a cluster of 'pagan' ideas from late antiquity that challenged the foundations of biblical religion and Greek rationality. Expelled from the academy on the basis of Protestant and Enlightenment polemics, these traditions have come to be perceived as the Other by which academics define their identity to the present day. Hanegraaff grounds his discussion in a meticulous study of primary and secondary sources, taking the reader on an exciting intellectual voyage from the fifteenth century to the present day and asking what implications the forgotten history of exclusion has for established textbook narratives of religion, philosophy and science.

Dieser Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit der These von Frances Yates, dass Denker wie Giordano Bruno und Agrippa von Nettesheim angenommen haben, dass die Schriften des Hermes Trismegistos von dem Ägypter Thoth (Hermes) stammten. Es soll in diesem Aufsatz demonstriert werden, dass die Annahme von Yates sehr spekulativ war und zumindest nicht auf Agrippa zutrifft, da aus keiner seiner Schriften hervorgeht, dass er das Corpus Hermeticum für Texte des Ägypters Hermes selbst hielt. Er glaubte zwar an die Legende des Hermes, aber in dieser Abhandlung wird die Hypothese überprüft, dass Agrippa dem Neuplatoniker Jamblichus folgte, dass griechische Philosophen, die ungefähr in der Zeit von Jamblichus lebten, diese Schriften verfasst haben. Damit wäre die Hypothese von Frances Yates widerlegt, nach der Agrippa glaubte, das Corpus Hermeticum würde direkt vom Ägypter Thoth herrühren. Aus der "Occulta philosophia" geht hervor, dass Agrippa die Werke Jamblichus hervorragend kannte, doch Yates hielt es scheinbar für nicht relevant, dass Jamblichus darauf hingewiesen hatte, dass das Corpus Hermeticum von ägyptischen Priestern geschrieben wurden. Es war damit nicht Casaubon, der als Erster erkannt hat, dass das Corpus Hermeticum unmöglich auf eine ägyptische Legende mit dem Namen Hermes zurückgehen konnte. Casaubon dachte selbst nicht, dass er der Erste war, der den Irrtum aufdeckte, denn er berichtete ebenfalls von der Aussage von Jamblichus. Abstract This paper deals with the thesis of Frances Yates that philosophers as Giordano Bruno and Agrippa von Nettesheim thought that the Trismegistic books were directly written by the Egyptian Hermes (Thoth). This paper has the target to reveal that the speculative thesis of Yates was not correct at least for Agrippa von Nettesheim, because from nowhere in the publications of Agrippa follows that he thought that the Corpus Hermeticum came directly from Egyptian Hermes. Agrippa thought that the legend of Hermes is true, however, we want to review the hypothesis that it is more likely that Agrippa followed the neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus that Greek philosophers who lived during life time of Jamblichus authored the books. From that perspective the hypothesis of Yates would be contradicted that Agrippa assumed that the Corpus Hermeticum came directly from the Egyptian Hermes. From the Occulta philosophia results that Agrippa knew the works of Iamblichus very well. However, Yates did not think it is relevant that Iamblichus already said that the Corpus Hermeticum was authored by Egyptian priests. Casaubon was not the first author who suggested that the Corpus Hermeticum did not originate from the Egyptian legend Hermes. Casaubon also did not think that he was the first who revealed the error, because he also mentioned the utterance of Iamblichus.

Abstract: In Italy the topic of realism has finally returned to prominence in
current literary debate, after the long postmodern phase in which both narrative
production and discussions in literary criticism were polarised by slogans
like ‘the self-referentiality of the literary text’ or ‘literature as play’. We can
now take renewed interest in the question of whether references to reality are
present even in works, like Le città invisibili (that have traditionally been interpreted
under the sign of literary self-referentiality and literature as play), and
we can ask what role these play in the text. The first part of the paper will
examine the critical function of the novel’s references to the tradition of literary
utopias, in which a classic study by Frances Yates is taken to be a – hitherto
unnoticed – source of textual and visual inspiration for Calvino. The second
part will analyse a number of passages to show how, in the combinatory play,
divergences from the literary utopian tradition function as a dialectical process
through which the reader is provoked to take a critical look at contemporary
urban reality and its unsolved social problems.