Love is not mysterious. We see it in others from the time we are born. We can watch it play out time and time again in the same pattern, like a Marvel summer blockbuster. Indeed, we see it in summer blockbusters. We see it in indie films. We read about it in classic books and modern books. Hell, even Star Wars correctly, if awkwardly, gets love right. (twice!) Everybody gets it right, from the ancient Sumerians to fanfic writers.
We can reduce love to a science. We know what personality types fit together like puzzle pieces with a few dozen questions. We know what proportions of muscle and fat ought to be obtained for universal attraction. We have a very good idea of what the brain is doing in love. We know there is a circuit of dopamine that sprinkles the frontal cortex. We know that it is linked to cortisol and testosterone, stress and sex.
But when we're in love we forget all this. The rules that stop us from being Romeo and Juliet suddenly don't mean shit. The friends that I sneered at for doing ridiculous things, like sending "I love you"s from the other side of the planet, become partners in the bittersweet paradise. The banks of wisdom, collected by intense examination of the natural world, become empty chasms. I cannot possibly call on them for help.
At best, I can go to a friend or two who parrot the same exact advice I have given them literally word for word. I don't need to put a string around my finger to remember, for I already put a string on everybody else's finger and they remember for me while I'm lost in the madness.
But they're outside of the madness. They don't understand, the same way when I'm outside the madness I cannot understand: the philosopher's ask, "what is it like to see the color red?" But they could surely ask, "what is it like to be in love?" Because while both surely have libraries of literature and verse describing them externally, nothing quite cuts it.
But Barthes comes close. In a little bit more then 200 pages, he held up the mirror to the Lover's condition and made the internal mindscape visible and legible. There is little narrative. There is a scene- the fragment- and how to approach it. But the scene is not local. It is global. which telephone does the Lover wait by? All of them. Who is the rival lover? Anybody.
Barthes does require some knowledge of things. You ought to be familiar with "The Sorrow of Young Werther", Nietzsche, and that Buddhism is a thing. You ought to be well guarded against the Werther effect. But I don't think you have to be in love to gain what you need to from this book. (now, at the moment of this review my opinion on this doesn't truly count as I am not not in love). For the sane, this book is a looking glass that telescopes in on the mountains and valleys of the Lover's condition. For the rest of us, it is a white mirror.
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