Baskadia

As a young boy, I was fascinated by romantic tragedies such as Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856) and Amos Oz’s My Michael (1968). These novels served as cautionary tales, warning what could happen if passion withered and true love died. Take the undoing of Emma Bovary, who tries to relieve the banality of her life through a series of adulterous affairs. Ultimately rejected by her lovers and deep in debt, Emma swallows arsenic and kills herself. Like her, Hannah Gonen (the wife of Michael) is full of passion and dreams, but stunted by her marriage to a pragmatic, unimaginative man. As time goes on, her marriage devolves into sadness and depression, and her dreams – along with her sanity – are squashed.

Emma and Hannah appear to be victims of a myth, a dangerous romantic ideology still enshrined in our rituals and songs: love can overcome all obstacles (there is no mountain high enough); love is forever (till death us do part). This seductive romantic ideology assumes the uniqueness of the beloved along with a kind of fusion. Soul mates are meant only for each other; the lovers form a single entity; each of the partners is irreplaceable in all the world. (Millions of people go by, but they all disappear from view – because I only have eyes for you.) Ideal love is total, uncompromising, and unconditional. No matter what happens outside the circle of the relationship, true love endures.