more about love

PAUL GÉRALDY

a lover now becomes a husband and learns from skilful counsel the art of being both

EDITOR'S Note:—In the August issue of Vanity Fair, M. Geraldy, in a series of thoughtful paragraphs, lightly counselled a hypothetical young man about to venture upon the devious path of life and love. In this article, his leisurely and charming advice follows the same youth, now a little older, into the more substantial condition of marriage.

§1

Armoured against misfortune, eager and appeased, you move in a world that is perfect, complete.

The present extends into the future.

You exult in the thought of holding a certain woman captive, sheltered from men, from the conflict and the muddy waters of life. You are touched by seeing her live for you alone, beautiful and near, haughty and gentle, a little like a goddess . . . yet so submissive!

You tell her about your triumphs and your failures. She listens. Nothing remains but your triumphs.

§2

But there comes a sudden storm. Tears. Voices. . . . She has locked herself in her room to weep. And you, horrified, bewildered, cast out from the garden of Paradise, take refuge in flight.

You flee toward the busy streets, streets crowded with men like yourself. But you are clothed in the glory and the confusion of love, and you do not know these men. You are a stranger to them, you reflect that she has neither heart nor mind. You reject her forever. Tirelessly, before an imaginary judge, you rehearse your wrongs, building them into a crushing accusation against her. And then you return to her, anxiously, aggressively, your heart full of words.

You set forth your arguments implacably. She answers them with sobs. Worn out and querulous, you touch her with your hand. At once you feel the need of touching her more closely. She is passive. You take her in your arms at last, and, once more, you are united in the divine, eternal secret of love.

The love of love is the salvation of love.

§3

Ah! You are so terribly dependent on each other!

§4

In love there is no peace unless a lover is satisfied both with himself and with the one whom he loves.

For her, to love is to cease judging. But for you, it means to judge more rigorously. You demand that she justify and at every moment corroborate your excellent taste in choosing her. Having selected her among all women, you feel personally humiliated by her shortcomings. And when you disapprove of her, you are ceasing to love yourself.

You overwhelm her with hints, observations, remonstrances, and advice.

A man may know that he is truly in love by the fact that he can hide nothing from himself. A great love is a mirror that does not flatter. What a fine idea one might have of one's self if one were not adored!

50

She surprises you continually by her spirit of levity and her childish whims.

On the other hand, there are moments when you are troubled by her lucidity, and feel that she is wiser, more practical than yourself. There are moments, even, when you are astonished by her courage.

After these moments are past, do not forget them!

§6

You blame her for being reticent with your friends, for not admiring them enough.

Why do we never love the friends of those we love?

§7

Don't insist on improving and perfecting her—in other words, on remoulding her into your own likeness. She will never be like you. The more strength, the more patience you exert in the effort to repress her, the more fiercely her deeper self will turn against you some day.

We have tried to absorb, to adapt women to our own ends as we have succeeded in adapting Nature. But women are better able to defend themselves.

We have assimilated Greece, Rome, the Barbarians, China. We are assimilating the Negro. We have not yet assimilated women.

§8

Lovers show each other their portraits, and each of them sees himself reflected in the glass.

$9

You must be somewhat alike to understand each other, but you must be a little different to be in love. Yes, similar and dissimilar. . . .

Ah, there are times when "stranger" is a pretty word!

§10

I know, I know, her frivolity! But what about your own asceticism? And can you be certain, moreover, that her charm depends solely upon her virtues?

My friend S., whose family reproached him for his ill nature, remarked one day, "They don't understand me at all. My ill nature is the best thing about me." And he was right. His moodiness and susceptibility arose from an excessive delicacy of heart.

One loves people for their faults, and one detests the faults of those one loves.

To love a woman is to love her for her virtues, and to adore her for her faults.

$11

It isn't true that there are days when one loves more and days when one loves less. There are days when one loves, and days when one does not.

Respect a woman for being the woman you have chosen.

§ 12

As a youth shrinks from revealing his secret and tremendous dreams, so are grown men ashamed to admit their goodness of heart. Show a little courage! Be kind.

You have caused her sorrow; very well. Whom would you choose to console her?

Do not be a miser with love. Like money, it is made to be spent.

To spend well is to enrich oneself.

$13

Of all social relationships, love is the most refined and the most uncivilized. You would not accept a hundred francs from your friend. You ask everything from your wife.

But do not ask too much.

"I have been happy in love," said my friend A. M., "since I realized that a woman could never be an intellectual comrade."

§i4

If you were satisfied with yourself, you would be less dissatisfied with her.

$15

Do not flatter yourself that in the eyes of your friends the beauty and grace of your wife are ever reflected upon yourself, nor that people will credit you with some of her charm merely because she is your wife. However united you feel yourselves to be, you are not so for the world. It has separate opinions about you both.

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And yet, the thought which stirred you so deeply at your first meeting was that she was the woman who, added to yourself, would make you a perfect man. What you love in her is what you, yourself, lack. What you hoped and expected was that she would supply this deficiency. However, the belief of lovers that each of them will add to the virtues of the other is a mirage and a delusion.

What the union of a man and a woman will give, perhaps, to their child, each of them expects for himself alone.

The little man does not admit to himself that he seems still smaller beside his big wife. He persuades himself that he has grown up to her, that he represents at least half the sum of the two.

This is true, but only in the second generation.

§16

Your true drama is the drama of your insufficiency. You cannot resign yourself to not being God.

§17

A child born to her and you would perhaps be the conqueror you grieve that you are not.

To love is to desire an exchange in which the good unites with the good to form the better. . . . What Yseult and Tristan seek desperately is this projection of themselves into the future. Not knowing this, they wander blindly, and dissolve in death beside the fountain of resurrection.

By a complete and absolutely clear understanding of love, we should be led to the same goal as by following its obscure appetites and our own most primitive instinct. You do not love her unless you passionately desire a child by her. She does not love you unless her flesh aspires to this torment and instinctively strains toward the stigmata of your embrace.

When one does not love, pleasure can suffice. When one loves, it is no longer enough.

Consecrate her with a kiss that endures.

Let your child be conceived.

§18

Heavy, childish, absent of mind, indolent, happy, she leans on you a little. How much charm there is in her weakness! And in your strength, how much love!

Be strong to love. Stronger to love better.

§19

She nearly died and you were so afraid! . . . Horrible, stifling night! . . . Ah, what torments!

She lives . . . and, once more, there is, for you purity, sweetness, and the glory of the dawn.

§20

The exacting and precarious child. And bending over it, the two of you, temple to temple.

Your home is warmer; she is brighter. Toward you, she has a friendly, almost a sisterly air. She has lost some of her mystery, a little of the excitement she once held for you. She is nearer, more easily read, and more simply a woman.

And you ... so light of heart now that you see her tranquil, justified, at peace!

§21

Forgotten is the time of those conflicts, those ' bitter quarrels that gnawed at the heart. Forgotten is your exhausting struggle to attain a distant, elusive harmony, that unision so pitifully insecure, so apt to be destroyed the moment it is re-established. You can think of her to-day without anguish, and you have ceased to doubt and to question her continually. You are no longer obsessed. You begin to see your friends once more. You can devote yourself to work.

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You work.

At last you are relaxed, free, and disburdened of love.

§22

You wish she were more of a mother. She is not purely maternal. Mothers are quick to revert into women. You find this rather irritating, but it cannot be helped.

The antics of her child amuse her for a moment. . . .

She is intelligent, artistic, and you yourself desired her to be so. She can hardly spend her whole life bending over a crib. Let her live a little. You were working. Work on.

§23

Your life is calm. . . . You are a little bored. You begin to look at other women. They are very lovely, I know, and younger than they seemed in your time. Ah! the youth of woman!

Your grizzled temples and the wrinkles in your face do not frighten them away. On the contrary. You have never felt them to be so near you.

At forty, a man is astonished by the sudden ease of his conquests. Bu,t they no longer have the same effect on his vanity. Because of his wealth, his authority, and a certain acquired strength, the game has begun to be unfair.

My boy, be careful. Follow your own path.

Love is a man's effort to be contented with one woman.

§24

So you cannot do without them? You need their cool lips, the supple rhythm of their bodies, the intoxicating promise of their eyes? Merely to watch them pass by stimulates your mind and exalts your heart? Your courage and your blood are the woman who passes by? All love is in the woman who passes by?

Well then, my boy, let them pass by!

§25

Work! At heart, you have never loved anything but your work.

Men work in the beginning to gain the love of women. But they are distracted from women by their own activity. They end by preferring it.

To work is to march toward yourself. Attain yourself!

To live is to feel oneself becoming the incarnation of the best one can possibly become.

And don't tell me that you would like to rest. You have had so much leisure already. Work on!