Potential Loves

Potential, as in latent, as in unawakened or unrealised.

"Hunger for the other person, the lure of their hidden depths. But once their secret has been decoded, along come these words, often pretentious and dogmatic, dissecting, pinpointing, categorizing. It all becomes comprehensible, reassuring. Now the routine of a relationship, or of indifference, can take over. The other one's mystery has been tamed. Their body reduced to a flesh and blood mechanism, desirable or otherwise. Their heart to a set of predictable responses.
At this stage a kind of murder occurs, for we kill this being of infinite and inexhaustable potential that we have encountered. We would rather deal with a verbal construct than a living person..."
Andrei Makine, "The Woman Who Waited", p. 3.


Tiutchev- "O, how our love is murderous"

"O, how our love is murderous,
The dearer something is to us
The surer are we to destroy it
In passion's savage blindness!
Was it so long ago you said,
Proud of your victory: she's mine . . .
Barely a year gone - stop and think,
What has remained of her?
Where are the roses in her cheeks,
Her smiling lips and shining eyes?
Rivers of scalding tears
Have scorched and burned them all.
Do you remember how you met,
Your very first, your fateful tete-а-tete;
Her gaze enchanting and her words,
Her laughter --lively, child-like?
What have you now? Where is it all?
Was it a lasting dream?
Alas, like northern summers,
It was a fleeting guest!
For her your love was naught but
Fate's awful judgment.
It weighed upon her life,
With undeserved shame.
A life of sacrifice, a life of trials!
Deep in her soul
She cherished memories . . .
Yet even they've betrayed her.
And earthly life has turned against her,
Its charms have disappeared. . .
The surging crowd's ground in the dirt
All that had flourished in her heart.
And what like ashes has she gathered
After her long torment?
Pain, the cruel pain of bitterness,
Pain without cease and without tears!
O, how our love is murderous,
The dearer something is to us
The surer are we to destroy it
In passion's savage blindness!"