"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis
12.08.2005
C.S. Lewis on Love
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5 comments:
The Four Loves is, I think, one of Lewis's best books. And that's saying something.
Who else writes like this?:
"Everyone knows that it is useless to try to separate lovers by proving to them that their marriage will be an unhappy one. This is not only because they will disbelieve you. The usually will, no doubt. But even if they believed, they would not be dissuaded. For it is the very mark of Eros that when he is in us we had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be happy on any other terms. Even if the two lovers are mature and experienced people who know that broken hearts heal in the end and can clearly foresee that, if they once steeled themselves to go through the present agony of parting, they would almost certainly be happier ten years hence than marriage is at all likely to make them -- even then, they would not part. To Eros all these calculations are irrelevant -- just as the coolly brutal judgment of Lucretius is irrelevant to Venus. Even when it becomes clear beyond all evasion that marriage with the Beloved cannot possibly lead to happiness -- when it cannot even profess to offer any other life than that of tending an incurable invalid, of hopeless poverty, of exile, or of disgrace -- Eros never hesitates to say, 'Better this than parting. Better to be miserable with her than happy without her. Let our hearts break provided they break together.' If the voice within us does not say this, it is not the voice of Eros.
This is the grandeur and terror of love."
-- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, pg. 75
Good thoughts! Love is worth it, I think. :)
I'm assuming that nothing is to be interpreted beyond this - other than you must be a C.S. Lewis fan.
I shall believe the best.
Yes, Carrie, I meant nothing romantic, or untoward in other relationships either, by this particular quote (which, btw, is from p. 169). =) I read this passage while studying the book of John and Christ's love for us. I must confess that I actually came across this quote because it was quoted by another author to whom I was referred in relation to my Bible study (R. Kent Hughes, John: That You May Believe, pgs 98-99, 103). What I am taking from this is how we (in whatever relationship it is, be it romantic or platonic, our love for Christ or brother, whatever) do not love others as we ought. I definitely don't, and needed a reminder of what I should be as friend, family member, Christian. In my relationships with others, if my heart is "broken" or I get hurt, do I just write that person off? I shouldn't. If I do, I am not following the commands of Christ, and I am in danger of what C.S. Lewis is speaking of here. In the future, if I am ever in a romantic relationship/marriage, I can only pray that I would love as I ought. (And yes, I do like C.S. Lewis, and now plan on getting/reading The Four Loves.)
Oh whew.
Well, I read it too. Before I was married.
And I didn't tell anyone. I actuall listened to the book on tape (read by C.S. Lewis) on a road trip-- that I took by myself.
So no one had to know.
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