Read me the bit
again about the thing
that is pure.…
read that bit, the thing
we cannot turn our eyes to,
you begin it.
John Holloway, “Cone”
But Sokrates keeps insisting on the beginning. After Phaedrus has read Lysias’ speech to him once through, he asks him to reread the opening words:
Ἴθι δή μοι ἀνάγνωθι τὴν τοῦ Λυσίου λόγου ἀρχήν.
Come on, read me the beginning of Lysias’ speech.… (262d)
And then he asks him to reread it again:
βούλει πάλιν ἀναγνῶμεν τὴν ἀρχὴν αὐτοῦ;
Please, will you reread his beginning one more time? (263e)
Phaedrus is politely reluctant. He knows there is no beginning to be found in it, and he says so:
Εἰ σοί γε δοκεῖ· ὃ μέντοι ζητεῖς οὐκ ἔστ᾽ αὐτόθι.
Yes, I will if you like, but the thing
you are looking for is not there. (263e)
The thing Sokrates is looking for is the ‘now’ of desire. But Lysias’ first sentence already puts the erotic relationship in the past tense. The nonlover starts off by saying to his boy:
Περὶ μεν τῶν ἐμῶν πραγμάτων ἐπίστασαι, καὶ ὡς νομίζω συμφέρειν ἡμῖν γενομένων τούτων ἀκήκοας·
My business you know and, as to how I think these things that have transpired between us should turn out, you have heard. (230e7 = 262e2 = 263e7)
The fact that Sokrates cannot find the beginning of Lysias’ logos, or of Lysias’ eros, is crucial. Beginnings are crucial. Sokrates emphasizes in the most dignified language (245c-46) that everything in existence has a beginning, with one exception: the beginning itself. Only the archē itself controls its own beginning. It is this very control that Lysias usurps when he takes his pen and crosses out the beginning of eros for his nonlover. But this act is fiction. In reality the beginning is the one moment that you, as an unwitting target of winged Eros, cannot control. All that this moment brings, both good and evil, bitter and sweet, comes gratuitously and unpredictably—a gift of the gods, as the poets say. From that moment on, the story is largely up to you, but the beginning is not. In this realization lies the critical difference between Sokrates’ and Lysias’ erotic thinking. Sokrates has Phaedrus search Lysias’ logos for a beginning, in vain, to make a point. The beginning is not fictive. It cannot be placed in the control of a writer or reader. We should note that the Greek verb ‘to read’ is anagignōskein, a compound of the verb ‘to know’ (gignōskein) and the prefix ana, meaning ‘again.’ If you are reading, you are not at the beginning.
As Sokrates tells it, your story begins the moment Eros enters you. That incursion is the biggest risk of your life. How you handle it is an index of the quality, wisdom and decorum of the things inside you. As you handle it you come into contact with what is inside you, in a sudden and startling way. You perceive what you are, what you lack, what you could be. What is this mode of perception, so different from ordinary perception that it is well described as madness? How is it that when you fall in love you feel as if suddenly you are seeing the world as it really is? A mood of knowledge floats out over your life. You seem to know what is real and what is not. Something is lifting you toward an understanding so complete and clear it makes you jubilant. This mood is no delusion, in Sokrates’ belief. It is a glance down into time, at realities you once knew, as staggeringly beautiful as the glance of your beloved (249e-50c).
The point of time that Lysias deletes from his logos, the moment of mania when Eros enters the lover, is for Sokrates the single most important moment to confront and grasp. ‘Now’ is a gift of the gods and an access onto reality. To address yourself to the moment when Eros glances into your life and to grasp what is happening in your soul at that moment is to begin to understand how to live. Eros’ mode of takeover is an education: it can teach you the real nature of what is inside you. Once you glimpse that, you can begin to become it. Sokrates says it is a glimpse of a god (253a).
Sokrates’ answer to the erotic dilemma of time, then, is the antithesis of Lysias’ answer. Lysias chooses to edit out ‘now’ and narrate entirely from the vantage point of ‘then.’ In Sokrates’ view, to cross out ‘now’ is, in the first place, impossible, a writer’s impertinence. Even if it were possible, it would mean losing a moment of unique and indispensable value. Sokrates proposes instead to assimilate ‘now’ in such a way that it prolongs itself over the whole of life, and beyond. Sokrates would inscribe his novel within the instant of desire. We should begin to keep an eye on this Sokratic literary ambition, because it will have a serious effect on the story Plato is telling in the Phaedrus. It will make it disappear.