Falling in Love
The Bang's comment about unrequited love and love vs. relationship reminded me of this poem by Czeslaw Milosz that I've loved for a long, long time - since the wee age of 1998, when I first read it in the December 21 issue of The New Yorker.
Anyways, the poem. (There may be some inaccuracies.)
* * *
Tomber amoureux. To fall in love. Does it occur suddenly or gradually? If gradually, when is the moment "already"? I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With a poem by a little-known poet. With human beings whose names still move me. And always the object of love was enveloped in erotic fantasy or was submitted, as in Stendhal, to a "cristallisation," so that it is frightful to think of that object as it was, naked among naked things, and of the fairy tales about it one invents. Yes, I was often in love with something or someone. Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love. That is something different.
* * *
Speaking of things you miss when you're young: I only NOW got the Stendhal allusion, having read Red and Black in 2004. And yes, "cristallization" is such an interesting way to describe what happens in the wacky minds of his protagonists. Perfect!
Anyways, the poem. (There may be some inaccuracies.)
* * *
Tomber amoureux. To fall in love. Does it occur suddenly or gradually? If gradually, when is the moment "already"? I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With a poem by a little-known poet. With human beings whose names still move me. And always the object of love was enveloped in erotic fantasy or was submitted, as in Stendhal, to a "cristallisation," so that it is frightful to think of that object as it was, naked among naked things, and of the fairy tales about it one invents. Yes, I was often in love with something or someone. Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love. That is something different.
* * *
Speaking of things you miss when you're young: I only NOW got the Stendhal allusion, having read Red and Black in 2004. And yes, "cristallization" is such an interesting way to describe what happens in the wacky minds of his protagonists. Perfect!
posted by Rex at 10:08 AM
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