“How did he disappear so suddenly?”
“He died by accident. Impassioned by the sky, he fell into a ditch when he went out, for he was only looking at the stars. And before dying he stammered that he was grateful to Jupiter for having brought him nearer to the heavens, since his eyes, obscured by age, could no longer see the stars from so far away.”
Plato stopped, in order to follow with his gaze two women clad in long peploi, one very old, the other much younger, who were depositing cakes and clay dolls on the tomb of a little girl, in order to maintain a kind of illusion of life there.
“Even so, one doesn’t want to die entirely,” he murmured. “One clings on to life desperately, ardently.”
Socrates proposed that they sit down for a few moments near the torrent of Eridans, which channeled the waters of Mount Lycabettus.
The sun was declining toward the horizon, dragging mantles of amethyst and ocher. The surrounding mountains lit up with its sumptuous agony.
Socrates remained there, savoring the emotion of spring, which was tempered and appeased by the calm end of the day.
Then, as Plato, plunged in thought, repeated “Even so, one doesn’t want to die entirely,” the master said to him softly: “The other day, I didn’t report to you precisely what Diotima of Mantinea taught me with regard to the object of amour.
Plato turned avidly to hear what Socrates was saying.
“Yes,” the latter continued, “I didn’t report her words to you exactly. They summarize marvelously all that we have already thought and repeated. If I want to quote them to you here, at his moment, it’s because, according to Diotima, the ultimate objective of amour is to aid Simon, and every man, and every being, not to die entirely.”
“Was Diotima a priestess?” Plato asked.
Socrates turned a surprised gaze upon his disciple.
“She was more than that,” he replied. “She was an initiator.”
And Socrates evoked the woman who had revealed the supreme mysteries to him.
“The Mantinean was young, on the threshold of life,” he said. “All the generous forces stirred in her body, but disciplined, quieted and, ordered. Her full face, her arms and her torso, having the sinuous forms of striking Egyptian marbles, offered a beauty that was not effeminate and limited, but complete and compassed, in which the strength and grace of a third sex, participating in the male and the female, were combined. She spoke softly, not seeking to hold forth or debate with others, but to communicate, with the result that even her conversation was amour.”
Then, after a pause in which he appeared to correspond mentally with the initiator, Socrates continued:
“Diotima had explained to me many times that it is thanks to amour that we become permanent and constitutive elements of all that is beautiful and all that is good on earth. Uniting ourselves with another being that appeals to us by its strength, virtues or excellence, we aspire to endure with it eternally.
“Finally, one day, Diotima said to me: ‘Have you noticed, Socrates, how all of nature folds up and concentrates itself, suffering and calling out, under the desire to engender? A sort of malady agitates animals when the hour of coupling sounds for them. At such moments, any privation becomes easy for them, and they are capable of fighting or dying in order to realize their desire. If animals that do not reason go as far as sacrifice and immolation, it is because amour is superior to life and superior to wellbeing. And how could it be otherwise, since amour is eternal life and immortality?
“‘Yes, Socrates,’ Diotima went on, ‘it seems evident that in loving we vanquish death; for we have other means of preserving ourselves from it than that of substituting by the birth of a young being for the old being that we are or will become. In any case, we act thus incessantly, and every human gesture is, to tell the truth, an act of amour and an aspiration to immortality.
“Remember, in fact, that from birth until death, an individual who retains his so-called identity and continuity, is, in reality, constantly changing, dying without respite. He is not the same from one moment to the next. His hair and his flesh, his bones and his blood, are being worn away and renewed in their elements, and even his thoughts, desires, pleasures and pains change and die. Fortunately, his consciousness is also transformed as his ideas, his aspirations and his joys change. Otherwise, a human life would be comparable in its anguish to an endless agony, and a man would become incapable of recognizing himself while the days succeed one another.
“‘And it is also to remedy that continuous instantaneous death that he gives birth amorously to memories, which are like the witnesses of his life and which escort the future, attach him to the past and enable yesterday to survive into tomorrow and mingle with it. A friend who disappears, an image that is effaced and a pleasure that comes to an end, leave traces within us that maintain and eternalize that friend, that image and that pleasure.
“‘Thus mortal beings are conserved, perishing in reality and already dead, having none of the immutability, the reality, proper to the gods, but trying to continue themselves by means of reminiscences and to ward off death by means of amour.
“‘That is why, in every animal, in every living being, amour has a supreme importance. Self-perpetuation is the primordial preoccupation for everyone. Many sacrifice themselves for glory or renown, which are also forms of immortality, braving dangers, scorning suffering and accepting a more rapid disappearance in order to leave a memory for future races. If Alcestis accepted to die instead of Admetus, if Achilles sought death in order to avenge Patroclus, and if Codrus went toward it in saving his fatherland, it was in order that they could continue to remain alive among us. People will sacrifice anything for that glorious or virtuous immortality, in the same way that they will do anything to save their carnal posterity, their children, their works.
“‘For amour, Socrates, is multiple,’ Diotima added. ‘There are men who can only procreate with the aid of their semen; they turn to women and fecundate bodies in order to live again in their children; but others are fecund in the mind, and their amour takes other forms: that of wisdom or that of justice. They too, sensing the divine need to procreate, perpetuating what is excellent within them. They go hither and yon, seeking the beauty in which they can deposit their spiritual semen—for they are never able to procreate in ugliness. Driven by their ardor to produce, they attach themselves to beautiful bodies, and if, in a beautiful body they encounter a beautiful, generous and well-born soul, they do not quit it again. They try to instruct it, they pour into it everything they have of the best.
“‘By means of a perpetual generation of beautiful discourse, beautiful thoughts and beautiful works they satisfy their desire for immortality. And the children they produce are more perfect than the carnal ones. Homer and Herodotus have left us, in consequence, their sublime poems, a true and eternal posterity, inseminated by their genius, which remains immortal for us. And it is also by an operation of amour that Lycurgus and Solon gave birth to their institutions.
“‘Yes, such are the works of amour,’ continued Diotima, ‘works of all kinds. And if one desired to go further, to hollow out the mystery more deeply, one could specify the ascendant march of immortality that is thus accomplished through amour. The perfect lover, we could say, seeks out beautiful bodies in his youth—or, rather a body that is the receptacle of all perfections. He engenders perfect sentiments and perfect thoughts therein. Then he perceives that the beauty that is contained in the body in question is sister to the beauty that is found in all other bodies. Henceforth he will seek, not a particular perfection, but perfection in general, made of all those distributed in nature.
“‘Then the veritable lover rids himself of the paltry weakness of concentrating his passion on a single individual, and strives, through the beauty of bodies, to divine a more precious beauty: that of souls. And in order to reveal in beautiful souls higher ideas and aspirations, he will be led to meditate upon human occupations, on the sciences and the arts. Gradually, he
will acquire a broader conception of the beautiful and, liberated definitively from any idea of limiting himself in one body and one individual, he will swim in the ocean of all beauties. Accumulating treasure incessantly, he will give birth to creations of genius that will perpetuate him immaterially and divinely and preserve him from death.’”
Socrates paused momentarily, caressed by the supreme appeasement of the evening. Then, as his disciple was looking at him avidly, he continued.
“Diotima said to me then: ‘The Lover who, from one beauty to another, elevates himself to the supreme initiation, will suddenly perceive a marvelous beauty, the goal and crown of all his previous efforts: an eternal, uncreated, imperishable, infinite beauty exempt from diminution or increase; a beauty that does not change with the milieu and the time, and does not exist in one place or another. That beauty has nothing sensible about it. It does not attract particularly, as the face and the hands attract, and does not reside either in a discourse or in a science, since it cannot be attached to anything material. That eternal beauty exists by itself, without the support of any object, but it participates in everything that is beautiful, without anything capturing it or modifying it.’
“Finally, the Mantinean concluded her discourse thus: ‘Dear Socrates, when, from one body to another, uniting all the formal beauties in a unique type of beauty, and from once science to another, concentrating all human knowledge in a single beauty of thought, one arrives at the contemplation of absolute Beauty, one already feels as if visited by a sentiment of immortality. One has the consciousness of being victorious over death, communicating with the divine. Try to imagine, Socrates, what the joy might be of savoring such a Beauty, since the limited and imperfect beauty of a human body, a feminine body, already troubles us to the point of being ready to neglect eating and drinking in order to spend our life gazing at it. To render oneself conscious of perfect Beauty, to live in the sublime in contemplating it, thus becoming immortal, not in our flesh by engendering a child but in our essence, by means of the consciousness of the divine existence of the beautiful that animates us: that is the ideal of amour, the supreme victory of the human being over Death.’”
They stood up in order to return to Athens at the first approaches of dusk.
They passed through the Ceramicus again, where all sadness was fading away under the double mantle of the earth and darkness.
“I find, in fact, in the words of Diotima, assembled and organized, everything that I had divined and everything that we have previously said about amour,” Plato exclaimed, marching beside his master.
Socrates stopped and pointed at the road that was extended toward Eleusis through the tombs, and which the procession followed.
“Look, Plato,” he said, “there are only two deities that can aid us to triumph over the tomb; they are Ceres and Amour. The former reveals to us that nothing finishes for the soul, the latter that everything is perpetuated by the rapprochement and the fecundation of beings and substances.”
“Thus one can escape death,” murmured Plato.
“Do you not know that, and are you not sure of it? So love, Plato, think, excite others to think, give birth to beautiful ideas, combine everything that you find beautiful and good and enclose in your discourse, in your works, everything that you have accumulated by means of meditation and emotion. If you succeed in putting your personal seal on it—I mean your semen—Plato will not die; for Plato will be identified with eternal Beauty, with the eternal Idea, the support and pivot of all things.
“Yes, think hard, dear friend, on what I have said. If Plato succeeds in offering to those who succeed him a mirror reflecting the true Beauty, the true Amour, Plato will live among them eternally. More than that, it will not be them but Plato who will be the only living being. Everyone else will be condemned and consecrated to thinking via him, to existing via him. Future philosophers will be Plato, while believing themselves to be themselves; founders of religions will be Plato. Plato will become human thought, the very Soul of the universe, and effacing Plato will be the equivalent of effacing the beautiful and the good, everything that ennobles humankind, everything that enables humans truly to live.”
“Now, the words of Diotima that you repeated to me just now are fully explained for me,” the disciple murmured. “If, progressing from one beauty to another, from one idea to another, one identifies oneself with the force of amour, with the ensemble, one lasts as long as beauty, as long as the idea.”
“That’s right. One becomes the Substance, one is the Totality. If he succeeds in personifying the perfect lover, Plato will be, in the future world, everything that it is worth the trouble of calling a world.”
They both felt the frisson of the sublime that visited them every time that their mortal understanding brushed in its flight the divine Mystery.
A kind of uncreated light, sprung from within themselves, inundated them while they walked through the darkness toward the Acropolis.
And from then on, Plato knew that he possessed amour.
NAÏS IN THE MIRROR
I
Men say that I am beautiful and prove it by always haunting my house. When they look at me, their faces reflect their desire and vehement images alter their pupils. My mirror also smiles at me benevolently. It shows me limbs so supple that one might think that the bones themselves were pliable, flexing at the whim of movements, and a cleavage so glorious and proud that Apelles might have been inspired by it to depict Venus Anadyomene.
My name is Naïs, like my mother, who was also a courtesan.15 She conceived me during the memorable night when the great king Alexander, who was her lover, burned the city of Persepolis.16 At the banquet that had preceded that orgy, my mother had the imprudence to drink the wine of Heraea, which grants women fecundity. But as, on quitting Philip’s son at dawn, she went to join a Thracian oxherd whom she loved in secret, she was never able to say which of them was my father, the king or the peasant. In any case, I scarcely care.
My mother abandoned me when I was still prepubescent and tender. She died shortly thereafter. My childhood was difficult, first in Corinth and then in Athens, where, having no experience in the profession and knowing my body to be still spindly and ignorant, I lent myself to the amour of the aged barber Gymnochete, who had a shop near the Ceramicus. He was talkative, but not without a certain charm. He sold mirrors of his own invention and also earned some money raising trained magpies and talking crows, and amusing the populace with a kind of concert that he obtained from his razors by skillfully striking them against one another. For two years he kneaded my body with his reckless caresses, but nature had failed so extensively in him that after his death, Mnesicles, the son of the dye-merchant, was surprised still to encounter and break the feeble seal of my innocence.
It was him who initiated me in sensuality. I acquired such a taste for it that afterwards I changed lovers several times and earned enough money to buy a house and permit myself three beautiful slave-girls. I received in my house Demetrius of Phalerum, the governor of the city, and the poet Menander. One evening, Diogenes the Cynic, who had known the glorious bed of Laïs, came to extinguish one of his last ardors in my arms.
I am amicable and pleasant; that is why all women resent me. I believe they call me Danaïde, meaning by that that I am never sated, and Sheep-shearer, because I ruin young men. But I accept those nicknames suggested by jealousy and see them as the affirmation of my empire over men.
In any case, every courtesan has her insulting nickname. One is called Clepsydra because she measures the pleasure of her lovers according to the solar watch and divides the fortunate minutes between them with a cold exactitude. Another is named Crow for her vices and another Proscenium because of the false and artificial beauty of her breasts. I even know an old one who is known as Abyss, and that is the worst of insults for a courtesan.
For myself, I flatter myself with being faultless with regard to my body and in adoring pleasure and beauty sincerely. It is true that I tint
my cheeks with acanthus. Sometimes I even spread yellow powder in my hair. But I do not elevate my height by lining my sandals with cork, and I am scornful of padded hips and false breasts, a supreme and heroic remedy against dangling and swollen bellies. Nor do I judge it necessary to tilt my head over my shoulder in order to seem dainty, nor to paint my eyebrows or brighten my skin with ceruse.
The days go by and Venus favors me. Someone is always knocking on my door and my bed is incessantly animated. I am, above all, proud of living in the most beautiful city in the world, in the midst of a population of statues, where Aspasia and Theodotus, Alcibiades and Harpalus loved and enjoyed life, causing the world to marvel.
It is true that Demetrius Poliorcetes has recently taken possession of our city of Athens, whose citizens have lowered themselves to the extent of divinizing him, confounding his cult with that of Pallas. They do not even recoil before the ultimate sacrileges, and in order to flatter Demetrius more they have given him the Parthenon as a dwelling.17 At least that conqueror favors pleasure. Thanks to him, frolics succeed feasts on the sacred rock. Demetrius treats courtesans like a king and gives them magnificent presents. When I see him go past, with his tinted hair, his powdered face and his cloak laden with gold embroideries, I cannot help admiring him.
Athens is not free, but we have not ceased to amuse ourselves. The flutes and lyres have never resounded so numerously or more cheerfully in the city; wine and amour have never been more triumphant; nor has the Attic air ever been lighter, more inflamed by the spirit of joy. Considering our eternal delight and our love of debate, one would willingly attribute to us the nature of the cricket, whose excellence is in singing.
Yesterday, in passing before the Pnyx, I saw the sacred procession of Delphi, which, changing the ritual, went to request obsequiously from Demetrius the orders that were once received from the mouth of the goddess. That offended me a little. But the same day, in a fit of prodigality, the generous son of Antigone tithed the crops of Attica in order to pay for my friend Lamia’s perfumes.
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