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Ascolo Parodites
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Eros, like Psyche, is compatible with experiences of an order of magnitude similar to itself. Just as pathos mediates and sets up the boundary of emotional life, thymos sets up the boundary of erotic life. If the object of this experience is raised out of proportion to Eros, if Eros defies the earthly measure given him by Thymos, then Eros does no longer truly experience it, but registers it dia Phaidron and unmediatedly, through the daemon and its non-intuitive concept, as desire, and therefor as something extrinsic to itself, something incommensurable, to which the latter relates as coldly as to the catastrophic shock; even as Stesichorus, to avoid becoming blind, exonerates the beautiful Helen from her responsibility for the Trojan War. The subjectivity of love, the whole order of experiences which belong to Eros, frees itself from the futile dotage of appearances, but it is also its continuation. The subject, as lover, is impotent except when it is able, erotically, to respond to it's daemonic infatuations towards the body. Only the subject's eros can transcend that infatuation. Without eros, consciousness is trapped in reification, and cannot obtain to the qualitative transformation from instinct and material sympathy to subjectivity proper and to true love, just as the scene of Jupiter and Danae communicates a conflation between the seduction of Danae, on the one had, and Jupiter's passion: Huic amor atque cupido inerant, suavisque loquela." Siquidem hoc anni tempus in primis jucundissimam voluptatum portionem implet. nec enim nimium frigore constringimur neque nimis calescimus; sed confinium quoddam temperamenti utinque sitorum temprum leniter in corporibus sentititur. Hunc igitur aerem Homerus paulo post aetheri commiscuit. [Pseudo-Heracliti Allegoriae Homericae] Eros is a kind of premonition of subjectivity, a sense of being touched by the other. The thymotic mode of behavior assimilates itself to that other rather than trying to subdue it, as can be infered from the political role of thymos, in marriage. Eros must receive his earthly measure by Thymos - must, because if he does not, he will be completely enraptured by the daemonic, by his infatuation with the body.Thus, the saturnine conclusion of love, whose daemon is Eros, is not a naked foundering but rather the true rescat of the deepest imperfection which belongs to the nature of subjectivity itself, excogitari potest beatius, the futile dotage of appearances: Eivsdem Philosophiae beneficio Deum agnoscimus, & mundum absque autore & rectore, nec esse, nec consistere posse, comprehendimus, caterosque supernos spiritus, caetera, quae coeli amnitu continentur, agnoscimus. Eiusdem artibus morborum & aegritudinum causa percipiums. Eiusdem artibus acremediis agroti curantur, & in pristinam valetudinem reducuntur. Quarum rerum omnium cognitione & intelligentia, quid excogitari potest beatius? quove magis alatur & vegetutur animus? Nec Musicam tacitus praeteribo, qua quid potest esse ad creandos ab opere ac reficiendos animos accomodatius? quid auribus lenius? quid suavius? ut omittam quanta sit delectatio in ipsa cantus ratione, in vocis mollitudine acsiirmitare, in citharae & caeterorum instrumentorum canors fidibus, quatum tantam artem ac rationem Timotheus ille Musicus tenuisse dicitur. [Felinus Maria Sandeus's De Regibus Siciliae et Apulia, in Bartholomaei Facci De Humana Vitae Felicitas p. 126] For it is this imperfection which denies to subjectivity the fulfillment of love. Therefore, into all loving that human nature alone determines, the blind dotary of appearances enters as the real work of Eros, thanatos - the admission that man cannot love: An fors Treicias alter habebit opes? [Coluccio Salutati, conquestio Phillidis] Yet it is precisely this constitutive orientation of the subject towards the objectively determined conclusion of love's impossibility which joins eros to agape, or unconditional love. For it is in true love that passion, like affection, remains secondary, and the transition of affections make up the essence of eros, agape. If eros is a kind of premonition of a genuine subjectivity, a subjectivity receptive to the needs of the other, to the beloved, then agape reflects the baneful order of alienation to which the subject belongs, tristiciae et tamen esse modum decet, optime Moeri, [Joachim Camerarius Eclogae] and therefor unites subjectivity to actual cognition. 'Though rage befits a river, Tiber wait,' so goes Pedo Albinovanus's Consolation to Livia, as Mars continues in his praise of the simplicity of war, 'for country let the reason be revealed; what I could give, I gave, a victory gained- the workman dies, the workmanship remained.' Equally, the praise of womanly levity seems to ease the anxiety that what is fleeting for Eros, viz. the transition of affections, will be again restored in the unition of subjectivity and the cognisable semblances of beauty, as an agape in the midst of eros. The contemplation of love must learn to yield to the abandon: to receive love, in all it's frustrations and antinomies, without subjecting it to an order it essentialy denies. Eros belongs to the realm of appearances, to the semblances of beauty apprised by a thymos, by a spiritedness which ultimately bears a man towards the beloved alone, and would like to bypass this latter, forma boni: formosa venus viz. through an agapic vision of the beloved: o curue in terras anime: celestium inanes quid iunat illecebris mentes involuuere carnis quid fuigitiua iuuant fallacis gaudia sensus quid fucatus honos quid adultera forma quod auro intertexta chlamis: quid cyclas choa, quid aule conditio attalice quid veri vera propinat forma boni: formosa venus. [Badius Ascensius Jodocus in Argentoratum P. 23] Love, in it's subjectivity, never seeks, however, to substitute itself through the semblances of beauty in an erotic fashion, as through a symptom, in place of the body of the beloved: phusichon me meton stergein philei eu men gao esches, tis epiplastou charis; eu s an amartes phusechu duschlera enegchen ouden to peplasmenon pleon. [Arsenios] Theoleptos of Philadelpheia in his monastic discourses says: "The perfection of virtue weaves a garment of love; love preserves the soul and bestows splendour and pleasure on it through the beauty of union with God. When love sees that the soul is stripped by the virtues of all worldly desire, it immediately enfolds the soul as with a garment." Eros, when it superordinates over the semblances of beauty, negates the reality of the beloved, and holds up to the beloved what therefor does not and cannot resemble it; invise divis Gorgoneum caput, quid machninaris tela Cyclopea, frustraque, ludis, & taducos ingeminas per inane bombos. [Nicolas Caussin in Felicitas] An aphorism in De Nugis Curialium reads, "This bride you once betrothed with the flower of your springtime; now, in your summer, she looks that you should bring forth grapes: do not in her despite marry another, lest in the time of vintage you bring foth wild grapes. I would not have you be the husband of Venus, but of Pallas." The diremption of sympathy and matrimony, between thymos and eros, which makes it possible to say, 'free and blessed are these vain little girls,' hypostatizes the historically achieved city of Adeimantus, - which knows neither thymos nor eros. This separation, even reduced to its due proportion, in comparison to the more stupendous intervals between loves, completes the disjecta membra of the critical philosophy. For in discovering this interval the dialectical content of thymos and eros is exposed, as an agape. Love teaches us this: In fact we hope that the remains of the departed will soon come to the light again out of the earth. And afterwards they become gods. [The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocyclides] This profound aphorism illuminates Benjamin's concept of a salvation not posited as the telos of world history, but as a sense of happiness generated out of the acceptance and the embrace of our earthly natures, even as in Baptista Mantuanus love justifies the mind of flesh and not the divine nature, Ludit amor sensus, oculos praestringit, & ausert libertatem animi, et mira nos fascinat arte credo aliquis daemon subiens praecordia flammam concitet, et raptam tollat de cardine mentem nec deus (ut perhibent) amor est, sed amor et error adde optatis nec spes erat ulla potiri quamuis illa meo miserata saureret amori monstraretque, suis oculis ac nutbius ignes.
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