/lit/ - Literature

THE PERSON KNOWN AS «WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE» WAS REAL, BUT HE WAS NOT WHAT HE HAS BEEN CONSTRUCTED TO APPEAR: HE WAS A GENOESE, HOMOSEXUAL, JEWISH MERCHANT OF HUMAN, AND NONHUMAN, MERCHANDISE.

>>19537914
It was just platonic.

>>19537948
>HOMOSEXUAL, JEWISH MERCHANT OF HUMAN, AND NONHUMAN, MERCHANDISE.
Stfu.

Ben Jonson, John Benson, make up your mind, for Christ's sake.

The degradation of male camaraderie into "lol they were fucking each other's asses" is the worst thing to have happened to mankind.

>>19537948
Everything you say is utter, brainless drivel. It has no basis in reality and could truly only come from a demented mind. Literally everything you've ever posted here would have been better off not being posted and this spewy garbage is absolutely no exception.

>>19537951
>>19537971
Male camaraderie is very different from agonised infatuation with male beauty. Shakespeare is not talking about solidarity with his "bro", he's talking about admiring an unreciprocating boy from a distance

>>19537980
You have a time machine? That's so cool.

>>19537971
Actually the removal of eros from male camaraderie is the worst thing that happened from mankind

>>19537980
Beauty in all individuals can cause such a reaction, especially for the sensitive soul of an artist. Doesn't mean you want to suck his cock.

>>19537990
Not that guy, but if you read the sonnets, it it pretty obvious that a "boy" is the subject of his horny, kink longings. Try reading a book before you opine on the subject.

>>19537991
>armies had sex with each other
Why does anyone believe this retarded shit? How dumb do you have to be to believe the Greeks had no understanding of male friendship without sexuality??? If you actually read that excerpt from the Symposium in the original context you'd know Plato wasn't advocating armies butfucking each other.

>>19538005
>horny, kink longings

>>19538014
>How dumb do you have to be to believe the Greeks had no understanding of male friendship without sexuality???
What? Of course they understood male friendship without sexuality. They just also understood male friendship *with* sexuality. Male camaraderie is presumably not something that would have been unique to the Sacred Band of Thebes -- if it was just camaraderie why would they speak about it like it's a unique thing? Furthermore in the original Greek they are using the words 'eros', 'eromenos,' 'erastes' and the topic comes up during a discussion of pederasty. You just have a limited imagination anon, if you can't conceive of historical societies having different norms and values to us.

>>19538005
It's obvious to you. The proclivities of a random retard hundreds of years later does not authorial intent make.

>>19537948
Idk who he was, but he wasn't Edware de Vere and Francis Bacon -- the writers of those wonderful plays

>>19537948
This

>>19537914
>Write a story about life from the eyes of a cat
>wtf I'm a cat now!
woah so this is the power of analysis

>>19538029
Except eros, if you'd studied Greek much at all, didn't just mean the sexual as it does today. ESPCIALLY for Plato. Closer to a general drawing towards beauty and desire.

It is you who lack the imagination, since you cannot conceive of a historical society wherein male relationships are treated more passionately (a passion such as only happens in the male-female relationships today), yet without the sexual. Which is a more traditional view, and undoubtedly can sometimes turn into the unnatural form of love. But you'd have to be a weirdo as big as Freud to think that such an unnatural form was the real base of the relationship all along. What restrictive view of love!

>>19538067
Oh, fuck off. Even a fucking casual knows the difference between eros and agape and philia, you're just making shit up

>>19538067
Yes anon except the speakers in the Symposium are not beginning with Plato's idealised definition of eros, they are beginning with the common worldly version and working their way up to it. One of the running themes in their conversation is the question of when it is appropriate/virtuous for an eromenos to 'gratify' (χαρίζεσθαι/charidzesthai) their erastes. Obviously they are talking about sexual relationships. The anecdote Alcibiades relates of trying to bed Socrates, who, unlike a typical erastes, refuses to be 'gratified' by his pupil, is meant to introduce this more refined, chaste eros. It is breaking with the kind of eros the rest of the speakers are discussing. The Sacred Band of Thebes is discussed in the context of sexual pederasty.

>>19538082
This is exactly the basic bitch idea of Greece I was talking about. You probably haven't even read the Symposium, if you did you'd know Eros is connected to a desire for beauty in general.

You are a fucking faggot retard that barely knows anything about Greece. You are not the same as them, you are a modern fag, you are a freak of nature and only shame yourself with these attempts at identifying with the Greeks. Tell me, how masculine are you, how much have you achieved with this apparently superior form of sexuality which the Greeks apparently practiced in hoplite formation? You are a LARPer.

>>19538098
The "basic bitch" idea of Greece otherwise known as the historical consensus. No one denies the existence of pederasty in ancient Greek society.

>>19538105
>No one denies the existence of pederasty in ancient Greek society.
When did I?

Except I merely doubt the ridiculous 'historical consensus' of a progressive ideology.

>>19538098
>implying
a hell of a lot, kek. I probably read the Symposium for the first time before you were a twinkle in your father's eye

>>19537948
I wish you wouldn't post here.

>>19538123
>Except I merely doubt the ridiculous 'historical consensus' of a progressive ideology.

>>19538093
Plato taking into account the baser love does not mean it is the fundamental basis for all eros. That would be to reduce all of the poetic depth and complexity of the work to merely the sequence of walking up the stairs towards the forms.

>>19538137
OK? But we are talking about the historical realities that are being reflected in the Symposium. When you say he is "taking into account the baser love" what you mean is that he is describing the sexual mores of the society he lives in. But earlier you were saying there was "no way" the Sacred Band of Thebes could have been based on homosexual relations.

>>19538126
Are you that guy that posted your tummy? You're not a twink bro, you're in your 30's. In any event you mustn't have remembered anything from the dialogue except the vague 'homosexuality', something of an aesthetic to justify your modern ideology.

You don't care about philosophy or Greek culture at all.

>>19538136
>infograph with carefully plucked quotes
Yeah no thanks, how about you read those authors yourself and make an argument from upon that knowledge? For example I have no problem with accepting Plutarch was a homosexual, and who did everything he could to discredit those that weren't or were against it in some way (notably Plato).

>>19538123
You're a dumbass making a flagrantly ahistorical thesis that Eros only means icky sex stuff when a man and woman are united in holy matrimony in the eyes of Jesus, etc, etc. You're also strawmanning wildly.

What I actually believe is that a Greek of Plato's time would have found it absurb and even sexually perverse to form an "identity" such as homosexual or heterosexual around the objects of desire, and what you seem to be doing a piss poor job of putting into words is the argument that Plato's investigations are into the nature of desire itself, not into its objects or "sexuality" in the way any modern midwit would define it

>>19538146
>there was "no way" the Sacred Band of Thebes could have been based on homosexual relations.
That is correct. The historical reality expressed in the Symposium is by no means as uniform as you seem to think, especially because of how women are brought into it. It is not as simple as 'Athenian society was pro-gay' or something like that, virtually every time Plato does bring up pederasty (or the vague relations between older men and boys) he mentions how it is very common for people to despise it, and there seems to be the connotation that it is a luxury of the upper classes.

>>19538157
>You're a dumbass making a flagrantly ahistorical thesis that Eros only means icky sex stuff when a man and woman are united in holy matrimony in the eyes of Jesus,
I'd like to see you find where I said that.

I'll justify my answer when you justify your strawman.

>>19538151
I haven't interacted with you before, to the best of my knowledge, but I've decided that the annoying faggot you're describing was probably right because you seem worse

>>19538167
Alas - I am here to engage in the cherished Elizabethan sport of torturing an animal for public amusement, sir, not to have a conversation with you

>>19538171
>>19538182
Lol k?

>>19538151
Plutarch himself did not seem to approve of pederasty (his Dialogue on Love ends with the 'woman-lover' winning in the debate against the 'boy-lover'), which makes his description of the Sacred Band of Thebes as homosexual have more weight, imo.
>>19538160
>every time Plato does bring up pederasty (or the vague relations between older men and boys) he mentions how it is very common for people to despise it
Does he? In the Symposium the only people he mentions who seem to despise it are foreigners. In other texts like Lysis, Charmides, Erastai, Protagoras, etc. it's simply included as a feature of daily life.
>there seems to be the connotation that it is a luxury of the upper classes.
Where? On the contrary, it is constantly infused with the rhetoric of democracy. The speakers point to the tyrant-slayers and lovers Harmodius and Aristogeiton (to whom statues were erected in democratic cities in Greece), describe them as striking fear into oligarchs everywhere, and contrast the fact that pederasty is practiced by free men in Greece with the fact that is forbidden by 'tyrants and barbarians' in the East (and in Greek cities ruled by Persians).