Carnal love in al its forms, from the highest, that is to say true marriage or platonic love, down to the worst, down to debauchery, has the beauty of the world as its object. The love we feel for the splendor of the heavens, the plains, the sea, and the mountains, for the silence of nature, which is borne in upon us by thousands of tiny sounds, for the breath of the winds or the warmth of the sun, this love of which every human being has at least an inkling, is an incomplete, painful love, for it is felt for things incapable of responding, that is to say, for matter. Men want to turn this same love toward a being who is like themselves and capable of answering to their love, of saying yes, of surrendering. When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is made possible. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn.
Simone Weil
"Forms of the Implicit Love of God"
Your title brought me in; it is enough.
ReplyDeleteBut I had wanted to ask for a recommendation about Simone Weil, after your comment. I have not read her, until now (and a few quotes I found after your comment).
I don't know. Now (after reading this passage) I feel what you feel when only weeping will answer. When all the longing we embody is answered with emptiness. It is a good emptiness, but it is empty all the same.
And this is partly because of you and erin. xxooxxoo (this is a world of hugs and kisses ... far from empty, and yet, it contains all the seemingly opposing forces within it...)
"But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn." What a gorgeous thought and looking at that picture I could believe it to be true
ReplyDeleteAhhh....the picture, the words.
ReplyDeleteRuth: i am trying to understand the point where fullness and emptiness are the same, where joy and annihilation are the same ... i believe there is such a point, but it is hard to talk about, the right words seem not to exist yet ... (but music, perhaps??)
ReplyDeleteMarion: perhaps it is true ... all beautiful things carry some fragment of the ideal, the origin ... i would like to think so (sometimes :-)
ReplyDeleteHannah: thank you :-)
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely post James!
ReplyDeleteAnd the title is poetic, beautiful and very, very intense... :)
Lucia: sometimes, i think, it is as if loving one person prepares the soul, expands some valve in us, and we can see beauty and grace and connection where we did not see it before ...
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you James!
DeleteHave a good new week! ;-)
Lucia: this is something i am learning only recently -- but it is a relief to know it ...
Deletea good week to you, as well :-)
yes, like the Forms, all learning is remembering. I love Plato :)
ReplyDeleteMarion: exactly!! we love Beauty, and express it by loving a million beautiful things ... but somewhere inside, we long for the ideal, we feel bereft forever ...
Deletei've tried to deny it at times, but i am a Plato kind of fellow ...