Saturday, October 21, 2006

Grahan Greene, The End Of The Affair

Leon Bloy: "Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence".
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The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it maybe in the form of a monstrous egotism-this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us; we lose our identity.

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The words of human love have been used by the saints to describe their vision of God; and so, I suppose, we might use the terms of prayer, meditations, contemplation to explain the intensity of the love we feel for a woman.
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We too surrender memory, intellect, intelligence, and we too experience the deprivation, the noche oscura (dark night), and sometimes as a reward a kind of peace. The act of love itself has been described as the little death, and lovers sometimes expereince too the little peace.
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The above quotes are from The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, first published in 1951. The Leon Bloy quote is cited at the start of the novel.

5 comments:

... said...

powerful analogy between love of a man/woman and the search for the divine... i wonder which is more pertinent and penultimate... maybe one is a medium for another, whichever one is picked first... buddha from wife to enlightenment, jesus from god to mary magdalene... krishna being god himself with radha, or shiva with uma parvati... come to think of it, perhaps hindu mythology has the answers which graham greene sought...

Anonymous said...

Love involves an object of affection that at the very extreme of unfulfillment of love; when the object of affection is denied again and again,even then the love does not die. The lover may at the very end start giving that Love to someone else, but the Love (however it originated from whichever object of affection) will live on. Whether that beloved is there or not, it is infact independant of the results. Yes it does need a beloved to be born, but it doesnt need that beloved to live. This is pure Love, which the spiritual at heart can actually feel with varying degrees

itinerant said...

xanjukta, yeah that Bhakti/Sufi aspect is something I am aware of. You know how God was referred to as the beloved and you reached him through extreme devotion.

Lilian, thanks a lot for visiting here. But while I did use that Greene quote, honestly I dont know what love is...I mean the word and the way we all use/misuse it.

I think this phrase 'true love' is well just a phrase, coined obviously by a genuis, considering its popularity today as words and a idea.

And I think love or that feeling for someone of the opposite sex is got nothing to do with anyone but the individual who feels it and who says it. I could love a girl and not fulfill (now whats fulfilling love?) it and I could move unto another girl and still like/love her and the love lives on cause it is that individual's feelings (in this case mine).

Anonymous said...

yeah...well said, we do experience little deaths, surrenderin our intelligence, intellect...when we love someone...whatever love is!but each "death" comes with a wish for the loved one to be happy and loved, even if it's by someone else.....and yes, the pain that follows is the lover's/mine.... and i wonder if the loved can ever feel it...

Anonymous said...

satya, true love is what you feel for yourself when you talk movies:)

a