Even on the basis of these brief remarks, we can already begin to discern how the courtly ideal, or cortezia, differs radically from, say, the classical form of eroticism propagated by Aristophanes in the Symposium. According to the latter account, amorous couples were originally unified, inextricably, in a single bodily form. Zeus, however, was jealous of the lovers‟ strength and power, and became further incensed when they mounted an insurrection against his authority. As punishment for their insubordination, the lovers‟ bodies were cruelly sundered into separate halves.48 It is
on this basis, then, that erotic longing within the classical tradition comes to be characterised by the nostalgic pursuit of a lost wholeness. Indeed, according to Aristophanes, the ultimate desire of every lover is to “melt together with the one he loves, so that one person might re-emerge from the two.”49
This emphasis upon the restoration of a primordial unity stands in sharp contrast to the valorisation of inexorable deferral which we have identified with the courtly erotic scene. Whereas the amorous couple, within Aristophanes‟ myth, seek to reactualise a forgotten state of consummatory bliss, the courtly lover affirms the continual postponement of satisfaction as a means toward perpetuating his desire. As it turns out, the distinction between these two models of erotic relationality can be further drawn through a comparison of the differing values which they ascribe to speech and writing.
As we have just suggested, written correspondence plays an incredibly important role within the courtly scene. This is a result, quite naturally, of the injunction against immediacy which carefully circumscribes all encounters between the lover and his
domina. “At the moment that social distance…increases to the point of becoming
48 Plato. Symposium. Translated by Alexander Nehamas & Paul Woodruff. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1989. . 26.
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absence, writing becomes necessary.”50 Indeed, if presencing, as Jacques Derrida has
painstakingly demonstrated, entails the simultaneity of thought and speech, pneuma
and logos – then this is precisely what courtly eroticism denies us.51 It abjures the
“eternal present” 52 of the consummating word, substituting in its place a never-
ending, proliferating series of detours and deferrals entrusted with prolonging the courtship.53 And as long as this regimen of unfulfilment prevails, the lover‟s
compulsion to write remains irrepressible, with the importance of each written word seemingly increasing in direct proportion to the magnitude of distance which separates him from his domina.
Unsurprisingly, then, within the ideal state of consummatory immersion which Aristophanes so famously depicts, the intimacy of the spoken word, whispered amongst lovers eternally conjoined, would relegate the written signifier to redundancy. For, complete and utter proximity, such as the kind evoked by Aristophanes, expunges the very deficit of presence which necessitates the dissemination of amorous correspondence within the courtly tale. “Would not two souls so intimately united be able to have immediate communication between them?”54 Indeed, finding himself engulfed within the absolute immediacy of his
domina’s eternal embrace, “the fulfilled lover,” as Barthes suggests, “would no longer have any need to write.”55
50 Of Grammatology. 281. 51 Ibid.. 18-21.
52 Ibid. 73.
53 André Gide‟s Strait is the Gate develops this point in detail. Interestingly, Gide assigns to the traditionally passive domina the more
assertive role within the romance; it is she (Alissa) who maintains and perpetuates the deployment of detours and deferrals entrusted with inexorably postponing the moment of consummation. She writes to Jerome: “I should be sorry to give you pain, but I have come to the point of no longer wanting your presence…” (71) Her priority, instead, is “to deliberately prolong [the] time of waiting.” (72) In her journal Alissa writes: “…I ask myself whether it is really happiness that I desire, so much as the progress toward happiness. Oh, Lord! Preserve me from a happiness to which I might too easily attain! Teach me to put off happiness…” (111) And in a final letter to Jerome: “As the day of our meeting comes near, I look forward to it with growing anxiety, almost with apprehension. I seem now to dread your coming that I so longed for; I try not to think of it; I imagine your ring at the bell, your step on the stairs, and my heart stops beating or hurts me…And whatever you do, don‟t expect me to be able to speak to you.” [my emphasis] (76) André Gide. Strait is the Gate. Translated by Dorothy Bussy. London: Penguin Books, 1985. We cite these passages not because they belong within the inter-textual thread of works linking the Tristan myth to its transposition within the pages of Zarathustra (Gide‟s novel was published nine years after Nietzsche‟s death), but merely because they feature exemplary instances of courtly rhetoric. The use of silence as an impediment, or obstruction, within Alissa‟s final letter to Jerome is particularly interesting given the fact that Nietzsche makes recourse to this very same courtly trope within the context of hisvarious (abortive) presentations of the eternal return.
54 La Nouvelle Héloïse. 246.
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There can be no doubt, then, that the status of the written signifier is persistently devalued within the tableau of consummatory love. To borrow from Derrida, we might say that it is assigned only a secondary and provisional importance in comparison with the glorified primordiality of pure speech. It is secondary, “due to the original and lost presence from which [it] derives”56 – and provisional, “as
concerns the final and missing presence toward which [it] is but a movement of mediation.”57 In other words, the written signifier‟s importance is limited to its
ability to function as a compensatory stand-in for lost presence until the originary state of consummatory bliss can be regained.58 Once the absolute proximity of the
lover to his beloved is achieved, the signifier is rendered surplus to requirements and falls away, leaving only the naked transparency of the spoken voice.
This is further clarified in the following passage from Speech and Phenomena, where Derrida writes: “Ideally, in the teleological essence of speech, it would be possible for the signifier to be in absolute proximity to the signified aimed at within intuition and governing the meaning. The signifier would then become perfectly diaphanous due to its absolute proximity to the signified.”59 To transpose Derrida‟s semiotic lexicon
into another register, we might say that the teleological coincidence of signifier and signified evoked in this passage is mirrored closely by the state of erotic reconciliation depicted within Aristophanes‟ tale. In both cases, we encounter the elimination of all distance and the subsequent consolidation of pure presence. The ceaseless movement of courtly deferral, it seems, is vanquished.
And yet, as Derrida claims, this mythical proximity, which seems so imperious within the annals of Western eroticism, comes to be broken “at the very moment I see myself write.”60 For the act of writing, through the very movement of differing and
56 “Différance.” 9. 57 Ibid.
58 This phrase: “the originary state of consummatory bliss” refers obliquely to both the plenitude of the signified and the fulfilment of
erotic release. Insofar as both are characterised by absolute presence, they may be considered interchangeable for the remainder of this study. Cf. Derrida‟s claim that “the formal essence of the signified is presence, and the privilege of its proximity to the logos as phonē is the privilege of presence.” Jacques Derrida. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. 18.
59 Speech and Phenomena. 80.
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deferral which it engenders, destabilises the very heart of presence, displacing the presumed authority of the undivided voice and suspending its facile allocation of meaning.61 This movement, moreover, has always already been in play. Its
anteriority with respect to every origin means that every signified “is always already in the position of the signifier.”62 Difference, as we have suggested in an earlier
footnote, is then responsible for both conditioning and dislocating every supposed origin, casting it back, ceaselessly, into the anarchic.
Though much more could, and indeed shall be said on these matters, let us not be detained by them any further at the moment. Suffice it to say that if we accept, at least provisionally, the theses outlined above, our earlier depiction of the courtly lover, as an author of amorous correspondence, must now be importantly amended on at least one account. We have previously suggested that the lover‟s compulsion to write arises as a direct response to his separation from his beloved. Now, however, we find that the act of writing itself generates this very distance which extenuates his torment. What follows from this is that the courtly lover might be seen to write in
response to the very distance which he himself perpetuates – as if the hand which
twisted the thorn inside him were ultimately his own. Indeed, this is precisely the strange and abyssal form of recursivity which characterises both the courtly lover‟s plight and privilege: to write, as a concerted response to the deprivation of presence engendered by writing…
●
To summarise, then, the suspension of teleology inherent within the preceding account means that there can belong to courtly love no ultimate end or meaning beyond the inexorable and futile process that constitutes it: neither the sanctity of the marital vow nor the bliss of erotic consummation are ever granted. As a result, courtly lovers, if they are true to their name, unconditionally affirm the inexorable
61 “Différance.” 7-8.
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forbearance of all fulfilment. They are relentless in pursuit of the impossible, toiling without repose – like authors of a work which incessantly unravels itself, precluding any completion.63 Seduced by the promise of yearning‟s indefinite intensification, the
courtly lover awaits, with unyielding patience, the moment which never comes. Indeed, to the extent that they undergo a waiting exonerated from every teleological constraint, the amorous couple must be understood to remain faithful, ultimately, to nothing other than the incessant play of detour and deferral which prolongs the courtship. Absolute, unwavering faithfulness to the scenography of endless waiting – this is the highest, most ineluctable exigency for the practitioner of domnei.
And in the opinion of Denis de Rougemont, there is no myth or legend within Occidental culture which accords all of this a more stunning, paradigmatic sweep than the romance of Tristan and Isolde.64 It is a startling concurrence, then, that of
all Wagner‟s works, it was precisely Tristan and Isolde which Nietzsche rated most highly. But what, precisely, was the nature of Nietzsche‟s attraction to this piece of music? What was it that compelled him, in the final weeks of 1888, on the very eve of his Umnachtung, to declare it Wagner‟s “non plus ultra,”65 a work of incomparable
genius “which has no parallel, not only in music but in all the arts?”66 And, most
importantly, to what extent can we discover within Nietzsche‟s various aporetic configurations of the eternal return a critical transposition and scenographic staging of its central themes? In attempting to address these questions, we have at our disposal an extensive repertoire of published statements and anecdotal accounts spanning the length of Nietzsche‟s adult life which incontestably demonstrate his profound and enduring fidelity to Wagner‟s Tristan – a fidelity which would, of course, far outlast Nietzsche‟s devotion to Wagner himself.
63 “I wanted the impossible,” admits Constant‟s protagonist, rather succinctly, near the end of the text. Adolphe. 115.
64 Rougemont‟s claims pertaining to the exemplarity of the Tristan myth may be found in Love in the Western World. 18-19.
65 The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. 93.
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