Ship of Fools
a strong allegory can persist through millennia
Dear word explorer,
Recently, in an email to a few friends, I made the observation about current events: ‘it’s like a carousel that's spinning too fast with a hideous clown music accompaniment, so I try to keep my gaze fixed on one point and wear noise cancelling headphones!’
I hope you’re not reeling and queasy at the moment, but if you are, I sympathise!
There were other aspects I wanted to touch upon in last week’s missive, ‘Fools’, but I decided to stay with the light-hearted jester and avoid any tonal shifts.
One of the digressions I excised is the notable allegory1 known as the Ship of Fools. This originates from Plato’s philosophical treatise, The Republic (circa 375 BCE), in which he outlined an ideal society. In one section he uses a ship as a metaphor for the state, which is steered by a captain and various crew members.
If you’re looking for a proposal about an egalitarian government you’ll need to search elsewhere, since Plato was no fan of democracy2. Plato imagined the chaos of a ship steered by a captain ill-equipped for his job, who is fending off a duplicitous crew unscrupulously striving for the top position.
Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better. The sailors are quarrelling with one another about the steering — every one is of opinion that he has a right to steer, though he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and will further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces any one who says the contrary. They throng about the captain, begging and praying him to commit the helm to them; and if at any time they do not prevail, but others are preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard, and having first chained up the noble captain's senses with drink or some narcotic drug, they mutiny and take possession of the ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating and drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such a manner as might be expected of them.
Plato, The Republic, book VI, translated by Benjamin Jowett.
In this example Plato imagines a shipload of moustache-twirling villains committing foul deeds, a demonstration of the worst excesses of an Empire in decline, but sadly this pantomime has regular comebacks on the world stage.
Millennia later, in the midst of huge ideological and social shifts, this allegory was developed by German satirist, Sebastian Brant, who published the book, Ship of Fools (Das Narrenschiff) in 1494. Written in the common language of ordinary people, it became an international bestseller, and was translated into French, Latin, Flemish, Dutch and English by 1507.
Ship of Fools is a moralistic poem divided into 112 sections, dictated by the fictional character of Saint Grobian, the patron saint of grubby, vulgar people.3 Each piece satirises a flaw, and is accompanied by a woodcut; in some editions the art was by Albrecht Dürer. The author assumes the mantle of an invented comedian in order to poke light fun at the stereotypical people who move among us. This riff on Plato’s metaphor reminds us: plus ça change!
The ship carries people to the ‘fool’s paradise’ of Narragonia. This includes a corrupt judge, a drunkard, and a untrained physician, as well as lust, slothfulness and procrastination. The book also takes potshots at the clergy (Brant was a Catholic), and this was read with delighted relish by those involved in the religious conflicts of the era.
At one point we are told:
A fool is he who climbs on high
And shows his shame to every eye,
He hopes to greater heights to go
But fortune’s wheel he doesn’t know.
All things that venture giddy flight
Will tumble down from greatest height.Ship of Fools, version by Professor Edwin H. Zeydel, Dover Publications, 1962.
Like the Fool, the Wheel of Fortune has a strong, well-established iconography and is another Major Arcana in the standard Tarot deck (number 10). It represents good luck, but also carries a reminder that cycles change. The shameless, materialistic clown of the Ship of Fools (a cynical evolution of the light-hearted optimist at the beginning of the Tarot) will be spun off the spokes eventually.
I was struck by the strong similarities of many of the Ship of Fools woodcuts to Tarot cards, and discovered I was not the only person to make that association. Brian Williams created the Ship of Fools tarot deck in 2002, using the original artwork from 1494 and reworking pieces to fit with a 78 card set.
This metaphoric vessel has staying power, but it took several more centuries for another version to emerge.
Katherine Anne Porter (1890 – 1980) was an American author who hobnobbed with political radicals and the NY literary intelligentsia from the 1920-40s. She was an acclaimed short story writer, best known for her collections, Flowering Judas (1930), Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939) and The Leaning Tower (1944).
In 1941 she began writing Ship of Fools, partly inspired by a 1931 ocean voyage she took from Veracruz, Mexico to Bremerhaven, Germany, funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship. Long anticipated, the novel took over twenty years to complete, and it was the only book she ever wrote. It was a fantastic success upon publication in 1962 (it was well and badly reviewed which is typical of runaway hits) and was quickly optioned as a movie.
The 1965 black and white film, directed by Stanley Kramer from a screenplay by Abby Mann, featured an astonishing all-star cast including Vivien Leigh in her last film role. Set on an ageing passenger ship in 1933, moving between Veracruz Mexico and Bremerhaven, Germany, the film examines the tensions of the era through the personal dilemmas and prejudices simmering in an array of characters cloistered together upon the high seas.
It was nominated for eight Academy Awards in 1966, and won for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Ernest Laszlo) and Best Art Direction, Black-and-White (Robert Clatworthy).4
This trailer for the film is almost a mini-documentary:
Since the Porter book and film adaptation, there have been over a dozen songs with this title, a video game, several novels, and a sculpture in Nuremberg.
The Ship of Fools continues to sail in modern waters.
Does it serve as a warning or an amusing diversion?
It depends on your sense of humour. And your proximity to the life boat.
Like many ‘rationalists’, Plato’s intellectual exercise hypothesised an ideal society, but was concerned primarily with a new order for the expert ruling class — which would be composed of astute philosophers, just like Plato! Those who were determined by the wise to have baser qualities (workers, slaves, and most women by default) would be expected to follow the rule of their superior elites. The pipe dreams of rational men rarely take into account the spectrum of humanity and its many messy aspects. In a twist of fate, Plato was enslaved at a later point. He escaped through pure luck: at the slave market an admirer recognised him and purchased Plato’s freedom.
Charles Dickens would be jealous of that moniker.
It was the last year there were separate categories for black-and-white and colour cinematography. The 1966 Academy Awards honoured an astonishing year of hits that included Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Doctor Zhivago, The Sound of Music, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and A Patch of Blue.
That tarot deck looks beautiful! But no one needs another deck, right? 😏