Gender Based Notions of Homoerotic Love in Sappho's Poetry & Plato's Symposium

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The poetry of Sappho and the numerous speeches in Plato’s Symposium both deal primarily with homoerotic love. Sappho, one of the only female poets in Ancient Greece, speaks from the female perspective whereas Plato’s work focuses on the nature of this love between men. Several fundamental elements are common to both perspectives, including similar ideals of youth and beauty as well as the idea of desire as integral to both views on love. Despite these similarities, there is an important distinction, which can be understood in terms of Pausanias’ concepts of Common versus Celestial Love. Common lovers are focused more on the physical experience than the intellectual contact in a relationship. Celestial love correlates with a forever kind of connection that is more than a physical relationship. Sappho’s view represents Common Love and the broader view of Symposium represents Celestial Love. While Sappho’s work is grounded in the physical realm, Plato emphasizes that love is centralized in the mind, or in other words, love is purely an intellectual and philosophical phenomenon. Pausanias, who delivers Symposium’s second speech, explains some of the societal norms governing male homoerotic affairs. The rules by which an older man and his boyfriend ( usually a young man who has probably not yet grown his beard) may behave are rigid and strongly enforced by society’s moral code. Pausanias reveals that the nature of this relationship is pursuer/pursued: “And as for attempts at conquest, our custom is to praise lovers for totally extraordinary acts” (182e Symposium). Pausanias emphasizes the morality further when he discusses the circumstances under which it is acceptable to gratify a lover. It is acceptable when “...and when the lover is able to help the young man become wiser and better, and the young man is eager to be taught and improved by his lover-then, and only

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