January 8 2016

Plato - seeing the beauty in everything - the highest stage of love - equivalent to Jesus Christ, beauty in creation, propogate all things.

Auster in Winter Journal - looking back at the past, the bad things never as radiant as the good. Focus on sex - certainly the main thing driving men in their youth (and middle age), but to focus on it too much in literature? As Plato writes, it is a shallow form of love - like writing about a shower or eating. And yet lots of great literature to do with food. The Kindly Ones at this level - sensory, surface reactions to events.

January 6 2016

Plato - the different kinds of love - deepr kind lasts longer - Love the youngest of the Gods as love is deeper when younger - is this true? Love changes over time - mellows and deepens like a fine wine - Auster's Winter Journal states same thing in the first section, 30 years with his wife and the love has changed, but not diminished.

I always see Auster as a pretentious writier until I read him again and am swept away ty the felicitous nature of his prose. A contrast to the Penguin Classics Symposium.