82
PARTISAN REVIEW
terms of effect. And one finds very little externalization in the
Sonnets.
Many of them attempt not a phrase of description yet manage to
convey a sense of the subject's beauty by the word-order and dispo–
sition of the lines. It is true Homer does not describe Helen. But
in the last book he gives us a good idea of the personal power of
Achilles by his effect on Priam; it is his gesture when he kills the
sheep that makes Priam marvel at how goodly and godlike he
is
to
look upon.
A: According to Socrates physical beauty may cause in some men
memory of a divine beauty. In poets and artists the sight even of
earthly beauty may bring about a noble madness.
I: Sight, of course, is the most piercing of the bodily senses.-When
people talk in romantic terms, they refer to love at first sight-not
first hearing or first touch-
A: The eye is the organ of choice, the sense by which one appre–
hends possibility. With smell, taste, touch-all one has is the im–
mediate data. Seeing depends on a voluntary effort. From the Bible
we learn that the eye is the instrument of guilt.
I: Why?
A: For several reasons. -"Eve
saw
that the tree was good for
food and pleasant to the eye." The eye is the abetoor of physical
love. By means of it one can be most grossly deceived. Since the
eye contains the way of gratification and refusal (the eyelid), this
sense is pretty much under control of the will which makes bad
use of it more reprehensible. Hearing represents the spiritual sense.
Christ spread his doctrine by the spoken word, as did most prophets
and leaders. One finds the ear-eye dichotomy illustrated by the con–
flict between John the Baptist and Salome; Socrates and Alcibiades;
and Christ and Mary Magdalene.
I : You mean Socrates spoke like a god and Alcibiades looked like
one?
A: More than that. The situation embodies the endless war be–
tween external and inward beauty. You remember at the conclusion
of the
Symposium
Alcibiades compares Socrates to the statuettes of
Silenus sold in shops, which opened to reveal images of gods inside.
I: Sight is, then, instantaneous, positive, guilty.-The eye can im–
mediately envelop the person of a stranger. I once looked up in the
