two pages essay

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LOVE

I hope you love your computer, because it seems that that’s all there is left to love nowadays. Maybe you can program your computer to love you back, and exist in a perfect feedback loop of your own fantasies – this could be hypothesized as a “perfect” love since perfection is commonly, stupidly defined as the absence of problems – and other people are always problems, even when they attract us – especially when they attract us. So a love without another person would be a perfect way to eliminate problems and focus on work, so you can be successful. And buy a better computer. The planned obsolesce of social relations is a longstanding trend in Western civilization – owing perhaps to an obscure insular mentality born somewhere in an obscure forest, and that reproduces itself in the city, in modern times, in the distant boxes we all stuff ourselves into like gifts that no one will ever open. Even before isolation became a rule, it was already a trend – and trends are just unspoken rules in the process of become conscious of themselves, and thereby imposing themselves on everyone’s consciousness as rules. Do you remember the silence and distance between people that permeated our school’s hallways and classrooms before the month of March? Maybe it isn’t worth remembering, maybe even then it was only worth forgetting about so that human relations could actually exist amidst that empty, vacuous background.

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That empty, vacuous background. Remember that in Western portrait painting the background is always the symbolic representation of what goes on inside the central figure. And here you see a portrait by the Austrian artist Egon Schiele, from only a hundred years ago, with the meaningless title Seated Woman with Legs Drawn Up. It sounds just as meaningless in German. She, like most modern people, is contained within herself, and charmingly lonely. Maybe it was solitude that created the computer as its own fantasy, and not vice-versa. Love, maybe, exists in defiance of reality – in defiance of social reality, not in conjunction with it, not as an extension of it. As Octavio Paz once wrote, “love is an antisocial act.” And yet when society is explicitly antisocial (an empty, vacuous background), the microcosm of love can be the only true form of society that exists, that can be imagined to exist. Society, in the ontological sense, is the discovery of ourselves through others – and love perhaps is just an intensification of that, the pinnacle of what it means to exist together. But love’s discoveries are preceded necessarily by mysteries.

This painting, The Lovers, by René Magritte is from only ninety years ago, or only eighty-eight years ago to be precise according to the exact right answer on the imaginary multiple-choice test that has been implanted into our minds from about sixty years ago. The other person is always a mystery, even in love. But then again, we are also a mystery to ourselves. Maybe love is just a

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planet orbiting the star of mystery, and masks are just there to remind us that we are always a mystery – an unsolvable mystery that creates a fictitious world of exactitude only in order to exorcize its own unbearable magic. “Remove the mask you see only to discover another mask you haven’t seen before,” wrote Nietzsche about us, one hundred and forty years ago. Is love the desire to put on a mask, or the desire to remove a mask? There is a question to accompany you in the empty spaces where you look for the truth, and finally become interesting. The physical space around you might be full of scantron-like objects that demand that you recite the truth – their own truth – back to them, but maybe you see that these objects are themselves just masks concealing their own lack of a good reason for existing. The decorative introduction to this lesson is just a frame to separate it off from what is all around it and what it is not: a litany of lifeless repetitions. This really is a history class, you’ll see – but only at the end, not at the beginning. Before we look at the history of ideas about love in Western civilization, why don’t we look at the word itself – etymology again, a hobby for people who want to escape from the flatness of everyday language. The English word love comes to us from the Anglo-Saxons who are part of the Germanic branch of European languages living in the north of the north of that far away continent. In German the word love appears as Liebe, and its proximity to the word for life, Leben is as close as a slip of the tongue. Love – life, Liebe – Leben, of course, how romantic, you’ll say. “What is life without love?” – highly productive, it seems, just look around you. If the word’s Germanic etymology implies that love is the only thing that’s worth living for, then you may ask yourself a series of troubling questions about how and why people live today, and what they do actually love (their animals, their machines, their custodians…) – but I’ll skip over this black hole for the sake of giving you room to fill it with your own hypotheses. Instead, I want to draw your attention to the double meaning that the word love has in English, which perhaps is part of the reason why people can’t distinguish well between loving their pet and loving a person. You know that in English we use the word love to indicate two different sentiments/relations. Love your neighbor is one thing, making love is another. Yes, it’s true, people have been known to fall in love with the person next door, so let’s say it in more stark terms: loving your grandmother is one thing, and the love of your life is another. Although perhaps in some subtle ways the love of your life may remind you of your grandmother – well, in the end no two things are entirely separate, but still a conceptual distinction is worth making. That distinction is made in the Greek language, which in many ways is to Western civilization what the Periodic Table is to chemistry – no, it is more interesting than the Periodic Table. In Greek there are two words to denote the two forms of love that in English share the same word: there is ἀγάπη (agapē) which corresponds to the message contained within the Christian injunction to love your neighbor, and also in the notion of loving your parents and your children, but then there is ἔρως (eros) from which we get the word erotic and its connotation is desire, fascination, and the ascent to oblivion. It is not true that one of these forms (agapē) is “mental”, or spiritual, while the other is “merely” physical – and that since the mental is always more important than the physical then the one (agapē) is “better” than the other (eros). To put the absurdity of this notion in plain sight, I will say only that the brain is a sex organ, and that desire is one of our most worthiest thoughts – so worthy that perhaps our other thoughts are jealous of it and have therefore conspired to cast it out of its natural home: our imagination, which resides thoroughly in our brain. Moreover, the love denoted by agapē also implies a physical relations, usually in the form of a bond that sometimes can become a leash. So the distinction between agapē and eros is not a mental – physical distinction, because they are

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both both of these things at once. Their distinction resides somewhere else in their respective natures. And for the sake of happy endings I will say also that agapē and eros have been known to overlap like to two circles in bed that share a central space in common. Yet still their conceptual distinction is worth recognizing, especially as in English they are crammed into the same word. This lesson regards eros, and only eros. We will look at what the four installments of Western civilization covered in this class have to say about love (eros) through the creations of some of their greatest geniuses: Plato from ancient Greece, Ovid from ancient Rome, the Arthurian legends of the Middle Ages (as written by Chrétien de Troyes), and Botticelli (the painter) from the Renaissance – because some paintings really are visual stories that we can learn how to read. As a place to start, we can look at how the concept of eros is represented in Greek mythology: in the god Eros, who always accompanies Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty. Perhaps you think you have not heard of Eros before, but most likely you have without knowing so. Because most likely you have heard of his Roman (Latin) equivalent: Cupid, who always accompanies Venus (the Latin name of Aphrodite). He appears frequently on postcards and refrigerators, but very rarely does he appear in our conceptual thinking – shall we put him there for a moment?

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Here is Eros (or Cupid) depicted on an ancient Greek bobbin from twenty-five hundred years ago. Do you recognize him? Have you ever asked yourself why Cupid, the god of love (meaning eros), is represented in the form of a child? It isn’t because “that’s how babies are made” – you know very well that many people who have had children together do not love each other, and sex by itself is not love. And you also might know that people who love each other do not always have children. So the relation to reproduction is not the key to the symbolic connection between the figure of the child and the desire called love. What is it then? It is simple. Observe children, small children, babies – what are they like, how do they behave? Do they understand rules, do they understand their “social context”, do they understand anything except what draws them and what repels them? – Do they not even understand that, nor need to? – They simply act. Could you say that the small child, and particularly the baby, is a little anarchist? There are three great pillars of life which the baby does not understand (yet) and which make him like the spirit of love: Does he understand logic? No. Does he understand ethics? No. Does he understand reality and its principle? Another marvelous no. Is he dangerous? Potentially. But is he innocent? Absolutely. Small children are innocent and play in the world, they are not yet indoctrinated into assuming roles in the social script: from being potty trained, to sitting still for long hours in school, to this bizarre situation of sitting in front of a screen – the stage of life that precedes this long story of discipline and self-discipline was observed by the ancients as a memento of freedom – of a lost freedom perhaps, but reminiscent always of the dangerous, playful nature of freedom itself. So the analogy, or the symbolic relation, is that love (eros) exists inside of us as a sentiment in a manner akin to a young child’s spontaneous form of anarchism: impulsive, in complete disregard of social conventions, without a sense of logic, ethics or reality, and wonderfully visceral in its experiencing of life. Now of course we are talking about love as sentiment, not as action. There is a difference between feeling something and acting upon that feeling – and that difference is constructed, necessarily, by the filters imposed in the mind after infancy as we learn to live inside of logic, ethics and reality’s principle. But the myth, and the god, of Cupid is there to remind us that we don’t live only there in those constructed worlds – they are necessary worlds, and they can be good worlds, but they are not the only worlds. And a world is only open when it recognizes more worlds beyond just itself. So there is a tension, the stage set for a transgression, in the very conceptualization of love in Greek mythology: love is wild and free in a world that cannot always afford to be so, but yet that same world cannot afford to never be so either. We can extend the analogy between love and the figure of the child further: Are children honest – more honest than the facts we learn about on screens? (Enter your answer here: ) Do children make plans, or do they simply live dreams? ( ) Are children deceived by appearances, or do they actually deceive the person who thinks that appearances are only a form of deception? ( ) Are children able to feel in a way that many adults should envy – including being able to feel pain? ( ). It would seem as though we forget as many things in life as we learn, and that love is there to help us relearn the world that we forgot. In ancient Greece an important concept was born: love is form of learning, perhaps the highest form of learning. To learn, dear students, means to change. Because learning means living with a newly acquired knowledge, and so this means living differently than before this knowledge dawned its light – hence to change the way life is lived. But change is not obligatory and can’t be forced, and people only really learn when they want to, as you can imagine. This notion of

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learning as changing is very different from the notion of learning as accumulating. I think it is rather clear that the prevalent notion of learning today is completely identifiable with a process of accumulation: we accumulate information, and skills in managing that information, so that we can accumulate points, so that we can accumulate a higher GPA, so that we can accumulate a better resumé, so that we can accumulate a better job, so that we can accumulate more money, so that we accumulate more things, and then maybe we can also accumulate some people (life’s greatest purchase!?), and accumulate stories about how we accumulated. Oh, and provide for our kids too, by teaching them how to accumulate. But all along the way of accumulation we are dealing with inanimate (soulless) things, even facts. Beware, because we become how we see the world – or how we are taught to see the world. Love is incompatible and antithetical to objectification. To love a person means to see and love that person’s soul as it is manifested (in physicality, in writing) and as it is imagined in the depths of our own soul. To see another person’s humanity makes us more human, and this is a fundamental changing of perspective from the objectifying mania that accumulates quantities into an infinity of nothingness. Love teaches us how to be human, when we forgot. And so love is treacherous – your own education tells you so, because love will not help you be a societal success, and success is the only sign under which education presents itself today, losing all sense of irony with regards to itself: successes always contain hidden failures, and failures (that very romantic word) contain hidden successes. PLATO Plato, the philosopher, in the fourth century BC (the 300s BC), wrote a very interesting book devoted to love: The Symposium. Entire college classes, and indeed entire lifetimes, can be devoted to the writings of Plato, their treasures are immeasurable. Here I will only say about him what is essential to our lesson: Plato wrote in the form of conversations (like a playwright) and never in the form of an essay (where only one voice is heard). Each of Plato’s books is composed as a conversation among a group of people discussing a certain topic. The reason for this form of composition is to present multiple points of view on a given topic – because the truth, after all, is never the monopoly of any one person. Imagine that the truth is like a broken glass, scattered a bit everywhere in the places where we express our thoughts together – and only after the conversation is over and we reflect upon it do we understand the reasons of differing points of view. It is true that in all of Plato’s conversations-made-books the center of gravity is Socrates, but Socrates’ magnetism (his ability to solicit other’s speech) comes from his claim to know nothing: which means to not hold dogmatically to any idea – a mask, of course, but a useful one for the purpose of conviviality. Symposium – the word itself is worth our attention: the prefix sym, as we see in the words sympathy and symphony comes from συν (sin) meaning with, or together in Greek. And the rest of the word –posium has its root in πίνω (píno) which means to drink. Symposium means to drink together: a drinking party, voilà. Today you will see the word symposium used in a highly modified way, whereby it indicates a boring academic conference where drinking, and all forms of fun, are prohibited (or actually just pushed in the shadows), but don’t worry about that. The premise of the book The Symposium is that a group of friends get together for a party at someone’s home where they will drink, eat, listen to (live) music… and (not as common today) entertain each other by talking intelligently and honestly about things that matter. Imagine that. The host of the party proposes a game – a game in the form of a question without a definitive answer. The gaming question is: What is the nature of love? Each guest at the party creates, on the spot, a story-explanation that answers the question

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of love’s nature. After everyone has spoken, the group will decide who told the best story, which also means who gave the most honest answer – you see, truth (the most honest answer) and pleasure (the best story) don’t need to be separated, and quite often when they are the both of them suffer – like two lovers separated by circumstances beyond their control. Here is what an ancient symposium looked like, according to a Greek vase:

The only female attendees at this symposium were the musicians, excluded from the conversation, from the game itself (although perhaps initiating a different game). Certainly the conversation – about love – would have been more interesting had women spoken, but nonetheless, despite this omission, the ancient conversation can be of a general interest. Here I want to give you to read two speeches made by two of the attendees of Plato’s Symposium, wherein they each offer an explanatory story regarding the nature of love. The first speech is attributed to Aristophanes, who, like Socrates, was an actual person that Plato knew. Aristophanes was a playwright, and later in this “class” we will read a play written by him on this subject of democracy: Lysistrata, wherein all of the main characters are women. The second speech I want to give you is attributed to Socrates. Now we depart from an English written in California in 2020, and enter an older translation of Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s The Symposium: ‘First of all, you must learn about human nature, and what has happened to it. Long ago, our

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nature was not the same as it is now but quite different. For one thing, there were three human genders, not just the present two, male and female. There was also a third one, a combination of these two; now its name survives, although the gender has vanished. Then “androgynous” was a distinct gender as well as a name, combining male and female; now nothing is left but the name, which is used as an insult. ‘For another thing, the shape of each human being was a rounded whole, with back and sides forming a circle. Each one had four hands and the same number of legs, and two identical faces on a circular neck. They had one head for both the faces, which were turned in opposite directions, four ears, two sets of genitals, and everything else was as you would imagine from what I’ve said so far. They moved around upright as we do now, in either direction, as they wanted. When they set off to run fast, they supported themselves on all their eight limbs, and moved quickly round and round, like tumblers who do cartwheels by keeping their legs straight as they go round and round. ‘The reason why there were these three genders, and why they were as described, is that the parent of the male gender was originally the sun, that of the female gender the earth, that of the combined gender the moon, because the moon is a combination of sun and earth. They were round, and so was the way they moved, because they took after their parents. They were terrible in their strength and vigour; they had great ambitions and made an attack on the gods. The story told by Homer about Ephialtes and Otus, how they tried to climb up to heaven to attack the gods, really refers to them. Zeus and the other gods discussed what to do to them and couldn’t decide. The gods didn’t see how they could kill them, wiping out the human race with thunderbolts as they’d done with the giants; if they did that, the honours and sacrifices the gods received from them would disappear. But they couldn’t let them go on behaving outrageously. After much hard thought, Zeus had an idea: “I think I have a plan by which human beings could still exist but be too weak to carry on their wild behaviour. I shall now cut each of them into two; they will be weaker and also more useful to us because there will be more of them. They will walk around upright on two legs. If we think they’re still acting outrageously, and they won’t settle down, I’ll cut them in half again so that they move around hopping on one leg.” ‘After saying this, Zeus cut humans into two, as people cut sorb-apples in half before they preserve them or as they cut hard-boiled eggs with hairs. As he cut each one, he told Apollo to turn the face and the half-neck attached to it towards the gash, so that humans would see their own wound and be more orderly; Zeus also told him to heal the other wounds. Apollo turned round the face; he pulled the skin from all around the body towards what’s now called the stomach (like a purse being pulled tight with a draw-string), and finished it off by making one opening in the middle of the stomach, which we call the navel. He also smoothed off the other numerous wrinkles, and shaped the chest with the kind of tool used by shoemakers when they smooth the wrinkles of leather on the last. But he left a few on the stomach round the navel, to remind them of what had happened to them long ago.

‘Since their original nature had been cut in two, each one longed for its own other half and stayed with it. They threw their arms round each other, weaving themselves together, wanting to form a round living thing. So they died from hunger and from general inactivity, because they didn’t want to do anything apart from each other. Whenever one of the halves died and one was

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left, the one that was left looked for another and wove itself together with that. Sometimes the one it met was half a whole woman (the half we now call a “woman”), sometimes half a whole man. In any case, they kept on dying this way. ‘Zeus took pity on them and came up with another plan: he moved their genitals round to the front; until then, they had genitals on the back of their bodies, and sexual reproduction occurred not with each other but on the earth, as in the case of cicadas. So Zeus moved the genitals round to the front and in this way made them reproduce in each other, by means of the male acting inside the female. The aim of this was that, if a man met with a woman and entwined himself with her, they would reproduce and then human race would be continued. Also, if two males came together, they would at least have the satisfaction of sexual intercourse, and then relax, turn to their work, and think about the other things in their life. ‘That’s how, long ago, the innate desire of human beings for each other started. It draws the two halves of our original nature back together and tries to make one out of two and to heal the wound in human nature. Each of us is a matching half of a human being, because we’ve been cut in half like flatfish, making two out of one, each of us looking for his own matching half. Those men who are cut from the combined gender (the androgynous, as it was called then) are attracted to women, and many adulterers are from this group. Similarly, the women who are attracted to men and become adulteresses come from this group. Those women who are cut from the female gender are not at all interested in men, but are drawn much more towards women; female homosexuals come from this group. ‘Those who are cut from the male gender go for males. While they are boys, because they are slices of the male gender, they are attracted to men and enjoy sleeping with men and being embraced by them. They are the best of their generation, both boys and young men, because they are naturally the bravest. Some people say that they are shameless, but that isn’t true. It’s not out of shamelessness that they do this but because they are bold, brave and masculine, and welcome the same qualities in others. Here is clear evidence of this: men like this are the only ones who, when grown up, end up as politicians. When they become men, they’re sexually attracted by boys; they have no natural interest in getting married and having children, although they are forced to do this by convention. They are quite satisfied by spending their lives together and not getting married. In short, such people become lovers of boys and boys who love their male lovers, always welcoming their shared natural character. ‘When a lover of boys, or any other type of person, meets that very person who is his other half, he is overwhelmed, to an amazing extent, with affection, concern and love. The two don’t want to spend any time apart from each other. These are people who live out whole lifetimes together, but still couldn’t say what it is they want from each other. I mean, no one can think that it’s just sexual intercourse they want, and that this is the reason why they find such joy in each other’s company and attach such importance to this. It's clear that each of them has some wish in his mind that he can’t articulate; instead, like an oracle, he half-grasps what he wants and obscurely hints at it. Imagine that Hephaestus with his tools stood over them while they were lying together and asked: “What is it, humans, that you want from each other?” If they didn’t know, imagine that he asked next: “Is this what you desire, to be together so completely that you’re never apart from each other night and day? If this is what you desire, I am prepared to fuse and

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weld you together, so that the two of you become one. Then the two of you would live a shared life, as long as you live, since you are one person; and when you died, you would have a shared death in Hades, as one person instead of two. But see if this is what you long for, and if achieving this state satisfies you.” We know that no one who heard this offer would turn it down and it would become apparent that no one wanted anything else. Everyone would think that what he was hearing now was just what he’d longed for all this time: to come together and be fused with the one he loved and become one instead of two. The reason is that this is our original natural state and we used to be whole creatures: “love” is the name for the desire and pursuit of wholeness. Translation by Christopher Gill “I feel complete with you,” “I feel like I knew you in another life,” the necklaces, or tattoos, displaying only half a heart… It seems as though Aristophanes’ myth still echoes around the mind today: love as a form of becoming whole, and no longer living in a hole – the added W indicating woman, you see how clever the English language is? Here is a question for you: what can you do with Aristophanes’ speech, rather than just praising it or criticizing it as though it were a product you were reviewing on Amazon, or Yelp or some other lonely place where you can evaluate people as though they were products? You have been taught, consciously, to memorize and highlight keywords and main points: but you are not actors needing to memorize lines for a play you will never perform. And you have been taught, unconsciously, that “your voice” consists in expressing likes and dislikes, but you are not so foolish or insecure as to believe that this is an actual form of “empowerment” – are you? Besides memorizing or liking/disliking something, how do you steal a meaning, or a line, or a style, from the whole that it appears in and make it your own? Why have schools not taught you to be bank robbers, and given you good banks (good books) to rob from? It is in your own speech – the verbal one, the written one, the corporal one, the sartorial one – where you can distribute all the things you’ve robbed from the storage banks of history that have no guards protecting them. You can be like Robin Hood, except you are the poor who become rich, and then other people can steal from you! Imagine if Bonnie and Clyde read books together, how much fun they would have. And here then is Socrates’ speech from The Symposium, where he recounts to the group a conversation he had with his dear teacher, Diotima: ‘“Who are the father and mother of Love?” I asked.

‘“That’s rather a long story,” she replied, “but I’ll tell you anyway. Following the birth of Aphrodite, the other gods were having a feast, including Resource, the son of Invention. When they’d had dinner, Poverty came to beg, as people do at feasts, and so she was by the gate. Resource was drunk with nectar (this was before wine was discovered), went into the garden of Zeus, and fell into drunken sleep. Poverty formed the plan of relieving her lack of resources by having a child by Resource; she slept with him and became pregnant with Love. So the reason Love became a follower and attendant of Aphrodite is because he was conceived on the day of her birth; also he is naturally a lover of beauty and Aphrodite is beautiful.

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‘“Because he is the son of Resource and Poverty, Love’s situation is like this. First of all, he’s always poor; far from being sensitive and beautiful, as is commonly supposed, he’s tough, with hardened skin, without shoes or home. He always sleeps rough, on the ground, with no bed, lying in doorways and by roads in the open air; sharing his mother’s nature, he always lives in a state of need. On the other hand, taking after his father, he schemes to get hold of beautiful and good things. He’s brave, impetuous and intense; a formidable hunter, always weaving tricks; he desires knowledge and is resourceful in getting it; a lifelong lover of wisdom; clever at using magic, drugs and sophistry.

‘“By nature he is neither immortal nor mortal. Sometimes on a single day he shoots into life, when he’s successful, and then dies, and then (taking after his father) comes back to life again. The resources he obtains keep on draining away, so that Love is neither wholly without resources nor rich. He is also in between wisdom and ignorance. The position is this. None of the gods loves wisdom or has the desire to become wise – because they already are; nor does anyone else who is already wise love wisdom. Nor do the ignorant love wisdom or have the desire to become wise. The problem with the ignorant person is precisely that, despite not being good or intelligent, he regards himself as satisfactory. If someone doesn’t think he’s in need of something, he can’t desire what he doesn’t think he needs.”

‘“Who are the lovers of wisdom, Diotima,” I asked, “if they are neither the wise nor the ignorant?”

‘“Even a child”, she said, “would realize by now that it is those who fall between these two, and that Love is one of them. Wisdom is one of the most beautiful things, and Love is love of beauty. So Love must necessarily be a lover of wisdom; and as a lover of wisdom he falls between wisdom and ignorance. Again the reason for this is his origin: his father is wise and resourceful while his mother has neither quality. So this is the nature of the spirit of Love, my dear Socrates. But it’s not at all surprising that you took the view of Love you did. To judge from what you said, I think you saw Love as the object of love instead of the lover: that’s why you imagined that Love is totally beautiful. But in fact beauty, elegance, perfection and blessedness are characteristic of the object that deserves to be loved, while the lover has a quite different character, which I have described.” ‘“Well, Diotima,” I said, “I’m sure you’re right about this. But if Love is like that, what use is he to human beings?”

‘“That’s the next thing, Socrates,” she said; “I’ll try to teach you. So far we’ve dealt with Love’s nature and birth; also, according to you, love is of beautiful things. But then, supposing someone asked us, ‘Why is Love of beautiful things?’, or, to put it more clearly, ‘The lover of beautiful things has a desire – what is it that he desires?’”

‘“That they become his own,” I said.

‘“But this answer raises another question,” she said. “What will he get when beautiful things become his own?”

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‘I said that I didn’t have a ready answer to that question.

“But suppose”, she said, “someone changed the question, using the word ‘good’ instead of ‘beautiful’, and asked: ‘Now then, Socrates, the lover of good things has a desire – what is it that he desires?’“

‘“That they become his own,” I said.

‘“And what will he get when good things become his own?”

‘“That’s easier for me to answer,” I said; “he’ll be happy.”

‘“So it’s the ownership of good things that makes happy people happy; and you don’t need to ask the further question, ‘Why does someone want to be happy?’ This answer seems to mark the end of the enquiry.” Translation by Christopher Gill I must admit that the brilliance of this passage has etched itself upon my mind since the first time I read it, when I was thirty. The world stopped when I read it. I didn’t choose to like it, it chose me. The concept stated here is that love, or desire, implies a wanting of something, some quality which is lacking in the person who desires. How can you want something that you already have? Perhaps you can want more of it, but that only moves the same question into another set of words. We want, we desire, what we don’t have yet admire. And so, if love (Eros) is indeed connected to beauty (Aphrodite), the lover is looking for, and hence lacking in beauty. Beauty in the sense of seeing the world beautifully, of feeling beauty – this has nothing to do with trophies. And the loved one is perceived, or is imagined, by the lover as embodying the beauty that the lover lacks. So the lover learns beauty through love. This is what the lover acquires and possesses through the experience of love, which should be distinguished from possessing the loved one as an object. We possess what we learn, or what is taught to us by books, by people, by music and by art. Our possessions are immaterial – they are ideas that become assimilated into our being. Magician, how do you keep your lover close to you and yet make possession disappear? – An aphorism of resourcefulness for who reads innocently, and therefore more intelligently. There is no point in telling you who “won” The Symposium’s conversation-game: who’s speech was voted the best. That would be lame, and we are already lame enough being online. And besides, the answer to this simple question is online too somewhere, like a sports game score or a stock report, or your GPA. You can find it if you’re really interested, if you’re not too busy. More important than that is the absurd idea I entertain that maybe you, someday, will discover that creating stories and telling them to others – like the attendees of The Symposium – is a noble way to put to use your own voice and your own mind for the sake of beautifying the world you inhabit, and of rendering obsolete the machines that conspire to render you obsolete. You should be more interesting than the movies you watch and the books you read.

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OVID In the year 1 AD, Ovid, the Roman poet, wrote The Art of Love. Art implies something artificial, an artifice, something unnatural and not innate. There is no Art of Sleeping, except perhaps for insomniacs. How can love be considered an art when we assume that love’s destination is our true selves, our “real me’s,” and our “genuine you’s”? Doesn’t art, and the artificial imply the fake, falsehood, deception…? Or, dear inhabitants of Orange County, does the fake, the falsehood and the deception consist in believing that life can ever do without a certain amount of artifice? Could it be that taken in the right dosage, the artificial can be beneficial, as it can miraculously enhance what is “real” rather than obscure it in the opacity of its own illusion of itself? As you read Ovid you will note that nowhere in his Art of Love – which was intended to be an instruction guide to successful love – does he encourage his readers to simply “be their true selves” or just “be honest” with the person they are in love with. Quite the contrary, love is a living theater for Ovid, and it is meant to be enjoyed as a performance that is both dream and reality, both serious and ridiculous, both superficial and satisfying. Like Plato and his speakers in The Symposium, Ovid measured the success of a love in terms of its transformative quality for the individuals involved – or rather, in terms of its ameliorative quality (ameliorative means to improve, it is a Latin word, and you can see its traces in the Spanish word mejor). Ovid’s guide to successful love is not a guide to founding a lasting marriage, because historically marriage has had very little to do with love. Marriage, as an institution, has served a functional, necessary purpose in Western history, but not until the eighteenth century – specifically not until the novels of Jane Austen, do we see love and marriage marring each other in Western literature. Love, as you will see in Ovid and also in the Arthurian legends of Chrétien de Troyes, existed for centuries in an undefined space outside of legally and ethically sanctioned institutions – it existed very much as a secret in a society that was wise enough to know that it didn’t need to know everything about itself. Ovid’s Art of Love is divided in two: the first part addressed to men, and the second part addressed to women. You will note, in the passages of the book which I have given you here to read, that he offers exactly the same advice to men and to women – there are no double standards here. In its essence, his advice consists of making oneself lovable and beautiful – and this includes, but is not limited to, the superficial abyss of “appearances” which the chorus of today’s morality claims so loudly to hold in contempt while in fact ours is the most appearance-driven society in the history of the world: how much time do we spend looking at a flat screens to satisfy our “inner selves”? Making oneself lovable and beautiful in The Art of Love means something more than simply taking care of your hair (though it means that too). You will see what else it means, if you are interested enough to read – because what else it means has everything to do with taking care of what is underneath your head’s hair (that is, your mind, which you can “comb” nicely by reading good books, ha ha). Should you be scandalized by what Ovid wrote, know that you are in prestigious company. The emperor of his time, Augustus Caesar, thought that Ovid’s book was so damaging to social morality that he had Ovid banished from the city of Rome to the most desolate corner of the Roman empire: Dacia, in today’s Rumania. Poor Ovid, who loved the city and all the encounters between people that the city made possible, was condemned to live the rest of his life, after publishing The Art of Love, in a cultural backwater inhabited by more horses than people. Here

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is a painting of him in exile by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, made in the nineteenth century:

There he is, looking dejected, wearing a white toga and blue cape, surrounded by illiterate people, with nothing in front of him but the banality of a horse’s ass. What a terrible fate for a poet, for a city lover, for a refined practitioner of the amorous art of conversation. Ovid corrupted, Socrates corrupted… when will we ever learn that we need to be a little corrupted in order to keep ourselves reasonable? Here then are some passages from Ovid’s ticket to the simple country life, The Art of Love: Ovid’s Syllabus All who are eager to know the surefire rules of romancing, make this manual yours! Learn how to conquer in love! Vessels are rapidly moved by skill in sailing or rowing; skill makes chariots dash; love must be governed by skill. […] This book is based on knowledge: take the advise of an expert! All’s true: mother of Love, kindly smile on my task! Keep away, slender hairbands (prudish ladies’ adornments); keep away, flounced dresses that hide half of a “good” woman’s feet! Let me sing of loves that are safe and “thefts” that are readily granted; here in my poem no gross wrongdoing secretly lurks.

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First of all, let me tell you soldiers new to such weapons: seek out a lady to love, that is your primary task. Secondly, you must strive to win her good grace with your wooing. Thirdly, make sure it’s a love likely to last for a while. Go Out and Find Her While you still may, while yet you’re able to roam about freely, choose which lady you’ll tell, “You are the one meant for me.” Never expect her to drop right into your lap from the heavens; she who will please your eyes has to be looked for, and hard! Hunters for deer know just where to spread the nets for their quarry, boar hunters know in which valley they’re gnashing their tusks. Hunters for birds know their thickets, and men who handle the fishhook know which waters they’ll find brimming with succulent prey. Likewise, you who are hunting for love and enduring affection, start off by learning just where ladies are wont to be found. […] Theaters are the best locations for amorous hunting; places like these repay prayers and vows best of all. There you will find some woman for loving, or one for deceiving; some you may toy with just once, some you may want to retain. Just as a long line of ants go back and forth on their labors, clasping their usual food tight in their grain-bearing beaks, just as the bees revisit their fragrant meadows and pastures, flying amid the blooms, over the top of the thyme, thus do lady sophisticates flock to a show that’s successful: such are their numbers, my mind often has ground to a halt! Though they come to look on, they also come to be looked at: that’s a place which dooms chastity, modesty, shame. Be Confident First of all, you must have self-confidence: all of them can be captured, sure as a shot; just you spread out your nets! Birds will sooner be mute in springtime, cicadas in summer, sooner will well-trained hounds turn their back on a hare, than a well-wooed lady will offer resistance to lovers: even one you suppose out of your reach will give in. Stolen love, so delightful to men, is more so to women; men reveal too much, women can hide their desire. Be Well-Groomed, but not a Dandy I beg you, refrain from curling your hair with hot irons; don’t use pumice to scrape hair off your legs, I advise. Leave that to eunuchs who praise in howling Phrygian measures Mother Cybele, great daughter of Heaven and Earth. Men look better when not so dandified, don’t they? When Theseus

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stole Ariadne, no brooch lent its grace to his hair. Never especially chic, Hippolytus gratified Phaedra; handsome Adonis pleased Venus, though bred in the woods. Just make sure you’re clean, let exercise tan your complexion; see that your toga fits, rid it of dirt and of stains. Don’t tie your shoe strap too tight, and wipe all the rust off the buckle; don’t let a shoe that’s too large make your feet seem to swim. Don’t let your wayward hair be ruined by amateur haircuts; always let practiced hands clip both your beard and your locks. Don’t let your nails grow too long, and never let them be dirty; don’t let unsightly hairs thrust themselves out of your nose. See that your breath is fresh, with no disagreeable odors; don’t offend people’s scent, smelling like a sheep or like goats. Leave all the rest for women of little virtue to practice, leave it to men who desire men as partners in bed. Be Educated and Pleasant Though you’re handsome as Nireus, that chief so vaunted by Homer, handsome as Hylas, the youth raped by sex-crazed nymphs, still, to hold on to your woman, avoiding the shock of rejection, let intellectual gifts join with your bodily ones. Handsomeness, always a weak thing, dwindles away as time passes; years that slowly plod on steadily wear it away. Violets aren’t always in blossom, nor wide-gaping lilies; roses, too, fall away, leaving behind only thorns. One day, good-looking lad, you’ll find grey hairs in your hairbrush; wrinkles will follow in turn, plowing that beautiful face. Now is the time to fashion a mind that will outlive your beauty; only your mind will last down to the day of your death. Don’t think it needless to cultivate arts of civilization; practice the two classic tongues, learning both Latin and Greek. No great shakes for looks was Ulysses; how he could speak, though! How he inflamed two sea goddesses with his appeal! […] Therefore, don’t trust too much in good looks that will later desert you; furthermore, you must posses something more solid than looks. Skillfully managed compassion is best for winning folks over; harshness leads to hate, causing merciless wars. Hawks are hateful to us, for they live by always attacking; wolves, too, because they’re found feeding on timorous sheep. Swallows, though, are never our victims, being so gentle, while for doves we provide towers to live in, as well. Far from me may quarrels remain and contentions of sharp tongues! Love is soft, it demands nurture through sweetness of speech. Let wives drive their husbands away by grumbling, let husbands drive away wives; let them deem couples are always at war.

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Wives must be like that; quarrels are normal parts of their dowry. Mistresses, though, ought to hear nothing but welcoming words. Not by some legal decree did you and she end up in one bed; love is law for you two, armed with legitimate rights. Seeing your loved one again, bring words of pleasure and solace; that way, each visit of yours makes it a red-letter day. Persevere Love is a sort of war, and sluggish men have no place there; guarding its banners is not work for the timid or shy. Night and tempest and long, long trails and terrible hardships, labors of every kind lurk in that amorous camp. Often you’ll suffer from rain that’s released by the clouds up in heaven, often you’ll suffer from cold, lying on ground that is bare. Legend tells that Apollo once guarded the herds of Admetus, hiding his glory away down in some miserable hut. Good enough for Apollo, but not for you? Don’t be prideful! Show that you crave a love calculated to last. Maybe the road you travel is never a safe or a smooth one; maybe you’ll find every door closed with an obstinate bolt. That’s the case? Slip headlong right into the house by the skylight! Let its high windows provide secret ways to get in! Thus you’ll make her happy, she’ll know she occasioned your perils; yes, she’ll be grateful for such tokens of genuine love! Flatter Her This above all, you men who want to hold onto your mistress: make her believe that her charm smites you and holds you in awe. When she’s in Tyrian robes, say Tyrian robes are the finest; should she wear Cosian garb, say that there’s no place like Cos. Is she clad in gold? Say gold bricks are hardly more precious. Wool is adorning her frame? Sing all the praises of wool. Should she be dressed in only a slip, cry out: “You ignite me!” Yet, with a timid voice say you’re afraid she’ll catch cold. Has she arranged her hair with a part in it? Praise for her hairdo! Has she curled it with hot irons? Praise for her curls! Gape at her arms when she’s dancing, thrill to her voice when she’s singing; then, when her number is done, shout out: “Encore! Don’t stop!” Make the most of your hours of intercourse, show her your pleasure; moaning aloud, let her know just how she sets you aflame. Even if normally violent, normally grim as Medusa, then she’ll be soft as silk, gentle and meek with her lad. Just make sure your words don’t reveal that you’re only pretending; don’t let your features spoil any impression you’ve made. Guile work best when it’s hidden; discovered, it’s liable to shame you. Through your own fault, you’ll have lost all your credit for good.

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Hide Your Affairs Ruddy boars at the height of their fury aren’t so savage, tumbling a whole pack of mad hounds with a flash of their tusks; female lions, when suckling their cubs, are never so vicious; nor is the tiny asp, trodden ineptly, so wild: no, a woman’s more fierce when she finds herself ousted by rivals: flames flaring up in her face point to the state of her mind. […] Playing the field will break up affairs that seem well knit and solid; prudent men should avoid letting such mishaps occur. Still, this decree of mine isn’t meant to tie you to one love. God forbid! Even young brides can’t pin you down if you roam. Have your fun, but in secret, and never allude to your mischief: never strut or brag, never boast of your sins. Don’t give gifts to another love that your first one may hear of; don’t have any new trysts slated for regular hours. Lest your earlier sweetheart detect your romance’s location, make sure to hold each new date in a separate spot. […] Should your amours be revealed though you’ve done your best to conceal them, keep on denying them flat, even if clear as the day. Don’t be more humble than usual, don’t be too openly coaxing: actions like these are too patent tokens of guilt. Then, don’t spare your lions; your peace is dependent on one thing: wipe out all her complaints, starting an orgy of sex. Make Her Jealous All you men who were just concealing your mischief, as ordered, change your course! I now counsel: own up to your sins! […] When hearts get rusty from being too lazy and carefree, love needs a stimulus, love needs to be prodded with goads. Make her feel insecure about you, heat up her lukewarm feelings, let her turn pale hearing that you’ve misbehaved. Oh, how happy a man is, a million times over and then some, having a woman weep over a grief that he’s caused! Right after word of his crime has come to her ears (with reluctance), Gods, let me be the one whose hair she rabidly pulls then! Let me be he whose cheeks then get viciously scratched! Let her look at me tearfully, casting glances of menace, feeling, against her will, life without me would be void. Let it not last too long if you grant her time to reproach you; don’t let her wrath increase, heightened by lengthy delays. Now is the moment to hold her snow-white neck in embraces, now let your loved one week joyful tears on your breast.

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Kiss her tears all away; give the weeper the pleasures of Venus. Make your peace; only thus anger is conquered and fees. After she’s worn herself out with raging, you and your foe should strike a treaty; have sex, then she’ll be gentle again. Tolerate Rivals Put up calmly with rivals, and gain the ultimate triumph! Like some great consul, you’ll stand on the Capitoline. Think of it as not me, but oracular oaks in Dodona telling you this; it’s the high summit of all of my art. Seeing her signal another man, bear it! And don’t touch her love notes; let her come whence she wants, let her go whither she likes. Husbands allow this freedom to spouses they’ve legally married after consoling sleep blissfully visits their eyes. I confess, though, I’m weak, not reconciled, not so complaisant. What shall I do? I can’t follow the precepts I preach. Let me catch some man giving my dear mistress a high sign! Will I take it? Won’t anger drive me amok? Even when she was kissed by her very own husband, it smarted; I posses a love cursed with barbarous traits. More than once this fault has injured me; those men are wiser, those who don’t really mind seeing her greet other men. Yes, it’s better to shut your eyes; let her cheating be hidden lest she grow so bold, shame wouldn’t cause her to blush. Use Euphemisms Things you don’t like, put up with; later you’ll like them; a long love mellows you; love that’s brand-new often has finicky moods. Till a grafted branch has grown into place and is steady, every breeze that blows shakes it and makes it come loose. Soon the same tree, now that time has strengthened it, puts up resistance; standing strong, it will bear fruit that it didn’t before. Time, by itself, can remove each flaw and failing from bodies; let time pass, and faults, little by little, will go. […] Faults can be lessened by euphemisms; should she be dark-skinned, blacker than pitch, then say “swarthy” women are hot. Cross-eyed? Say she’s like Venus. Gray-haired? Say, like Minerva. Should she be dying of dire skinniness, tell her she’s slim. Should she be short, she’s petite; all fat girls are pleasingly plump ones. Hide each minus away, cloaked by the name of a plus. Simultaneous Orgasms Trust me, the pleasures of loving shouldn’t be hasty or hurried. After locating the spot where a lady likes to be handled, let no shame or false modesty shoo you away.

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Look at her eyes, all asparkle with trembling flashes of lightning, just like the summer sun’s rays reflected in pools. Hear her moan with bliss, and hear her amorous murmurs; hear her uttering sighs, words that befit the event. Don’t spread too much sail and suddenly get there before her; yet, on the other hand, don’t let her leave you behind. Reach your goal together: that’s when both parties are happy, man and maid side by side, both of them weary but glad. Advice to Women: Don’t be Afraid Once I gave arms to the Greeks to fight the Amazons, now I’ll lend some to Amazon queen Penthesilea as well. Women, be equal contenders, and may those win who are favored both by Venus and young Cupid, who circles the globe. Quite unfair to have unarmed women as foes to armed heroes! Winning that way would plunge every man into disgrace. One fellow out of the crowd may say, “Why give a snake extra venom? Why entrust she-wolves with innocent sheep?” Cease to ascribe to all women the faults of a few women only; let each one be judged solely by acts of her own. […] Come and learn from me, ladies (those who’re less strict, but obey modesty, law and the right)! Even now bear in mind that old age surely is coming; don’t let an hour pass by wasted that might be well spent. While you may, while the springtime of life still sweetly adorns you, have your fun; years go by just like a hastening brook. Waters already gone past can never be made to flow upstream; time that’s flown won’t come back to you ever again. Make good use of your youth, for time speeds by with a swift foot, never restoring the heights once achieved in your prime. There where I now see barren plots, once violets blossomed; roses for garlands adorned bushes where I now see thorns. Days will come when women who now shut their doors on their lovers find themselves sleeping alone, old and cold in the night. Then their doors won’t be smashed in a nighttime fight, and their thresholds won’t be strewn with red roses when morning returns. […] Emulate, mortal women, the goddesses’ shining examples; don’t rob lusty hot men of your lovable charms. What will you lose if they fool you? You still will have tested those pleasures. Taste them a thousand times: pleasures like those aren’t lost. […] These instructions won’t make you wanton; they’ll keep you from fearing ills that are fanciful. Give! Don’t be afraid of a loss!

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Know Yourself: Hair and Clothes Grooming’s my first concern: doesn’t Bacchus foster well-tended grapevines? Doesn’t the wheat thrive in a field free of weeds? Beauty’s a gift from the gods, and not many women can claim it. Most of you never obtain gifts so great and so rare. Forms, looked after, will prosper. Neglect them, you’ll surely regret it, even when they’re at first lovely as Venus’s form. […] Ladies, refrain form weighing your ears down with gems and the pearls which dark-skinned Indians cull, diving in waters of green. Don’t clump around with the weight of the gold sewn into your garments; riches you hope will allure often chase us away. Cleanliness, neatness attract us; don’t let your hair be disheveled; hands that are deftly run through your hair can add to your charms or subtract. Nor is there only one form of adorning yourselves: pick the fittest, pick what’s suited to you. Mirrors will help you to judge. Should your face be long, fix your hair with an unadorned parting; Laodamia fixed hers that way, and no other way. Rounded faces require that a very small knot of the hair be tied at the top of the head, leaving the two ears exposed. One woman lets her hair hang all the way down to her shoulders; that’s how Apollo wears his, singing low to the lyre. Other women can bind their hair back like huntress Diana out on a spirited chase, hitching her skirt with a belt. Some women look their best when their hair is billowing loosely; others, when their hair’s tightly confined by a band. […] What shall I say of your clothes, ladies? Can’t you see I’ve no use for appliqués, nor for wools purpled by Tyrian dyes? Finding available less expensive coloring matters, why so insanely wear all of your cash on your back? Can’t you wear clear blue shades, the color of skies that are cloudless, not turned gray by rain brought by southerly winds? Can’t you wear golden hues, like the ram on which Phrixus and Helle fled from Ino, a mean mother-in-law, as they flew? […] So many flowers appear when the earth is refreshed in the springtime, vines are producing buds, winter’s doldrums are gone! That’s how many colors wool can absorb. When you choose them, choose them well; not all colors become each of you. Dark ones are good if you’re pale-skinned: dark ones suited Briseis; captured by Greeks, she wore dark gray garments at Troy. Light ones are good if you’re dark: Andromeda, white-clad, was gorgeous; envy made the gods torment Seriphos, her isle. Read Beautiful Things

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Ladies, learn the verse of Callimachus, learn the verse of Philitas; learn the verse of that old drunkard Anacreon, too. Memorize Sappho’s poems (who ever was lewder than she was?); study Menander’s plays (masters deluded by slaves). Be prepared to read the works of the tender Propertius; Gallus’s poems of love, yes – Tibullus’s too! Read the story of Phrixus and Helle, related by Varro, how that golden fleece caused her to drown in the strait. Read of Aeneas the refugee, ancient sire of our nation: Vergil’s epic’s the best yet published in Rome. One day, perhaps, my name will be mentioned along with those great ones; maybe my writings will last, saved from oblivion, too. Go Out and Find Him, and Make Sure He’s Serious Crowds are of use to you, lovely ladies; let your feet often stray past your own front door: gladly mingle with throngs. Where the sheep are numerous, she-wolves can pick out a fine one; Jupiter’s eagle swoops down on birds in a flock. Therefore, let the people have leave to see beautiful women; out of that number, perhaps one will be drawn to their charms. Women desirous of pleasing men should be seen in all places, paying strictest heed always to looking their best. Everywhere chance plays a part; let your hook be constantly dangling; just when you think it’s no go, lo! you’ve caught you a fish! […] Yet, shun men who take too much pride in their looks and appearance, deftly arranging their hair, keeping it neatly in place. Yes, they’ll spin you a yarn, but they’ve told it to thousands of women; love like theirs will stray, free from ties that could last. What is a lady to do when her lover is slicker than she is? Maybe he has more men firing his fancy than she! […] Some men plan their attack by falsely pretending they love you, seeking a shameful gain via a ploy such as that. Don’t be fooled by their hair, all shiny with sweet-smelling lotions, nor by the tongue of their tight belt that wrinkles their robes. Don’t let the toga deceive you, however finely it’s woven; don’t be beguiled if they wear numerous rings on their hands. Make Him Wait Study his love notes; from the words he’s written there, make a decision whether he’s telling a lie, whether his pain is sincere. After a short while, answer him; often a lover kept waiting burns more fiercely – but don’t keep him waiting too long! Never make your defeat too easy for love-hungry suitors, nor deny their request harshly, either: keep calm!

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Make him hope and despair at the same time; see that your answers give him more and more hope, less despair every time. Make Him Jealous Favors readily granted won’t foster a love that’s enduring; sometimes, not often, give up cheerfulness, standing aloof. Let the man sprawl outside your front door, crying, “How cruel!” Let him now implore, now make many a threat. Sweetness is hard on a man, we find bitter potions refreshing; often a favoring wind sinks the skiff it should aid. Why do men have such trouble adoring legitimate spouses? – men can take them to bed any old time that they like. Put a door in their way, let a doorkeeper say to those husbands harshly, “No, you can’t” – love will come, once they’re shut out. […]

While your newfound lover is caught in your net and still thrashing, let him hope he alone owns all the rights to your charms. Only later allow him to sense that he shares with a rival bed and charms alike; otherwise, watch him grow cold. Brave-hearted horses race best when, released from the starting gate’s confines, they can see foes to pursue, horses they need to outrun. Flames of love, though flickering out, flare up when the lover’s hurt; as for me, I confess, only my hurts make me love. Flatter Him Ladies, make us believe you love us (really, it’s easy); men who are eager enough readily offer their trust. Let a woman gaze on a youth more lovingly; let her sigh deep sighs and ask why he’s arriving so late. Let her add a few tears and pretend he has given her rivals; let her claw that youth’s cheeks with redoubtable nails. Then he’s already convinced; he’ll offer sympathy gladly, telling himself, “this poor woman’s upset over me!” Should he, especially, be a fashion plate, pleased with his mirror, he’ll imagine he’s got goddesses falling for him. Yet, however much he irks you, inhibit your anger; hearing of rivals, do not lose your wits all at once. Translation by Stanley Applebaum What would Ovid be without his reader’s sense of humor? “I think Ovid is like someone who is stuck in high school,” students who have just graduated from high school have said. “I just don’t like the part where….” Yes, we know. Somewhere over the rainbow Ovid and world hunger will disappear, and everything will be ok.

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There are a few ideas presented in The Art of Love that are worth regarding more closely. Here the point is not to locate, through scientific analysis, their true meaning – because we are dealing here with a book, not a molecule, and we are not in a laboratory, but in our own heads. Instead the point is to do something with The Art of Love – which means to create something with it – because interpreting a piece of writing is a creative act that completes the meaning of what was presented. Excuse me if I repeat myself. Ovid mentions theaters as the best place to go in Rome to look for love. Theaters – a Greek invention that the Romans took up and made their own. Why theaters? What is it about theaters? Theaters, where plays are performed, still exist today, but their aura is quite different than it was in ancient times, or even in Shakespeare’s times (the seventeenth century). If you regard how Ovid writes about going to the theater, you can see that he considers the audience members to be imagining themselves as participants in a separate performance than the one they came to view. The theater’s stage is a place where the distinction between reality and fantasy is eliminated – so why then should that distinction persist in the audience? Isn’t magic contagious? Doesn’t life imitate art? Is the theater that Ovid refers to simply a more civilized form of carnival, where things can happen that don’t usually happen because the codes of logic, ethics and reality are suspended? It is easy to imagine Ovid as a grown up Cupid, but that would be too flattering. In Roman theaters people went not only to see the play, but also to be seen seeing the play. The audience was on display to itself too, not only the actors - and in fact, everyone became aware of themselves as perennial actors is a collective life that was visual and sensory. Moreover, consider that the best place to view people, to look at people aesthetically, and also culturally, is from a stage. Actors see you, the audience, like a play that they are watching. A teacher in front of a classroom can assume this perspective too – assuming that he does not imagine himself to be a policeman, a boss, or a mere appendage of his own PowerPoint presentation – looking at his own words on the screen rather than the people in the room called “students.” The gaze of authority objectifies the people it sees. The gaze of technology makes people obsolete. But the aesthetic gaze, the looking at people and reading of appearances, and enjoyment of appearances, is something different. Theaters are places to see life performed, both onstage and in the audience. Theaters today don’t hold the same charm they did two thousand years ago – but then what place does? What places today are like the theaters that Ovid wrote about, where you can encounter people, where eyes can meet, where dreams between people can come to life? Where is a fantasy space in real life? This is a question – and I remind you, excuse me for doing so, that real questions don’t have mathematical answers. The answers to questions have to be imagined and invented, and made real. I have always thought that schools could be like theaters. Or grocery stores, or kitchens in restaurants – which are usually much more interesting than the seating section for customers. None of these places were intended to be fun, but so what? You can make them so. Consider this French saying, “underneath the paved stones hides the beach.” In the middle of monotonous mediocrity of everyday life (the paved stones) there exist hidden worlds (the beach) that you create as you discover them, and the only ticket of admission is the one you issue to yourself when you let yourself go. Ovid’s theaters, where do you see them today? You read the portions The Art of Love where Ovid writes about taking care of one’s appearance. But you noticed too that he writes about taking care of one’s intellect and content of speech. It is in the decoration of the soul that reading poetry, appreciating art, studying philosophy, and

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feeling music find their real fulfillment. In refining the way the world is seen and experienced. To be “cultured” means to look at the world through more sensitive eyes, to see the beauty in the world that is generally overlooked, but not hiding. In these lessons I have shown you several works of art. What is the point of looking at art, or of studying “art history?” While certainly it has a historic value, I think its primary value is entirely in the present, in the eyes of the viewer. We look at art to look at the world around us differently, to look at it better, to live in it better, to change the way we see things – so that we can receive the world’s gifts and thereby not be so easily convinced that we are poor and in need of things that can be bought and sold. Imagine that museums are like gyms, where you can go to exercise your eyes, so that once you leave you look better. Yes, really look better – at life. These are the types of things Ovid was referring to. And their value, in the art of love, in there in terms of what you can give to a conversation, even a nonverbal one, experienced only through visual signs. Today students, and teachers too, commonly say that they don’t have time for any of this – they are too busy with busywork and feel intimidated because “Culture” is for them, not us, whose habits have been formed differently. And this is not by chance. If the mass of a society cannot be cultured, then it more easily is convinced to buy what it lacks, and in the end be consumed by what it consumes. If schools keep you so busy that you have no tine to think, then you are simply learning not to think. If reading is conceptualized as a “job” and not a form of enjoyment, then your literacy has been reduced to very little. Pleasure, and not obligation, is the secret of good writing, and the secret of good reading too. Following Ovid, I would say that it helps if you have people to talk to about those useless things you read and see, which make the world much more interesting without it even knowing. Ovid’s advice regarding the attainment of culture (reading for pleasure, admiring art…) pertain to a person’s interiority – culture is the ornamentation of the soul, as the ancients called it. But yet interiority shines through, and is visible. What does it look like? In the history of Western art, you will see that a recurrent motif is the representation of a person transfixed by a feeling that becomes a thought. Or said more simply: a person thinking (though this simplicity is deceptive). This begins from the observation that people are more attractive when they are thinking. Maybe you will see this in life, if your eyes look for it. Consider this Roman statue, from the first century AD:

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The statue has been given the conventional name Seated Girl by art historians. Is its spirit not echoed in the first painting in this lesson, the one by Egon Schiele with an equally conventional name? Interiority is visible, what goes on on the inside is manifested on the outside. Artists have know this throughout history, why shouldn’t you? CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES The Middle Ages gives us a concept that is enduring – not correct or incorrect – but enduring in the practice of love: Chivalry. The concept of chivalry is perhaps one of the most interesting creations of the Middle Ages, and it is represented vividly in the legends of knights and ladies that make up a large component of medieval literature. In the vast grouping of medieval chivalric legends, which were recited and written throughout Europe and the Middle East, the Arthurian legends of western, Celtic Europe are where I want to focus our attention. The Arthurian legends are a collection of stories regarding King Arthur and his knights of the roundtable. The origins of these legends go back to Celtic polytheism. The gods and goddesses

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of that mythology were not discarded and forgotten about with the conversion of Western Europe to Christianity, but instead redressed in the vestiges of kings, knights and ladies all declaring their nominal adherence to the new religion. Originating in Britain and in western France, the Arthurian legends were transmitted orally for centuries. In the twelfth century the French writer Chrétien de Troyes wrote some very beautiful versions of a few of the most popular Arthurian legends. Chrétien was not the only person to write versions of the Arthurian legends in the Middle Ages, and there is no definitive version of any of them – for folklore and polytheism by nature do not adhere to definitive versions. But Chrétien’s versions are the most suggestive, the most impressive, at least to me. I want us to look at Chrétien’s telling of the legend of Lancelot and Guinevere, for this legend best exemplifies the medieval concept of chivalry. Before looking at the legend itself, let’s look at the concept that looks at us through the legend. Chivalry. What is it? Forget about opening doors for people, that’s too easy. Anyone can do that. And knights – the practitioners of chivalry – are not supposed to be like anyone (everyone): they are supposed to be better. Better means doing things that most people (anyone/everyone) can’t do, or can’t even imagine doing. The English language, from its Germanic Anglo-Saxon strand, gives us the word knight to designate the protagonist of chivalry, yet this word is an anomaly. Knight, from the Germanic Knecht means the vassal, or the servant of a king. And in fact medieval knights did pledge their allegiance to and serve a king as a vassal. But more useful for our purposes is to regard how the word knight is said in neo-Latin languages: in Spanish and in French. In Spanish the word appears as caballero, and the root of this word is caballo: horse. Caballero literally means horseman. And the same is the case in French: knight is said chevalier, and the root of the word is cheval: horse. Chivalry is the conduct of the chevalier in the field of love. So, to understand chivalry we would do well to begin with looking at the chevalier’s primary field of conduct, whose rules are then transposed onto the field of love – I am referring to the battlefield, since after all the knight (the chevalier) is first and foremost a warrior. You may ask why the horse is so important to the knight and to even give him his name is neo- Latin languages and also in German, where he is called Ritter (rider). The knight’s horse was not merely a means of transportation, but an instrument of combat. And combat was conceived as a test of bravery. The paradigmatic image of the knight on his horse is the joust. You can see it here in an illustration from the fourteenth century German illuminated manuscript The Codex Manesse:

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As essentially a warrior, the knight’s primary virtue was courage – which means the facing of fear. Courage, as a virtue, only exists in relation to the sentiment that it must overcome, which of course is fear. Rather than running away from fear, courage leads us to it in order to defeat it, exactly like the knight’s mounted movement in a joust. I present you this synopsis of courage because in the knight’s love life, where chivalry finds its proper domain, the same virtue – courage – is reiterated in a most impressive way. We see in the Arthurian legends that the knights of the roundtable did not have wives at home. They did not frequent prostitutes. Nor did they have female friends with whom they chatted about everyday affairs. In other words they did not have what most people had because, and this is the point, knights were not like most people. In Spain there is a saying: si son todos caballeros entonces no hay más caballeros: if everyone is a knight, then knighthood no longer exist. The knight is the exceptional and the exception. That is what made him a favored literary character. The knight is exceptional first of all in courage – being more courageous in the face of fear, and in the face of death in particular, than the average person. And this exceptional courage – as well as loyalty, another knightly

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attribute – were as evident in his loves as they were in his battles. No wives, no prostitutes and no friends for the knight – then what? Only an impossible idea, the most unattainable woman imaginable, a dream that most people would turn away from in an instant porque no vale la pena: I am speaking of the lady: the conceptual complement of the knight. When you imagine falling in love, what would be the most difficult, painful and dangerous scenario imaginable? What would make you afraid to fall in love with someone? What problems and obstacles could exist between you and your loved one that would seem so big and insurmountable that you wouldn’t even bother pursuing your feeling? What risks could you imagine there would be in pursuing your loved one that would scare you away? Think of a love that would make you suffer terribly – not because the other person was treating you badly, but because of everything around that other person: the situation she found herself in that couldn’t be changed, the general circumstances of life, society’s rules and codes, a whole series of things. There. Take what you’ve imagined and consider that a knight, according to his exceptional nature, would imagine all of that just as a more lucrative challenge, just as a bigger dragon to slay. Being exceptional, the knight never wanted easy things, because ease makes people weak and lazy. No. Hard things, challenges, the impossible – only there did the knight set his gaze. Like I said, it is easy to open doors for people, but to move mountains it takes a knight. And so who was the typical lady of a chivalric tale? Who was this woman who most men wouldn’t dare to love, much less to pursue? We know her as the damsel in distress, which translated into contemporary English means: a young woman (damsel) with problems (distress). What were the damsel’s essential problems, her causes of (di)stress? Captivity, confinement, boredom. The damsel, or lady – the terms are interchangeable – was always confined within the captivity of either her father’s or her husband’s house, and was bored to death there. Most marriages were loveless as based solely on conventions: property, having children, property, having children… And women, as daughters and as wives, passed most of their lives in the status of a possessed object, without autonomy: the perfect recipe for boredom. Quite often in chivalric tales the knight falls in love by merely seeing the lady for a brief instance at a public gathering, like in church for example. He would rarely be able to speak to her and get to know her through conversation, or make himself known to her through conversation, since speaking in such a way was prohibited by decorum. The knight had to use his fantasy, based on fleeting images, to imagine what his lady was like – and on this planet of fantasy love was born. Cooped up in her father’s or her husband’s castle, the lady might exchange secret letters with the knight, hence a literary component became crucial to the whole affair. Imagining each other, and feeling devotion to an idea of the other person were the main components of the knight’s and lady’s relationship. At least in its initial stages. Because eventually, after a long prelude of distances and absences and fantasies, everything that was imagined and written between the two lovers becomes real. The knight eventually rescues the lady from her boring confinement and they exist together for a brief time. This is like the story of Hades abducting Persephone, except it is not, because this time it is a consensual abduction, a pleasurable abduction, an abduction from boredom not from innocence. But, as I said, only for a brief time. The knight’s and the lady’s story does not last forever, they don’t run away together, there is no divorce from an unwanted husband or marriage to an adventurous and death-prone knight, there is only that brief time that the lovers may live their secret world together, having risked their lives to do so. So yes, it must be that good, it must be that intense, it must be worth the risk of death – or rather, the

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desire must be stronger than the fear of death. I bring up death because, typically in chivalric stories, the knight must fight with his sword several custodians and guardians of the lady before he can get to her. The challenge here isn’t about being sneaky, it’s about fighting with security guards. The experience of the knight and lady is exceptionally rare, it stands in exceptional defiance of how most people live who don’t have the courage to follow their dreams or the courage to accept the fact that the object of their dreams is like a cloud that eventually floats away and can’t be held on to forever. It is a paradox that I raise here: most people don’t have the courage to be tamed by their dreams, and therefore set free by them. Most people instead tame their dreams, and are therefore frustrated by them, haunted by them. Remember that we are dealing with literature. But remember also that literature can either be an escape from life or a guide to life depending on the character of the person who reads it. Here is a tapestry from fifteenth century Flanders (Belgium) that represents the lady and what she means in chivalric legend:

On the tent is written A mon seul désir: To my sole desire. A concentrator of desire. A lion (courage) sits tamed close to the lady (desire), and a unicorn too, representing fantasy. Gifts

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appear the hands of an attendant, because love is nothing but a circulation of gifts. And only rarely are those gifts material, because if they always were then they would no longer be real. Now that the concept of chivalry has been presented, let’s look at some passages from the story of Lancelot and Guinevere as told by Chrétien de Troyes. The title of Chrétien’s book is Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart. You will see why the cart is an important symbol in the story. The Cart Ride The knight Lancelot has set out from King Arthur’s court to rescue Queen Guinevere, Arthur’s wife. Guinevere is being held captive by the malicious Prince Méléagant in the castle of his kindly father, King Bademagu. Lancelot is in such haste to rescue his beloved Guinevere that he has ridden his horse to death. […] And there Was a cart – used, in those days, As we use a pillory, now. In any good-sized town You’ll find them by the thousand, but then There was only one, and they used it For every kind of criminal, Exactly like the pillory Today – murderers, thieves, Those defeated in judicial Combat, robbers who roamed In the dark, and those who rode The highways. Offenders were punished By being set in the cart And driven up and down The town. Their reputations Were lost, and the right to be present At court; they lost all honor And joy. Everyone knew What the carts were for, and feared them; They’d say, “If you see a cart Coming your way, cross Yourself, and pray to the Lord On high, to keep you from evil.” The knight on foot, who had No lance, came up behind The cart and saw, seated On the shaft, a dwarf, who like A carter held a long whip In his hands. And the knight said, “Dwarf, in the name of God, Tell me: have you seen my lady

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The queen come by?” The dwarf, Low-born and disgusting, had no Interest in telling the knight Anything: “If you feel like taking A ride in this cart of mine, You might find out, by tomorrow, What’s happened to the queen.” The cart Rolled slowly on, not stopping For even a moment; and the knight Followed along behind For several steps, not climbing Right up. But his hesitant shame Was wrong. Reason, which warred With Love, warned him to take care; It taught and advised him never To attempt anything likely To bring him shame or reproach. Reason’s rules come From the mouth, not from the heart. But Love, speaking from deep In the heart, hurriedly ordered him Into the cart. He listened To Love, and quickly jumped in, Putting all sense of shame Aside, as Love had commanded. Only Guinevere Further on in Lancelot’s quest… Mind and body, the knight Of the cart remained in Love’s Firm grip, helpless against it; His thoughts were so tumbled about That he no longer knew who he was, Or if he truly existed, Or what his name might be, Or whether he was wearing armor, Or where he was going or from where He’d come. All he could think of Was one woman, for whom He’d forgotten everything else – And he thought of her so intently That he heard and saw and knew Nothing. But his horse galloped Ahead, on all the right roads,

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A Cold Reception After a long and perilous journey Lancelot reaches King Bademagu’s castle where Guinevere has been held captive. Lancelot frees Guinevere by defeating Prince Méléagant in a joust and swordfight. Bademagu, who is more favorable to Lancelot than to his own son, now brings Lancelot to see Guinevere and also Sir Kay, King Arthur’s steward who has been held in captivity with her. The king had left the field, Leading Lancelot with him, And Lancelot asked to be taken To the queen. “And how could I Object?” said the king. “Of course You’d like to see her. Indeed, If you wish you can also see Sir Kay.” Lancelot almost Fell to his knees with delight. The king took him directly To the great hall, where the queen Had been waiting for our knight to appear. Seeing Bademagu Hand in hand with Lancelot, She rose to greet the king, Seeming greatly embarrassed: Head down, she stood there, silent. “Lady, I bring you Lancelot,” Said the king, “who’s come to see you. I’m sure his visit will please you.” “Me?” she answered. “How could it? I’ve nothing to do with his coming.” “Good Lord, lady!” said the king, An exceedingly courteous man, “How can you say such a thing – Mistreating a man who’s served you So wonderfully well, often Putting his life at risk And all for you? A man Who came to your aid and fought with My son solely for your sake, Obliging him to surrender What he never wanted to lose?” “My lord, truly, he’s wasted His time. I can’t help it: I take no pleasure in his sight.” And Lancelot stood there, thinking, Then replied with infinite courtesy,

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As a true lover should, “You leave me sorrowful, lady, But I dare not ask you why.” He could have complained, and bitterly, Had she been willing to listen, But as if to make him feel worse She spoke not a word, just walking Away to another room. Lancelot’s eyes, and his heart As well, followed her out. It seemed to him far Too quick, far too short A trip: his eyes would have followed Her in, if they possibly could. His noble heart, which beat With greater strength and power, Crossed the threshold with her And went in, as she shut the door, Though his eyes, all filled with tears, Remained outside with his body. Then the king took him aside, Whispering, “But Lancelot, What can she mean, refusing To see you, not saying a word? Surely, if you used to speak, You two, she shouldn’t be Capricious and ignore you this way – Not with all you’ve done For her! Tell me, if you know, Why would she treat you like this? What have you done to deserve it?” “My lord, I had no warning. But clearly she took no pleasure In seeing my face or hearing My words, and it weighs on my heart.” “By God,” said the king, “she’s behaving Badly. You’ve risked your life, And all for her! But come, My good sweet friend, it's time You had a word with Sir Kay.” I Want You In Lancelot has been delayed in returning Guinevere to King Arthur’s court and the two lovers are still in King Bademagu’s castle. Rumors of the other’s death have driven Lancelot to try to kill himself and Guinevere to regret the cold reception she had given him previously. Once they now

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learn that the other is still alive Bademagu arranges for them a meeting. […] Then the king Brought him to see the queen And now her eyes were not Lowered to the ground, she came To greet him gaily, offering All the honor she knew how To give, making him sit At her side. And they talked Of whatever came to their minds, Neither of them hunting for words, For Love supplied them in abundance. And seeing how well it went, And nothing he said displeased The queen, Lancelot lowered His voice: “Lady,” he said, “I was taken aback at the greeting You gave me, the other day, Not saying a single word. I felt myself close to death And had not the courage, as I have Today, to say a word Or ask you why. Lady, If you’ll tell me what I’ve done To deserve such torment, I’m ready, Now, to make you amends.” To which the queen answered, “Indeed? Didn’t the cart Shame you the least little bit? You must have hesitated, For you lingered a good two steps. And that, you see, was my sole Reason for ignoring your presence.” “May God keep me from another Such error,” said Lancelot, “And may He show me no mercy If you haven’t spoken the truth! In the name of God, Lady, Tell me what I must do To earn your forgiveness, and whatever It is I will do it at once. I beg you: pardon my fault.” “My friend,” said the queen gaily, “Your fault is freely forgiven. You have my absolute pardon.”

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“I thank you, Lady,” he said. “But I cannot tell you, here, All I would like to say. I’d be grateful for the chance to speak In private, if that can be managed.” Then the queen motioned – not With her hand, but her eyes – to a window, And said, “Come speak to me Tonight, at that window, when everyone Else will be asleep. Come by way of that orchard. I can’t let you in, Nor can you stay the night. I shall have to stay inside, And you will have to stay out. I won’t be able to touch you, Except with my hand, or my mouth But if it gives you pleasure I’ll stay there till dawn, for love Of you. We cannot come Together, for Sir Kay, the steward, Sleeps on a bed in my room, Still sick from the wounds he received. And the door is always closed, And it’s strong, and very well guarded. Be very careful, when you come, That none of those watching see you.” “Lady,” he said, “If I can, No one will see me, and neither Think nor say an evil Word.” And thus they talked, And parted wonderfully happy. Lancelot left her, his spirits So high that all his pains And sorrows had been forgotten. But night was too slow in coming, And the day lingered too long: It seemed to him a hundred Days, or even a year. He’d hurry to their rendezvous, If only night would come! Then finally the thick, dark Night fought the day To its knees and slowly covered it Over with its heavy cloak.

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And seeing the light fade, He pretended an immense fatigue, Saying he’d been awake Too long, and needed to rest. You who’ve used the same trick Don’t need to have it explained: He made a great show of weariness And took himself off to bed – But found no comfort, for sleep Was not what he had in mind. He could not have slept, nor would he Have dared to even had he wanted To try. And soon he rose, Quietly, not a bit unhappy That no moon was shining, and no stars, And all through the house not a candle Or a lamp or a lantern was lit. He slipped outdoors, careful That no one was watching; everyone Thought he was fast asleep, Lost in his bed for the night. No one went with him, or showed him The path, as he went to the orchard, And he met no one on the way. And his luck held: part Of the wall around the orchard Had recently fallen, and through The hole he went, quickly, And stood beneath the window, Still as a stone, careful Not to cough or sneeze. And then the queen appeared, Dressed in a snow-white gown. She wore neither a coat Nor any covering but a short Red cloak, fur-trimmed, across Her shoulders. Seeing the queen Bend her head against The window’s great iron bars, Lancelot greeted her with gentle Warmth, which she returned, Immense longing gripping Them both, each for the other. No harsh or angry words Passed between them: pressing As close as they could, they were just

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Able to clasp hand To hand. How it hurt them, Unable to be together, And how they cursed those iron Bars! But Lancelot assured her, Should she be willing, he’d come And join her: no iron bars Could keep him out! The queen Quickly replied, "Can’t You see? This iron’s too thick To bend, too strong to break. Please: don't even attempt it! How could you possibly pull Away a single one?” “Ah, don’t worry, my lady! No iron can keep me out. Nothing can stop me from coming To you, if you want me to come Just say the word, and consider it As good as done. Your Not wanting me in is the only Obstacle that could keep me out, The only barrier I can’t Break down.” “I want you in,” Said the queen. “That’s not the question. But let me quickly return To bed, and lie there, and watch, Because it won’t be pleasant Or at all amusing if my husband’s Steward, who’s sleeping here, Hears you at work, and wakes up. Besides, it’s better for me To be back in bed, not standing Here for everyone to see.” “Go back to bed, lady, But have no fear: this Is work I can do quietly. These bars will come out quickly And with hardly an effort, and no one Will hear me or know what I’ve done.” The queen hurried back To her bed, and the knight prepared To pull the window apart. Taking hold of the bars, He bent them toward him until

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They snapped away from their sockets, But the iron edge was so sharp It cut through his little Finger, down to the bone, And sliced deep in the knuckle Of the finger next to it. He had no Awareness of the blood running out, Nor the wounds; he felt no pain, His mind on other matters. The window was high in the wall, But Lancelot had no trouble Climbing quickly through. Finding Sir Kay asleep, He approached the queen’s bed, Bowing in adoration Before the holiest relic He knew, and the queen reached out Her arms and drew him down, Holding him tight against Her breast, making the knight As welcome in her bed, and as happy, As she possibly could, impelled By the power of Love, and her own Heart. It was Love that moved her, And she loved him truly, but he Loved her a hundred thousand Times more, for if other hearts Had escaped Love, his Had not. His heart was so Completely captured that the image Of Love in all other hearts Was a pale one. And the knight had What he wanted, for the queen willingly Gave him all the pleasures Of herself, held him in her arms As he was holding her. It was so exceedingly sweet And good – the kisses, the embraces – That Lancelot knew a delight So fine, so wondrous, that no one In the world had ever before Known anything like it, so help me God! And that’s all I’m allowed To tell you; I can say no more. These pleasures I’m forbidden to report Were the most wonderful known,

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The most delightful. That night, And all night long, Lancelot Experienced incredible joy. But the dawn came, against His will, and he had to leave. Rising from her bed was like Some terrible martyrdom; He suffered immense pain. His heart kept yearning back To where the queen was lying, Nor could he keep it in his breast, For after such joy he had No heart to take away with him: The body might go, hut the heart Would remain. He turned and went To the window – but some of him stayed, For the curtains were spotted and stained With the blood he’d shed as he entered. He left more slowly than he’d come, With much sighing and many Tears. They could plan for nothing More, no matter how much They longed to: reluctant to leave, He left, and hated to go. His hands had been badly wounded, His fingers were scarred, but he bent The bars back where they’d been, Set them in their sockets again, So no matter how or where One looked, top or bottom, Inside or out, they seemed Completely undisturbed. And as he passed through the window He bowed and crossed himself, As if acknowledging An altar. And so he left, Sadly, seen by no one, And returned to his lodgings. He lay down In his bed, naked; no one Was disturbed, no one woke up. And then he noticed, astonished, How badly his fingers had been hurt, But was not bothered, quite sure That in bending the window’s iron Bars he must have cut And bruised himself. He felt

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No regret: he’d rather let Both his arms be ripped From his body than never have gone Through that window – though the wounds were so Severe that suffering such injuries On some other occasion, in some other Cause, would have been an affliction. Translation by Burton Raffel The cart. Lancelot must forsake the public image of his honor – one of the knight’s most prized possessions – for the sake of his love. And Guinevere – she gives Lancelot a cold reception because she heard that he hesitated for a moment before jumping onto the cart, in the moment wherein he debated with himself, where he was confused over which was more important: his public image (honor) or his private paradise (love). “He no longer knew who he was, or if he truly existed, or what his name might be, or whether he was wearing armor, or where he was going or from where he’d come.” To want to reach this state of oblivion is something deeply human. Love is a road there, and so is poetry which enchants the way a person looks at the world. Imagine that it is due to the absence of these things – the absence of love and the absence of poetry – which are both very natural and attainable through the work of the imagination, that then, only then, in their absence, does a substitute and a simulation of their affects need to be sought after. What are those things that substitute and simulate that which we cannot feel? BOTTICELLI The Renaissance had a particular interest in geometry, in form. Why? Because it loved paradoxes, and geometry only seems to make the world seem like a more ordered place but really it just gives human disorder more space to play in. Geometry was not intended to make us apprentice robots, it was intended to clear a space where we can frolic in. Order and disorder work together, complement each other, rise and fall together in the same movement. A paradox is an understanding of the unity of oppositional concepts. We generally don’t think paradoxically enough, and imagine that opposites naturally fight each other for supremacy: order grows at the expense of disorder, and vice versa. This mania that believes itself to be perfecting the world has done great damage to it. Let’s put it aside for a moment and look at something obsolete and useless: the Renaissance, Botticelli’s painting Primavera (which means spring, like the season, in Italian):

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This painting was made in 1482 in Florence. It was made, by Botticelli, as a wedding present for a wealthy couple – but that couple had to have been intelligent too, besides rich, otherwise they would have never understood it and it would thereby be meaningless. But you don’t have to be rich to be intelligent, and in fact quite often the pursuit of wealth comes at the expense of the pursuit of intelligence because all that matters is calculation and cleverness in the pursuit of wealth, but that is another story. The point is that regardless of whoever owns art as a material object, its spirit really belongs to whoever can appreciate it – and quite often these two persons: the owner and the appreciator of art, do not correspond. Primavera is an allegory of love, and all of the figures that you see in the painting are deities of Greek mythology. They are recognizable to who knows how to read the language of the symbols of mythology. As recognizable as the golden arches in a red background are to us. I said the Renaissance played with geometry: not to put life in boxes, but to give life the space to play. One tenant of the ordering of space, which is a faculty of geometry, is the ordering of the way we read. In European languages we read from left to right. It becomes “logical” to us, it corresponds with what we perceive as an ordered presentation of the world’s discourse. Look at the painting, and understand that the figures that appear there are not all together in time, they are not standing as a group. They are installments in a story – they are separated by time as the figures in boxes are in comic strips. They are in a temporal sequence – one following the other, and not all existing at once. How would we read a sequence of images (a comic strip) if not how we read words too – from left to right? This is our given logic – but it is fictitious and arbitrary, artificial and not absolute. It doesn’t have to be this way – because reality in general doesn’t have to be the way that it is normally perceived. And this is a painting about love, which

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deploys the season of spring as its metaphor – love, an occurrence that can never happen if we remain logical, that cannot be contained within the parameters of logic, that cannot be understood by logic. And yet life without it would make no sense. Botticelli plays with this perennial opposition between love (sentiment) and logic (rationality – which finds its spatial form in geometry). The story that he tells in the painting through its sequential figures is told from right to left – in breakage from the convention of normal, logical reading. You cannot understand the painting (you cannot understand love) if you look at it in the normal, rational way (symbolized here by reading from left to right). You must abandon convention, and reason too, if you want to see this strange and wonderful world. You must look at things backwards, or maybe upside down sometimes, or as paradoxes. Could it be so strange? By looking at the painting, we can perceive that it is meant to be read from right to left by the general movement and posture of the figures which all tend from the right to the left – like a wave or a breeze moving through them. What I want to do is look at the figures and tell the story as vaguely as I can – so that you can fill in everything that wasn’t said. Who is that blue person with wings on the right, coming down from the sky, with his cheeks puffed up, grabbing and abducting the woman looking back at him? What does he look like a personification of? Blue, from the sky, with air in his mouth about to be blown out? He is one of the winds – the western wind, Zephyrus. In springtime, in the Mediterranean (Greece, Italy…) a strong western wind blows. Remember that this painting is called Spring (Primavera) and it uses the natural occurrence of spring to represent the human occurrence of love: love is like spring, love is the spring of our lives. The winds of the early spring are like the last vestiges of the winter’s cold air reaching out and contributing to a new season that makes winter itself a distant memory. What are the winters of our lives? This question has been asked before, because it will be asked forever. But those of you who suffer from allergies know very well that the spring, even here in southern California, is marked by a strange unison of winds moving pollen. Pollen in the air, allergies in sensitive people’s noses. But you don’t have to have an allergy to appreciate art. Why does the wind move the flowers’ pollen in the spring? So that they can bloom everywhere and make the world colorful again. Do the flowers want to be blown? Do they ask the wind to disturb them? Well, look at the woman who Zephyrus is reaching for like how the wind reaches for flowers – she is Flora, the goddess of flowers. Do you see the first of the painting’s many flowers emerging from her mouth? The wind meets the flower, the sky meets the earth – the male spirit meets the female spirit, oh no. The myth of Zephyrus (the west wind) abducting Flora (the flower) is a variation of the myth of Hades (death) abducting Persephone (innocence). The point is that there is room for death in life according to polytheism. And there is room for the cold (the wind) too – it also has a role to play in the cycle of regeneration. Let’s move backwardly on, to the left. Who is that woman full of flowers? Flowers in her hair, on her neck and on her dress? She is holding her stomach, she is pregnant – pregnant, the way the earth is pregnant in the spring. And notice that behind her, above her head, the oranges start appearing in the trees. That woman is Flora again. Now made bountiful by the echoed wind of Zephyrus. That small flower that appeared from her mouth in the previous “frame” of the painting has now spread everywhere and become exuberant. Spring has bloomed. Imagine that the first two figures in the painting (Zephyrus and the first Flora) are standing behind the second Flora in time. Can you see a movement in their collective presentation, a becoming? This first

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part of the painting (the first three figures) represents the occurrence of spring in nature. Nature comes first, and humanity comes second, as an echo of nature. At the center of the painting – between nature (which we have just looked at) and humanity (which we will look at next: the three women dancing together and the strange guy at the end) who is there? Who is that woman in the center with the red and blue cape, and with Cupid above her – the little kid – blindfolded, with wings, and shooting an arrow? It is Venus. Because Venus and Cupid are always together in art. But does the way that Venus is represented in this painting not remind you of the way that Mary is represented in art? The colors red and blue are the signs of Mary in art. Do you remember this one? -

Raphael’s Small Cowper Madonna, wearing the telltale red and blue. Botticelli overwrites the two goddesses upon each other: Venus and Mary, polytheism and Christianity – such was the style of the Renaissance. In our lesson about polytheism last week, you remember that the deities were representations of human qualities that found their symbols in nature – like a

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pairing, like a metaphor. And so in this painting, Botticelli’s Primavera, the central goddess, Venus, and her itinerant friend, Cupid, stand in the geometric center, the point of passage between nature’s occurrence, spring, and humanity’s occurrence (love). I wish you all the success in the world in the inventing of gods for yourself. You’ll need good eyes to see things around you that remind you of things inside of you. You’ll need two-way eyes. Let’s look at Cupid. Do you see that the direction of this arrow is at the same diagonal angle as Zephyrus’s movement towards Flora? Two diagonal lines: Zephyrus’s arm reaching towards Flora, and Cupid’s arrow aiming at the three women dancing (the Three Graces, we’ll get to them shortly). A man (Zephyrus) and then a boy (Cupid) – two males - coming from the sky (remember Zeus?) aiming at women on the earth (remember the fertility goddesses?). Cupid represents desire (eros), love. Is it like the wind that blows freely, careless regarding what it disturbs? We may try to clean up after strong winds have made our streets messy, but without winds there would be nothing living to have become a mess. Where does desire (Cupid) aim its arrow? Where does desire find its destination and destiny? And now we can look at the Three Graces (the three women dancing together) – now we can enter the properly human portion of the painting, because grace is a distinctly human quality regarding being. We can begin by looking at the word grace. It is an interesting word that you can see appear today in religion (amazing grace, the grace of god…) and in fashion/behavior/the superficial (looking graceful, gracious manners…). And in case you forgot, you can see in the word in Spanish too, gracias, where it means thank you and also graces. The word is Latin in origin, where it means all of these things together so as to remind us that they really are the same thing: a blessing (for which we say thank you), and the way a person feels and behaves once that blessing has been received (“graciously,” pleasantly). In the Christian language what does it mean to receive god’s grace? It means to receive love. But when you receive a person’s love are you not being graced then? Are you the one who is being thanked for being you by being loved? Or should the person who loves you be thanked by you for loving you? Love confounds subject and object – it confounds grammar (remember that the subject is the one who performs the verb in a sentence and the object is the one that receives the verb): I (subject) eat the apple (object). Love is a circuit, not a straight line, subject and object become each other. And this confounding of grammar is a very much a part of the confounding of geometry and its linear organization of space – so the point is, enjoy the confusion because there is nothing else to enjoy except its destruction, which really isn’t that enjoyable at all. Grace, gracias, thank you, I feel blessed. This is what love does. Love, like a wind, blows into our spirit and makes us bloom as people, and it shows. Feeling graced, feeling loved shows in a persons outward manifestations: speech, behavior, movement, aura – in the domains of existence where we can denote graciousness. Being gracious means being possessed by love’s spirit. Love’s presence in a person is as visible in their being as its absence is: look at people. Remember that art is always there to enhance the way you look at real life. So what are the Three Graces, and why are thy always dancing together in their countless representations in Western art that span from antiquity to modern times? The Three Graces indicate the three domains of being that manifest themselves in life: the body, the mind, and the spirit. How does a body move, how does it exist in the world when it is loved, when it has been graced? Does it not move elegantly, slowly, musically, at peace with its surroundings rather than antagonistic towards them or hiding from them? That is the first Grace, the one of the body: elegance. Elegance is not striking a pose or mimicking a rich

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pretentious person’s manners – it is a form of being physically that dances in space, it cannot be learned without becoming a parody of itself, it can only be lived unconsciously as a gift to the rest of the world. Because in this magical realm everyone is saying thank you to each other. The second Grace, that of the mind: what thoughts exist in a loved person’s mind and fill their words, since thoughts are strictly related to language and their expression through it? Happy thoughts, joyous thoughts, thoughts that see life blossom even in the darkest most emptiest places. “You are crazy,” says the unhappy person to the happy one, not realizing that they are giving a great compliment. Happiness in speech, and in writing, and everywhere where thoughts materialize themselves is pleasant to behold, it is the literal equivalent of elegance in corporeality: the reality of the corpus (Latin) or cuerpo (Spanish): the body. The third Grace, that of the spirit: kindness. The receiver of loved, the graced one, is rendered kind in their visceral relation to the world by the gift that has fulfilled them. The spirit is not a formalized realm of action the way the mind is, where thoughts – according to the inherent quality of the grammar that they appear in – proceed logically according to the compulsion to explain themselves. Spirit is a realm on the periphery of words, on the periphery of logic, yet as evident as a walking billboard. Spirits are to be felt, not understood. A spirit is emitted the way messages are emitted, though rarely verbally – instead through an invisible language that we never listen to enough. Elegance (the body), Happiness (the mind) and Kindness (the soul): they dance together because they exist in the same being, the same person. And was Cupid’s arrow aimed at them (attracted to them) because he saw them from afar, or did his arrow (love) create them in the same gesture as imagining he saw them? Ultimately love is attracted to what it creates itself. Our springtime, our state of grace, our season of love, they are all the same thing. But the central metaphor of Primavera is a season – and seasons pass. They come to an end. All of them, even winter. We are now at the end of our painted story, looking at the last figure. Do you recognize him? Who is that guy with the winged sandals and winged helmet, young and without a beard, looking rather preoccupied with something up in the clouds and ignoring the Three Graces standing next to him? It’s Hermes. Again. You remember him. What is he doing? This man on earth is obsessed with the sky, and thereby ignoring the earth (the Three Graces). What is he obsessed with? Look closely at the top left corner of the painting. Hermes has his staff (his wand) poking into something, what is it? What are those grayish things in the very top left corner? They are clouds – a sign of the end of the good season – spring/summer – a sign of the return of the cold and its accompanying wind (fall/winter). A sign that the season love, like all human occurrences, has its own end. But what is Hermes doing with those grey clouds? Look at his hand holding his wand. Is he pulling them in, or is he pushing them out? Is he pulling them in to signify that he is “wrapping up” the season of love – which wraps up when the Three Graces are ignored? Or is he pushing the clouds out of the painting, so as to symbolize the eternal, impossible human desire to want the best seasons of life last forever? To defy reality and time, to defy nature and its season cycle, to break free of the earth and live in eternity. He is confused and obsessed – and maybe that sentiment itself is a harbinger of the end of love’s natural season. When we say, “I want this to last forever” it is a deeply tragic statement which connotes our inability to live the moment itself as its own temporary eternity – we are not equipped to live a fleeting moment, and want to capture it into a plan, where it naturally dies. Is he pushing the clouds our or pulling them in? Is he a romantic or a cynic? Does it matter anymore because the moment we assume we are one or the other we are no longer lost from ourselves – and as Chrétien told us, love consists in feeling lost. Botticelli, as a true artistic

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genius of unparalleled dimensions, intentionally left Hermes’ gesture ambiguous, confused and confusing – it can be interpreted either way, according to how you lived your life today, dear view, dear completer of meaning. And you’ll remember that Hermes – who I called the god of communications – is the incarnate of all these things: confusion, ambiguity, riddle, paradox, meaning’s incompleteness without a receiver. There is one last dimension of the painting I wish to address before leaving this lesson. It is the level of concrete personhood, which plays and intertwines with the mythological dimension we have looked at up to now. All the figures in the painting are gods and goddess, but who do they look like in real life, who did Botticelli use as his actual models for the figures? Look very closely at the six women in the painting: the two incarnations of Flora, Venus, and the Three Graces. Do you not notice that they all look very similar? Not so exactly similar as to appear indistinguishable from each other, but similar in their essential features and lineaments. The six female figures look similar because Botticelli used the same woman as the model of each of them. And he used that same woman as the model for ever female figure he ever painted throughout his life, whether mythological or Christian. You saw her before, in our previous lesson – do you remember?

And if you go to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, you will see her again in the guise of Mary:

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Botticelli took as the model of all his female figures the person of Simonetta Vespucci, who was as recognizable to the Florentine public as a celebrity in the media would be to us today. In real life Simonetta was in love with Lorenzo de Medici. He belonged to a powerful, well-known family (the de Medici) as was as publically recognizable in the city of Florence (where Botticelli’s paintings were meant to be seen and coexist with their social environment) as Simonetta. And what a surprise, Lorenzo was the model that Botticelli used for his figure of Hermes in Primavera. Simonetta and Lorenzo – dressed as gods and goddesses but still recognizable as themselves. Imagine. Imagine the reaction of the public. Don’t imagine just the stupid surprise that says “wow” at everything and then nothing else. Imagine the reaction of a thinking public that can understand the concept of this gesture: real life and mythology are the same thing. Eternal human forms are lived, are apparent in the lives of people around us everyday, in ourselves. That could be you in the painting, it is you. Our lives are nothing but the reanimation of eternal, mythical, human stories. Such is a point of view, not the truth, but a way of relating to the truth. Maybe only our confused friend Hermes is interesting in finding the truth somewhere up in the clouds, and thereby misses what is right next to him on earth. The tsunami is over, we are on page fifty. I’m sorry if I wrote too much. Don’t worry. Take from it what you want. The most important thing is to enjoy your summer, and maybe a little bit of that enjoyment can creep into your writing. Dimitri Papandreu September 28, 2020