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IFComp 2023: Xanthippe's Last Night with Socrates, November 2, 2023If I had to rank genres by personal interest, then “sex comedy” would rank pretty near the bottom, a fact which has proved surprisingly relevant this comp. As a resident Gijsbers scholar, however, I am dutybound to report on this newest addition to the oeuvre. Although lines like “He tries to escape from your hug, but you’re not going to let him. “Come on, mister So-Crabby-Tes,” you say. “I know what you want. You want to feel your little Xanita real close to you, don’t you? Real close.”” tested my resolve, sapping my will to click buttons, with a little assistance from my friend Pouilly-Fuissé, I performed my scholarly duties.
Beneath exhaustingly thorough banter about cows and infidelities, the dominating tension in Xanthippe’s Last Night with Socrates is between the Person Who Will Die and the people who tried to live. Socrates’ world historical commitment to persona, the totalizing symbol of his perfectly poetic election of death, clashes with his mundane obligations to those who shared his world: “He becomes animated. “A great joke! A joke for the ages! People will still be talking about it when…” / “When my name is forgotten and my bones turned to dust?” / He sighs. “Okay, look.” His tone is apologetic. “You have a point. But, see, it just went with the role.”” The disconnect between person and Purpose doubles the underlying gender disparity, that Socrates’ memory is built from His liberty of bickering round the town, while Xanthippe is remembered as any femalifying stereotype one might like to attach to the Socrates story. Of course, given he must bear it for only a few more hours, he’s perfectly willing to commit to the burdens of his role: “He raises his moist eyes to find yours. “No,” he says. “No. Even though I know I’m losing you, and you’re losing me, and although I know you don’t want me to go – see, I had to do it. I had to stand there and show the world what philosophy is. What it is to choose truth over everything else. It’s not some role that I played. This is who I am.” But this gesture, alchemizing an authenticity worthy to adopt, brutalizes Xanthippe’s grief, substituting the loss of her husband with this preening simulacrum. Her desperate attempt, in this last night, to beg from him some true connection, not with the Socrates who will die, but with the husband who once loved her, listened to her, pledged a life to her, draws out the embarrassing facticity of his humanness, gross and inadequate before the stylized portrait so soon he could assume. The silence between you grows; the philosopher doesn’t know what to say. “Your husband eats little, but he drinks all the more. Perhaps it will help him face the hemlock. But it definitely won’t help him face you.”
But is that really what you want, from the end of all things, to be some daunting reckoning which he must face as steely and certain as the one that comes with dawn? Isn’t there room, before all the lonely nights, for one last togetherness? Just the desire to be desired, is all, nothing so momentous, why should it have to be, isn’t the simplicity of your existence enough? Not before the one who chooses Death… wasn’t always like this, “he made you feel wanted. / And not just your body, but you, really you, with your desires and fantasies … And now that will all come to an end. He’s sitting before you, his face badly lit by the flickering oil lamp, and for the first time he looks vulnerable.” What can you rectify in a single night that took so many to wallow here? Is there any peace you can make stronger than utterly the grief, the end of things, the end of all your trying? Perhaps you have to accept fate, the fine ghost he will make. “I have a task, Xanthippe, and I was never free to desist from it.” You watch his resolve dissolve him, and you’re not sure that it wasn’t always this way: his path wherever it leads, your privilege merely the chance to follow behind. “He seems more than a little dead already, that husband of yours, huddled in a corner and neither moving nor speaking. Only soft, inarticulate grunts escape from his throat. His breathing comes heavily. He keeps his eyes closed. / You smile tenderly.” At least it was a journey, that’s more than most get.
Defeated, but refusing despair, you accept your husband for who he was regardless of you. “No more thoughts about death, then. We’ll celebrate life.” And, if it’s any consolation, some residue of your existence can endure in his carefully crafted immortality, the human remains of where he will not admit you: ““Don’t be sorry.” Socrates takes your face in his hands. “I’ve always loved you. I’ve loved you more than I thought I could love anyone. And, you know, maybe I shouldn’t say this… but without you, Xanthippe, without your love, your support… I wouldn’t have had the courage to walk the path that I did. To stand up to the people of Athens. To choose death.”” So your vow ends, an us merely a part.
