Brief Excerpt from Transformations of Eros by Vladimir Solovyev

Terracotta lekythos in the form of Eros, 2nd half of the 4th century BC,
Metropolitan Museum of Art (photo by New York Scugnizzo)

"When Eros enters into an earthly being, he at once transforms it. The lover feels within himself a new power of infinity; he has received a new and mighty gift. But then inevitably arise the rivalry and antagonism of the two parts or tendencies of the soul — the higher and the lower. Which of them is to appropriate and turn to its own advantage the mighty power of Eros, so as to become infinitely fertile or generative in its own domain and its own direction? The lower soul desires an infinite creation on the physical plane only — a negative, evil infinity, accessible solely to victorious matter; a constant repetition of the same fugitive phenomena, an eternal hunger and thirst without satiation, a living emptiness never to be filled, an infinity and eternity of Tantalus, Sisyphus and the Danaides. The sensual soul drags down the winged Eros and puts a bandage over his eyes, in order that he should maintain life on the plane of material phenomena, preserving and fostering the law of evil infinity, and working as a servile tool for the irrational immensity of material appetites.

"But what will the infinite power of Eros give to the higher intelligent soul? Will it direct it to the contemplation of the truly existent, ideal, cosmos? But such contemplation is already proper to the mind by its very nature, and is practiced without the aid of Eros. And Eros himself is, by his nature, not a theoretical or contemplative power, but one which is infinitely creative. The nature and the results of the activity of Eros, when he is subject to the lower sensual soul, are sufficiently well known, not only to men, but also to animals and plants. But what then does he impart to the soul which has risen to something higher than the service of mortal life? Where can this soul produce its offspring — not of Apollo, not of Hermes, but of Eros? Not in the world of Ideas and of pure, divine minds, for that world is the abode of what is unchangeable; of what neither needs nor has the power of reproduction in its own eternal domain. But generation in the non-existent does not befit the winged and clear-sighted demi-god when he is free and not in bondage to the lower physical soul, which deprives him both of wings and vision. Therefore, for his true creative power there remains only that boundary line of the two worlds which is known by the name of The Beautiful."

* Vladimir Solovyev, Transformations of Eros: An Odyssey from Platonic to Christian Eros (New Culture Press, 1992), pp. 58–59.