Page 15 - GALIET THE TORCH, THE GODDESS: On Poesy Plato IV

own pharmakon as narrated in the allegory of the musician and summarized as follows:
“all expert musicians try to attain perfect harmony, so they tighten and loosen their strings to exactly the same degree, namely, the one that will produce the right pitch” (349c)
In this evocative statement, we can interpret Socrates as accepting and understanding how essential it is to struggle, to live in binaries, in order that we may attain harmony by knowing that which is not. If we are to apply the same logic to poetry, we shall find that antithesis creates harmony. In other words, without tension, we can’t access the a priori Forms, the “right pitch” within, and create beauty out of them and be given the opportunity to fall in love with our creations, our poems, our lives as, Socrates, later reminds us:
“Just as poets love their poems and fathers love their children, so those who have made their own money don’t just care about it because it’s useful, as other people do, but because it’s something they’ve made themselves” (330c)
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