The words we read and words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbola never perfectly match. Eros is in between.
Interpretation
Meaning and feelings are often lost in translation, leading to imperfect connections in love and communication.
This quote reflects the complexities of human relationships, emphasizing that words, whether written or spoken, fail to convey our true intentions completely. In love, this misalignment shows that our expectations often do not align with reality, and the concept of 'Eros' signifies the space or tension that exists in this gap, capturing the essence of desire and longing that fuels our connections.
In practice
In a speech about the intricacies of communication in relationships.
Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate.
[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.
Novels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, emotional and cognitive. It permits the reader to stand in triangular relation to the characters in the story and reach into the text after the objects of their desire, sharing their longing but also detached from it, seeing their view of reality but also its mistakenness. It is almost like being in love.
To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.
I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp--brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure.
Sometimes I dream a sentence and write it down. It’s usually nonsense, but sometimes it seems a key to another world.
Where I come from," said Archie, "a bloke likes to get to know a girl before he marries her." "Where you come from it is customary to boil vegetables until they fall apart. This does not mean," said Samad tersely, "that it is a good idea.
They always threw their arms around and hugged me while crying our Yiddish endearments. Yet none of them believed in God. They believed in social justice, good works, Israel, and Bette Midler. I was nearly thirty before I met a religious Jew.
Given the historical power differential between blacks and whites, blacks are required to be attentive to the way their white counterparts see themselves in relation to people of color if they want to survive and even thrive.
Familiarity seems to breed contempt
I've always loved independent women, outspoken women, eccentric women, funny women, flawed women. When someone says about a woman, 'I'm sorry, that's just wrong,' I tend to think she must be doing something right.
Most African women are taught to endure abusive marriages. They say endurance means a good wife but most women endure abusive relationship because they are not empowered economically; they depend on their husbands.
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