Socrates’ goblet of death: the image of the philosopher in the poem ‘Socrates’ by P. F. Yakubovich

Annotation

A poem by Russian poet and writer Petr Filippovich Yakubovich, is coming out with an introduction and comments. The author of the article points out that the theme of a goblet/cup is frequent in the poet’s verses. This image is often related to the motif of self-sacrifice and death. The theme also permeates the poem Socrates (1886) playing up the well-known story from ancient history. The image of the ‘goblet of death’ is akin to that of the Holy Cross, and the Athenian philosopher was often presented as a Christian before Christ, the first ‘righteous’. Yet, in Yakubovich’s Socrates, the motif is different: the populist revolutionary portrays the philosopher as a sturdy and relentless fighter for freedom, the one who opposes the powers that be who condemned him to death. Socrates here is an example of a man holding true to the ideals. Yakubovich’s poem is a dialogue between Socrates and his friend. The Athenian philosopher rejects the arrangements made by his well-wishing friend to escape from prison, and faces death in the name of the ideas he had upheld all his life, fully aware that his teaching would stand the test of time. To fear death, to turn a faint-hearted fraud and betray everything he had held dear all his life would be to discredit his very devotion. Only ‘sublime contempt for death’ can prove and perpetuate the verity of his beliefs, the ‘honest fervor of the teaching’. Plato’s Socrates does not despise death, on the contrary, in his last hours he admits that he seems happy to have been cured of life as a disease (the dialogue Phaedo in which the condemned philosopher, to comfort his friends and disciples, offers four proofs of immortality of the soul Plato Phaedo 70c–108c). However, Yakubovich diverges from the main ancient source (Plato’s), he sweeps away the motifs of humility and humbleness, focusing on the inflexible will of his hero. The theme of the escape refers to Plato’s Crito. The ancient Greek’s Socrates refuses to escape, referring to his respect for law and his submission to the sentence pronounced in court by most of his fellow countrymen. The Russian poet believed that the condemnation of the heroic sage Socrates, a true fighter serving the ideals of the good, was unfair, so, according to the law of truth, the death of the philosopher was ‘lawless’. The message in Yakubovich’s Socrates: by no means must a fighter retreat in the last battle, he must accept the ‘goblet of death’ dispassionately, aware of what he is dying for, and he must withstand the entreaties made by his close friends and ‘never let his heart fail him’. For those who will look on to the hero in future, he accepts death. It is fortitude that makes a man a hero; ‘sublime contempt’ for death is the foundation of victory and eternal life of the hero.

Keywords

Russian poetry of the 19th century, P. F. Yakubovich, philosopher, Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Archelaus, Crito, prison poetry, dialogue, bowl, cup, hemlock/cicuta, death, fighter, sacrifice, memory.

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