Suffering joy & joyful suffering. Unamuno, Life 7.5
Unamuno
presents his own version of the ladder of Diotima (described in
Plato's Symposium). A doomed passion on earth causes those who
hold it to conceive some place where it might not be doomed, where it
might find the fruition denied to it here. But that fruition must be
different, as the place outside the world must be, and so the passion
is transformed, too, becoming otherworldly (abstract from the
original circumstances that fostered it).
Todo
lo cual se siente más clara y más fuertemente aun cuando brota,
arraiga y crece uno de esos amores trágicos que tienen que luchar
contra las diamantinas leyes del Destino, uno de esos amores que
nacen a destiempo o desazón, antes o después del momento o fuera de
la norma en que el mundo, que es costumbre, los hubiera recibido.
Cuantas más murallas pongan el Destino y el mundo y su ley entre los
amantes, con tanta más fuerza se sienten empujados el uno al otro, y
la dicha de quererse se les amarga y se les acrecienta el dolor de no
poder quererse a las claras y libremente, y se compadecen desde las
raíces del corazón el uno del otro, y esta común compasión, que
es su común miseria y su felicidad común, da fuego y pábulo a la
vez a su amor. Y sufren su gozo gozando su sufrimiento. Y ponen su
amor fuera del mundo, y la fuerza de ese pobre amor sufriente bajo el
yugo del Destino les hace intuir otro mundo en que no hay más ley
que la libertad del amor, otro mundo en que no hay barreras porque no
hay carne. Porque nada nos penetra más de la esperanza y la fe en
otro mundo que la imposibilidad de que un amor nuestro fructifique de
veras en este mundo de carne y de apariencias.
Y
el amor maternal, ¿qué es, sino compasión al débil, al desvalido,
al pobre niño inerme que necesita de la leche y del regazo de la
madre? Y en la mujer todo amor es maternal.
All
the foregoing is even easier to recognize, appearing clearer to the
mind and more forcefully correct to our feelings, when history
spawns, roots, and nurtures one of those tragic loves that must fight
against the diamond laws of Destiny—a love born outside its proper
time, before or after the lawful moment when the world would have
embraced it, endorsing it as part of our received tradition. The more
walls erected between lovers by Destiny, the world, and the law, the
greater the attractive force that drives them together, compelling
them onward until the joy of their mutual desire embitters them,
increasing the pain that rises from being unable to cleave together
openly and freely. Then they feel real pity for one another, each
from the bottom of the heart, and this shared suffering, the misery
that is also happiness that joins what can never be united, kindles
and feeds the fires of their passion. They suffer their joy, and take
joy in their suffering. Eventually they place their love beyond the
boundaries of our world, and the power of this poor love, suffering
beneath the yoke of Destiny, makes them perceive another world in
which there is no law for love but liberty, no bounds because there
is no flesh. For there is nothing that fills us more with hope and
faith in another world than the total failure of some love we have
here, in this world of flesh and fleeting appearances.
As
for maternal love, what else is it but compassion for the weak and
invalid, the poor hapless child who needs milk and his mother's lap?
All womanly love is maternal.