Part 7 – Symposium

We are in someone’s lounge – maybe one of the crew’s. It’s been a night of drinking. The actors and the director talk about love, what is it, what about the characters – what are they doing, what do they hope for, what does it all mean?

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ANCIENT Greece about 416 BC. A poet, Agathon, just won first prize in a festival, and he thought he’d get some mates together to celebrate. The guests at this party were real people – the who’s who of Athens glitterati: amongst the guests you had Alcibiades – a general of the Athenian army, Eryximachos a doctor, Socrates, the philosopher and Aristophanes, the comic playwright. It would be like if you had, say, Germaine Greer, Madonna, Barack Obama, Dr Phil, and Major Morrison come to your party…
We are hearing about this party, second, third hand. An unknown person heard it from Apollodorus, who heard it from Aristodemus, who was at the party. The unknown person hears about it from Apolloduros while they are walking from Pireus the main Port of Athens to Athens city centre. These days you’d catch the bus from Pireus to Athens. 

And we become further removed because what non-Ancient Greek-speaking people have to rely on and trust are translations of the original version. Now translations are interesting – because they are often a product of their time. It can’t be a word for word explanation – often that doesn’t make sense – as you know if you use Google translate – but must be based on the intended meaning of the text – based on a word in one language having the exact same meaning in another language. For example the word “love”. You see the Greeks have three words for love:
“Agape” which means a deep, unconditional, self-less love, a love where you do not seek anything in return. What is the English word equivalent of this?
“Filia” which means a friendship, also loyalty to your friends, your family and your community – what is the English word equivalent of this?

And
“Eros” which means sexual, intimate love – Ok maybe “lust” can be the equivalent English word for this.
So we can never be sure what was actually meant when you translate from Greek 416BC to now, Melbourne, Australia, 4 February 2016 – two and half thousand years after this play was written by Plato.
Now the guests at this party decided that they would each give a speech in honour of love. One of the guests, whose speech I am about to tell you, was by Aristophanes – who was a very successful comic playwright in his time – think the Tina Fey of his time. Some of his surviving works are The Clouds, The Frogs and Lysistrata – you know the one about the women of Ancient Greece who refused to have sex with their husbands until they stopped fighting wars – maybe that’s a story we need to tell another time.
Each of the guests takes their turn. Aristophanes had to wait to give his speech because he had the hiccups.
So the first guest Phaedrus talks about love inspiring you to do noble acts so that your lover admires you. The next speaker is Pausanias, a lawyer, who explains that there are two types of love: physical love for sexual gratification and love based on honouring your lover’s intelligence and wisdom.
Then it comes to Aristophanes’ turn –he has now recovered from the hiccups. Aristophanes explains:
Originally people had double bodies – they were made round – their back and sides forming a circle having four hands, four feet, one head with two faces on a round neck – with their limbs and faces turned away from one another – facing in opposite directions. They could walk upright, or backwards or forwards and when they wanted to go fast they turned on their hands and feet, like clowns performing cartwheels.
And there were three genders: One was all male, one all female, and the third gender was “androgynous,” [Greek word] who was half male – half female. The males were said to have descended from the sun, the females from the earth and the androgynous couples from the moon.
And these original people were very powerful.
One day they decided to climb – maybe roll – up Mount Olympus – the home of the Gods – to take on the Gods – to defeat them. This pissed off Zeus, who initially wanted to kill them with his preferred weapon of choice – the thunderbolt. But after thinking about it – and he was quite practical – he decided instead , to cut them into two – because he reasoned – it will make these beings half as strong and they can make twice as many offerings. So he cut them in two and asked Apollo – who was the god of healing – to rearrange the bodies and tie up the loose ends to create a knot – this is why we have a belly button.
And so what was one being, now became two.
Ever since then people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are actually trying to recover their primal nature. The women who were separated from women run after their own kind, creating lesbians. The men split from other men also run after their own kind and love being embraced by other men. The beings that were originally androgynous beings are the men and women that engage in heterosexual love.
And when two people who were separated from each other find each other, they never again want to be separated. All they want is to be whole.
This feeling has perplexed humans for, well, thousands of years – it is a mystery and cannot be explained.
This feeling, this pursuit of the whole, we call love.