Lecture
Forum Antiquum Lecture: Plato’s winged chariot in Coetzee’s Jesus Trilogy: Literature’s journey toward transcendence
- Date
- Thursday 27 February 2025
- Time
- Address
-
Herta Mohr
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- 0.02
Coetzee’s Jesus Trilogy is built on analogy and dialogue with multifarious texts, viz. the Gospels, The Brothers Karamazov, Don Quixote, and Plato’s dialogues. Despite noting this complex intertextual network, scholars and reviewers have only briefly mentioned Coetzee’s debt to Plato without unpacking the Phaedrus’ symbolic, thematic, and philosophical contribution to the overall meaning of the novels, which, as I illustrate, proves fundamental to their understanding. I submit how the trilogy is, in its entirety, a re-reading of the Phaedrus’ eschatological myth, whose implications for human nature form a fil rouge across the three novels.
At a micro-level, the trilogy’s characters repeatedly reference Plato’s image of the soul as a winged chariot and integrate it into their stories. Through it and by endlessly returning to the themes of memory of a previous life, recollection, and longing, they engage in a constant debate on reason and passion, post-mortem and pre-natal existence, human desire, and its relationship with transcendence.
At a macro-level, the plot mirrors and expands this debate, as each character embodies their own stance on reason, passion, and desire. The questions they pose through their reinterpretations of the winged chariot myth, however, remain unanswered: Coetzee alerts us to the problems of desire and human longing for ‘an elsewhere’ but does not attempt to solve them. Rather, he lets his readers choose for themselves how to interpret the deeds of David, a Christological protagonist who resists a world deprived of transcendence.
Finally, I discuss how Coetzee’s engagement with the Phaedrus’ eschatological myth provokes a broader reflection on literature’s role in conjuring up another dimension capable of reconfiguring the ‘here-and-now’. By re-reading the Phaedrus within the trilogy’s dense intertextual network and evoking Plato’s choice to address human desire and its connection with transcendence through myth rather than dialectic, Coetzee reopens Plato’s inquiry: are myths serious or mere play? Fiction, truth, or something in between? Once again, it is for his readers to decide.
Caterina Fossi earned her bachelor’s degree in Classics from the University of Milan and her (research) master’s degree in Classics and Ancient Civilisations from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She obtained her PhD in Ancient Greek Literature at the Amsterdam Centre for Ancient Studies and Archaeology (ACASA) at the University of Amsterdam. Her doctoral project was funded by the Dutch gravitation grant Anchoring Innovation and focused on the linguistic and narrative devices and the dynamics of appropriation of traditional mythological material that characterise Plato’s eschatological myths. Caterina’s research interests centre on linguistic, narratological, and cognitive approaches to ancient Greek literature and philosophy.