Men can but say, love did his reason blind,
And love’s the noblest frailty of the mind.

– John Dryden, The Indian Emperor, Act II, Scene 2

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Francis Bacon, Of Love

The stage is more beholding to love, than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief; sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury. You may observe, that amongst all the great and worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth, either ancient or recent) there is not one, that hath been transported to the mad degree of love: which shows that great spirits, and great business, do keep out this weak passion. You must except, nevertheless, Marcus Antonius, the half partner of the empire of Rome, and Appius Claudius, the decemvir and lawgiver; whereof the former was indeed a voluptuous man, and inordinate; but the latter was an austere and wise man: and therefore it seems (though rarely) that love can find entrance, not only into an open heart, but also into a heart well fortified, if watch be not well kept. It is a poor saying of Epicurus, Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus (Each of us is enough of an audience for the other); as if man, made for the contemplation of heaven, and all noble objects, should do nothing but kneel before a little idol, and make himself a subject, though not of the mouth (as beasts are), yet of the eye; which was given him for higher purposes. It is a strange thing, to note the excess of this passion, and how it braves the nature, and value of things, by this; that the speaking in a perpetual hyperbole, is comely in nothing but in love. Neither is it merely in the phrase; for whereas it hath been well said, that the arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man’s self; certainly the lover is more. For there was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself, as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, That it is impossible to love, and to be wise. Neither doth this weakness appear to others only, and not to the party loved; but to the loved most of all, except the love be reciproque. For it is a true rule, that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque, or with an inward and secret contempt. By how much the more, men ought to beware of this passion, which loseth not only other things, but itself! As for the other losses, the poet’s relation doth well figure them: that he that preferred Helena, quitted the gifts of Juno and Pallas. For whosoever esteemeth too much of amorous affection, quitteth both riches and wisdom. This passion hath his floods, in very times of weakness; which are great prosperity, and great adversity; though this latter hath been less observed: both which times kindle love, and make it more fervent, and therefore show it to be the child of folly. They do best, who if they cannot but admit love, yet make it keep quarters; and sever it wholly from their serious affairs, and actions, of life; for if it check once with business, it troubleth men’s fortunes, and maketh men, that they can no ways be true to their own ends. I know not how, but martial men are given to love: I think, it is but as they are given to wine; for perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures. There is in man’s nature, a secret inclination and motion, towards love of others, which if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable; as it is seen sometime in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth, and embaseth it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (Drivers)

There was one thing to be done before I left, an awkward, unpleasant thing that perhaps had better have been let alone. But I wanted to leave things in order and not just trust that obliging and indifferent sea to sweep my refuse away. I saw Jordan Baker and talked over and around what had happened to us together and what had happened afterward to me, and she lay perfectly still listening in a big chair.

She was dressed to play golf and I remember thinking she looked like a good illustration, her chin raised a little, jauntily, her hair the color of an autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished she told me without comment that she was engaged to another man. I doubted that though there were several she could have married at a nod of her head but I pretended to be surprised. For just a minute I wondered if I wasn’t making a mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say goodbye.

“Nevertheless you did throw me over,” said Jordan suddenly. “You threw me over on the telephone. I don’t give a damn about you now but it was a new experience for me and I felt a little dizzy for a while.”

We shook hands.

“Oh, and do you remember-” she added, “-a conversation we had once about driving a car?”

“Why – not exactly.”

“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.”

“I’m thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.”

She didn’t answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.

Anthony Hecht, The Dover Bitch

A Criticism of Life: for Andrews Wanning

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, “Try to be true to me,
And I’ll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.”
Well now, I knew this girl. It’s true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn’t judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She’s really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it’s a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come,
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d’Amour.

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Alain Badiou, Éloges de l’amour (Jealousy and Love)

…I disagree profoundly with all those who think that jealousy is a constituent element of love. The most brilliant representative of the latter is Proust, for whom jealousy is the real, intense, demonic content of amorous subjec­tivity. In my opinion, this is simply a variant of the thesis of the sceptical moralists. Jealousy is a fake parasite that feeds on love and doesn’t at all help to define it. Must every love identify an external rival before it can declare itself, before it can begin? No way! The reverse is the case: the immanent difficulties of love, the internal contradictions of the Two scene can crystal­lize around a third party, a rival, imagined or real. The difficulties love harbours don’t stem from the existence of an enemy who has been identified. They are internal to the process: the creative play of difference. Selfishness, not any rival, is love’s enemy. One could say: my love’s main enemy, the one I must defeat, is not the other, it is myself, the “myself” that prefers identity to difference, that prefers to impose its world against the world re-constructed through the filter of difference.

The opposite of love is not, as we many times or almost always think, hatred, but the fear to love.” – Elia Rodriguez

Billy Collins, Weighing the Dog

It is awkward for me and bewildering for him
as I hold him in my arms in the small bathroom,
balancing our weight on the shaky blue scale,

but this is the way to weigh a dog and easier
than training him to sit obediently on one spot
with his tongue out, waiting for the cookie.

With pencil and paper I subtract my weight
from our total to find out the remainder that is his,
and I start to wonder if there is an analogy here.

It could not have to do with my leaving you
though I never figured out what you amounted to
until I subtracted myself from our combination.

You held me in your arms more than I held you
through all those awkward and bewildering months
and now we are both lost in strange and distant neighborhoods.

Alain Badiou, Éloge de l’amour (Vérité de l’amour)

Vous rappeliez précédement que Platon avait déjà vu le lien particulier entre amour et vérité. Mais en quoi l’amour est-il, selon vous, un “procédure de vérité?”

Je soutiens que l’amour est en effet ce que j’appelle dans mon jargon de philosophie une “procédure de vérité”, c’est-á-dire une expérience où un certain type de vérité est construit. Cette vérité est tout simplement la vérité sur le Deux. La vérité de la difference comme telle. Et je pense que l’amour – ce que j’appelle la “scène du Deux” – est cette expérience. En ce sens, tout amour qui accepte l’épreuve, qui accepte la durée, qui accepte justement cette expérience du monde du point de la différence produit à sa manière une vérité nouvelle sur la différence. C’est pourquoi tout amour véritable intéresse l’humanité tout entière, si humble qu’il puisse être en apparence, si caché. Nous savons bien que les histoires d’amour passionnent tout le monde! Le philosophe doit demander pourquoi elles nous passionnent. Pourquoi tous ces films, tous ces romans, toutes ces chansons, entièrement consacrés à des histoires d’amour?  Il faut bien qu’il y ait quelque chose d’universel dans l’amour pour que ces histoires intéressent un immense public. Ce qu’il y a d’universel, c’est que tout amour propose une nouvelle expérience de vérité sur ce que c’est d’être deux et non pas un. Que le monde puisse être rencontré et expérimenté autrement que par une conscience solitaire, voilà ce dont n’importe quel amour nous donne une nouvelle preuve. Et c’est pourquoi nous aimons l’amour, comme le dit saint Augustin, nous aimons aimer, mais nous aimons aussi que d’autres aiment. Tout simplement parce que nous aimons les vérités. C’est là ce qui donne tout son sens à la philosophie – les gens aiment les vérités, même quand ils ne savent pas qu’ils les aiment.

Cette vérité semble devoir être dite, vous avez parlé de l’amour “déclaré”. Dans l’amour il y a, d’après vous, nécessairement l’étape de la déclaration. Pourquoi le fait de dire l’amour est-il si important?

Parce que la déclaration s’inscrit dans la structure de l’événement. Vous avez d’abord une rencontre. J’ai dit que l’amour commence par le caractère absolument contingent et hasardeux de la rencontre. C’est vraiment les jeux de l’amour et du hasard. Et ils sont inéluctables. Ils existent toujours, en dépit de la propagande dont je vous parlais. Mais le hasard doit, à un moment donné, être fixé: Il doit commencer une durée, justement. C’est un problème quasi métaphysique très compliqué: comment un pur hasard, au départ, va-t-il devenir le point d’appoui d’une construction de vérité? Comment cette chose qui, au fond, n’était pas prévisible et paraît liée aux imprévisibles péripéties de l’existence va-telle cependant devenir le sens complet de deux vies mêlées, appariées, qui vont faire l’expérience prolongée de la constante (re)naissance du monde par l’entremise de la différence des regards? Comment pass-t-on de la pure rencontre au paradoxe d’un seul monde où se déchiffre que nous sommes deux? C’est tout à fait mystérieux, à vrai dire. Et d’ailleurs, cela nourrit beaucoup le scepticisme à l’égard de l’amour. Pourquoi, dira-t-on, parler de grande vérité à propos du fait, banal, que quelqu’un a rencontré sa ou son collègue au boulot? Or c’est justement cela qu’il faut soutenir – un événement d’apparence, insignifiante, mais qui en réalité est un événement radical de la vie microscopique, est porteur, dans son obstination et dans sa durée, d’une signification universelle. Il est vrai cependant que “le hasard doit être fixé”. C’est une expression de Malarmé… Il ne le dit pas à propos de l’amour, il le dit à propos du poème. Mais on peut très bien l’appliquer à l’amour et à la déclaration d’amour, avec les terribles difficultés et angoisses diverses qui lui sont associées. Au demeurant, les affinités entre le poème et la déclaration d’amour sont bien connues. Dans les deux cas, il  y a un risque énorme qu’on fait endosser au langage. Il s’agit de prononcer une parole dont les effets, dans l’existence, peuvent être pratiquement infinis. C’est bien aussi le désir du poème. Les mots les plus simples se chargent alors d’une intensité presque insoutenable. Déclarer l’amour, c’est passer de l’événement-rencontre au commencement d’une construction de vérité. C’est fixer le hasard de la rencontre sous la forme d’un commencement. Et souvent ce qui commence là dure si longtemps, est si chargé de nouveauté et d’expérience du monde que, rétrospectivement, cela apparaît non plus du tout comme contingent et hasardeux, comme au tout début, mais pratiquement comme une nécessité. C’est ainsi que le hasard est fixé: l’absolue contingence de la rencontre de quelqu’un que je ne connaissais pas finit par prendre l’allure d’un destin. La déclaration d’amour est le passage du hasard au destin, et c’est pourquoi elle est si périlleuse, si chargée d’une sorte de trac effrayant. La deééclaration d’amour, d’ailleurs, n’a pas lieu forcément une seule fois, elle peut être longue, diffuse, confuse, compliquée, déclarée et re-déclarée, et vouée à être re-déclarée encore. C’est le moment où le hasard est fixé. Où vous vous dites: ce qui s’est passé là, en tout cas pour moi, quelque chose qui m’engage. Voilà: je t’aime. Si “je t’aime” n’est pas une ruse pour coucher avec quelqu’un, ce qui peut arriver, si ce n’est pas cette ruse, qu’est-ce que c’est? Qu’est-ce qui est dit là? Ce n’est pas simple du tout, de dire “je t’aime”. On a l’habitude de considérer ce petit membre de phrase comme absolument usé et insignificant. D’ailleurs, quelquefois, pour dire “je t’aime”, on préfère employer d’autres mots, plus poétiques ou moins usés. Mais c’est toujours pour dire: ce qui était hasard, je vais en tirer autre chose. Je vais en tirer une durée, une obstination, un engagement, une fidélité. Alors, fidélité, c’est un mot que j’emploie ici dans mon jargon philosophique en le retirant de son contexte habituel. Il signifie justement le passage d’une rencontre hasardeuse à une construction aussi solide que si elle avait été nécessaire.

À ce propos, il importe de citer le très bel ouvrage d’André Gorz, Lettre à D. Histoire d’un amour, déclaration d’amour du philosophe à sa femme, Dorine, récit d’un amour qui, si je puis dire, a duré toujours et dont voici les premières lignes: “Tu va avoir quatre-vingt-deux ans. Tu as rapetissé de six centimètres, tu ne pèses que quarante-cinq kilos et tu es toujours belle, gracieuse et désirable. Cela fait cinquante-huit ans que nous vivons ensemble et je t’aime plus que jamais. Je porte de nouveau au creux de ma poitrine un vide dévorante que seule comble la chaleur de ton corps contre le mien”. Quel sens donnez-vous à la fidélité?

La fidélité n’a-t-elle pas un sens beaucoup plus considérable que la seule promesse de ne pas coucher avec quelqu’un d’autre? No montre-telle pas précisément que le “je t’aime” initial est un engagement qui n’a besoin d’aucune consécration particulière, l’engagement de construire une durée, afin que la rencontre soit délivrée de son hasard? Mallarmé voyait le poème comme “le hasard vaincu mot par mot”. Dans l’amour, la fidélité désigne cette longue victoire: le hasard de la rencontre vaincu jour après jour dans l’invention d’une durée, dans la naissance d’un monde. Pourquoi dit-on si souvent: je t’aimerai toujours? À condition, bien sûr, que ce ne soit pas une ruse. Les moralistes, évidement, s’en sont beaucoup moqués, disant qu’en réalité ce n’est jamais vrai. D’abord, ce n’est pas vrai que ce n’est jamais vrai. Il y a des gens qui s’aiment toujours, et il y en a beaucoup plus qu’on ne le croit ou qu’on ne le dit. Et tout le monde sait que décider, surtout unilatéralement, la fin d’un amour est toujours un désastre, quelles que soient les excellentes raisons qu’on met en avant. Cela ne m’est arrivé qu’une fois dans mon existence, d’abandonner un amour. C’était mon premier amour, et j’ai été progressivement si conscient que cet abandon était une faute que je suis revenu vers cet amour inaugural, tard, bien tard – la mort de l’aimée approchait – mais avec une intensité et une nécessité incomparables. Ensuite, je n’ai jamais renoncé. Il y a eu des drames et des déchirements et des incertitudes, mais je n’ai plus jamais quitté un amour. Et je crois bien être assuré du point que celles que j’ai aimées, ce fut et c’est réellement pour toujours. Je said donc intimement que la polémique sceptique est inexacte. Et deuxièmement, si le “je t’aime” est toujours, à beaucoup d’égards, l’annonce d’un “je t’aime pour toujours”, c’est qu’en effect il fixe le hasard dans le registre de l’éternité. N’ayons pas peur des mots! La fixation du hasard, c’est une annonce d’éternité. Et en un certain sens, tout amour se déclare éternel: c’est contenu dans la déclaration… Tout le problème, après, est d’inscrire cette éternité dans le temps. Parce que, au fond, c’est ça l’amour: une déclaration d’éternité qui doit se réaliser ou se déployer comme elle peut dans le temps. Une descente de l’éternité dans le temps. C’est pour cette raison que c’est un sentiment si intense. Vous comprenez, les sceptiques, ils nous font quand même bien rire, parce que, si l’on tentait de renoncer à l’amour, de ne plus y croire, ce serait un véritable désastre subjectif, et tout le monde le sait. La vie, il faut bien le dire, serait fortement décolorée! Donc, l’amour reste une puissance. Une puissance subjective. Une des rares expériences où, à partir d’un hasard inscrit dans l’instant, vous tentez une proposition d’éternité. “Toujours” et le mot par lequel, en fait, on dit l’éternité. Parce qu’on ne peut pas savoir ce que veut dire ce “toujours” ni quelle est sa durée. “Toujours”, ça veut dire “éternellement”. Simplement, c’est un engagement dans le temps, parce qu’il faut être Claudel pour croire que ça dure au-delà du temps, dans le monde fabuleux de l’après-mort. Mais que l’éternité puisse exister dans le temps même de la vie, c’est ce que l’amour, dont l’essence est la fidélité au sens que je donne à ce mot, vient prouver. Le bonheur, en somme! Oui, le bonheur amoureux est la preuve que le temps peut accueillir l’éternité. Comme aussi en sont des preuves l’enthousiasme politique quand on participe à une action révolutionnaire, le plaisir que délivrent les œuvres d’art et la joie presque surnaturelle qu’on éprouve quand on comprend enfin, en profondeur, une théorie scientifique.

Posons que l’amour est l’avènement du Deux comme tel, la “scène du Deux”. Et l’enfant? L’enfant ne vient-il pas altérer ou rompre cette “scène du Deux”? N’est-il pas le “Un” qui rassemble le “Deux” des amoureux, mais également un Trois qui peut les prolonger mais aussi les séparer?

C’est une question tout à fait profonde et intéressante. Un ami, Jérôme Bennaroch, qui est un Juif de l’étude, accepte ma thèse sur l’amour jusqu’à un certain point. Il me dit toujours: l’amour, oui, c’est l’épreuve du Deux, c’est sa déclaration, son éternité, mais il y a un moment où il doit faire sa preuve dans l’ordre de l’Un. C’est-à-dire qu’il doit revenir à l’Un. Et la figure à la fois symbolique et réelle de cet Un, c’est l’enfant. La destination véritable de l’amour, c’est quand mème qu’il y ait l’enfant particulier qu’il fallait, dans ce cas, dénier le caractère amoureux aux couples stériles, homosexuels, etc. Puis, plus profondément, je lui ai dit: l’enfant fait partie en effect de l’escape de l’amour, en tant qu’il en est ce que j’appelle, dans mon jargon, un point. Un point, c’est un moment particulier sur lequel un événement se resserre, où il doit en quelque sorte être rejoué, comme s’il revenait sous une forme déplacée, modifiée, mais vous obligeant à “redéclarer”. Un point, en somme, c’est quand les conséquences d’une construction de vérité, qu’elle soit politique, amoureuse, artistique ou scientifique, vous obligent soudain à refaire un choix radical, comme au tout début, quand vous avez accepté et déclaré l’événement. Il faut à nouveau dire “j’accepte ce hasard, je le désire, je l’assume”. Dans le cas de l’amour, il faut, et souvent de toute urgence, refaire sa déclaration. On pourrait dire: il faut (re)faire le point. Et je pense que l’enfant, le désir d’enfant, la naissance, c’est ça. Il fait partie du processus amoureux, c’est évident, sous la forme d’un point pour l’amour. On sait qu’il y a pour tout couple une épreuve autour de la naissance, à la fois un miracle et une difficulté. Autour de l’enfant, et précisément parce qu’il est un, il va falloir redéployer le Deux. Le Deux ne va plus pouvoir continuer à s’expérimenter dans le monde comme il le faisait avant qu’on soit confronté à ce point. Je ne nie pas du tout que l’amour soit séquentiel, autrement dit qu’il ne roule pas tout seul. Il y a des points, des épreuves, des tentations, des apparitions neuves et, à chaque fois, il faut rejouer la “scène du Deux”, trouver les termes d’une nouvelle déclaration. Inauguralement déclaré, l’amour doit aussi être “re-déclaré”. Et c’est pourquoi l’amour est aussi à l’origine de crises existentielles violentes. Comme tout procédure de vérité…

English Translation: You were reminding us earlier that Plato had already identified the particular link that exists between love and truth. But in what way do you think that love is a “truth procedure”?

I believe that love is indeed what I call in my own philosophical jargon a “truth procedure”, that is, an experience whereby a certain kind of truth is constructed. This truth is quite simply the truth about Two: the truth that derives from difference as such. And I think that love – what I call the “Two scene” – is this experience. In this sense, all love that accepts the challenge, commits to enduring, and embraces this experience of the world from the perspective of difference produces in its way a new truth about difference.

That is why love that is real is always of interest to the whole of humanity, however humble, however hidden, that love might seem on the surface. We know how people get carried away by love stories! A philosopher must ask why that happens. Why are there so many films, novels, and songs that are entirely given over to love stories? There must be something universal about love for these stories to interest such an enormous audience. What is universal is that all love suggests a new experience of truth about what it is to be two and not one. That we can encounter and experience the world other than through a solitary consciousness: any love what­ soever gives us new evidence of this. And that is why we like to love; as St Augustine says, we like to love, but we also like others to love us: quite simply because we love truths. That is what gives philosophy its meaning: people like truths, even when they don’t know that they like them.

It seems that this truth needs to be spoken, and you have talked about love that is “declared”. According to you, of necessity, there is a stage in love when love is declared. Why is it so vital for love to be spoken?

Because the declaration is inscribed in the structure of the event itself. First, you have an encounter. I pointed out how love begins with the wholly contingent, random character of the encounter. These really are games of love and chance. And they are unavoidable. They always exist, despite that publicity hype I mentioned. But chance, at a given moment, must be curbed. It must turn into a process that can last. This is a very difficult, almost metaphysical problem: how can what is pure chance at the outset become the fulcrum for a construction of truth? How can something that was basically unpre­dictable and seemed tied to the unpredictable vagaries of existence nevertheless become the entire meaning of two lives that have met, paired off, that will engage in the extended experi­ence of the constant (re)-birth of the world via the mediation of the difference in their gazes? How do you move from a mere encounter to the paradox of a single world where it is revealed that we are two? It is a complete mystery. And this is what really nourishes scepticism about love. People will say, why talk about great truth in respect of the quite banal fact that So and So met his or her colleague at work? That’s exactly what we must emphasise: an apparently insig­nificant act, but one that is a really radical event in life at a micro-level, bears universal meaning in the way it persists and endures.

Nevertheless, it is right that “chance must be curbed”…something Mallarmé said… He says it about poetry, not about love. But his words can be quite usefully applied to love and the declaration of love, with the terrible difficulties and varieties of anguish they bring. Besides, the affinities between poems and declarations of love are well known. In both cases, huge risks are involved that are dependent on language itself. It is about uttering a word the effects of which, in existence, can be almost infinite. That is also the desire driving a poem. The simplest words become charged with an intensity that is almost intolerable. To make a declaration of love is to move on from the event- encounter to embark on a construction of truth. The chance nature of the encounter morphs into the assumption of a beginning. And often what starts there lasts so long, is so charged with novelty and experience of the world that in retrospect it doesn’t seem at all random and contingent, as it appeared initially, but almost a necessity. That is how chance is curbed: the absolute contingency of the encounter with someone I didn’t know finally takes on the appearance of destiny. The declaration of love marks the transition from chance to destiny, and that’s why it is so perilous and so burdened with a kind of horrifying stage fright. Moreover, the declaration of love isn’t necessarily a one-off; it can be protracted, diffuse, confused, entangled, stated and re-stated, and even destined to be re-stated yet again. That is the moment when chance is curbed, when you say to yourself: I must tell the other person about what happened, about that encounter and the incidents within the encounter. I will tell the other that something that commits me took place, at least as I see it. In a word: I love you. If “I love you” isn’t simply a ploy to sleep with somebody, which can be the case. If it isn’t a ploy, what is it? What’s being said there? It isn’t at all easy to say “I love you”. That small sentence is usually thought to be completely meaningless and banal. Moreover, people sometimes prefer to use other more poetic, less commonplace words to say “I love you”. But what they are always saying is: I shall extract something else from what was mere chance. I’m going to extract something that will endure, something that will persist, a commitment, a fidelity. And here I am using the word “fidelity” within my own philosophical jargon, stripped of its usual connotations. It means precisely that transition from random encounter to a construc­tion that is resilient, as if it had been necessary.

In this context, I would like to quote from the very beautiful work by André Gorz, Letter to D., the declaration of love made by the philosopher to his wife, Dorine, and the narration of a love that, if I may say so, has always endured: its opening lines are, “You’ll soon be eighty-two. You have shrunk six centimetres, you only weigh forty-five kilos yet you are as beautiful, gracious and desirable as ever. We have now lived together for fifty-eight years and I love you more than ever. In the hollow of my chest I can feel again that ravaging emptiness that can only be filled by the warmth of your body against mine.” What meaning do you give to fidelity?

Isn’t the meaning of fidelity much broader than the simple promise not to sleep with someone else? Doesn’t it in fact show that the initial “I love you” is a commitment requiring no particular conse­cration, the commitment to construct something that will endure in order to release the encounter from its randomness? Mallarmé saw a poem as “chance defeated word by word”. In love, fidelity signifies this extended victory: the randomness of an encounter defeated day after day through the invention of what will endure, through the birth of a world. Why do people so often say: I will always love you? Provided, of course, that it isn’t a ploy. The moralists have naturally mocked that, saying it is never in fact true. Firstly, it isn’t true that it is never true. There are people who always love each other, and a lot more than you might think or say.

Everybody knows that deciding to break off such love, particularly unilaterally, is always a disaster, whatever the excellent reasons put forward to support such a move. I have only once in my life given up on a love. It was my first love, and then gradually I became so aware this step had been a mistake that I tried to recover that initial love, late, very late – the death of the loved one was approaching – but with a unique intensity and feeling of necessity. Subsequently, I have never renounced a love. There have been dramas and heart wrenching and doubts, but I have never again abandoned a love. And I feel really assured by the fact that the women I have loved I have loved for always. So I have personal reasons for knowing that the sceptics’ barb is far from the truth. And secondly if “I love you” is always, in most respects, the heralding of ‘I will always love you”, it is in effect locking chance into the framework of eternity. We shouldn’t be afraid of words. The locking in of chance is an anticipation of eternity. And to an extent, every love states that it is eternal: it is assumed within the declaration…

The problem then resides in inscribing this eternity within time. Because, basically, that is what love is: a declaration of eternity to be fulfilled or unfurled as best it can be within time: eternity descending into time. That’s why it is such an intense feeling. In the end, you know, the sceptics even make us laugh, because, if one tried to give up love, to stop believing in it, it would be a genuine, subjective disaster and everybody knows this. Life, one must say, would become very grey. So love remains powerful, subjectively powerful: one of those rare experiences where, on the basis of chance inscribed in a moment, you attempt a declaration of eternity. “Always” is the word used to declare eternity. Because you cannot know what that “always” means or how long it will last. “Always” means “eternally”. It is simply a commitment within time, because you have to be a Claudel to believe that love endures beyond time, in the fabulous world of the after­ life. But love, the essence of which is fidelity in the meaning I give to this word, demonstrates how eternity can exist within the time span of life itself. Happiness, in a word! Yes, happiness in love is the proof that time can accommo­date eternity. And you can also find proof in the political enthusiasm you feel when participating in a revolutionary act, in the pleasure given by works of art and the almost supernatural joy you experience when you at last grasp in depth the meaning of a scientific theory.

Let’s assume that love is the advent of Two as such, the “Two scene”. What about the child? Won’t a child alter or change this “Two scene”? Isn’t he the “One” who will bring together the “Two” of the lovers, but also a “Three” who can extend yet also separate them?

This is both a profound and interesting question. An erudite friend of mine, a practising Jew, Jérôme Bennaroch partly accepts my thesis about love. He always tells me: yes, love is proof of Two, it is their declaration and eternity but there comes a moment when Two must pass their test in the order of One. That is, it must return to One. The at once symbolic and real figure for this One is the child. And love’s true goal remains the existence of the child as the expression of the One. I have challenged his objection empirically on a number of fronts, in particular because it would require the denial of the amorous nature of sterile couples, of homosexuals, etc. Then, at a deeper level, I told him: the child is indeed part of the space marked out by love, and as such constitutes “a point” in terms of my own jargon. A point, namely a particular moment around which an event establishes itself, where it must be re-played in some way, as if it were returning in a changed, displaced form, but one forcing you “to declare afresh”. A point, in effect, comes when the consequences of a construction of a truth, whether it be political, amorous, artistic or scien­tific, suddenly compels you to opt for a radical choice, as if you were back at the beginning, when you accepted and declared the event. Once more you must say, “I accept this chance, want it and take it on board”. In the case of love, you must, often very urgently, re-make your declara­tion. You could even say: you must (re-)make the point. And I think that’s what a child, the desire to have a child, and the birth is. It forms part of the process of love, clearly, in the shape of a point of support for love. We know that a birth, at once a miracle and a challenge, is a test for all couples. It becomes necessary to redeploy Two around the child, precisely because he is One. Two cannot continue to experience each other in the world as they did before they were challenged on this point.

I don’t at all deny that love is sequential, in other words, that it’s not autonomous. There are points, tests, temptations and new appear­ances, and, each time, you must replay the “Two scene”, find the terms for a new declaration. After the initial declaration, love too must also be “re-stated”. And that is why love is also the source of violent existential crises. Like all processes involving the search for truth…