Roberto Calasso - Ardor

But the relationship between his philosophy and cult — in the Mysteries or in any other form — concealed some more secrets. Socrates’ last words have been debated over the centuries — up until Nietzsche and Dumézil. “Crito, we owe a cockerel to Aesculapius. But pay the debt, don’t forget it.” Words in which he talks once again about debt. In their enigmatic exchange (“‘It shall be done,’ said Crito. ‘But have you anything else to say?’ The question remained unanswered”), these words have distracted attention from Socrates’ last gesture —which had no less weight.

When an official of the Eleven appeared with the hemlock, Socrates asked him a question, “looking up at him from below, as was his custom.” He wanted to know whether he was allowed to use some of the drink to pour a libation. “We prepare just enough for it to be drunk,” answered the official. Meaning: it is exactly the amount needed to kill. Socrates nods — and says that he will confine himself to offering a prayer to the gods “so that the change of residence from here hence may go well.”

The implications of the scene are endless. Deep down, Socrates wants to preserve the sacrificial practice, which required part of the drink to be offered to the gods before being drunk. An established custom that went beyond practices of faith and was respected at every symposium. It was the gesture of giving way to the invisible.

At the same time, by doing so, Socrates sought to offer a deadly poison to the gods. All that would be written in future centuries about him being corrosive and disruptive is anticipated and underlined by that gesture. And the official, by declaring that the potion had been prepared with the exact amount needed to kill him, showed that state law contravened the age-old rule requiring a part of any drink to be poured off, to be destroyed as an offering to the gods. “Speísas kaì euxámenos épie,” “When he had poured a libation and prayed, he drank,” says Xenophon, describing Cyrus. But the expression already appears in the Iliad. And every Homeric formula is firmly rooted in Greek life. The underlying principle: there is no prayer without libation, there is no libation without prayer. That was the most solid alliance between gesture and speech, in addressing the divine.

Thus the death sentence turned out to be murder. All that remained for Socrates was prayer, speech. But for the whole Athenian civilization it was assumed that speech and libation went together. One required the other. Whereas now there were only those spare words of hope for a peaceful “change of residence,” metoíkēsis , fitting for a philosopher. Whose final wish had been refused. A pious yet blasphemous desire: offering a libation, sharing a poison with the gods. When the official of the Eleven refused to grant Socrates’ request, the last wish of a man condemned to death, the link between gesture and word had, for the Greeks, been broken. From then on, the word stands alone, self-contained, orphaned and sovereign.

The whole of Indian tradition, in its various branches, is influenced by a doctrine of residue , which can be embodied in three words, corresponding to three successive stages: vāstu, ucchiṣṭa , and śeṣa. It has a key role as a doctrine, similar to that of ousía in classical Greece, in that it suggests the inadequacy of sacrifice (but instead of sacrifice we can also say: of any system ) in supporting the whole of existence. Something always remains outside — indeed, has to remain outside, because, if it were included in the system, it would disrupt it from within. On the other hand, the sacrifice or any system makes sense only if it extends to everything. A compromise therefore had to be established with what was left outside , what was left behind. So Rudra became Vāstavya, the ruler of the place and of the residue. This was the place the gods had left behind to get to the sky. But this place was the whole earth. So the whole earth was the residue.

The passage from one epoch to the other was described as being like an enormous fire, a funeral sacrifice in which the fire consumed the whole earth. In the end, all that remained was ash, floating on the waters. Once again, the residue. This ash took the form of a snake, called Śeṣa, Residue, and also Ananta, Infinite. What at the beginning had been thrown away turned out to be limitless, invincible. The snake arranged its coils into a soft bed so Viṣṇu could lie on it. The god slept — or meditated or dreamed. One day a surplus of sattva , that luminous thread woven within all that exists, shook him and woke him. And another world sprang forth while a long lotus stalk sprouted from his navel. At the top, a magnificent pink bud came into blossom. And resting on it was another god, Brahmā, who looked about him with his four faces and was puzzled, since “sitting at the center of that plant, he didn’t see the world.” Looking about in all directions he saw the vast lotus petals and then waters and sky, far away. The petals prevented Brahmā from seeing the other god, Viṣṇu, from whose navel the stalk had sprouted. Brahmā would one day drop down into that porous fiber to make a new world start.

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The question of residue arises when at last “by means of the sacrifice the gods rose up to the sky.” It could have been the happy ending to their troubled time on earth. But it was not to be so, for that moment marked the beginning of a convulsive, coruscating sequence that the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa recounts in its masterly style: “The god who rules the cattle was left behind here: so they call him Vāstavya, because he was left behind on the sacrificial site ( vāstu ). The gods continued to practice tapas in the same sacrifice through which they had ascended to the sky. Now the god who rules the cattle and had been left behind here saw [all this and said]: ‘I have been left behind. They are leaving me out of the sacrifice!’ He pursued them and with his [weapon] held high he rose up to the north, and the moment when this happened was that of the Sviṣṭakṛt [He-who-offers-well-the-sacrifice]. The gods said: ‘Don’t shoot!’ He said: ‘Don’t leave me out of the sacrifice! Leave an oblation aside for me!’ They replied: ‘Let it be so!’ He withdrew and didn’t shoot his weapon; and injured no one. The gods said to themselves: ‘All portions of the sacrificial food we have prepared have been offered. Let us try to find a way of putting aside an oblation for him!’ They said to the officiant: ‘Lay out the sacrificial plates in the proper succession; and fill them, making an extra portion, and make them once again fitting to be used; and then cut a portion for each.’ So the officiant lay out the sacrificial plates in the proper succession and filled them up, making an extra portion, and he made them once again fitting to be used and cut a portion for each. This is the reason he is called Vāstavya, because a residue ( vāstu ) is that part of the sacrifice that remains when the oblations have been made.”

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Sacrifice is a journey above all for the gods — the only way of reaching heaven. But who did the gods sacrifice to, when they rose up to heaven? The elements for the sacrifice had been obtained — desire, to remain in heaven; tapas , which the gods practiced; and the material for the oblation (ghee). But there was no one to sacrifice to. Heaven was apparently empty. On this point the texts, so complete in every other detail, are silent. One might suspect, then, that the sacrificial act was effective regardless of whom it was for. Indeed, one could arrive at the ultimate conclusion: that it was all the more effective because the recipient of the sacrifice was not there. One day, Kṛṣṇa taught a doctrine no less paradoxical, in the Bhagavad Gītā : of sacrifice where desire is eliminated. This is suggested as a path for mankind, a path that never reaches its destination and one therefore to be continually pursued. But the gods had set their minds on a journey that was to be taken only once. And so they had no wish to renounce desire. If anything, they were more concerned about something else: wiping out their tracks so that people couldn’t follow them: “They sucked the sap of the sacrifice, as bees suck honey; and after having drained and wiped out its traces with the sacrificial post, they hid themselves.” Spiteful gods. But they were equally spiteful toward one of their own. They had abandoned him on earth, at the very place of the sacrifice. He was a god they preferred not to name — and who is not indeed named anywhere in the whole passage except at the end, with a clever device in which his name appears as one of his epithets: Rudra, the Wild One. We can, thus, already see the strange impatience, tinged with fear and hostility, that the gods felt for two divine figures: firstly Prajāpati, the father, who in having intercourse with Uṣas had performed an act that was “an evil in the eyes of the gods,” and then Rudra, this strange god, whom the other gods want to be rid of, for mysterious reasons that are never explained, at the point when they become fully fledged gods, inhabitants of the sky. Even if the texts are more reticent over Rudra than over any other god, the essential points seem clear: the Devas want to get away from Rudra, they want to leave him behind at the place ( vāstu ) of the sacrifice, which is also the residue ( vāstu ) of the sacrifice. But once the gods have risen to the sky, the whole earth can be seen as a residue of the sacrifice. And this residue is powerful and can attack the gods. And so its lord, who is Rudra, retains the capacity to injure the gods, as he threatens to do by shooting his unnamed weapon, presumably an arrow. For the gods, therefore, it is not enough to perform an effective sacrifice. They have to reach a pact with Rudra, who will otherwise strike them. And a pact, for the gods, is always a new division of portions. This time a division has to be made that includes Rudra’s portion: la part du feu. And that portion, by definition, will be the excess , that surplus which the gods can forgo, so as to ward off Rudra’s attack.