I’m currently reading the classic novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. I recently got to page 345 and came across a part that completely floored me. Okay, maybe the reason it stood out so clearly is simply because I’m a girl. Yes – I love romantic films, yes – I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love In The Time Of Cholera and swooned at Florentino’s selfless and enduring love for Fermina.
Pic is where the CCM film was shot.
What I truly love about books is that they allow me to travel all over the world (and are much cheaper than a plane ticket). For example, Corelli dropped me smack dab in the middle of Greece. In this passage, a Greek father is talking to his daughter, who’s fallen for an Italian soldier. He explains to her the difference between infatuation and real, true, lasting love.
Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation [open declaration] of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.
And there you have it. Love, defined.
April
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