Carmen



This weekend I went to the Opera to see Bizet's Carmen. Although this was far from being a great performance, I came away admiring Carmen's character. Known for being a beauty, Carmen arouses men's interests by her playful disenchantment. She is fiercely proud, but passionate to the point of danger. Her heart opens widely to each of her lovers and she is above the scruples of society, moving on once the magic is over. Far from being a loose woman, Carmen is honest enough to recognize the limits of a human heart and refuses to live a lie in any man's arms. She prefers to stay free even if it means pain, disreputation, and even, ultimately death.

I have not made up my own mind on these matters. There are days when I wish to be as free as Carmen: abandoning myself for each love then moving on once the last ember of passion has blown out. And then, quite as fiercely, I crave a stabler romance that can withstand the storms of the heart and conquer time with it's steadfastness.

I suppose that in order to make up my mind about this, I have to define love for myself. Does love, like Shakespeare wrote, look "upon tempests and is never shaken?" Or is it the very thing that creates storms washing away the cares of the world in a violent night of winds and rains before abating at dawn?

Tradition dictates the former. We are bred to aspire to marriage and a partnership with one person. The image of marital bliss is enriched with shared triumphs and surmounted trials. We are taught to see merit in endurance. Those who sing the praises of monogamy speak of family and also of the time freed to seek out wisdom from other sources, to devote the energy we would have spent on amorous pursuit on loftier ideals. I suppose I have to agree with this, seduction is very taxing business and leaves very little time to anything else. Our minds, hearts and bodies, once removed from the game of love, have a chance to grow outside of our relationship. But is this not the very thing that should make lifelong partnership all the harder? Do we not, once we grow, grow apart? It seems to me that the second option of freed passion makes natural sense: for once the love we shared with another has run out, it should push us on to someone more suited to our new evolved personas.

Of course the life of freed passion has it's perils too: it is pock marked with heartbreak and the end could very well spell years of loneliness. But along the way the ups and downs of romantic entaglements color our lives and allow us the freedom to pursue not only our hearts' desires but also the cravings of our minds, souls and bodies. For, which each new love, we are introduced to an entirely new world filled with another's experience and richness.

There is a point in Carmen where she faces this very choice. Don Jose re-appears in her life and begs her to return to him and the life they had together. To her the choice is clear: no matter how uncertain her future with Escamillo, her new lover, is, she prefers it to the predictability of live with Don Jose. So much, that she is willing to die for it.

This is all for the sake of arguement since, I do believe in everlasting, enduring love. I have not found it yet, which perhaps makes me wonder about the merits of passing fancies...

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