Thinking about your friends and how they must feel, about how you yourself felt after your own blushing moments, about how much you yourself miss those moments, you think back upon Augustine of Hippo’s comment that love always comes too late, as well as Tolstoy’s remarkable capacity to depict romances, especially that special kind of poetic, circuitous speech that two shy lovers have. In particular, you think of the ice-skating scene in Anna Karenina, when Kitty grabs Levin’s hand.
Kitty: “With you I would soon learn [to skate]; I somehow feel confidence in you”
Levin: “And I have confidence in myself, when you are leaning on me”
The scene is also where one can find the masterful line from Tolstoy, oft-referenced in lists of the most beautiful prose: “he walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her, as at the sun—but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.” You go back through your dog-eared copy of Anna Karenina, looking for the scene in question, and you find that the very paragraph where the metaphor of the sun appears begins: “He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized his heart.” You think about the simultaneity of love and fear, your essay on love and fear in Call Me By Your Name, as well as that kind of mystical sight which knows by feeling, which feels but cannot find form for its effulgent emotion.
You also note that before Levin speaks, he asks himself: “Speak to her now? But that’s just why I’m happy now, happy in hope, anyway…And then?” You think about how much joy instills fear, how lovers are fearful precisely to the extent that they are in love. And after finally speaking, he admonishes himself: “he was at once panic-stricken at what he had said, and blushed. And indeed, no sooner had he uttered those words than all at once, like the sun going behind a cloud, her face lost all its friendliness…”
And again, he attempts to gather his courage, so that when she asks: “Are you going to stay in town long?” He responds: “I don’t know. It depends on you.”
You are particularly fond of Levin, of this ice-skating scene, and of the romance between Levin and Kitty. You truly hate that people often read Anna Karenina as a dichotomy between a loving relationship (Anna and Vronsky) and an acceptable one (Levin and Kitty). You suppose one could read Kitty’s thoughts as exemplifying the fact that she settles for Levin. When Levin makes clear, through his implication-laden statements, that he loves Kitty, she wonders to herself if she is leading Levin on: “And can it be my fault, can I have done anything wrong? They talk of flirtation. I know it’s not he that I love; but still I am happy with him, and he’s so nice.” Although, you have a hard time reading the book, or even the ice-skating scene, in this way; indeed, you find in the semicolon before the “but” not a move towards settling despite the absence of love; rather, you find the move reminiscent of that same fear which causes Levin to oscillate between speech and silence, as Kitty questions whether what she feels should fall into the dangerous territory of love, or if it can be removed to the safe domain of friendship.
You don’t think that love ever comes with the pleasure of certainty; in fact, you think it’s doomed to a domain of subtlety and silence, that its most direct profession can only put its validity into doubt. You think that lovers not only question if their love is reciprocated, but they also ask themselves if what they feel is truly love—and, worse, you think that these doubts are interrelated, for you do not think that true love could be called so if it were not reciprocated (nobody wants to settle, or be settled for).
Indeed, after Kitty leaves, “Levin was wondering what that change in Kitty’s expression had meant, and alternately assuring himself that there was hope, and falling into despair seeing that his hopes were insane, and yet all the while he felt himself quite another man, utterly unlike what he had been before her smile and those words, ‘Good-by till this evening.” ” Levin is in agony because he does not know what he is experiencing, and he does not know what he is experiencing because he requires Kitty’s words to be certain that he is in the infallible grips of love and not just living with a deranged obsession (which may be cured, unlike marriages, which “are made in heaven,” as Tolstoy frequently remarks in War and Peace). You think that we cannot love those whom we think do not, in at least some way, love us back, and that doubting another’s love is a way of doubting of our own feelings, just as questioning ourselves is a way of questioning another’s feelings—for, after Kitty says that she knows she cannot love Levin, she asks herself (putting doubt on her earlier certainty, thinking about the alternative after that crucial “but”) if Levin truly loves her: “Only, why did he say that?”
As you flipped to find this scene, you noticed that nearly all of your dog-eared pages, which you had turned over upon finding a particularly enchanting sentence, one to which you hoped to someday return, featured something in this theme of speech and silence. You had made note of the short chapter 10 in part 2, a mere single paragraph, describing Aleksey and Anna’s marriage after her affair, in which “outwardly everything was the same, but their inner relations were completely changed…[Aleksey] awaited the blow of the ax which he felt was raised over him. Every time he began to think about it, he felt that he must try once more, that by kindness, tenderness, and persuasion there was still hope of saving her…and every day he prepared to talk to her. But every time he began talking to her…he talked in a tone quite unlike that in which he had meant to. Involuntary he talked to her in his habitual tone of jeering, as if he were ridiculing anyone who would say what he was saying. And in that tone it was impossible to say what needed to be said to her.” Again, one finds anxiety, like the burning sun, represented as the fear of that which is unseen; and, again, love is a kind of speech, a confession, which we all fail to utter.
Similarly, you had folded over the page where Vronsky falls in love with his horse: “She was one of those creatures that seem mute only because the mechanism of their mouth does not allow them to speak. To Vronsky, at any rate, it seemed that she understood all he felt at that moment, looking at her.”
And another page where Kitty goes to visit the disabled Madame Stahl, and she says “Often one wonders what the goal of this life is?…The other side!” Kitty’s father responds: “To do good probably,” and Madame Stahl admonishes him: “That is not for us to judge.” And, upon leaving the Madame’s company, Kitty’s father whispers to her: “perhaps [the Madame does good] but it’s better when one does good in such a manner that no one knows of it.” Reflecting on the whole episode, Kitty “did not respond, not because she had nothing to say, but because she did not care to reveal her secret thoughts even to her father…she had made her mind not to be influenced by her father’s views, not to let him into her inmost sanctuary, [but] she felt that the heavenly image of Madame Stahl, which she had carried for a whole month in her heart, had vanished.” Again, goodness can only be lost through the attempt to clearly define it, at an attempt to completely present oneself before others, and so love and truth are kept to the domain of the ineffable.
Or when Levin, the night before his wedding, being coaxed into cold feet by his friends, “did not want to say ‘love’ before them;” he asks himself if he “had in his heart that regret of freedom of which they had spoken?” Despite his friends’ concerns, he feels certain of himself, until “suddenly a strange feeling came upon him. There came over him a dread and doubt—doubt of everything.” Levin, the suitor, cannot doubt if he really loves Kitty, and so must disguise his self-doubt as a question posed to her: whether she really loves him. Just as earlier, Kitty—the pursued, who could not question if Levin really loves her—disguised her insecurity as an absence of love for him. And you had folded over a page at the marriage ceremony, when Levin asks himself: ” ‘How did they guess it is help, just help that one needs?’ he thought, recalling all his fears and doubts of late. ‘What do I know? What can I do in this fearful business without help?’ ”
You think that the scene of Levin’s proposal is perfectly chosen for Tolstoy’s purpose, is exemplary of this silent and uncertain quality of love—as well as of Levin and Kitty being the perfect match for each other, rather than one for which they settle. They each converse in acronyms rather than sentences, writing letters in chalk on a poker table. Their chosen mode of communication is successful only if the other feels the same, just as they love each other only if they are certain that they are loved in return.
You think about the poker game you played earlier, about not wanting to wake your friend, about her not wanting you to think that you had woken her up, and you realize that all our desires are dependent on the desires of other people. More strongly, you think that the attempt to communicate—to discover those desires together—is so difficult, so disorienting, that many people would rather just be as selfish as they think they can be, to take the neo-liberal route so common today, and settle for Pareto optimality, if not “the greatest good for the greatest number.” Because who knows what the greatest good is? Who knows what others desire, what they feel? Who knows, even, their own desires and feelings?
You think that our culture worships love at first sight, love that is perfect and is forever certain of itself; but, you do not think that such love is possible—or even desirable, for that matter, because desire requires a search through the unknown, an uncertain attempt, a valiant quest, something still to be worked on and accomplished, a dark, terrifying territory through which we must charge: vulnerable and courageous. You think what makes the myth of the perfect romance so enticing is precisely what makes it so dangerous: it prevents us from being wrong and of realizing that we have been mistaken, and so prevents us venturing into what may yet still lie ahead, from seeking something other than that with which we are presently comfortable.
You think that part of what makes leaving an unhealthy or abusive relationship, parsing out our own feelings from the advice and demands of our friends and families, or attempting divorce (as Aleksey and Anna make clear) so difficult is the fact that we only understand ourselves in relation to others, and have to simultaneously place ourselves and our environments in order. You think about how Hayden White uses Anna as an example (as well as Don Quixote and Madame Bovary) of the kind of people who live unhappily because their understanding of the world has been warped by unrealistic narratives, by impossible expectations set by their respective cultures, by chivalric romances. You think about unhappiness as a discord between one’s expectations and one’s experience, about how happiness lies in discovering those narratives which more accurately analyze our own histories, so that we can predict our futures as they unfold.
You think about how love and happiness are protean figures, so difficult to pin down and define—how the truth can be expressed in a single sentence, but needs thousands of paragraphs for us to be certain. You think about how Tolstoy has written Anna Karennina twice, about the fact that Tolstoy declared that, if he wanted to say everything he intended to say in Anna Karennina, he would find himself re-writing the novel word for word. There is the first expression of Anna Karennina, on the left side of the equals sign: “all happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Then, there is the second half of the equation, which comprises everything that follows from that first sentence, both logically and chronologically. You think that Anna Karennina is an attempted proof, which aims to define that still-yet unknown formula to happiness. You find it important to note that, as part of that formula, Tolstoy writes about happy families rather than happy individuals, which highlights the extent to which we are happy only through a harmonious relation to our environment.
You think about how the traditional reading of Tolstoy’s opening line would be a conservative one: the heteronormative one which argues that the object of our universal quest for happiness is a monogamous partnership with a member of the opposite sex, who reciprocates our desires, and with whom we may procreate successfully. You think that Tolstoy attempts to point out that Anna is destroyed by her environment because of its prevalent adherence to this belief, which prevents her from divorcing Aleksey, and which, after her separation, prevents her from maintaining a relationship with her children and her community. You think that Anna Karennina is an attempt to expand that formula for happiness beyond its conservative definition—as if to say that we ought to look for what is shared in seemingly dissimilar and yet still happy communities, rather than impose similarities on what are unhappy and dissimilar situations.
We would rather believe that we know ourselves perfectly, and that we can reliably and independently steer our own fates. However, you think that the realm of romance is where those expectations meet their greatest obstacles, where it becomes most salient that we don’t know ourselves as well as we would hope.
You think about Harry Styles’s new song “Cherry” (which you think is a pun on his French ex-girlfriend’s nickname chère), specifically about the lyrics “don’t you call him baby, don’t you call him what you used to call me.” You think that the lyrics point out precisely what makes us jealous of our partners, and suspect that many of our insecurities about our partners’ exes (or even our own) revolve around all those declarations of love that proved to be false, at least insofar as they did not last forever. We imagine that our partners’ declarations of love cannot be authentic if they have been said to someone else before us, and we worry that our own declarations of love may be inauthentic, because we have been wrong before. You imagine that Styles’s song, especially his including a loving voicemail from his ex-girlfriend, must make it incredibly difficult for her to move on—to continue to live her life, independently of him. You imagine being her new partner, being called “baby,” and how insecure hearing Styles’s song would make you in your partnership.
At first, you thought that Styles’s song was possessive and unfair; but, at the same time, you think that maybe the loss of privacy is the cost of dating an artist, because true artistry is only possible with honesty, and because honesty would not be possible without one’s willingness to share one’s private life. You think that the attempt to be honest without being private creates a narrative of human beings as entirely political, career-driven personas, when much of what affects us comprises those domestic and romantic affairs of which we are afraid to speak. You think that the absence of these “private” narratives creates a discord between people’s lived experience and the cultural narratives that they use to cope with that experience. You think that honesty is required for people to truly understand themselves, to hear more than the same tired love songs over and over again, and that honesty is worth whatever small cuts may come from it. You yourself struggle with trying to share your experiences in a meaningful way with others, while also trying not to harm those who may be affected by your sharing your own story; and, you often wonder whom you may harm by sharing or publishing your writing, by making your writing identifiable to yourself.
You think that many people, after break-ups, like to play the victim: like to deride and disparage their former partners; like to claim that their partners were dishonest and that they suffered because they were gullible and succumbed to that dishonesty (not because they were both wrong, fallible humans, who weren’t as good a match as they wanted themselves to be). You think about Lake Street Dive’s powerful “Good Kisser,” especially the lyrics “if you’re gonna tell them everything, tell ’em I’m a good kisser; tell ’em all the things you told me, in your desperate whisper.” You think that this song is a more empowered, confident version of Styles’s desperate “Cherry.” You think that in pop culture—from Lizzo to Carrie Underwood, from Beyoncé to Shania Twain—we flock to female voices who declare their self-love, who are willing to assert that they are better than their toxic relationships, who derogate dishonest and manipulative men, as well as the abuses and infidelities that such men commit.
You think that our self-aware, postmodern culture tends to seek inversions of traditional gender norms, tends to seek powerful women and vulnerable men, without necessarily questioning how power and vulnerability themselves ought to influence our behaviors. Does lauding any narrative where a woman verbally castrates a terrible man make women more likely to be seen as—or to see themselves as—former victims? Does it make us automatically suspect men in cases where a woman acts aggressively, where she seems indignant or assertive (does it elide the difference between feminism and misandry, scoffing at victimized men, regarding them as regressive conservatives, deluded and entitled)? Does lauding vulnerability in men reward those men who project fragility as a means of disarming and manipulating others, whom we now call fuck-boys? Does it privilege those non-toxically masculine men who are supposedly sensitive, but who are unable to take care of themselves emotionally and form codependent relationships? Does it perpetuate that narrative where one partner has to be an asshole for a break-up to happen—where one always questions oneself “am I the asshole?” and where one has to declare the other an ass in order to defend oneself against those self-imposed questions?
You think that gender norms comprise a significant portion of those unrealistic narratives which cause one to act in discord with one’s lived experience, think that these gender norms continue to undergird the scripts for romantic involvement, and wonder what territories and potentialities remain to be discovered re: gendered behavior.
You think about the fact that a man of immense wealth and privilege, who is considered a sex icon, is still able to feel insecure about himself and his future, and what that may mean for our universal fear of being alone, and how that fear stops us from finding meaningful relationships (or at least for your own insecurity, and how that stops you from cultivating healthy relationships). That being said, you don’t think that Harry Styles provides any meaningful answers about what it means to be vulnerable while identifying, and being identified, as male; but, you do think that the song provokes an important question about our willingness to be wrong about ourselves and about others—a question which may have meaningful answers, even if Styles has not found them. There is a fitting quote from The Philadelphia Story, which has seemingly been in vogue since Zadie Smith used it in Changing My Mind: “The time to make up your mind about people – is never.” You think about the fact that we ought to include ourselves in that universal word “people,” that we ought to forgive ourselves when we change our minds (or when others change theirs), and that we and others are not intentionally lying when we are mistaken—that we may even learn from (rather than simply regret) our mistakes, so as not to be wrong in the future.
And, turning back to Tolstoy, you think about how Anna commits suicide because she considers that she has been destroyed by her society, because she believes that she has been entirely and utterly wrong about her decisions, because she believes that Vronsky has been dishonest and unfaithful to her. You think about the fact that her destruction is assured precisely because of her inability to deal with that uncertainty, because of her desire to determine her own fate—rather than leave it open to other possibilities.