If we started counting the number of songs, poems, paintings, novels, or love films, we would never see the end of them .

Indeed, it is a subject that seems endless, because there are always many ways to understand and express it, starting from the purest manifestations of romanticism, up to the controversial revelations of the Marquis de Sade or Anaïs Nin.

Today the idea of ​​love as a “lifeline” to cling to triumphs, in an era where everything collapses and renews itself, as if nothing had happened.

Love represents the promised oasis, even if it sometimes turns into a battlefield. It also represents self-reaffirmation, even if it sometimes implies losing ourselves a little in this other that we love.

It is also sometimes an opportunity to free ourselves from our cynicism and our sarcasm, faced with a life that we consider unhappy, but also from our skepticism, if we believe that there is no point in believing in it.

What is so enigmatic about a feeling which, a few centuries ago, did not arouse any questions or curiosity?

The legend of Charlemagne

Here is a little legend referring to the greatest warrior of all time:

“The Emperor Charlemagne, already in his advanced years, fell in love with a German young lady.The barons of the court were concerned to see that the sovereign, prey to a romantic passion which made him forget his royal dignity, was neglecting the duties of the Empire.When the young lady died suddenly, the dignitaries were relieved, but only for a while, because Charlemagne's love had not died out.The emperor, who had brought back the embalmed body, did not want to part with her.Archbishop Turpin, astonished by this macabre passion, supposed an enchantment and wanted to examine the corpse.He then found, hidden under the corpse's tongue, a ring set with a precious stone.The ring was barely in Turpin's hands when Charlemagne hastened to bury the young lady.And his love suddenly fell on the archbishop.To put an end to this delicate situation, Turpin threw the ring into Lake Constance.Charlemagne then fell in love with Lake Constance and categorically refused to move away from it.It is obvious that, with this legend, Calvino wanted to take a completely new look at the ardor of love.He didn't even bother to name this poor young lady, who was initially the reason for such passion.He was content to call her “a German young lady”.He then gets lost in the labyrinths of the absurd: a very famous warrior who venerates a corpse and has it embalmed... Doeshe then suggest to us that love does not always respond to reason?That it breaks the limits and brings us into the world of the irrational?From the unconscious perhaps?

Finally, he makes this important revelation to us: love is part of the magical order. It would, in fact, have a lot to do with ourselves and with our inner demons, rather than with the person for whom we feel this love.

The coordinates of love

If you characterize yourself as a romantic and are eternally nostalgic for love, it is likely that this point displeases you.

Love mainly represents a certain suffering, of course, but a “positive suffering” from which no one wants to get rid of.

Florentino Aroza, character in the novel “ Love in the Time of Cholera ”, firmly rejected all those who wanted to protect him from this ember that he preferred to consume again and again . If we follow this logic, love evolves, and that is why it makes the walls of our life tremble.

If there is anything valuable about this feeling, it is that it prevents us from falling into the abyss into which we sometimes feel like we are falling .

It allows us to face emptiness and reminds us that “if God gave us life only to take it away from us, he also offered us love to fill it” (Juan Manuel Roca).

Love is perhaps found in the great paradox that inhabits us. In the infinite solitude that each of us carries and in the illusion of overcoming it. In the truth of our destiny as individuals and in the never-fulfilled promise of forming oneness with another human being.

Perhaps in this same enigmatic phrase with which Pablo Picasso elucidated the reason for art: “a lie that allows us to reveal the truth”.

Photo: Joe Philipson – Via Flickr