May 30, 2011

Love Between Two People

jesters, by Paul Cézanne

No area of human existence is so burdened with conventions as love between two people. There are life-preservers of the most varied invention, life-boats and safety vests; society has fashioned rescue strategies of every description. Since it has chosen to take love as an easy pleasure, it must make it as cheap and as safe as all public amusements should be.

Rome, May 14, 1904
Letters to a Young Poet

2 comments:

  1. "love as an easy pleasure". hmmmm. more like a point of departure that unties you from the shore of your understanding and assumptions, setting you adrift on currents as capricious and unpredictable as any ocean could offer. ultimately, a signpost pointing to the possibility of the unconditional. steven

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  2. ha! steven!

    i think that may have been rilke's point exactly. what we don't try to tame or pound down as a society! love is the lurid little whore that travels the gentleman's seams, undoing every crease!

    xo
    erin

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"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Go ahead, bloom recklessly!