Neo-Platonic love in fictional obsessions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59533/Verb.2023.24.1.2Resumen
Twentieth-century novels present sexuality as a source of mystifying pleasure often challenging the conventions of heterosexual relationships by presenting a plot with elderly men captivated by much younger women. Alternatively, we should read those controversial texts as a Neo-Platonic exercise wherein Beauty itself recalls virtue and the more beautiful something is the more it is identifiable with the divine. Consequently, to those who managed to attain, by contemplation, the pure beauty, such contemplation would resemble a revelation of some sort. In the end, much the same way as plants naturally seek out sunlight, man before death reconciles all desires with a longing for God.
Referencias
Alexandrakis, Aphrodite and Nicholas J. Moutafaks (eds) (2002): Neoplatonism and Western Aesthetics. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Anton, John P. (1964): Plotinus’ Refutation of Beauty as Symmetry. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 23(2): 233–237. https://doi.org/10.2307/427785
Brendan, Thomas Sammon (2014): The God Who Is Beauty. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co.
Boletsi, Maria (2007): Barbaric Encounters: Rethinking Barbarism in C. O. Cavafy’s and J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting For The Barbarians. Comparative Literature Studies 44(1/2): 67–96. https://doi.org/10.2307/25659562
Cass, Jeremy L. (2011): Why Is No One Talking about Memoria de Mis Putas Tristes?. South Atlantic Review 76: 113–128. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41635674
Coetzee, J. M. (1980): Waiting for the Barbarians. New York: Penguin Books.
Cornyetz, Nina (2007): The Ethics of Aesthetics in Japanese Cinema and Literature: Polygraphic Desire. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203967010
de Vogel, C. J. (1953): On the Neoplatonic Character of Platonism and the Platonic Character of Neoplatonism. Mind 62(245): 43–64. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/LXII.245.43
Dillon, John M. (2003): The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy, 347–247 B.C. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/0198237669.001.0001
Flores, Francisca González (2008): Gabriel García Márquez y Yasunari Kawabata: El Bel Vivir y El Bel Morir. A Propósito de ‘Memoria de Mis Putas Tristes’. Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 34(67): 335–345. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25479064.
Haruki, Namiko (2010): Hospitality in Kawabata’s ‘House of the Sleeping Beauties’. American Imago 67(3): 31–40. https://doi.org/10.1353/aim.2010.0021
Homer (1937): The Odyssey, trans. W. H. D. Rouse. New York: Mentor.
Jayne, Sears (1952): Ficino and the Platonism of the English Renaissance. Comparative Literature 4(3): 214–238. https://doi.org/10.2307/1768535
Kahn, Charles H. (ed.) (1996): Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of Literary Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511585579
Kawabata, Yasunari (1980): The House of the Sleeping Beauties [1969]. Translated by Edward Seidensticker. New York: Kodansha.
Lévinas, Emmanuel (1974): Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence. The Hague: Nijhoff. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-1111-7
Márquez, Gabriel García (2004): Memoria de mis putas tristes. Milano: Mondadori.
May, Brian (2001): J. M. Coetzee and the question of the body. Modern Fiction Studies 47(2): 391–420. https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2001.0044
Mebed, Sharif (2019): A Critique of Desire: Law, Language, and the Death Drive in Kawabata’s House of the Sleeping Beauties. Japan Review 32: 89–106. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26652951
Moses, Michael Valdez (1993): The Mark of Empire: Writing, History, and Torture in Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians. The Kenyon Review 15(1): 115–127. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4336813
Oviedo, José Miguel (2007): Noventa años de soledad. Ínsula 723 (March 2007): 15–16.
Phillips, Brian (2006): The Tyranny of Beauty: Kawabata. The Hudson Review 59(3): 419–428. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20464602
Pieper, Josef (1995): “Divine Madness”: Plato’s Case Against Secular Humanism. Translated by Lothar Krauth. San Francisco: Ignatius.
Plato (1903): Platonis Opera. Edited by John Burnet. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Plotinus (1951): Plotini opera. 3 vols. Edited by P. Henry and H.-R. Schwyzer. Leiden: Brill.
Saegusa, Kazuko (1991): Ren’ai shosetsu no kansei. Seidosha.
Saint Agustín (2010): Confesiones. Buenos Aires: Edibesa.
Saint Gregory (1990): On the Soul and the Resurrection. In: Ascetical Works, trans. Virginia Woods Callahan. Washington: The Catholic University.
Scarry, Elaine (1999): On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400847358
Smith, Andrew (2011): The Quest for Beauty and Truth. Classics Ireland 18: 74–90. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23621463
Tatar, Maria (2014): Show and Tell: Sleeping Beauty as Verbal Icon and Seductive Story. Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies 28(1): 142–158. https://doi.org/10.13110/marvelstales.28.1.0142
