er, in Volume II, Marcel, the narrator, will likewise love Albertine through "those Michelangelo figures which are being swept away in a stationary and vertiginous whirlwind". These examples of love refracted through art reminded me a year or so ago of some of Barthes' writing on the imaginaire, the manner in which we superimpose our own imagining onto our thus selected desire and I wrote about it a little. Perhaps these works of art are indeed merely tropes, no different from other literary stylings, on which Proust could express his characters' love. How nice these flourishes remain, and how true to the grandiose impressions we have of our new loves.Valentine's Day, despite how lucky I have been in love, has nonetheless generally made me uncomfortable and I find art an honest yet still distracting way of expressing or enjoying it. Last year, I went to The Tempest with my new love, my aunt and her partner, which solved the need to speak for several hours and allowed the rest of the evening to be focused on the play rather than this still uncertain relationship. Other years, I have largely tried to avoid the heart-shaped, chocolate-covered celebration, always unsuccessfully, not because I do not feel love for one or many, but rather because I am not sure how to express it on demand. I do not proclaim well. I am more spontaneous in my desire and appreciation, believing, as I do, that Love is truly important, fundamental even.
In Greek mythology, specifically remembering my recent reading of Hesiod, after Chaos the first creation is Eros. How this occurs Hesiod does not explain, but only after Eros do Gaia and Okeanous, and the others, appear. Eros remains an independently created entity, though one who produces progeny with some of those first created. Similarly, when Zeus overthrows the Titans, Aphrodite, rising from the castrated penis of Kronos, becomes the first personification of the previous abstracted deities. The rest of the Olympians then appear. Love is always the first in the new world.
Perhaps because there is something static in Love, a kind of ever presence, Love is difficult to describe. Lust moves us and so words more easily build on each other in an attempt to convey the passion, the way we 'fall' for someone, 'tumble' into bed together, 'stoke' the fires of desire. Love is simply there, present. Though Love may share traits with the other passions such as being inopportune, undeniable, there is something undefinable about it that is different from the others. Having started speaking of Proust, I must here intervene to say that both Swann and Marcel discover their own jealousy in coveting the women they desire, a jealousy that overwhelms and undermines any other feelings, including any fascimile of love they might have created for themselves. They each believe they love, but maintain desire through jealousy. Swann finds a picture of Botticelli's painting to keep on his desk to remind him of Odette. Does he love? There is only the question.
I am sometimes asked if I would love the man I love any less if I did not like the works of art that he creates, or if he were not an artist. The question is dumbfounding because, as I know too well, he can not help but paint or draw and is compelled to return to it if he spends too much time away. I love his pictures–it is true–and perhaps had I not liked his paintings as much as I did when we first met, I might not have bothered getting to know him better. Who knows? He admits he let his feelings grow upon seeing my home and approving of my aesthetic sensibility. Did I picture him when I closed my eyes as a young girl? Not exactly. Did he me? I sincerely doubt it. And yet the pictures mutate to fit the one standing in front of us...if we are lucky, imaginative, both. The art of love is, for me at least, a picture I will see tomorrow, when he smiles at me sitting at a communal table in a crowded, loud dumpling house in Chinatown, where we meet because I still can't stand Valentine's Day and where there is no art on the walls to distract either of us from a ritualized acknowledgment of love. Love, then, is not always a pretty picture, picture perfect as it may be.
I loved this commentary, ripe with reflection and vulnerability. It has inspired me to post to my own blog!
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