Love & Death. Unamuno, Life 7.1
Unamuno
begins his imagination of human life with love, which he finds tragic
because of its necessary and intimate association with death. We must
desire affiliation with others and ourselves, must love the world, if
we are to survive. But the ultimate end of our love's expression is
mortality: even if we embrace some belief in love beyond death's
grasp, we must pass through death all the same. The love we must hold
will lead us eventually to his sister and spouse, death.
Es
el amor, lectores y hermanos míos, lo más trágico que en el mundo
y en la vida hay; es el amor hijo del engaño y padre del desengaño;
es el amor el consuelo en el desconsuelo, es la única medicina
contra la muerte, siendo como es de ella hermana.
Fratelli,
a un tempo stesso, Amore e Morte
Ingenerò
la sorte,
como
cantó Leopardi.
El
amor busca con furia a través del amado, algo que está allende
éste, y como no lo halla, se desespera.
Love
is the most tragic thing that exists, readers and brothers of mine,
in the world and in life. Love is the child of deceit, and the father
of disenchantment. Love is comfort and discomfort, the only medicine
we possess against death, since they are siblings. As Leopardi sang
(†):
Brethren!
In this moment's room
Love
& Death conceived our doom.
Plunging deep into the persona of the beloved, love seeks furiously after something that lies beyond, and as
it fails to find this, it despairs.
---
(†)
This quote comes from the opening stanza of Leopardi's
twenty-seventh canto, written in Florence circa 1832, and
published in Naples in 1835. The full poem is definitely worth
reading, but it is quite long, so I give here only a taste:
Fratelli,
a un tempo stesso, Amore e Morte
Ingenerò
la sorte.
Cose
quaggiù sì belle
Altre
il mondo non ha, non han le stelle.
Nasce
dall’uno il bene,
Nasce
il piacer maggiore
Che
per lo mar dell’essere si trova;
L’altra
ogni gran dolore,
Ogni
gran male annulla.
Brethren!
In this moment's room
Love
& Death conceived our doom.
Nothing
brighter on this earth
Nor
any realm the stars have birthed.
Love!
He sows all goodly seed,
Each
pleasure in the flooding sea
Where
Being drowns mortality.
And
as for Death: she takes our pain
Makes
each evil naught again.