An uncomfortable take on C de B. I have greatly approved (but James came to a similar conclusion at the end of the comments. CWCID.) Maybe I just like men martyring themselves too much.
and then—as roxane herself asks—why tell her after all these years? “because he’s dying, of course.” because now that he’s dying, by telling her he can deprive her of himself too. he can deprive her of the meaning of the years she spent mourning. he even, in his honor, deprives her of any comfort from the idea that the one she really loved was there for her all along. he keeps bringing up christian. he can’t let her forget for a second that the thing she loved was him & christian, which is to say, no one.
I came upon the substack Sympathetic Opposition from a Rob Henderson link about why autistic and other "strange" girls should be ladylike. She is quite frank.
4 comments:
I’m not too impressed with this analysis.
“…he concession-stand girl at the artsy theater try to play cat person with him. but wait, cyrano was there too, he’s a smart guy, how did we learn something from this scene that he didn’t learn from it?”
There speaks someone who has never been in the situation he describes. Generally speaking the truth is obvious to everyone except those intimately involved, for whom the powerful emotions — love, passion, despair, loneliness — are blinding. That is a key part of the tragic element, which is also the human element.
It is also what keeps it a story of living and dying people struggling rather than a cheap morality tale. The essence of tragedy is the human, even the humane.
I agree insofar as he is denying his own desire for the sake of his own honor. Laudable. But when the noble plan to help the boy - for the sake of the woman - goes south, he is now stuck having deceived her, giving nothing in return. I suppose she has the comfort that someone lwith a poetic soul loved her, but still she could have actually had him, but he had backed all of them into a corner.
So I tried the exercise of gaming out how he could have told her the truth--at the moment or shortly thereafter. Somehow or other he has to admit that he has lied to her, and set her up for disappointment in her marriage.
In a face-culture, how do you admit to a lie? He would need humility, and no matter how I tried I couldn't square his pride with the requirements of such a confession.
Hmm, yes. First the man tells the lie; then the lie tells a lie; then the lie tells the man.
But he meant so well, so generously at first! Life is hard.
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