The Paradox of Love, 2

The Prisoner of Love by Yelena Tylkina

Did I say I was back in Sointula? I brought 33 pounds of books with me, so heavy that the airline affixed a "HEAVY" tag to the suitcase. The books divide into two categories: Goethe and love. Goethe is always with me, and in this case I have to write a review for Goethe Yearbook, for which I have carted along other books by the author I am reviewing. Books on love are a new interest, part of the theme of "love versus the sublime" that now occupies me.

I am moving along in Pascal Bruckner's The Paradox of Love, subject of my last post. There are lots of good thoughts in it, but I am beginning to think that French writers are more content with dazzling readers with pregnant observations that making a cogent analysis. Perhaps on the subject of love, one should not be overly cogent. Part I, which I have just finished reading, is entitled "The Redemption of Love." Does Bruckner tell us how love redeems us? Not at all. The subject, as I wrote in my last post, is really the fluidity of love in the modern world, a world of freedom, of so many alternatives in lovers, that we hesitate and doubt ourselves and are, of course, freely rejected by others.

Chapter 3, "I Love You: Weakness and Capture," begins with an analysis of what the words "I love you" mean. This very phrase is itself borrowed, not unique to the speaker of the sentiment. It is, as Bruckner writers, "a collective vehicle for a personal end." Indeed, all of the words we use to express what feels like spontaneous feeling exist before us and are part of a "treasuring of loving words that we apply to those close to us, to pets, and to babies." Even if we go through many lovers, we will use the same words over and over. Otherwise, we "would have to create unique words that are valid only in the instant that I utter them and then disintegrate." We do not tread new territory in our expressions of love; the path been trod by millions before us.

Uttering the words of love leads to the disconcerting situation, for moderns, that we have committed ourselves to something permanent. Although we consider ourselves free, we now have responsibility for what we have said. Lovers resort to stratagems to get themselves out of a situation that promised permanence. As befits love in a capitalist society, "the declaration of love is also a blank check that we can hardly wait to cash: the marvelous gift is transformed into a debt, and we want to recoup our costs." Thus, lovers are constantly bedeviled by the risks in loving and calculate ways to spare themselves risk.

"We Are All Blind Before We See"

Mostly Bruckner speaks of the insecurities of love, and I recognize from my own experience what he is talking about. Having been married and loved and been loved, however, I tend to regard what he says as applying to restless people who have no real anchor in the world, which characterized me at one time. Indeed, I would say that love anchored me. Thus, I was glad when he added some thoughts about what I consider true love, which is unselfish, free of any obligation, a gift that "in no way deprives its donor but instead enriches her beyond all possession." He is speaking of the love of parents for children, but I felt the same way in my marriage. "To love in this way," he writes, again writing of parents, "is to consent, despite ourselves, to lose the other," as when children grow up and move away.

But to tell someone you love him also means that he will not go away. You have committed yourself to "forever." He quotes Gabriel Marcel to this effect: "To say to someone: I love you, is to tell him: You shall not die." Is this one reason that I still have so much trouble accepting that Rick is dead?

Picture credit: Fine Art America; Vision Bank Corp.