Xaire!
Plato's Symposium marks a departure in both theme and
structure from the exploration of the Socratic method of dialectics common to
the previous dialogues. It comes as a particular surprise, albeit a very
pleasant one, that Plato should write so extensively on the theme of love, such
an unusual work coming from someone who would strictly limit or do away with
poetry in his ideal image of a utopian Republic.
But perhaps its purpose is dual, not only to showcase some
of the ideas and attitudes towards sexual love, male and otherwise in 5th
Century Athens and in the process provide a vehicle to introduce a beginners
module as it were to his pet Theory of Forms,
with the ever brilliant and engaging Socrates as posthumous spokesman,
but also to create a personal and impassioned yet gentle homage to his greatest
hero and to offer much by way of apology for one of the greatest thinkers the
west has ever produced.
I feel compelled to say this because, more than any other
work of his, the Symposium is replete with warmth, wit and humour as well as
very touching scenes of loving friendship between males in company that make
for a very endearing poignant and inspiring work, one that is still resonating
with us today as a work of so many facets for so short a piece of writing. In
this short work we go on a journey from bland and flat rhetoric to the very
sublime heights of the purpose of life itself...against a backdrop of very
human and life-like characters drinking and enjoying an evening of stimulating
sublime conversation as well as some fine teasing and ribaldry in true Athenian,
even Aristophanian fashion. There is much of the sublime and ridiculous in the
work, both quite admirable qualities when expertly mixed in the wine bowl!
I was going to write in some detail about each of the
speeches but I have decided in the interests of time and the approaching end of
the year to refer in passing to our very stimulating discussion of them when we
last met. The thing that strikes me in particular about this work is that it
comes across strongly as Plato’s attempt to leave both an homage and an apology
for Socrates and give the lie to his accusers picture of him as a corrupter of
youth and one who was impious and worshipped other gods. Perhaps it was this
endearing love of his hero that caused Plato to embark on such an unusually
dramatic and vivid piece of writing in the first place. I can also recommend
Benjamin Jowett’s (Master of Balliol and translator of the Dialogues of Plato
in five volumes for the Oxford University Press 3rd Edition 1892) analysis and
introduction to the Symposium, which although dated, is remarkable for its very
even handed and almost prescient treatment of the issues throughout the
dialogue.
I would also like to mention a couple of the things in the text
itself that struck me as particularly interesting. One of these is the framing
narrative at the start of the work where an unknown person has heard of the
discourse in praise of love by Socrates at the celebratory dinner held in
honour of Agathon and wanting to hear the account more accurately asks
Apollodorus to recount it to him.
The story or rather action of the Symposium is buried
Russian doll-like inside other times and the accounts and retellings of
different voices at different times - it’s almost a precursor of the technique
which features heavily in later masterpieces of narrative such as The Thousand
and One Nights. Further hints at later Arab literary usage or at least
inspiration arise from the concept of the lover and the beloved, in Pausanias’
speech and in Alcibiades speech on the effect of Socrates upon him and by
extension all men fortunate enough to really hear what he is saying. I’m
thinking of works of Sufi literature such as the Mantiq-ut-Tayr (c. 1177) of
Attar of Nishapur in which several concepts of Platonic theory of Forms as
applied to love and desire are mirrored and expanded upon. Another is the theme
of role reversal, firstly in the passage dealing with Socrates and Diotima,
possibly the most mysterious and fascinating of all of the sequences in the
Symposium, where Socrates become the pupil who is subjected to his own
dialectic method and found to know next to nothing about love and ripe for
instruction at the feet of Diotima, seeress, wise woman and teacher of the ways
of love.
Secondly where Alcibiades turns from the pursued, supremely confident
in his sexual allure, and is transformed into the maddened pursuer, trying
everything he can to get Socrates to have sex with him - finally realising that
his would-be conquest is entirely on another plane, with a concept of love and
the real love of wisdom that will hurl him into a deeper frenzy and eventually blow
his mind altogether.
What Socrates offers is the higher love beyond all base or
mere physical loves and the key to the mysteries of existence and the soul
itself. Its Plato’s theory of Forms for sure, but no dry exegesis, rather a
scintillating, radiant and maddening piece of inspiration which has
reverberated down the years and across continents, its slim volume containing a
bewildering array of ideas, expertly woven with some fine and heart-warming
dramatic scenes, as vivid now as when they were first composed. After such an
inspiring work where can we possibly go next? Homer must be the only answer!
Euge and Happy Saturnalia 2015
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