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Entry tags:
- btvs,
- literature,
- love,
- spuffy
L'amour toujours l'amour
First off, I found an interesting article about Brokeback Mountain fitting in the pattern of tragic loves in literature: Cowboys in love.
The author mentioned Denis de Rougemont's famous analysis of romantic love in L'Amour et L'Occident which was a book I had to study a long time ago when I was in Highschool!
Because of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jamalov29 's last entry, I kept on thinking of romantic love and Spuffy today...finding out the article was a sign that I had to write something about it! This is an answer to your post, Caroline, well kind of...
Basically Denis de Rougemont's thesis was that the Western World actually created the notion of erotic love, of passion-love, and that Tristan et Iseut, a legend told in Provence by troubadours and that became a Myth, was the basis of all other love stories in the West (including Romeo and Juliet)that came to define romantic love for us. It is the archetype.
But at the same time he completely demystified Tristan et Iseut, saying that they didn't really love each other, "ils s'entr'aiment", they were simply under a spell. He argued that what the Tristan legend was about might indeed be the parting of lovers, but a parting in the name of passion, for love of love itself. Parting would ensure the intensification and transfiguration of love, at the cost of happiness and even of the lovers' lives. Tristan and Iseult, he said, did not love one another; rather they were 'in love", loving love in a way, and what they therefore needed was not one another's presence, but one another's absence!
So while they had experienced the joys of physical love, they actually needed the absence of the other and when the love potion wore off after its allotted span of three years, they didn't try to stay together at all. They sought King Mark's forgiveness and Iseult returnt to the court. Yet their deliberately chosen separation seemed, at least in part, a ploy to make their love still stronger. By the way De Rougemont didn't forget to recall what the word "passion" came from, that its etymology is conected to "pain" and "passivity".
He also declared the idea of romantic love was the greatest curse on western civilization precisely because passion-love is based on absence.
Thus love is experienced solely as trying to attain or maintain the object of our affections. In order to feel love, we must either be separated or face the threat of loss, something that marriage kills quite effectively since it requires the pledge to remain constant and present! So for the philosopher it's a Catholic heresy, not only because it's the doom of marriage but also because such love commands and the beloved, unreachable and loved because of it, is like God for the lover. The lovers can only unite within death. Dying for the beloved is constituing romantic love. Great love is rooted in pain and is fatal.
Since then, we think that love must hurt, that love is pain. It's Joss Whedon's song, innit?
I guess it's because I had to read "L'Amour et l'Occident" 19 years ago and also because I love Wagner's opera that I've always thought so strongly that Spuffy was a new version of Tristan and Iseut. They so embodied that pattern of love. Much more than Bangel. Of course B/A is also about parting and doomed love, but it's Spuffy that wholly fulfilled the Myth while Bangel did not according to me(probably because there was a big Lolita vibe that called to another literary model).
Because of Spike, the most romantic character on screen, because Spuffy was so carnal in season 6 and also because there was Willow's spell to begin with, in "Something Blue", Spuffy is the ultimate romantic love on BTVS...
The "My Will Be Done" spell took the place of the love potion. In the earliest versions of Tristan et Iseut the love potion comes into the narrative suddenly and unexpectedly, and its effect is to bind together two people who have no reason to like each other and whose relations have so far been more hostile than friendly.
Besides Angel and also Riley could both be seen as King Mark. Angel because Buffy was supposed to be HIS and because he's Spike's grandsire and Mark was Tristan's suzerain. Riley because he was the main obstacle to Spuffy on BTVS, and Buffy threw herself in his arms after "Something Blue", just like Iseut still married Mark after the love potion.
I could even see Giles as an avatar of King Mark because of being Buffy's Watcher, especially in season 7.
Even the 3 years span of the spell works on BTVS. Spike left, just like Tristan and the carnal love stopped. And as Tristan thought that Iseut had failed him when he died, Spike apparently didn't believe in Buffy's declaration while he was about to die in "Chosen".
Yes Spuffy was an unhappy love, not because of a stupid curse but because of its very nature. That's why angsty Spuffy fanfictions work so well. Spuffy resonates with that inconscious part of us that believes in Tristan as the archetype of romantic love. It's filled with pain, but we think it's worth it. It's a kind of faith (hence our conservative Swiss philosopher talking about Heresy!). We cannot not believe in Spuffy. It makes life tastier, more colourful, more everything. Such love makes miserable and at the same time bigger and stronger than the pain involved. It's transcendental.
So yes I think that Spuffy was the epitome of romantic love in the Buffyverse. And it wasn't only a one way deal. Buffy fell for Spike. When she asked Willow why everybody thought she was STILL in love with Spike, she admitted that she had fallen in love with him prior to season 7.
BTW Buffy's relationships on the show tell a lot of things about love and falling in love.
First she fell for Angel before she knew he was a vampire !
Of course the idea of a vampire with a soul was poetic enough (something Giles pointed out) for a 16 years old girl to fuel some "crystallization" afterwards, but he was simply a mysterious older guy when she fell for him first. A cliche for many teenage girls!
I think she precisely fell for Angel because he was different, a dream come true and it sounded like a fairytale for her. It's typical of the age she had then. It was normal.
"Crystallization" is a term created by French writer Stendhal in his essay On Love. It's non-rational and happens when you fall in love. Imagine a tree branch covered with crystal deposits left in Salzburg's salt mines for a few months. Stendhal used this analogy to explain love. A lover becomes "crystallized" after being left with his or her thoughts, like the tree branch with the crystal, for approximately twenty-four hours after realizing that the beloved loves him or her back. Over time, like the branch left in the mine for months, the intensity of love strengthens. The lover endows the beloved with "a thousand perfections," and is blinded to the beloved's flaws. Stendhal believed that four types of love exist: passionate love (that would be real love), mannered love (makes no room for passion and spontaneity, it involves delicacy, etiquette, and refinement but is too weak to survive obstacles), physical love (the chase, the sex, but it's childish pleasure), and vanity love. He also thought that relationships often combined these four types of love, in any combination, and that all love relationships risked disintegrating into vanity love. Vanity love concerns flattery and fashion. It may encompass physical love or may lack it. Vanity love has a dramatic edge, disguising itself as grand passion, but habit or weak friendship rests at the base. Vanity love is empty.
But let's back to Buffy.
In season 4, Buffy was older and she *wanted* the typical college relationship with the physical part (that she couldn't have with Angel !). So she got first Parker the jerk who talked her into doing what young adults are supposed to do (the next morning discussion with Giles pointed what was going in her head then!). She fell into the trap, and then she "chose" Riley the assistant teacher more than she fell for him. I think she fell for the idea of a romance with someone like Riley (which doesn't mean she didn't come to love him). Riley was security. The relationship followed the etiquette of dating, going from base to base to use the American analogy...and it felt normal. Quite the mannered love to use Stendhal's words.
Then came Spike. I think she fell for him despite herself, despite her tries to deny the attraction ("Crush") and to reject him in season 5 and after their kisses in season 6. She couldn't help falling in love with him, while he was a soulless vampire. She didn't choose him, she didn't want to love him, she couldn't love him being a Slayer but it was beyond her control, she fell. The way Spuffy happened in season 6 totally matched "Something Blue". It was passion.
In season 7, we didn't see Buffy falling for anyone, maybe because the point was precisely to stand! LOL
But she still acted out of love concerning Spike to the point that Giles got worried about their connection and her feelings towards him. But Buffy being The Slayer, and the show being about female empowerment, she could not end as Iseut and die with her lover. She had to choose life. The Slayer arc overcame.
Through all the relationships Buffy had, the writers studied different sorts of falling in love that one can experience.
1. the teenage crush, turning into a romantic dream and leading to crystallization (on both sides) and passion until Angelus' coming broke the dream for Buffy and spoiled the romance for ever.
2. being under the illusion about the other before the desillusion with Parker...It was physical but I bet Stendhal would have thought it was mostly a vanity love, that is actually empty. Buffy's ego was hurt.
3. the rational choice with Riley...It isn't passion because Buffy was extremely active, not passive. She was not subjected to that love. It was physical but not passionate, so not the "usual" model of romantic love but obvioulsy Joss didn't want that sort of love to last either!
4. the forbidden passion, physical and passionate, with Spike, just like the unsought passion which draws Tristan and Iseut irresistibly together and which compels them to cut across the moral code and the social and family obligations which are the framework of their existence.
I didn't mention the Immortal because according to me, Buffy's journey on screen ended up in "Chosen". The episode TGIQ was about Angel and Spike, not about her.
But Spuffy being THE romantic love based on Tristan was still there as a subtext in Ats season 5. That's why Spike didn't leave in "Harm's Way". He needed Buffy's absence to keep 'drowning in her' and in my heart I know that Buffy is still haunted by Spike's absence as well.
The author mentioned Denis de Rougemont's famous analysis of romantic love in L'Amour et L'Occident which was a book I had to study a long time ago when I was in Highschool!
Because of
jamalov29 's last entry, I kept on thinking of romantic love and Spuffy today...finding out the article was a sign that I had to write something about it! This is an answer to your post, Caroline, well kind of...Basically Denis de Rougemont's thesis was that the Western World actually created the notion of erotic love, of passion-love, and that Tristan et Iseut, a legend told in Provence by troubadours and that became a Myth, was the basis of all other love stories in the West (including Romeo and Juliet)that came to define romantic love for us. It is the archetype.
But at the same time he completely demystified Tristan et Iseut, saying that they didn't really love each other, "ils s'entr'aiment", they were simply under a spell. He argued that what the Tristan legend was about might indeed be the parting of lovers, but a parting in the name of passion, for love of love itself. Parting would ensure the intensification and transfiguration of love, at the cost of happiness and even of the lovers' lives. Tristan and Iseult, he said, did not love one another; rather they were 'in love", loving love in a way, and what they therefore needed was not one another's presence, but one another's absence!
So while they had experienced the joys of physical love, they actually needed the absence of the other and when the love potion wore off after its allotted span of three years, they didn't try to stay together at all. They sought King Mark's forgiveness and Iseult returnt to the court. Yet their deliberately chosen separation seemed, at least in part, a ploy to make their love still stronger. By the way De Rougemont didn't forget to recall what the word "passion" came from, that its etymology is conected to "pain" and "passivity".
He also declared the idea of romantic love was the greatest curse on western civilization precisely because passion-love is based on absence.
Thus love is experienced solely as trying to attain or maintain the object of our affections. In order to feel love, we must either be separated or face the threat of loss, something that marriage kills quite effectively since it requires the pledge to remain constant and present! So for the philosopher it's a Catholic heresy, not only because it's the doom of marriage but also because such love commands and the beloved, unreachable and loved because of it, is like God for the lover. The lovers can only unite within death. Dying for the beloved is constituing romantic love. Great love is rooted in pain and is fatal.
Since then, we think that love must hurt, that love is pain. It's Joss Whedon's song, innit?
I guess it's because I had to read "L'Amour et l'Occident" 19 years ago and also because I love Wagner's opera that I've always thought so strongly that Spuffy was a new version of Tristan and Iseut. They so embodied that pattern of love. Much more than Bangel. Of course B/A is also about parting and doomed love, but it's Spuffy that wholly fulfilled the Myth while Bangel did not according to me(probably because there was a big Lolita vibe that called to another literary model).
Because of Spike, the most romantic character on screen, because Spuffy was so carnal in season 6 and also because there was Willow's spell to begin with, in "Something Blue", Spuffy is the ultimate romantic love on BTVS...
The "My Will Be Done" spell took the place of the love potion. In the earliest versions of Tristan et Iseut the love potion comes into the narrative suddenly and unexpectedly, and its effect is to bind together two people who have no reason to like each other and whose relations have so far been more hostile than friendly.
Besides Angel and also Riley could both be seen as King Mark. Angel because Buffy was supposed to be HIS and because he's Spike's grandsire and Mark was Tristan's suzerain. Riley because he was the main obstacle to Spuffy on BTVS, and Buffy threw herself in his arms after "Something Blue", just like Iseut still married Mark after the love potion.
I could even see Giles as an avatar of King Mark because of being Buffy's Watcher, especially in season 7.
Even the 3 years span of the spell works on BTVS. Spike left, just like Tristan and the carnal love stopped. And as Tristan thought that Iseut had failed him when he died, Spike apparently didn't believe in Buffy's declaration while he was about to die in "Chosen".
Yes Spuffy was an unhappy love, not because of a stupid curse but because of its very nature. That's why angsty Spuffy fanfictions work so well. Spuffy resonates with that inconscious part of us that believes in Tristan as the archetype of romantic love. It's filled with pain, but we think it's worth it. It's a kind of faith (hence our conservative Swiss philosopher talking about Heresy!). We cannot not believe in Spuffy. It makes life tastier, more colourful, more everything. Such love makes miserable and at the same time bigger and stronger than the pain involved. It's transcendental.
So yes I think that Spuffy was the epitome of romantic love in the Buffyverse. And it wasn't only a one way deal. Buffy fell for Spike. When she asked Willow why everybody thought she was STILL in love with Spike, she admitted that she had fallen in love with him prior to season 7.
BTW Buffy's relationships on the show tell a lot of things about love and falling in love.
First she fell for Angel before she knew he was a vampire !
Of course the idea of a vampire with a soul was poetic enough (something Giles pointed out) for a 16 years old girl to fuel some "crystallization" afterwards, but he was simply a mysterious older guy when she fell for him first. A cliche for many teenage girls!
I think she precisely fell for Angel because he was different, a dream come true and it sounded like a fairytale for her. It's typical of the age she had then. It was normal.
"Crystallization" is a term created by French writer Stendhal in his essay On Love. It's non-rational and happens when you fall in love. Imagine a tree branch covered with crystal deposits left in Salzburg's salt mines for a few months. Stendhal used this analogy to explain love. A lover becomes "crystallized" after being left with his or her thoughts, like the tree branch with the crystal, for approximately twenty-four hours after realizing that the beloved loves him or her back. Over time, like the branch left in the mine for months, the intensity of love strengthens. The lover endows the beloved with "a thousand perfections," and is blinded to the beloved's flaws. Stendhal believed that four types of love exist: passionate love (that would be real love), mannered love (makes no room for passion and spontaneity, it involves delicacy, etiquette, and refinement but is too weak to survive obstacles), physical love (the chase, the sex, but it's childish pleasure), and vanity love. He also thought that relationships often combined these four types of love, in any combination, and that all love relationships risked disintegrating into vanity love. Vanity love concerns flattery and fashion. It may encompass physical love or may lack it. Vanity love has a dramatic edge, disguising itself as grand passion, but habit or weak friendship rests at the base. Vanity love is empty.
But let's back to Buffy.
In season 4, Buffy was older and she *wanted* the typical college relationship with the physical part (that she couldn't have with Angel !). So she got first Parker the jerk who talked her into doing what young adults are supposed to do (the next morning discussion with Giles pointed what was going in her head then!). She fell into the trap, and then she "chose" Riley the assistant teacher more than she fell for him. I think she fell for the idea of a romance with someone like Riley (which doesn't mean she didn't come to love him). Riley was security. The relationship followed the etiquette of dating, going from base to base to use the American analogy...and it felt normal. Quite the mannered love to use Stendhal's words.
Then came Spike. I think she fell for him despite herself, despite her tries to deny the attraction ("Crush") and to reject him in season 5 and after their kisses in season 6. She couldn't help falling in love with him, while he was a soulless vampire. She didn't choose him, she didn't want to love him, she couldn't love him being a Slayer but it was beyond her control, she fell. The way Spuffy happened in season 6 totally matched "Something Blue". It was passion.
In season 7, we didn't see Buffy falling for anyone, maybe because the point was precisely to stand! LOL
But she still acted out of love concerning Spike to the point that Giles got worried about their connection and her feelings towards him. But Buffy being The Slayer, and the show being about female empowerment, she could not end as Iseut and die with her lover. She had to choose life. The Slayer arc overcame.
Through all the relationships Buffy had, the writers studied different sorts of falling in love that one can experience.
1. the teenage crush, turning into a romantic dream and leading to crystallization (on both sides) and passion until Angelus' coming broke the dream for Buffy and spoiled the romance for ever.
2. being under the illusion about the other before the desillusion with Parker...It was physical but I bet Stendhal would have thought it was mostly a vanity love, that is actually empty. Buffy's ego was hurt.
3. the rational choice with Riley...It isn't passion because Buffy was extremely active, not passive. She was not subjected to that love. It was physical but not passionate, so not the "usual" model of romantic love but obvioulsy Joss didn't want that sort of love to last either!
4. the forbidden passion, physical and passionate, with Spike, just like the unsought passion which draws Tristan and Iseut irresistibly together and which compels them to cut across the moral code and the social and family obligations which are the framework of their existence.
I didn't mention the Immortal because according to me, Buffy's journey on screen ended up in "Chosen". The episode TGIQ was about Angel and Spike, not about her.
But Spuffy being THE romantic love based on Tristan was still there as a subtext in Ats season 5. That's why Spike didn't leave in "Harm's Way". He needed Buffy's absence to keep 'drowning in her' and in my heart I know that Buffy is still haunted by Spike's absence as well.