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The Chimeric Certainty of Love
Common currency of occasionally profound value.
This article is adapted from an essay I wrote at university that was joint-winner of a competition.
“And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is some thing in you that wants to move out of it.”[1] — Rainer Maria Rilke
The philosopher, Jacques Derrida once wrote,
“When we cannot grasp or show the thing…when the present cannot be presented, we signify, we go through the detour of the sign”.[2]
If we are to communicate experience, our shifting economy of signs — the rising and falling tides of culturally inscribed meanings — cannot be circumvented. Consequently, when addressing ‘love’ (one of the most expansive, protean, and widely circulated terms in human history) we should be especially conscious of what Derrida tells us. We must remind ourselves that ‘love’ is, primarily, a word, and the swirling hysteria, dancing nerves, aching sorrow, all the centrifugal ripples that flow through time immemorial, belie a hidden epicenter that is, at its heart, a sign.
Philosophers attempt to classify, poets exploit, biologists reduce, advertisers…
