Love and the concentric spheres: part 2
Or, to put it another way, the flip side of the rambling nonsense that I was thinking about over the weekend.
It’s terribly presumptious to quote from a book that you’ve hardly even begun reading yet, but what the hell.
From the back cover of A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes:
“The language we use when we are in love is not a language we speak, for it is addressed to ourselves and to our imaginary beloved. It is, for that very reason, a language of solitude.”
Too right. I think that “solitude” is the important word there. Sometimes, it appears that declarations of love have become the latest public property, to be discussed aloud and possibly shouted across the rooftops. Well, fine, if that’s your style …
But love is something that begins in private, that seems so precious and secret that you hardly dare admit it even to yourself, let alone to anyone else. Eventually, it becomes so overwhelming that you feel the need to reveal it to one or two people (yes, despite the fact that this involves sharing the secret, it still qualifies as solitude in my opinion). And then maybe — sometimes, sadly, maybe not — you eventually get around to telling the subject of your affections how you feel about them. If your feelings are reciprocated, at that moment there is often a huge social pressure to make some public announcement. Again, it’s obviously the next move if it absolutely feels right to share this declaration of love with the world. However, there should be no social pressure to say anything. Love should still be private, a precious secret, if you want it to be. In a society where “getting in touch with your emotions” increasingly appears to mean revealing the most intimate details on radio phone-in shows, is it any wonder that there is often this unseemly rush to get everything out in the open even in our immediate social circles?
Pause a moment — love is “a language of solitude”, remember.
What about the nature of love itself? We’re all looking for the right person — and it can be a bloody long search, with lots of wrong turnings along the way. Just because we can’t find that one person, does that mean we are never meant to feel love until that perfect moment? Some more Barthes — the writer himself this time, rather than the back cover blurb:
“… it is my desire I desire, and the loved being is no more than its tool. I rejoice at the thought of such a great cause, which leaves far behind it the person whom I have made into its pretext (at least this is what I tell myself, happy to raise myself by lowering the other): I sacrifice the image to the Image-repertoire. And if a day comes when I must bring myself to renounce the other, the violent mourning which then grips me is the mourning of the Image-repertoire itself: it was a beloved structure, and I weep for the loss of love, not of him or her.”
Being in love with the idea of love. Well, why not? The whole concept might seem ridiculous if you happen to have a particular target for your affections. It might seem positively laughable if you happen to be in love. But you can still desire the absolute experience of being in love , even if you don’t have a particular focus on which to concentrate that desire. Why should anyone be denied one of the most powerful feelings that can be experienced in life, just because of their situation? Maybe “love” is the wrong term to use here, as it so emotionally loaded — but music, poetry, literature, art, er, um, even beautiful mornings and exquisite sunsets all come to us absolutely suffused with romantic imagery. This is the “Image-repertoire” to which Barthes is referring. All these elements, and not least the feelings within your own heart, can mean that it is entirely possible to experience the emotions of love — even if it is just the simplest form of actually needing and wishing to find love.
(Insert flippant sign-off line of your choice here. I can’t think of one at the moment.)