In Praise of Forgiveness. Massimo Recalcati

in a world that is no longer the same one as before, that of the One on their own, because this world is lived in a brand new way as a Two. It is, therefore, a new opening onto the world, a world viewed not from the point of view of one alone, but of the Two.¹⁷ It is only this new perspective that allows us to experience the New in the Same, as happens every time the spring wind blows into Milan exposing the blue peaks of the Alps every year at the end of every winter. It is the Same wind each time every year, and each time every year it is new. It is the same surprise that accompanies the Two in seeing mushrooms spring up on forest floors, or observing the portulaca flowers on the terrace of the house by the sea resist the force of the wind.¹⁸ Each time the Same and each time entirely New. Is this not the Same enchantment that accompanies a life spent together in lasting love, in love that resists the empty siren song of the New, even in its most modest ordinariness? Is it not her that I always love as Other in being herself? Is the same day not a New one in light of love? Is it not what I have that, thanks to love, becomes New each time? Is it not love that reveals the repetition of everyday things to be pure poetry, like the strength of the image that does not pass, that is suspended and sits outside of time? The Morandiesque attention to things in the world that is found in the most recent poetry by Francesco Scarabicchi is one of the highest and most intense glorifications of the shared time of things bending towards the eternal.¹⁹ This is why when Lacan dedicated one of his most intense and original Seminars to the subject of love he decided to call it Encore, again, again, encore. ²⁰ ‘Again’ is, in essence, the basic form taken by the demand for love. Again, again, the Same again, again like today, again like now, once more, again. To want the Same again, the Same that is never enough, that you want to drink because it quenches thirst and, at the same time, feeds a new thirst that is never quenched, but that grows precisely as you try to quench it without every truly managing. It is only in the gift of life that there is a growth of the self, a strengthening and expansion of life that is able to live the absolute exposure to the desire of the Other. This is one of the decisive theses put forward by Saint Augustine: love is not cupiditas [lust, greed], it is not the greedy consumption of the Other, but the gift of oneself that causes those who give it to grow.²¹ Is this not deep down the strange substance from which love is made? A substance that the more it is given, the more it concedes, the more it is consumed, the more it enriches, grows and expands. This is why the young Hegel wanted to carve all of the mystery and power of love into the words Shakespeare’s Juliet says to her Romeo: ‘The more I give to thee, the more I have.’²²

Notes

      1 1. T. W. Adorno, Minima moralia: Reflections on an Offended Life, Verso, London 2005, pp. 181–2.

      2 2. See Freud, ‘Contributions to the Psychology of Love’. A highly informative Lacanian reading of Freud’s text can be found in Jacques-Alain Miller, Logiche della vita amorosa [Logic of a Love Life], ed. A. Di Ciaccia, Astrolabio, Rome 1997, pp. 11–57.

      3 3. On this new and specific degradation of love, see the particularly accurate observations made by Charles Melman in L’uomo senza gravità: Conversazioni con Jean-Pierre Lebrun [Man Without Gravity: Conversations with Jean-Pierre Lebrun], trans. Bruno Mondadori, Milan 2011, pp. 32–4. For the French original, see L’homme sans gravité, Gallimard, Paris 2005.

      4 4. An intense and ironic depiction of this dilemma can be found in Antonio Scurati’s novel Il padre infedele [The Unfaithful Father], Bompiani, Milan 2013.

      5 5. Robin Dunbar, The Science of Love, Faber and Faber, London 2012, p. 50.

      6 6. Dunbar, Science of Love, pp. 34–42.

      7 7. Lacanian psychoanalyst Darian Leader goes even further in this direction with cutting irony: ‘a man who vows eternal love or demands eternal fidelity is also likely to talk silly’, in Promises Lovers Make When It Gets Late, Faber and Faber, London 1998, p. 10.

      8 8. This is the thesis that Freud broadly develops in ‘Instincts and Their Vicissitudes’, demonstrating how in the build-up of instincts the only thing that really counts for the drive is its own satisfaction. The object, therefore, appears only as a means through which the drive is satisfied, as ‘[that which] is most variable about an instinct’, Freud writes. See Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XIV (1914–1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, Vintage, London 2001, pp. 109–40, in particular p. 122.

      9 9. The two main texts in which Freud theorizes love as logical blindness and an infatuated and narcissistic idealization of the self through the beloved object elevated to the ideal Ego are ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’ and ‘Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego’ in, respectively: Freud, Standard Edition, vol. XIV, pp. 73–104, and The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XVIII (1920–1922): Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works, Vintage, London 2001, pp. 68–144.

      10 10. This anthropological mutation is at the centre of my work L’uomo senza inconscio: Figure della nuova clinica psicoanalitica [Man Without Unconscious: Figures in New Psychoanalytic Treatment], Raffaello Cortina, Milan 2010.

      11 11. See Massimo Recalcati, Clinica del vuoto: Anoressie, dipendenze e psicosi [Treating the Void: Anorexia, Addiction, Psychosis], Franco Angeli, Milan 2002.

      12 12. Max Weber, ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and Other Writings, Penguin, London 2002, pp. 1–200.

      13 13. See Jacques Lacan, ‘Della psicoanalisi nei suoi rapporti con la realtà’ [‘On Psychoanalysis and Its Relation with Reality’], in Altri scritti [Other Writings], ed. A. Di Ciaccia, Einaudi, Turin 2013, p. 351. For the original, see De la psychanalyse dans ses rapports avec la réalité, in Autres écrits, Seuil, Paris 2001.

      14 14. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds, Polity, Cambridge 2003.

      15 15. This is a thesis developed with courage and poetry in a recent text by the materialist philosopher Alain Badiou, who speaks (in a Christian sense) of love as ‘eternity descending into time’, in In Praise of Love, Serpent’s Tail, London 2012, p. 47.

      16 16. Martin Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in Basic Writings, Routledge, London 2010, pp. 83–140.

      17 17. Heidegger, ‘Origin of the Work of Art’.

      18 18. The reference to the portulaca is an homage to Michele Serra, Gli sdraiati, Feltrinelli, Milan 2013.

      19 19. See F. Scarabicchi, L’esperienza della neve [The Experience of Snow], Donzelli, Rome 2003.

      20 20. Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book XX: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge: Encore, W. W. Norton, London 1999.

      21 21. See Saint Augustine, Confessions, Penguin, London 1961, pp. 164–5.

      22 22. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2, 140–1.