Ep 04: Eros and its Discontents
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What is love? What is desire? At one point or another in our lives, I am sure we have all asked these questions. We were hoping that one day we’ll find that one true love, the one we are destined to be with. Reality though, often disappoints. So we go to the must-read classics to find the answers. In my life, I have found two texts that somehow taught me how to love. One is from ancient greek, another from ancient China.
Now, if you don’t already know, the Greeks have a word for all forms of love, they call it Eros. In fact, Eros was the Greek god of love, or more precisely, passionate and physical desire. The Greeks did not know how to define Eros, so they did what they always do, they hosted a banquet inviting all the notable men in Athens, and each of those invited was asked to give a speech on love, a Symposium. At the symposium, there was the famous philosopher Socrates, the general and political figure Alcibiades, and the comic playwright Aristophanes, among others. The speeches were given in praise of Eros, even though it was in the context of ancient Greek society, the text continued to shine light on our understanding of love.
Another text that changed my view on love is a pornographic, wait, no not really. It’s a well known fiction from 16th century China, called Jin Ping Mei. Its English name is The Plum in the Golden Vase, which is not only famous for being a moralistic tale on human nature, but also for its explicit depiction of sexuality. Princeton University Press, in describing the Roy translation, calls the novel "a landmark in the development of the narrative art form—not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical context...noted for its surprisingly modern technique" and "with the possible exception of The Tale of Genji (c. 1010) and Don Quixote (1605, 1615), there is no earlier work of prose fiction of equal sophistication in world literature.” Jin Ping Mei is considered one of the six classics of Chinese literature.
What is fascinating in the dialectic in the Symposium is the debate over the definition, philosophy, and pursuit of eros that is prompted by Alcibiades, as well as the overarching discussion that Socrates engages in. Because of the way the Symposium attempts to negotiate with eros and notions of pursuit and fulfillment, I wish to draw a comparison with the themes and narratives of Jing Ping Mei and its protagonist and cast of characters. Like the Symposium, there is also a set of circumstantial similarities: Both texts have authors whose status as real or fictional is somewhat contested, both represent dialectical stories to depict moral and ethical situations and critique contemporary society. The protagonist of Jing Ping Mei and the discourse that Alcibiades initiates surface a similar topic, namely of desires, the pursuit of desire, which often involve the search for love, for beauty, for eros, for a particular set of fulfillment and meaning that each expounds upon through their own versions of thought, dialogue, and action.
There are two terms that help us approach a shared critical crux in both the Symposium and Jing Ping Mei: desire and eros. Desire, the overwhelming sense of wishing and wanting, of seeking fulfillment. Eros is where the philosophy and praxis of desire is created, defined, contested. Eros and its discontents are the source of much of the discussion, controversy, and rancor in both the Symposium and Jing Ping Mei. The ethical and moral, the teleological and epistemological, all are at stake in the ways both texts represents how people craft or are possessed, lose or preserve, define or change their sense of the world and themselves as they seek to discover and realize their desires. The sense of self, of being that they then proceed to enact as they live their lives, encounter and impact others, is something both the Symposium and Jing Ping Mei grapple with at every level, in their own way. While both differ fundamentally in terms of structure and origin, I wish to show that both texts are nonetheless fundamentally engaged with an examination of being through desire that is best framed through a discussion of eros and the forms it takes and is received in both works.
Desire, though, in both texts are ultimately means by which the reader can discern how both works negotiate with what it means to seek the “good” life, to be “good” -- to discern virtue from vice -- as its characters struggle with the pursuit of their desires the narratives dramatize through dialectic or action. Jing Ping Mei can be read as a novel whose fundamental stance is one of contention. For one, it seeks to test through dramatization aspects of Buddhist philosophy and thought, particularly with its negotiation with the concept of 空 kong, of the return to nothingness. As one makes it through the cast and narratives of the novel, I argue that it is a novel that puts all into contention: it does not seek to overthrow or disprove, but rather to disturb and doubt any way of life that is lead blindly, unconsciously, by showing the ramifications of such ways of life. Though one of the principal themes of the novel is satisfaction in all its forms, particularly those temporal and carnal, so too is one of its themes the sense of lack, of dissatisfaction that permeates and seems to be suffused into the very everyday lives of the period that Jing Ping Mei represents and critiques so dramatically.