Passion is suffering; emotions are pain. Unamuno, Life 7.3
Unamuno
continues to reflect on the ambiguous nature of love, in its most
basic form (of sexual intimacy). On the surface, his reading will
appear traditionally Catholic, offering a division of good and evil
that not everyone can easily or even safely accept. But if you look
beyond the Catholicism, those who cannot or will not embrace it, what
he offers has a wider and still compelling significance. He observes,
correctly, that there is something inherently selfish in our intimate
relations (especially those that involve some kind of sex): left to
drift aimlessly in such relations, we often arrive at very selfish
positions, reducing other people to objects serving our own
gratification. If we treat others this way, we must necessarily
expect the same from them, and so our eros, our love, becomes
eternally tainted. In such situations, celibacy does become a more
attractive choice (recommended by our desire to escape the game that
makes us tyrants and slaves, the sort of people who dominate our
lovers because we know they will dominate us). Whatever our
conception of the proper way to manage intimacy, be we Catholics or
pagans, there is need to consider more than just our own immediate
delight. Good eros demands some consideration not just of the other
lover, but of what comes after the heated moment, of what we will do
with the embers of passion when its fire is banked or even extinct.
Humanity—civilization,
family—requires more
commitment than can be found in any single moment of passion. Beyond
that moment lie other needful things, which Unamuno sees reflected in
spiritual passion, the kind of passion that Christ carries on the
road toward crucifixion. Perhaps that is a road we must all walk in
some fashion, the road of our mortality; Unamuno will understand it
as a via dolorosa. That is a Christian formulation, but not merely or exclusively Christian. Buddhists mark the same reality by observing that all emotions are pain.
Hay,
sin duda, algo de trágicamente destructivo en el fondo del amor, tal
como en su forma primitiva animal se nos presenta, en el invencible
instinto que empuja a un macho y una hembra a confundir sus entrañas
en un apretón de furia. Lo mismo que les confunde los cuerpos, les
separa, en cierto respecto, las almas; al abrazarse se odian tanto
como se aman, y sobre todo luchan, luchan por un tercero, aun sin
vida. El amor es una lucha, y especies animales hay en que al unirse
el macho a la hembra la maltrata, y otras en que la hembra devora al
macho luego que éste la hubo fecundado.
Hase
dicho del amor que es un egoísmo mutuo. Y de hecho cada uno de los
amantes busca poseer al otro, y buscando mediante él, sin entonces
pensarlo ni proponérselo, su propia perpetuación, busca
consiguientemente su goce. Cada uno de los amantes es un instrumento
de goce inmediatamente y de perpetuación mediatamente para el otro.
Y así son tiranos y esclavos; cada uno de ellos tirano y esclavo a
la vez del otro.
¿Tiene
algo de extraño acaso que el más hondo sentido religioso haya
condenado el amor carnal, exaltando la virginidad? La avaricia es la
fuente de los pecados todos, decía el Apóstol, y es porque la
avaricia toma la riqueza que no es sino un medio como fin, y la
entraña del pecado es esa, tomar los medios como fines, desconocer o
despreciar el fin. Y el amor carnal que toma por fin el goce, que no
es sino un medio, y no la perpetuación, que es el fin, ¿qué es
sino avaricia? Y es posible que haya quien para mejor perpetuarse
guarde su virginidad. Y para perpetuar algo más humano que la carne.
Porque
lo que perpetúan los amantes sobre la tierra es la carne de dolor,
es el dolor, es la muerte. El amor es hermano, hijo y a la vez padre
de la muerte, que es su hermana, su madre y su hija. Y así es que
hay en la hondura del amor una hondura de eterno desesperarse, de la
cual brotan la esperanza y el consuelo. Porque de este amor carnal y
primitivo de que vengo hablando, de este amor de todo el cuerpo con
sus sentidos, que es el origen animal de la sociedad humana, de este
enamoramiento surge el amor espiritual y doloroso.
The
primitive animal form of love doubtless holds something tragically
destructive in its depths, this invincible instinct that compels male
and female to confuse their bowels in a bout of madness. The same
power that joins their bodies will sunder, in some measure, their
souls. Their mutual embrace is infused with hatred as with love, and
above all with strife: they are striving together for a third person,
as yet outside the realm of life. Love is a battle, and there are
animal species in which mating requires violence: males harm females
in the act of copulation, or the female devours the male after
impregnation.
It
has been said of love that it is a shared selfishness. And in fact we
find that every lover tries to possess the other, seeking by means of
that other his own perpetuation: he does this without forethought or
intention, chasing only his own gratification. Each lover is a source
of immediate gratification to the other, immediate gratification
and eventual perpetuation. Thus they become tyrants and slaves, each
one simultaneously the tyrant and the slave of the other.
Is
it anything strange, then, that our most profound religious feeling
has condemned carnal love, exalting virginity? Greed is the fount of
all sins, the apostle said (†), and this is because greed takes
wealth as an end rather than as means. The entry to sin is just this,
taking means for ends, ignoring or despising the real end. Carnal
love takes delight as its end, when that is just a means, and ignores
the relation that comes after, the end that is our perpetuation. What
is this, if not greed? It is possible that someone might remain
chaste in order better to serve that same end, and they might want to
perpetuate and hand down something more human, or humane, than this
flesh we wear.
For
the flesh that lovers perpetuate upon the earth is pain, and
eventually death. Love is brother, son, and at the same time father
to death, his sister, mother, and daughter. And so in the depths of
love we find a deep tide of eternal despair, but hope and comfort
rise from it, still. For the carnal and primitive love I am
discussing here is our source for something else. From carnal
love—the love of the
body with all its senses, the animal love whose original spell gives
birth to human society—rises
another love, a spiritual love full of woe and suffering.
---
(†)
A reference to 1 Timothy 6.10: Radix malorum est cupiditas
(Vulgate); ῥίζα γὰρ πάντων τῶν κακῶν ἐστὶν
ἡ φιλαργυρία (Greek). Unamuno seems
to have both the Latin and the Greek in mind here, with references to
carnal desire (cupiditas)
and love of money or wealth (φιλαργυρία).