Wednesday February 28

Dionysus: drunken speech

Frame story:

Socratic irony: is used to distance us from the story to see what is really going on

Plato: invented Socrates, who invented Diotima, but there was a real man named Socrates too, who was also a scholar

2 types of love:

1. EROS
2. PHILIA

Sophia: wisdom

philosophy: love of wisdom (an erotic pursuit)

rhetoric: erotic

Symposium players:

1. Phaedrus
2. Pausanias: lawyer
3. Eryximachus: doctor
4. Aritsophanes: a comedic poet
5. Agathon
6. Socrates and Diotema
7. Alicibiades

Homoerotic love: is found in this story

pedophilia: can also be found between the lover (erastes) and the beloved (eromenos)

greekophilia: passionate about Greek

Raymond Carver: "What we talk about when we talk about love" a novel modeled after the Symposium that is conversational and realistic

People in love who do crazy things:

• eat rat poisoning
• eat shampoo: like in the movie Down To You
• stalking:

1. I had a friend who was so in love with this guy that she would steal his used milk cartons from the garbage can after he threw them away
2. This one really creepy guy who wouldn't leave me alone walked 15 miles to my work at 1 am because I didn't call him back, imagine that...

Back then, women were inferior to men, so the only real love was with someone who was 'equal' to you and helped you intellectually, which is why men loved men

'interstate without issue': means that someone has no children

aesthetic: pleasing to the eye, beautiful

SOCRATES: At the end of the Symposium we are told that Socrates isn't 'into' sexual practices, but Alcibiades wants him, and the roles are reversed.

PHYSICAL LEVEL:

Socrates= erastes and Alcibiades= eromenes

SPIRITUAL LEVEL:

Alcibiades= erastes and Socrates= eromenes

"Socrates made the elephant man look like Robert Redford" ~Dr. Sexson

aka- he wasn't a very good looking man...

but he teaches us that beauty is not love, but that intellect is love (beauty in the soul, good/virtuous acts)

Stories on a plane continued...

The King and the Corpse: Drawing from Eastern and Western literatures, Heinrich Zimmer presents a selection of stories linked together by their common concern for the problem of our eternal conflict with the forces of evil. Beginning with a tale from the Arabian Nights, this theme unfolds in legends from Irish paganism, medieval Christianity, the Arthurian cycle, and early Hinduism. In the retelling of these tales, Zimmer discloses the meanings within their seemingly unrelated symbols and suggests the philosophical wholeness of this assortment of myth. (source)

The Parrot: When a merchant goes away and leaves his beautiful daughter alone, the young prince who has loved her from afar is determined to keep her safe from the clutches of the evil old king. In order to keep watch over her, the prince turns himself into a parrot and tells her a marvelous story, which he threatens to cut short if there are any interruptions. So spellbound is the maiden that she ignores the soldiers insistently pounding on her door, until before she knows it, her father returns and she is safe once again. (source)

She did 3 things:

1. DO: she gave Dr. Sexson a package that he knows is book, yet hasn't opened it
2. SAY: 'I just want to please you'
3. SHOW: She showed him the real numbers on her arm, and that she was lying about lying

THE BIG QUESTION:

who are you?

• Oedipus asked it
• Alice asked the caterpillar this
• Inigo Montoya asked Westley this while he was disguised as the man with the black mask who does what is 'inconceivable'

stupid: ignorant 'don't know stuff' ~ this is the worst thing that you can be in classy lit!!

you must 'know thyself' which can have an erotic charge

We must all go forth and do something that makes lives more interesting!!