"I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less."
26 December 2006Little diamonds are foreverWe've taken this person's concept of love and replaced it with Stendhal's Crystals. Let's see what happens:
My understanding of what he wrote is that he believes that lovers become convinced of the perfection of their beloved, relate every perfection they encounter to their beloved, and that deepening of love is dependent upon fears: First of the beloved not returning their love and then of them not loving them any more. It seems, that in his view a person will not fall in love without these fears and finally that, if the person falls in love, the loss of fear will kill passion but allow for confidence.
I find this to be interesting in many ways; First, I wonder if it is true that one must have fear in order to love. Having never been "in love" I find it difficult to say if this seems likely, but I like to think that falling in love would have more to do with something deeper, more 'real,' than fear of loss. I don't think that fear is the single prerequisite, necessarily, but I do believe that all the emotions should be in at least working condition for love to have any functionality; otherwise it's just whistling into the wind. Stendhal, at least, was cognizant of the fact that the emotions tend to travel as a pack: "The pleasures of love," he wrote, "are always in proportion to our fears." But the path of crystallization deals initially with the process of perception: as minor, even major, imperfections become irrelevant to the lover, the desire for reciprocation increases. Fear first manifests itself when one's feelings are not returned; when fear and hope are intermixed, the romantic attraction is intensified. And the fear doesn't always go away when the feelings are returned: this is where thoughts of abandonment kick in. Maybe I'm paying more attention to this stuff these days because one of my fears — perhaps the only one that matters in the long run — has to do with getting out of here alive, which of course none of us ever do, at least not in a sense that we understand. Stendhal anticipated this too:
A dayfly is born at nine in the morning, during the long summer days, to die at five in the evening; how could it understand the word "night"? Give it five hours more; it will see and understand what night is. Likewise, I shall die at twenty-three. Give me five more years of life, to live with Mme. de Rènal ....
I didn't die at twenty-three, obviously, but I have this sinking feeling that I won't find someone until the day after I discover I've come down with something terminal. And that's the thing about crystals: incredibly beautiful they may be, but inevitably they have an edge. Posted at 10:31 AM to Table for One |