Love Must be Reinvented

Discourse at Sciences Po on March 27^th, 2018, with an introductory paragraph and some additional remarks in square brackets. Double square brackets are translator notes.

To speak about love, to speak about sex, to speak about men and women, about their relation and about their non-relation is today, you know by the fuss of the gazettes, risky business. It is even more risky to talk about all of this when you are an aging man. And when one is an aging man, as I am, the danger increases again if one addresses the youth, and especially the young girls. "What is he looking for there?." "Should he not use his power—whether real or supposed, symbolic or imaginary—to venture into the creation of a space where inappropriate demands may appear to him legitimate?"

On this point we have a fundamental testimony, which is Goethe's splendid poem "Marienbad Elegy." When Goethe meets the beautiful Ulrike von Levetzow, who is 17 years old, he was 72. Let us admit that this age, in the eighteenth century, was considered more than my 81 years today.

The record, buzz, or journals, did not say that Goethe put his hand on Ulrike von Levetzow's knee at the table. It was not a case of sexual harassment. But it seems certain that she would have kissed him, or that he would have kissed her. Without the limit of that kiss they remained somewhere between cordial property and an unclear proposal. No doubt, the meaning of the kiss was not the same for the old man and the girl. In any case, Goethe asks Ulrike to marry him without taking any notice of the 55 years between them. This request does not succeed: despite his impressive fame and the symbolic power of the old man, Ulrike's family, and no doubt Ulrike herself, planned to make her clear refusal look as respectful as possible. So, Goethe fled. We can almost add: as usual! It is interesting to note that Goethe, in love, is a professional fugitive. And how does he deal with these escapes? Obviously, by writing a splendid poem, during the very moment when love did not take place, or when love lost meaning. In this case, the poem is "Marienbad Elegy." I share with you this as an introduction to any statement on love. Indeed, we can see how it was through a profound existential gap that Goethe rushed in with his declaration of love.

I am far!And what would be best for the current minute?It is impossible to say.

Aside from beauty,perhaps there are many good things.But it is my responsibility to disengage from them.

An irrepressible nostalgia drives me from place to place.Here, there is no recourse, except the infinity of tears.¹

Notice the maelstrom of contradictions: "impossible," "beauty," "good things," "disengage," "no recourse," "tears," "infinity." Thus, put poetically, is the eternal obscurity of love.

It was at the heart of his opacity that quite another poet, Rimbaud, declared that "love must be reinvented." And I think that we all know today—indeed, it is quite certain—that to love is to reinvent.

Love is again omnipresent, as the only possible guarantee of a real link to another; love is the effect of a cure from the primordial figure of solitude that the merchant cult of the individual inflicts upon us; when one claims that a man or a woman is alone, that he or she lives alone, it means, mainly, even today, that he is neglected by love.

Yet, love is also, for the same reason, deeply suspicious: does it not end up fundamentally alienating our sovereign right to live for ourselves? Does it not replace the threat of loneliness with the risk of infinite torment? Why should I take the risk of making my existence dependent upon the whims of another's existence if I will probably never know the secret of my intimate harmony? Since God only exists faintly, or at some kind of impersonal distance, we are therefore entirely accountable for what happens...