Stumbled across this again...
Feb. 11th, 2012 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
goldvermilion87I wasn't looking for it, but it is no coincidence that I found it while composing something on A Scandal in Belgravia.
It says something that I am constantly wanting to rant about (and sometimes do rant about to my friends) but it says it far better than I ever could:
"Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love, but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best."
-C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
It says something that I am constantly wanting to rant about (and sometimes do rant about to my friends) but it says it far better than I ever could:
"Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love, but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best."
-C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
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Date: 2012-02-14 12:42 am (UTC)One other thing about this quotation in regards to fandom: To me it puts its finger on what makes, what I have taken to calling "non-slash slash" -- that fic that girls write that's meant to be gen, and doesn't actually have John and Sherlock sleeping together (most of these girls would be horrified by the thought) but it's really slashy anyway... Anyway, I think the "lovers look at each other, and friends look in the same direction" bit is exactly what happens. Non-slash slash may not have John and Sherlock smooching or anything beyond that, but it's all about John and Sherlock thinking about John and Sherlock and obsessing over the relationship of John and Sherlock... does that make sense?
Anyway... so many things to like about this quotation!
I was teaching on Freud today, so I rounded it out with this quotation... like a breathmint for the mind after chewing on Freud. :-P