Monday, March 17, 2008
"I think it's all stuff and nonsense to say that there can be love without passion; when people say love can endure after passion is dead they're talking of something else, affection, kindliness, community of taste and interest, and habit. Especially habit. Two people can go on having sexual intercourse from habit in just the same way as they grow hungry at the hour they're accustomed to have their meals. Of course there can be desire without love. Desire isn't passion. Desire is the natural consequence of the sexual instinct and it isn't of any more importance than any other function of the human animal. That's why women are foolish to make a song and dance if their husbands have an occasional flutter when the time and place are propitious."
"Does that apply only to men?"
I smiled.
"If you insist I'll admit that what is sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose. The only thing to be said against it is that with a man a passing connection of that sort has no emotional significance, while with a woman it has."
"It depends on the woman."
I wasn't going to let myself be interrupted.
"Unless love is passion, it's not love, but something else; and passion thrives not on satisfaction, but on impediment. What d'you suppose Keats meant when he told the lover on his Grecian urn not to grieve? 'Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!' Why? Because she was unattainable, and however madly the lover pursued she still eluded him. For they were both imprisoned in the marble of what i suspect was an indifferent work of art. Your love for Larry and his for you were as simple and natural as the love of Paolo and Francesca or Romeo and Juliet. Fortunately for you it didn't come to a bad end. You made a rich marriage and Larry roamed the world to find out what song the Sirens sang. Passion didn't enter into it."
"How d'you know?"
"Passion doesn't count the cost. Pascal said that the heart has its reasons that reason takes no account of. If he meant what i think, he meant that when passion seizes the heart it invents reasons that seem not only plausible but conclusive to prove that the world is well lost for love. It convinces you that honor is well sacrificed and that shame is a cheap price to pay. Passion is destructive. It destroyed Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Parnell and Kitty O'Shea. And if it doesn't destroy, it dies. It may be than that one is faced with the desolation of knowing that one has wasted the years of one's life, that one's brought disgrace upon oneself, endured the frightful pang of jealousy, swallowed every bitter mortification, that one's expended all one's tenderness, poured out all the riches of one's soul on a poor drab, a fool, a peg on which one hung one's dreams who wasn't worth a stick of chewing gum."
-"The Razor's Edge" W. Somerset Maugham
This book is quickly becoming the best I've ever read. And it's not because the above quote is the theme of the book, but because it's a novel that likes to ask a lot of difficult questions and presents the unattractive side to likable characters. As in, the author genuinely feels that all the characters are likable, but is not afraid to show the other side of things and refuses to let us believe that any of them are saints. But we still like them! Any way, I just wanted to talk to people about this quote because I think it's a topic worthy of discussion.
So, what is the relationship between passion and love?
"Does that apply only to men?"
I smiled.
"If you insist I'll admit that what is sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose. The only thing to be said against it is that with a man a passing connection of that sort has no emotional significance, while with a woman it has."
"It depends on the woman."
I wasn't going to let myself be interrupted.
"Unless love is passion, it's not love, but something else; and passion thrives not on satisfaction, but on impediment. What d'you suppose Keats meant when he told the lover on his Grecian urn not to grieve? 'Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!' Why? Because she was unattainable, and however madly the lover pursued she still eluded him. For they were both imprisoned in the marble of what i suspect was an indifferent work of art. Your love for Larry and his for you were as simple and natural as the love of Paolo and Francesca or Romeo and Juliet. Fortunately for you it didn't come to a bad end. You made a rich marriage and Larry roamed the world to find out what song the Sirens sang. Passion didn't enter into it."
"How d'you know?"
"Passion doesn't count the cost. Pascal said that the heart has its reasons that reason takes no account of. If he meant what i think, he meant that when passion seizes the heart it invents reasons that seem not only plausible but conclusive to prove that the world is well lost for love. It convinces you that honor is well sacrificed and that shame is a cheap price to pay. Passion is destructive. It destroyed Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Parnell and Kitty O'Shea. And if it doesn't destroy, it dies. It may be than that one is faced with the desolation of knowing that one has wasted the years of one's life, that one's brought disgrace upon oneself, endured the frightful pang of jealousy, swallowed every bitter mortification, that one's expended all one's tenderness, poured out all the riches of one's soul on a poor drab, a fool, a peg on which one hung one's dreams who wasn't worth a stick of chewing gum."
-"The Razor's Edge" W. Somerset Maugham
This book is quickly becoming the best I've ever read. And it's not because the above quote is the theme of the book, but because it's a novel that likes to ask a lot of difficult questions and presents the unattractive side to likable characters. As in, the author genuinely feels that all the characters are likable, but is not afraid to show the other side of things and refuses to let us believe that any of them are saints. But we still like them! Any way, I just wanted to talk to people about this quote because I think it's a topic worthy of discussion.
So, what is the relationship between passion and love?
