Listen to the article
Many individuals may already be familiar with the renowned painting by G. Klimt displayed at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, The Kiss. At first glance, we are captivated by the prevailing gold hue that illuminates the two figures, appearing to comprise a singular entity. These two personas are entwined in a rapturous embrace of love. The male figure leans towards the woman with tenderness, enveloping her in his secure hold. She kneels, seemingly nestling into the sanctuary he provides. The man’s face is hidden from our view; perhaps he is whispering endearing words into his beloved’s ear, while her countenance conveys ecstasy, oblivious to her external environment, wholly absorbed in this moment of profound joy.
Drawing from the Platonic tradition, Roland Barthes offers the following description of the painting: “The two halves of the androgyne sigh for each other, as if each incomplete breath wanted to mingle with the other. The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject’s dream of total union with the loved one.” (A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments). This complete union of two lovers inherently resides in the unconscious fantasy of the primordial fusion with the mother. Some perceive love as the replica of this fusion, while others, in stark contrast, jestingly state: “You still believe in Santa Claus!”, or assert emphatically: “Love doesn’t exist!”
Barthes makes a keen observation: “Today, the discourse of love is one of extreme solitude. It may be spoken by thousands of subjects, but it is not supported by anyone. It is abandoned by surrounding languages, ignored, deprecated, or mocked.” Perhaps we harbor the impression that we instantly comprehend the meaning of the word ‘love’ as soon as it is evoked. This comprehension seems so apparent that there is no requirement to elucidate or define it. However, I propose to approach this sentiment, at least for the duration of this discourse, with nuanced comprehension, by calling upon several intellectual figures. The objective is not to constrict the topic or confine it within a definitive dialogue but rather to maintain its openness to the boundless possibilities of fantasies and individual experiences.
Let us first allow Spinoza to guide us on an initial path: “Love is nothing other than joy accompanied by the idea of an external cause.” This suggests that the cause of love truly resides in an idea, a representation external to the beloved. We may feel that we are in love with a very real person, but this person is associated with another, the primordial among all. Freud also elegantly characterizes love as “homesickness,” a nostalgia for the homeland, for the “universal mother,” a place of safety and contentment.
In love, it’s not merely two people involved; rather, in each individual’s subconscious, at least four other characters are present: the earliest objects of affection. This leads Freud to claim: “To find the object of love is to rediscover it.” Barthes again shares his personal experience of love: “The amorous encounter is the moment of recounted stories, the moment of the voice that comes to fix me, to dazzle me, it is the return to the mother. In this repeated incest, everything is suspended: time, law, prohibition: nothing is exhausted, nothing is wanted: all desires are abolished since they seem definitively fulfilled.” In the amorous encounter, there is a regression to the infantile, to the pre-genital. Two characters fuse into one: the child and the adult. This is the paradox.
Nevertheless, Freud elucidates, “We are never so vulnerably exposed to suffering as when we love.” For in the romantic liaison, the subject is prone to lose themselves in the idealization of the other. The amorous self relinquishes its autonomy to amalgamate into the other, through a process of idealization and self-abasement. The subject thus discovers themselves in a state of total dependence on the other, perpetually dissatisfied, enduring a myriad of sufferings. This pain is intensified by the constant apprehension of being deprived of love. There is no such thing as “love insurance,” cautions Lacan. Should we then echo Aragon and Ferrat in their melodious yet melancholy assertion, “there is no happy love?”
Paradoxically, the suffering inherent to love possesses a distinct essence. In G.G. Marquez’s magnum opus, Love in the Time of Cholera, the mother of Florentino Ariza, as she beholds her son consumed by love and enduring the severest tribulations, imparts this advice: “Seize your youth to experience as much suffering as you can, for it will not persist your entire life!”
Read more
