love
‘How the French Invented Love’ – SFGate
‘How the French Invented Love’ – SFGate
How the French Invented Love
Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance
By Marilyn Yalom
(Harper Perennial; 400 pages; $15.99)
Americans are endlessly intrigued by the French: How do they stay so thin? Why do their children devour cassoulet and green beans without complaining? And how do they pull off all those adulterous affairs, menages a trois, same-sex liaisons and romantic reveries? What inspires them to love so passionately, anyway?
To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you’re getting this down.
Woody Allen, Love and Death