Penelope's Secret

by Nicolas Ségur

  Sophocles said in his turn:

  “I commenced the meal by citing verses. I believe the best thing would be to continue. I shall therefore recite you a superb ode on Amour. I was part of an old tragedy. Simple, it appeared to me to be more inflamed than what Simonides and Sappho herself have said on the subject:

  “Amour is the invincible force, the insensate rage, the unrestrained delirium, dolor and tears. All existence is submissive to that god. The fish and the species that live in the water do not escape his reach, and the beings that live on the surface of the earth experience his arrows. With his divine wings he visits the birds, the beasts of the forest, humans, and the gods themselves in their celestial abode.”

  And Agathon said:

  “Oh, Sophocles, after such verses, what could one address more melodious in honor of the son of Aphrodite, except perhaps the sublime chorus of your Antigone? But I shall refrain from citing that to Athenians. All have it on their lips. In following the excellent things that have been said about the omnipotence of Amour, I should like to exalt in my turn his tenderness. Thanks to him we know humanity.

  “The first beings, whom fear and the need to gorge themselves rendered hostile and ferocious, felt their hearts soften under the visitation of Amour. Their lips were no longer extended to bite but to kiss. Thus it is to the virtue of Amour that we owe the first bonds of relationship and the great pact of the family, spreading over the implacable warriors the appeasing breath of fraternity. Like the soft harmony of the flute of Amphion, which joined stones together and elevated also, the pacifying power of Amour cemented societies. Gradually, uniting us in mildness, rendering human beings apt to communicate with one another, Amour purged us of our primal impurities and gave us a common consciousness. That is why I honor him, above all, as the great polisher of human mores, the divine civilizer.”

  “All that is very well,” said the young Aristophanes, but I see it rather as the eulogy of amour than its definition. For me, this is what I understand and what I repeat regarding the origin of that sentiment.

  “Know, then, that in very ancient times there were three sorts of beings on the earth. In addition to males and females there were also androgynes that united the two sexes simultaneously. Both male and female, the androgynes were free and did not know passion. That rendered their courage powerful and their strength invincible. In consequence they attempted the most reckless things and ended up making war on the divinities of Olympus, as did Ephialtes and Otus whose story is told by Homer.

  “Jupiter wanted to punish the androgynes and, reluctant to destroy them completely, he rendered them weak and miserable by splitting them in two, leaving them only a single sex and throwing them mutilated and incomplete on to the surface of the earth. Since then, the distraught androgynes have wandered, but every time they rediscover their other half, they feel violently impelled to unite with it, to reconstitute the ancient ensemble, to complete themselves. Thus, Amour is the force that drives us to join together, in order to realize our ancient integrity and rediscover our glorious and perfect primitive form.”

  “And you, Alcibiades, what do you have to tell us about amour?” asked Aspasia, smiling. “You are young, Amour haunted you too soon and you commenced to empty the cup of pleasures and sensations so gluttonously that one might think that you already about to drain it.”

  “My ideal, thus far,” Alcibiades replied, “has been to satisfy my senses, to enrich myself with the universal sensuality. I know the beauties of all the lands of the world. The supple Athens, the crazy Corinth, and Abydos, whose women are so knowledgeable in the redoubtable science of caresses, have aided me to fathom pleasure, and also distant Egypt and the impure Babylon, and the strange land of spasms and lust that is Phoenicia. I was thus able to assimilate all the expressions and sensations of the flesh and I believe that in that way my wisdom also was increased. For true pleasure renders grave. It approaches us to death and communicates to us the knowledge of profound and tragic things. It is a terrible initiation. And I could, Aspasia, respond to your request by defining amour as an intimate perfection of knowledge, a communion with the soul of the world.”

  Everyone applauded Alcibiades, and Aspasia who had praised him, gave the floor to Socrates.

  “I do not know the essence of amour,” the latter said, “but I can repeat what Plato and I were saying. We have fallen into accord in that amour does not consist exclusively either of desire, as some are tempted to believe, or beauty. Its significance is more profound and its seat must be placed in the soul. Alcibiades appears to me to have touched upon its veritable character in telling us that it is an intimate perfection of knowledge. In that, amour participates in desire and beauty, since it enables us to know which souls are the most perfect and unites us with them in ineffable pleasure. Progressing toward perfection, a ladder that takes us very high, accomplishing our goal and our destiny, such is amour. That is why our ancestors attributed wings to the god. It elevates humans, enables them to participate in immortal mysteries...”

  Aspasia was about to speak in her turn and Plato was looking at her with avid eyes, but as she allowed her eyes to stray beyond the open terrace, she perceived a vivid flame furrowing the nocturnal serenity.

  “That’s the torch relay commencing,” she said. “What a pity we can’t follow it at close range.”

  At her invitation, everyone went on to the terrace in order to contemplate the mystic celebration. A religious frisson elevated their breasts.

  Over the obscure extent of the plain they saw the light crossing areas, drawing away, vacillating, appearing to die out, and then emerging again, flamboyant. Passing from hand to hand, always gaining ground, it became more distant but always present.

  “That is the true symbol of your sublime amour, Socrates,” said Aspasia, indicating the errant flame. “That torch gives me the perfect signification of amour, which is the hectic desire of creation. Don’t you feel a frisson at the aspect of that ardent course, during which the ephebes are passing the torch from hand to hand, like the life that we pass from flesh to flesh at the whim and to the rhythm of amour? A sublime image, in truth, of the only divine thing in which we participate.

  “For while everything perishes and fades, as the centuries succeed one another, while the body dies and the animating intelligence yields and vanishes, amour persists, continuing its work, touching us momentarily in order to render us creators, then going toward other beings. Thus, each of us is transfigured for an instant with the aid of passion, elevated as far as the gods, holding the sacred flame of all life. Then it is handed on to another. And while we disappear, the divine spark is eternal, hurling our seed beyond worlds and continuing to weave the future, to prepare the ends...”

  All eyes were how turned toward the woman. Transfigured by the flame of her enthusiasm, she appeared new to her friends, as if they were seeing her for the first time.

  She was simply wearing a linen tunic. Her hair, ornamented by a golden ring, spread out around her head in numerous meanders. She was beautiful, but her beauty was dominated by the radiance of an intellectual clarity, a flame of genius that transformed her features and made her entire visage into a pure and bright mirror, in which one could follow the soul weaving harmonious thoughts.

  When she stopped speaking, a breath of grandeur inflated their lungs. They all respired the fever that is emitted by elite cities during great days, when humans take a step forward in the knowledge of their destiny.

  Plato, who was invincibly penetrated by the philter that Aspasia’s visage was pouring forth, suddenly experienced a strange tenderness. While the woman was talking, he discovered secret affinities that linked her soul with his own. He believed that the roots of his existence and her existence were adjacent, overlapping, intersecting in the unfathomable abysses of destiny. And Aspasia appeared to him to realize in her person the perfect accord between the extreme beauty of lines and the extreme nobility of the soul.

  And as a disturbance of a sublime o
rder, an unknown joy, visited him, he finally understood that the woman in question, who was at the summit of grace and knowledge, awakened in his soul a new and sacred sentiment, and initiated him solely by its presence into the ineffable mysteries for which he had so far sought the solution in vain.

  The ephebe was sure henceforth of knowing amour.

  As for Aspasia, who was standing there, her gaze lost among the stars, beautiful and almost frightening, such was the profound harmony that presided over the lines and the movements of her body, she sensed a circle of anxiety grip her, and knew the obsession of an immaterial and invisible contact.. She therefore turned her head and encountered Plato’s gaze posed upon her, motional, desirous, amorous and dominating.

  She understood, and a strange flood of tenderness invaded her, giving her consciousness of a divine force, of an infinite power.

  Meanwhile, the torch relay having concluded, the guests withdrew. When Socrates’ turn came, Aspasia put her hand on his shoulder gently.

  Stay for a few moments more, with your disciple, son of Sophroniscus,” she said. “The night is clear and fine.”

  And she sat down next to the young man.

  “Is amour not the revelation of the universe in a miracle?” said Plato, feeling as if he had been transfigured by an increasing tenderness of the emotion that he was experiencing.

  It was Socrates who replied.

  “You’re right, Plato. And now that, being alone, we can speak without offending the ears of men, I will reveal to you that Amour is the sole veritable god, the solitary guest of Olympus. For the world is nothing but inert matter, and it is the breath of passion that animates the Totality. It takes on by turns the aspect of flame, the fluidity of water and the vivacity of intelligence, and by means of its faithful servants, Beauty and Desire, it succeeds in moving everything, in mingling with everything, in eternalizing everything. It is not only the plants, the birds, the beasts and humans, but also the earth itself, the planetary bodies and the infinite universe that are ordered and animated by amour. What we call force, intelligence and exaltation, that which is the science of the heart and the science of numbers, the matter of mechanics and the matter of psychology, are all submissive to amour. The ancestors were correct to make Eros the most ancient of the gods, the animator of chaos. We can still call him the opener of Destiny.”

  He fell silent. Then, suddenly saddened by feeling old and in darkness, he inspected the mysterious horizon with his gaze. And he saw a white aureole emerging in the Occident and which, struggling with the darkness, illuminated the sacred rock on which the Parthenon shone.

  “It’s late, Aspasia,” he said, finally. “I have to go. But the night is clear and pure. It will be beneficial and precious for Plato to remain by your side. You can initiate him further in matters of amour.

  “My desire would even be that you become for him what a priestess of Mantinea named Diotima was for me. I knew her when I was young. I will not tell you about the beauty of that woman, nor her wisdom. I remember her like the apparitions of the Eternals that the initiates see in the Eleusian Mysteries and of which it is not permissible to speak. By means of her speech and by means of her gaze, Diotia gave me in a moment, as if in a fulgurant flash, consciousness of the world and knowledge of passion.

  “It was wisdom that linked us. Gradually, in speaking to me, she appeared to me to be the sister of my soul, like a reflection of myself, a more harmonious receptacle of my own thoughts. Our meditations, in the bosom of nature, near sources, in the sacred rustle of forests, opened to me the splendid routes that lead to the ideal. Diotima talked to me about the Egyptian science that she possessed, having once lived in Memphis, and all the Ionian wisdom with which she was familiar.

  “It was by a sort of intuition and not by cold reflection that she advanced in knowledge; and often she made me understand not only the substance of things but their occult force, and after that which is the object of thought, she unveiled to me that which divine science is.

  “One day, when we were talking about the ideal, and obscurities appeared to arrest and trouble our understanding, Diotima drew me to her and hugged me. And that gentle approach, that tender contact, was for us an advancement toward clarity, a perfection of understanding, a supreme mystical refinement in which our thoughts touched more intimately, in which the language we were speaking became more expressive, more profound and seemingly alive.

  “After that, we talked and we caressed, exhausting human knowledge as much as it was possible for us to do. From initiation to initiation, we rose as far as the contemplation of pure wisdom, of pure science, and of the pure verity that is God.”

  And, rising to his feet, Socrates added, looking at Aspasia: “Be for Plato what Diotima was for me, and my disciple will subsequently be able to reveal the supreme mysteries to the wonderstruck understanding of men.”

  He fell silent.

  And, leaving Plato with Aspasia, he went away, meditating matters of passion, and those of eternity.

  VII. The Celestial Abode

  “By the expression on your face I recognize that you are agitating in perplexity,” Socrates said the following day and they were going down the hill of the Pnyx slowly.

  “Great problems are, indeed, haunting me,” Plato replied, “surging forth in my mind one after another, and I feel as if I am lost in their meanders.”

  “Let us make our way together through the detours of those problems, then,” said the master. “It’s possible that in both making use of our eyes and rubbing our ideas together we might arrive at glimpsing some clarity, a enlightenment, in the same way that putting two pieces of wood in contact can cause a spark to spring forth.”

  “And perhaps,” Plato completed, “while juggling with words, we will both end up receiving a vision of life, and even of reality.”

  They sat down next to a field of asphodels with tender, slightly funeral hues.

  Plato’s face was grave. The ephebe seemed suddenly to have entered into virility, as if the knowledge of amour, extracting him from his tender years, had suddenly ripened him and placed him in the very heart of life.

  “This is what is happening to me, Socrates,” he said. “I was initiated to amour in proximity with the rhythm and the music that emerge from the soul of Aspasia. And by virtue of having known the glare of tender passion, I feel as if I were lost in a new ignorance. The world has enlarged before me, and by that very fact, the problems of the world have multiplied. Glimpsing other, unexpected difficulties, I feel troubled more than ever by the enigma that is the universe, by the enigma that is life.”

  “The state in which you find yourself, very dear one, appears to me to be excellent,” replied Socrates, smiling. “I have experienced it myself many times. The road of wisdom is thus made. At every height that one reaches, one immediately perceives an even higher summit, surrounded by darkness, which it is a matter of attaining. For that reason, life is a perpetual effort of knowledge, and old age itself is an apprenticeship.”

  “To know! That is the ardent desire that possesses me. Having penetrated amour, I feel thirsty also to reveal the goal of life, the why of things.”

  “That is already a result acquired, and a precious result,” Socrates approved. “The thirst that is devouring you is, moreover, necessary. If, in fact, you do not learn the why of things and the goal of life, you will not be able to determine the place and the importance of amour, of that marvelous sentiment to which you have been initiated, for one only truly knows something when one has perceived its relationship with the whole. You have felt amour and its mystery, but amour will continue to propose new enigmas to you so long as you have not determined the fashion in which it serves the divine design, and the harmony that it contributes to the universal concert.”

  “Yes, after amour, and as a complement to the science of amour, it will be necessary to know the goal of life, to go by means of thought into the depth of things,” Plato agreed.

  “Or, to put it better,” Soc
rates corrected, “after the love of a woman, the love of creatures, one ought to pass on to the love of wisdom, to philosophy, to employ the sublime word created by Pythagoras. We shall succeed in that. For you are, I see, an intrepid lover, Plato. I too am tenacious and passionately amorous. Now, it is by means of enthusiasm, by the divine folly appropriate to the amorous, that we integrate nature entire, that we become the center of the world, entering into possession of all the ideas and all the substances that we love.”

  They got up and took a few steps in the direction of the temple of Jupiter, crossing the Ilissus.

  “The idea that haunts me the most,” the disciple went on, after a pause, “is an idea, or rather than illusion, that suddenly visited me yesterday, next to Aspasia, at the moment when my lips quit hers. It suddenly seemed to me, at that moment, that I was seeing again hours already known. I remembered having felt before the same rapture that the kiss of the beloved procured for me, of having stared before into the same beautiful face of Aspasia, of having exchanged before the same fraternal words that linked me to the Milesian so tenderly and so passionately. Yes, it seemed to me that I was not savoring those supreme moments for the first time. However, I searched in my past and my memory in vain; nowhere did I found the real foundation of any such remembrance.”

  “And what if it was not a memory of your past, Plato?”

  And as the disciple looked at him, amazed, already divining and sensing himself fill up with an extreme emotion, Socrates said: “Yes, what if, by a miracle of amour, you found yourself capable of remembering, not your past life or another life, but the divine country from which you are momentarily exiled, the etheric abode from which souls come, and where it is not perishable appearances that reside but the essences of things?”

  “According to your words, Socrates, amour would then be a miracle of recognition.”

  “Yes, it would be the sublime testimony and revelation of our celestial origins, the spark that illuminates temporarily the ignorant darkness of perishable life and shows us the eternal unity from which we come.”