It Cannot Sleep, but Runs
Read the full text in our reader
Socrates — οὔτε νυκτὸς δύναται καθεύδειν οὔτε μεθʼ ἡμέραν οὗ ἂν ᾖ μένειν, θεῖ δὲ ποθοῦσα ὅπου ἂν οἴηται ὄψεσθαι τὸν ἔχοντα τὸ κάλλος·
When the beloved is out of sight, the growing wings give the soul no rest, and Socrates describes the result with perfect recognizability: the lover cannot sleep at night, cannot stay where it is by day, but runs — aching, yearning — to wherever it imagines it might glimpse the one who holds beauty. This is the outward behavior that follows from the inward physiology of the last passage. The feathers, half-grown, throb and itch when the sight that feeds them is withdrawn, and the whole person is dragged into motion by the need to see the face again. Anyone who has been in love knows the picture exactly: the sleeplessness, the inability to settle, the way the feet carry you toward the beloved before you have decided to go.
The lover's restlessness. When the beloved is out of sight, the throbbing of the growing wings gives the soul no peace: it cannot sleep at night or stay put by day, but runs, aching with longing, to wherever it thinks it might catch sight of the one who holds beauty. Only the sight of the beloved brings relief.
What makes this passage land is that it is simply, exactly true to experience — and that Plato has built a whole metaphysics that explains it. The behavior is universal: love makes you unable to sleep or sit still, and turns you into a person who keeps finding reasons to be where the beloved might appear. The first two speeches treated this restlessness as evidence against love, a symptom of the disease, a good reason to prefer the calm non-lover. The palinode has given it a cause that transfigures it entirely. The soul cannot rest because its wings are growing back, and half-grown feathers throb for the one food that soothes them — the sight of beauty. So the sleeplessness is not derangement but hunger, and not a low hunger either: it is the immortal part of a person reaching for the one thing on earth that reminds it of home. The lover runs to the beloved for the same reason a starving animal runs toward food, except that the food is a glimpse of the eternal shining through a face. Plato neither denies the madness of love nor apologizes for it; he explains it, and in explaining it, redeems it. The man who cannot keep away is not weak-willed. He is a soul that has started to remember what it is, and cannot bear to lose sight of the thing that woke it.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Phaedrus 251e in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Phaedrus — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Phaedrus 251e — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/phaedrus/251e/