The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm © 1956 ~ part one

Foreword

This book, on the contrary, wants to show that love is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone, regardless of the level of maturity reached by him. It wants to convince the reader that all his attempts for love are bound to fail, unless he tries most actively to develop his total personality, so as to achieve a productive orientation; that satisfaction in individual love cannot be attained without the capacity to love one's neighbor, without true humanity, courage, faith, and discipline. pXIX


He who knows nothing, loves nothing. He who can do nothing understands nothing. He who understands nothing is worthless. But he who understands also loves, notices, sees … The more knowledge is inherent in a thing, the greater the love.… Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time as the strawberries knows nothing about grapes. — Paracelsus pXXI


I. Is Love an Art?
Is Love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love an pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matter of chance, something one "falls into" if one is lucky? p1

A second premise behind the attitude that there is nothing to be learned about love is the assumption that the problem of love is the problem of an object, not the problem of a faculty. People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love—or to be loved by—is difficult. This attitude has several reasons rooted in the development of modern society. p2

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... there seems to be only one adequate way to overcome the failure of love—to examine the reasons for this failure, and to proceed to study the meaning of love.

The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering.

What are the necessary steps in learning any art?

The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about various diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one—my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art. But, aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art—the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. This holds true for music, for medicine, for painting—and for love. p5
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II. The Theory of Love
I. Love, The Answer to The Problem of Human Existence

When man is born, the human race as well as the individual, he is thrown out of a situation which was definite, as definite as the instincts, into a situation which is indefinite, uncertain and open. There is certainty only about the past—and about the future only as far as that it is death. p7-8

Man is gifted with reason; he is life being aware of itself; he has awareness of himself, of his fellow man, of his past, and of the possibilities of his future. This awareness of himself as a separate entity, the awareness of his own short life span, of the fact that without his will he is born and against his will he dies, that he will die before those whom he loves, or they before him, the awareness of his aloneness and separateness, of his helplessness before the forces of nature and of society, all this makes his separate, disunited existence aan unbearable prison. He would become insane could he not liberate himself from this prison and reach out, unite himself in some form or other with men, with the world outside. p8


The experience of separateness arouses anxiety; it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety. Being separate means being cut off, without any capacity to use my human powers. Hence to be separate means to be helpless, unable to grasp the world—things and people—actively; it means that the would can invade me without my ability to react. Thus, separateness is the source of intense anxiety. Beyond that, it arouses shame and the feeling of guilt. p8

The awareness of human separation, without reunion by love—is the source of shame. It is at the same time the source of guilt and anxiety. p9

The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness. The absolute failure to achieve this aim means insanity, because the panic of complete isolation can be overcome only by such a radical withdrawal from the world outside that the feeling of separation disappears—because the world outside, from which one is separated, has disappperared. p9


But the more the human race emerges from these primary bonds, the more it separates itself from the natural world, the more intense becomes the need to find new ways of escaping separateness.
One way of achieving this aim lies in all kinds of orgiastic states. These may have the form of drugs. Many rituals of primitive tribes offer a vivid picture of this type of solution. p11

Alcoholism and drug addiction are the forms which the individual chooses in a non-orgiastic culture. p12

the sexual act without love never bridges the gap between two human beings, except momentarily. p12

 

 

 

 

Anna Akhmatova

Appearance Of the Moon

(From "The Moon in Zenith")
1942-1944, Tashkent

Of the pearl’s light and agate’s clouds 

Of the such fairly smoked glass, 

By slopes of so sudden mounds, 

She sailed such solemnly in skies – 

As if the Moon Sonata’s sounds 

Had cut our roadway at once.

 

Source: Lyrical Digression on the Seventh Elegy

I defend
Not my voice, but my silence.


Source: Cinque

As if on the edge of a cloud
I remember your words,
And because of my words
Night became brighter than day to you. 
Thus, torn from the earth,
We rose up high, like stars.


(source: unknown)

To live--as if in freedom,
To die--as if at home.
Volkov field,
Yellow straw.
June 22, 1941
(Day of the declaration of war)

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Translated by Katherine Woods, pubblished in 1971)

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. p4

But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said.
Grown-ups are like that... p15

Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, "What does his voice sounds like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?" Instead, they demand: "How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?" Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him. p16~17

Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people. p17

... for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference. p17

To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures... p18

I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: "I am busy with matters of consequences!" And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man—he is a mushroom! p29

If some one loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. p29~30

It is such a secret place, the land of tears. p31

I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. p36

Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her... p37

Accepted authority rests first of all on reason. p45

That (judging yourself) is the most difficult thing of all. It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom. p46

For, to conceited men, all other men are admirers... Conceited people never hear anything but praise. p48

It is of some use to my volcanoes, and it is of some use to my flower, that I own them. But you are of no use to the stars... p57

Nevertheless he is the only one of them all who does not seem to me ridiculous. Perhaps that is because he is thinking of something else besides himself. p61

When one wishes to play the wit, he sometimes wanders a little from the truth. p68

What does that mean—"tame"?
It means to establish ties.
... If you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. to you, I shall be unique in all the world. p80

One only understands the things that one tames. Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me... you must be very patient... p83~84

Words are the source of misunderstandings. p84

"What is a rite?"
"Those also are actions too often neglected. They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours." p84

Because she is my rose. p87

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. p87

It is the time that you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important. p87

You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. p88

"Were they not satisfied where they were?"
"No one is ever satisfied where he is." p89

Only children know what they are looking for. p89

It is a good thing to have had a friend, even if one is about to die. p91

What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well... p93

The house, the stars, the desert—what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible! p93

I looked at his pale forehead... "what I see here is nothing but a shell. What is most important is invisible..." p93

But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart... p97

time soothes all sorrows. p104

There is nothing sad about old shells... p106

Limited by Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)

http://www.bartleby.com/165/35.html

I am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers: “Omaha.”

Chicago Poems.  1916.

The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (copyright 1955)

We have what you want, though you may not know you want it.
Malnutrition of the reading faculty is a serious thing.
Let us prescribe for you. p13

A doctor is advertised by the bodies he cures. My business is advertised by the minds I stimulate. And let me tell you that the book business is different from other trades. People don't know they want books. I can see just by looking at you that your mind is ill for lack of books but you are blissfully unaware of it! People don't go to a bookseller until some serious mental accident or disease makes them aware of their danger. Then they come to here. p16

... future lies not merely in systematizing it as a trade. It lies in dignifying it as a profession. It is small use to jeer at the public for craving shoddy books, quack books, untrue books. Physician, cure thyself! Let the bookseller learn to know and revere good books, he will teach the customer. The hunger for good book is more general and more insistent than you would dream. But it is still in a way subconscious. People need books, but they don't know they need them. Generally they are not aware that the books they need are in existence. p17

Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a "good" book. A book is "good" only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error. A book that is good for me would very likely be punk for you. My pleasure is to prescribe books for such patients as drop in here and are willing to tell me their symptoms. Some people have let their reading faculties decay so that all I can do is hold a post mortem on them. But most are still open to treatment. There is no one so grateful as the man to whom you have given just the book his soul needed and he never knew it. No advertising on earth is as potent as a grateful customer. p17-18

The real book-lovers are generally among the humbler classes. A man who is impassioned with books has little time or patience to grow rich by concocting schemes for cozening his fellows. p19

Human beings pay very little attention to what is told them unless they know something about it already. p21

The life of a bookseller is very demoralizing to the intellect. He is surrounded by innumerable books; he cannot possibly read them all, he dips into one and picks up a scrap from another. His mind gradually fills itself with miscellaneous flotsam, with superficial opinions, with a thousand half-knowledges. Almost unconsciously he begins to rate literature according to what people ask for. p30

They (booksellers) are likely to be a little – shall we say – worn at the bindings, as becomes men who have forsaken worldly profit to pursue a noble calling ill rewarded in cash. p42

The honor of his (bookseller) profession should compel him to do all he can to spread the distribution of good stuff. p47

... but they (customers) really want good books—the poor souls don't know how to get them. p49

... bookselling is an impossible job for a man who loves literature. p51

"The works of a man, bury them under what guano-mountains and obscene owl-droppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish. What of Heroism, what of Eternal Light was in a Man and his Life, is with very great exactness added to the Eternities, remains forever a new divine portion of the Sum of Things." — Thomas Carlyle, Cromwell (1845) p53

If an assistant chef is so fond of good books that he has to steal them, the world is safe for democracy. p77

The human yearning for innocent pastime is a pathetic thing... It shows what a desperately grim thing life has become. p107

... if you let yourself think that you are satisfied with husks, you'll have no appetite left for the real grain. p108

To laugh at cheap jests is as base as to pray to cheap gods. p108

... the real Peace will be a long time coming. When you tear up all the fibers of civilization it's a slow job to knit things together again. p112

That's the terrible hypnotism of war, the brute mass-impulse, the pride and national spirit, the instinctive simplicity of men that makes them worship what is their own above everything else. p113

"A grain of glory mixed with humbleness
Cures both a fever and lethargickness." — George Herbert p114

Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries. p115

... books contain the thoughts and dreams of men, their hopes and strivings and all their immortal parts. It's in books that most of us learn how splendidly worth-while life is. p115

~~~~~~~~~ the last page ~~~~~~~~~

The Bookstore

The bookstore is one of humanity's great engines, and one that we use very imperfectly. It is a queer fact that most of us still have the primitive habit of visiting bookshops chiefly to ask for some definite title. Aren't we ever going to leave anything to destiny, or to good luck, or to the happy suggestion of some wise bookseller?

"We have ready access, in the bookshop, one of the greatest instruments of civilization; and yet none of us—neither publisher, booksellers, nor customers—have yet learned more than an inkling of what that place can accomplish."
—From JOHN MISTLETOE, by Christopher Morley

In every bookstore, small or large, there are books we have not read; books which may have messages of unsuspected beauty or importance. They may be new books, they may be of yesterday, or of long ago.

The store where you found this volume exists in the hope of knowing—and learning—about books. There is no habit more valuable than that of dropping into a bookstore occasionally to look around—to look both inward and outward.

"We have what you need, though you may not know you need it."

Dr. Albert Schweitzer - Full Documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf4B9v0s0CY

Reverence for Life – "Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben"

A brotherhood of those who bare the mark of pain. Who are the members of the brotherhood? Those who have learned by experience of physical pain and bodily anguish belong together all over the world. They are united by a secrete bound.

One must be careful to not to mix himself up uninvited in other people’s business. On the other hand, one must not forget the danger looking and reserve which daily life forces on all of us. We cannot let ourselves get through into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger. No man is ever a completely stranger to his fellow man. Man belongs to men. Man has claims on men. Our reserve is condemned to be broken down by the claims of the heart, and thus all of us get into a position where we must reach out and to one of our fellow man become ourselves a man.

a desk, some books, and his old piano, these are all his needs to carry on his work in philosophy, theology, and music… work that may never be finished because there are claims on his heart.