Yes, when I said about forms and maps that sounds dull, and art isn’t dull, it’s emotion and excitement and some art is thrilling like music or when you’re in the theatre and you don’t know what on earth it’s about but your heart beats and – of course painting isn’t exciting like that –

DEXIMENES

Oh come on – isn’t it – sometimes?

CALLISTOS puzzled for a moment

You mean like pictures, like those special pictures in Derkon’s house which show – ? Yes, but that’s sex.

DEXIMENES

Isn’t art about sex?

CALLISTOS

Well–

DEXIMENES

Don’t blush, you can’t shock Socrates.

SOCRATES

He looks charming.

ACASTOS

Of course we all have kinds of pictures of – But those horrible erotic scenes in Derkon’s house aren’t art at all, they’re just designed to –

DEXIMENES

Acastos is such a puritan, almost as bad as Plato.

ACASTOS

Well, what does Plato think?

He turns to Plato, but Plato ignores him.

MANTIAS

What’s the matter with him?

DEXIMENES

Jealousy. He wants Socrates all to himself.

MANTIAS

I see he’s taking notes again. Socrates told him not to.

SOCRATES

Go on, hold on to your idea, you’ve just discovered something you want to add, so perhaps you might now restate your definition.

CALLISTOS

You mean with sex in?

SOCRATES

Anything you like in.

DEXIMENES

You needn’t call it sex, call it passion.

SOCRATES

What does music do?

CALLISTOS

It expresses feelings and emotions and makes you feel as if the musical pattern went straight into your heart, into your body.

SOCRATES

Don’t you want to put something like that into your definition?

DEXIMENES

Oh come on!

CALLISTOS

Art is the expression of feeling, the communication of emotion. All art is like music really.

SOCRATES

You said it was like painting. Now you say it is like music. You used the word pattern. Now do you want to give up your idea that art imitates the world, in some way?

CALLISTOS

It won’t do for music – unless music copies something we can’t see or hear.

SOCRATES

Some say that the gods are always doing geometry. Perhaps they are always composing music too.

ACASTOS

I like that – and we sometimes overhear a little.

CALLISTOS

But art is about the world, how real things are changed into a sort of feeling – pattern, a feeling – thought or – sorry, I’m in a muddle –

SOCRATES

Go on, dear boy, don’t give up, try to catch something here. Remember, you are doing philosophy – and sometimes when you’ve been trying really hard to get a glimpse of an idea you can only talk about it in a kind of nonsense. So stop trying to be clear and just talk honest nonsense.

CALLISTOS trying hard