Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Jackson Browne, Heathcliff and Les Liasisons Dangereuses
The other day, when first starting Wuthering Heights I was listening to Jackson Browne and the song "I'm Alive" came up. Browne is first starts singing about losing a love and how he would have done something to keep that love if he had the chance. The whole story is that Browne has lost someone that he loves immensely yet he hates and is glad is gone; the entire song is this back and forth motion of thinking about this person, being haunted, and yet wanting to escape to where he will never think of them again. He is so glad they are gone yet can't bear to stop thinking of his heart in their hands. This immediately made me think of the consuming relationship of Heathcliff and Cathy, which we sort of touched on today in class. The idea of being so consumed with something that it can literally drive you insane, reach to your lowest points in life of sorrow and evil as well as bring you immense happiness and love is such a reckless, romantic, scary idea. It is this consumption that will lead you to do whatever you must to be with this person as well as tearing them apart. Browne has a lyric,"And I will follow through/With my beautiful plans," which makes me think of the games that Heathcliff and Cathy play. They have these plans of destruction and rapture that they believe are right, true and beautiful in nature. This also made me think of the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil in Les Liasisons Dangereuses. These two characters are so literally obsessed with each other and themselves at the same time that they want to destroy everything about each other and yet are desperately in love with each other. In the case of Heathcliff and Cathy, they do not want to admit, and certainly not be the first to admit, that they desire each other so strongly so they begin to hate each other. This hatred comes from the desire to be with that person so badly as well as the almost rejection they feel by not getting that love back. This leads them to want to destroy them because they hurt so badly; it is just like the old saying, "can't live with them, can't live without them." Consumption is almost the true terror of this story (along with the setting in my opinion) because it is the absolute demise of these two people and in turn, everyone around them. Consumption is the not just the path that these characters choose to go down, but the one they run to. It is all about the "time wasted and pleasure tasted" in the words of Jackson Browne for Heathcliff and Cathy.
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"Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil in Les Liasisons Dangereuses (...)are so literally obsessed with each other and themselves at the same time that they want to destroy everything about each other and yet are desperately in love with each other"
ReplyDeleteThis made me think of another couple: Penthesilea and Achilles from Homer's Ilias and, more important for me, in Kleist's adaption "Penthesilea" (a German drama, Kleist also was a Romantic author/poet). Penthesilea, the Amazon Queen, is not allowed to chose a man by herself but has to conquer someone in a war. However, she deeply falls in love with Achilles and vice versa. So Penthesilea is stuck between the law and her own feelings. And by desperately defeating Achilles (in order to at least try to follow the law) she also defeats her own feelings, Achilles becomes a projection, an external part of her self (I have to work this out, it's still a bit unclear). Unfortunately, there is a huge mutual lack of communication b/w Achilles and Penthesilea so that she finally kills him accidentally. Moreover, she literally incorporates him, she eats him! Although she soemhow unified the two selves she now can't live either as she destroyed her reflection of her self and metaphorically a part of herself. So she also has to die.
The topic is still much more complicated...I'm working on my thesis for another class, but I thought it fits here as well b/c it again shows how love can finally destroy everything AND it is written by another Romantic :-)