April 17th, 2008
Saw Cinema Paradiso years ago. In it, an old man tells a young man this beautiful story about the lover who on the eve of finally fulfilling his desire (i.e., getting his love), left, without so much as a word or explanation.
Why did he leave? Did he resent the fact that his love had to test his love? Did he get scared of the impending success of his quest? Did he tire of the waiting? Lost his love/desire? Gotten what he wanted (proven to himself that he had the capacity to suffer for his love)?
We do not know.
Why would we give up something/someone that we desire (with the whole of our being) just when we’re about to get it/her/him?
That story is what in the film made the deepest impression in me.
Many years later, I got to read this book by Roland Barthes, “A Lover’s Discourse” (1977). In the section entitled “Waiting,” we find this fragment:
“A mandarin fell in love with a courtesan. ‘I shall be yours,’ she told him, ‘When you have spent a hundred nights waiting for me, sitting on a stool, in my garden, beneath my window.’ But on the ninety-ninth night, the mandarin stood up, put his stool under his arm, and went away.”
April 17th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
[...] Michael Ian Lomongo created an interesting post today on Cinema Paradiso and Barthesâ