Platonism in French Renaissance Poetry

Merrill, R. Platonism in French Renaissance Poetry. New York: NYU P. 1957.

Diotima’s comparison of the search for the Idea of Beauty with the climbing of a staircase set in train a vogue which had a considerable fortune. Symp. Para 210-212

n2 For instance, Enn. III, lib. ii, capp. 11-14; iii,4; iv,2-4; IV,iii,12-17; V,viii. It is in Enn. III,v,1 that feminine beauty is introduced into the doctrine, for apparently the earliest time in its history, as the first stage in the amatory ascent. 204

In loving thou dost well, in passion not,

Wherein true love consists not; Love refines

The thoughts and heart enlarges, hath his seat

In Reason, is judicious, is the scale

By which to Heav’nly Love thou mai’st ascend,

Not sunk in carnal pleasure, for which cause

Among the Beasts no Mate for thee was found. VIII,588-94 80

Although the Symposium is the dialogue of Plato which offers the most fertile field for Renaissance poets, the Phaedrus approaches it closely; for the Phaedrus supplies in more picturesque metaphor much the same link between the theory of the Ideas and the doctrine of love as appears in Diotima’s exposition to Socrates. The conception of the human soul as compounded of intelligence, spirit and appetite appears frequently in the Dialogues; in the Phaedrus it is clothed in an extended allegory. Here the intellect is personified as the driver of a chariot whose winged horses are the one white, docile and inclined to good, the other dark, passionate and recalcitrant. 81

Now the charioteer and the good horse must both exert their efforts to curb the base desires of the dark steed until, when both animals equally obey the highest element in the soul, the love manifested by that soul is as calm and perfect as earthly love may be. 82

THE ANDROGYNE

...Aristophanes in the Symposium:

And first let me treat of the nature and state of man; for the original human nature was not like the present, but different. In the first place, the sexes were three in number, not two as they are now; there was a man, a woman, and the union of the two having a name corresponding to this double nature, which once had a real existence, but is now lost, and the name is only preserved as a term of reproach. In the second place, the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and four feet, and head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on around neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. Now there were these three sexes because the sun, moon, and earth are three . . . Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods . . .At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way. He said: “Methinks I have a plan which will humble their pride and mend their manners; they shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers . . .” ...Each of us when separated is but the indenture of a man, having one side only, like a flat fish, and he is always looking for his other half. Men who are a section of that double nature which was once called Androgynous are lascivious; adulterers are generally of this breed, and also adulterous and lascivious women: the women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have female attachments; the female companions are of this sort. But they who are a section of the male follow the male, and while they are young, being slices of the original man, they hang about men, and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of boys and youths, because they have the most manly nature... (189-93) 100

In the myth there are three classes of beings—the double man, the double woman, and Androgyne, which is both man and woman. Now, while Aristophanes in his speech expressly denies the importance of this third creature, in the interest of lauding the nobility of purely masculine affections, the Renaissance almost unanimously exalted to the place of literary renown the rather contemptible figure of the Androgyne. The reason is obvious enough: western Christian culture had in the later Middle Ages steadily idealized (unconsciously agreeing with so early a Platonist as Plotinus) the reciprocal love of man and woman, and had reduced the status of masculine loves to that of a perversion... 103

...fashionable argument is provided by the supposition of an ancient unity re-established when true lovers meet, and illustrated by the story of the Androgyne. [eg Ficino] 104