For great love, as the Nobel-winning Polish poet Wisława Szymborska observed in her splendid meditation on its mystery, is “never justified” but is rather “like the little tree that springs up in some inexplicable fashion on the side of a cliff: where are its roots, what does it feed on, what miracle produces those green leaves?” But when they do come, with all the delirium of the improbable, they enter the house of the heart as if they have always lived there, instantly at home they enter like light bending at a certain angle to reveal, without fuss or fanfare, some corner of the universe for the very first time - but the corner has always been there, dusty and dim, and the light has always been ambient, unlensed and unbent into illumination. Such loves come unbidden, without warning or presentiment, and that is their supreme insurance against the projectionist fantasy that so frequently disguises not-love - infatuation, obsession, jealousy, longing - as love. That, at least, has been my experience, both as a scholar of history and as a private participant in the lives of the heart. Great loves, like great works of art, live at the crossing point of the improbable and the inevitable.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |