Srinivasan Narayana Moorthy
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Ok, not sure if this qualifies for a "quote", following up on Gokul's post on love being mad ... here goes something that i read some time back....
"What can love be then? A mortal?" I said.
"Far from it".
"Well, what?"
"As in my previous examples he is half-way between mortal and immortal".
"What sort of being is he then Diotima?"
"He is a great spirit, Socrates; everything that is of the nature of a spirit is half-god and half-man" .....
"Who are his parents?" I asked.
"That is rather a long story," she answered, "but I will tell you. On the day that Aphrodite was born the gods were feasting, among them was Contrivance the son of Invention; and after dinner, seeing that a party was in progress, Poverty came to beg and stood at the door.
Now Contrivance was drunk with nectar - wine, I may say, had not yet been invented - and went out into the garden of Zeus, and was overcmoe by sleep. So Poverty, thinking to alleviate her wretched condition by bearing a child to Contrivance, lay with him and conceived Love.
Since Love was begotten on Aphrodite's birthday, and since he has also an innate passion for the beautiful, and so for the beauty of Aphrodite herself, he became her follower and servant. Again, having Contrivance for his father and Poverty for his mother, he bears the following character.
He is always poor, and, far from being sensitive and beautiful, as most people imagine, he is hard and weather-beaten, shoeless and homeless, always sleeping out for want of a bed, on the ground, on doorsteps and in the street. So far he takes after his mother and lives in want. But, being also his father's son, he schemes to get for himself whatever is beautiful and good; he is bold and forward and strenuous, always devising tricks like a cunning huntsman"
- Plato, Symposium, Translated by Walter HamiltonPrivate Reply to Srinivasan Narayana Moorthy (new win) |
