Appignanesi - All about love: anatomy of an unruly emotion

Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion

W. W. Norton & Company

New York London

Copyright 2011 by Lisa Appignanesi

Copyright acknowledgments on page 403 constitute
an extension of this copyright page.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Appignanesi, Lisa.
All about love: anatomy of an unruly emotion /
Lisa Appignanesi. 1st American ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-0-393-06945-7
1. Love. 2. Marriage. I. Title.
BF575.L8A67 2011
152.'41dc22

2011006756

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To my loved ones and those they love

Where does one start in writing a book about love? Its an emotion or state that casts a bright light on all of life or shadows it by its lack. North, south, east, west, love is both essential and conflictual. It transforms and it destroys. It seems to matter because life matters. Yet seen from the outside, its also plain silly or simply mad. Subject of countless myths, lyrics and stories, as well as philosophical and sociological interrogations, embedded in our ways of thinking and seeing the world, loves manifestations are not only as various as the individuals who experience them, but are different at different points in our lives. Intensely personal, unpredictable, love often seems allergic to generalizations, yet its continuities through history and its commonality also make these inevitable and ubiquitous. So the only place to begin in unravelling some of loves riddles seems to be with the self. And the only point in doing so may be to grow a little wiser in loves ways.

I dont know exactly how old I was when I first became aware of love. Aware enough so that it stirred an emotion sufficiently significant to become memorable, even though its meanings were confusing. Aware of it as a word that stood in for a host of feelings.

I was probably around seven and the memory is linked to a French song. French was my first clearly spoken language amidst all those others that floated through my parents immigrant trajectory, which brought its own traditions of love in train. Like all immigrants they felt alternately ambivalent about these traditions and idealized them, subliminally communicating this to us. In the way of most songs heard or learned by children, the lyrics were only half grasped, but the refrain of this one stayed with me

Il y a longtemps que je taime. Jamais je ne toublierai.

A translation might read:

Ive loved you for a long time. Ill never forget you.

Maybe what imprinted the song within me was the mysterious arc of the refrain: it moved from a past of love through the present and abruptly into a future where, though love is lost, memory and longing are for ever. Maybe it was also the collective embarrassment of raising our childrens voices into the palpably intimate, a region hovering on the forbidden. I clearly recall musing over what it might all mean. Loving, it seemed, stretched back into the mists of a time past and was so significant it continued for ever, tumbling into a vague future of the imagination.