It sure is.
That sounds like a prison.Perhaps it's the shape of things to come.It would be logical given the way people talk and thus presumably think.
"Nightsticks,water cannons,tear gas,padlocks,Molotov cocktails and rocks behind every curtain."--Bob Dylan.Jokerman.
As nothing much up above has engaged your attention have you a subject for the day?
It might be worth a try but I wouldn't hold out too many hopes.
Could you make a start?
It's not easy indeed to speak about love. Which conditions are necessary to do so? Can one speak of love in everyday's conditions?
Is it easier to speak of love in the dark or in broad daylight?
It hardly matters when we haven't got a working definition.Flaubert saw it as a madness inflicted by the Gods as a punishment.
Could it be an affectation?
From Flaubert, yes, as he really had a hard time with it.
I was thinking more in matters of "discours amoureux", things lovers tell one another.
Would it do as definition? (you know i'm handicapped by the lack of English fluency)
How can love be a punishment from God? Obviously
someone who hasn't loved would make statements like that.
Is there anything better than love?
I hardly think that the words people use is a satisfactory definition of anything.After all we have seen many scenes in movies where the most avid declarations are exchanged between people who,as career actors and actresses,hardly know each other and in some well documented cases hate each other's guts.We have also seen some startling renderings in witness boxes.Movies have shown millions of people how to act.
Mr Ted Hughes (RIP) wrote a book just a few years ago on the theme of unconditional love in Shakespeare.
Is that what is meant?
No spendius, I am talking about your own experience.
Love in movies, resp. the love scenes they're showing in
movies, are either good or bad acting, but not the real
thing, the love you have experienced yourself.
There is no comparison, isn't there?
In comparison to the real thing, Jane? There is nothing like it, especially when it is unconditional. Or should I say that only REAL love is unconditional?
Aren't there just different kinds of love as well or are we just speaking of the romantic?
At least I was trying to speak of the romantic.
And, in some circumstances it can be a punishment of God ( for those who believe in God), for past sins.
For example, separated lovers can consider it's a curse, dont they?
Do you think so? No examples come to mind. Do you have any? So, can it be supposed that if you believe that, that you do not believe "it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all"?
Once again in comes the invidious comparison.I am not talking about me.I am talking about the literature of the subject and the use of it to analyse my own behaviour and that of people I see.
Francis raised it not I and once again off he has trotted.I would never raise such a subject because I have never heard anybody speak about it in any remotely intellectual way.It seems to have become some sort of status symbol.Imagine having a Valentine card collection from all the split up couples you have known and possibly seen tear each other to bits in courts and lawyer's offices and sometimes with knives and guns.I gather you have a 50% divorce rate over there.It's about 35% here.
I have witnessed three in the last six months.
There are plenty of people who would make the comparison you suggest.Ovid did.Shakespeare did.
Flaubert did.Stendalh's De L'Amour probably comes nearest to what you mean and he never married or fathered children.
Is 50% an exaggeration?
It's a curse but in another field. Words are not understood the same way by everybody.
Dev - you are hypothesizing what I believe or not.
Spendius - your are trying to put the fault of your inhability to comprehend life experiences on my supposed lack of will to debate.
Why is love talking supposed to be intellectual?
What has it to do with divorce rate?
Not quite Francis.I was simply trying to goad you back into the debate you started.Which is a bit of a compliment actually.I don't say things gratuitously.
There is a vast range of life experiences I do not understand.I haven't the faintest idea what it is like to be a woman for a start.We use language to overcome such obvious difficulties and when language is improperly used,and it is pretty imperfect even when used well,all we do is make the situation worse."Love" is a classic example.
I don't really understand a seriously ill person and a suicide bomber is out of the window.I don't really understand the people I know.Not really understand.An intellectual approach might lead to understanding where talking at cross purposes will never do.
The divorce rate shows how this love thing can turn to hate or dislike.I don't understand that either.I just get on with everybody as best I can and I could even say I love the lot of them my cats included.I even love you lot.I forgive you all your faults because I might have had them if I had experienced what you have.I love homemade soup and I love fags and beer and television and most of all I love snoozing.
Will you forgive me my 575,762 faults?
Unfortunately, Spendi-, 50% is not an exaggeration. I've seen several friends' marriages end in divorce recently myself. It's just too easy to do nowadays. People don't seem to want to work it out. I'm speaking from experience. I feel that when they've been through something like what I've been through, then MAYBE should they be able to divorce. Yes, that is a subjective opinion.
Francis, I was really trying to get at your philosophy, I suppose. I saw your statement and wondered if it was something you believed or experienced or thought yourself. Is that clearer?
I know you want to speak of love in literature, but maybe just my being a woman, maybe it's just me makes it difficult to do without inserting my own feelings about it, even about something I've read. (And yes, in case you're wondering if I can separate myself from my clients, of course I can. It's imperative. I'm speaking personally here not professionally.)
The initial love one has for another is not the same one that you end up with. By this I mean that it changes, deepens, grows with life's experiences, even in literature. Would you agree? What do you think?
Faults forgiven, spendi-. I think that goes without saying for all of us with each other, no?
It certainly changes.Deepens sometimes but that can be er..er..difficult.
I'm not sure I think about it much.I take people for granted and they take me for granted.When neither side minds that things go okay.That might be real unspoken love.It has no need of expression.
Nicknames are common.Often quite derogatory ones.I know a couple who seem to hate each other but I bet if they split up they would both be heartbroken.I do know that the soppiest lovebirds never make it.
There is a selfish side to love don't you think?
In Robert Ferguson's biog. of Henry Miller he says about Miller's crudities concerning women that they -"assuredly rescued many a young man from the paralysing effects of over-sensitivity in his first encounters with women..."
Was that worth my effort to find it?
Sure, there's a selfish side to love. I suppose it works as long as a person isn't too selfish, because there's also a certain selflessness in love as well, wouldn't you agree to that?
Hmmm. That's a quote to mull over... Was he speaking of the over-sensitivity of men or women?
I also found this quote: "Henry was so enthralled by women that he sought to demystify their mysterious parts through the violent verbal magic of his books. The violence is rooted in a sense of self-abnegation and humiliation before them. He is, as the Freudians would say, counterphobic.'' (Erica Jong in The Devil at Large, 1993)
Are you familiar with Miller's work?
