How often has a love apparently dead resuscitated as live as ever,
probably more alive than before; and this, heralded as a miracle, is one
of the usual mysteries of the heart, for life was not extinguished, but
only latent, as no dead, really and truly dead, with the exception of
Lazarus, has ever been seen to rise again. A nerve was still sensitive,
a desire could still be resuscitated, and the apparently dead comes to
life again. Physicians remark that apparent death is much more frequent
in cases of hysteria, catalepsy and in all forms of neurosis; it is then
natural that many loves, alive but believed to be dead, have been
interred through a most cruel mistake, since an organism more nervous,
more cataleptic and more hysterical than love is difficult to find in
the entire world of the living. In our case, however, the burial is less
dangerous, because love itself opens every coffin, every grave,
overturns every clod and appears to you saying: "Do not weep; here I
am!"
Very rarely does love die a violent death, and cases called by that name
are wounds, ruptures, syncopes and nothing more. Real death occurs
through senility and after long illness. Duty frequently commands not to
love him or her who suddenly has seemed base and infamous to us; but
love, sentenced to death, weeps, despairs, but does not want to die.
Sent back to prison, without light, without food, it defies hunger,
darkness, cold, but does not die. The public, perhaps, believes that it
has disappeared from the face of the earth, as has happened with
illustrious prisoners plunged into the stillness of a castle; but love
lives in those depths and groans, convulsed by a prolonged agony, until
at last, with him who feels it, it dies a merciful death.
If the appearance of a new creature on the path of life seems to kill
love violently, it is because it was not true love; and if it really
were such, the battle will be relentless and long, and the Prince of
Affections will die, as in other cases, a lingering death. When we shall
once and forever have ceased to call love that which is the desire of
the flesh and the pride of possession, that sentiment will appear to us
as a much more beautiful thing, greater and more honorable than is
ordinarily supposed; many miracles will at last be explained as very
simple physical phenomena, and many obscure mysteries will be exposed to
light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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