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The Two Arts of Love
βThere are two arts of love, and it makes a considerable difference which one is meant.
There is the art of love as Casanova, for example, practiced it. The art of seduction, courtship, and sexual gratification. It is an art which culminates in the sexual act. It can be repeated with the same lover; and with other lovers; but it exhausts itself in the moment of ecstasy. When that moment is reached, the work of art is done, and the lovers, as artists; after an interval of perhaps stupor and vital recuperation, must start all over again until at last, the rhythm is SO STALE that it is a weariness to start at all. Or, the lover must find new lovers and new resistances to conquer. The aftermath of romantic love, that is the love that is consummated in sexual ecstasy, is either TEDIUM in middle age, or the compulsive adventurousness of the Libertine.
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The Second Art of Love:
On the other hand; when a man and a woman are successfully in love, their whole activity is energized and victorious. They walk better; their digestion improves. they THINK more clearly. Their secret worries drop away, the world is fresh and interesting. They do more than they dreamed they could ever do; in a love of this kind, sexual intimacy is not the dead end of desire as it is in romantical, promiscuous love; but a periodical affirmation of the inward delight of desire pervading an act of love.
Love of this sort can grow because it has something to grow with. It is not like youth itself; a moment that comes and is gone and remains only a memory which cannot be recovered. It is not contracted and stale because it has as itsβ object the mere relief of physical tension; but all the objects of which the two lovers are concerned.
They desire their worlds in each other and therefore
Their LOVE is as interesting as their Worlds, and their Worlds are as interesting as their love.β Walter Lippmann
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βThere are two arts of love, and it makes a considerable difference which one is meant.
There is the art of love as Casanova, for example, practiced it. The art of seduction, courtship, and sexual gratification. It is an art which culminates in the sexual act. It can be repeated with the same lover; and with other lovers; but it exhausts itself in the moment of ecstasy. When that moment is reached, the work of art is done, and the lovers, as artists; after an interval of perhaps stupor and vital recuperation, must start all over again until at last, the rhythm is SO STALE that it is a weariness to start at all. Or, the lover must find new lovers and new resistances to conquer. The aftermath of romantic love, that is the love that is consummated in sexual ecstasy, is either TEDIUM in middle age, or the compulsive adventurousness of the Libertine.
~~~~~~~~~~~
The Second Art of Love:
On the other hand; when a man and a woman are successfully in love, their whole activity is energized and victorious. They walk better; their digestion improves. they THINK more clearly. Their secret worries drop away, the world is fresh and interesting. They do more than they dreamed they could ever do; in a love of this kind, sexual intimacy is not the dead end of desire as it is in romantical, promiscuous love; but a periodical affirmation of the inward delight of desire pervading an act of love.
Love of this sort can grow because it has something to grow with. It is not like youth itself; a moment that comes and is gone and remains only a memory which cannot be recovered. It is not contracted and stale because it has as itsβ object the mere relief of physical tension; but all the objects of which the two lovers are concerned.
They desire their worlds in each other and therefore
Their LOVE is as interesting as their Worlds, and their Worlds are as interesting as their love.β Walter Lippmann
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"...Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be."~~ Lord Alfred Tennyson
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be."~~ Lord Alfred Tennyson
