The Origin & Wellspring of Love. Unamuno, Life 7.2

Unamuno discusses procreation, which he sees as the foundation for love inasmuch as it is required for life (including the life of primitive unicellular organisms, who interrupt normal asexual reproduction with occasional sexual exchanges that keep their DNA from terminal decay). Unamuno's understanding of sex: it is a form of death, involving the surrender of the self—to the lover, to potential children, and to the family whose existence will change our own for all time after the deed is done. Of course this means that sex, for Unamuno, is never casual. He sees it rather as sacramental.

Siempre que hablamos de amor tenemos presente a la memoria el amor sexual, el amor entre hombre y mujer para perpetuar el linaje humano sobre la tierra. Y esto es lo que hace que no se consiga reducir el amor, ni a lo puramente intelectivo, ni a lo puramente volitivo, dejando lo sentimental o, si se quiere, sensitivo de él. Porque el amor no es en el fondo ni idea ni volición; es más bien deseo, sentimiento; es algo carnal hasta en el espíritu. Gracias al amor sentimos todo lo que de carne tiene el espíritu.

El amor sexual es el tipo generador de todo otro amor. En el amor y por él buscamos perpetuarnos y sólo nos perpetuamos sobre la tierra a condición de morir, de entregar a otros nuestra vida. Los más humildes animalitos, los vivientes ínfimos, se multiplican dividiéndose, partiéndose, dejando de ser el uno que antes eran.

Pero agotada al fin la vitalidad del ser que así se multiplica dividiéndose de la especie, tiene de vez en cuando que renovar el manantial de la vida mediante uniones de dos individuos decadentes, mediante lo que se llama conjugación en los protozoarios. Únense para volver con más brío a dividirse. Y todo acto de engendramiento es un dejar de ser, total o parcialmente, lo que se era, un partirse, una muerte parcial. Vivir es darse, perpetuarse, y perpetuarse y darse es morir. Acaso el supremo deleite del engendrar no es sino un anticipado gustar la muerte, el desgarramiento de la propia esencia vital. Nos unimos a otro, pero es para partirnos; ese más íntimo abrazo no es sino un más íntimo desgarramiento. En su fondo el deleite amoroso sexual, el espasmo genésico, es una sensación de resurrección, de resucitar en otro, porque sólo en otros podemos resucitar para perpetuarnos.

Every time we speak of love, our memory recalls the love of the sexes, the love between man and woman that exists to perpetuate the human family upon the earth. This is what prevents love from being effectively reduced to something purely intellectual, or purely volitional: love cannot ever leave the realm of feeling, cannot be entirely abstracted from the sensual. For in its innermost depths, love is neither an idea, nor any expression of will: instead, it is desire, a feeling. It is something carnal, even in the spirit. Because of love, we feel how much flesh the spirit actually has.

The love of the sexes is the origin of every other love. In love and through it, we seek to perpetuate ourselves, and the only way to achieve this on earth is by becoming mortal, by handing our lives over to other people. Even the most humble animals of all, the tiniest living creatures, multiply by dividing themselves, splitting into pieces, ceasing to be the unity they once were.

But when at last the vitality of the little animal that multiplies itself in this way, by cutting itself off from the species, begins to fail, that animal must renew the wellspring of life within by uniting with another decrepit individual, a process of genetic exchange known as conjugation when it occurs in protozoans. They unite together in order to return thereafter to dividing their new selves, with more vigor. Every act of procreation is a cessation, total or partial, of what came before—a separation, a partial death. To live is to give yourself away, to extend yourself into the future: and when you extend yourself, and give yourself away, you die. Perhaps the supreme delight of procreation is just an anticipation of death, a taste of the undoing of our own vital being. We unite ourselves with another, but the purpose is to part from ourselves; this most intimate embrace is also a most intimate release. The spasm of joy that accompanies sexual love is in its depths a feeling of resurrection, of being reborn in another person, for it is only in others that we can revive, claiming the power to perpetuate ourselves.