The anthology The Kokinshu is a Japanese classic consisting of hundreds of poems. According to the intro and preface, it is a collection of poems describing the seasons and love. One can’t help to notice that even when the poets are talking about nature and their surroundings, the double meaning is ultimately about love. The endearing part of the poetry is the concise syllabic rhythm they are comprised of, however, no matter what type of poetry I try to read, poems just doesn’t resonate with me.

In Poem 553, the author talks about a moment in time in where she dozes off and dreams about someone she loves. At the end however, she says “Since when I have begun to place/My trust in the things called dreams”. I find myself thinking the same thing many times. I learned about psych analysis and the difference between the conscious and subconscious. There are certain dreams that I don’t pay any mind to but when there is a possibility a dream can mean something I want it to mean, I delve deeper into it.

Most poems in this work remind me so much of my grandma’s farm. The farms in Ecuador aren’t like the farms here. The farms over there are filled with tall trees and luscious fruits and flowers. In Poems 23, 24, and 27  I can’t help but recall her farm. Even though the natural surroundings described differ from the South American vegetation, the combination of the poems bring back memories of my time spent there.

In Tao Ch’ien’s prose “The Peach Blossom Spring,” a fisherman came upon a mysterious cave by rowing upstream, mindless of the distance he had traveled. Once he entered the cave, he was greeted with hospitality and warmth. It was a rural community, with comely houses, various plantations, domesticated animals and livestock. The populace consisted of ordinary people who worked in the fields. The fisherman, being a newcomer, was invited to the villagers’ houses to feast and drink. He learned that they were a community who had lost contact with the outside world; past and present dynasties were unheard of to them. Before the fisherman left, the villagers said it’s not necessary to make known to outsiders their existence. The fisherman revealed it nonetheless to other people. However, nobody could reach that place even by following marked routes. The imagery hints at hermitage, independent on its own and wanting no outside interference. The cave is mystic and unfathomable, as the opening suggests, when the fisherman went on to find out how long the grove extended until he arrived at the spring stream. The village represents a quiet little place far from the decaying dynasties and the maddening crowd. Mulberry, bamboo, and other trees combine with the sound effect of cocks crowing and dogs barking to produce an atmosphere of harmony between nature and human.

In his poem “Begging for Food,” Tao ingeniously set up an encounter between two strangers to showcase their generosity and congeniality. A starving man walks with no destination in mind until he reached a town, where he knocked at a door and was let in. The house owner proffered free meal and they engaged in lively conversation. Consuming alcohol, they made happy acquaintance. A sort of feast it turned out to be, as they sang songs and wrote poems. Tao apparently considers it a virtue to readily welcome a supplicatory stranger into the house and feed him. The adequately fed fellow remarks on the host’s kindness and promises to repay him, if not with talent, as a ghost. This poem illustrates the role of food and drinks in fostering a comradeship and depicts the cordial relationship between people in the town.

In Symposium, Plato shows off the different facets of love. Each speaker doesn’t merely repeat what the previous speaker says but rather takes a completely different view on love.   Love has always been around and the first speaker Phaedrus gives a good introduction by establishing loves eternal complexity. However, no description grabs my attention like Socrate’s definition of love of it being a quest for immortality. He says “I believe that anyone will do anything for the sake of immortal virtue… for they are all in love with immortality” . He further claims that people who aren’t intelligent enough to seek immortality through true virtue just have babies and seek immortality through their offspring. Although I do understand that love is beautiful, I agree with the latter part because at the end of the day, love is just an evolutionary trait that helps humans produce offspring. Even though the speakers’ lexicon is confusing in some parts, I do agree with some speakers on beauty of love, however, my thoughts on the abstractness of love are sort of bias due to the recent scientific discoveries on love.

I think the kind of love he’s talking about is the love we were looking for when we were in High-school.  When I used to desire my ex’s, until I didn’t  get what I wanted from them, I didn’t stop desiring it. The truth is that even nowadays not only in High-school, as soon as the human gets what they want,  the desire is over along with the relationship. If we as human like it that much we will stay, because we don’t want that desire to never ends. Eventually, if you left it was because you stopped desiring it and you wanted to desire someone or something else.

Reading Plato’s Symposium was very interesting. To my understanding of the story, there are two types of love, sexual and spiritual, intellectual. Sexual love is between a man and a woman while two men in love will be more focused on learning about each other and the idea of being the others half and completing each other. “it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of the human nature…. Each of us, then is a ‘matching half’ of a human whole because each was sliced like a flatfish, two out of one, and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him”(page 882)

Some interesting points I noticed. How loving for money is dishonorable and not noble but being with someone who was thought to have good virtue and personality and would help one group even when fooled is still seen as being noble.

The story also talks about cheating being dishonorable different from the Odyssey and other stories we have read which have a lot of affairs occurring.

Overall I really enjoyed the different takes on love this story expresses.

Plato’s Symposium is a discussion on the nature and meaning of love. A man’s love was viewed as the highest form of affection, best understood and appreciated by men. It’s only aim is to fulfill that which it desires. There are different kind of love and it is not just limited to being aroused for another human being but is also extended to all living things, objects, and theories.  Love is not confined and it knows no restrictions.  Love is defined based on the individual and their background.

It is amazing to see a simple word such as ‘love’ can have such a great meaning to it, to the extent that there is a greek god for it. In the time that these books were written, love between 2 men were interpreted much differently than the same love today. Phadrus begins by saying how the strongest love is between a man and a boy. Being that both parties are at risk of getting caught, this supposedly brings the love closer. I think that Aristophanes also brings a very deep point about ourselves. The idea that we all have a missing half, and are in a life long search for what we might think is another person, but really we are in search of ourselves. Many people say that they need to “discover themselves”, which in the sense of Aristophanes speech, makes sense.

Within The Symposium, there is evidence that argues that the love shared between two men is the most lucrative kind of relationship. More specifically, the nurturing of a older man to a younger man is argued to cultivate the social aspects most important to male development. Phaedrus asserts that the purer nature of a male-male relationship implies that the love is more natural,  therefore stronger, and more ingrained within the mind and body. It is clear that during these times, the idea of being gay is not a characteristic of one’s character unlike our society today.

It is interesting how much thought and detail is placed into defining love by those at the dinner.  All parties present seemed to feel that love much serve a bigger purpose to the lovers. Phaedrus believes that love should teach shame and pride.  Pausanias believes that love should make one good and wise, and he feels very upset that love is discriminating in attraction because it is attraction to the body not the mind.  Eryximachus stated that love is a balance and a sort of order in life that may appear anywhere.  What is interesting is how all the participants state a piece of their idea that if combined may create the definition of love.  However, maybe defining love is something that should be undefined.

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.

In Plato’s Symposium, Pausanias describes love in the form of two types. The first type of love he talks about is common love. Common love is described as the vulgar and sexual desires between a man and woman. On the other hand, the other type of love is referred to Heavenly love. This type of love goes beyond sexual desires, and is more compatible with a spiritual bond. Although I can strongly agree with Pausanias view on heavenly love, I cannot agree with his view on common love. For the reason being that his philosophy on common love, is closely connected with lust and infatuation. I don’t believe that lust is a form of love, but its own separate idea. Moreover, none of the speakers really distinguish the two ideas, but includes them in one.