n praise of romantic Iofe

mean to praise roman- tic love, that poor, de- spised cast-off cerns child of modern culture, a wonderful experi- ence that has been ignored, made fun of, deconstructed, and otherwise tossed on the rubbish heap of hip modern life.

What is romantic love? Itis that delight- ful, terrifying feeling that possesses you when Reality focuses on a single Other, the beautiful friend, the lover, the person whose soul you simply cannot do without. You meet someone in an ordinary social context, politenesses are exchanged, functions exercised, then, lo and behold! Something happens. At some moment - it is almost impossible to say when - the social trappings fall away and you are face to face with areal person. Not just 5 as a common person so- cially perceived, but a person you look upon with joy, a person whose faceand manner are ingrained upon your consciousness, perhaps forever.

Such a person, when you come upon them unexpectedly, has the power to startle you into a recognition of blessedness; it is joy simply to be with them, and sorrow to be cut off. Do you want to test your experience of romantic love? Ask yourself if it would be heaven to spend six hours with your lover in the waiting room of an airport. Ask your- self if you can see them in all their plainness,

with faults or wrinkles, and rejoice that, after

8/X-Press/September 9, 1993

by Tom Henighan Tom Henighan is a professor of English at Carleton University and has just published a new collection of stories, Strange Attractors.

all, there’s something extraordinarily good about being alive in our universe.

It’s odd, but when you first “recognize” the loved person you know them almost as well as you ever will. You may knowalmost nothing about them -and may have to spend months or years acquiring facts about them -but youwill never know them better than at that first moment. This is where the “eternal” comes in.

Weliveinatime-bound world, stretched on the rack of minutes, hours and years. Everyday life is often routinized and depressing; it lacks “annunciations.” But the moments spent with your lover seem to defy time. A sceptic would declare this a form of illusion - but scepticism

dissolves in the texture of such an experience.

om: Tae ie

We live in an age of “nothing buts.” Romantic loveis “nothing but” addiction, “noth- ing but” a power-trip, “nothing but” sex in disguise. Of course there are such components in romantic love, but even so, what a glorious experience it is in*its wholeness and complexity, how marvellously it can enrich the person, what a complex, tender and funny world emerges for you, when it has you in its grasp! In sucha state everything takes on a newness and an unex- pected beauty: a simple meal shared becomes a feast,a common melody raises you to the skies, sunshine ona frosty window makes you want to cry for joy. You can sit in a shopping mall with your lover and be supremely happy. A magic shell encloses you: people pass by, count their money, scold their children or yawn, someone empties a trash can. It is all supremely funny and delightful, like the discovery of a mysterious dimension in the heart of our everyday banality.

This is true joy - but is it possible to incorporate it into an ordinary marriage? Alas, probably not. Marriageandromantic love - each wonderful in its own way - contradict one another.

Marriage at its best encourages a mutual soul-making under the pressure of domestic routine. Romantic love asserts its faith in the miracle of the occasional encounter, the secret meeting, the unexpected insight. It is often carried on at a distance - thinking about the other person, performing uncalled-for acts of devotion, filling up one’s dream-time with a real presence.

Do romantic lovers always end up in bed? Not always. Such love can exist even where sexual consummation is impossible, or must be m/e long delayed, or where " thereis no possibility of transforming it into mar- ried love. | think of Andrew Wyeth and his secret paintings of the other woman (which his wife referred to as “acts of love”), of Evelyn Waugh, the novelist, and Lady Diana Cooper, car- rying on a long-distance butintimate correspond- ence for twenty years.

In romantic love at its best there is joy and service, companionship amid absence, passion even without consum- mation, the triumph of energy and ecstasy over the tedium of our sad existence, and above all, the knowledge that. in this lonely and often daunting world, you have a friend.