2/21/24
Chapter two is where Stendhal’s book truly begins. Here we get his first mention of crystallization, which is his ingenious description of the projection of feelings and virtues that travel from the lover to the object of affection. Here is how Stendhal describes it:
At the salt mines of Salzburg, they throw a leafless wintry bough into one of the abandoned workings. Two or three months later they haul it out covered with a shining deposit of crystals. The smallest twig, no bigger than a tom-tit’s claw, is studded with a galaxy of scintillating diamonds. The original’s branch is no longer recognizable.
What I have called crystallization is a mental process which draws from everything that happens new proofs of the perfection of the loved one.
But this is just the initial stage. Stendhal claims that in love, for the crystallization to take its fullest form, doubt and difficulty must creep in. Here comes the material for the standard romantic comedy plot, except in 19th century Paris, Stendhal saw it playing out more like a blood sport where women always had the upper hand.
The second crystallization occurs when the lover seeks out and occasionally finds proofs that his object of affection loves him:
Every few minutes throughout the night which follows the birth of doubt, the lover has a moment of dreadful misgiving, and then reassures himself, ‘she loves me’; and crystallization begins to reveal new charms. Then once again the haggard eye of doubt pierces him and he stops transfixed. He forgets to draw breath and mutters ‘But does she love me?’ Torn between doubt and delight, the poor lover convinces himself that she could give him such pleasure as he could find nowhere else on earth.
And then eventually you reach the final stage:
The most heartrending moment of love in its infancy is the realization that you have been mistaken about something, and that a whole framework of crystals has to be destroyed. You begin to feel doubtful about the entire process of crystallization.
Stendhal can be forgiven for the somewhat juvenile and one-sided nature of this definition of love because he wrote it so early in his career. By the time he wrote “The Red and the Black,” the relationship that illustrates this crystallization – the one between Julian and Mathelide – shows that doubt creeps in on both sides. As they take turns drawing together and pulling away, the two are trapped in the hall of mirrors that drives them both insane.
I think Stendhal is getting at something important here about how difficulty – sometimes even defeat – can make the object of affection even more appealing.
But there is a question that must be addressed before we proceed with this project – should love be considered a feeling, as Stendhal has described it? The strongest argument against this kind of sentimental examination comes from Erich Fromm in his book “The Art of Loving.” The second chapter of Fromm’s work concerns his definition of love, which he spells out clearly and completely in three parts.
First, for Fromm, love is a human imperative:
The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness. The absolute failure to achieve this aim means insanity, because the panic of complete isolation can be overcome only by such a radical withdrawal from the world outside that the feeling of separation disappears – because the world outside, from which one is separated, has disappeared.
So humans are social beings and we need to find connection in others to be complete. But Fromm says most forms of connection we find are not sufficient:
The unity achieved in productive work is not interpersonal; the unity achieved in orgiastic fusion is transitory; the unity achieved by conformity is only pseudo-unity. Hence, they are only partial answers to the problem of existence. The full answer lies in the achievement of inter-personal union, of fusion with another person, in love.
But to anyone who thinks Fromm is selling some simple Hollywood “love conquers all” message, the third part draws a strict line against that as well. To Fromm, love is not about how someone makes you feel:
Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a ’standing in,’ not a ‘falling for.’ In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.
So in Fromm’s construct, everything Stendhal is writing about is pure nonsense. It’s an evasion of love, a refusal to give. It’s just as transitory as the ‘orgiastic fusion’ he so hilariously drops in to describe sex. So you can just forget all of Stendhal’s categories and poetic descriptions, Fromm is saying, because attraction, vanity, mind games, idealization, and anything else that keeps people at arm's length from each other is the antithesis of love. Genuine, necessary, healing love for Fromm is about two people sacrificing for one another.
I have a difficult time arguing with Fromm. Check that – it’s impossible to argue with Fromm. But even in accepting that he’s right, there are a couple “yes, but ...” responses I feel are necessary here.
The first is categorical. Yes, perhaps Stendhal is using faulty terminology and is adding to the confusion about love by talking about it in this manner. But even if Stendhal is really talking about the ways that human beings avoid love, that too is a subject worth discussing, because we probably spend more time in our lives finding various distractions from Fromm’s definition of love than living in it.
The second argument I want to make is that while Fromm can de-prioritize feelings, he cannot fully explain them away. And to illustrate this, I’ll refer to the wonderful new movie “Perfect Days,” directed by Wim Wenders. This a movie about an older man named Hirayama who lives a very simple, spartan existence and works cleaning public toilets in Tokyo. The first section of the film focuses on the routine and simple pleasures of his day to day life. Part of his ritualistic approach to life consists of listening to classic rock songs on his drive in to work, including “House of the Rising Sun,” a very interesting song to hear in the context of a person living in the land of the rising sun.
But in Act II, we start to see some challenges to this ritualistic life and his serenity. His work partner is inconsistent and draws him into mini-dramas. His nieces drops by his apartment and he must adjust to her. And in a very subtle, wonderful scene, he goes to a restaurant he apparently frequents often and kindly chats with the restaurant owner (who goes by Mama) as she prepares meals for several guests. Then Mama is enticed by the guests to get up and sing – which she apparently does often and someone has a guitar on hand to accompany her.
Mama sings, in Japanese, “House of the Rising Sun.” Wenders is a master of film grammar and he makes clear, simply by the look on Hirayama’s face, that he is in love with her. This fact will be validated later in the film, but I raise it in this context because I believe that movies are powerful because they accurately reflect the way we feel in our daily lives. Fromm, while being highly humanistic in his analysis of love, has left out something essentially human.
We cannot help but to be drawn to certain people, to be charmed, to play favorites, to equate those people to music. Sure, we can build lasting connection and value through our efforts, but for me at least, that process begins with feeling. And it applies as much to my work as it does to my connection to people. I have taken several jobs in my life simply because they were the best paying ones available to me at the time. But if I didn’t believe in what I was doing, it couldn’t do my best work. It’s the same in love. It is an activity and the most noble one, but it begins with simply being charmed by someone and perhaps a little intoxicated.
And so I will continue working through Stendhal’s examination of this maddening, sometimes self-defeating quest to find love, even if it only gives me a better understanding of why it remains elusive for so many for so long.