Tuesday, March 30, 2010

C.S. Lewis on Eros

"For it is the very mark of Eros that when he is in us we had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be happy on any other terms…Eros never hesitates to say, ‘Better this than parting. Better to be miserable with her than happy without her. Let our hearts break provided they break together.’ If the voice within us does not say this, it is not the voice of Eros.”


“The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intolerable the idea that it should be transitory. In one high bound it has overleaped the massive wall of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being. Spontaneously and without effort we have fulfilled the law (towards one person) by loving our neighbor as ourselves. It is an image, a foretaste, of what we must become to all if Love Himself rules in us without a rival. It is even (well used) a preparation for that. Simply to relapse from it, merely to ‘fall our of’ love again, is – if I may coin the ugly word – a sort of disredemption. Eros is driven to promise what Eros of himself cannot perform.”

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