Platonic Communion and ‘An Unfinished Romance’ in Gaston de Latour
This chapter explores the Platonism in Pater’s Gaston de Latour, which began publication in monthly instalments in 1888. Like Marius, Gaston is set in a time of religious turmoil—the religious wars of sixteenth-century France—and follows a single character in search of spiritual transcendence. Along the way Gaston has critical encounters with historical authors, such as Michel de Montaigne and Giordano Bruno, who enrich his understanding of Platonism. The love that seeks wholeness in Plato’s Symposium is proposed as a model for Pater’s critical engendering with historical authors. Beyond Platonic love narratives, Pater incorporates the Odyssean homecoming, employed by Neoplatonists, and the Christian narrative of desire in Song of Solomon. Gaston’s later chapters seem to engage with Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Portrait of Mr. W. H.’ concerning what Pater means by the phrase ‘lover and philosopher at once’, inspired by Plato’s Phaedrus.