This is one of those texts that I think most curators of queer fiction would agree is pretty darn important both in terms of being a central paratext and an artifact of queer history. Scores of literary queer works reference The Symposium, usually by name. It's a sort of shorthand in a lot of historical literary fiction to represent gay men try to find each other (looking at you E.M. Forster), it's used as a source for entire plots of novels (a certain recent retelling of a certain Greek epic comes to mind), and mentioned in passing in others to let the reader know that some gay stuff is going to go down at some point.

The Symposium has been a critical text for queer men trying to understand themselves, searching for representation, for validation of their feelings and experiences for a very long time.

It's a lot of weight to put on the shoulders of such a slim little stack of pages.

So how does it stand up? And what even is it beyond a citation for Achilles/Patroclus shippers?

The Symposium is, loosely, about a group of (mostly) sober guys having a night in with the boys and talking about love. That's it. That's the whole plot.

We learn a bit about each of our characters, though the only one that really matters is the man of the hour, Socrates.

Each guest at this shindig takes a turn praising Love, each focussing on a different aspect thereof. Many of these speeches, especially the early ones, explore sexuality in so unbothered a manner I'm wholly unsurprised that much of The Symposium was redacted at universities until relatively recently if Forster is to be believed.

Not that it's particularly graphic (though one guest does go off on a tangent about how Achilles was canonically a bottom, actually, and people need to get that right). But one entire speech is about how humans are naturally either straight or gay (bisexuality is also alluded to in many of the speeches), though that isn't the language used. This message is instead relayed via a myth about Zeus splitting humans in half to teach them humility, and that love is trying to find that other half of ourselves again.

Men who are a section of that double nature which was once called Androgynous are lovers of women [...] The women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have female attachments. But they who are a section of the male follow the male. (p.32)

Each speech is quite dense (this is still a philosophy text after all) but quite readable (at least in this Library of Liberal Arts edition), so this isn't something you'd pick up and read straight through.

Though the speeches compliment each other, they are quite distinct, so there's really something here for everyone, as Love is interpreted in as many ways as there are speeches. I suspect everyone who does eventually read them all will have their favorite, though reading them all (with the boys, perhaps?) would also be a great springboard for discussion.

As far as philosophy texts go, this one is one of the most approachable because it is set up as a narrative, and so each idea feels tied to something concrete (a character) rather than just dangling out in space under some intimidating bolded heading. There is enough light interaction between the characters between speeches to break everything up nicely, and we round off with a saucy little biography of Socrates himself, delivered by our resident flower-crown wearing overgrown twink Alcibiades (an interesting historical figure in his own right, and the basis of a character in the fabulous Manhua One Thousand and One Nights).

I'll probably have to read the speeches again (and again) to have any concrete feeling about them, but they're lovely to read, especially in a genre that can often feel so dry and/or dour.

So go: join Socrates and Alcibiades around the table for an evening philosophizing about Love, and rejoice at the fact that we, queer people, have always been here, loving and laughing and wearing flower crowns.