/lit/ - Literature

>>16004754
Myth and poetry is the product of inspired madness, whenever one is struck by insight it is hard to resist writing it down as poetry or myth. That's one of the points of Phaedrus, read Ion.
Plato's myth always occur late into every dialogue precisely because the preceding discussion is necessary for correct interpretation. Dialectics antecede, to warm up the reader until the sage bursts into mythopoetics. His myths like his piety point to something real.

SOCRATES: Shouldn’t we offer a prayer to the gods here before we leave?
PHAEDRUS: Of course.
>SOCRATES: O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him. Do we need anything else, Phaedrus? I believe my prayer is enough for me.
PHAEDRUS: Make it a prayer for me as well. Friends have everything in common.

>Well now, how can one argue for the existence of gods without getting angry? You see, one inevitably gets irritable and annoyed with these people who have put us to the trouble, and continue to put us to the trouble, of composing these explanations. If only they believed the stories which they had as babes and sucklings from their nurses and mothers! These almost literally ‘charming’ stories were told partly for amusement, partly in FULL EARNEST; the children heard them related in prayer at sacrifices, and saw acted representations of them—apart of the ceremony a child always loves to see and hear; and they saw their own parents praying with the utmost seriousness for themselves and their families in the firm conviction that their prayers and supplications were addressed to gods who really did exist. At the rising and setting of the sun and moon the children saw and heard Greeks and foreigners, in happiness and misery alike, all prostrate at their devotions; far from supposing gods to be a myth, the worshippers believed their existence to be so sure as to be beyond suspicion. When some people contemptuously brush aside all this evidence without a single good reason to support them (as even a half-wit can see) and oblige us to deliver this address—well, how could one possibly admonish them and at the same time teach them the basic fact about gods, their existence, without using the rough edge of one’s tongue?

>>15653857
>>15653868
>>15653879
>>15653887
>>15653900
he makes licence his companion and is not afraid or ashamed to pursue pleasure in violation of nature. But he who is newly initiated, who beheld many of those realities, when he sees a godlike face or form which is a good image of beauty, shudders at first, and something of the old awe comes over him, then, as he gazes, he reveres the beautiful one as a god, and if he did not fear to be thought stark mad, he would offer sacrifice to his beloved as to an idol or a god. And as he looks upon him, a reaction from his shuddering comes over him, with sweat and unwonted heat; [251b] for as the effluence of beauty enters him through the eyes, he is warmed; the effluence moistens the germ of the feathers, and as he grows warm, the parts from which the feathers grow, which were before hard and choked, and prevented the feathers from sprouting, become soft, and as the nourishment streams upon him, the quills of the feathers swell and begin to grow from the roots over all the form of the soul; for it was once all feathered. Now in this process the whole soul throbs and palpitates, and [251c] as in those who are cutting teeth there is an irritation and discomfort in the gums, when the teeth begin to grow, just so the soul suffers when the growth of the feathers begins; it is feverish and is uncomfortable and itches when they begin to grow. Then when it gazes upon the beauty of the boy and receives the particles which flow thence to it (for which reason they are called yearning),1 it is moistened and warmed, [251d] ceases from its pain and is filled with joy; but when it is alone and grows dry, the mouths of the passages in which the feathers begin to grow become dry and close up, shutting in the sprouting feathers, and the sprouts within, shut in with the yearning, throb like pulsing arteries, and each sprout pricks the passage in which it is, so that the whole soul, stung in every part, rages with pain; and then again, remembering the beautiful one, it rejoices.

>>15352534
Sweet child in time
You'll see the line
The line that's drawn between
Good and bad
See the blind man
Shooting at the world
Bullets flying
Ohh taking toll
If you've been bad
Oh Lord I bet you have
And you've not been hit
Oh by flying lead
You'd better close your eyes
Ooohhhh bow your head