"Have you ever loved anyone that did not make you feel guilty? The loved object will take place of the ideal: one will behave toA banquet for thought.
"Have you ever loved anyone that did not make you feel guilty? The loved object will take place of the ideal: one will behave to this person as if they were exempt from criticism and truly ideal. If the love object is put into the place ideal and guilt is a relation between ego and ideal, being in love will generate a profound feeling of guilt.
It has long been observed how readily a man can fall in love with a different woman shortly after the end of a relationship. A man's love, even at an everyday level, is constantly subject to change, to oscillation from affectionate concern to wakeful suspicion and even hate. It is as if his ideal image of the partner is shadowed by the declamation 'Why aren't you someone else?'.
While a woman may spend a great deal of time concerned about whether her partner really loves her or not, a man is more likely to spend his hours doubting his own love for the one he has chosen.
The more focused quality of male narcissism is seen clearly in the relative speed with which men will become involved with a new partner shortly after the end of a love relation. In a sense, they can do this because their unconscious narcissistic link to the mother is so strong - the unconscious position of being the satisfying, darling object for the mother - that what actually happens from one female partner to another is diminished in consequence.
Loving the same person does not mean you can't desire someone else. Or several other people. If love is ultimately a demand, which aims to get rid of lack, desire shows its difference. It reintroduces precisely what love is designed to conceal, and hence the moment when it seems that the partners are finally satisfied, that all obstacles to their love have at last been lifted. Something has to happen which will reinstate the dimension of lack.
There is a fundamental incompatibility between what one asks for and what one wants. Desire, indeed, is there to persist as desire, not as anything else. It doesn't ask to be realized. He wanted to demand, not to get what he demanded. Desire has to be maintained beyond the dimension of demand.
We could say that having for a man is always based on the possibility of not having. As St Paul insisted, man must have as though he had not, possess as though he did not possess.
Giving for man is different. The more a man gives the more he aims at the destruction of his object. To give, after all, is a demand. The irony is that the more generous they are, the more selfish their love is, with only obliteration at its horizon."...more
This took a bit to get into and it is very different from Ava, my favorite Maso up until now.
That said, there is something I love about debut novels, This took a bit to get into and it is very different from Ava, my favorite Maso up until now.
That said, there is something I love about debut novels, I think it has to do with how free and yet unpolished they are. They feel deprived of already existing external expectations, which often gives them sharper edges and a wilder feel.
This is an explosion of feelings that can barely fit the pages without leaking out and penetrating your skin. Never have I cried so many times while reading as I did with this book. There was such urgency in these words, such impact, it was impossible to remain untouched by them.
The repetitions and circularity treatment given to the memories in their pervasive non-chronology kept building emotional charge until they would burst into almost a single flame.
There is so much packed in here, so many ghosts, so much flesh, so much soul, that could fill a whole ocean and still overflow. Maso is not for everyone, and I myself can barely handle opening up to all of her intensity. That said, I don’t think I’ve come across any author that reached so deep within the nature of grief and desire like she has. It is painful and rewarding, like any life transformation. But, oh so worth it!...more