Plato's "The Symposium" & Sappho's poetry: pre-class thoughts

Anselm Feuerbach - Plato's Symposium - 1869

Both Sappho's poems and Plato's The Symposium explore the subject of Love.  Through their perspectives, we see perfect examples of the tension between Reason and Passion. Not surprisingly, in Plato attacks the subject of love like an argument.  Like in Phaedrus, The Symposium takes place in an informal setting: a gathering of friends over wine.  Socrates' position on love is foreshadowed as he cautions the other guests not to drink to the point of becoming drunk - by imbibing only a modest amount, they will be able to enjoy themselves while still staying alert enough to have a good conversation; in essence, by indulging moderately, they will be able to have the best of all experiences, and satisfy both mind and body.

 One by one, the guests give a speech that analyses or praises love.

Phaedrus (the title character of another of Plato's texts on love, Phaedrus), highlights love's use in maintaining social order and bringing out the best in a man (as one does not want to be shamed in the eyes of their loved one), and says "even the gods value the commitment and courage that come from love" (175d).  Phaedrus is the first to introduce the idea of a distinct demarcation between a "lover" (romantic love) and a "boyfriend" (companion love).

Pausanias further deconstructs the idea of love, dividing it into "common love" and "heavenly love", each led by a different aspect of Aphrodite: the young, feminine version, and the older, masculine version.  Pausanias describes common love as "the kind of love that inferior people feel", wherein "those inferior people" are people who are attracted to women and young boys, and to "bodies rather than minds" (181b)).  He sees heavenly love, on the other hand, as between two men, "mature enough to lead a fully shared life" (181d).  Pausanias goes on to further define the "right" way to love, reinforcing the many reasons that a object of love should be  (such as manipulation and social standing).  He sees any relationship other than between equals as "willing slavery", and the only way that this arrangement is acceptable is in a mentorship arrangement in order for the youth to gain the virtue of education and wisdom.

Eryxmachus sees love from a medical point of view, and  further clinicalises it. He affirms the concept of "good" and "bad" love, and links bad love to natural disasters, good love to bountiful harvests. Aristophanes tells an origin story which explains the longing that one feels for another in mythological terms: at one time the human race was made of three genders (male, female and androgen) , and each gender was torn into two by the gods, leaving us to yearn for our other halves. Agathon reminds his companions that they should refocus their appreciation from the act, or gift of romantic love, and onto the God of Love instead, as she makes the experience possible. He says that love is young, sensitive, just, courageous, moderate, skilled poet – the inspiration for all learning in gods and men.

Finally, Socrates tells the other guests of the female sage Diotima.  Ditoima teaches that love is not a god, he is a spirit, as a god in his perfection cannot need in the way that love needs.  Love is a child of Poverty and Resource, and a follower of Aphrodite.

Although Plato's logical approach is persuasive, he distances himself from the subject - his strongest argument is Diotimia's, relayed by Socrates, and told by Plato to the audience via a dialogue between Apollodorus and his companion.  In contrast, where Plato analyses love from afar, Sappho looks at it from the inside out.  She doesn't theorise about love, she experiences it; through her first-person, fragmented descriptive phrases, we experience it with her.

Like Plato, Sappho discusses same-sex love, however unlike Plato, she does not dissect these relationships, she simply lives them.  Where Plato speaks of the social, moral and political ramifications of love, Sappho speaks of the physicality of love:

                                                                     one glance at you

and I can't get any words out,       

 my voice cracks,

a thin flame runs under my skin,

my eyes go blind,                        

my ears ring,

a cold sweat pours down my body,

I tremble all over,                           

turn paler than grass. (20)

Sappho's human approach is effective.  She speaks not only of the joy, but of the pain of love:  "You have forgotten me, / our you love someone else more." (58).  By exposing her intensely emotional side, as well as speaking to concrete, real world objects, animals ane experiences, Sappho is able to bridge the millennium and allow modern readers to identify with her passions.

 

Works Cited:

 Plato. The Symposium. Trans. Christopher Gill. New York: Penguin Classics, 1999. Print.

Sappho. Poems and Fragments. Trans. Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002. Print.