Michael Ide

CLST/WGST 114

2/19/02

FACES OF LOVE

Gender-Based Notions of Homoerotic Love:

Sappho and Plato’s Symposium

The poetry of Sappho, and the speeches in Plato’s Symposium both deal primarily with homoerotic love, although Sappho, one of the only female poets in Ancient Greece, speaks from the female perspective, while Plato’s work focuses on the nature of this love between men. There are several fundamental elements that are common to both perspectives, including similar ideals of youth and beauty, and the idea of desire as integral to both views on love. Despite these similarities, however, there is an important distinction, which can be understood in terms of Pausanias’ concepts of Common versus Celestial Love, where Sappho’s view represents Common Love, and the larger view of Symposium represents Celestial Love. While Sappho’s work is very much grounded in the physical realm, Plato emphasizes that true love is centralized in the mind, and that it is an intellectual and philosophical phenomenon.

Pausanias, who delivers Symposium’s second speech, explains some of the societal norms governing male homoerotic affairs. The rules by which a lover (an older man) and his boyfriend (a young man who has probably not yet grown his beard) may behave are rigid, and strongly enforced by the society’s moral code. Pausanias reveals that the convention of this relationship is pursuer/pursued: “our society encourages the lovers to chase their boyfriends, and their boyfriends to run away: this enables us to find out whether a given lover and his beloved are good or bad” (184a). Pausanias emphasizes the moral element further when he discusses the circumstances under which it is acceptable to gratify a lover. It is acceptable when “the lover appreciat[es] that any service he performs for a boyfriend who gratifies him would be morally acceptable, and the boy appreciat[es] that any favors he does for a man who is teaching him things and making him good…”(184d). Pausanias thus makes it clear that the relationship is also largely teacher/student; the convention stresses that an integral part of the arrangement is to increase goodness, in the lover, and knowledge, in the boyfriend.

In Sappho’s poetry we see elements of this “pursuer/pursued” relationship as well, however Sappho names no convention stipulating who must chase and who must be chased. The roles are apparently interchangeable, [“For if she runs, she’ll soon be chasing” (1(L-P) l. 21)], which suggests an overall sense of equality between female lovers, an equality which is absent in descriptions of male homoerotic love. Sappho describes the objects of pursuit (the subjects of her poetry) in purely physical terms, indicating this through language, as she describes their physical aspects [“your supple neck” (94 (L-P) l.17), and “the shining luster of her face” (16 (L-P) l. 18)], as well as the physical effect they (the pursued) have on her (the pursuer). For example, in fragment 31 (L-P) she addresses her subject: “For when I see you even a moment/ I cant speak any longer…/my eyes go dark, my ears/ are roaring…a trembling/ seizes all my body”(ll. 7-14). In contrast to Pausanias’ speech where the goal of male homoerotic love is moral satisfaction and the acquisition of knowledge, the goal, according to Sappho’ appears to be the possession of the pursued in body, to satisfy a physical longing.

Pausanias argues the dual nature of love by introducing the concepts of Common and Celestial Love. Common lovers are attracted to the bodies rather than the minds of the people they love…theyre after the satisfaction of their desires and they don’t care whether or not these desires are properly satisfied” (181b). The idea of celestial love, on the other hand, is associated with a lifelong intellectual connection that transcends the mere physical realm. It seems that Pausanias, in describing Common Love, is speaking directly to the love Sappho’s poetry addresses, while the concept of Celestial Love can be easily applied to the love he describes, and the love that the Symposium as a whole, deals with. The concept of morality, for example, is absent in Sappho, and much of her writing demonstrates the desire for physical body or fulfillment, as she describes: “you came, and I was looking for you./ And you cooled my breast aflame with lust” (48 (L-P)). Pausanias, by contrast, notes the important moral aspects of love by emphasizing the conventions of homoerotic courtship that signal the right and wrong ways of satisfying desire.

Sappho’s poetry emphasizes physical and sexual beauty through graceful language and metaphor, which suggests that it plays a significant role in female homoerotic love. This is clear in the way she describes her subject in fragment 96 (L-P): “But now she stands out among Lydian women/ just as…/the rosy fingered moon/ surpasses all the stars” (ll.6-9). Though indirectly, Sappho most likely refers to this woman’s physical beauty. In addition to such descriptions, her metaphors are particularly erotic: “a sudden, slender/ flame invades my flesh” (31 (L-P) ll. 9-10), “…the sweet-apple reddens on the top-most branch” (105a (L-P)), and “horses graze in a field a-flower/ with springtime blossoms and breezes” (2 (L-P) ll. 9-10). From these metaphors it is clear that the physical aspect is indeed important in female homoerotic love. The metaphors also support the notion that Sappho’s love is grounded in the physical realm, because they are all described in terms of the natural world.

The idea of beauty, according to various of Symposium’s speeches, is vastly different from that of Sappho. Socrates initially argues that “love’s purpose is physical and mental procreation in an attractive medium” (206a), which suggests the importance of both physical and mental beauty. Later he suggests that there is a natural ascent:

“You start by loving one attractive body and step up to two; from there you move on to physical beauty in general…to the beauty of people’s activities…to the beauty of intellectual endeavors, which is no more and no less than the study of that beauty, so that you finally recognize true beauty” (211c).

Socrates argues that this recognition is the ultimate goal in life and love, and that it gpes beyond the physical and perhaps even the mental realms. It is clear just how important beauty of the mind is, when Socrates states: “even if someone is almost entirely lacking the bloom of youth, but still has an attractive mind, that’s enough to kindle his love and affection” (210b), earlier Agathon argues that Love “is the youngest of the gods and is forever young” (195b), which reflects a greater Athenian ideal that youth is a predictor of love. In Sappho, it is clear that female homoerotic love is guided by the same ideal, from fragment 121 (L-P): “…take the bed of someone younger./ For I couldn’t bear to live/ with you if I were the elder.” Physical and mental beauty are thus inherently related, and Socrates emphasizes that only by transcending the former is the latter, the true goal, achieved.

Desire seems to constitute a very central aspect of both male and female homoerotic love, as evident in both Sappho’s poetry and Plato’s Symposium. The idea of desire in Symposium is different from Sappho in motive, but the two perspectives do support each other in some ways. Each deals, for example, with the idea of desire as an integral part, even a determining factor of love. Many of Sappho’s fragments emphasize longing due to a physical separation. Many of Sappho’s fragments emphasize longing due to a physical separation. In 1 (L-P), for example, Sappho complains to Aphrodite about a lover how has wronged her. She appeals to the goddess: “free me from jagged/ sorrow and make what my heart is longing for happen” (ll.25-27). Fragment 94 (L-P) describes her response to the leaving of her lover: “She left me sobbing/ streams and told me this:/’…Really, I’m leaving you against my will” (ll.2-5). Physical separation thus kindles desire, which in turn ignites heated passion, or heart-breaking sorrow. While these emotions are oriented in the mind, they are caused by the actual separation between lovers. Symposium also deals with the idea that love would not exist without desire. In Socrates’ speech, he reasons: “if there’s something you need, miss or lack, then that’s the thing you can desire and love” (200a). Later on in his speech, the idea of lacking something becomes a defining factor of love.

Aristophanes’ speech supports the idea that love arises from an absence of something, while explaining the motives associated with desire. His story, about how the original humans (odd, two-bodied creatures) were split in half as punishment by Zeus, underscores the natural human tendency to search for one’s other half. He states then, that “love is just the name we give to the desire and pursuit of wholeness” (192e). Aristophanes’ story suggests the actual pursuit, in body, of the other half. Later he relates this search to that of another mental quality, the idea of happiness: “We human beings will never attain happiness unless we find perfect love, unless we each come across the love of our lives and thereby recover our original nature” (193c). This supports the idea of self-serving love, which appears elsewhere in Symposium (184c). In finding one’s other half (which is simultaneous with finding love), one benefits personally, in this case by recapturing the essence of oneself, which is arguably an intellectual achievement. The desire that is prevalent in Symposium is characterized, not by a sexual drive, but by the need for personal, intellectual improvement. In contrast, Sappho’s desire is characterized by the (here physical and emotional) need of a lover.

Sappho, who represents female homoeroticism, and Plato, who’s Symposium addresses many aspects of male homoerotic love, share some fundamental aspects of love, but their views and objectives are largely different. The latter’s goal is essentially intellectual satisfaction, while the former’s is more directly linked with physical beauty and desire for physical closeness, not characterized by grand moral and intellectual ideals. This is not to say that the love between Sappho and her lovers, was solely based on sexual desire. It is certainly wrong to assume that, in light of the Symposium’s perspective, they were mindless, sex-driven lesbians. I would argue, rather, that this love, is more real, more common, and more universally accessible, whereas the love in Symposium is highly specialized, and accessible exclusively to men.