#lispector: 'love is ultimately poverty; love is not having'

[crucifiedlovers]

There are people who volunteer for love, thinking love will enrich their personal lives. On the contrary: love is ultimately poverty. Love is not having. Moreover love is the disillusionment of what you thought was love.

Clarice Lispector, ‘The Egg and the Chicken’ from The Imitation of the Rose (trans. Katrina Dodson)

[mosscollector]

By a certain way of looking, by a way of shaking hands, we recognize each other and call this love. And then our disguise is unnecessary: though we don’t speak, neither do we lie, though we don’t speak the truth, neither must we dissemble any longer. Love is when we are allowed to participate a bit more. Few want love, because love is the great disillusionment with all the rest. And few can bear losing the rest of their illusions. There are people who would volunteer for love, thinking love will enrich their personal lives. On the contrary: love is ultimately poverty. Love is not having. Moreover love is the disillusionment of what you thought was love.

Clarice Lispector, The Egg and the Chicken (tr. Katrina Dodson)

[feuillesmortes]

— Jean-Luc Nancy, Noli me tangere: On the Raising of the Body (tr. Sarah Clift, Pascale-Anne Brault, and Michael Naas)

[wandelingen]

I pick up another egg in the kitchen, I break its shell and shape. And from this precise moment there was never an egg. It is absolutely essential that I be a busy and distracted person. I am necessarily one of those people who refuse. I belong to that Masonic society of those who once saw the egg and refused it as a way to protect it. We are the ones who abstain from destroying, and by doing so are consumed. We, undercover agents dispersed among less revealing duties, we sometimes recognize each other. By a certain way of looking, by a way of shaking hands, we recognize each other and call this love. And then our disguise is unnecessary: though we don’t speak, neither do we lie, though we don’t speak the truth, neither must we dissemble any longer. Love is when we are allowed to participate a bit more. Few want love, because love is the great disillusionment with all the rest. And few can bear losing the rest of their illusions. There are people who would volunteer for love, thinking love will enrich their personal lives. On the contrary: love is ultimately poverty. Love is not having. Moreover love is the disillusionment of what you thought was love. And it’s no prize, that’s why it doesn’t make people vain, love is no prize, it’s a status granted exclusively to people who, without it, would defile the egg with their personal suffering. That doesn’t make love an honorable exception; it is granted precisely to those bad agents, those who would ruin everything if they weren’t allowed to guess at things vaguely

The Egg and the Chicken by Clarice Lispector