I think many people still cling to a romantic conception of love that in a way absorbs love in the encounter. Love is simultaneously ignited, consummated and consumed in the meeting, in a magical moment outside the world as it really is. Something happens that is in the nature of a miracle, an existential intensity, an encounter leading to meltdown. But when things happen that way, we arent witnessing a Two scene but a One scene. It is the meltdown concept of love: the two lovers met and something like a heroic act for One was enacted against the world. In Romantic mythology we can see how this point of fusion very often leads to death. There is a close and profound link between love and death, the highest point of which no doubt is Richard Wagners Tristan and Isolde, because love is consumed in the ineffable, exceptional moment of the encounter, after which it is impossible to go back to a world that remains external to the relationship. This is a radically Romantic interpretation that I think we need to challenge. It is artistically extremely beautiful but, in my opinion, it is existentially seriously lacking. I believe we should accept it as a powerful artistic myth, but not as a genuine philosophy of love. After all, love takes place in the world. It is an event that cant be predicted or calculated in terms of the worlds laws. Nothing enables one to prearrange the encounter. However, love cannot be reduced to the first encounter, because it is a construction. The enigma in thinking about love is the duration of time necessary for it to flourish. In fact, it isnt the ecstasy of those beginnings that is remarkable. The latter are clearly ecstatic, but love is above all a construction that lasts. We could say that love is a tenacious adventure. The adventurous side is necessary, but equally so is the need for tenacity. To give up at the first hurdle, the first serious disagreement, the first quarrel, is only to distort love. Real love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world. -- Alain Badiou Happy pride weekend to all my pals and their various tenacious adventures.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 08:57:22 +0000
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