Updike: That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds.
Love this meditation on how loss reshapes us rather than just diminishing us. The Alaska narrative really anchored the philosophical stuff, especialy the moment under the aurora where absence became presence in a different form. I went thru a similar reckoning after my dad passed and found myself arguing with Johnston's view that romantic love is somehow less transformative than agape. If anything, theloss of romantic connection taught me way more about self-evacuation than any abstract ethical principle ever could.
Unrequited love doesn't actually feature in the Sonnets at all. The equivalent figure to the lost beloved is Wera Knoop, the 19-year-old dedicatee who had died the previous year. She was a dancer and one of the themes of the Sonnets, as with the Elegies, is the transcendence of death through art. Gilbert's fine poem also evokes for me the sadness inherent in art making, the finitude of every work set against the infinity of the artist's vision.
Yes, re: the transcendence of death through art, which I was trying to get at with my point about poetic commemoration. In terms of unrequited love, I was talking more about the Elegies in that case--and the later work in general--although lost love, including--arguably--unrequited love is at the center of Orpheus myth (which Rilke underlines, alongside its connection to death and dying, in his much earlier "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes"). Thanks for pointing out the citation error, and for the engagement.
Updike: That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds.
Love this meditation on how loss reshapes us rather than just diminishing us. The Alaska narrative really anchored the philosophical stuff, especialy the moment under the aurora where absence became presence in a different form. I went thru a similar reckoning after my dad passed and found myself arguing with Johnston's view that romantic love is somehow less transformative than agape. If anything, theloss of romantic connection taught me way more about self-evacuation than any abstract ethical principle ever could.
Unrequited love doesn't actually feature in the Sonnets at all. The equivalent figure to the lost beloved is Wera Knoop, the 19-year-old dedicatee who had died the previous year. She was a dancer and one of the themes of the Sonnets, as with the Elegies, is the transcendence of death through art. Gilbert's fine poem also evokes for me the sadness inherent in art making, the finitude of every work set against the infinity of the artist's vision.
Yes, re: the transcendence of death through art, which I was trying to get at with my point about poetic commemoration. In terms of unrequited love, I was talking more about the Elegies in that case--and the later work in general--although lost love, including--arguably--unrequited love is at the center of Orpheus myth (which Rilke underlines, alongside its connection to death and dying, in his much earlier "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes"). Thanks for pointing out the citation error, and for the engagement.