Literatures of Love
“ Tell
me that you love me”
“ I love
you”
“ Tell
me once more”
“ I
don’t love you”
L’ Aventura
Michelangelo
Antonioni
LOVE is
all a matter of audacity; LOVE is all a matter of unwillingness to suspend our
thoughts on our own pleasure, which we alone cannot fulfill; LOVE is a matter
of urge to attain the willingness, I mean what we provide, in return. So LOVE
is a matter, not only of valour, but of self-seeking. LOVE has, on the poles,
idealistic and popular versions: idealistic being a kind of universalisation of
the feeling, inclusive of benevolence, mercy, patience, tolerance, fraternity,
whereas the popular, as always, lay on the banality of evil.
LOVE is
at odds over pessimism. But the outsiders, by all odds would chant, ‘caution’,
‘caution’, taking the popular reading only. Caution does not let off steam of
IT to escape, because the popular is gruesome, inflammable with the tinge of
morality. If attempt to occupy a
different realm, without signing off valediction, pressure of the steam inside let loose the
blood, blood if let free will call revolt. Thus caution, though presumably
keeps the pendulum balanced, essentially renovates the models of relinquished
desires hidden, under the crust, but still potent for an explosion. So cautious
people, be vigilant, you have hidden a volcano inside; a volcano of temptation,
of love, of hatred.
The
rationale behind my caution, on indulging in writing about the subject of, and
indulging in the practice of preaching IT, the universal temptation, which
taunts, tempts and tears everyone, is due to the fear of becoming the voice of
the popular, which is what Roopesh Paul engrossed on the title of his film, The
Temptation between the Legs. Roopesh, the film director ,
is a script writer, legitimate enough to talk,( which I am afraid, I am not) about the temptation, with Indu Menon, the Malayalam
Short story writer, both proved, the matter, the solidified fluid, with the testimony, the
life as their white paper. Such a proof after, was Anuragathinte Pustakam,
the Book, of love, for love, by love. The book was an example for a simile of burning
sensation as Burns wrote, “IT” is like a RED,
RED, rose, when our foreheads were
not burning, and tongue not parching. It did not dissent to sort of ‘Vegetable
love growing v(f) aster than empires and more slow’ or love ‘is a tale told by
an idiot, full of furious sound, signifying nothing.’
It
was impossible for me to move with the guesswork, oversimplified earlier; not
because of the fear, of getting out dated, but for the fear of predation, for
the fear of outsiders’ morbid preoccupation with the popular, in the view,
since the popular co-efficient denominates my sustenance, as with the majority.
The reality, to me, here and now, is the significance of nothingness of
the so called love, because nothing does not mean ‘no’ ‘thing’, but means
something at least to someone. Let me call it sacrifice, I could hear hail from
the chorus of Idealism; let me call it conquest, “great”, the warriors of
darkness; let me call it duel, immediately, the fresco of the rustling box,
uproar. Let me say, it drives loneliness away, and loneliness in you will be
made perplexed. But is it all, and it is more.
To Kamala Das, who composed a foreword to the work,…Pusthakam, IT
was not only her thumb impression, the signature, but the print of the palm. The
magala- Nisamudden express, a train of love, was the privileged subject of
objectified dedication of Anuragathine…
On
the week of the Celebration of the day of Valentines, prefixed with my epigraph,
at the beginning, the lady Valentines may or may not join the feminists, the
celebrators of liberation against the series of rapes, may or may not join
those who believe that the celebration of the Day may summon gang rape. It may,
or may not be tempting, may or may not open the doors of unanchored vigor for
queries. May it be a utopian craving for the balance sheet of future, from the
perspective of the past; the past’s redemption of the present or future. Or let
me say, it is like the letters Gorky wrote for Theresa.
Who is Theresa, who is Anna, Who is Fatima?
Who are Elsie Moll, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, and Susan Gilbert? They were all a
part of the book, of love, of history, of literature, the light of LOVE from
many lamps, which Roopesh and Indu collected, and published. The book, though
not seriously acclaimed, was a nice companion to those who approach love in all
its romantic vitality. A less than one percent of it can be disclosed if I
narrate, the gain I am not sure, through the story of the lover(s) stolen from
the book.
The
story of Gorky:
Once
when he was in Moscow, Gorky had a neighbor, a lady with man’s body-language,
but still a lady; a brunette, with a man’s voice. She approached the writer to
send a letter to her home, in the name of Theresa, addressing Boles. The romantic
lines of the letter appear to be comic, to a rational writer since he recognized
the heroine of the letter as none other than this lady. Later the same lady
approached the writer to write to Theresa, in the name of Boles. The
recognition, that rings the bells, was the pain of the lover/beloved in her
yearns for love to fill the space of loneliness.
The
Book of Love is replete with a lot of stories, of the familiar strangeness of
love, lust, conquest. As Shakespeare, Neruda, Fitzgerald and so many others
spoke, you float on the Laputa…
This is
enough..
The book
is all yours…because …I know…each of you are… already in it…as
I am…in our own ways…
Aswathi.M.P.
