Some writings hardly
admit of a more distinct interpretation than a musical composition; and
every reader may form his own accompaniment of thought or feeling to the
strain which he hears. The Symposium of Plato is a work of this character,
and can with difficulty be rendered in any words but the writer's own.
There are so many half-lights and cross-lights, so much of the colour of
mythology, and of the manner of sophistry adhering--rhetoric and poetry,
the playful and the serious, are so subtly intermingled in it, and vestiges
of old philosophy so curiously blend with germs of future knowledge, that
agreement among interpreters is not to be expected. The expression 'poema
magis putandum quam comicorum poetarum,' which has been applied to all the
writings of Plato, is especially applicable to the Symposium.
The power of love is represented in the Symposium as running through all
nature and all being: at one end descending to animals and plants, and
attaining to the highest vision of truth at the other. In an age when man
was seeking for an expression of the world around him, the conception of
love greatly affected him.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42