ARTicles vol. 1 i.3: Unreasonable Desire

I am seventy-four years old, as I write this: I have lived a long time, then: a long time indeed, alas! I am wrong: properly speaking, I live only in this instant that passes; there was another, which is already no longer, in which I have lived, it is true; but in which I no longer exist; and it is as if I had not been; this could I not say that my life does not last; that it is always beginning? This young and old, we would all be of the same age. A child is born, as I write, and as I see it, aged as I am, he is already as old as I. That is what it seems to me and on this basis, what is life? A perpetual dream, except for the instant one possesses, and which in its turn becomes a dream.

— Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux, 1762

Desire seems to the lover to demolish time in the instant it happens, and to gather all other moments into itself in unimportance. Yet, simultaneously, the lover perceives more sharply than anyone else the difference between the “now” of his desire and all the other moments called “then” that line up before and after it. One of those moments called “then” contains his beloved.

— Anne Carson, Eros and the Bittersweet, 1986

Biologists now recognize that the female bluebird, long thought to be an exemplar of lifelong monogamy, often indulges in what they delicately term “EPCs,” or “extra-pair copulations.” While her mate back at the nest may be a good provider, he is, all too often, dull. So she turns to her lover for gifts, the thrill of amorous attention, and possibly also for better genes.

— Richard Conniff, The Natural History of the Rich, 2002

The true self cannot be fully described. It is less like the articulation of meaning through words which allow one to isolate a unit of meaning as in the location of a signifier, and more akin to the movement of symphonic music. Each individual is unique, and the true self is an idiom of organization that seeks its personal world through the use of an object. The fashioning of life is something like an aesthetic: a form revealed through one’s way of being.

— Christopher Bollas, Forces of Destiny,1989

Dominance is almost as basic to primate life as breathing, and perhaps as subconscious. One intriguing study suggested that we unwittingly declare our dominance or submission every time we open our mouths. Researchers from Kent State University taped twenty-five interviews on the Larry King Live talk show, paying particular attention to frequencies below 500 herz. In the past, most researchers disregarded these low-frequency tones as meaningless noise, a low, nonverbal humming on which the spoken word rides. But as they toted up their results, sociologists Stanford Gregory and Stephen Webster noticed that in every conversation the low-frequency tones of the two speakers quickly converged.

— Richard Conniff, The Natural History of the Rich, 2002

The male blue peafowl is nothing less than an ostentatious sexual advertisement, proclaiming with strident voice and ornate plumage that he is the best source of sperm. Designed to be seen by the hen from the front, his display begins with him lifting and spreading his train; it forms an enormous fan, decorated with serried ranks of beautifully irridescent eye-spots, framing his glossy blue neck and underparts. The impact of the performance is enhanced when he rustles the feathers in his train so that the metallic eye-spots shimmer, suggesting a great deal more movement than is actually happening. If the show is a hit, the peahen to which it is directed appears mesmerized and the male is allowed to mount her.

— John Sparks, Battle of the Sexes, 1999

Marivaux’s theater parallels rococo architecture, with its “play” of trompe l’oeil, illusions, surprises, and mirrors. The aesthetic of architecture and some painting of the period playfully enjoyed the game of illusion and the deception of ornamentation.

— Susan Jonas, False Smiles, 1990

When Narcissus died the pool of his pleasure changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, and the Oreads came weeping through the woodland that they might sing to the pool and give it comfort. And when they saw that the pool had changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, they loosened the green tresses of their hair and cried to the pool and said, “We do not wonder that you should mourn in this manner for Narcissus, so beautiful was he.” “But was Narcissus beautiful?” said the pool. “Who should know that better than you?” answered the Oreads. “Us did he ever pass by, but you he sought for, and would lie on your banks and look down at you, and in the mirror of your waters he would mirror his own beauty.” And the pool answered, “But I loved Narcissus because, as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored.”

— Oscar Wilde, Poems in Prose, 1894

It is a great and beautiful sight to see man emerging from, as it were, nothing through his own efforts, emerging through the enlightenment of his reason from the darkness in which nature had enveloped him; rising up above himself; thrusting forward with his intelligence into the celestial regions; traversing with giant steps the vast expanse of the universe, just like the sun; and, what is even greater and more difficult, returning into himself to study man there and to know his nature, his duties and his purpose. All these miracles have been repeated only in recent generations.

— Rousseau, Discours sur les sciences et les arts, 1750

Barbara Whitney is a first-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T/MXAT. Institute for Advanced Theater Training.

Program: Wings of Desire