Response to "Gender-Based Notions of Homoerotic Love"

Laura Efron

Michael makes a strong and provocative argument in this paper. The nature of homoerotic love, however, can be seen in many ways depending on different interpretations of the texts, and the choice of text used. I think that Sappho’s love can be seen as in the emotional plane based on her poetry. Her final argument that the Common Love is the more accessible and visible love in Greek society can be proved through other examples of male homoerotic love, too.

Depending on what lines you quote from Sappho’s poetry, you can get different impressions of her love. You can even use the same quotes and have a different interpretation of them. Lines 25-27 of 1L-P, "Come to me now once more, and free me from jagged sorrow, and make what my heart is longing for, happen," seem to me to describe a longing from the heart, rather than from a sexual root. When she mentions the woman’s "tempting laugh"( 31(L-P) line 5) she says it sets her "heart a-flutter in (her) breast" (31 (L-P) line6). She says: "Eros shakes up (her) heart" (47 (L-P)). In both of these fragments, Sappho is describing how love drives her heart mad. She doesn’t mention any feeling of sexual lust or physical attraction. Instead, the focus is on her heart’s expression, a feeling that neither the Common (or physical) nor Celestial (or mental/intellectual) Love address.

I think Michael has a strong point in that the Celestial Love described in "Symposium" is rare. The defendant in Legal Text number eight, "Wounding With Intent to Kill: Quarrel Over a Boy," expresses shame throughout the entire speech over having felt such lust for a young boy. He obviously did not find his role as the aggressor/older man to be honorable or part of a Celestial Love. It seemed entirely based on lust, since it drove both him and his competitor, Simon, to such violent extremes (Murder of Herodes p100).

Michael’s point that the Common–or lust based– Love was more prevalent and less highly regarded in Greek society seems impossible to refute. I just wonder if the Celestial Love described in Symposium ever happened in real life–or if it was merely a philosophical idea. Sappho’s love, which I interpret as more emotional rather than sexual, seems to be more likely to occur, and does not fit the Common/Celestial duality of Love at all. I get the sense that maybe those men all sitting around at their high class dinner party were talking to impress each other, rather than to describe something real.