'The Bridge of San Luis Rey' again

I posted two excerpts from the novel a while ago but never got around to writing about them. Well, now I finally am. In reverse order.

The second passage talks about death, memory, and love. Through Madre Maria, Wilder presents the idea that when a person dies, all that remains is the living's memories of him, but love transcends this to exist even when all memories of a person cease. I think that's such a difficult concept to embrace.

In that way, I can understand why someone might want to be famous. I can understand why someone would want to change the world dramatically, would want to do something that people will remember. It's easy to feel that once you die, if no one remembers you, it's almost as though you never existed. Frank Capra counters that with It's a Wonderful Life, showing how a person's life has probably influenced countless people and consequently has shaped the way things are, and without him, nothing would be the same. Still, though, we really have become a society that practically requires instant gratification - we like things to be tangible, we like to be able to see the fruits of our labors. I guess that's one of the many difficulties of love - it's not often present in such a physical sense.

And that leads me to the first passage, which talks about how passionate love is love in self-interest. Wilder pulls the Our Town trick - Our Town is surprising and unusual in that it paints a picture of mundane, unextraordinary life, and then shows how it's extraordinary and how you shouldn't take a moment of it for granted. Likewise, I found it unusual that a man of literary talent - genius, even - was arguing against passion. A writer. Giving a negative connotation to passion. To passion - the inspiration of so much great art. Except, he's right. To me, at least.

I was reading a pleasant novel by one Stephen King the other day, in which he writes that,

"True love, like any other strong and addicting drug, is boring--once the tale of encounter and discovery is told, kisses quickly grow stale and caresses tiresome . . . except, of course, to those who share the kisses, who give and take the caresses while every sound and color of the world seems to deepen and brighten around them. As with any other strong drug, true first love is really only interesting to those who have become its prisoners.

"And, as is true of any other strong and addicting drug, true first love is dangerous."

I'm inclined to agree with Sai King. (And apparently I'm inclined to pick up his phrases and dialect.) And having heard Sai Wilder's argument, I'm inclined to agree with him as well. Like King says, true love and especially true first love is a strong and addicting drug, and those bound by it are its prisoners. (Whether or not it feels like that while you're in it, that's something else. Either way, it's true, and it's impossible to know how difficult it is to not let it take over everything you are until you're in it. It sweeps you away. "Ka like a wind." But I digress.) True first love is also, like Wilder says, love as passion - and therefore, it's an expression of self-interest. It's fleeting and impermanent and unstable and exists for itself - not for others. To become what Wilder hints at is lasting, mature love, he say sit must pass "through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts" before it can "take its place among the loyalties."

I Corinthians 13:4 sounds almost cliche to me by now, but I still like it. "Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people's sins, but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes." If that's so, then love as passion - love in self-interest - cannot be pure love.

The wonderful Mrs. Smith taught us the three words the Greeks used for love: eros, agape, and philia - love as passion and attraction, a more general and mature love, and a sort of virtuous and platonic love. If I remember right, ideally, it is thought that a marriage should comprise all three. Eros is in self-interest, but I like what Wilder says - it can transform itself through a series of arduous motions to become agape.

In that passage, Wilder is describing a character named Camila, who was a beautiful and talented actress who suddenly abandoned her art and then fell ill and faded from public view. As he said, "she had never realized any love save love as passion." This reminded me of a book I read about the making of Rebel Without a Cause. It was a long, tumultuous process involving all sorts of problems and difficulties from before the script was even penned. Many of these were due to the director, Nick Ray. Near the end of the book, the writers talked about how much of Ray comes out in the film:

"In some ways, Ray was the Melville hero that actress Betsy Blair saw in him back in the days of her great Hollywood parties. He became his own Romantic figure, flinging himself recklessly through time, creating and destroying all along the way. He maintained an intense, self-dramatizing regard and respect for his feelings. If Rebel aches like kids ache, that's because Ray ached that way. He worked off his pain, struggled against authority and refused to 'mature' if that meant feeling less."

I love that. One one level, I pity him for never knowing mature love, but in some ways, I can't help but respect him for actually succeeding in that. "Refused to mature if that meant feeling less." Part of me would want that. I don't want to "mature" if it means growing numb. At the same time, I'd kind of welcome it. Feeling things intensely is exhausting. But what does it mean, to "mature" and grow numb and stop feeling so much? I feel like you lose something if you let yourself grow numb enough that you don't feel any more. Lester Burnham in American Beauty-style. You become more capable of getting through life without growing weary and cynical, but still. In theory, I'd rather be cynical and angry than indifferent. Indifference is poison to me. If that's what it means to mature, I think I'd rather not.

Don't hold me to that, though.

Counting Crows lyrics:

I don't want to feel so different

But I don't want to be insignificant and

I don't know how to see the same things different

Now...

Haha. Adam Duritz, the epitome of self-interest. I can sympathize mostly though, if not empathize. Reconciling the desire to not feel alienated and alone and all that angst-y teenage-y stuff, with the desire to not be the same as everyone else = not easy. (Excuse the split infinitives, please.)

I guess that's all. I gotta finish up my work for class in the a.m. anyway.

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Now playing: Jason Mraz - I'm Yours