There are many things about summer that I love. But one of the best is summer reading. Now that I'm an adult and work all seasons of the year, summers shouldn't really matter anymore. Alas, old habits die hard, and the magic of summer lingers on. And the sense that I can actually read for fun and not school remains. So this summer, my reading takes me back to my favorite genre of all genres, Southern Gothic. There's nothing quite like reading about a hot summer's day in the south, on a hot summer's day in the PNW (yes it does actually get hot up here). There is also nothing like finding a copy of a book from the 70's, all marked from the previous readers, and finding the same meaning and insight from the same passages that they marked years, perhaps decades ago. The passage on love, the lover versus the beloved, was just such a passage for me, and whomever came before me.
"What sort of thing, then, was this
love?
First of all, love is a joint experience between two
persons—but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean
that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are
the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different
countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up
love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto.
And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his
love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness,
and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one
thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as
best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world—a
world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here
that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young
man saving for a wedding ring—this lover can be a man, woman,
child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.
Now, the beloved can also be of any
description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for
love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only
a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two
decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may
be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and
the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else—but that does not
affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person
can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful
as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus
for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring
about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore,
the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover
himself.
It is for this reason that most of us
would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the
lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state
of being be loved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and
hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is
forever trying to strip bare his beloved, even if this experience can
cause him only pain."
