Monthly Archives: September 2015

Love within Symposium and The Odyssey

“Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). Compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata.”


In Plato’s Symposium, there is a strong emphasis on the masculinity of males loving other males (as well as females loving males). On the other hand, in The Odyssey, masculinity is based much more heavily on where you come from and what you’ve accomplished. However, the reason for this, at least as explained by Phaedrus in Symposium, could be because there are two different kinds of love; “Common Aphrodite’s Love” and “Love of Heavenly Aphrodite.” Common love was more of a sexual attraction that enticed men into ‘loving’ someone, which we must hear and remember the amount of times Odysseus may have been unfaithful to his wife. Heavenly love would be more of a connection, or craving, on both a mental and physical level. It’s through Phaedrus’ speech that I make the assumption that if Odysseus were among the men at the drinking party, he would be considered a common man with a common type of love, despite how greatly he is seen in his own story.

Sappho-Lady of Lesbos

Sappho is considered the first female author in Western civilization. However, almost none of her work survived a few centuries after her death, and the poems that did survive are missing large chunks of text. Meanwhile, countless male poets and authors had volumes of their work preserved in libraries around the world. Why was Sappho’s work treated so haphazardly? One possible reason could be Sappho’s ambiguous sexuality, although this seems unlikely since Greek men often had relationships with both men and women, as seen in both Plato’s Symposium and Catullus’s work. Another reason could be that men wanted to erase the evidence of an educated woman from ancient times. The works of Sappho’s male contemporary from Lesbos, Alcaeus, partially survived, while hers almost disappeared, and was used to cover mummified bodies in ancient Egypt centuries later. In The Guardian article, “Lady of Lesbos,” one author writes, “…The damaged text of Alcaeus has no value as a political symbol, whereas the gaps in Sappho can be used as an image of male oppression. For Winterson, the loss of Sappho’s poetry represents the damage done to women’s bodies and women’s writing by centuries of patriarchy.” Perhaps the reason evidence of the works of Sappho are so few and far between is because the presence of an intelligent female threatened the patriarchy of Ancient Greece, and they squashed that threat by destroying her work.

Views on love ( The Symposium V.S Lysistrata)

Plato expressed a more in-depth view on love and the different types of relationships rather than Lysistrata. While Lysistrata focused mainly on the sexual connection between a man and a woman, The Symposium,  looked at the complex relationship between a man and a boy. It is also implied that love not only exists within humans, but also within music, or as a means of obtaining wisdom. Although both works express different views on love, it is evident that the relationship amongst men are held at a higher standard. In Pausanias’s speech, he differentiates between the two unions. He describes the relationship between a man and a woman was “Common Love” whilst a man and man relationship is described as “Heavenly Love”

Relationship

Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata. You can also choose to focus more specifically on either the lover or the beloved if you like.

In Sappho’s works, it show the importance of the relationship. In poem 16, Sappho states that the most beautiful thing on the Earth is what we love. In that specific poem, it mention about Helen left her husband went to Troy. It is sort of the starting point of the Trojan War. It is similar to Lysistrata where as Lysistrata was trying to use ‘sex’ and the love between couples and to stop the war between Spartan and Athenian. Both of them spotted the relationship between people. In Sappho, she states the relationship between Helen and Paris is love and it become the cause of the Trojan War. On the other side, in Lysistrata, the love between couple become the “weapon” for Lysistrata to be negotiate for the end of the war.

Symposium & The Odyssey

By Xhozef Lumaj

 

Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata. You can also choose to focus more specifically on either the lover or the beloved if you like.

 

Plato describes love in a few different forms, which varies depending on the individual telling its meaning. It very much reminds me of The Odyssey. Within Homers story, love takes place in many different ways. One being the love of physical desire, which is displayed by Kalypso and Circe and another being the love for family that is displayed by Odyssues, Penelope and Telemachus. The love of family can be said to be the strongest as it was victoriously the end result. The point is, the meaning of love varies from person to person.

Desire, Virginity, and Sappho’s Sweetapple

Analyze a literary device–most likely an image or metaphor–or series of devices you find in Plato, Sappho, or Catullus.

as the sweetapple reddens on a high branch / high on the highest branch and the applepickers forgot – no, not forgot: were unable to reach

Sappho, Fragment 105A

In this fragmented remnant of one of her lyrical love poems, Sappho employs a simile to compare an unspecified figure to a sweetapple ripening on a difficult-to-reach branch of a tall fruit tree. It can be inferred that the sweetapple represents a virginal young woman, a picture of femininity coming of age (hence the “redden”-ing or ripening imagery), who is beginning to attract the eye of suitors who are watching her maturing beauty unfold. These lines read more of desire and lust than of pure love; the applepickers know that the sweetapple is far from their clutches but nonetheless yearn for it. Still, they are unwilling to strive to reach out for her. Rather, that additional attempt will be made by a romantic hero, the man who truly loves her enough to exert the extra effort necessary to reach the top branches. There is a lack of true sentiment here, as the comparison of a woman to a sweetapple brings to mind images of consumption (or, in this case, consummation) and, inevitably, once the apple is freed from its position at the top of the tree, it is free to be eaten at the whim of the applepicker. Additionally, the “picking” of a fruit off a branch symbolically makes a connection to the concept of being “chosen” or “claimed” by a suitor; a sweetapple is immovable without an outside party acting upon it, just as the reddening, blushing young virgin patiently awaits a fearless, far-reaching suitor to be the catalyst for change in her romantic life.

Sappho’s Poem 31 vs Catullus’s Poem 51

Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata. You can also choose to focus more specifically on either the lover or the beloved if you like.

When comparing the way Sappho and Catullus think of love I feel it is best to compare two very similar works of their’s, Sappho’s Poem 31 and Catullus’s Poem 51. In Catullus’ adaptation of Sappho’s Poem 31, there are difference that show how the two poets view love. The first observation which can be made is that Catullus’s description of emotions and feelings is a level more intense than Sappho’s; for example Sappho writes, “lovely laughing – oh it puts the heart in my chest on wings” (5-6), while Catullus writes, “sweetly laughing-that sunders unhappy me from all my senses” (5-6). However perhaps the biggest difference between the two poets can be seen when comparing the endings, lines 13-16 of both poems. While Sappho, writes about how the pain of unobtainable love causes her to feel paralyzed and helpless when it comes to getting the person she loves, Catullus, writes about how he needs to stop sitting by and doing nothing and actually fight for the love that he wants.

Catullus

Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata.

 

Catullus is a very passionate writer, he loves and hates hard. He writes of a woman named Lesbia, it is obvious that the love he has for her is strong just by the way he writes about her. In Poem 5 Catullus says, “You’d like to know how many of your kisses would be enough and over, Lesbia, for me? Match them to every grain of Libyan sand in silphium-rich Cyrene, from the shrine of torrid oracular Jupiter to the sacred sepulchre of old Battus; reckon their total equal to all those stars that in the silent night look down on the stolen loves of mortals.” Here, he describes that he would want endless kisses from Lesbia, he wouldn’t get tired of them. He expresses his love by using metaphors in his poem. Catullus’ poems and Lysistrata are a bit different when it comes to the topic of love because the love is actually genuine in Catullus’ poems. In Lysistrata, it was more about the men just wanting sex out of the women, they didn’t really appreciate them. But they are also a bit similar because sex was brought up many times in the poems of Catullus.

Sappho-metaphor and image in her lyric poems

Q: Analyze a literary device–most likely an image or metaphor–or series of devices you find in Plato, Sappho, or Catullus. 

   Sappho uses many metaphor and image in her poem,which helps her convey her emotions and feelings in more imaginary way. For example, "...And fine birds brought you, quick sparrows over the black earth whipping their wings down the sky through midair-they arrived. But you, O blessed one, smiled in your deathless face."(Poem 1 P637) In this sentence, she gives readers the scenes by using birds which whipping its wing down the sky to express her lonely feelings with sad moods. Another example, "Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. but I say it is what you love." (Poem 16 P638) In this sentence, she uses army of horse, army on foot, and army of ships to describe and emphasize the characteristics of the men. In addition, in most of her poems, she uses many natural scenery to describe her feelings and her thoughts. Sometimes it contains painful and sorrow feelings like the moon which is setting down. Sometimes it contains the happy and sweet feelings like green grass. She naturally describes natural subjects to express her mix of the feelings in her lyric poem.

Plato’s symposium and Odyssey

Love is the feeling that we perceiving on daily basis but most of us are not able to give a convincing definition. The love that mentioned in Plato’s symposium is demonstrated well in Homer’s Odyssey. In Plato’s symposium, Phaedrus brought up an intriguing point in which he split general love into common love and heavenly love. Common love is basically depicting human’s vulgar desires, which mostly reflect on possession of body. In Odyssey, Calypso imprisoned Odysseus for ten years because she “love” Odysseus in “common” way, however, it is questionable that the passion that Calypso had on Odysseus is real love. Therefore, Phaedrus followed up by talked about heavenly love in which described as the passion that beyond sexual desire. Heavenly love could be knowledge, spirit, or other characteristics that bring one person to the another without the involvement of body’s desires. For example, the love that Calypso had on Odysseus may not be classified as heavenly love from my personal perspective because her imprisonment is very likely violated his will. Penelope’s love, nevertheless, shall be called heavenly love. She rejected the chance to select one of the suitors to become new King in order to receive both sexual desire and luxury life. Same as the love that Odysseus had on Penelope, he encountered various difficulties through his venture in order to go back to his city for his family. His heavenly love is demonstrated by his responsibilities and bravery.