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Ogni dipintore dipigne sé.
Cosimo de' Medici1
The idea of renovatio would have been as meaningless to the Neoplatonists themselves as to those who later took up their standard if it had not been couched in highly rational terms-in other words, "remythicized." "Remythicization" is Hans Blumenberg's concept, and, drawing on his approach to myth, this essay will analyze the relation of charismatic authority to forms of remythicization in the work of Marsilio Ficino. Blumenberg claimed that myth, despite appearances to the contrary, is itself a form of rationality, "one of the modes of accomplishment of logos."2 For him, the boundary separating myth and logos was imaginary; myth, he said, is "a piece of high-carat 'work of logos.'"3 Throughout the essay I will rely on this notion and the idea that "remythicization" enforces rationality while leaving intact the structure and even the substance of myths. I would like to show how Ficino's remythicizations reflect what Blumenberg calls "the accomplishment of logos." My aim is not, however, to vindicate Blumenberg's thesis by a reading of Ficino. Rather, I will use the concept of remythicization to shed light on Ficino's manipulation of vatic myth. Both in his personal actions and through his texts, Ficino came to be seen as the central figure of the Neoplatonic revolution. His manipulation of vatic myth in particular helped him to create a back-formation of Orphic and Platonic charisma for his own impeccable Christian pedigree. Yet a curious paradox emerges: at the same time that he rejects the inspired poet's agency in producing poetry, Ficino manages to remythicize vatic myth and fashion for himself a vatic persona.
The divine or vatic element of poetry is a charismatic legacy handed down from antiquity.4 For early modern writers, however, the numinous properties of the early bearers of this charismatic legacy, who were known as the prisci theologi and prisci poetae, required the controlling harness of a remythicization. Apologists for poetry advanced familiar origin myths in order to inscribe themselves in the genealogical revival and resuscitation of auctores. Their practice enacted the functional duality common to remythicizations. It conflated rationalization and charismatic elements, "depleting," in Blumenberg's terms, "the power of unfamiliar and uncanny phenomena" with the aim not of reinvigorating the old myths, but of adapting...