De l'Amour

 De l'Amour

Max and I sat sipping wine in my conservatory as the light slowly faded.

"So," I asked, "what do you say when your girlfriend says she loves you and asks if you love her?'"

"Huh!" he shrugged, "Of course I murmur something about me loving her too. But in truth I am thrown into confusion."

"Even panic" I replied.  "What is love, anyway? I am not sure if I have ever experienced love. Fondness, liking, friendship, familiarity, I know all these. And wanting something, desperately; like a boy for a bicycle, or a girl for a pet.  I rotated my glass by its stem, tilted it and sniffed the heavy vapour. "How would I know love if I had it? Is love the same for everyone?  etc, etc."

"Is love perhaps a female thing?" Max asked.

"Oh yes!  I can see why a girl might want to know, of her man, the level of his commitment, as it is she who might have to carry the consequences.  Fair enough, but how on earth can admitting or claiming to be in love convince anyone of anything?"  

Max agreed. 

"Are there no other signs? More reliable ones. Perhaps a distracted air, dilated pupils, or something in the gait? Perhaps someone could devise a test kit; a colour-changing dip-stick. I am sure there would be a market for that."  

"You might think", suggested Max, "that bringing a bunch of flowers should be enough; if they are red ones."

"Come on Max, you are being frivolous, as you often are. I am being serious about this, as is my wont. Some sixty years ago I read Stendhal's 'De l'Amour', but I never got much into it, nor much out of it. All I remember at this distance is his concept of 'Crystallisation'; the way additional virtues accrue spontaneously to the 'love-object'; as salt crystals grow in the saturated atmosphere of a salt-mine."

"All the great essayists treat of 'Friendship'; do not some also consider love?". I believe I have read Montaigne on 'Friendship', and Emerson, and Francis Bacon."

"We can soon test that idea", I said, getting up. I returned in 2 minutes with those three authors, as well at Marcus Aurelius's 'Thoughts', Stendhal's 'De l'Amour', and Plato's 'Symposium' . 

The 'Symposium' I waved at Max, saying "I think Aristophanes here got as close to my understanding about love as any of them. He covered both the aspect of looking for  your soul-mate, and Nature's canny trick of so positioning the genitalia that procreation is the unintended consequence. 

"Then what is left to discover?" asked Max. "Stendhal covered the business about the progressive distortion of perception as the lover succumbs to his obsession. And Aristophanes propounded the truth that the two fundamental rôles of love are to promote conception, and to improve childcare; for at least a sufficient portion of the population."

"I was coming to a similar conclusion myself," I said. "But I had decided that a common characteristic of love was its lack of reason; so much so that to call an emotion 'love' almost requires the presence of folly. My friend writes to me from Colombia that she will fly back to sit at my bedside while I recover from my operation. 'No, no,' I protest, 'you were here only a month ago; when I am fit I shall come to Bogota.' What, I ask you, could be sillier than that exchange?". 

"Would you really go to Bogota?"

    "Yes I would. And that is how, for once, I feel I can honestly tell her that I love her. "