the pure lover

 from the pure lover by david plante [beacon press, 2009]

"grief makes the griever believe the death of his lover is unique. grief demands a grand, timeless expression, and the bereaved tries, tries for that expression, and wonders if the expression is false." (25)

"grief cannot help but idealize." (43)

"grief reveals the griever's vanity, the vanity of his grief, the vanity of all his life." (47)

"at a dinner party to celebrate the success of one of these books, you, when complimented, raised a napkin to cover your face, as if to absent yourself. at the time, i thought you were trying to impress more with your absence than your presence, but i was wrong, for you always thought of yourself as more absent than present." (53-54)

"how confused i become thinking of you and me as one, wondering how much of you i have made mine, how much of me i have made yours - combining in us both mind and soul, as if these two were one, and aristotle and plato, too." (76)

"nietzsche's books, you argued, all together 'cohered,' not 'logically' as philosophy, but 'formally' as in a work of art, the 'form' containing 'an infinite number of inconsistencies.' nietzsche's 'form' was cyclical, was repetition revolving on repetition, each repetition an elaboration." (79)

"did i want you to die, as though your death were a strange fulfillment of my love for you? i'd stop, stand still in the street, overwhelmed by this: the sense, a sensation throughout my body and, too, my soul, that you must live.

i sometimes asked myself in the pages of my diary (wanting in those pages to account for every thought, every feeling) if your death would liberate me from our lives together to live an altogether other life with radiating possibilities. my answer to myself, as near as i could get to a central truth, was no - i wanted, at that center, no other life, but my life radiating in you." (89)

"every night, in bed with you, i thought: i am falling asleep with someone who is dying. all during the night, often woken by you because your back pained you, i'd think: i'm in bed with someone who is dying." (91)

"the griever prays that grief will come and purify him, prays that after the overwhelming devastation of grief, whatever remains of him will be simple and clear. and suddenly, grief overwhelms the griever at the sight of an old woman in a crowd carrying a small valise.

my love for you was not enough - you died." (103)

"grief centers the griever's grief everywhere, making connections." (111)