Love and sex
Sumana mentions a piece by Annalee Newitz (whose writing I've sometimes read in the past; she likes to write about free software reasonably often). This one, on the other hand, is about love and sex, and what they have to do with one another. Newitz mentions the "scarcity economy of love" and suggests that it's a problem that people either think that sex must be connected with love, or that it must not. This reminds me a lot of the divisibility problem: there, if the divisor is a divisor of the highest possible digit, the divisibility of the sum of the digits in a number must be the same as the divisibility of the number itself. Either they are both divisible, or they are both not divisibile. On the other hand, if the divisor is not a divisor of the highest possible digit, then the divisibility of the sum of the digits in a number will certainly sometimes be the same as and certainly sometimes be different from the sum of the digits of that number, depending on what number you choose. So I guess Newitz is telling us that sex and love are like the divisibility of a number and the divisibility of the sum of digits in the number, where the highest digit in the base is not itself divisible by the divisor of interest: they're sometimes the same and sometimes different, sometimes both present, sometimes neither, and sometimes either one by itself in the absence of the other, and if we assume that they're one way or the other all the time, we're sure to be mistaken eventually.
Of course, I am one of these people who are part of the problem, per Newitz's view, on account of having a traditional (in two senses) theory about the situation.
Yeah, I'm really far from being able to relate to her attitude. I go far beyond what she criticizes as unreasonable.
And, separately, alas for us if her conclusion is right:
[O]ne often hears the truism "communication is the key." The idea is that we can bridge that gulf of relationship misunderstandings if we're just "honest," and tell our sex partners up front what we expect from them. But communication and honesty can't possibly be solutions to a problem whose roots are self-delusion and plain old uncertainty. If few of us truly know what sex means to us, or what we want out of our dates, how can we be honest about our feelings unless we say something like, "Duh, I don't know"? That's the sort of honesty we could all do without.We long to use words like "honesty" when it comes to love and sex not because we are confident about our intentions but because we want to ward off the disorienting ambiguity of desire.
I remember quoting, and I'll quote again, the lines from Aeneid VI:
O tandem magnis pelagi defuncte periclis!
Sed terrae graviora manent. In regna Lavini
Dardanidae venient; mitte hanc de pectore curam;
sed non et venisse volent. Bella, horrida bella,
et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
Non Simois tibi, nec Xanthus, nec Dorica castra
defuerint; alius Latio iam partus Achilles,
natus et ipse dea; nec Teucris addita Iuno
usquam aberit; cum tu supplex in rebus egenis
quas gentes Italum aut quas non oraveris urbes!
I'll try a quick informal translation:
Oh you who passed such dangers on the sea!
But graver ones remain on land: into the kingdom
of Lavinius you Trojans will come, so send that fear away.
But you won't wish that you had come! I forsee wars,
horrible wars, the Tiber flowing red with blood.
The rivers of Troy and the enemy camps will
come back again for you; another already in Latium
Achilles waits for you, his mother, too, a goddess. And Juno
who hates you won't leave you alone: when you in dire straits
go as a beggar, what cities won't you ask for help
in Italy?
I told Zack that the best figurative translation of "Non Simois tibi ... defuerint" for Americans might be "It will be another Vietnam for you".
One reason this passage is so disturbing is its context. Aeneas has survived a long war -- in which his country was destroyed -- and then wandered for years at sea and nearly been killed there, too. He's learned that his destiny is to go to Italy and to found a new civilization there. So he dutifully heads for Italy, never having been there before, and not entirely sure he'll make it. But in Italy, he believes, "the fates offer us peaceful seats" ("Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas / ostendunt").
So now, through much effort (the theme of the first half of the poem), Aeneas has almost made it to Italy at last, and he stops by to ask this prophetess to give him more advice about his destiny. In some sense, he believes that the poem is about to end, for he's on the verge of reaching Italy, and reaching Italy was what he was supposed to do, wasn't it? And then she says this! She tells him that, not only will Italy not be peaceful, but that he'll practically have to fight the Trojan war all over again from scratch when he gets there. (Indeed, the entire second half of the Aeneid is devoted to the war Aeneas does, in fact, have to fight when he finally makes it to Italy; the Sybil wasn't joking around, and the river Tiber does run run with blood.)
The great Dryden translation has
Escap'd the dangers of the wat'ry reign,
Yet more and greater ills by land remain.
The coast, so long desir'd (nor doubt th' event),
Thy troops shall reach, but, having reach'd, repent.
Wars, horrid wars, I view -- a field of blood,
And Tiber rolling with a purple flood.
Simois nor Xanthus shall be wanting there:
A new Achilles shall in arms appear,
And he, too, goddess-born. Fierce Juno's hate,
Added to hostile force, shall urge thy fate.
To what strange nations shalt not thou resort,
Driv'n to solicit aid at ev'ry court!
I believe that the line "Sed non et venisse volent" ("But they will not also wish to have come", or Dryden's "but having reach'd, repent") must have been the most shocking to Aeneas of everything he hears in the whole poem. It's true that Aeneas gives a speech in reply in which he denies being afraid of anything, but immediately beforehand he's just expressed his state of mind and clearly shown that he was relying on reaching Italy to be the end of the story. And, directly in reply, the Sybil says no, there is a second half of the Aeneid, books seven through twelve, and in them you're going to fight your war again, another Vietnam...
Annalee Newitz is the Cumaean Sybil.
